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Unlock the secrets to business success and gain valuable insights from local industry leaders. Join us as we delve into the strategies, triumphs, and lessons learned of thriving companies, empowering entrepreneurs to elevate their businesses to new heights.
Sharon: [00:00:05] Welcome to It's Time for Success, the Business Insight podcast. I'm your host, Sharon de Koning. I love business, I love working with businesses. I love learning about business. Hence the creation of this particular podcast. At this podcast, we get to interview other people and so they can share their wisdom and their insights with you, our listeners, and me as well. I get to learn a lot. This particular podcast is also sponsored by my company, It's Time Promotions, wherein I also get to work with businesses much like yourselves. At It's Time Promotions, we pride ourselves with doing majority of our work in-house. So we do embroidery, we do screen printing, we do engraving, we do all the print for the signs, right up to fleet graphics, full wraps on your vehicles. We have three locations here in Alberta. If you have a company and you think that you can use our services, I would really appreciate the opportunity. If so, just kindly reach out to my team at itpromo.ca. Tell them you heard about us on this podcast and receive some special pricing. Thank you everyone.
Sharon: [00:01:05] Today we're going to dive into the heart of what makes businesses tick, grow, and occasionally where we stumble. Today, we are joined with the incredible Gretchen Richards, founder of Dynamic Business Capabilities, LLC. Gretchen spent over 35 years crushing it at fortune 500 companies before deciding to bring that high-level expertise to the heartbeat of our communities, small businesses. That's us. Gretchen has helped many companies improve our service operations so they can scale, grow and increase their profits. Gretchen, welcome to the show. Okay, let's just jump in. Let's tell, Gretchen I'm going to get you to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself before we go into some questions.
Gretchen: [00:01:41] Okay. So I'm Gretchen Richards, and thank you for having me on the show today. I'm really excited to be able to reach out to your community and hopefully offer some things that they can find useful. So I started out my career as a software engineer. I was a computer science and math nerd coming out of school. And worked for some of the big telecoms, did some of their like, key systems. I was really lucky at the first one and landed in a little group of ten people who nobody in the company knew who we were until four years later when we deployed the network element, and it started bringing in 2 billion of their 6 billion in revenue. And everybody in the company knew who we were. And may I say, the sharks came out. And it was at that point in time, I looked up that corporate ladder and thought, I think I want to work in small businesses. Yeah, that was why.
Sharon: [00:02:28] Why didn't you want to go up? Well, tell me the difference between the small and going up.
Gretchen: [00:02:32] It was really all perception management and it was all politics and backstabbing and positioning. It was very unproductive. And it was it was really perception management. And you realize the people at the top, at a big company of 20,000 people have absolutely no idea what's going on down below. And, you know, there's, there's no place to hide in a small business if you're not pulling your weight. It's obvious, right? And you don't last.
Sharon: [00:02:55] It's very obvious. And darn it, we need your help. So thank you for doing that.
Gretchen: [00:03:00] I love small businesses. I think, yes, they make decisions. They're quick, they're nimble. They get stuff done. I think they're the lifeline of our economy.
Sharon: [00:03:09] It is. I believe that so much. I was actually, um, my mom was from we're from a small town in Manitoba and she was an entrepreneur back in the day. And it was like 300 people. So she had the restaurant and then she opened up a grocery store. Fast forward till today, my brother runs that grocery store and now owns the gas station. So it's funny how they know. So actually the gas, the grocery store burnt down, which was very devastating a year ago. And the community realized the devastation, how important it is to have that in our community because it affects the it'll actually affect the real estate value. It affects like the whole economy because now they're driving out of town to get things. So then you're losing something else, right? So anyways, the town pulled together to make resources so they could build another, um, grocery store. So anyways, just food for thought.
Gretchen: [00:03:54] I love that story.
Sharon: [00:03:55] Yeah, it's very important. And we do need these businesses, like even myself when we talk about like, so we are growing and we add people to our staff, which is awesome. But guess what? That person like, I don't know, you probably know better. So if I pay somebody a wage, how many times does their dollar ricochet back in our community? Do you know that ratio or how that works?
Gretchen: [00:04:14] I don't, but they call it like the velocity of money, how often it gets passed from person to person.
Sharon: [00:04:20] Yeah. So when you're helping those small businesses, you're helping the, the whole, the whole dynamics, the whole economy, as you said. So this is, this is great. So I'm really excited for today's podcast. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about business too. So this is awesome. Okay. Some of the subjects we, I think we're going to talk about today is burnout. Getting lost. I just left that as two words because we'll get more into detail about that. Check-ins. Systems, which is very important, helping others, which is something that we'd love to do. I'm sure we'll get off track, but then we can, you know, try to get back on track. So those are some of the things I want to talk about a little bit. So which one do you want to hit on first? What are your thoughts?
Gretchen: [00:04:56] Well, we could start with burnout. That was the one you mentioned first because that's that's one thing I coach a lot of my entrepreneurs in is that you have to avoid getting burnt out because as the entrepreneur, I know, I know it's because, because we think like, oh, we're this entrepreneur, we're going to work hard, we're going to crush it. It's all about putting in more time, more hours, right? It's kind of that. But you have to realize as the entrepreneur, you're the one who has to bring the energy to your company. You're the one that has to bring the enthusiasm, the passion and everything. And if you're exhausted and you're dragging yourself into work, it shows. It shows to your team. It shows to your customers. Your business won't have the energy if you don't have the energy. So it's really important. You know, one of the other things I tell my clients about is you have to be your own cheerleader in that same like keeping your energy high. You know, nobody's coming up and saying, great job entrepreneur, right? There's nobody. Never. And so you have to kind of collect your wins. You have to review them. You have to put things in place to celebrate and celebrate, not, you know, sometimes the wind isn't necessarily based on the results. Sometimes the wind is like you made yourself do something that was uncomfortable.
Sharon: [00:06:08] Mhm.
Gretchen: [00:06:08] Right.
Sharon: [00:06:09] And you got to do that a lot.
Gretchen: [00:06:10] You really do. And so I think, you know, keeping yourself from being discouraged or, or, you know, kind of overwhelmed and beaten down is key to being successful. I think that you can't do great work when you're, when you're burnt out and discouraged.
Sharon: [00:06:26] Yeah. Even like for me, like just now, for example, on our vinyl department, because we do vehicle wraps and signage and all that kind of stuff as well. But anyway, she came up to me and she had to order some something and I says, well, just phone the supplier and find out what's going on and where it is. And they deal with it. Right. But she's just, she's so used to ordering online. She didn't like that. Want to have that communication. I know she's really new to us. Right? So it's outside of her comfort zone. So for me, I have to like, I could have dealt with that, you know? Easy. I could have phoned Michael up, said, hey, Michael, you know what I mean? But now I need but I need her to build that relationship and her to step out of her comfort zone and her to own that responsibility. So sometimes you have to like push people over into that as well. Otherwise you will get burned out.
