A Platform for Making A Difference

A platform for making a difference. Hey, Polk County, we're back for another episode of the Elevate Polk podcast. Hoping you're having a wonderful week. My name is Chrissanne Long. I'm here again with my co-host Nate Kendrick, who always helps us tell the unique and personal stories of entrepreneurs in Polk County. How are you doing today?

I am doing amazing, Chrissanne. How are you? I'm doing great.

You know, we did an episode the 2 of us had, we enjoyed it so much. We're doing it again.

Yeah. Right.

It's kind of fun. Like we get to dig deep into just the issue that we're talking about and we're talking today about making a difference. And as it applies to our podcast in general, it's like how entrepreneurship is a platform for making a difference. Right. Um, and then a little bit more into it than that is kind of how employers entrepreneurs who have a team can be considering how they're hiring or what they're kind of looking for in their future leaders in the communities or the businesses that they're building, right?

Yeah, for sure.

And so we were talking before the show about kind of my office and how I'll just start this conversation. I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek. I don't know how much, how deep you've gotten into following any of his content. Yeah, but Simon wrote Start With Why. Yep. He wrote Leaders Eat Last. He's written The Infinite Game. So there's a lot of different really great books that he's written. But of course, most people find him from Start With Why.

Yeah.

And when he wrote Leaders Eat Last, he started on this discussion about kind of the label, the labeling factor of like millennials, Gen Xers, boomers, and all of this other stuff. And so there's this really good video that I landed on. It's probably been like 5 or 6 years ago, and we used it in a team meeting. We had Simon talking about kind of his take on, um, how devices are separating us, you know, like we're, we're like totally hooked on getting that notification or feeling wanted or needed and, you know, separating ourselves, turning that stuff off is, is a hard thing to, um, to do for a lot of us. But what he was saying in that discussion was just more about how the younger generation is feeling in relation to the older generation. And so sadly, I have to say, I have become a member of the older generation. I don't necessarily feel like it, but when I relate to my team, sometimes I see the, I see the differences.

Yeah.

And, um, Craig has been, has the biggest challenge of us all on our team. You know, he is a, a younger boomer, and it's evident sometimes. I mean, he's just very, very different in some of the conversations that we have in the office.

Yeah.

And So what I wanted us to talk about today was just kind of like where everybody's places are in the workforce and how important it is for us as employers, as business owners, as entrepreneurs to be considering that it might not be them, that it might actually be us. So that's the challenge. That's the thought. Like, why don't you just take a little anything there that you want to riff on from just The opening.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think, I think sometimes it's tough to see other individuals' perspectives. Like, I'm a millennial, and we were talking a little bit before we started that sometimes I even, I'll look at the, the generation under, under me, which is Gen Z, and some, some of the things that they do, I don't quite understand it. But then I catch myself because I think about how the older generation looked at the millennial generation. I'm like, man, am I being like Gen X? I don't want to, I don't want to have that same type of mentality, but I think it's important to, like you said, you mentioned Simon Sinek talking about taking off those labels and, and just accepting individuals as themselves and realizing that obviously there are going to be certain nuances because Gen Z grew up in a, just a completely different era where there was technology everywhere as opposed to my generation. We, I specifically remember the dial-up computer and how time I would be sitting there and not even really thinking about how long it was taking. And now if I type in something and I'm not connected to a cell tower and it takes more than a minute, I'm frustrated. But the Gen Z, they're always, that's all they knew. So when they're coming into a workplace and when we're talking about trying to grow a business or whatever it may be, and I'm looking at individuals that can potentially help my individual business, I have to realize that they're coming from that perspective.

Yeah.

And that's how they're approaching life. That's how they're approaching business. It's very, very fast-paced for them. It has to be because they're used to that type of environment.

And in the classroom, having been in the classroom before, there's this, there's a tendency for there to be this ADHD discussion where there's all of this, just they can't sit still or they're— and it, you know, it's like the creativity of the young, the small little children. You know, when I was a kid, I was all over the place, right? But eventually, based on society, that kind of gets— I don't want to say beaten out of us, but eventually it just kind of— we grow out of it and we grow out of it because what we see around us isn't embracing that behavior. And so eventually it just gets stunted or it just gets pushed away or we learn different habits and patterns. And then we become the product of the society that we're raised in.

For sure. For sure. I agree. I think it's interesting you said that too, because I feel you, and you probably felt this more than I did, but when even if you were like left-handed, you were looked at a certain way in the classroom or just across the board. But as generations have come, we've realized how to be more accepting of each other. And sometimes older generations that have come before us have a tough time understanding. Wait, wait, wait. Well, I just kind of bit the bullet and then worked for 40 years and just kept my head down. Why, why is it that this generation, every year and a half, every 2 years, they're doing something different?

