Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / How to Channel Your Dark Energy For Good With Jennifer Guzman

Transcript

How to Channel Your Dark Energy For Good With Jennifer Guzman · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  Cheers, cheers. Jennifer Guzman.
• 0:02
  Thanks for having me. Yeah.
• 0:03
  Glad to have you here and I'm pleasure to have you on the
• 0:05
  show, founder of Bestola Consulting.
• 0:07
  Yes. And we're going to get into your
• 0:10
  experiences, what you've been through, your journey as a
• 0:12
  founder. I think there's gonna be a lot
• 0:13
  of things that the audience, which is mostly founders and
• 0:16
  entrepreneurs can learn from. And the first thing I want to do
• 0:20
  is we had a question that came in from our Founder Talk club.
• 0:23
  So are you part of our club yet or?
• 0:24
  No, I am OK, I thought. I thought I saw your question.
• 0:27
  Yeah. So we had a question that came
• 0:28
  in from GAIL and I'll preface this with your background
• 0:32
  because I was telling them a little bit about your background
• 0:34
  and where you came from before you started your business, your
• 0:36
  consulting business now. And one of the things is before
• 0:39
  you went on your own and started your own firm, you helped your
• 0:41
  former employer grow their client base from 1:50 to 500,
• 0:46
  which are pretty big numbers. And then you, the experience
• 0:49
  expanded the team from 45 to 150 employees.
• 0:52
  You doubled the worksite employees from 10,000 to 20,000.
• 0:56
  I'm reading to make sure I got my numbers correctly.
• 0:59
  And ultimately you prepared the firm for a successful sale in
• 1:02
  2022. Obviously you and the team were
• 1:05
  all part of that, but the question was what were some of
• 1:07
  the strategies that you used to increase your client base going
• 1:11
  from 150 to 500 clients? What were some of the things
• 1:16
  that you guys did as a team to scale that way?
• 1:18
  Because that's a. That's a pretty big jump.
• 1:20
  Great question. You know, I have a feeling that
• 1:24
  this is going to end up being the theme of our discussion
• 1:26
  around authentic connections and relationships and really what we
• 1:30
  did well one we were a market by market people approach.
• 1:36
  So we had a Chicago market, Milwaukee market, Detroit market
• 1:40
  and Columbus, OH market. And in a time where we could
• 1:44
  have been virtual with all of those markets, we put human
• 1:47
  beings in every one of those markets.
• 1:49
  So you had a client relationship manager.
• 1:52
  So that was my team that really owned the success of the
• 1:56
  partnerships that we had. It was an HR outsourcing firm,
• 1:59
  PEO and. What does that mean?
• 2:01
  Just break that quickly for people listening?
• 2:02
  What? The hell is that?
• 2:03
  So for small to mid market businesses who don't have an
• 2:07
  internal HR person, we would provide all the HR, payroll and
• 2:11
  benefit support. For that group.
• 2:13
  Got it. And oftentimes I see especially
• 2:16
  in the HR space and especially right now, there's so many
• 2:18
  people that try to implement a technology solution to replace
• 2:24
  human beings, AI. Exactly.
• 2:27
  And my approach is let's use AI to enhance the human experience,
• 2:33
  not replace it. So with Empower HR, we had a
• 2:37
  dedicated sales resource in each one of those markets that worked
• 2:41
  hand in hand with the client relationship manager.
• 2:43
  So that person had a great network of centers of influence,
• 2:48
  referral sources, etcetera that would leverage those
• 2:52
  relationships to sell those new deals.
• 2:54
  And then the client relationship manager would really own the
• 2:57
  relationship and build deep authentic connections with the
• 3:00
  clients that we served. And because I was very, I should
• 3:05
  say I am very competitive, not I was very competitive.
• 3:11
  Typical retention in an HR outsourcing firm retention rate
• 3:15
  is about 80%. I set our goal at 90% and three
• 3:19
  out of five years we hit 95% and it was really around 1:00.
• 3:24
  We understood what mattered to our clients.
• 3:27
  Two, we had deep authentic connections with the people that
• 3:30
  we serve. So even if we made a mistake,
• 3:32
  which it happens, we're in the human business, we were able
• 3:36
  able to leverage the relationship that we have with
• 3:38
  those clients to make up for that mistake.
• 3:40
  So we'd see people in person, we would be their bat phone, I like
• 3:45
  to call it the bat phone and show up for those clients even
• 3:48
  if it wasn't something HR related.
• 3:49
  So client had a major issue or client had a major win, they
• 3:54
  maybe they hit their sales goal etcetera.
• 3:57
  And we were an extension of that team and celebrated every win
• 4:00
  and every loss with our clients. And I think in a time where
• 4:03
  technology is rapidly catching up with us, people are still
• 4:08
  desiring the human connection and the authentic connection.
• 4:11
  And that's really the strategy in the playbook that we use.
• 4:14
  And every time we would go to sell a deal, we brought the team
• 4:16
  along with us, told the story of the work that we did.
• 4:20
  We were able to say we understand what matters to our
• 4:23
  clients, we understand what's what matters to the small to
• 4:26
  middle market workplace and workspace.
• 4:30
  And that was a huge strategy that ended up paying off
• 4:33
  dividends. Wow.
• 4:34
  Well, it's one of the, when you start saying that stuff, I think
• 4:36
  about our podcast here kind of the strategy of founder talk.
• 4:39
  And people always ask me like, what made you want to do it in
• 4:42
  person and why not do it virtual?
• 4:43
  Because I could easily have a million founders on the show if
• 4:46
  I just said, hey, this is a virtual podcast, hop on a Zoom
• 4:49
  or Riverside FM and we'll do the damn show.
• 4:51
  And it's just more convenient for people when you came from
• 4:54
  Chicago today. So it's like it's not as easy.
• 4:57
  It's a more challenging path, you might call it, to get people
• 5:00
  to come here to have all the equipment to set up.
• 5:03
  But in my mind, it's, it's part of, I think 1.
• 5:06
  I enjoy doing it in person much better.
• 5:08
  The human connection is there. You can feel the energy of
• 5:11
  someone else. But two, it's part of the
• 5:13
  strategy. It's a better relationship
• 5:16
  builder. It's a, it's a better way to
• 5:18
  connect with other founders. You can build community around
• 5:20
  it. You're face to face.
• 5:21
  You're getting to know someone in a deeper level versus the
• 5:24
  Zoom calls and stuff. For me personally, I had a
• 5:26
  couple virtual podcast before that and it just, it felt more
• 5:29
  transactional where this I've noticed it's just you're really
• 5:32
  connecting well after the podcast ends.
• 5:35
  And so it's like anything you're going to invest a certain amount
• 5:38
  and then you can expect, you know, to get that amount on the
• 5:40
  other side depending on how much you put in.
• 5:42
  It sounds like you guys really took that to a whole new level
• 5:45
  where you said, hey, in in a world where everyone is going
• 5:47
  virtual and dominating by speed, speed, speed, we can talk to a
• 5:51
  customer in California from here from Illinois.
• 5:54
  We're going to slow down and we're going to go to different
• 5:57
  markets and get to know the market and know the landscape
• 6:00
  within that market. The people, we can meet them for
• 6:02
  coffees and in person meetings and show up and network and
• 6:05
  events, be part of the community.
• 6:07
  That to me, I do agree, I think it's a little bit, people are
• 6:09
  getting away from that a little bit, but I think there's almost
• 6:12
  like a reversal now where people are saying, wait, slow down from
• 6:15
  the all the technology and AI hype.
• 6:17
  As great as AI is, let's bring it back to the things that
• 6:20
  actually matter. Completely agree and I think if
• 6:24
  you think about business before even e-mail existed.
• 6:27
  Well, we're going way back. Going way back that over over 40
• 6:31
  life, my new glasses, you know, you think about businesses that
• 6:37
  did extremely well in an environment that had no
• 6:41
  technological connection to anybody and we're able to hit
• 6:44
  10,000,050 million, 100 million. And how did they do it by you
• 6:49
  use the word investment and commitment to investing in
• 6:52
  relationships that mattered, knowing your customer, showing
• 6:57
  up for that customer. I can't tell you how many times,
• 7:01
  again, human experience, we've made a mistake and I've gone to
• 7:05
  sit in front of that client and said, when we make a mistake, we
• 7:09
  feel it and we know that it hurts the relationship or it
• 7:13
  hurts the trust in your employees that trust in US.
• 7:16
  And I'm going to do anything that it takes to build back that
• 7:20
  trust. And so I agree, it's an
• 7:22
  investment in the relationship. And I think if you think about
• 7:26
  service in general, are you going to give more attention to
• 7:31
  the relationship, if you have a trusted relationship, if you
• 7:34
  know it's a human being, if you know that person cares about you
• 7:38
  versus a technology platform that maybe you have an 800
• 7:42
  number for? Yeah, probably not.
• 7:44
  And I think a lot of that comes actually from my experience
• 7:47
  leading HR for apartment electronics.
• 7:49
  So Apartment Electronics for those who aren't in Illinois is
• 7:54
  a family owned retailer that does probably close to a billion
• 7:58
  dollars in revenue out of one single location.
• 8:01
  No way that they have one location.
• 8:04
  They have probably 30 to 40% of their businesses online.
• 8:08
  But my mentor, Bob Abt, who was the second generation of that
• 8:12
  business, had the philosophy of the answer is yes to any
• 8:16
  reasonable request. And so while I let HR for that
• 8:20
  business, I learned the value of relationships.
• 8:24
  I learned the value of falling on the sword when you make a
• 8:27
  mistake and doing it right. I learned the value of not
• 8:30
  arguing with a customer over 50 bucks.
• 8:33
  You know, you could, I probably shouldn't even say this.
• 8:36
  I was going to say you could walk into apps and say I saw
• 8:38
  this thing on Amazon for 100 bucks, can you knock 10 bucks
• 8:42
  off for me? Of course they will because
• 8:44
  they'd rather invest in a long term customer in that
• 8:48
  relationship than making it a transaction.
• 8:50
  So you use that word. And what we did at Empower also
• 8:54
  was we sought to make interactions versus transactions
• 8:59
  with people. There it is one.
• 9:02
  Speaking of that, one important thing that I've been thinking a
• 9:04
  lot about is just what type of business are you and what's the
• 9:08
  one big problem that you solve for other companies?