Gretchen: [00:07:04] Yeah. And you know, part of that is, is the mindset, right? So sometimes we think like we're giving them our grunt work to do, right. But it's for them, it's a growth opportunity.
Sharon: [00:07:14] Mhm.
Gretchen: [00:07:15] Right. And so, you know, that helped me because, you know, sometimes I'd be like, oh, you know, I don't want to ask them to do something I don't want to do and I don't want to do this. Yeah. But it's, but, you know, it's something they probably haven't done before or something that they could learn something from. And so maybe mentally shifting it to, you know, let them grow, let them take on more responsibility. I'm kind of like fostering them and helping them develop. It helps make that easier for people sometimes.
Sharon: [00:07:42] Mhm, mhm. Almost like a mentor instead of, so it's a mind shift, right? Instead of like, just do that. But you're like, yeah, you don't have to think about it as like doing something that you'd like because like, it'll take us two seconds to do it, but you're helping them grow and morph into a position that they like. You're spread your wings.
Gretchen: [00:07:57] You're not dumping stuff on them. You're actually like helping expand their position and making it bigger and giving them room for growth and promotion.
Sharon: [00:08:06] Okay, so burnout by delegating, I think that's basically sums that up. What other ways can we avoid burnout thing that people talk about?
Gretchen: [00:08:14] Well, one I think is to actually take time off of your job, right? Actually disconnect. And one really simple thing that you can do that I like to do is kind of an end of the day wrap up. So when I get to the end of my workday, I look at the next day and I make sure I have everything that I need, like, you know, oh, there's a meeting and I forgot I got to pull something together for it or I forgot I have an early meeting and I need to get up extra early or, you know, whatever. But if I can look at the next day and think I have all that under control. And maybe I make notes to remember to call so and so or whatever. That helps me disconnect. Like when I stop working, like I've put my to do list in my calendar, right? I'll do these things tomorrow at ten and I can just sort of like download and get rid of the work stuff and then have a relaxed evening, right. And to the other thing is to really plan those after work hours. So I like to like schedule my week, like on the weekend. And, you know, it's easy to be tired, and you fall on the sofa and you just sort of like surf around your TV looking for something, anything that's mildly entertaining. Right? But that's not really like rejuvenation or recovery.
Sharon: [00:09:28] No, none.
Gretchen: [00:09:29] And like the next day, you're like, oh, I could have gone to yoga or I could have taken a hot bath or I could do, you know what I mean? But we just weren't intentional about it. And so, um, if you kind of do like a weekly plan and put in there, where am I going to relieve the stress? Where am I going to do fun things? When am I going to, you know, maybe you like to paint or play guitar or whatever. Like, where are you going to carve out those hours so you can just relax? I remember years ago, I took a painting class and it was like two hours and it would just go by like that. You get so focused in what you were doing. It shuts off the to do list. It's off all those kind of random thoughts, and it's very rejuvenating to just focus on one thing like that.
Sharon: [00:10:14] Yeah, because we get, we're creatures of habit for sure. The brain dump thing that you talk, that's how I, that's how I limited like get your thoughts out comes for tomorrow or whatever. One of my girls, she's just a little girl. She started with me right from grade 12. Anyway, so she graduated grade 12 and she didn't want to go to college. She was gonna take a year off. While she's still here. How many years later? Probably. Well, we've been doing it for 19 years, so probably 19 years. But she's the one that actually told me. She says that when she goes home, sometimes she can't leave work, like her work follows her home and she'll wake up in the night or she thinks about stuff in the shower like. Yes, I'm very grateful to have this kind of team, but that's not what I want for them. Farthest thing from it. And she's the one that come up with the idea. I think we took a course or something. We went to something and to write things down at the end of the night. So that's her. She's adopted it and she's been doing it. And she says if she writes it all down, at least it's out of her head like you had mentioned. And then it's gone. And she's not waking up middle night or in the shower or whatever the case is, or she's not feeling stressed when she gets home about stuff that she didn't finish. So yeah, even doing that, making your list, doing your brain dump like you had messaged check your calendar probably would be very, very helpful.
Gretchen: [00:11:17] It lets you disengage. And I like to actually put it in the calendar as opposed to on a piece of paper that I might lose. So I'll have like, if I have a lot of to do's, I'll put like a half hour to do list. And then I open up the calendar event and I just put the notes in there, like, because you know, you don't want to schedule like a two minute thing and a five minute thing, but you have a list and it adds up, right? So I'll just have like, this is my to do list time and I can just put the notes like right in there. And then I know, like, I don't need to worry about this. I'm going to handle it tomorrow at ten.
Sharon: [00:11:48] Yeah, I'm gonna handle it tomorrow. That's perfect. I love it, I love it, love it, love it. And then the weekly plan carving out some time for yourself because again, we're creatures of habit. So sometimes it's just forcing yourself to do something a little bit different, probably. Right. And then you will enjoy it. Yeah. In our area, of course, we're really like, it's cold. So now we're in spring and it's, you know, we're just breaking into where we can kind of go outside for a while, which is nice.
Gretchen: [00:12:09] Yeah.
Sharon: [00:12:09] So it's like you are Fahrenheit, but right now our temperature, I think it is three, three degrees Celsius. I don't know what that is, but basically freezing. The next topic we're going to talk about is getting lost, which is making a clear plan so you don't get lost. Tell me about your clear plans and how we can focus on that.
Gretchen: [00:12:25] This is a great topic because I think the way you do strategic planning for entrepreneurship is different than how you do it if you're in the corporate world and maybe how a lot of people have learned it. Planning is, there's kind of two pieces to planning, right? There's planning where you want to go, And then there's planning how to get there. And so the planning where you want to go should be pretty static, like where you shouldn't be changing where you want to go, right? As an entrepreneur, you should have a clear idea like this is the business I'm in. This is what I'm. I'm not being a chiropractor today and a gymnast tomorrow or something, right? I'm going to like I might, I might adjust it slightly, but I'm going in this direction.
Sharon: [00:13:06] Mhm.
Gretchen: [00:13:06] But where it's really different from corporate is the. How are you going to get there? Because in entrepreneurship, there's just so many unknowns. A lot of us are doing things we've never done before. We don't know how long they're going to take. We don't you know, we have to get new people or tools or processes that we've never used before. There's just so many unknowns that you have to plan in a shorter time frame, and you have to kind of plan in an iterative way where you're like trying something, evaluating it, adjusting, and then like trying it again. And so, you know, it's different in the corporate world. You have kind of all those structures and everything in place, and you can plan like pretty far out, you can make a year plan. It's very hard for entrepreneurs to come up with a year long plan. They might have some major milestones, but they really can't have any level of detail more than like a, you know, maybe 1 to 3 months out, right? Because things just change. You're also an entrepreneur and your advantage is you can turn on a dime. So you could plan out a whole year and then you turn on a dime and it's useless.
