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💥 Ignite your company culture with the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast!
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[00:00:02] Announcer: This is the Build A Vibrant Culture Podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and smarts you need to turn possibility into purpose. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations. As our host, Nicole Greer, interviews leadership and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development. Now, here's your host, a professional speaker, coach, and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:33] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me The Vibrant Coach, and I am here with an amazing guest. You know, I always bring you people amazing guests. And today, let me tell you all about her. Her name is Dr. Myra Corrello. She is a small business growth strategist who helps CEOs build brands that attract both great customers and great employees. She teaches that every promise made in marketing becomes a promise the company must keep (imagine that... a company that does what they say they're going to do) both internally --that's what we're going to talk about today-- and externally. A dynamic speaker with roots in New Orleans, Myra infuses every discussion with clarity, energy, and a touch of unmistakable southern flare, and that's why I love her. She's one of my girlfriends here in the south. Hello, Myra.
[00:01:25] Myra Corrello: Hello. It's nice to see you, Nicole.
[00:01:28] Nicole Greer: You too. You too. I'm so glad to be here with you. You know, we were on somebody else's training program and I was watching Myra deliver a message and I was like, this woman is so dang smart. I've got to get her on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. So I'm delighted you decided to say yes.
[00:01:47] Myra Corrello: My pleasure. This one is a stretch for me, as I have told you.
[00:01:52] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. Well, and so you've got to know first of all, you've got this wonderful blog that you do that comes out all the time. It comes right to my inbox. I read it every time. I think it's fantastic. Tell everybody about that real quick.
[00:02:04] Myra Corrello: Well, basically we have a couple of things going. I have a substack that I am doing with a wonderful marketing colleague named Mallory Whitfield, and we're revising Dear Abby, to be small business owners that have their issue and we both tackle the issue together. And it is so much fun. We're doing it every single week. One just dropped a few minutes ago, and what I'm getting ready to do is then take my piece of all of those and dust off my old blog and start putting those every single week and then doing a monthly digest. So just look me up on LinkedIn at some point, connect with me and I'll keep you posted on all the updates.
[00:02:48] Nicole Greer: But I love your little Dear Abby thing, and then,
[00:02:51] Myra Corrello: Oh, it's so fun.
[00:02:51] Nicole Greer: You know, if you're young and you don't know who Dear Abby is, here's what I'll tell you. First of all, Google it, but then go to Pinterest. I don't know if you know this, Myra, but over on Pinterest, there'll be little pieces of paper people snipped out of the newspaper and they post it as a little pin on Pinterest.
[00:03:06] I get such a kick reading those, so it's fantastic,
[00:03:09] Myra Corrello: Too cool.
[00:03:09] Nicole Greer: All right. Yeah. All right, so let's do this. We want to think about our people building a vibrant culture. And then how we can like leverage Myra's genius around marketing. Okay. And so we talked before the show and we put together kind of a format we want to go through.
[00:03:27] But the first thing we want to think about is like the foundations and framing, right? So you often talk about how marketing isn't just about getting clients. It's also about alignment. How can the same clarity that attracts the right customers also attract and energize the right employees? Oh, ha, ha ha.
[00:03:47] Myra Corrello: Yes. You know, I tell people all the time, I'm kind of old and crabby now that I've got into my sixties, and I basically want to do what feels good. Right?
[00:03:57] Nicole Greer: Yes. Yes.
[00:03:58] Myra Corrello: And, and so the way I kind of describe it is swimming downstream versus swimming upstream. Does it feel like it's flowing, or do we feel like we are treading water like crazy? And basically work should be enjoyable. It should be fun. And that happens when we're working with the right people. And so one of the things I do, I'm going to share with you what I do with my small business owners because it translates to inside too. Okay.
[00:04:25] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:04:26] Myra Corrello: So a lot of times, believe it or not, small business owners struggle. If I you know, we hear all this, you need to identify your target market and we think demographics and industry sectors, and we think attitudes, we think this, that. Those are all fine, but believe it or not, sometimes it's these hidden things that we don't realize that really make the perfect fit client versus the not so perfect fit client.
[00:04:56] And if you have a perfect fit client, it is heaven. It's fun. You cannot wait to get with them. You can't wait to do the work. You go through the rest of the day floating in air. But if it is a non fit client, you work yourself to death. You do everything in the world to try to make it work, and at the end of the day, you're tired, you're exhausted, and you just want that project to be over. And so
[00:05:23] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:05:23] Myra Corrello: What I do is I make my small business owners, I make them download their last 50 clients, and I make them give each client a grade, either an A, a C, or an F. All right?
[00:05:41] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:05:41] Myra Corrello: And I'm not so worried
[00:05:42] Nicole Greer: We're not farting around with B'S and D's. Okay, got it. Yeah.
[00:05:45] Myra Corrello: So I'm not so worried about the C's.
[00:05:48] But what I care about is I want them then to look at those perfect clients, those grade A clients, and I want them to look at them as a group. What are the commonalities, what are the behaviors, the traits, the values, the styles, the interaction, the relationship, all of those things. And try to identify those traits and characteristics and then I want them to take the other group, which almost makes their stomach turn, you almost get a visceral reaction.