Right. Why can't they just stay at one job for 2, 3, 4, 5 years? I mean, that's just unheard of in some situations. And, you know, and I remember, so a couple of things just came to my mind when you were saying that. One was when I was a teacher. So I feel like when you said, when you said it was probably hard for me, you know, growing up and whatnot, I relate more toward a millennial mindset. Like, I feel like my mindset is more millennial than Gen X. Yeah. With that being said, though, there are a lot of discrepancies. I don't— I definitely am not a millennial, but I feel like I have— I can relate to the cause or to some of the challenges that they bring to the table. And one of those is I've always wanted to make a difference. Right. I've always wanted to show up and feel like I can make a contribution to the cause. And I really feel like that's a really relatable part of the millennial generation is like, that's why they don't stick around. If they don't feel like they can contribute to the cause, it's like, let me go find a place where I can make a difference. Right.

Yeah.

And so when I was a teacher, you know, this idealism is not something that I could talk about as much before because I didn't understand it. I couldn't take it off of my head and look at it and say, hey, this is idealistic and this is realistic and this is Chrissanne and this is me challenging reality. But as I've gotten older, I'm able to see that. And so when I was a teacher, taking you back to 9/11 and the reaction that America had to kind of coming together and unifying. And there was a group of students in my classroom that wanted to do something, right? It was like a response that felt human. And we wanted— they wanted, like, what can we do? What can we do? You know, write a letter. So we did a— you know, I was writing. I was a creative writing— you know, it was in language arts.

Got it.

So it's like, let's do letters to the survivors, or let's do letters to the emergency response teams or whatever. So we did, you know, activities like that. But one day a student walks in and said they had one of those safety pin American flags. I don't know if you can remember this far back, but yep, there were red, white, and blue beads and safety pins, and they took one long safety pin and a bunch of little short safety pins, and they threaded the put the beads on there, and they made these American flags out of them. And they were really cute, and you could pin them on your shirt, and it was just great. And it was a craft, right? And so these kids came to my classroom, and they said, "Miss Long, can we create these and then sell them or do something to fundraise and then send money to help some of the victims' families or whatever?" And so these were these kids coming up with an idea. They wanted to make a difference. And so I could have immediately squashed their idea. I was like, "No, no, no, we're too busy. We have work to do in our classroom." And I said, well, let me find out. Let me see what we can do. So I'm excited about it. I'm thinking, okay, I'll go buy safety pins. I'll go buy beads. We'll just do these things. And it was a really good hands-on kind of activity for kids to do it after school, you know, experience maybe just a club or whatever. So I kind of pushed it up the flagpole to see if it could happen. And it got squashed, not because we couldn't have a club, not because we couldn't do the thing, but because if we were going to sell them, we needed to get the information of every single solitary person who wrote, who paid a dollar for a pin, right? And then we had to have all the documentation.

Yeah. And I'm like, all these processes, all these processes and stuff.

And I'm totally okay with the processes, but it wasn't like, let's see how we could figure out how to do it, correct? It was just, well, here's what you're going to have to do if you do that. And they just painted this really difficult bureaucratic picture in my face. And I'm like, well, are there solutions? I mean, I'm surely that there's a way that we could— well, you know, you know, Chrissanne, you're going to learn, you're going to eventually learn that, you know, it's just too, too much work. And so that was one of those experiences for me where it was like, basically you eventually either get along to go along or go along to get along, or you buck the system and you say, okay, no, forget that, I'm going to go do it. And I didn't, I didn't buck the system in that situation. I just felt like that squashing feeling of I just really wanted to make a difference. I wanted the kids to have a chance to make a difference. So that was the part when you were talking about like feeling that, like feeling that in my life viscerally, like as I was growing up and even as a young adult thinking, gosh, I really want to find a place where I can make a difference. And teaching seemed like a good place for me to feel like I could make a difference. I did. And I enjoyed it. But there were times like that where I was like the creativity, the innovation, you know, the possibility of something is a natural part of who I am in my DNA.

Yeah.

But it didn't— it wasn't always received well.

Yeah, it goes— it went against the very model that you worked in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I'll pause and let you kind of chime in on that.

Yeah. No, I— man, I think this is a really good conversation. I agree with what you're saying 100%. It makes me— it makes me think about certain situations in my life where I was just doing things that were different or looked at differently, just because, again, I think that's how we can relate really well with each other. Just wanting to do something that I knew for a fact it empowered— I felt empowered, but I was also empowering others as well. It just wasn't about me.

Yeah.

And I felt like a lot of the things, like, I'll never forget when I was younger and people would always kind of say that at least to me, the generic answers of, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" People would say, "Oh, firefighter, police officer," all these different things. I just never said anything. And for a little bit, and this is probably the first time I'm ever really talking about it publicly, for a little bit, I would think, I'm like, "Man, am I weird for not saying police officer like everybody else?" But I was like, "No, that's not what I want to be. I don't want to be the firefighter or the mechanic." I had a friend that wanted to be an astronaut. You know, kids say all these things.

Right, right.

And here I'm, you know, 7, 8 years old and I'm having a ton of fun just flipping candy on the side. And it was just—

I just want to flip candy. Let me keep doing that.

Yeah. And it was a ton of fun and it was a blast. And it was— but again, I think it's— and I think that's part of it too, really at the root of the conversation. It's like, it's okay to embrace who you are. And of course we live in a society of different people's different beliefs, different processes and systems.