Sharon: [00:14:07] Yeah, yeah. That's true.
Gretchen: [00:14:10] Yeah. So you really want to plan in like shorter bursts? I think quarterly is a good, good thing for most entrepreneurs. Like you should have your long term. This is where I want to go. This is my yearly goals. This is my three year goals, ten year goals, whatever. You should have your vision. But then I think you have to take those and break it into like, what are my quarterly objectives? And then really ask yourself, do I have a proven approach to make those objectives happen or do I need to go find one? I think a lot of times we start working on something and we kind of have a vague idea on how to get there, but we don't really know. It's kind of like if you want to lose weight, you're like, well, I'll try to eat less and work out more. But that's not like a structured approach than as if you went to like a dietician or joined Weight Watchers or got a trainer at a gym or something. Right. So I think a lot of times we're like, well, I'll try some different sales avenues and see what works, but it's not like I'm going to actually go do some research and see what other people in my industry have done and see what works for them, and come up with like 2 or 3 top approaches, pick one, make it mine, and then work that right.
Sharon: [00:15:13] Right.
Gretchen: [00:15:13] So I think, um, you know, doing that and then you put those tests and adjust and review.
Sharon: [00:15:19] So for these, for these quarterly approaches, the one year, three year tenure, when you're saying to focus on that kind of stuff, it could be anything from financial to hiring to new locations, equipment, like what are, is there something more focus point when we do that or just analyze your whole like what, what's your thoughts on this? How, how do you help people get to this stage? Like what are some of the questions that you ask them?
Gretchen: [00:15:42] Usually I group it in like four different pieces. So one, like how, how would their audience change or would their audience change? Are they trying to grow their audience? If so, how? Are they trying to just go deeper with their current audience? Right? So like, how would your audience be different between now and where you want to be? And then, okay, how would your products and services be different if at all? Right. Are you going.
Sharon: [00:16:05] Okay, so add, is that what you're saying? Or add or diminish or what add?
Gretchen: [00:16:09] Go deeper. A lot of people have product tiers. Maybe maybe you're going to add a tier or something. And then I look at, you know, the back office stuff. So to support those customers with those products, what do you need behind the scenes? What kind of process and systems do you need? What kind of like application software? What kind of information do you need and how are you going to manage that? Do you need a team? Right. So it's all focused on supporting the first two. And then I look at kind of what kind of investments do you need to make? Do you need to is there some place where you're like, lacking skills, lacking resources, lacking finances, and then what's the reward you want out of it? What's the revenue and the profit that you want out of it? So I kind of structure it that way.
Sharon: [00:16:51] Gotcha. So so if somebody was to come to you, that's those questions for that area is to help them focus on what they're doing, find out what they need to focus on. Probably because sometimes as an entrepreneur, we don't even know.
Gretchen: [00:17:01] No, there's so many options.
Sharon: [00:17:01] So, many we don't know.
Gretchen: [00:17:02] There's so many things. Just prioritizing and getting that clear path forward is, is huge.
Sharon: [00:17:08] Huh? Yeah. So back in the day, not that long ago, I just had them for a long time. We had a business coach. His name is Jared Stanton from Action Business Coaching. And he was amazing. He is amazing. But anyways, he threw things at me like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm used to working. I go to work, I work, I go home, fall to sleep, and then do it all over again the next day. But all of a sudden he started talking about things like in business and on business. And he started talking about profit margin, and he started talking about average dollar sales. And he started talking about all these things that I didn't even know I'm supposed to be analyzing in depth and how to even do that kind of stuff. Mhm. And I thank God for him every day. I feel that as entrepreneurs, if you're wanting to grow your business or get ahead of your business, or maybe not even grow just to have less stress, even, I don't know, even be a better business owner, better for your team, better for your community. You need help. We need help. We need people like you to get to those spots. I feel anyways.
Gretchen: [00:18:07] You know, it's so hard to be an entrepreneur because you have to you have to have that high level view of everything. You need to know the legal aspects of your company. You need to know the HR aspects. You need to know you know all the financial stuff. You need to know the the operational aspects. You need to know the marketing and sales. Plus, you need to know what you do, right? And that's a lot of different disciplines that need like different skill sets and stuff. And so it's, I don't know anyone who can do all of them well out of the gate. Right. Yeah. And so yeah, there is like, which one of these do I really want to learn? Which one of these do I just want to learn at a high level and delegate it out at the lower level. Which one of these do I really need to like dive into? Right. So I, one thing I encourage all the entrepreneurs to have is a growth plan where they really look at like to get their business to where they want it to be one year, three years out. How do they personally need to grow? What skills do they need to develop and to put that kind of training in place? And it's, you know, learning a new skill isn't like, I'm going to go read a book or I'm going to go take a course and then boom, I'm an expert and I've mastered the skill, right? It doesn't unfortunately, work that way.
Gretchen: [00:19:18] You have to actually like do the skill and practice the skill before you get good at it. And so you've got to put that in your calendar and, you know, figure out the time for doing that. And there is an art to delegating, right? You have to delegate and check. A lot of people get into trouble because they delegate and just sort of blindly trust that everything is going to be done correctly. And you can't even your best employees have a bad day, and you need to put some kind of checks in place. People behave differently when they know you're checking, right? And so you have to look at, you know, where do I want to have them stop and have me check it before it goes out? Versus where do I just want to let them go ahead and do it? But I'm going to spot check just to make sure things aren't going astray. So there's different, you know, different levels of checks and stuff, but you definitely need to keep a pulse on it. And part of that is setting up metrics like you were talking about the different things your business coach has said.
Sharon: [00:20:15] Mhm.
Gretchen: [00:20:15] And you know, there's always going to be some metrics that you always want to measure, right? The revenue, the profit, the, um, average customer lifetime value, or whatever you called it. You know, those are things that you're always going to want to measure, you always want to have in place. You can you can kind of set those up. But then there's other metrics that are only interesting for a short period of time. Like if you're, if you're launching a new product or you're standing a new process up, then you want to measure it, see how it's working, see, you know how it's going. But then once it's up and running, maybe a lot of those metrics can go away and you just have one to kind of, you know, keep track and make sure it's not going south on you, but you can measure it a lot lighter. And so, you know, looking, you know, there's that saying, you, you can't manage what you can't measure. So having that information, having systems that give you the information that's really important.