• 9:10
  But I think about this because I've, I see a lot of AI stuff
• 9:13
  and, and we use AI every day. I mean, literally, I think
• 9:16
  you're kind of crazy if you're not using AI every day, every
• 9:19
  week. Like it solves 1,000,000
• 9:20
  problems. It's here, it's not going
• 9:22
  anywhere and you got to get on that train or you're going to be
• 9:25
  lost. But on the flip side, from a
• 9:28
  marketing standpoint, we do marketing strategy, training,
• 9:30
  coaching. I see things like there's this
• 9:33
  new AI software tool and there's this new this and there
• 9:35
  automate, there's this. And in one token, I'm like, at a
• 9:38
  quick glance, I'm like, man, should we start doing stuff like
• 9:40
  that? And then I go, no, because
• 9:42
  that's not the type of business we are.
• 9:45
  We are more of the human connection.
• 9:47
  We're going to show you how to do something like this to build
• 9:49
  relationships around a podcast, to build a community, to create
• 9:52
  an emotional client attracting short form videos, you know, to
• 9:55
  really do things that yes, you will show you how to leverage AI
• 9:58
  in that process. But knowing who we are as a
• 10:02
  company and at our core keeps me grounded to say, that's awesome
• 10:06
  and we may use that at some point, but that's not us.
• 10:10
  And that's such. And that sounds like that's kind
• 10:12
  of what you guys found out at some point, whether it was
• 10:15
  intentionally or unintentionally.
• 10:17
  As you, you said, our identity is going to be that we are the
• 10:20
  people that show up in person, that when they take a hit, we
• 10:23
  feel the hit that we meet them where they're at.
• 10:26
  And we have, you know, real emotional human connection
• 10:29
  relationships with our clients. It's almost like that seems kind
• 10:32
  of obvious, but it's really a strategic shift.
• 10:35
  Not every company does. That it's a strategic shift and
• 10:40
  the talent pool right now, many don't know how to build those
• 10:44
  relationships. Yeah.
• 10:45
  Because they grew up in a generation of having a
• 10:49
  smartphone, yeah. Or being behind a laptop, laptop
• 10:52
  screen. And so it's going to take us
• 10:55
  some time to invest in developing folks because you're
• 10:59
  not learning that in school. Yeah.
• 11:01
  And some people have it inherently and some people
• 11:04
  don't. That's a good point.
• 11:05
  And so making investments into teaching your talent pool how to
• 11:09
  speak to a customer, Yeah, is part of the problem that Bestola
• 11:14
  is trying to solve. So Bestola happened organically,
• 11:18
  so we sold the business in 22. Did you have a?
• 11:23
  Stake in the company a little equally I did nice good for you.
• 11:25
  So it was very nice. I was a partner and, and really
• 11:29
  even for those who didn't have the title of partner or didn't
• 11:32
  have a stake, everyone treated the organization like it was
• 11:36
  their own. And we treated every customer,
• 11:38
  whether it was 5 employees or 500 employees with the same TLC
• 11:44
  and respect and care. And so I think that goes such a
• 11:48
  long way as well. But we sold the business in 22.
• 11:51
  We were purchased by a way larger competitor.
• 11:54
  And of course, like a lot of those deals go, they were like,
• 11:57
  you're going to love it here. We're going to just really help
• 12:01
  you with your temp technology issues and allow you to really
• 12:04
  focus on relationships. Was not the case at all and so.
• 12:09
  What happened? I'm curious.
• 12:11
  It was a very transactional culture and it was to the point
• 12:15
  where they were measuring the amount of mouse clicks that an
• 12:20
  employee right, right. If you're not clicking your a
• 12:24
  mouse enough then you're not productive.
• 12:26
  Nothing says relationship building like mouse click
• 12:28
  tracking, you know? It's like exactly.
• 12:31
  Exactly. It was so the opposite of our
• 12:34
  culture. And I remember the client
• 12:37
  experience leader of that business at the time, I, who was
• 12:41
  basically my counterpart said to me, God, you guys are Rd.
• 12:45
  warriors, you're always in front of your clients.
• 12:47
  That is just not our model. And I'm like, wow, then how do
• 12:51
  you expect to retain business? But this organization was heavy
• 12:56
  in acquisition mode because I would wonder, gosh, you guys
• 13:00
  have so much client turnover, how are you reporting this to
• 13:04
  the private equity owner, the investor?
• 13:07
  And I realized that they were acquiring it such a fast clip
• 13:11
  that they didn't really see what was going out the back door
• 13:14
  because they would acquire so many worksite employees that it
• 13:18
  balanced out whatever was exiting.
• 13:21
  So did you get to see how that played out?
• 13:23
  Did you guys get to see the impact on the customer's revenue
• 13:25
  retention or were you out by the time you saw the impact?
• 13:28
  Cuz that's an interesting case study, right?
• 13:30
  It's like you guys were dead set on the customer experience in
• 13:33
  person relationship slowing down to speed up and they were like,
• 13:36
  I've cut costs, why are we doing this track the clicks
• 13:39
  transactional And so I'm curious if there's a result.
• 13:44
  I saw the beginnings of it at this point. 3 1/2 years later
• 13:47
  they've almost completely destroyed the entire book of
• 13:51
  business. Wow, 500 clients?
• 13:53
  Probably down to 100, maybe 120 employees of ours, probably down
• 14:01
  to maybe 20 leftover and completely decimated the
• 14:05
  business, which to be honest, emotionally was really hard for
• 14:10
  me for a period of time to see how hard we worked and
• 14:15
  personally how much I sacrificed into building that book of
• 14:18
  business. To see it just lit on fire was
• 14:22
  awful. You know, early on, we would
• 14:25
  talk to other groups that had been acquired by this company
• 14:29
  and I started to see some of the signs and they'd be like, Oh
• 14:33
  yeah, we had 80% client turnover or we had 60% employee turnover.
• 14:38
  So I knew it was coming. So I started to see it
• 14:41
  happening. And and the hard part is going
• 14:43
  back to those relationships is my client book trusted me.
• 14:47
  And so I had to say to them, don't worry, we're not going
• 14:51
  anywhere. Everything's going to be fine.
• 14:52
  And then after a period of time, I started to say to our internal
• 14:56
  team, we've got to tell our clients the truth.
• 14:58
  And I started telling our clients the truth and started
• 15:01
  helping them find other solutions because I knew over
• 15:05
  time they weren't going to get the same level of service.
• 15:09
  And I could not in good conscience continue to tell them
• 15:12
  that they were, and to sell them a bill of goods.
• 15:15
  That just wasn't true. So did they not?
• 15:17
  Want you guys spending the time that you were spending like how
• 15:19
  did it impact the client? Relationship, yeah, they didn't,
• 15:21
  they didn't want us out in front of our clients.
• 15:23
  They wanted us just being transactional, handling any
• 15:26
  client issues that were coming in the house.
• 15:29
  And that was just not our model at all.
• 15:31
  And so if I had been this group originally, they said, hey,
• 15:36
  we're going to let you guys continue to operate.
• 15:38
  We won't fully integrate you into our systems.
• 15:40
  That would have been the smart investment, right, because we
• 15:43
  would have continued to grow. Yeah.
• 15:45
  And totally re nagged on that wow promise or that commitment.
• 15:50
  That's too bad. And I think that's where it goes
• 15:51
  back to. And usually people that have
• 15:53
  been through this experience, they learn this, but I've not
• 15:55
  been to that experience. But I've heard from interviewing
• 15:57
  founder, talking to founders, the core alignment, the core
• 16:00
  values alignment, making sure it's like, hey, what yes,
• 16:03
  there's a good business case here.
• 16:05
  We could grow, we could do this. We have the same technology or
• 16:07
  whatever it is, but what are our core values and doesn't line up
• 16:11
  with the company that's buying it.
• 16:12
  And that company may not care. They might not be like I don't
• 16:15
  care. The seasons of great, this seems
• 16:16
  like a great opportunity, we're going to do it.
• 16:18
  But that seems to be where you have a lot of the friction.
• 16:20
  And so from there, was that what inspired you to go start your
• 16:23
  own consulting firm then? Yes.
• 16:25
  So this is how it kind of went down.
• 16:27
  And interestingly enough, all of us partners had a five year
• 16:30
  agreement with the new company and all of us were gone.
• 16:34
  Wow. That's a.
• 16:35
  That's a. Pretty long agreement a year, I
• 16:37
  would say within or just around a year point.
• 16:40
  So Jared Gibson, who's been on your podcast, was.
• 16:43
  One of the. Folks that also got off the bus
• 16:45
  and I'll actually, so this is how it went down.
• 16:48
  I also owned, I own client experience and employee
• 16:51
  experience and our employee experience area of the business
• 16:54
  was basically our customer service center that helped the
• 16:57
  worksite employees. So the employees of the clients
• 16:59
  that we served on all of their questions whether it's payroll
• 17:03
  related, benefit related etcetera.
• 17:05
  And that's really the team that we built to to be that our
• 17:10
  interactional team, not transactional team because we
• 17:13
  understood that someone could be calling in with a benefits
• 17:16
  request because they have cancer, say, hey, empower HR,
• 17:20
  I'm calling because I want to understand my short term
• 17:22
  disability because I need to go out on leave because I have
• 17:25
  cancer. And we really started to follow
• 17:28
  the Zappos model of customer service on not expediently
• 17:33
  getting that employee off the phone, but spending as much time
• 17:36
  as we needed to, to help that person through that human
• 17:41
  challenge in their life. And that's why building out
• 17:45
  experience for this firm was meant so much to me, and it
• 17:48
  meant so much to the team that we built.
• 17:50
  And we knew that these weren't human resources issues that were
• 17:55
  coming into our call center. These were human challenges that
• 17:59
  were coming in and we were going to handle it with a white glove
• 18:02
  service and treat every single employee with the utmost dignity
• 18:06
  and respect to celebrate life's challenges and also great
• 18:10
  things. We'd have people call in because
• 18:12
  they needed to add a baby to their insurance or their husband
• 18:15
  or their wife. And often times we would hit
• 18:18
  them with a gift back card. We'd send them a handwritten
• 18:20
  note to say, you know, Congrats on the new baby, or we wanted to
• 18:25
  follow up with you. We understand you were having
• 18:27
  chemo treatment. Hope everything is all OK.