Yeah.

But in order to create change, you sometimes have to buck the system. You just have to. That's the only way that anything will change. You have to. And that's the thing that I'm learning more and more is, especially when you're building a business and you're trying to push something that's not quite there.

Right.

If it's not there, it's not there for a reason. And usually if it's not there, you're probably at the forefront of it, which means you're going to be doing a lot of bucking.

Yes. You're on the front of the wave.

Yep.

And guess who gets all of it? All of the pain points are the people on the front of the wave.

You get the brunt of it, but then you pave the way so that everybody else has a smoother process down the road.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

And I think that's, that can be discouraging, you know, to be on the front of the wave and not, not be— the reception isn't there.

Yeah.

You know, we talked in our episode about white space.

Yeah.

You can see an opportunity and if nobody else can see it, You know, the question is, is there just not a market for it?

Yeah.

Or has the market not been developed or advanced or sophisticated enough to understand it? Right. It's, it's like, it's like a doctor prescribing medicine for something that you don't actually need.

Yep.

And why would you take medicine if you don't have any ailments? Right. So in this case, we're looking at it like, okay, well, the market doesn't support whatever this new creative, innovative idea is. But that's not because the new creative innovative idea isn't going to work or isn't going to solve a problem. It's that the market isn't there. And I think one of the biggest challenges for me and why I love this podcast as a platform for us is because we generally, I think we've spoken about it, Polk County are, are we as gen in general are laggards. You know, we as a county kind of wait for Tampa or Orlando to innovate and then we follow, follow behind. Instead of being leaders in innovation and creating ideas and solutions. And if we don't see it around us, then we don't really have any models to follow.

Yeah. And I think it's tough too, because you have to look at, you have to look at the environment and if the environment you're in has never really been that way before, because that's the biggest thing people always, I think that's like the process of what the, what the average person kind of goes through. They go through this kind of mental process. We had a, had a meeting the other day. And we're going through this process of, okay, what this model, this business model in which we're, in which we're doing, we're doing two things and most businesses only do one. They only do one or the other. So the question is why?

Yeah.

Is it because it's too hard to do both or there's just this massive opportunity that no one's really paying attention to and we have an opportunity to do both.

Right.

And so when you go through those processes, the average person's like, man, okay, I'm either going to do one or the other. I'm not going to do both because Obviously there's been 5, 10, 15, 100 companies or 100 businesses or 100 services that have been offered in this space that just haven't been able to figure it out. Or you flip it on its head and say, no, I'm going to approach it in a unique and different way that nobody else has approached it before and be able to provide and offer whatever I'm trying to offer to the market.

Find the way to do it.

Find the way to do it.

You know, and I think it also comes down to profitability. Maybe the reason why it hasn't been done is that someone hasn't found a way for it to be profitable.

Correct.

Not necessarily not wanting wanting to do it, or the infrastructure or the efficiencies aren't there to be able to do both and be, you know, profitable at the same time. Which lends ourselves back to this Millennial, Gen Z kind of question, because for, for them, and for, for me sometimes even, it really isn't all about profit, correct? It's really sometimes about making a difference, and the profit will come, correct? Right. It's Oprah said, do what you love and the money will follow.

Yeah.

It's not find the way to make the money and then find the way to do what you love.

And I think that's the, I think that's the very, I think that's the most interesting situation that we're finding ourselves in, in today's market is that we are finding a lot of these, these new businesses, businesses that are coming out, out that are more focused on reaching these individual people or reaching the market and not necessarily caring about profitability, but then The old money, the older generation, it's all about the bottom line. It's about the bottom dollar. I'm not going to— no, we've always dressed a certain way. We've always done this. We've always— because this is how we've done things and this is how we've been able to make X amount of dollars on a consistent basis. And this new model hasn't been— we've never seen this model. We've been doing this other model for the past 25, 30 years. But again, we evolve, we change over time and we have to change.

Yeah. And I think that That comes back to the, what I think you and I've talked about, the success grid.

Yeah.

Like if I look at success and I, if I were able to come up with an X and Y axis, right. And like, you know, feeling good, showing up to work every day versus, you know, making money and everything being on the, on the X axis being, you know, this being my priority and figuring out, okay, where does the Y axis start to actually go upward into the right?

Yeah.

You know, and figuring out that configuration so that you can succeed because showing up and feeling good is selfish, right? It's like that feeling of selfishness. Like, I just have to feel good every single solitary day. And it's your job as the boss to make sure that I feel good coming into work every day. And then that just kind of diminishes the importance of the hard work, the grit, the determination, and working through the challenges. And so the why might not be, you know, profitability or making money, but it might be something else.

Yeah.

And that's where everybody's success grid is. So in the past, when it was the industrial age and it was like the conveyor belt and Ford was like, okay, how many cars can we make in a year and how profitable can we be because we made these cars? It's do it faster, do it faster, do it faster so that we could make more money, right?

Correct.