[00:06:17] Nicole Greer: We don't want to think about those people.
[00:06:19] Myra Corrello: That's why they need to be trimmed just like our hair. Okay? On a regular basis, we find ways to modify our client list to be a little bit more positive. Okay? So what is it about those clients that just honestly make us sick? You know, just life's too short. All right, so then once we get those characteristics, we really can begin to understand what we're going after with much more clarity. And clarity creates culture. Okay. And so then let's translate that into the internal, okay.
[00:06:57] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:06:58] Myra Corrello: 'Cause if we know, let's say for instance, that we find out that our A+ clients, that the number one thing they value is proactive communication. They're quick to proact and they expect us to proact and, and because of that, we never reach a crisis point because we're always one step ahead of it.
[00:07:20] All right, so then if I am a hiring person inside, I know that is something I need to be screening for is what are some ways that I can test to see whether these applicants have that same kind of proactive communication behavior. Yeah. And so it's really important. Whatever the traits we see in the perfect fit customers, we actually need to be aligning those with what we are recruiting for, what we're screening for, how we're selecting it. That's where the magic occurs and here's the beautiful thing.
[00:07:57] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:58] Myra Corrello: If you get your brand and your culture correct externally, it's going to attract a lot of prospective employees who just are inspired by that vision and who want to be a part of that promise.
[00:08:13] Nicole Greer: Absolutely. And I just taught yesterday at UNC Charlotte Myra, I taught part of the HR certificate.
[00:08:20] I taught this class Fostering Employee Engagement. And so, usually, you know, people might think, oh, well, we're going to talk about what to do with our current employees. I was like, we're going back this train way up. We're going to talk about like just the job placement ad. What does your career page look like on your website? Because it's all marketing.
[00:08:40] Myra Corrello: Yes. Oh my god. Yes. And and truly, I'm going to say this, I know you have a lot of HR people who have tremendous influence and talent. I want you to get friendly with the marketing side. Yes. Oh my goodness. Can they give you perspective on how to more creatively recruit ? It is just incredible at how they can be your best support system and you're also, in turn, just making them so much more effective at having those brand ambassadors at every level of the organization. And so partner with them. I know sometimes HR and marketing just seem almost like oil and water. But, oh my God.
[00:09:31] Nicole Greer: Or, or they just don't talk. It's just not even a thought.
[00:09:33] Myra Corrello: Yeah.
[00:09:34] Nicole Greer: It's not even a thing. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so here's what Myra just said, and sometimes I'll go in and I'll be like, let me bottom line it. So she's saying that, you know, there's, there's an ideal, right? There's an A+ candidate and there's an, you know, A+ client and you make the two, the lists of the A's and the F's. Right. And the C's. And then you, you try to not settle. Right? Yeah. You said something so interesting before we got on here and started talking to everybody. You said, I only work with CEOs because then I can get stuff done. And it's the same thing with an employee. You've got to hire what Nicole Greer calls an eagle. An A+. You've got to hire that person so you can get stuff done.
[00:10:17] Myra Corrello: Yes. Yes. I'm going to tell you something Nicole. I, I'm, tell me a podcast junkie. Okay. And one of my favorites is Diary of the CEO, Steven Bartlett. Oh my God, that young man is talented. And one of my favorites that he recently did. He interviewed Barbara Corcoran, and she is just such a character, of course.
[00:10:38] Nicole Greer: Okay. She's a shark, everybody.
[00:10:40] Myra Corrello: She is the "real estate maven" of New York and and a, a regular on Shark Tank. And Barbara's just got this amazing personality and if you've listened to that podcast, Diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett interviewing Barbara Corcoran. Mm-hmm. You will hear the nitty gritty background that she has come out of and, and she's a tremendous success story. But the thing that just made me stop whatever I was doing and go, wow, is that she does not tolerate complaining. She just doesn't tolerate complaining. And what happens is she wants people to, and not that they don't question or see problems or this or that, but she wants them to constructively bring in the right channels in the right ways. And basically if she hears that somebody has complained across the board in a non-productive way, they get a meeting with Barbara on Friday.
[00:11:40] Nicole Greer: Ruh-Roh.
[00:11:41] Myra Corrello: it's immediately, it is immediately removed. And now I know in a large organization it doesn't quite work that way. I have been in the C-level and some organizations, and I know things get clunky when it comes to making changes, and that's why if you are hiring, oh my God, you've got to be maniacal about choosing the right people, and that means taking time to do some really creative things.
[00:12:12] I'll never forget, I was in an entrepreneur conference once and we were blessed with some of the most amazing successful entrepreneurs speaking to this, to us. And one of them was telling us how he created this extraordinary, innovative culture in his new organization. He basically uses the driver who goes to pick up almost any candidate in that organization. This was years ago.
[00:12:42] Nicole Greer: Oh, I love this.
[00:12:43] Myra Corrello: And the driver has a vote in the post interview process because the driver is reporting on what kind of an--
[00:12:54] Nicole Greer: How they were treated.