Sharon: [00:21:06] It is one of those that made me think of. So we've implemented EOS as entrepreneur operating systems here at it's time promotions. Um, one of the things that we were tracking is receivables because our receivables were getting crazy and we just hired, um, an AR like accounts receivables one. I have a lady doing accounts receivable and a lady doing accounts payable kind of scenario, but our receivables was getting crazy and it's like, well, we don't have a system in place. Our new AR does not know when to call. What's our pulse at 30 days, you know, or whatever, like to get into that. So we because we were measuring it, we realized and now we got this stuff like, you know, but it's just because we didn't know what we didn't know until we started analyzing it. I knew that accounts receivable was up. I was like, I was happy with that, you know? And anyway, so it's really nice because we were measuring it and we have like a, you know, a dollar amount that's allowed to go for 30 days, but nothing over like a percentage of sales and all that kind of stuff. But it was something that we didn't measure before, but it sure helps cash flow.
Gretchen: [00:22:01] Yes, it really does. It really does. And you know, as you grow, that'll, that'll happen, right? I think one of the challenges when you grow is to kind of analyze something that comes up and say, is, is this something that I now need to pay attention to? Like, is this a new thing that's coming into my company or is this just a weird one off? Right, right. 100%. Because for that, you want to build out a new metric and start really managing your your AR, but sometimes it's just a weird one off and we can build something up for that weird one off. And then we start getting all these like clunky things that we don't actually really need. Yeah. So you do want to be careful before you start putting stuff in place.
Sharon: [00:22:40] Too much in place. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So the other one was accountability. This has here having people who've helped keep you on track. But I think it's vice versa as well. Probably. Right. Check ins accountability.
Gretchen: [00:22:53] Yeah. Um, accountability is an interesting thing when it comes to an entrepreneur. Because you're setting the rules, you're setting the deadlines, you're setting things. One thing I think entrepreneurs can, I did this when I first started my own company, I beat myself up for missing deadlines because when I was working for other people, I was the go to person to get things done, like on time, on budget. And then when I started my own business, I'm like, I'm missing deadlines. Like, what is going on? I had like an identity crisis and I kind of had to realize that there's deadlines and then there's target dates. And the difference is a deadline is something that you've you can have a deadline for something that you've done before, you know how to do it. And you know, you kind of know the risks and you're pretty confident that you can, you can get it done by that date, where a target date to me is I'm doing something I've never done before. I'm not really sure if it's going to work. I don't really know how long it's going to take, but I'm going to put a target on my calendar because I need to keep the urgency. I need to keep the momentum. I need to be moving towards a certain date.
Gretchen: [00:23:57] So I had all these target dates for things I had never done before, and I was missing them because I just underestimated how long something took. And then, you know, I would work it. It wasn't like I was just, you know, goofing off or something. I was working towards it and I would make progress, but I would miss the date and I would, I would beat myself up because that was so part of my identity that I didn't miss dates. And then and then I got discouraged and I got kind of in this downward spiral. And I realized, you know, those target dates, those are the ones where you're really pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. You're making yourself do things that you haven't done before, that you don't really know if it's going to be good. Those are the ones you need to be like, rewarding yourself for and celebrating, not beating yourself up. Right. And so I was just like kind of taking myself down unnecessarily. And I just had to reset my whole mindset around that. And, and so now I kind of realize, like, is this a deadline or is this a target date? And, you know, it can be a deadline too, if you've made a commitment to somebody else.
Sharon: [00:25:00] Mhm.
Gretchen: [00:25:01] Right.
Sharon: [00:25:01] That's why I think deadlines is a commitment.
Gretchen: [00:25:03] Yeah. And you know, if sometimes you have target dates leading up to a deadline, in which case, you know, you want to try to get the appropriate buffer in there.
Sharon: [00:25:12] Yeah.
Gretchen: [00:25:13] Before you commit to a deadline to an external party. But yeah, so, you know, so what you're holding yourself accountable for, I think, in the entrepreneurial world is different. I think if it's a target and it's something you haven't done before, you're holding yourself accountable for taking action and doing the uncomfortable thing and learning and kind of following that scientific process of, you know, do it, review it, adjust it, and keep going forward. And really reward yourself for that, even if you're not really getting the results that you want or meeting the deadlines that you thought.
Sharon: [00:25:49] That's so. And I feel as business owners, we need to do that. We need to find out what those targets are. We need to be oh, my phrase I tell my team is it's one of our core values and the core values being, being comfortable, being uncomfortable. Because everything that we do, we're not being stagnant. We need to grow. We need to be better for our people. We need to be better for our, our customers. So that's learning new things, adjusting, adapting, I guess, targets is what you're talking about. Like we have our own target. So I guess that would fall into that whole scenario is probably targets that basically.
Gretchen: [00:26:21] Yeah, you know, people say get out of your comfort zone. But I prefer to say you want to expand your comfort zone. So you kind of want to live at the edge of your comfort zone, like pushing out. And honestly, that's kind of the fun place to be as long as you're not pushing too hard. Like if you, if you think about like video games, they're always like increasing the level, increasing the hardness, right? You wouldn't want to stay at the first level after you've gotten to level five, because then it's boring, right?
Sharon: [00:26:49] It's boring.
Gretchen: [00:26:50] But but they do it in little steps so that you feel like you can make the next step, right. And you keep trying to get that next step, and then you get some kind of reward, and then you go on to the next step. And that's kind of how we have to like gamify our businesses, right? We have to, you know, if you've got some big thing that's really hard, you've got to kind of break it up into littler pieces or look at a smaller way to, to do it so that you can kind of gain the skills, gain the competency and, you know, and reward yourself for, for taking those steps and those actions because that living on the edge of your comfort zone, that's actually the fun place to be because it's, you're, you're a little bit challenged, but you feel like you can, you can master it, right?
Sharon: [00:27:34] 100%.
Gretchen: [00:27:35] Nobody wants to be bored.
Sharon: [00:27:36] No we don't. Neither should my team. I always tell my team they I want them to be happy. They're here eight hours a day. And I feel if they're feeling accomplished, if they're feeling like that pushed a little bit and nailing it, they're going to be walking on water like they're going to be proud and it's going to ricochet across the team. It's going to ricochet to my customers. Yeah, it's very important, I think, through everybody, not just as leadership, everybody, some of my team is like, I don't want to learn anymore. I want to remember. I don't want to learn anymore. I was like, well, you are. And she does. She just like she just like she does it. But every day she's learning something new without even knowing it. So anyways.
Gretchen: [00:28:10] Well, sometimes you want to rest, especially if you've been through like a high, high, you know, I mean, there are times when you have to like, you know, I said avoid burnout. But there are times when you have to put your head down and just work really hard for like 2 or 3 months and you are working crazy hours, right? I mean, that reality doesn't go away. But you know, if that's what your life looks like year after year after year, you know you're going to suffer. So, I mean, you can do it for short bursts of time, but you need to you need to rest and recover.