• 18:30
  We're thinking about you again, turning that human transaction
• 18:34
  into an interaction. So I own both of those areas of
• 18:37
  the business. And it was so rewarding.
• 18:39
  And so after this business acquired us and that started to
• 18:43
  go away and the team started getting off the ship because
• 18:46
  they saw the writing on the wall.
• 18:48
  I ended up in the hospital in late December 2022 going into
• 18:54
  2023 and I have suffered from endometriosis for many, many
• 18:59
  years. I've had 8-9 different surgeries
• 19:02
  just related to endometriosis and this time it was different
• 19:06
  and I was in the hospital from call it New Year's Eve all the
• 19:11
  way until the 1st week of February at Northwestern in
• 19:14
  Chicago and had a life threatening surgery.
• 19:20
  The surgery that I had went sideways.
• 19:23
  Unfortunately they perforated my intestine which caused it to be
• 19:28
  a very serious situation. And while I was in the hospital,
• 19:32
  Jared Gibson came to visit me, brought cookies.
• 19:34
  Unfortunately, I couldn't eat them at the time, but I remember
• 19:38
  him sitting on the bench and looking at me and he said if you
• 19:42
  come back to this business after what you just went through, I
• 19:45
  will never speak to you again because everybody started
• 19:49
  getting off the bus at that time or off the ship, whatever you
• 19:51
  want. And I had refused to leave
• 19:54
  because I didn't want to leave my team.
• 19:57
  There had been some team members that had already gotten off, but
• 20:00
  there were some that were still there and they were fighting the
• 20:02
  good fight and they were fighting for our clients and the
• 20:04
  worksite employees of our clients.
• 20:06
  And I'd refuse to leave. And then God told me otherwise
• 20:11
  was kind of like, let me pull you out.
• 20:13
  Obviously was for a health related reason.
• 20:15
  But Jared looked at me and he's like, you better not come back
• 20:18
  to this business. It is so toxic.
• 20:20
  It is so gross. And so I took my full 12 weeks
• 20:24
  of leave. And upon reflection and Jared's
• 20:27
  threats, thank you. I realized as a leader that
• 20:33
  sometimes you have to show people the way, and it occurred
• 20:38
  to me that by getting off the ride would show my team that it
• 20:43
  was OK for them to do it as well.
• 20:46
  And so because I was like, I don't want to be selfish.
• 20:49
  I don't want to leave them behind.
• 20:50
  That's just not who I am. I'm what Jared refers to me as a
• 20:53
  foxhole friend. I'm in there with you 24/7 no
• 20:58
  matter what. That's my leadership approach
• 21:00
  and always has been. And but I realized if I don't
• 21:04
  get off this ride, my team won't either.
• 21:07
  We're all going to stay for each other and then we're all going
• 21:09
  to be miserable and it's just not worth it.
• 21:11
  So I left in April of 23, and as soon as I made it public that I
• 21:17
  had left in power, which was a very difficult decision to make,
• 21:21
  I had five or six people that I had were either friends or I had
• 21:24
  done business with previously. Reach out and say you're free
• 21:27
  agent. Great.
• 21:29
  Can we pay you to help us? And so thus Bastola was born in
• 21:33
  Bastola's name for both of my grandmother's Bess and Bartola.
• 21:37
  Bartola died unfortunately, the year before I was born, so I
• 21:41
  never got to physically meet her.
• 21:43
  But she comes to my dreams sometimes, which is great.
• 21:46
  That's. Cool.
• 21:46
  So this is podcast by the way, right?
• 21:48
  Exactly for all listening, I had a dream about recording this
• 21:52
  podcast the night before we recorded but and then Bess was
• 21:57
  the grandmother who helped raise me along with my dad who was a
• 22:00
  single dad. Wow.
• 22:01
  So I I sought to solve challenges in the areas of
• 22:08
  client experience, employee experience and team development.
• 22:11
  And what it really comes down to is, and it's industry agnostic,
• 22:15
  you have a client retention issue or a client attraction
• 22:19
  issue or your team can't talk to your customers or clients.
• 22:24
  Jen, please come in and help us build the infrastructure around
• 22:26
  client relations. And so I've been doing that for
• 22:29
  the last two years with clients, small to large, manufacturing
• 22:35
  professional services, other consulting firms, nonprofits and
• 22:39
  help them really build an infrastructure on how to serve
• 22:42
  people. And I'm of the mindset, if your
• 22:45
  team is taken care of and develop, they're going to take
• 22:49
  care of your clients. And that's how IT has to work.
• 22:52
  Any business that doesn't invest in their people can rest assured
• 22:58
  that their client retention is going to have an issue.
• 23:00
  For sure. Totally agree with that.
• 23:02
  I'd pause you for a quick second.
• 23:03
  Yeah. So when you announce that you're
• 23:05
  leaving the company, right, and you're not going back there,
• 23:07
  you're getting off the ship, so to speak, you've got just this
• 23:10
  flood of people saying, hey, you're a free agent, we'd like
• 23:13
  to work with you. Hey, we've done good work with
• 23:15
  you before. Hey, I've got a relationship
• 23:17
  with you before with that. We still have I like talk to
• 23:19
  you. That to me speaks to exactly
• 23:22
  what we've been talking about so far in this conversation of just
• 23:25
  the relationship building and the doing good by your people.
• 23:29
  And I think that's just like an underrated thing that that's
• 23:31
  when, when you said that, I was like, of course she had people
• 23:34
  reach out right away. She was doing right by people.
• 23:36
  She had built relationships. She believed in the work that
• 23:39
  she was doing. She served her team.
• 23:41
  That's what happens when you invest in people.
• 23:44
  It really is. And I think, and I know it's
• 23:46
  like, oh, well, yeah, of course. But there's a lot of people
• 23:49
  going very fast And a theme this year, and I had Brian Smith on
• 23:53
  here was a great episode of IA Business Advisors.
• 23:57
  Go back and watch if you haven't seen that one.
• 23:58
  But his advice was slow down. And they're a company that
• 24:02
  ranked the top. They made the top 5000 ink list,
• 24:05
  best growing companies. And he was sitting here telling
• 24:07
  me, slow down. And I'm like, that's such.
• 24:09
  And it just made me think about things like you have all these
• 24:13
  interactions and and people around you.
• 24:15
  What are you doing with it? Right.
• 24:16
  You know, it's always like, let's go get the next one, Go
• 24:18
  get the next one. And that's what that company
• 24:20
  that came in and did sounds like they were like the next, the
• 24:22
  next, the next. And it's like, yeah, but now
• 24:24
  you've got a leaky bucket and you've got no relationships.
• 24:27
  And people don't raise their hand and say, I've worked with
• 24:30
  you before. I know who you are, Jennifer.
• 24:32
  Like I trust that you would be a good person to get the job done,
• 24:35
  right? That was all the foundation that
• 24:37
  you build on. My next question is where does
• 24:39
  that come from? Because obviously you had it at
• 24:41
  the company. So where did it come from in the
• 24:43
  company? Or was that something that you
• 24:44
  brought in before you came with the company?
• 24:46
  Or is that something that you learned from being part of that
• 24:48
  group, the original group? It was twofold.
• 24:51
  One, it was our culture to really build authentic
• 24:54
  connection. So our purpose was delivering
• 24:55
  what matters through relentless accountability and authentic
• 24:59
  connections and relentless accountability to results and
• 25:02
  building good relationships. And it was what I brought with
• 25:07
  me. It's it's been my whole career
• 25:10
  has been built upon relationships and trust.
• 25:13
  And a friend of mine and former colleague Aaron would always say
• 25:17
  it's your say do ratio. Are you saying more than you're
• 25:21
  doing or are you doing more than you're saying?
• 25:24
  And I think people overcomplicate relationships.
• 25:28
  It's really just showing up for people and just doing what you
• 25:32
  said you're going to do. And if you don't, apologizing.
• 25:37
  I think people get so worked up and conflict avoided or avoidant
• 25:43
  over nothing. And it's kind of just saying,
• 25:46
  hey, I made a mistake. I'm so sorry.
• 25:48
  Here's how I'm going to fix it and building trust with people.
• 25:51
  But it's it's not as inherent for other people as I thought it
• 25:55
  was. And so definitely my challenge
• 25:58
  in terms of my style of leadership is I've always been
• 26:02
  very direct and some people like that and respond to that and
• 26:07
  some people don't. And so over time, I've had to
• 26:09
  really learn other leadership tools that would help me build
• 26:14
  that trust with the internal team to teach them the way.
• 26:17
  And it's kind of funny because going back to the technology
• 26:21
  piece, I can't tell you how many times somebody in the team would
• 26:24
  say, Jen, I don't know what to do with this client.
• 26:27
  I've emailed them 10 times and they haven't responded.
• 26:30
  And I just respond with, did you call them?
• 26:33
  And they're like, well, no. And I'm like, great, pick up the
• 26:37
  phone and call them. And so most people think that
• 26:41
  that's common sense and it should be.
• 26:43
  But if you have a young team member who's never had any work
• 26:46
  experience, where are they gonna learn that?
• 26:48
  And so I think especially in a transactional environment or a
• 26:54
  fast-paced customer service environment, if you're at 5 or
• 26:59
  more e-mail exchanges or Slack exchanges or text exchanges with
• 27:05
  the person that you're serving, stop, pick up the phone, call
• 27:09
  them because you're wasting their time.
• 27:12
  You're not just wasting your time, you are wasting their
• 27:14
  time. And time, as you know, is money.
• 27:17
  And so one Bestola Consulting and and collective really seeks
• 27:23
  to bring humanity back to business.
• 27:25
  And honestly, for me, it's making founders feel less alone
• 27:33
  because being a founder is incredibly scary.
• 27:36
  It's lonely. Jared and I talked the other
• 27:38
  day. I'm like, it's ugly.
• 27:39
  It's almost like a a toxic relationship.
• 27:42
  Sometimes you're like, oh God, I love my new boyfriend.
• 27:44
  And then you're like, God I hate my new boyfriend.
• 27:46
  Son of a Yeah, I know, you asshole.
• 27:49
  It's totally. Pissed me.
• 27:50
  It's a roller coaster. It really is, especially the
• 27:52
  first few three years, Yeah, but always there's challenges at
• 27:54
  different levels too. So it's like even if you get
• 27:56
  past the first few years were tougher for a certain reason,
• 27:59
  you get to the next few years where you're trying to grow to a
• 28:01
  different level and that's tough on its own.