Not so that we could give more people freedom and get on the road and let them have more access to life or the world. It was more about that industrial, like, let's make it fast, let's make it efficient.

It was a power struggle with the guys at the top. They were really just competing And I mean, you have to think back then they didn't really, they didn't have labor laws and a lot of these things in places that protected their employees and minimum wage and all this other stuff. It really was just about the bottom dollar. But as we evolved, things had to change. I think that's kind of what we're speaking to is we're in this, we're in this really interesting space now where some businesses, some startups, some organizations are starting to move towards a different model and not everybody is necessarily wanting to or looking to move to that model, but I feel like we're in this space now where we have to, because again, when you look at where we've come from, I mean, again, technology has advanced so quickly at such a high rate, you can't expect the new generation that's coming in, that's coming into the workforce to work the same way. It's just not, it's not possible.

Yeah, it is. You know, it's, it's It's evident with technology. So I'll give you kind of one of my examples.

Yeah.

Being, being that I am not always an early adopter to everything. Yeah. So I'm owning it. There are some things that I'm just like, you know, this is going to, this is going to be around forever.

Yeah.

And I'm just going to, you know, hold on to this being around forever. I used to be very much Microsoft, very much Office. Everything I did was focused on all of the tools that you had, PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel and all of those pieces. And I was a very kind of resistor to the Google environment for the first 4 or 5 years of us being in business. And, you know, everything worked with my Gmail account, right? Like when I created my Gmail account, it was more for personal. It wasn't for business. It was just all of these things. And all of this technology was innovating and integrating and everything was accessible. Because if I could just connect my Gmail account, all of these other things would work, right?

Yeah.

And so eventually I took, I took that, I made the decision to take the leap and go into using Google's G Suite and now Workspace.

Yeah.

And my entire business changed from that point on. We were locked into Dropbox. Every time you log into Dropbox and you make an edit to a file, you know, that, that file has to be re-uploaded and saved and all of these different things. And it wasn't like real-time editing. Now, Microsoft has caught up to kind of that collaborative, you know, real-time editing being available. But it was a little bit later to the game, right? I had already jumped over into Google's world. But, you know, the thing is, it's like now as you're talking about like sharing documents and doing— I did my masterclass this morning and I use Google Docs to share files to my, to my team, to my, to my clients. And, you know, there's still people that are like, wait a minute, I don't use Google. Okay, well, that's okay. Just hit this button, File, Save, Download as Microsoft Word, and you can still be a part of the language. But everything is innovating so quickly that the longer that you hold on to that, I want everything to stay the same mindset, the further behind you're going to be.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I am. It's funny. It's funny you say that because I've been, I've been holding on to Excel for, I think, a little bit too long. I was talking to someone the other day and they're like, oh man, Google Sheets is so much more seamless. And I'm like, man, But Excel, it's like, it's what I know. I know it so well. And I think that's, I think that's part of it. I think part of it is, especially when we're talking about what we're talking about, which this podcast is based around entrepreneurship and business and, and knowing how to build your business and structure it the right way. I think it's important to know, like what you're saying, technology is always moving and it's moving at such a fast rate. You have to, I'm speaking to myself too, you have to make sure that you're on the cutting edge with the new technology that, because a lot of times the technology, even though there's pushback, they're creating it in a way to where it makes it more effective and more efficient for your business so that you're saving time and money and saving time on processes and like the whole collaboration aspect. I've always, and it's interesting you said that because I remember when Google did that and I, to me that was a game changer because I remember specifically there was a project that I was working on and we did it. That way. And I was like, man, this is strategic. And you can see real-time edits at the same time. It's like, oh, this person's editing this, I'm editing this at the same time.

Right.

And it's more collaborative as opposed to two separate laptops. You're having to sit next to each other. You don't even have to be in the same room.

Right.

Or in the same city.

Yep.

And you can edit at the same time. So it's—

or in the same time zone or on the same continent.

Exactly. Yeah.

And I think that's the part that bringing that back to these, the younger leaders of the future, leaders of our, of our world. Right. So we recently hired a couple of new people, probably in the last 10 months. I've got 2 new hires and I want to be able to get— maybe we bring Alexis and Annie on the show one day and just kind of talk to them and get their perspectives. But, you know, I feel like if we as employers consider how it feels for the younger generation to come into the workforce from where they're coming from, right, the mindset, the experience, the tools, the things that they know how to do, they know how to do things much more efficiently coming out of college than most businesses are currently working.

For sure.

Right. So let's just say we were still staunchly stuck in the Microsoft Word environment, and Alexis is like so adept at using Google, like using all of the Google tools. Like she is a pro, right? Like I hand her something and she's done with it in minutes, as opposed to me or Craig or somebody who's a little bit slower figuring this stuff out. Because like you said, this is all she's ever known, right?

Yeah.