[00:12:56] Myra Corrello: You got it. That's the kind of creativity that I implore you to think about when it comes to your recruitment. You know, there's never been a time that we haven't had so much ideation and brainstorming because I live in AI, I can't even imagine now doing anything without running it through just to get another idea or another perspective or counter perspective. And it can help you with every single trait. It can help you brainstorm some creative scenarios to test for screening as well as selection your applicants. Think about the driver.
[00:13:40] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Because you know, that driver is like, this guy, he was rude. He wanted me to adjust this and that and everything, and stop, get him a pack of cigarettes. Yes. You know, and then the other was like, well, she got in the car, she said, yes sir, no, sir. I mean,
[00:13:55] Myra Corrello: Yes! We like that in the south, by the way.
[00:13:57] Nicole Greer: Yes, we do. Yes ma'am and no ma'am. And you know, what if Myra and I did not say those things. I don't know what you got, but I got the wooden spoon if I didn't.
[00:14:06] Myra Corrello: Oh, oh yeah.
[00:14:07] Nicole Greer: I didn't. No, I, I got the business. Anyway, all right, let's do our next question, which is about vision. Okay? So you help leaders and small businesses articulate a powerful value promise. Okay, so don't miss that language, everybody. Value promise. How can that same skill help a leader sell their vision so that people, candidates, employees want to be part of their, the future, the the leader's got in his brain or her brain.
[00:14:34] Myra Corrello: Oh man. It is so critical and a lot of this comes down to storytelling. Big time. We all have to be better at selling stories and here is how it plays out on the external, and I'll show you how I would take it to the internal. On the external, one of the things that of course, and we all have, we know this, we've talked about it, is engagement. But it's not engagement of just your C-suite team or your departmental team.
[00:15:06] It is engagement all the way across the board because everybody really needs to be able to buy into this. And certainly vision, there are so many components to it and so many different ways that it manifests. And so one of the things that's really important when I sit down with the CEO, we do a lot of work on your why.
[00:15:31] Why are you doing this? Why does this matter? Give me examples of when you knew this is where you were meant to be. Tell me what you want this to feel like and look like. What do you want people to say about you 10 years from now? All of those kinds of things because it's very personal and especially if you are a leader in a company, that why is what gets you through the rough days, quite frankly.
[00:15:58] And so when it comes to articulating that vision, it's so important to break it down into component parts because the vision, if it's just too lofty, then no one really fully understands how to interpret it. And so on the external side, I work really hard with small business owners to help them be able to build-- and I hate to use the word because it's not as complicated as it sounds-- case studies. They're stories. They're stories!
[00:16:34] Nicole Greer: Right. That's right.
[00:16:35] Myra Corrello: Because every single small business -- and large companies-- is selling some form of transformation.
[00:16:43] Nicole Greer: That's right. I need this to change my life.
[00:16:46] Myra Corrello: Because people pay you to get them from point A to point D through some sort of B-C process.
[00:16:56] Nicole Greer: Right, right.
[00:16:58] Myra Corrello: And they need to understand what sometimes D looks like, because strangely enough, I have a lot of small business owners who they'll have people say, well, why should I work with you? What could you do for me? And so, oddly enough, sometimes they haven't really got the need articulated enough to really even understand the transformation.
[00:17:21] And so stories, case studies-- very simple. Believe it or not, a case study can be one sentence.
[00:17:28] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:29] Myra Corrello: You know, it, it basically is saying, here's where we started and here's what we did to help them. Here was the immediate outcome and the things that related to that. And here is what is going to be the long-term benefit. And that's a case study. That could be a sentence, believe it or not. But giving example after example, after example of how this translates to the vision. It's all down to the little pieces and parts. And departmentally, inside, the top leadership along with management at every level, and especially our HR professionals, our talent development professionals, need to look at how does that vision play out in every single aspect of the company? Because they need to be involved, they need to understand, and the performance needs to be tied to those elements of the vision.
[00:18:32] Nicole Greer: That's right. And you know, I go lots of places, Myra, manufacturing, retail, wherever. And a lot of people don't connect, you know, I'm sitting here making something on a production line. What is the value of that and how is that rolling up into these numbers I hear about? How is this rolling up into our five-year plan? Why is my work of value? And I think when people understand it, they bring this crazy thing called discretionary effort to the party. You know, they're like, oh, I get why I am doing what I'm doing. Otherwise, I think people are in the break room going, I don't know why we do what we do.
[00:19:07] Myra Corrello: Absolutely.
[00:19:08] Nicole Greer: I'm just, I'm just doing it. Right?
[00:19:10] Myra Corrello: It's, it's so important because. I think hardworking, committed human beings at every level, we want a why. Why does what I do matter? Why are we making this particular decision at this point? Why? Why, why? And when we talk about, you know, getting that vision articulated, it really comes down to just continuous consistency across so many different ways and formats and channels. And it comes down to just continuous feedback. It is so important and especially uh, the little as we go to case studies, celebrating wins, showcasing and profiling how people's individual acts have contributed to solidifying that vision. S o those things can happen all the time. We all need good news every day, and we need to find really fun, creative ways of recognizing those behaviors.