• 28:04
  Yes, yes. And so I have gotten to a point
• 28:08
  in my career, you know, I'm 43. I started in HR actually at 15
• 28:14
  years old for corporate law firm here in Chicago, 1515.
• 28:18
  I was a summer intern. I thought I was such a badass.
• 28:22
  My grandma took me to New York and company to buy me a suit and
• 28:25
  I was going downtown on the Brown Line to 1 N Dearborn.
• 28:30
  So that was at the time, the Bank One building, it's now
• 28:32
  Chase Building. So how I got in there was my
• 28:35
  grandfather, who was a World War 2 veteran, worked at the post
• 28:39
  office, retired well before I was born and then was home for
• 28:45
  three weeks and was like, I can't do retirement.
• 28:47
  And went and got a job at Sidley Austin, which I think is
• 28:50
  probably #3 largest law firm in the city and in the country.
• 28:54
  And he got a job there as a runner and was helping when we
• 28:58
  had interoffice mail, you had the yellow envelope with the to
• 29:02
  the from. And he built such great
• 29:05
  relationships for 18 years that he was there.
• 29:09
  He retired three weeks before or he left Sidley Austin three
• 29:12
  weeks before he passed away from cancer.
• 29:15
  And I was 15 years old. And at his funeral, the managing
• 29:19
  partner said to me, your grandfather thought the world of
• 29:21
  you. I was the only grandchild in a
• 29:24
  Jewish grandparent household. So I was the apple of their eye.
• 29:27
  And he said, Bill Collins said at the time, we'd love to have
• 29:33
  you come work in our summer program.
• 29:34
  I'm like, well, I'm only 15. And he's like, get a work permit
• 29:37
  from your high school. Oh yeah, that's right, you
• 29:38
  didn't need. One.
• 29:39
  Yeah, yeah. And we'll take care of you.
• 29:41
  And the rest was history. And so I started in human
• 29:45
  resources and really just learning human interaction.
• 29:49
  And so I've been doing this for 28 years.
• 29:53
  So I worked every summer throughout high school and then
• 29:55
  I was there part time throughout my undergraduate De Paul and
• 29:59
  then went out to Los Angeles and did the startup thing.
• 30:02
  We had AI built an HR department from scratch in my early 20s for
• 30:07
  a startup called Helio. It was a wireless cell phone
• 30:09
  company before iPhone launch. It was the first Myspace mobile
• 30:13
  phone, YouTube mobile phone super cool and talk about fast
• 30:17
  pace. And so I say all this to say, my
• 30:21
  whole career has been built upon relationships and trust.
• 30:24
  And I've gone to work with several other people that I've
• 30:27
  worked with in the past just based on building relationships.
• 30:30
  And so I'm like, if I can build a business around teaching
• 30:34
  people to just build really solid relationships so that they
• 30:38
  can have growth or great lifestyle business or an exit,
• 30:42
  then let's do it. It's all my years of experience
• 30:45
  combined and and by the way, it brings me a lot of joy.
• 30:48
  That's and that's it, right? I think that elements got to be
• 30:50
  there. You enjoy what you're doing.
• 30:52
  It makes a bit and it shows big time, right?
• 30:56
  So you may have mentioned some of it, but what are some of the
• 30:58
  mistakes that founders are making right now in regards to
• 31:01
  what you help them do? What are some of the common
• 31:03
  themes that keep coming up from working with companies that hold
• 31:06
  them back from growing their business, having their team do
• 31:09
  better work retention, whatever it might be?
• 31:12
  I think going to your point, back to your point about Brian,
• 31:15
  people are moving too fast and because the environment
• 31:20
  holistically the market is shaky, we're in a recession
• 31:24
  it's. A weird time right now.
• 31:26
  Very. Weird time.
• 31:27
  I personally think we're already in a recession, not headed
• 31:30
  towards recession. And So what I'm seeing a lot of
• 31:33
  founders make mistakes on right now is they're operating in a
• 31:37
  fear based mindset. And, and I get it, there is fear
• 31:41
  around sustaining their business, not just growing their
• 31:44
  business. There's fear around uncertainty.
• 31:47
  And so they're making decisions based on fear versus strategic,
• 31:52
  strategic decisions. So often times that includes
• 31:55
  hiring too fast, hiring the wrong people, hiring people to
• 32:01
  solve what is a system problem. A lot of times people grow very
• 32:06
  quickly and don't build that infrastructure to support the
• 32:10
  growth and so they get to 100 customers or clients or 200 and
• 32:14
  then they have to go backwards. Quick question on that, Yeah,
• 32:17
  how do you know when you should hire an employee or a person
• 32:20
  versus just adding a system or AI or technology to it?
• 32:23
  Because I feel like for me, before, there's been times where
• 32:26
  I've hired people, I'm like, I wasn't even ready for it.
• 32:28
  Like I just needed a better system or SOP or like technology
• 32:31
  that could have probably done 80 to 90% of this.
• 32:34
  But there's other times when you need someone in the role.
• 32:36
  So how do you know the difference?
• 32:38
  Typically what I suggest to people now is let's use the
• 32:41
  example I hear a lot of people say.
• 32:43
  I need a virtual assistant that's so much on my plate.
• 32:45
  That's a very common 1 and I'm like do.
• 32:47
  You right, exactly. I'm like, how are you managing
• 32:51
  your time? That's number one.
• 32:53
  And by the way, I am the Cobblers kid on this because I
• 32:56
  will say I'm totally overwhelmed.
• 32:58
  I have so much on my plate and it's because I'm not managing my
• 33:01
  time well. But what what I will recommend
• 33:03
  to people typically is write down a list of things that are
• 33:08
  on your plate that are not directly aligned with growing
• 33:13
  the business, with sales, with implementing whatever need
• 33:18
  processes need to get implemented in order to grow the
• 33:21
  business. Make a list of all those things
• 33:23
  and once it adds up to 10/15/20 hours, then hire a virtual
• 33:29
  assistant. But if it's like 3 hours to
• 33:31
  invest in a virtual assistant or call it a tactical player on
• 33:37
  your team, if you don't have enough work for that person,
• 33:40
  you're actually giving yourself double work because now you're
• 33:44
  trying to keep that person busy. You are trying to find work to
• 33:47
  give them. And so now you've got even more
• 33:50
  on your plate because then you're trying to figure out how
• 33:51
  to lead that person. It's just too much.
• 33:54
  So make a list and be real honest with yourself.
• 33:57
  Are you using the right tools and technology in order to
• 34:00
  support the work that you're doing?
• 34:03
  If that list is at 1015 hours worth of work, great, then hire
• 34:06
  somebody. And then same goes for a the
• 34:09
  first full time employee. Are you a consultant?
• 34:12
  I've even thought about this. Should I hire somebody to help
• 34:14
  with some of my client work? And then I'm like no, probably
• 34:17
  not yet. And also I just need to be in
• 34:21
  that relationship. It's hard for me to let that go,
• 34:23
  but I think a lot of times people hire quickly instead of
• 34:28
  solving a process related issue. Yep.
• 34:31
  How have you struggled with time management and then what have
• 34:33
  you done to get better at it? I say yes to everything.
• 34:36
  Yeah, well, I'm recovering from saying yes to everything because
• 34:41
  I care. It's just who I am.
• 34:43
  I also sit on multiple nonprofit boards around the city, which I
• 34:47
  have been doing for years. I also at the same time started
• 34:52
  another organization aside from the solo called Rye Chicago.
• 34:55
  We're gonna. Talk a little bit about that
• 34:56
  later. Yeah, so I I struggle with time
• 34:59
  management because I say yes to everything and I wanna show up
• 35:02
  for everybody. Now what's the deeper reason for
• 35:05
  that though? Cuz do you think there's
• 35:06
  something deeper there that you feel like you need to say?
• 35:08
  Yes of course I can tell you wanna serve people, that's
• 35:10
  great. But is there something else
• 35:12
  there? Totally.
• 35:13
  Yeah. And that's why I said I'm
• 35:14
  recovering. Cuz I'm getting, I know, yeah.
• 35:17
  It's the need to be accepted or loved or not rejected.
• 35:22
  All of that comes. This is not a professional
• 35:24
  thing. Yeah, it's a personal.
• 35:25
  Thing totally. And we all have an element of
• 35:27
  that too. Yeah, it's comes from that
• 35:29
  insecurity of gosh, if I say no to this person professionally or
• 35:34
  personally, it could be a family member, it could be a friend, it
• 35:36
  could be a client. If I say no, are they going to
• 35:38
  reject me? And so once you start, I invest
• 35:42
  a lot of time on my mental health and my personal
• 35:46
  development. Once you start realizing that
• 35:49
  that's not the case, it becomes a lot easier to say no or not
• 35:53
  right now or I can't do it this way.
• 35:56
  But what I can do is cuz I'm also the mindset from a client
• 36:00
  standpoint, you don't like to tell your clients no, but if you
• 36:03
  give them context behind the reasoning, it's usually fine.
• 36:06
  And again, if you've invested in that front end on the
• 36:10
  relationship, yeah, it makes it a lot easier.
• 36:13
  Well, how did you justify saying no though?
• 36:15
  Going from yes, yes, yes, yes to now you're I'm comfortable
• 36:18
  saying no. There had to be some type of
• 36:20
  change in philosophy or mindset or something.
• 36:26
  It's not comfortable actually, it's very uncomfortable and it's
• 36:28
  having to sit with the discomfort.
• 36:31
  The other piece of it for me, and I've always been an open
• 36:35
  book on some of the development and personal development that I
• 36:38
  have, but earlier this year I actually went through a ketamine
• 36:43
  journey with my therapy group and which is mind blowing.
• 36:48
  So it's medical ketamine process alongside a therapist that helps
• 36:54
  you unload some of that deep trauma that may have not gotten
• 36:59
  unloaded during regular cognitive therapy.
• 37:02
  This could probably be a whole another for sure this.
• 37:06
  But once I started shedding some of those layers personally and
• 37:12
  realizing who I am at my core and knowing who I am at my core
• 37:17
  and being confident in that, it got a lot easier for me to say.
• 37:21
  Not saying it got a lot easier for me to implement better
• 37:26
  boundaries and actually respect my own boundaries.
• 37:28
  So it all comes down to self worth, self worth and awareness.