All of her high school years, probably teachers were using those. Some of the teachers who were maybe more innovative. But when it's— when a student like that graduates, gets a job, and walks into a work environment that is, is not innovating, there's like a clash, right? It's like, all of the things that I've been doing, I can contribute. Yeah, I can teach you a better way. I can show you how to do this work faster. We can reduce the cost of printing because we don't need to print and mark things up and then make changes to it. You know, that's the old, you know, before the computer kind of mindset. and it's like, are we embracing that? Are we saying, no, this is how we do this here. This is the way we do things. And you're cute. That's cool that you know how to do all those flashy, cool technology things, little one. But we do things differently over here. Because at that point in time, that becomes frustrating because now they have to learn an entirely new way that is old. But they have this learning curve of like, and they're looking at it going, this is so slow. This is so dumb. Why am I doing this? And if we could put our lenses on and say, hey, What can you teach us, new hire? What can you, what can you show us how to do that's better, faster, easier, more efficient? Then they feel like they're coming in and making that difference.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I agree 100%. We, because I'm in the process of starting to think towards that with, with adding new people to the team, with adding new people to the team. And I'm always trying to be self-aware of making sure that anybody that is going to be added to the team. Can add value, but not just that, me being open to the value that they're adding.

Yeah, it's, it's what value they add.

Yeah.

And asking some of those questions on the front end as part of the interview process.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, are, and are they, are they empowered to share their opinion when they, when you hire, if you do make that decision?

Yeah.

You know, the question that I ask is, you know, I, I want them to be able to tell me what they see, but not necessarily be ready. But they also have to be ready for me not to do something about it. Right? It's like, I want to hear what you have to say, but we might not. It might just be an infrastructure challenge. It might be something that we're, we're not there yet. But I want you to know that you're heard so that at a point in time when we do want to move in that direction, we can come to you and say, okay, now, now we're ready. Let's start innovating on that idea and figure out how we can make it better.

Yeah, I think, I think what you're talking about too is, I think we've mentioned it before, is the, the bottom-up approaches as opposed to a top-down approach. Being willing to listen to people no matter what level that they're at, even if they're entry-level team member. I don't even like saying employee. I like saying team member to make them feel like they're a part of the team as opposed to something completely different. But I think that's important because what I've learned in my short form of experience owning my own businesses is you're always learning. You always have to be open to learn. And it doesn't matter if the person's older or younger than you. Some of the most strategic things I've ever learned is from people that have been younger than me.

Mm-hmm.

And they've taught me things that I was like, man, okay, well, you just saved me an hour of my time by doing it this way. I didn't even know this existed.

Right, right. And your mind is open to that. So you can, you can learn that.

Exactly. Like it was, it was something as simple as, so My wife Jess, as you know, she's from Pennsylvania. So we were up for Christmas like 2 years ago with her uncle and his stepdaughters. And we were trying to figure out how to screen record on the iPhone. And she's a Gen Zer and she just grabbed my phone real quick, say, you do this, this, and this, and did it in like 2 seconds. And I was like, wait, can you show me that again? Show me one more time. I was like, oh, That's how you do that? Because I was seeing it on social media of how people were screen recording on their phone. I was like, how are people doing that?

Yeah.

Because there's not like a— like if you Google it, it's really hard to like to find that.

Yeah.

And it's fascinating that these tools and resources in this technology, some of these platforms are being built to almost be built in a way to where you figure it out on the go as opposed to—

Apply. Like, wait, I know that this is possible. I should probably be able to figure it out.

Exactly. But things like that. It sounds simple, but if you're trying to do certain things for marketing or, or whatever, there's certain things that you can do with the screen recording of a, of your phone that you can't just do on a computer.

Right, right, right, right. And you know, and, and going even one level deeper too, like I talked about Google, from Microsoft to Google, but, um, you know, these very robust softwares that are expensive and also have a high learning curve, you know, so you're hiring these professional graphic designers or web designers or people. I remember when we first started in the business 12, 13 years ago, people were still writing, like manually writing HTML code using Dreamweaver to build their websites, right?

Oh man, I don't know, when was the last time you opened Dreamweaver?

And then, you know, WordPress was becoming more prolific and, and all of these other website builders were starting to kind of override that heart because who wants to write code? Yeah, I mean, some people really probably get off on it and it's exciting to them and that's great.

Yeah.

But at the same time, do you want to spend 17 hours to create something that some other program can do just as efficiently in an hour? Right. And, and so I was resistant to when Canva kind of started to come out.

That was a game changer to the market, right? That was a game changer.

Oh, well, Photoshop is going to be so much better. You know, you need Illustrator, you know, and you still need those for certain parts of the, of, of the, of the business that you're running.

Yeah.

But now Canva has become become a regular part of our business.

And talk about what a fascinating model— ours too— and what a fascinating model that she's built. She's from Australia, uh, to which she's built a model to which you technically don't have to pay for it and you can still use the software, right? Like, think about even 5, 10 years ago, that, that wasn't even close to existence. Anything even close to that, you would have to pay $20, $30, $40, $50 a month, right, to be able to get those different piece tool, tools and pieces. I can't, there's, there was a software that I used before that I was paying for actively.

Mm-hmm.