Sharon: [00:28:39] My way, I think every entrepreneur is different. So like I do actually in my last podcast, I talked about this. This is because he says, you got to have these downtimes like leadership. You got to have downtime, much like you're talking about, you know, go home in the evening, find your thing. It's like, but for burnout, like, I like what I do, like, I like what I do. And it's not like, oh, I have to work today. That'll never come out of my mouth. That expression will never come when it's relating to my work. I love what I do. But he says, Sharon you. I think of it differently. And I says, okay, if I force myself to stay home, force myself, do you notice that right? Force myself? If I force myself to have a Saturday off, I don't know what to do. I don't know, I don't know, it's like I default to and I don't like cleaning, so it's definitely not going to be cleaning. You know, I read my book. Maybe a hot tub, maybe, but it's winter half the time. So what am I going to do? Go for a I don't even own a snowmobile. But anyways, whatever. I don't have my thing to do, which kind of ricochets back. And he said, Sharon, that's a mindset because you got to find something that you like to do instead of work.
Gretchen: [00:29:36] Yes.
Sharon: [00:29:36] He called me out on it and he was so right. I don't have that thing I don't have. Yes, I like to read a book, but I don't have that thing to do on a regular basis. I have things that I that I call, you know, do and like we'll go away on a hot holiday. My husband and I, my kids and I, we all get together twice a year, which is great. We have all these funds, you know, we'll go for a weekend horseback riding. So I always say that's, that's my way of making up for my long hours. But he still called me out on it. He said, Sharon, no, you still need more time. And you got to figure out what that is.
Gretchen: [00:30:06] Yeah. It's hobbies are are kind of important and it's something I have neglected, but I think it's really important. And your hobby could be working out. You know, your hobby could be painting, it could be playing a musical instrument. It could be getting together with people to play bridge or mahjong. There's a bunch of people getting together for mahjong parties recently. It could be a book club, it could be, you know, there's a ton of different things. I mean, it just depends on what you what you like to do and what sort of is, is relaxing for you.
Sharon: [00:30:37] Yeah. So I always have that story. It's like, I'm fine because I love what I do. I'm great. And then you called me out. I was like, oh, you're probably right. He's right. I joined the gym. So that's good. We'll do that. We'll start, we'll start.
Gretchen: [00:30:46] That's good because that's also a great way to release stress is just, you know, moving your body like that. That's a great way to.
Sharon: [00:30:52] Because we do have stress. Entrepreneurs have a lot of stress. We have so much stress.
Gretchen: [00:30:56] Yes. And if you, if you want to be resilient, you need not to be at maximum stress when the next stressful thing comes in. And the only way to really do that is to have some kind of routine, to release stress on a regular basis, whether that's working out, whether that's mindfulness practices, whether that's, you know, meditation or, you know, kicking a boxing bag.
Sharon: [00:31:20] I would love to take kickboxing. I think that'd be so much fun just punching stuff and kicking things. That'd be so much fun. That's definitely what I need my life.
Gretchen: [00:31:26] That's what you can do on Saturday.
Sharon: [00:31:27] Get all the anger out.
Gretchen: [00:31:29] Yeah. No, I worked with a lady once who was this very cute, petite, just adorable little thing. And I remember her telling me once that she was taking this kickboxing class, and she's like, can I tell you? I really like kicking the bag.
Sharon: [00:31:43] I bet you I would too. I would. Yeah, that's a great way to yeah. Get some. Okay. Moving on systems, let's talk about systems building systems. So your business runs smoothly every time. What's your take on that?
Gretchen: [00:31:55] Yeah. Well, systems can be complex. Systems can be really simple, right? It depends on what it is that that you need. Pretty much every company needs a sales system. So if you don't have any other systems, I recommend really mapping out like what's your sales system? Start with all the different ways that a lead comes in, and what are the steps that you take them through to closing the sale? And, you know, that's a great thing to set up some measurements is how many make it from step one to step two, from step two to step three, right? And that'll let you know where there's drop off and where you can go back and optimize. So definitely, you know, mapping out your sales process, I think is something every company should, should do and should have at least a couple measurements in to see, you know, how they're doing there.
Sharon: [00:32:41] And so did I just draw that out? Like I'm just scribbling on paper right now. Do they use Google Drive? Like, how do how do we make these systems?
Gretchen: [00:32:47] Yeah. I mean, you can just draw it out on paper to start. There's some free web based tools that will let you draw it out in like a process way you can go to draw.io is one of them. It looks a lot like, um, Visio. If you guys are familiar with that, it has a bunch of different templates and different things that you could use to draw it out. I like that one. But you know, I don't, I think when it comes to process, there's. You don't want to draw too many diagrams. I think the diagram is for the process is who are the different people in your process and the different systems and how do they interact. Right. So it's like a big interaction diagram, if you will. And that one of the problems, I think with a lot of the processes out there is that we don't have the right people determining what the process should be. So in a lot of bigger companies, management will dictate the process. And then you have people saying, why do I have to do it this way? I've got to jump through all these hoops. This doesn't make sense.
Gretchen: [00:33:45] Right? And then a lot of smaller companies just let the people doing the work create the process. Yeah. But then you get like, I don't know who to go to. Where do I get this information? How does this, you know, people don't know the big picture and how things flow or how they impact each other. And so I think you really want a combination of it. So you want management to determine that interaction diagram because it has to do with roles and responsibilities. So these are the different people and systems and this is how I want them to interact. These are the hand off points. This is who I want to be in charge of making sure the handoff happens correctly. And then when it gets into now they have to piece of work to do. That's where you need the people actually doing the work to come up with. What are the best practices? Now management could define the output, the quality output, or the customer experience output that they want from the process. But how you get there, should the staff should have creativity in getting there as efficiently as they see.
Sharon: [00:34:46] Yeah, because they're they're in there doing it. They know the systems and what's worked. So like for us, we have like production team, for example. Well, our sales team has no idea what the production team is, has to do for saving files, what the format, you know, I guess they know formats, but the whole process, how long it takes to stitch, you know, embroider a 200 hats, like all that kind of stuff. So. Right. And what that looks like. So. Yeah. So the production team, so whatever departments you would have, you would think that they would create it. But whoever is in lead, I call it LET.
Gretchen: [00:35:15] Yeah.
Sharon: [00:35:16] They would decipher what areas need those.