• 37:34
  And I also this year stopped tying my worth to achievement
• 37:39
  and that's a big one. I also know that if I had enough
• 37:45
  good water in the bucket with my relationships that if I spilled
• 37:49
  a little out it would be recoverable.
• 37:53
  The achievement one's big, especially for entrepreneurs and
• 37:56
  founders. You guys know this, you're
• 37:57
  listening right now. We tie a lot of our identity
• 38:00
  into our accomplishments in our business.
• 38:02
  And when our business takes a hit or something changes or we
• 38:06
  lose someone or whatever might happen, it's hard not to take
• 38:09
  that personally. It is.
• 38:11
  And has there been something that you kind of went back on to
• 38:14
  say, OK, it's not my achievements, then what is it?
• 38:17
  Where am I getting myself worth from?
• 38:20
  That is such a good question. I'll get my take, but I'm
• 38:24
  curious to hear from you. It's I realized that life is
• 38:35
  short and I think the more I spend time on building who I am
• 38:42
  as a person, the less I need to achieve.
• 38:45
  And what I mean by that is earlier this year or actually,
• 38:50
  sorry, earlier this fall with my executive coach, who's been my
• 38:54
  executive coach for about 6 years or so, Julie Miller, shout
• 38:57
  out. Julie.
• 38:59
  Yes, you should have. But she can't come live unless
• 39:02
  she drives to Michigan. But she does come to Illinois
• 39:05
  sometimes. So maybe she and I did a Wheel
• 39:09
  of Life exercise about five years ago.
• 39:12
  And what it is, is it's basically a pie chart, and it's
• 39:15
  broken out into different categories.
• 39:17
  It's broken out into professional development,
• 39:20
  career, finances, personal life, intimate relationships, family,
• 39:25
  spiritual, etcetera. And we did a refresh earlier
• 39:29
  this fall against the one that I had done five years ago.
• 39:32
  And I realized that once again, it looked almost exactly the
• 39:38
  same. Professional was at an 8910
• 39:42
  high, right? So you score it one through 10.
• 39:45
  And my personal was embarrassingly low. 3 or below
• 39:50
  on a lot of these. I'm still not married looking
• 39:53
  for Mr. Wonderful. I'm still not a mother, which is
• 39:55
  my #1 priority is to be a mom. And so when that mirror got
• 40:01
  shine in my face, I took it really hard and I was like,
• 40:06
  gosh, I've been focused so much on achievement again that my
• 40:12
  personal life is suffering. I shouldn't say suffering.
• 40:16
  I have a great personal life, social life, friends, travel,
• 40:19
  family, etcetera. But in those personal priorities
• 40:22
  that matter so much to me, they still are not at the forefront
• 40:27
  for me. And so the only way to get out
• 40:31
  of that is you got to kick your own ass and be really painfully
• 40:35
  self aware around it or of it. And so it's a practice and
• 40:41
  becoming a discipline and saying if I don't do this, this doesn't
• 40:46
  make me any less of a person. So it's really you got to get
• 40:50
  the spider webs out of your own head and it's a lot of work.
• 40:55
  It is, and I think it is, yeah. It's a constant muscle that
• 40:58
  you're working, right to stay in that state for sure.
• 41:00
  Do you know Clay Stelzer? No.
• 41:02
  OK, he's he's AC, he runs his own company.
• 41:06
  I don't want to butcher the name, but he's he's been on the
• 41:08
  show. I'll actually send you the
• 41:09
  episode. I think it's a good episode.
• 41:10
  So he does a lot of work with CE OS and Founders and executive
• 41:13
  teams. And a lot of it is rooted in
• 41:15
  this stuff that we're talking about here of the self worth,
• 41:17
  the self esteem, the working with others, the conflict, it's
• 41:21
  all of that stuff. And one good point that he
• 41:23
  brought up was he was like, if you look at a little kid, like
• 41:27
  let's say there was just a 5 year old kid here, I think we
• 41:29
  would all look at that kid and go, well, why is that kid worth
• 41:33
  anything, right? Where does that self worth come?
• 41:34
  And we would say he's a kid, it's he doesn't need to achieve
• 41:38
  or like do anything. He's just, he's worthy of love
• 41:40
  because he's just, he's a kid. Every kid should be loved.
• 41:44
  But then as adults, we somehow lose that and we somehow think,
• 41:47
  well, where does myself worth come?
• 41:48
  Well, it's got to be, maybe it's relationships, maybe it's
• 41:50
  achievement, maybe it's, maybe it's just that you just are you
• 41:54
  and that's enough. And when he broke that down, I
• 41:58
  was like, that's so true. We stopped kind of seeing people
• 42:01
  through that lens and ourself through that lens.
• 42:03
  We started thinking, 1 this age and I should have this and I've
• 42:06
  got to have this accomplished. And we all go through that.
• 42:09
  And it's like, but also at the same time, we're just that same
• 42:12
  kid that now is older and we still deserve the same love,
• 42:16
  right? And so I think that's a really
• 42:18
  powerful thing to kind of hold onto.
• 42:19
  And yeah, I think for me, and I think the other thing that's
• 42:22
  helped me too, because it is hard to, especially on social
• 42:25
  media in my early years, I wanted to say yes to everyone.
• 42:28
  I get Adm, I'd be like, I got to respond back.
• 42:30
  Otherwise they wouldn't think I'm there.
• 42:31
  Like they don't think I care or whatever it is and I but when I
• 42:35
  noticed is that the successful people that wanted the things I
• 42:38
  had that were building stuff and accomplished.
• 42:41
  And this is the time when I had my side hustle and I was working
• 42:43
  my full time job back in early 2020.
• 42:46
  They didn't always get back and I was like, that's interesting.
• 42:50
  And now I see why because they were prioritizing their time,
• 42:54
  they were focused. They were saying, if I, if I get
• 42:57
  back to every person that DMS me or sends me a message or
• 43:00
  certainly there's certain people that you should give your time
• 43:03
  to, it's worth it, right? It makes sense.
• 43:05
  But if I let everyone have that same opportunity, how would I
• 43:08
  ever serve the people that I need to serve that I really care
• 43:11
  about? How would I ever accomplish this
• 43:12
  thing, the things I want to accomplish?
• 43:14
  How would I spend time with friends or family or whatever it
• 43:16
  is? You wouldn't because you're
• 43:19
  giving everyone access. And so to me it's like it's OK
• 43:21
  to not respond. I don't owe somebody a response.
• 43:25
  Right. I mean, if it's someone that I
• 43:27
  care about and I have a relationship with, I think
• 43:28
  that's a different story. But if it's a random person that
• 43:31
  DMS me and is trying to start a conversation and I don't have
• 43:33
  time or want to prioritize that time, I can just move on and I
• 43:38
  can be OK with that. Yep.
• 43:40
  You know, and I think that's, that's something you learn and
• 43:43
  it, it takes time to I think develop that and get to a place
• 43:46
  where you feel good about that. It's really hard, yeah, because
• 43:50
  it's very uncomfortable, especially whatever business it
• 43:56
  is. You could be a founder, You
• 43:58
  could not be a founder. Everyone is bringing their whole
• 44:02
  human self to the workplace. And so for many people it is
• 44:07
  childhood trauma, abandonment, abuse or not childhood trauma
• 44:15
  could be abandonment by a spouse, etcetera.
• 44:19
  All of those things in the snap of a finger can change your
• 44:25
  trajectory. The trajectory of someone's
• 44:28
  approach to how they see their their self worth, their
• 44:32
  achievement, their professional life, etcetera.
• 44:34
  All of those things happening in a split second, positive or
• 44:38
  negative shape who you are and how you show up.
• 44:42
  And so I think most people don't take that into account when that
• 44:47
  little boy that's five years old, if he's told that five
• 44:51
  years old that he's shit when he's 30, he's going to think
• 44:55
  he's shit from that one moment. And so that's what we're dealing
• 45:00
  with in business and politics and leadership is someone's
• 45:06
  whole self and their whole life story that came before that.
• 45:09
  And if you have the time and patience for yourself 1st and
• 45:16
  you start to work on that and work that muscle and really
• 45:18
  understand. Am I projecting my past onto
• 45:22
  this moment? Is this actually happening?
• 45:25
  Or am I being blinded by something that's happened to me
• 45:29
  before? Again, it's a practice and it's
• 45:33
  really hard work, but over time it gets easier and it allows you
• 45:39
  to show up for other people. Yeah, in an even more present
• 45:43
  kind of way. Yeah, I totally agree.
• 45:46
  I think it's sometimes it's easier to hold on to the
• 45:50
  challenging and and bad things that have happened to you and
• 45:53
  the chip on your shoulder and you, at least for me, it was
• 45:56
  easier to use that to fuel me than it was to say, I'm going
• 45:59
  towards something positive and purpose and mission filled.
• 46:02
  And I think now it's changed a little bit where I do see a
• 46:05
  little bit more of that light, but it was like real easy for me
• 46:07
  to get on the chip on my shoulder.
• 46:09
  Alex, who went to three different high schools.
• 46:11
  That was like everyone doubted that failed out of you know, it
• 46:14
  was easy for me to say, that's my motivation.
• 46:17
  Let's go. No one believes me.
• 46:19
  Good, let's get it today. You know what I mean?
• 46:21
  It was like, you know, and you could just like go, right.
• 46:24
  And I get into that almost like dark energy, I would call it.
• 46:28
  Yep. But the dark energy helped me
• 46:31
  create light energy to a certain degree.
• 46:33
  I almost transferred that energy.
• 46:36
  But if I'm not careful, it can bring me down a dark path.
• 46:39
  And it did when I was in high school and a kid.
• 46:42
  And so I think it's one of those things where it's like you have
• 46:45
  to watch that and I think you do got to move towards something
• 46:49
  there. Maybe there's a little fire
• 46:50
  underneath you. But I think generally when
• 46:52
  you're you mature, you got to be moving towards something that
• 46:56
  lights you up that is purpose driven.
• 46:58
  Hopefully there's a bigger, brighter vision in front of you
• 47:01
  versus saying I'm going to go do this because people don't think
• 47:04
  I can do it or I got a chip on my shoulder because that's
• 47:06
  fleeting that that's not long lasting to me and fulfilling.
• 47:10
  Get ready. Now I know why I have the dream.
• 47:14
  So you got to hold the darkness's hand?
• 47:20
  The darkness. The darkness's hand is.