[00:20:14] Nicole Greer: Yeah. That's so good. All right, so bottom lining: people got to understand on the inside how they connect to the vision. Just like we have to connect how our products, our services, can make somebody's life easier, right?
[00:20:27] So, really what we're talking about is like capturing somebody's heart, right? Like getting their heart in the game. I love that.
[00:20:32] Okay, so you said this at just five paragraphs back, but you said storytelling, Nicole, you've got to do storytelling. And let me just tell everybody, if you'll email me, nicole@vibrantculture.com, I'll send you a list called the 10 Stories every Leader Needs to Tell. All right, so you should have this list of 10 stories and like one of them is why you should want to work here. So if somebody, you know, okay, everybody, imagine you're out at your mailbox getting your mail. Your neighbor comes out to get their mail, their brand new neighbor, and they're like, hi. And you're like, hi. What's the first thing you ask somebody? Well, what do you do? That's the first thing we ask people.
[00:21:10] Myra Corrello: Exactly.
[00:21:11] Nicole Greer: And you say, oh, I work, I work for whoever. It's not great, pays bills and here I've got some in my hand or whatever. Or they're like, oh, I work for so and so and I love it. You know what I mean? So, you've got to be able to tell the story of, you know, why you should want to work at my company and turn our people into raving fans and then referral agents.
[00:21:30] Okay. So here's our question. You've said storytelling is the currency of connection, which-- what beautiful language right there. How can stories about customers, community and impact be shared internally to keep our employees inspired or engaged? And then how might we share them with prospects?
[00:21:49] Myra Corrello: Oh, oh yes.
[00:21:50] Nicole Greer: To come work for us.
[00:21:52] Myra Corrello: Well, and this is where: make friends with your marketing department because they're constantly having to build these little case studies to be able to show a prospective customer or client how the product's used, all of its different forms, what it's done for people, finding ways to make it easier for them to take the risk, all those things. And so they are wonderful at being able to help. Then do the internal marketing in terms of what-- um, when we send sales teams out into the field, we prepare them with a sales packet. Primarily digital, but a lot of little odds and ends and, and what we've got to do is we've got to get used to presenting that story in all kinds of little snippets, sound bites. We are just such a video shorts world, speaking of video. Okay? And so I want you to think about all the channels in the organization, the visual, the auditory, the meetings, the Slack, the whatever it is, and think about this is kind of a PR plan. Again with marketing, if they know that you are open and that you really want to be able to continue to reinforce those success stories, they're going to be able to give you a sales packet of all kinds of resources and materials to incorporate into your meetings. I think the greatest way in the world to start a meeting is win of the day, win of the week. You know, and not just, oh, somebody hit numbers of calculating this, this report, you know? No, you know, what effect did that have? Because the thing we know about stories. When you you receive a story from someone, what that does emotionally is it allows you to connect with your own story and it brings that back to the surface and the emotion felt from that story.
[00:23:57] And that is what triggers and allows you to remember the story. There's the story that is the key to it is anything we're really trying to communicate or convey. When we do it by story, the retention is dramatically improved, but we've got to do it through multiple channels. And I know this sounds like a lot of work, but I tell my small business owners all the time, marketing, it's a lot of work! It is a lot of work, but we have to be consistent. We have to spread it in many ways so it can be consumed and digested and reinforced in so many different ways. So I, I'm a huge believer whether we call them case studies, success stories, whatever we call them, and, and it can be not only our client or external success stories and how the team did. But just internal success stories of how you know, one team member was able to go above and beyond to help everybody to accomplish a piece of that vision.
[00:25:04] Nicole Greer: Yeah, so good. And these stories I, I teach this class all the time and go to different SHRM, Society for Human Resource Management meetings all across the country.
[00:25:14] I'm going up to New Jersey in April. I just got done talking with those fine folks up there, so I'm going to work in a trip to the city. But anyway, so, so I was talking to them and they're like, we want you to do your Radical Recruiting and Retention program. I said, okay. And so I'm all excited about going to New Jersey and sharing that with those ladies and gentlemen. But one of the things I tell them in there is one of my strategies is you need to have a story of somebody who's in the position that you're interviewing for that is an eagle. Let me tell you about Susan. She's an eagle and she is slaying it over there in that job. And this is what she does. This is how she acts, this is how she rolls. This is what it's like to experience her. But you know what? The reason why we're interviewing you is 'cause we had a turkey. And let me tell you that story, without mentioning any names of course, but this person did this and that and this, and it did not work out. And then it gives your candidate who's sitting right in front of you an opportunity to go. I'm like the eagle. This is perfect for me. And then if the person is a turkey and then they're like, oh, I think I'm like this other person. Maybe they might take themselves out of the running. But you, it's almost like a setting expectations thing too, when you tell stories, right? Like when you said the win of the day, win of the week. Like that's an expectation set.
[00:26:32] Myra Corrello: Yes.
[00:26:33] Nicole Greer: This is how I want us to roll people.
[00:26:35] Myra Corrello: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because this is the thing about story as we know, espoused values and vision and so on. Hmm.
