EPISODE 98 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: CLIENTS, CONFLICT AND COMMUNICATION: HOW OUR APPROACH HAS CHANGED AS WE’VE GROWN

Sonya:

When people talk about the challenges they face in business, any business, a lot of the time those issues occur due to one of two things, poor communication or poor systems. Learning to navigate each of these things and creating standard operating procedures for how we deal with issues when they arise is probably one of the reasons why we're still in business today.

It's been somewhat of a bumpy ride and I didn't do it alone. So I thought I'd bring Lib onto the podcast to share her thoughts on our journey. For those of you who don't know, Lib is my longest running team member and was my very first full-time hire.

She's worked with me for about four years and together we've gone through a lot of highs and lows, coming out the other end with a few more wrinkles and some really valuable lessons. Welcome Lib.

Lib:

Hi, it's great to be here.

Sonya:

Welcome to the Boom Your Biz Podcast, a podcast for the movers, for shakers and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host Sonya McIntyre-Reid, and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive?

I'm on a mission to educate, empower and inspire business owners and myself along the way. While I would love to be able to say that things in Kiss Marketing and Linchpin land have always been smooth sailing, as with any business, we've certainly experienced some challenging times together. What would you say is the biggest difference between how we deal with challenges today versus when we started?

Lib:

I think when we started, we saw problems as being the end of the world. If somebody had a problem with us, it was a problem with us personally, rather than a problem with the work or our process or just the situation in general. So I think probably that's the biggest thing for us is that it's not personal, it's about the work.

Sonya:

Absolutely. And I know both of us would get quite anxious about it and ruminate on it for a long period of time when we could have just gone, all right. Well, we need to look at our systems here or we need to look at maybe something else is going on in the client's life at the moment. Not take it personally, see how we can fix it and move on.

Lib:

Yup. And I do think in terms of just our own maturity as well, we've kind of pulled together this four step unofficial process where we take ownership for our role in the issue, we communicate better, we reflect and then we implement.

So ownership, communication, reflection and implementation. And I think that served us really well, particularly bringing on new team members and seeing them going through the same sort of anxieties that we used to.

Sonya:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's been really interesting to see with some of these team members like we've had, for example, a team member the other day had sent the wrong file that ended up getting printed. And I had to laugh because you and I did the same thing two and a half years ago.

And at the time I think my mom had literally just passed away the week before, everything was just really high tension at the time. And it felt like the end of the world when that happened. And I think that team member was kind of expecting me to get angry, but I know that our team, I often don't have to say, hey, like pull them up on stuff.

I'll just say, hey, just see why this has happened. And they're hard enough on themselves without me having to do a lecture or be scary or whatever it is. And they do their own self-reflection and take ownership of it themselves, which I think is great.

I think something that we have gotten better at is once you've done that ownership side of things, not then dwelling on it and getting yourself down and letting it affect your work for the rest of the week.

And I know I used to lie in bed at night at home and stare at the ceiling and think, oh my God, why did I say that? Why did I do that? Why didn't I pick up on that mistake? All of this stuff. So yeah, it's been a massive 180, I reckon.

Lib:

Yeah. And it's still a battle for you and I today. We've been working together about four years now. It's still often a battle to not dwell on things, but we know that once you make a big mistake once you don't make it twice. And if you do make it twice, you need to take a hard look at yourself.

Sonya:

Absolutely. And I think we definitely look at it in a positive light of, okay, if something was rocky or went wrong, we now then have that communication piece where we totally debrief. We pull it apart from the beginning of that relationship with the client and go, where did things fall off track?

Again, what was our part in it, but then how do we control our part for the next time so it doesn't happen. So my role in the business particularly over, I would even say the last three months, has really changed where I'm not doing so much of the day-to-day client management anymore.

I'm just looking ahead and looking at our systems and procedures and building out the processes around that, and also encouraging you guys to give me feedback and go, "Oh, we've had this error." And it's amazing to see the team now coming to me going, "Here is how I think we can do things better."

That makes my heart happy. And I think that I'm only so fixated on this because we have had so many rocky encounters with clients and taking on more than we can chew and all of this stuff over the years. And we've seen other people building agencies that don't have those systems in place and the headaches they have to deal with.

So it's definitely been a big lesson in nailing it before you scale up. And I think we've only really hit that phase in our business now.

Lib:

Yeah. I would agree with that for sure.

Sonya:

And then I would say definitely we reflect more rather than be reactive about it. So I know something I used to do, I'm not sure about you Lib, because I think a lot of the time I'd seem like a calm duck with my feet going crazy underwater, but I used to be quite reactive.

And say I'd get an email or a phone call or a text or something from a client, I'd be straight onto it, very just like, ugh. And communicating back quickly without sitting down going, all right. Well, what was the actual issue?

How do I fix this? And coming to them with a certain measured response. And I'm not saying I was ever reactive in the sense of being rude or not handling a situation well with a client.