• 47:23
  That I think that's right. And show gratitude to that
• 47:27
  darkness because and you don't have to let it own you anymore.
• 47:33
  But I learned through my ketamine process this year, I
• 47:38
  saw that darkness. It's like Kobe Bryant's Black
• 47:42
  Mamba. Exactly right.
• 47:44
  It's he was able to channel Black Mamba, but then turn it
• 47:49
  off when he was with his family, with when he was with his
• 47:52
  friends. But for us, I actually had this
• 47:56
  conversation earlier today. It's easier to use anger as
• 48:01
  rocket fuel. It's just.
• 48:02
  Easy. But what's underlying is
• 48:06
  typically some sort of sadness. Sadness.
• 48:10
  Rejection. Yeah, it's really hard to use as
• 48:13
  rocket fuel and so, but you have to show gratitude to that power,
• 48:19
  to that dark energy, because it got you to where you needed to
• 48:22
  go at the time. All my life has been fueled by
• 48:27
  dark energy and I was never afraid of the dark.
• 48:32
  And I know that I am full of light as well, but I needed that
• 48:38
  dark energy in order to survive. And I think for a long time I
• 48:42
  was kind of salty at it. Like gosh, I don't want to be
• 48:45
  this angry chip on my shoulder person, but two things can be
• 48:49
  true. I don't want to be owned by that
• 48:52
  dark, that darkness anymore. But I'm appreciative to you,
• 48:56
  darkness. Thank you for holding my hand
• 48:59
  and getting me to where I needed to go, Darkness.
• 49:02
  But now you're going to have your own place.
• 49:04
  And if I need you again to fuel me out, maybe I'll tap into you.
• 49:08
  But now I know that I'm in a better place and I have all
• 49:11
  these gifts and I can share this light with the world.
• 49:14
  I don't need you as much anymore, but or you can use it
• 49:19
  for power and for good and creating and growth.
• 49:23
  And I think so many times that's why I said Black Mama is a
• 49:26
  perfect example. Kobe Bryant was a horrible
• 49:29
  person because he used that energy for winning.
• 49:35
  Michael Jordan has a similar energy, just doesn't have a
• 49:37
  name. But I would, I would say,
• 49:39
  though, that they sacrifice probably 95% of their life, yes,
• 49:43
  for that dark energy and, and to be #1 at what they do, which I'm
• 49:47
  not saying is right or wrong, but they gave that thing a lot.
• 49:51
  Yeah. And so it's like that is the
• 49:52
  founder. You got to say you could go.
• 49:53
  You could be, you want to be the Mamba, you want to be MJ, you
• 49:56
  can. But they're just, your heroes
• 49:58
  just gave up every single thing in their life to do that one
• 50:01
  thing exceptionally well. That's what your hero is.
• 50:05
  Every single thing and I think if you haven't watched The Last
• 50:10
  Dance, which is about. That was such a girl, Oh my God.
• 50:12
  Dude I watched it. Came out in COVID, it was like
• 50:14
  you're all everyone's at home. You're just like, man, that shit
• 50:17
  pumped me up. It pumped me.
• 50:19
  I was like, damn. And then I was like, but I don't
• 50:22
  actually. I don't want to give up my
• 50:23
  entire life for one craft. Though Exactly.
• 50:25
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 50:26
  You see MJ of it? Yeah, Episode 7.
• 50:30
  Just a dedication of greatness like has.
• 50:33
  God, dude, episode 7 at the end when somebody, I think BJ
• 50:37
  Armstrong gets asked, did you perceive Michael Jordan as an
• 50:41
  asshole or a nice guy? And he's like, no, he was an
• 50:44
  asshole because he knew he had to be in order to get shit done.
• 50:50
  And then they break to Michael and he talks about leadership
• 50:53
  being a sacrifice and pulling people along when they don't
• 50:57
  want to be pulled and being on the front lines, taking the hits
• 51:01
  that your team isn't going to take.
• 51:02
  You're taking it. And at the end of the scene, he
• 51:06
  says, if you don't want to play that way, this is the way I
• 51:11
  lead. This is the way I play the game.
• 51:13
  And if you don't want to play that way, don't play that way.
• 51:17
  And he goes to break and you see him get teary eyed.
• 51:20
  And obviously he's a lot older than Kobe was.
• 51:23
  So probably when they recorded this, he was 60, somewhere
• 51:27
  around there. And you see him become human in
• 51:31
  that moment and realize how much he sacrificed and how many
• 51:38
  beatings he took to be that leader.
• 51:42
  And does he regret it? No, but I could tell that it
• 51:46
  causes him pain and you see it on his face.
• 51:49
  And so, yeah, to founders, it is a massive sacrifice and it's
• 51:55
  difficult. However, you can find a lot of
• 51:58
  beauty in it as well, and everybody has a role in life.
• 52:03
  Sometimes you're the Creator, sometimes you're not.
• 52:06
  And I think what we're seeing right now is a lot of people
• 52:10
  being hungry to be the founder of the Creator, to solve
• 52:13
  problems in the absence of leadership.
• 52:17
  And I think a lot of people are saying, you know what, my leader
• 52:20
  sucks. So I'm going to go do this on my
• 52:21
  own because I'm a really good subject matter expert and I'm
• 52:24
  really good at my craft. But I don't think they go into
• 52:28
  it eyes wide open and don't realize how difficult it
• 52:31
  actually is, especially when you're accountable for a team of
• 52:35
  people, because you're not accountable for just 10
• 52:38
  employees or 20 or 50. You're accountable for them and
• 52:42
  all of their families. And the amount of sacrifice
• 52:45
  required to do that is extraordinarily.
• 52:49
  Great. That was really well put about
• 52:53
  the dark energy and knowing, being grateful for it, knowing
• 52:57
  if you need to tap into it, you can, but not letting it consume
• 53:01
  you. Because I think that's, I think
• 53:03
  that's very common, especially people that build very
• 53:05
  successful companies. There's typically a chip on
• 53:07
  their shoulder. There's something they're
• 53:08
  proving there's and they they go on to do great things.
• 53:12
  But then later on I often hear from them saying I just didn't
• 53:15
  spend any time with my kids or they don't know me or I didn't
• 53:17
  spend this right. I wish I would have done this a
• 53:19
  little bit differently. So that's always the balance for
• 53:22
  me. It's like I'm going to go get
• 53:23
  it. I want to be the best at this.
• 53:24
  I want to be the MJ of what I do.
• 53:27
  And then there's the other side where I, I have two daughters,
• 53:29
  you know, 11:00 and 9:00 and I, but I also want to really be
• 53:32
  there for them. And I just, I don't want to miss
• 53:34
  a moment, you know? And they're super important to
• 53:36
  me. There's a saying that is no one
• 53:40
  remembers how hard you worked except for your kids.
• 53:45
  Wow. That's a good one, and it's the
• 53:48
  truth. Damn.
• 53:49
  And it's I have already sacrificed many years of my life
• 53:56
  to be a mother or or in spite of being a mother.
• 53:59
  I went through 8 rounds of IVF as a single woman to try to get
• 54:02
  pregnant. And then I realized it wasn't
• 54:06
  the time. And the reason that it wasn't
• 54:08
  the time is because I hadn't created the space.
• 54:11
  So I was working with science to try to make my body do
• 54:15
  something, but I hadn't made the space for that child yet.
• 54:19
  And so I started to realize I have to create the world for my
• 54:26
  child now, not when they get here.
• 54:29
  I have to start it now. And if I don't start saying no
• 54:32
  to things, if I don't stop, start taking commitments off my
• 54:36
  plate, the space is never going to exist.
• 54:39
  Energy is energy. How can you have that child come
• 54:42
  in to a place that's full of energy and has no room?
• 54:46
  It's not possible. And so that's my priority right
• 54:50
  now, which shapes how I show up in the work that I do with the
• 54:55
  people that I work with. And I'm never going to regret
• 54:58
  that ever. And I'm glad that I came to that
• 55:01
  realization because I don't want to get to 80 years old and say,
• 55:05
  gosh, look at all the things I accomplished and still single
• 55:08
  and have no grandkids. Who gives a shit, you know,
• 55:12
  right. There's a certain point where
• 55:13
  like money's nice to have and you don't want to be broke and
• 55:16
  and paycheck to paycheck sucks. I've lived that in the past.
• 55:18
  Yep. But at a certain point it's
• 55:20
  like, all right, you've got some money, you can afford things,
• 55:23
  you can go on the vacation, you can take care of your people.
• 55:26
  Beyond that, it's kind of like, you know, is having that much
• 55:29
  more like really that gratitude if you got to give up your
• 55:31
  entire life? Depends on the person, you know,
• 55:34
  it depends on the person. There's a bunch of different
• 55:36
  ways to build it too. I guess what's cool about being
• 55:37
  an entrepreneur? There's a bunch of different
• 55:39
  ways to do it. Absolutely.
• 55:41
  And PS I've heard of probably four people in my circle in the
• 55:47
  last 60 days that have died at a very young age, 60 or younger,
• 55:52
  604349 and 40. And my point in saying that is
• 55:59
  going back to Kobe, you also don't know.
• 56:02
  I think we make the mistake of thinking we can control
• 56:04
  everything, including immortality.
• 56:08
  Somebody can go out and get hit by a bus tomorrow.
• 56:11
  You just don't know. And so live your life and teach
• 56:15
  your kids what how to live their lives, not how to be the
• 56:20
  greatest at every single thing that they do.
• 56:23
  It's kind of funny. My dad is a Mexican immigrant.
• 56:25
  He came here in 1975 with nothing.
• 56:28
  Couple, maybe, I don't know, couple 100 bucks in his pocket
• 56:31
  at 18 years old or excuse me, at 20 years old.
• 56:35
  There was no Google Maps at the time, no technology.
• 56:39
  Came here from a small town in central Mexico and and made a
• 56:42
  life for us. And he's a, he's a retired union
• 56:45
  cement finisher. So literally has worked on his
• 56:48
  hands and knees his entire career.
• 56:51
  And he once in a while will go back and help my cousin or his
• 56:56
  old company still finish the Med at 70 years old.
• 56:59
  And then he'll look at me and be like, gosh, why do you work so
• 57:01
  hard? Why are you always on the road
• 57:03
  all the time? Sit down and I'm like, dude, you
• 57:05
  are literally failing at retirement and talking to me.