[00:26:45] Nicole Greer: Yeah, we've heard that.
[00:26:47] Myra Corrello: Yeah. It's consistency of the behaviors to back it up and highlighting those behaviors. Yeah. Huge.
[00:26:56] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Okay.
[00:26:58] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results. Your organization will get lit from within! Email her at nicole@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole's TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com.
[00:27:25] Nicole Greer: All right. So like I said yesterday, I had a full house of people trying to learn how to foster employee engagement. So let's talk about engagement. So this is a hot topic out there. So in your work with small businesses, what have you seen happen when owners and employees are invited into an open, authentic dialogue about the mission? Oh. Talk about that one.
[00:27:48] Myra Corrello: This one, because literally gives me a visceral reaction at some of the beautiful stories that's come out of what we do. Okay, so here's what happens. When I'm working with a small business owner and I ask them this question, it sometimes gets crickets, and that is, believe it or not, something as simple as " Why should that prospective buyer choose you over everything else they perceive as the competition?"
[00:28:19] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:20] Myra Corrello: And what I get is I get either a little bit of silence or I get, oh, we have great service and we have great price. And I go
[00:28:29] Nicole Greer: Right, ho hum.
[00:28:31] Myra Corrello: Because I, if I turn to them and say, what do you think your competitors say about this? And they go, yeah, I guess that's not really a differentiator, is it? And I go, no, not really.
[00:28:42] And so what we do is, again, I am a complete AI nerd. So every single client I work with, I build this huge workspace with all of their information, very well protected. But I build all these custom assessments and questionnaires and things so that we can get to the nitty gritty. So one of the very first things I do when I see and 90% of the time, they are not clear on their differentiators. Okay? So 90% of the time I'm creating this custom assessment questionnaire that I send to them to begin to surface. It's a brainstorming activity to begin to surface, you know, how do they describe themselves? How would other people describe them? How do they not want to be described? You know, dah, dah, dah. So all the branding. But also all these ways I keep trying to brainstorm with them to help them surface what is it about them that is distinctive in a way that's important to a prospective buyer.
[00:29:42] Okay so I send them this and sometimes the owner fills it all out, sends back. But then I have really great leaders, small business owners who say I like this. I'm sending this to my whole team. And what happens is magic occurs, I, I had one recently and she has maybe 40 employees, and we started and, and sure enough, she sends me back, all of them completed, and I go, thank God for AI to help me synthesize, analyze, and then begin to extract and, and pull from. And it did a beautiful job. And, and so what we discovered as I had the meeting with her is, and she saw it as, as they were coming in, she's going, my god, you know, the, the dispatcher has a completely different perspective on this than my finance guy. And this person and that person and the field people and, and they're in many different functions and, and you see what they're bought into, what they're tuned into. All these things. And you see the differences. And so it is so exciting because then I can go back with her and we can begin to figure out how do we build that promise in a way that shows each of them how they contribute to that promise. And so I tell the story just to say, engagement matters and engagement can be formal and it can be informal.
[00:31:20] Nicole Greer: Oh, yes.
[00:31:21] Myra Corrello: And oh, and, and when we are talking to the HR professional in the organization. Got to do whatever you can to get those division heads and your top leadership to informally engage on a regular basis because they're going to discover things that are just so enlightening about how every team member sees the organization from such a unique place. And so be creative with how you engage. It's got to be multiple ways of formality and informality, and especially the informality piece. I'm so old, I go back to the days of management by walking around.
[00:32:07] Nicole Greer: Oh my God, you're going to, I just had that book in my mind. Guess who is just on my podcast? Martha Lawrence. Okay, so who's Martha Lawrence? Martha Lawrence is an author. She just wrote a book about Ken Blanchard, who is the guy that wrote The One Minute Manager and one of his concepts is "Manage by walking around." And she has actually been on Ken Blanchard's team for like forever. 20 something, 30 years, whatever it was.
[00:32:34] And we just had this whole talk about who is the man, Ken Blanchard. Because if y'all don't know that book, you've got to go get it. Okay. It's like $19.90-something or something, I don't know. But, but just buy it and read the thing. You can read it in one sitting, like if you had a nice coffee at a Starbucks, you could get right through it. But like that concept is huge, manage by walking around.
[00:32:55] Myra Corrello: It is because you uncover the most important things in the most informal ways. And, and it's just got to be a commitment at, at all levels, especially of your leadership levels.
[00:33:10] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:11] Myra Corrello: To be able to engage with people and make them feel comfortable, being able to provide input and being able to engage and being able to share.
[00:33:22] And we go back to Barbara Corcoran, not the, not the negative complaining, but the proactive resolution seeking. Okay, and it's just so important.
[00:33:33] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And and, and you know, the thing, I love what you're saying about formal and informal. So just, just, here's the thing. Formal is like, I'm sending out this email to everyone about the policy change, okay?
[00:33:46] The minute you do that, you better get your butt out of your chair and go down to the production floor, start visiting stores or whatever and talk to people. Hey, did you get my email about that policy change?