I think I just made things more confusing by not taking the time to calm down, take a few deep breaths, work out what's gone wrong and come back to them with a solution. Rather than being like, oh, it could be, this could be that. All this stuff, like sometimes things do not need to reply straight away.

Lib:

Yeah. And I do think, especially when you're working with clients there is, we go back to that I don't want to get in trouble situation, but if you put your hand up and say, "I'm so sorry, I was supposed to get this to you on Tuesday. I am very aware that it is now Thursday. Here's when you can expect the work that was due two days ago."

And just saying, "I dropped the ball. I'm so sorry I overlooked that." And thanking them for bringing it to your attention just so they know that it's been recognized. We're not going, "Oh, well, you didn't get it to me until Friday. And so I only had two days." So just really communicating all the way through.

I think that's kind of been our theme for the last couple of weeks, for sure has been let's give people a timeline. If something is held up on the other end, we need to communicate new timelines. But just putting your hand up and saying, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake. Here's when to expect what you were waiting on," goes a really long way.

Sonya:

Oh, absolutely. And you're right, us dictating those timelines as well. I mean, we've had a few project things happen over the last probably six months. And I actually had a meeting with a client yesterday where they were like, "Look, it was great to begin with and then the ball was dropped and the quality of work wasn't good. And we felt like deadlines were missed and miscommunications."

And I sat there and I said to the client, "100%, like I recognize that. We've put in all of these measures now to make sure that doesn't happen. That was in a phase of a lot of growth in the business." The project had been stopped at start.

It's on me for saying, yes, we can recommend straight away rather than giving realistic deadlines. So then it's my fault of putting the team under pressure, setting up unrealistic timelines with the client. And that's, I guess, the ownership part of things, where have we played the role in their unhappiness and how can we prevent it from happening moving forward.

And she was super, super responsive to that and was like, "Great. We're in business too. We've been through that phase as well. We've got excellent trust and faith in what you're doing and that you're the right people for the job and we're excited to move forward."

So I think taking that ownership and having the confidence to be able to map out your own timelines with clients. And if someone turns around and goes, "Oh, I needed this yesterday," I heard someone say the other day that your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my behalf.

We're not brain surgeons, this isn't life or death. We are very efficient and love to have things turned around as quickly as possible for our clients, but I think definitely sometimes we've been caught in that concept that everything is urgent and everything needs to be delivered within 24 hours.

And it doesn't, and it just adds a lot of pressure and stress to the team. And then it adds a lot of pressure and stress to myself when I'm getting calls from clients being like, "Where is this?" So we've had a lot of learning lessons.

None of these have been massive big deal breakers or anything like that, but we've definitely recognized where we can improve. And I'm really proud of how the team has embraced it and our attitude towards things now, I think it's really positive.

Lib:

The attitude has definitely changed in that we're keen to develop processes. And we now know that you can't actually test a process until the process is tested. So until you have that pressure of what's the deadline, what are the competing priorities, you don't actually know if your process stands up.

And at the end of the day, I feel like as an agency, we put so much time into client management, client relationships that when these hiccups do come, it isn't the end of the world because they do have faith and trust in us. And we've got that solid relationship to be able to say, "Hey, a bit of a wobble. Let's move forward. Here's our plan."

Sonya:

Absolutely. And I think now that we are setting those timelines, we are starting to get better at recognizing, hey, I told you that I'm going to get you this on Thursday, realistically with the change in scope or team members being out sick, which has happened a lot over the last few weeks, I'm not going to be able to get this to you until Friday afternoon.

So sorry about the delay. Thank you for understanding. And then when you send it to them saying, thank you so much for your patience with this. And I have been sending the client an email, so it's in writing. And then I pick up the phone and just have a quick chat with them.

And when they can hear that tone of voice and that bit of reassurance, that doesn't often I think come across in emails and you can look like you're making excuses and whatnot, but people get that things happen. And on our end, I think we've gotten a lot better at determining what the real priorities are.

If a client does have a really hard deadline, we'll drop other things or push other client work back to make it happen. Or we'll pull some massive hours like all of us, yourself included, Lib, over the last few weeks have been.

Lib:

Yeah. It's definitely been a real period of learning for us, I think. But also in terms of bringing on these new team members, we're learning how long things actually take. So I previously thought that you could just whip up a Reel in half an hour, or do a quick video at it and it would take five minutes.

And I've learned that nothing in video takes five minutes. At the bare minimum it takes 15. And for us, I think just learning each other's workflows, learning how long things take has been really important. And just on picking up the phone, that's something that I think you and I both used to be a little bit afraid of, but it's the quickest way to diffuse tension.

It's the quickest way to set the tone for communication moving forward. So if you pick up the phone to someone and you are making excuses or you come in a little bit aggressive, the project's going to fall down. It's really hard to call it back after that.

But if you get on the phone and you check your own energy before you jump on that call and you just take those deep breaths, you calm yourself down and you go in with a sort of a view of, all right, we're going to solve this problem. How do we solve the problem? What do you need?