Gretchen: [00:35:18] Yeah. So you could and you can have process at different levels. So you might have one that's a high level one that's sales. Sales collects the information from the customer, the type of shirt or hat or whatever they want, their logo, the colors, and then they have to feed it to somebody in production to actually do that. And then maybe it goes to like fulfillment or shipping or something. And then maybe you have a customer care. So you'd want to say like, this is how I want the different people to interact. This is where the systems that would have the information and this is like, who would put the information in, who would read the information out, how the different systems would stay in sync, right? And then, you know, maybe your sales team has a process for the sales team, and maybe they break it down how their people within the sales team interact at that level.
Sharon: [00:36:04] So what do you think? So few people have sisters. There's people that don't have systems implemented. And what's the difference? Tell me the scenario between systems. No systems. Can you grow with known systems? Do they want to grow? Do they want to stay where they are? Tell me a little bit about that.
Gretchen: [00:36:18] Yeah. There's like a process maturity model from Carnegie Mellon and it says, um, a system is really just a repeatable process, right when it comes down to it. And so if you don't have a repeatable process, you're really relying on your key players and your superstars to just make it happen.
Sharon: [00:36:37] Mhm.
Gretchen: [00:36:38] And that is not scalable. And so you really, you need to define what the basic steps are so you can have a repeatable process and that gets you multiple things. One, once it's repeatable, then you can measure it. Then you can look at it, then you can improve it. So you can optimize it and grow it. But it also means you don't need the key people to execute it, right? You can figure out.
Sharon: [00:37:02] Freeing up their time.
Gretchen: [00:37:03] You can figure out how complicated it is, what skill sets needed to run that process. And then you can hire people so you can have multiple people doing the same thing and hopefully get the same result. That's where you want to be really specific on the result you want. Otherwise, when you get multiple people, you get different results, right? And so yeah, if you don't have any systems, everybody's just winging it. And it's going to be different every time. And you're kind of recreating it every time you do it. When you have the system, you have kind of the flow. People know what the next step is. You don't have to recreate the process every time, and you can optimize it and you can delegate it, right? That's, I think a lot of the time, people don't delegate stuff because they don't have the process mapped out. And so it's like, well, I have to explain it to you and it's quicker for me just to do it right.
Sharon: [00:37:52] Do it. We talked about that before we jumped on. Yeah, yeah. My business coach always said Jared would always say to me, he said, Sharon, if you have to figure out, take your time and figure it out three times. It needs a system. That's what he said. If you're struggling and you have to figure it out three times, it needs a system. And I'm like, okey dokey. So that's kind of what we have implemented. And even I think people think like, does it have to be this long ordeal? But sometimes I don't know, it could be a trade, it could be whatever the case is. But use your video even, like use your phone. Like it doesn't have to be complex.
Gretchen: [00:38:20] And it can be even a checklist, right? Like, let's say you went to a conference once a year and you just wrote down a checklist. These are the things I need to bring to the checklist. These are the people I need to hire. This is, you know what I mean? And you just put the checklist somewhere so that a year from now you don't have to go, oh yeah, what was that list? What were the things that I had to do? You know what I mean? Mhm. Yeah. You're recreating it every single time.
Sharon: [00:38:45] Yeah. One thing about us, we we have systems. We actually have a person on our team. She's labeled, um, systems and she does all the training kind of thing. So she creates all the systems and she puts it so we can easily find them because the more systems you create, they get really tricky to find because we use Google Drive, right? So they have to be saved properly. Like it's, it's quite the ordeal actually.
Gretchen: [00:39:05] Okay. When you say she does the systems she works with the who does she work with to define the system?
Sharon: [00:39:11] So it'll be our general manager. So they like, we have, like I say, we use EOS. So sometimes we'll come to EOS and then we have IDS-ing and it's called so what's any issue. So we'll face down the issues. It's like okay, does this need a system that's been happening too often? How do we fix this? Okay. So then we go into that system and then we'll figure out what we need. If we do need a system because you said you can be overkill with systems, right? So we analyze that too as, as LET team and then we go from there. So she's in charge. Yes. She might not know everything, but she's, she's, she's accountable for it. So what that means is she has to get it done. However it's done.
Gretchen: [00:39:47] Yeah. Okay. So she's, she's accountable for driving, um, identifying what the systems are and getting them documented and stored and stuff. But she doesn't actually create the system, right.
Sharon: [00:39:57] She creates some the ones she knows, Like she's the one that's been here for 19 years. She knows better than I can. Yeah. Okay. So I think the moral of the systems is record it. If you're thinking more than three times, you have to stumble over it or look something up too many times and make a system for it. Make it easily findable wherever, like we use Google Docs. And now we've incorporated an HR software where everything is recorded into. But whatever that platform may be. I think just make sure they're utilizing it. Right? Probably.
Gretchen: [00:40:23] Yeah. And just, you know, when you're doing something, just, you know, take notes of what you did. That's kind of the easiest way to like build those up. And, you know, I think less documentation is more, I really like to have that one interaction diagram. And then just kind of clean steps on this is how you execute it, but you don't, you don't want a thick binder of different documents. You just have to update it and maintain it. It gets outdated and, and don't draw diagrams for the steps. That's just a waste of time. Just, just do the interaction diagram.
Sharon: [00:40:56] Gotcha. Perfect. And nothing like. I guess it depends on whatever they're doing. But we do a lot of screen recording because a lot of it's on on the screen. So we can record our screen when we're doing those kind of things. And a tidbit because we never thought of it. But you can't do that.
Gretchen: [00:41:09] Yeah, like a little Loom video or something. That's perfect. That's, that's a good way to do training.
Sharon: [00:41:13] Okay. Um, the next question is, was that really a question? I think it's more like a statement helping others. Of course, this podcast is meant to help others. And I think that not only is it fulfilling, but it's also while you're helping others and it's rewarding. So I think that I'd like for you to talk about why helping others help you also grow your business. Yes. It's fulfilling. Yes, it's rewarding, but it helps us grow as well. So let's talk about that a little bit.
Gretchen: [00:41:37] Yeah, I mean, I do what I do because I really want to help grow the small business success rate. I, I really want people to be self-sufficient. I think that corporate America is not a healthy environment. I don't think it lets people be their full selves. Right. It's living by somebody else's rules. They put you in a box. They want you to stay in the box. They kind of hamper your creativity and all that kind of stuff. And I think you're seeing more and more people being disillusioned with corporate America and leaving, especially sort of people who have more experience in corporate America. They're just getting tired of all of it and leaving and wanting to start their own business. And I think that's where all the innovation really comes from, because you can move so quickly and you can do so many things. And I, I love to see people just put their shingle out and have their own business with the internet. We can do that. It feels like we're very much kind of like the 19th century was all about kind of like the 9 to 5 job and getting paid by the hour. And I feel like this century, we're going back to being paid for services or products, and it's less like an hourly wage thing. And it's more, you know, people putting their shingle out. And, you know, there's so much disruption right now with like AI and all the different technology and you know, what Jobs will be around and what won't. You know, I want people to be able to not be worried about putting food on the table. Like they have a value that they're bringing and how to do it. And, um, you know, I from my childhood, you know, I, I had to be very independent and self-reliant and there wasn't like a lot of help. And so I kind of always had a soft spot for people who need to be responsible and get stuff done and there's no help. And so, you know, I always like want to stop and help those people like. Mhm.