[00:33:56] Myra Corrello: And I bring up something.
[00:33:58] Nicole Greer: Well, what do y'all think? Right?
[00:34:00] Myra Corrello: Oh, you bring up something that my old brain does not want to forget. Because I think one of the things that we had planned when we were planning is we were talking about change. Okay. And while we're on this subject
[00:34:11] Nicole Greer: Yeah. That's next on the list. Yes.
[00:34:13] Myra Corrello: Perfect timing. Yeah. What I want to say, and this is so important, is I have business owners that come to me and they're facing a major change in the company. And one of them was moving away to start a whole new office in another state. And it's one of those things where the client buys that person and they're going to suddenly not be physically available all the time, and he is coming to me going "Help! "
[00:34:42] And the number one thing I say immediately is time is of the essence. And you do not treat every single stakeholder in your life equally. Sorry. You don't. You basically have to identify who are the absolute key people in priority rating that need to be engaged with and in what way? And having that message very clear about the rationale. Again, the rationale, the rationale, the why, for any of these changes.
[00:35:20] And, and of course I hope that you've gotten tons of input and in that kind of rank order of, of importance of making sure those people have been involved in t he process and the policy change, but it is so important to have those individual meetings. Nobody on the planet wants to see blanket policy come through and then have leadership scrambling to try to explain it after the fact.
[00:35:46] You know, everything should be evolving and you want to make sure you've got ambassadors in the organization who are clearly on board, who clearly understand and have that ability to influence and communicate with their spheres of influence. And, out in the business, the external side, once again, no client is equal. There's some clients that just frigging matter. We go back to Pareto's Principle of the 80 20 rule. Honey, I can guarantee you I work with that small business owner to protect those top 20% clients 'cause they're 80% of the revenue. And
[00:36:25] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:36:25] Myra Corrello: We are going to give them the bulk of all the resources, the time, the attention, the handholding, the involvement, everything. The same thing happens in the organization. It's not necessarily your top leadership that are the key stakeholders. There are plenty of people in that organization that have influence. And so it's just really important to make sure you're aware and roll out these things with clear intention, because
[00:36:55] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:36:56] Myra Corrello: It just matters critically.
[00:36:57] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to just add a little something to that. So, rationale, rationale. Did you hear her? The why behind things. And a lot of times I'll see people say, "Hey, we're going to change this. More to come!" Like there'll be this thing, and then at the end it says, more details will be forthcoming. And I'm like, wait,
[00:37:15] Myra Corrello: That's not a good place for a cliffhanger.
[00:37:18] Nicole Greer: But I see it all the time. It's like, what do you mean more to come? You know? And then by the time that that email hits, two hours later, people are like, I think the entire marketing department's going to get outsourced. You know, more to come. You know, I, you know, it can be crazy.
[00:37:32] So, when you're doing change management, you do need to make sure, like she said, you've got that whole hierarchy. You're making sure the right stakeholders know first and that you've had the conversations and everybody's clear as the day is long, you've got your ambassadors. You might want to rewind right there. That's, That's my age showing right there. You might want to move your cursor. What do we say now? Rewind. Rewind back to listen to that one again anyway. Okay.
[00:37:56] All right, let's go to tools and tactics. Okay. So you help businesses choose the right marketing channels, right? So that could be radio, television, social media, print, blah, blah, blah. All right, so you help businesses choose the right marketing channels externally. What parallels do you see internally? What channels or rhythms keep people connected to the company, to the vision, to the brand?
[00:38:21] Myra Corrello: Yeah. Okay. This one is
[00:38:24] Nicole Greer: Giant questions. Giant questions we're asking.
[00:38:26] Myra Corrello: Woohoo.
[00:38:27] Nicole Greer: Hold on. Myra, it's almost the top of the hour.
[00:38:30] Myra Corrello: This one is a challenge because let's just look at our multi-generational workforce.
[00:38:36] Nicole Greer: Oh yeah.
[00:38:37] Myra Corrello: Oh boy. You know, being able to satisfy the preferences of all of your team. Oh my. You know, it is a challenge because we know some people don't want email. Other people passionately want it. That's my inbox. Some people want Slack. Other people go, that's not for me. That's distracting. The only way I can say it, and this does differ from the external because with small business owners, what I try to do is I have them focus on one to two channels and do them beautifully, effectively, and consistently, and then repurpose efficiently into any other channels that need to be.
[00:39:19] Oh, inside the organization, the consistency part is still extremely important, but it does have to translate into a whole lot of different languages. You know, it's got to translate into visual language. It's got to translate into auditory language. It's got to translate into tactical language, believe it or not. And I know some of your HR professionals are getting big into gamification and other forms of engagement. Yes. Believe it or not, this stuff really-- you, go befriend your marketing team because they,
[00:40:00] Nicole Greer: Yeah, that's three times now she's telling y'all.
[00:40:02] Myra Corrello: Oh my God, because I love-- my HR professionals are some of my closest friends in the world and I cannot do what they do.
[00:40:12] Nicole Greer: Oh no, you have to be very special.