• 57:08
  But you know what he said to me and it checked me and he said
• 57:12
  this, it was probably about a year ago this combo happened.
• 57:15
  And he said, I did all this so that you wouldn't have to.
• 57:20
  And now you're doing the same thing I'm doing.
• 57:23
  Jen, live your life, have fun. Stop freaking out about money.
• 57:27
  Money comes and goes. And so my dad ended up moving in
• 57:30
  with me about five years ago after he almost passed away from
• 57:34
  COVID. And so there's some advantages
• 57:38
  to that, right? Like cuts my fruit and cooks
• 57:40
  well. And I get to have these kind of
• 57:43
  life conversations with him. Well, there's some disadvantages
• 57:46
  too, because you know, whatever, we won't get into that, but but
• 57:50
  it's helpful to hear that from him, to be like Jen, life isn't
• 57:55
  or life isn't all about work. And I think the culture, we
• 58:00
  spent a lot of time in Mexico. Now because he's retired, he
• 58:02
  spends more time there than me. But I try to go down three weeks
• 58:06
  or a month at a time. And the culture in Mexico is you
• 58:09
  start working very early in the day, but then everybody stops
• 58:12
  around 2-3 o'clock. The family all sits at a table
• 58:15
  and has a meal on what? So every single day, so you
• 58:20
  start, you're working, you stop, you're sitting around a communal
• 58:23
  table, you're having conversations, you're arguing,
• 58:27
  you're sharing stories, you're laughing every single day.
• 58:30
  And what I realized was, gosh, we don't do that here.
• 58:34
  We don't make the time to do that.
• 58:36
  And so going back to my earlier point about the workforce not
• 58:39
  being able to have conversations with customers and clients
• 58:43
  because they're not having conversations with their own
• 58:44
  family. That's so true.
• 58:46
  She's. Moving so fast.
• 58:49
  Slow down, slow down, appreciate the things you have and build
• 58:53
  the relationships. I want to quickly touch on Rise
• 58:56
  Chicago. Can you tell us a little bit
• 58:57
  about what that is and and why you're so passionate about it
• 59:00
  and what's going on with Chicago?
• 59:01
  Oh my God, because I'm just seeing teen riots in the street
• 59:04
  and I'm like the teen takeovers and sound like what?
• 59:07
  Lack of leadership and. Tell me about it.
• 59:10
  Creates chaos. But, you know, two years ago I
• 59:15
  was having a conversation with some VC folks in the city and we
• 59:20
  were disheartened by the election of Mayor Brandon
• 59:22
  Johnson and this. Guy's like the all time worst
• 59:25
  mayor ever. Right all time.
• 59:27
  Worst mayor? And I don't even know.
• 59:28
  I'm about just everything I hear.
• 59:29
  I'm like, no one likes this guy. No.
• 59:31
  Why? Because people think the mayor
• 59:34
  of Chicago is a policy ideology role.
• 59:39
  Mayor of Chicago is an operating role. 80% of your job is
• 59:46
  operating in $18 billion budget. And so if you have no business
• 59:52
  skills, business acumen, budget skills, real life leadership
• 59:57
  development, you cannot run. No, that's.
• 1:00:00
  A big responsibility to drop in front of your plate.
• 1:00:02
  Exactly. It's one thing to be able to win
• 1:00:05
  an election, it's another thing to be able to actually do the
• 1:00:09
  job. And so would.
• 1:00:10
  You When is he out? How much more does he have?
• 1:00:12
  February 27 And so that's why we started Rye Chicago two years.
• 1:00:16
  Is there a new candidate that's like going to win, you think?
• 1:00:19
  There's a couple people. My personal preference would be
• 1:00:22
  Susana Mendoza, but I would say there's probably going to be 10
• 1:00:28
  to 15 candidates again, because everybody thinks that they can
• 1:00:32
  do this job. And so coming from a talent
• 1:00:36
  background and operating background, I can tell you this
• 1:00:39
  job is extraordinarily difficult.
• 1:00:42
  And you see it in New York as well.
• 1:00:43
  Mom, Donnie. Just got.
• 1:00:44
  Elected. Do you think that this guy with
• 1:00:46
  almost no work experience can run 100 and 118?
• 1:00:50
  It sounds off to me. Yeah, it sounds off to me.
• 1:00:53
  Sounds very. But everything's going to be
• 1:00:54
  free, so we're all good, right? Exactly.
• 1:00:56
  No. That you and I are going to pay
• 1:00:58
  for it, basically. Exactly.
• 1:01:00
  So in Chicago two years ago, I was having this discussion with
• 1:01:04
  some folks and I'm of the mindset that we don't admire
• 1:01:09
  problems. And I felt that I was, I'm X
• 1:01:12
  still. I think it was Twitter still at
• 1:01:13
  the time and I still say Twitter.
• 1:01:15
  Yeah, everyone. Does, right.
• 1:01:17
  I was pretty vocal about my dissatisfaction with leadership
• 1:01:21
  and I started to say, gosh, we're broken at the national
• 1:01:25
  level or no, excuse me, we're broken at the local level
• 1:01:29
  because we're broken at the national level.
• 1:01:30
  And then I'm like, wait, no, no, no, no, the other way around.
• 1:01:34
  The foundation is broken at the local level.
• 1:01:37
  And that's why we don't have any really good solid leaders who
• 1:01:41
  then grow into national level roles.
• 1:01:44
  This is not. That's a good point.
• 1:01:46
  It became a realization that this is not a political issue,
• 1:01:49
  this is a leadership issue. We are not developing the right
• 1:01:53
  leaders to then grow international level roles and
• 1:01:56
  so. If you think about like a
• 1:01:57
  company, right, you would develop, bring people in,
• 1:01:59
  develop them, give them opportunities to lead, give them
• 1:02:02
  more opportunities, yeah. Exactly.
• 1:02:04
  And we don't have that right now.
• 1:02:06
  And so we started Rise Chicago. It's a 5O1C4.
• 1:02:10
  So it's a social welfare organization really focused on
• 1:02:14
  civic education and awareness and engagement in the city of
• 1:02:17
  Chicago. Our very first go at an election
• 1:02:21
  was helping Eileen O'Neill Burke get elected Cook County State's
• 1:02:23
  attorney. Thank God she's been in the
• 1:02:25
  office for one year and has made a ton of positive impact and
• 1:02:29
  changes because she's actually prosecuting people for breaking
• 1:02:33
  the law. Wow, imagine that that's a novel
• 1:02:35
  idea. Doing your job?
• 1:02:37
  I saw the guy lit, you know, lit this poor girl on fire on the
• 1:02:40
  subway. And it turned out he'd been
• 1:02:42
  convicted so many other times for battery for this, for
• 1:02:45
  assault, for. And I'm like, why is this guy
• 1:02:47
  even still out? 79 times he had been arrested,
• 1:02:52
  13 times convicted The Cook County state's attorney, the
• 1:02:55
  prosecutor begged the judge to retain him, to keep him, to
• 1:03:00
  excuse me, to detain him. And the judge said I can't put
• 1:03:04
  every single person in jail that the Cook County state's attorney
• 1:03:07
  asks him to. And so.
• 1:03:09
  So is it a? Is it a capacity?
• 1:03:12
  Like are they blaming it on capacity or is there something
• 1:03:15
  else going on? Not to go too far down this
• 1:03:17
  rabbit hole, but it's like this guy, literally, if you don't
• 1:03:19
  know, he was on the on the CTA, on the train, the public trans,
• 1:03:23
  the blue line and poured gasoline on this girl, lit her
• 1:03:26
  on fire. I think she's, I think she
• 1:03:27
  actually survived. Right.
• 1:03:28
  She's survived but she's been in the hospital.
• 1:03:31
  Right. So terrible, terrible.
• 1:03:33
  And then you just read and it just pisses you off that you
• 1:03:36
  read this guy like shouldn't even be on the street like a
• 1:03:39
  known convicted felon. I mean all the huge rap sheet as
• 1:03:42
  you mentioned, bigger than I even thought and he's still just
• 1:03:45
  sitting there out on public. Because we're saying, well, he
• 1:03:49
  has mental health issues, that's OK.
• 1:03:51
  I don't give a shit. About that exactly.
• 1:03:54
  It's one thing to have mental health issues.
• 1:03:57
  It's another thing to allow people to be on the street that
• 1:04:01
  have a track record of violent offenses.
• 1:04:06
  And so I actually put out a tweet after this happened, and I
• 1:04:08
  said if Judge think her name is Teresa Molina, something like
• 1:04:12
  that. I said if Judge Molina doesn't
• 1:04:15
  think that he should be detained, then she should take
• 1:04:18
  these people home with her. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:19
  If you feel sorry for. Criminal.
• 1:04:21
  Exactly. Bring them to your home and let
• 1:04:24
  them stay with you. So two years ago, we started
• 1:04:27
  this organization. I was on the steering committee
• 1:04:30
  or board, and we were thinking about hiring an executive
• 1:04:33
  director. And then we helped Eileen get
• 1:04:36
  get elected and I got a taste of it.
• 1:04:38
  I enjoyed it because we ran a sales process which was we
• 1:04:44
  understood what mattered to people.
• 1:04:46
  We found the right candidate that could deliver results on
• 1:04:49
  what mattered to people. And then we presented people
• 1:04:52
  with her. So we'd host round tables and
• 1:04:54
  fundraisers, lunches, etcetera, and had people meet and greet
• 1:04:57
  with Eileen and give Eileen an opportunity to tell people what
• 1:05:01
  she stood for and what her policies were going to be.
• 1:05:04
  And thankfully she won that election and she's been a year
• 1:05:08
  on the job. And then we also recruited a
• 1:05:10
  school board candidate. So the Chicago Board of
• 1:05:13
  Education had their very first elected school board go into
• 1:05:17
  effect this year. And so the first election ever
• 1:05:20
  was last fall. And so we started doing this
• 1:05:23
  work and I said to our board, I'm like, you know what?
• 1:05:26
  I can be the executive director. We don't need to hire anybody.
• 1:05:29
  Wow. Cuz at the time it was OK Jen
• 1:05:32
  can solve everything. So boy, sure.
• 1:05:36
  I can do that. Yeah, don't do two things at one
• 1:05:38
  time. Like was I in glue?
• 1:05:39
  How come nobody told me that this was a mistake?
• 1:05:42
  Actually, probably somebody did. And I probably was like, no, I
• 1:05:45
  could do it, I could do everything, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:05:49
  And so we had some great success.