Sharon: [00:43:22] That's true. I always cheer for the underdog. Yeah. I always, always, always do. And like I say, this podcast was meant for that. But even like our business at It's Time, Promotions, like you can't grow your business if you're not seeing. Right. So it's meant to, to promote, to get your business out there and the best possible way that we can put it out there, you know, like I've even my team, like we're all on board and I'm so honest, if somebody comes in and they'll say, oh, Sharon, I want to do this, I'll be like, no, let's not do that. Yeah. Anyways, but no, it's just like, because you have the experience, you have the time. So you want to implement it back to them. And I think that they're grateful for that. When you when you bring your two cents to the table as well and just don't be order takers. That's what we call it. We're not order takers. We want to help you grow your company. And we do have ideas and some of your ideas are more expensive. I can do it for a better rate than what you're even talking about, right? So just let me let's, let's talk about what you need. And then we'll figure that out together and then go from there.
Gretchen: [00:44:14] Yeah, yeah. Because it's hard. And you know, it's hard when you're in the business day to day to kind of step back and look at it from a different perspective as well. And sometimes that's all you really need. But you know, I have a few customers I've been working with for a couple of years and be able to see them go from, you know, just making enough money to keep the business going to now working with them to like really plan out how they're going to use this kind of discretionary income that they have and how are they going to be invested in their company. And how I see like even their personal lifestyles go up, it's very rewarding to see.
Sharon: [00:44:45] And that is so cool.
Gretchen: [00:44:46] It is. It's very cool. And you know, they're offering more services. So it's kind of that ripple effect. You help them, they help other people. And it's.
Sharon: [00:44:54] Yeah.
Gretchen: [00:44:54] Yeah, it's it comes back. Good karma out in the world, right?
Sharon: [00:44:58] Yeah. It's just, it's a good karma. Like, yes, we do this and yes, we like to help people, but I don't kid yourself like even being present in the community by doing these things, it's going to come back because they're going to think of us more when they need our promotional products or they need a new vehicle or app, right? So you know, it does, it comes back, but it also comes from my heart.
Gretchen: [00:45:15] It comes from my heart. But, you know, I think you're always learning. So, I mean, I learned from all of my customers and, you know, the marketplace is always changing. I'm seeing like, oh, that's something now that's in the marketplace. Do you know what I mean? So I'm always, you know, I'm always enhancing my skills by helping them.
Sharon: [00:45:32] Yeah. And even like for us, for example, like customers come in and I don't get to talk to all my customers anymore because we're going to that phase where I don't get to see them. I can hear them. Sometimes I'll go out and talk to them. But for example, when they come in, I always say like, what's going on in your world? What's your pain points right now? Because like, I do have a network because I'm part of BNI. I'm part of, you know, Rotary, WP like all these things, I do have a network. So sometimes it's like, what are your other pain points? I might not be able to help you, but there's other ways I can help you. Like what? And I always ask them that always, always, always. You know what our big thing right now over here is? Staffing. That's our big one, is finding people.
Gretchen: [00:46:05] Really.
Sharon: [00:46:06] For pain points. And here in Alberta. So if you need a job, move to Alberta. Yeah. Anyways, it's, uh, it's, it's, there are pain points our staffing right now. Yeah. For almost every, it doesn't matter what industry it is.
Gretchen: [00:46:17] Yeah, I like you. I have, um, a big network, I'm in a couple different networking groups and it's very rewarding when you can refer your customer to somebody to fix something that you don't service, you don't provide, and they come back and they're like grateful. You know, I've had customers go to bankers that got them like lower loan rates. That saved them a lot of money. Um, financial advisors to help them keep key people engaged, you know, lawyers to help them through difficulties, all kinds of different things you can bring in. And they're very appreciative. You become their trusted advisor for.
Sharon: [00:46:48] They become the trusted advisor. And guess what? You're going to be top of mind when they need your services next. Right? That's just the way it is. Even like a ricochet effect. So one of our customers come in and he, he was having a staffing issue. This was a couple years ago now. And I knew somebody says, okay, what qualifications do they need? Because we're in the oil industry, right? So they need class one. They need blah, blah, blah, blah. If they have, you know, experience on hauling oil, a great, um, I think it was fluids or some kind of, I don't know, we have tickets for everything out here. But anyways, but if not, I'll train them. I said, you know what, let me I think I might know somebody. And it was my daughter's friend and he lived in a out in Saskatchewan, but they weren't happy out there. He's got a family of two and his wife. And anyway, so I hooked them up. He got this miraculous job. He's still working there today, moved his family out here, and his wife now works for me. And she's godsent.
Gretchen: [00:47:39] Right.
Sharon: [00:47:39] So like, it's a whole. So yes. And she's helping my business grow. I can trust her. She's on fire. She's lightning smart. She's sweet. My customers love her. So when you reach yourself out and you want to help other people from the heart, from the heart, and you follow through, it will come back in some way somehow guaranteed. As you said, it's karma.
Gretchen: [00:47:58] Completely believe in that. I believe, you know, whether it's law of attraction and it's energy and vibrations or it's karma or it's the golden rule or it's, you know, it's, it's so across different religions and beliefs that, you know, it's just, it's just a fundamental thing, right?
Sharon: [00:48:14] Yeah. Whatever, whatever form you take it in. Just, I know it's true. I've seen it, I've witnessed it in my 57 years and I embrace it. So absolutely one thing I did not tell you that we normally do. And if you don't have one, that's okay. They'll edit it out. But I always ask my guests if they have a favourite book that they would like to share with their audiences.
Gretchen: [00:48:32] A favourite book from just a pleasure standpoint would be Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I like that it's per the title, it's a, it's, you know, it's from like the 1700s or something. It's a period piece, but it's about a young woman that through her pride and prejudice, she misjudged people and how she learns their true identity. And I think, you know, we all have that. We kind of go into different situations with preconceived ideas. So but I like that. And then from a business book, one of the ones I really like is High Performance Habits by Brendon Bouchard.
Sharon: [00:49:08] Okay. I don't think I've heard that one yet. High performance habits.
Gretchen: [00:49:12] Yeah. Bye bye. Brendon Bouchard he's a high performance coach.