[00:40:14] Myra Corrello: Oh. And, and they come to me and go, okay, I'm inside my glass jar working here and I can't see what the label says. Tell me what this looks like from the outside.
[00:40:26] Nicole Greer: Right, right.
[00:40:27] Myra Corrello: And that's where your marketing people are just such ambassadors to help you. Uh uh, but but do understand that any message. You've got to get creative these days. And you know what kind of diverse workforce you're dealing with and all of their habits.
[00:40:43] Nicole Greer: Oh yes.
[00:40:44] Myra Corrello: Some of them won't talk on a telephone if their life depends on it, but you can text all day, you know?
[00:40:50] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yep. But I will say this, if the recruiter calls you, call him or her back. Because we're not going to hire you over text. I'll tell you that. Oh, I'm talking to the choir right now. Nevermind. Okay. All right.
[00:41:03] So we're at the top of the hour, so I got one last question for you because, you know, really every company's trying to stay in business. It's all about sustainability. Like, how do we keep this sucker rolling? Right? That's what we're trying to do. Many companies start strong, but lose consistency in their brand story. So what lessons from small business marketing can leaders keep their culture story alive over time?
[00:41:28] Myra Corrello: Yeah. And this is where -- and I used to do a lot of work with larger organizations in different forms, but this is why I love working with small business so much is they're so nimble and they're quick to react, or at least they have the capacity to be quick to react. I mean, Nicole, we are dealing with the most dynamic set of environmental factors affecting our organizations ever, and, and so the brand. Has to be rethought, reconfigured, tweaked, evolved. You know, this is not something we do. And put a stamp on it and say, done. All right, this is what it's going to be.
[00:42:14] I follow a couple of people who are really big on reinvention, organizational reinvention, and I've looked at some of the reinvention curves. Which is how fast companies now have to reinvent themselves in order to stay viable and competitive. And it, it's just insane at the fraction of time, it used to be like 23 years, it was for a long time that a company could kind of stay status quo without having to reinvent, and now they're.
[00:42:49] Nicole Greer: Wow. Just think about that.
[00:42:51] Myra Corrello: Yeah.
[00:42:52] Nicole Greer: Well, and if you think about like Kodak. I mean, they owned the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, uhoh. Right. It was 40 years. Right, right.
[00:43:01] Myra Corrello: You know, and up until the last, let's say year and a half, two years when AI became prolific. Okay. Even then the reinvention curve, you know, they could get by with two or three or four years. AI is changing things monthly. It's scary. It's incredible. It's my best friend.
[00:43:22] Nicole Greer: Scary good. Scary good, everybody.
[00:43:25] Myra Corrello: Scary good. It's my best friend.
[00:43:26] Nicole Greer: Scary good. That's right. Yeah. And just real quick, I mean, if you're not playing with the chat. Oh, you've got to get these skills. Get it on your 2026 p ersonal development plan that you're going to learn AI. Okay, I'm done. Go ahead. And
[00:43:41] Myra Corrello: especially, no, and I think that this, we talk about sustainability. All right, let's just get bottom line here. AI, AI adoption. Now I know that every single organization, the bigger you are, the more you may have some restrictions, the more whatever-- I want you, even if you can't use your company computer, or even if you can't do this or that, you can brainstorm outside with your home laptop on "Ideas to _______" that's not going to, in any way interfere with sensitive company or organizational information. You don't even have to identify it. And there are settings that you can set in AI, by the way that help to buffer some of this, but it, it is going to be essential because every single day we're faced with new circumstances and we're having to adapt and modify really quickly. And I'm going to, I'm here to tell you that my small business owners struggled like crazy pre AI with SOPs. With the hiring process. Oh, now it's a no-brainer.
[00:44:47] Nicole Greer: It's a total no-brainer
[00:44:48] Myra Corrello: With all of these things and, and so now guess who's having to help them with HR, but at least in terms of how to use AI. To be more documented on everything. They're, the SOPs are just incredible at what can happen to give them the jumpstart to tweak with their team. But in addition to that, all the creative ways to recruit, to screen and to select. I show them how to build scoring rubrics based on the characteristics and traits they're looking for. I give them an entire hiring guide on how to do this and they're just blown away because before that, they had to rely on their own devices and many of them can't afford to bring in somebody as expert as your listeners.
[00:45:39] Nicole Greer: Right, right. That's right.
[00:45:41] Myra Corrello: And so sustainability, the key piece to all of this is going to be AI. It's learning to use it as your brainstorming partner, because the most successful organizations and people in them are going to be the most innovative. And innovation means constant reinvention. It's constantly being, you know, willing to take those chances, like me talking about leadership and management and stuff with you today.
[00:46:14] Nicole Greer: You're doing great by the way.
[00:46:15] Myra Corrello: But I think that is one of the greatest things that we really can wrap up on is please embrace it even if your organization is a little slow to do so. Please embrace it. You have no idea.
[00:46:28] Nicole Greer: Just do it for yourself.
[00:46:29] Myra Corrello: Yes.
[00:46:29] Nicole Greer: Get your own account on your own and start playing with it now. It's going to be something that's going to be on your resume.