Just, you would, you know, pay $5 for a piece of content that was moving or $5 for a little piece of a logo, and then you can kind of clash things together and create your logo. But I mean, with Canva, it's a game changer. And so things like that, which again, the freemium kind of the freemium model, the freemium model. So I think about kids that are in school right now and in high school, they're probably using Canva all the time for different projects and stuff. And so when they're immersed into the workforce, there's a business that hasn't adapted to that, right? They're going to potentially offer that to the table. And I think literally what we're saying is that that business or that business owner, the willingness to say, I never thought about that before.

Yeah. Or look at what that could do for our business.

Exactly.

And let's let that ride. Let's see what they can do. Let's see how they do.

Yeah.

I think the other part to me that makes a lot of sense for us in this conversation is just understanding that it's about possibility, right? I mean, we as entrepreneurs kind of start the path because we think something could be better and we could help, right? That's why we start the business. There's a problem, we can solve it. But these kids, I call them kids, I probably, they probably don't want me to call them kids, but we're talking about labels. So yeah, they come into the workforce eager, excited, ready to show what they can do. Right. That's the whole point of taking on that new position, right? It's like, yeah, I got— I want you to hire me so I can show you what I can do. And when you— when I show you what I can do, A, I'm going to get up in the morning and feel excited about going to work, and B, I'm going to help you grow your business. Right. If I show up and those two things are happening, then, then you have, you have like the best kind of outcomes, right?

Yeah.

If they come in and they're either met with resistance, they're met with a closed mind, they're met with, this is how we do things. They'll take the job because, you know, they need the job, they need the experience, they need the work experience. But instead of it being an investment that they're making in you, I think that's the part that I think that's, that's missing. It's like, we're, you know, employees and staff, and that's an investment. We have to put money into hiring them so that we can get the quality of candidates that we want. But in turn, what we have to recognize as entrepreneurs is that they too are investing in us. And when that is seen as a mutually beneficial relationship, and it's not just the financial compensation part, but that we're listening to them, we're hearing them, we're bringing them in, and we're saying, show us what you can do, then they stick around.

Yeah, I agree.

And we also have to recognize that they're not going to stick around forever.

Yeah, you gotta be ready for that. Yeah.

Um, but I think that's, that's the, the message I think here, because there's so much challenge right now with the workforce, getting people to, you know, come and take this job or show up. I mean, I'm hearing that resonating over and over and over again.

Yeah.

And if you want to flip that on its end, and instead of saying, you know, people don't want to work today, you know, what can you do to make working for you irresistible?

Yep.

Instead of like, well, they just don't want to show up. Well, why, why don't they want to show up? What are you—

what, what are you offering?

Could you make about your job that would be better for them to be like, hell yeah, I want to work there?

Yeah, exactly. I agree. I agree 100%. I look at a very fascinating model in Chewbani. They, the CEO, man, he goes above and beyond for his employees. I was reading, or I was, a friend of mine shared with me an article about, apparently they're going to be going public soon, and I believe he gave 10% of his stock options.

Yes, I saw. To his employees.

And so, and that was like 3 or 4 years ago, back when they had a completely different valuation. So they were talking about how a lot of these employees are going to be making millions when the stock goes public.

And these are factory workers.

They're just regular people.

Yeah. These aren't like middle management, upper management, C-suite.

Yeah. This isn't the C-suite executives. I mean, these are just the regular everyday employees, but I think especially, and it's like, I think about that and I say, okay, in a time where The workforce is in pure chaos. And when you drive down South Florida, you see a thousand different apply here signs and different incentives that they're trying to— we pay same day and things like that. But then you see Chobani and you see what he's always done for his employees and always gone above and beyond and pays them a minimum that's higher than I think like 10 or 15% than the average. It just goes to show you, and it's not just about the pay, like you said, it's about the care about the employees, the thoughtfulness about realizing that, like you said, it's not just a compensation aspect, it's they're investing in me too. They believe in this vision, this mission of the company, what we're trying to do. There's a purpose behind it. And really and truthfully, some people call it a trend. I don't think it's a trend. I just think that's where we're headed. More and more individuals are realizing, especially I feel like the pandemic really, really sped that up. People had a chance to kind of sit down and say to themselves, man, do I really enjoy doing what I'm doing? I was fascinated by the amount of people that, that leapt out and did different side hustles and they were passionate about it. And that passion turned into a full-time business. And they said, man, I'm not going to work this job anymore. I'm going to do this, this, the side hustle that I'm passionate about.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think, you know, there's mind-numbing work and work is work and I'm not trying to make it sound like all jobs are sexy.

Yeah, for sure.

It's not all fun and games and work is work and you have responsibilities and you have accountability. And I'm not like, you know, I think that sometimes when I share some of these extreme thoughts, right, there's a whole group of people going, Chrissanne, you know, get real. All right. So garbage collecting or, you know, cleaning windows or doing certain things, it's not necessarily this redeeming, really great feeling kind of work. Right. But at the same time, you tell the story of like when Kennedy was walking through NASA and there was the guy sweeping the floors and Kennedy's like, hey, you know, what's your job? What do you do? He's like, I'm putting the man on the moon. Like, everyone was so bought into getting the first flight to the moon that even the guy— and, and this is kind of a sensationalized story that everybody has probably heard before, but at the same time, that's what you want to create. That's the ideal. Now, how do you create some version of that ideal? It might not be 100% that the person cleaning the floors is all bought into the vision, but hopefully they feel appreciated.