Sharon: [00:49:16] Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Love it. Okay. I'd like to ask that. And then they put links and it's it's remarkable how many of our listeners actually will, you know, embrace those or download them or listen to them? It's pretty cool because you can always learn something because everybody so far, I don't know what podcast episode we're at, but nobody's repeated the book twice. It's always new, which I find very intriguing.
Gretchen: [00:49:36] Yeah. There's so many books out there, so many, so many books.
Sharon: [00:49:39] Yeah. And so many.
Gretchen: [00:49:40] Business books and so many different slices of business that you could.
Sharon: [00:49:43] Mhm. So that's perfect. Thank you so much for that. Is there anything that you would like to add to our customers before we sign off? I am definitely over time here. I'm sorry if I could talk to you forever. So is there anything else that you'd like to.
Gretchen: [00:49:54] Just, you know, entrepreneurs just need to really cheer themselves on. They're out there on the cutting edge, making things happen. And, you know, they shouldn't be scared to start small. I think coming from corporate, like, you know, you may have had a certain level of success, a certain title or something, and then you start your business and it feels like a step backwards in some ways. Mhm. You know, as one mentor said, you know, you know, thank God he was talking about trying to fill a class. And somebody said, well, what if I only have two people show up? He's like, thank God only two people show up. It's the first time you're giving it. You're not going to be good at it.
Sharon: [00:50:30] That's so, so again, a mindset like you got to look at it differently. Yeah. And how do you do that? Right? Yeah.
Gretchen: [00:50:37] So don't be scared to start small. Don't be embarrassed to start small. You know, it's entrepreneurship is hard and, you know, stick with it. You take consistent daily action towards your goals and you will get there.
Sharon: [00:50:49] Yeah, I think sometimes if you need help, reach out for it or reach out. For example, I'm part of a BNI, so this is my take on on entrepreneurship. And I feel that we need people like yourself or even just other business owners. Sometimes I just need to vent. So we're part I'm part of BNI here in Lloydminster. It's a new group to us out here. It's not. Bni is global and it's been around forever. Yeah, but sometimes just sitting amongst other entrepreneurs can make a difference. They do have the same struggles. They do have the same stories of the other band members. We just go for a Caesar. We're Canadians, we have Caesars. No, it's not a Bloody Mary anyway. So we go for one of those after work and it's just like basically a bitch session almost. Right? And it's just like getting everything out that's related to work. We just get it out. We don't need to be fixed. We just need to vent a little bit. We go home. Whereas if I go home and talk to my husband about the same issues, well, he wants to fix everything. And why aren't you doing this and why don't you do that? No, just. I'm not talking to you right now. It's a different. So sometimes having somebody in your corner as well is very important as well.
Gretchen: [00:51:47] Community is very important and having cohorts. I remember early in my career I met a lady and she said, when I network, I network for two different things. She's like, I'm either looking for customers or I'm looking for cohorts.
Sharon: [00:52:01] Right?
Gretchen: [00:52:02] And I thought that was an interesting distinction. Right? But having that, like you said, the network of other trusted advisors who are could be referral partners to you and from you. Yeah, you can get together with them. And you can, I mean, ask them like silly things like, how do you track your mileage? Take it off on your taxes, right? I mean, 100%.
Sharon: [00:52:21] So different things like even like for different apps that you use for different things, you know, like whatever the case is, whatever makes your business easier that you're struggling with right now. Somebody knows the answers out there.
Gretchen: [00:52:31] Yes. And so just to have the cohort for that or some masterminds, you know, I've had some really interesting coffees with people where we just. And I think, you know, I'm I'm always willing to sit down with any of my networking partners and have a coffee with them and talk about any of their business operations, because I think it makes them better referral partners if they actually see like what I can do, right.
Sharon: [00:52:52] They understand you. Yeah, 100%. And that's, that's what that's what our BNI group is. It's a referral. That's, I always say we're not selling to the room, we're selling through the room. And that's how that works. Yeah, exactly. They don't they can't sell through the room if they don't know you and they get to know you. And it's so anyways, whatever the application is, whatever it is way, if you need somebody to talk to find your, find your niche, find somebody, find a mentor, there's something out there.
Gretchen: [00:53:14] Find your cohort.
Sharon: [00:53:15] Read a book out there. Yeah, find, find them, find them. Yeah.
Gretchen: [00:53:18] It helps a lot of online communities that, that you can be a member of.
Sharon: [00:53:21] Yeah, lots of different things. So can you tell our listeners how to get a hold of you, please, so they can look you up and reach out if they'd like.
Gretchen: [00:53:28] Okay, so I'm Gretchen Richards and you can my email is Gretchen, G-R-E-T-C-H-E-N at dynamicbc, it's for dynamic business capabilities, but I don't make you spell the whole thing out. So it's just dynamic. And then bc my main social media is LinkedIn. You should be able to find me there. I think it's let me see. I'll look it up real quick.
Sharon: [00:53:51] I found you pretty easy when I was looking.
Gretchen: [00:53:52] Yeah, it's.
Sharon: [00:53:53] So.
Gretchen: [00:53:53] Much fun. Dash Richards dash dynamic bc so yeah, I'm up pretty quickly.
Sharon: [00:53:59] Yeah. And then I, so any of our listeners, we will put down there will be show notes and all those links will be in the show notes as well, as well as referral to those books that Gretchen talked about too, in case you want to take those in.
Gretchen: [00:54:10] Yeah.
Sharon: [00:54:10] So yes, please reach out to Gretchen at any of those handles that she had just mentioned. I'm sure she would love to help you or have a chat with you.
Gretchen: [00:54:18] Yeah. Thank you. Got some free resources. And I have, um, a course and I have different level of engagement with people if they're interested.
Sharon: [00:54:25] So if you're an entrepreneur and you just need that little bit of help, take Gretchen up on those free resources, at least at the bare minimum, please do that. We need you to succeed. Our communities need you. So if you're struggling, please, please take advantage of those.
Gretchen: [00:54:37] So don't struggle alone.
Sharon: [00:54:39] Nope. Don't struggle alone. So one thing I do ask our listeners as well, if you have a topic that you would like for us to cover here on the It's Time for Success podcast, please leave us a note below on any of these. It's on podcast, any of your platforms that you listen to or watch on YouTube as well. Just send us a message what you'd like to talk about. And we will try to find an expert in that level. Because I am no expert, I get to learn something every day or every time I do a podcast, but I will find somebody who is. And if you may have a subject that you would like to air with us and you would like to come on the podcast, please reach out because I'd love to. Sometimes it's just about, you know, something that you've overcome. It could be a hurdle. It could be something that nearly knocked you out, but you overcome something, a story that you have. I would love to have you on the podcast here at It's Time for Success. Remember, stay curious, stay adaptable, and never lose sight of the people who make it all possible. We'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you everyone. Bye for now.