• 1:05:51
  We started a sub stack and started educating people on
• 1:05:55
  basic things because what I started to realize was the
• 1:05:58
  average voter in Chicago doesn't even know what an Alderman does
• 1:06:02
  or who their Alderman is. It doesn't know the basics of
• 1:06:07
  the finances, the budget, how the city of Chicago operates.
• 1:06:11
  And I realized that's why we don't get people out to vote.
• 1:06:15
  So our last mayoral election in February, well, February 23, and
• 1:06:19
  then the runoff was April of 23. We had a 36% voter turn out,
• 1:06:25
  which is abysmal. Yeah, and egregious.
• 1:06:28
  And that's how Brandon got elected.
• 1:06:30
  And so we said let's make it our mission to connect people to the
• 1:06:34
  outcomes so that they will show up on our next election.
• 1:06:37
  There we go. So Fast forward.
• 1:06:39
  Same thing in business, right? It really is like there's so
• 1:06:42
  many transferable things. Yeah, yes.
• 1:06:44
  Yeah. And in the absence of
• 1:06:45
  leadership, people will fall for anything and anyone.
• 1:06:50
  And Mumdani? Exactly.
• 1:06:53
  He spoke to people well and had a great social media strategy.
• 1:06:57
  Is he going to be able to execute?
• 1:06:59
  Absolutely not. And some people could say, well,
• 1:07:02
  he's not even in the job yet. Give him some grace.
• 1:07:04
  Look at the Brandon Johnson scenario.
• 1:07:06
  Yeah, everybody was like, all right, let's give the guy a
• 1:07:08
  chance and look at us now. Yeah.
• 1:07:10
  And so. Well, it's like when did we ever
• 1:07:12
  nobody got promoted or just gave a billion dollar company for not
• 1:07:16
  doing anything? You had to work for it.
• 1:07:17
  You have to demonstrate your capabilities and your leadership
• 1:07:20
  and the fact that you could take something like this on and all
• 1:07:23
  of a sudden and now it's like, hey, you got a smile and you got
• 1:07:26
  some good ideas and that's enough.
• 1:07:27
  People don't care what you've done.
• 1:07:29
  Exactly. And so we're gonna keep seeing a
• 1:07:32
  lot of this. And So what I would implore
• 1:07:34
  people to do is do your research on these candidates.
• 1:07:38
  By the way, I have been screaming from the rooftops, we
• 1:07:43
  don't work for them. They work for us.
• 1:07:46
  We literally pay their salaries. And so when people are on the
• 1:07:51
  campaign trail, ask for a meeting or for people in the
• 1:07:54
  city of Chicago, go and sit with your Alderman or anywhere in
• 1:07:57
  Illinois, go sit with your Cook County commissioner, Go sit with
• 1:08:00
  your state representative. Know who your people are and
• 1:08:04
  hold them accountable. You are their boss or you are
• 1:08:07
  the board of directors. And I think sometimes people are
• 1:08:10
  like, oh gosh, elected officials, they're a celebrity.
• 1:08:15
  They're untouchable. And I'm like, no, they are on
• 1:08:18
  your payroll. So go and ask questions.
• 1:08:22
  Hold them accountable, Call your Alderman.
• 1:08:24
  So the city budget hasn't been passed for this year yet and
• 1:08:28
  Brandon Johnson came out the gates with his proposal for a
• 1:08:31
  head tax. Did you hear about the head tax?
• 1:08:33
  But how much times can we tax more?
• 1:08:35
  People 4. Employers.
• 1:08:37
  Bankrupt everyone, it's like. 4 employers, 100 employees or
• 1:08:42
  more, A $21.00 per head tax on a monthly basis.
• 1:08:49
  Jeez. Taxing billionaires for their
• 1:08:52
  fair share. Tell me how many groups that are
• 1:08:55
  100 employees or more are billionaire people?
• 1:08:58
  Right, right. Seldom, right, if any.
• 1:09:01
  Yeah. So my point is that we need
• 1:09:04
  people to get engaged. And I think, look, politics on a
• 1:09:08
  national level is off the rails as well.
• 1:09:12
  Yeah. And it's because where you can
• 1:09:14
  all, there's a saying, all politics is local, you can get
• 1:09:18
  involved on a local level and overtime compound effect, it
• 1:09:23
  will start to impact the national level.
• 1:09:25
  But until we fix the stuff that's happening in our county,
• 1:09:29
  on our block, in our local school council, in our public
• 1:09:33
  safety council's caps meetings, which are police beat meetings
• 1:09:37
  with the Police Department and community residents, until
• 1:09:40
  people make an investment into those relationships, we're going
• 1:09:45
  to continue to see this and people are going to fall for the
• 1:09:47
  social media politician because it's cool, it's flashy.
• 1:09:51
  But Jen, you know what they got to do to get involved in that
• 1:09:53
  stuff? They got to slow down and
• 1:09:55
  actually invest in relationships and things that matter.
• 1:09:58
  You're so, so right. Yeah, it's like people are just,
• 1:10:01
  they're just, I don't have time to.
• 1:10:02
  I don't look, I don't want to look into this.
• 1:10:03
  I don't look into that. And we get people that are not
• 1:10:05
  qualified to be in there exactly.
• 1:10:07
  They promise something or they look the part or whatever it is,
• 1:10:09
  and a lot of it's just common sense.
• 1:10:12
  Like can we just have like good, let's meet in the middle.
• 1:10:14
  I see your side, I see where you're coming from.
• 1:10:17
  I think we can come together on this.
• 1:10:18
  It just became so way over here. Not locking up a guy because he
• 1:10:23
  has mental hell, even though he's done terrible things and it
• 1:10:26
  will continue to do terrible things.
• 1:10:28
  Or it's completely on the other side where there should be
• 1:10:30
  nothing and we should just let it.
• 1:10:31
  Like it's just the answers are in the middle I think.
• 1:10:36
  They're. Always in the middle.
• 1:10:37
  It's just let's come together, let's look at both sides, let's
• 1:10:40
  figure out what's the right thing to do.
• 1:10:42
  And we also got to understand that this is a country that we
• 1:10:45
  have to get back to. What are our core values as a
• 1:10:48
  country? We got to get back to like, who
• 1:10:50
  is America? What do we stand for?
• 1:10:53
  Because I think the Mandami one, I get it.
• 1:10:55
  There's affordability issues. That's a reality.
• 1:10:57
  We need to address that. Healthcare, we need to address
• 1:11:00
  that and we need good leadership.
• 1:11:03
  And we're not getting that right.
• 1:11:05
  But it's also, this isn't the country where everything was
• 1:11:08
  free. It was the country where you
• 1:11:10
  come here and you have an opportunity to make something,
• 1:11:12
  but everyone had an opportunity to make something right?
• 1:11:15
  And we helped where we needed to.
• 1:11:16
  We came together. And so I just think it, a lot of
• 1:11:19
  it comes back to just like a company would, what, what do we
• 1:11:22
  believe in? What are we doing here?
• 1:11:24
  How are we all on the same page? And what are we working toward
• 1:11:27
  the greater good? And let's not forget where we
• 1:11:28
  came from. But let's also remember we're
• 1:11:29
  trying to get better than where we came from, too.
• 1:11:32
  And I, Alex Sheridan, will be running for president.
• 1:11:35
  I'll get behind. You.
• 1:11:36
  No, definitely not. Jen, this is awesome.
• 1:11:40
  I, I love this was a really, really good conversation.
• 1:11:42
  I didn't know where it was going to go.
• 1:11:43
  Just like most episodes, it's up in the air.
• 1:11:46
  But I'm really happy that it went the way it did and I'm
• 1:11:49
  happy that we went the direction that we did because I think a
• 1:11:52
  lot of people are thinking about these things, but don't always
• 1:11:54
  get it out there or have someone to talk to.
• 1:11:56
  One of the things you mentioned about founders going through it
• 1:11:59
  and sometimes it being a little bit lonely.
• 1:12:01
  I hope that this podcast in this community, we're building the
• 1:12:06
  founder talk movement that it does give people a space to say,
• 1:12:08
  I'm not going through it alone. And I went through that too.
• 1:12:13
  And I see that the world that way too.
• 1:12:15
  And I've went through that challenge too or had that win
• 1:12:17
  too. And, and that's part of the
• 1:12:19
  mission that we're on to build this.
• 1:12:20
  So I appreciate you being a part of it.
• 1:12:22
  It's an amazing mission, I appreciate you having me on.
• 1:12:24
  This has been a great chat. I'm glad I had the dream the
• 1:12:26
  night before. I know, you know, it came to
• 1:12:29
  fruition and there was a message in it.
• 1:12:31
  Yeah. Where can people go to find you,
• 1:12:33
  connect with you, learn more about you and maybe who's a good
• 1:12:36
  customer for you to in case someone's listening?
• 1:12:37
  Sure, LinkedIn, as always, is a good place to find me.
• 1:12:41
  Instagram if you like Instagram but stole a collective and
• 1:12:44
  that's more grabbing other like minded businesses so and
• 1:12:49
  amplifying those businesses often time they're women owned
• 1:12:51
  as well on X if you want to see any political discourse.
• 1:12:55
  On Twitter, let's get into. It at Jenny Goos, but it's
• 1:12:58
  spelled OOZ instead of UZ. An ideal customer is really
• 1:13:04
  industry agnostic. Anyone who is in growth mode or
• 1:13:08
  is experiencing any sort of trouble with employee or client
• 1:13:11
  retention is someone I want to talk to.
• 1:13:13
  And even if it doesn't work out, let's just have a conversation.
• 1:13:16
  I'm happy to give you my thoughts.
• 1:13:17
  That's so much of building those relationships is just not
• 1:13:21
  seeking out the deal, just seeking to provide value.
• 1:13:25
  And even if it doesn't work out in the moment, if you help that
• 1:13:27
  person out, I guarantee you later on they'll come back
• 1:13:30
  around you and say either I need your help, can I hire you, or
• 1:13:33
  I've got somebody because you've built that trust.
• 1:13:35
  So totally free consulting is the way to go a lot of times.
• 1:13:39
  Love it, but set boundaries on your time.
• 1:13:41
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:13:42
  Not hours and hours and hours. Yeah.
• 1:13:45
  Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you.
• 1:13:46
  Appreciate it.