Yeah.

For the work that they're doing. And it's not just like You know, my boss is a jerk because he makes me clean the floors. You know, like, no, my boss is somebody I appreciate because the work that we're doing is making a difference in the lives of our customers and clients.

Yeah. It's about really kind of immersing that why, kind of like what you were talking about. Cause no matter what you do, you mentioned it just a few seconds ago, there's going to be some things that just really suck. It's not, some things are just not enjoyable. There's just some things that we as individuals don't like doing, but we have to do it. But If you have a why about what you're doing, it overwhelms the thing that you don't necessarily like to do, and you're willing to bite the bullet because of that end goal that you see in mind. And, and sometimes it's really tough. I commend every single person that can get a large team or even a, even a small team together on a collective goal and mission and say, hey, this is, this is what we're about, this is what we're working towards, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Let's work on this together. Mm-hmm. From the person that has, is having to do the cold calls to the person that's having to do collections, to the person that's having to come in and clean. Everything has a purpose and a mission in order to get to that objective. And like I said, the people that can immerse that into new team members, people that have been there for 5, 10 years, people that have been there for a year and all be on the same page, continually get people in alignment. Yeah, I commend those people.

That synergy is— and it's not always easy.

Yeah.

And it's not something like a set and forget. Okay, we've got synergy and alignment today. We're done. We got there. Check the box. Synergy and alignment come over time, consistently doing, checking in with the employees, making sure, you know, when you sense that someone's not having a good day, what does that feel like in the office? Yeah. What does that feel like in the workday? You know, if they're generally performing at this level and you see a decline in their performance, what do you do there? Do you check in or do you go, "Huh, might be there may be one foot out the door because I'm going to have to let them go if they don't start performing better." Yeah. You know, what is the way we react to the performance of our team? And, you know, I'm not painting a picture of perfection. So if my team is listening to this podcast, right, there are so many things that I can do better. And I just, I'm really just trying to point out the fact that we as employers really have the responsibility. The onus is on us to be the kinds of places that people want to work. And that's a big Simon Sinek message. He's recently just shared something. He was kind of relaying a story of— and I can't think of this world leader. It'll come to me, but it's probably— so we'll edit this out. What's the name of the guy? South African, South African leader. No, he's not South African. Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela. Yeah.

Okay. So recently he's— Simon's talking about a story he relayed about Nelson Mandela and a story he had told. And it was really like how the leaders in his, in his younger generation or how he was raised, they would lead— they would meet in, in a circle. And his father or grandfather or somebody was a tribal leader or something. And I don't remember exactly the story, but the story was that there was a tribal leader there was a circle of the people in the conversation, and he was in the conversation as a younger person, and everyone in the circle had a chance to speak, and the leader spoke last. The leader didn't walk in the room and say, okay, this is what I think we need to do. Now I want to hear what you guys have to say.

Yeah.

The leader walks in the room and says, okay, this is the problem that we have. I want to hear what all of you have to say, and I'll speak last. Because once you've said what you think they need to do, the room is already biased and they're not going to go against you.

Yeah, I agree.

And it was a really great visual understanding of that. It's like, all right, everybody in the circle needs to have a chance to speak and we speak last. And I have to work on that. You know, cause I have a tendency to talk a little. I don't know if you've heard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's easier said than done. I think. And I think that's, I think that's like all the conversations that we're having. It's easy to say a lot of these things, but for us to step up to the plate and do those things as well is another thing.

Yeah. And that's to me, the part that excites me most about being an entrepreneur.

Right.

Like there's always more work to be done. Yeah. And for some people that's exactly exhausting.

Yeah.

If I talk to my mom, she's like, oh my God, I don't understand how you do it, Chrissanne. And a lot of people are like, Chrissanne, you're— do you ever sleep? I'm like, I sleep really well.

Yeah, yeah.

But I wake up in the morning renewed and excited most of the time to get at it and start doing whatever it is that I can do, simply because I feel like I'm making a difference. And when I can see that in my employees, then it's even better. When I can't see that in my employees, I'm the first one to go, okay, What do I need to do to fix this? And it's all— and I'm one of the— so on the other side, if you do not have the dream team that I feel like I am fortunate and blessed to have, how do you handle the firing and the getting through all of that? Because that toxicity or that negativity or that problem starts to infuse itself into the workplace and efficiencies start to slow down.

I'm starting to find out, find in at least in my path that I'm going, I think it's, I think it's, it's very tough to build things without the right team and the right partners and the right people in place, just because an individual only has so many hours in the day. They can only do so much before they feel burnt out.

Yeah.

So you have, I really feel like you have the right to have, have to have the right team in place. And I think you would agree.

Oh, I agree 100%.