[00:46:35] Myra Corrello: Yes.
[00:46:36] Nicole Greer: You know, like "Do you know how to use AI?" will be an interview question for you. And it will be an interview question for the people you're hiring, because that's where we're going.
[00:46:45] And I'll just tell you a really, really fun thing. I had a young man and I was coaching him, you know, one-on-one as his executive coach. And he says, I understand everything about this business in this area. And he said, but like, nobody's ever taught me budgeting and, you know, finance.
[00:47:02] And I said, okay. Here's what we're going to do, you know, because I could have said, go read this book. You know, and some people aren't, some people aren't readers, you know, in terms of like sitting down with a book. Like they have to take a class and get a grade, just force themselves to learn things, right? I said, I want you to go on Chat GPT for 15 minutes a day, and you're going to put in a prompt and let, we'll just, Myra and I both know it's all about the prompt. So you're going to put this prompt in that says, " Pretend I am 15 years old and I know nothing about budgeting. Start there and teach me something in bite-size pieces and we'll do this for 15 minutes." And you just type that in. And so Chat will be like, okay. And the first thing it'll do is it'll teach you a little something and you read it. And then you ask a question, and Chat's so nice. Would you like me to also do this? So, you know, you can use it to teach you, you could use it to teach your employees. So I don't know, we could nerd out on this, couldn't we?
[00:48:00] Myra Corrello: Oh, you don't even know. Right now, my own little dirty laundry is, I have always been terrified of my website. It's a WordPress site and
[00:48:11] Nicole Greer: Yeah, teach me how to use WordPress.
[00:48:13] Myra Corrello: Oh my God. It's like, oh, please. I'm terrified. I'm going to blow this thing up, right? It'll go down step by step to get in here and get comfortable making all my own changes, including adding new pages and all kinds of fancy stuff. And my hosting company's a good friend of mine. He says, "Don't worry, I'll back you up every night. If you blow it up, we'll put it back tomorrow."
[00:48:38] Nicole Greer: And see, and see, that's the other thing about, you know, building a vibrant culture is you have to try some of this stuff that we talk about. You're not going to blow anything up. You know, people are going to be like, God bless her, she's trying. Look at that. You know, because people are like, I'm not sure people will like that. I'm like, well, we won't know unless we try it. And if they say we don't like that, then you can say, okay, we won't do that again. Let's try something else. You know? So it's failing forward. We all know that.
[00:49:05] Myra Corrello: Yeah. I can tell you, Nicole this is probably the most personal piece. I struggle with confidence sometimes. Am I still relevant? Am I still adding value?
[00:49:16] Nicole Greer: Of course.
[00:49:17] Myra Corrello: Are they perceiving what I want them to? I mean, I think most of us that are subject matter experts, we, we question, we hold the mirror and go am I okay? Am I doing well? AI has given me insane levels of confidence because it helps me validate my thinking.
[00:49:39] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:49:40] Myra Corrello: I cannot tell you I will tackle just about anything now. Now I invest in the pro level the Chat GPT Plus, and I have Perplexity Pro $20 a month?
[00:49:51] Nicole Greer: Do it, do it.
[00:49:52] Myra Corrello: But I cannot tell you. It has transformed what I'm willing to take on because I have more confidence because I am using it as my partner. And yes, I validate multiple ways. I do all kinds of,
[00:50:08] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:50:09] Myra Corrello: But I cannot tell you if you're listening to this and you're not sure, please for me, go out there and spend a little bit more time on it this week and see what you can do.
[00:50:19] Nicole Greer: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Okay. All right, Ms. Myra, if they want to get ahold of you they're sitting there thinking, Hmm, we don't even have a marketing team. We need Myra. So, you know what, what, how do they get ahold of you? Where can we find you? I've been so great to have you on the podcast.
[00:50:34] Myra Corrello: My pleasure. By all means, definitely, look me up on LinkedIn. There's a button there for follow, but no. Hit the connect button, send me a little message and say, Hey, I heard you and Nicole acting up on her podcast and I'd love to be a part of it. Okay?
[00:50:51] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:50:52] Myra Corrello: So do that for sure. Look me up on LinkedIn and if you just need to send me an email you can send it to my first name at first name, last name.com. But everybody messes up my last name, so I made one easier. And it's just called Myra@GrowWithMyra.com.
[00:51:10] Nicole Greer: Oh, I love that. That's so good.
[00:51:12] Myra Corrello: Yeah, so I would love to hear from you.
[00:51:15] Nicole Greer: All right, very good, everybody, you know the drill. Please go down real quick. Pop your finger on the like button, go into the text box and say, I want to grow with Myra.
[00:51:25] And just write that in there. Leave us a little love comment. If we can do better, if you didn't understand something, we'll certainly interact with you. So put that in there. Myra, it's been an absolute delight. Thank you so much for being on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast.
[00:51:37] Myra Corrello: My pleasure, Nicole. You are a jewel, and I'm so glad that the HR world has you for inspiration and all kinds of amazing, wonderful conversations.
[00:51:50] Nicole Greer: Thanks, Myra. All right, I'll see you soon.
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