Because without the right team, You could be building a business and having to always, 'cause like you said, you could be in alignment on Monday, but by Wednesday something happens in the business. And if you don't have a conversation until the following Monday, your entire business model may just be a mess.

Yeah. Things go sideways very, very quickly.

Yeah.

You know, client relations challenges, you know, a problem with whatever it is in the scheme of the workforce, you know, whatever's going on in your day-to-day. So it's important to just keep a continual opportunity to check in and make that open door policy legitimately open door and not feel like it's hard to access talking about a problem or a challenge or working through that and figuring out, okay, what are we going to do next time? Let's get through this problem because it's clearly gone sideways. Well, what are we going to do to make sure that the next time it doesn't go sideways?

Yeah. And be willing to be adaptive and to Like we were talking about, there's new individuals that are entering in the workforce for the first time and being willing to listen to what they have to say. And if they suggest, hey, you know, what if we did things this way? Not to just say, ah, no, we're not going to do it this way because we've just created this new system. It works really well to at least listen and say, you know what? Well, think about that. If it makes sense.

Right. Right. Have you guys, And so speaking to some of the millennials and the Gen Zers and the employee, the workforce, you're showing up for these jobs asking questions like, have you guys ever tried this or have you ever considered this?

Yeah.

Or, you know, instead of maybe not saying anything or trying to force an idea onto your, to your old employer, speaking of myself, you know, bringing it in as a possibility as opposed to a, you know, you guys don't have it figured out because you should be doing it this way. Coming at it so that the idea is presented and then consider, for your consideration, maybe this is an opportunity for you to try this other new opportunity or this new software or this new tool.

For sure. For sure. And since you said that too, I was just thought about, I was like, if for anybody that's in that, the millennial or Gen Z generation, to me, the biggest asset to any business is do research on them, find out what their problem, some of their problems are that they're dealing with. And if you can, solve that problem and bring it to them, that's an opportunity right there to springboard you into a new role, a new position, or make a position that doesn't necessarily exist because they need it.

Yeah. It's that disruption of the pattern. It's a pattern interrupt. We as entrepreneurs and employers need to understand that sometimes those patterns need to be interrupted because that's how we innovate. That's how we create new ways of solving problems. But then on the other side, it's like, How long do you wait until you're heard or not heard before you move on to the next thing?

Yeah.

So we're not open to those ideas. If we're not open to that pattern interrupt, if we're not receptive to these new ideas, those awesome, talented, incredibly engaged, wanting to make a difference employees are going to go find a place where they will be heard, where their ideas will be respected, or they'll go create their own business, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, ultimately, and create competition in the marketplace because, you know, now it's so accessible to become entrepreneurs. You know, in this day and age.

Yeah, I agree. I agree 100%. That's why I'm always— I always try to be open to new ideas and as long as it's within reason. I mean, some things are unreasonable, but within reason, I always try to be accepting to most of the ideas that are pitched my way or brought my way. And again, like you said, it's— we should empower people. We shouldn't say, ah, don't do that. Don't— that idea is insane. That idea is wacky. We've had wackier ideas, I'm sure. Yeah.

So, well, and wacky ideas tend to be sometimes if they're explored and vetted, the ones that change the game.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, it's not the, it's not the things we've always done that changes the game. It's the new things that we've never tried before. So as we wrap up, I just wanted to kind of talk about like the fact that for me, there's like a certain number of questions that we can be asking, right? Like, and so I've written a blog post. I think we'll put that in the show notes. And so some of these ideas were inspired by that blog post that I've written.

Yeah.

But then, you know, for the audience to say today, it's like, you know, So the two— there's two sides to this equation. It's: did I respect? Was I respected? As an employer, did I respect my employee? As an employee, did I feel respected? But vice versa. Did I also respect my employer, and did they also feel respected? So it's a mutual—

it's mutual.

Both of these are both sides. It's like times 4, basically. Did I see? Was I seen? Did I value? Was I valued? Did I invest in others? Did others invest in me? Did I care for others? Did others care for me? Did I listen? Was I listened to? Did I encourage? Did others encourage me? So those are the kinds of questions that we should be asking in our workforce. And if we're trying, if we're struggling to find employees, maybe we can start at kind of restructuring how we hire so that we can start to find those employees that really do want to show up and make a difference.

Yeah. I agree. I agree 100%. I really enjoyed this conversation and it made me even self-reflect and think deeper within myself about how I'm approaching things, especially when it goes towards hiring and making sure that we're in alignment with the individuals that we're going to bring to the table and even with team members too.

And growth comes with growing pains.

Oh yeah.

You know, so it's like, figure that out as fast as you can so that you can fail fast, and then iterate and improve upon the process.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, well, awesome, awesome, awesome. Great conversation. That's a wrap. Thanks for listening to this week's show. If you'd like to help us get the word out about this podcast or any of our others, check out the posts on our Facebook page, share it, and better yet, comment with your favorite part of the episode. We're looking forward to learning what you loved about this conversation, and if you have some ideas for upcoming shows, we'd love to hear from you. And we'll see you next week, Polk County.