Here's what I need. Let's figure out when we need it by and we'll move forward. And I think that's something that only comes with a little bit of experience. And maybe as you get a little bit older, it's easier to jump on the phone.

Sonya:

Absolutely. I know I was always scared of being on the phone, so silly. Yeah. And I look back on it and I'm like, I now do the sales for the business. I am now the one that if something's majorly gone wrong, because I've onboarded that client and I've done that initial sales process and essentially I'm the face of the business.

I'm the one that then has to, if something really has escalated, put out that fire. And I reckon it was even No Bullshit Leadership, that book by Martin Moore, how he was really talking about how having more of those uncomfortable conversations will make you better at them.

And he almost, and this is not the right wording. So excuse me Martin M, but he almost phrases it as though relish having those conversations, look at it as a challenge and opportunity to get better, to get comfortable with that tension because you are not going to grow.

You're not going to be an effective person in business unless you are able to do that. So again, it's that, I don't want to be wonky, but it's that mindset switch. Right?

Lib:

And it's also one of the top time saving tips. Instead of stressing about what am I going to say? What are they going to say? And then I'll say this, and you plan the conversation in your head for three days before a meeting. If you just get on a call and say, "Hey, feels a bit tense. What do we need? How do we fix this? Let's move forward."

Sonya:

Oh, absolutely. And even over the last couple days, you've said to me about a few clients, "Oh, I'm feeling a bit wobbly about them. I'm a bit worried that they're not happy." And I've said to you, "Look, Lib, I don't think that's the case. You're delivering and everything. You're doing an amazing job. I think that they've got a lot going on in their business at the moment."

"And I think they're feeling a bit of pressure and bit of stress. And you're probably picking up on that. But if it's going to make you feel better, why don't you just pick up the phone and say, hey, I just want to make sure that you are happy with the standard of work that we are delivering. Is there anything that we can do better for you?"

And not being afraid to get that feedback because sometimes something might have happened and they expected one thing, but you told them you were going to get them something else. And why is it being crossed and people are busy and haven't read emails properly or all of that. And you can fix it like that.

And it might be that they go, "Oh, my child's been sick and this has happened in the business. Then I'm just under the pump at the moment. I'm really sorry if you've felt that there's animosity there." But I think that also brings us to a lesson in making sure that we are documenting all of our client calls and following up the client call with an email and then off the back of that, putting in action points into our project management tool.

And if we're talking about the practicalities around these systems and things that we're building out, it all comes back to how do we drill it down into that step by step and make sure there's a checkbox there that people know needs to be done. And we can see if it hasn't been done and that process is being followed. So there is no gray area.

I think it's all about making it black and white, but at the same time, not making it so rigid that there's not that room for creativity as well. It's kind of like, where have we made the mistakes in the past? How can we improve? And how do we build that into our systems so something like that doesn't happen again?

Lib:

Yeah. And I think when you're creating these systems, they do need to be flexible. So a very, like a tiny example from us last week we said, hang on, we're sending clients a project update on a Friday afternoon and we do that to close out our week, but then that doesn't give them the opportunity to respond.

And if something is time sensitive, they're not going to get a reply until Monday. So we've shifted that now to Thursday afternoon. And it's not a big deal for us. It works better for our part-timers.

And yeah, so it was nice to see that we can create processes, but we don't have to be sort of tyrannical about the implementation. We can be flexible. And again, it's that reflection piece of knowing what's working, what's not.

Sonya:

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to hear what you think we've put in place over the last two years that has shaped the business quite a bit, because I think a lot of the stress that we had was we had bitten off more than we could chew. We were moving a million miles now.

We weren't charging enough for retainers. We're taking on the wrong clients. There was a whole heap of stuff that I think led to both of us just feeling totally flat and burnt out. I'd love to hear from your perspective, what has helped the most that we've implemented?

Lib:

It would be two things. So I think changing to a project management tool that has a very clear workflow set out. So we use ClickUp. You can have an almost if this, then that. So I need this task to be done, but before it's done, I need someone else to do this task.

So you can create what's called a dependency. So you can't do your big task until the little tasks are done, and that's really helpful. And also just to be able to see it a glance, everything you've got going on, where your due dates are and where you might have some very late nights and maybe started a week earlier and try and get it done.

The second thing I think would probably be Deep Work Wednesdays, which we still implement at varying degrees. So as an agency, we put an autoresponder on our emails every Wednesday that says, hey, just letting you know, this is Deep Work Wednesdays. This is a day we take to really focus on providing the best work possible for our clients.

We'll be in touch tomorrow. And some of us prefer to have a meeting on a Wednesday. They can if they want, but it gives everyone on the team permission to just take a day to dig really deep into a project or to get ahead on client content plans. And it's just giving everyone permission to switch all your notifications off and just work, I think has been really good in terms of productivity.

Sonya:

Yeah. I definitely feel myself that I've got a to-do list that I have barely made a dent in and excuse the fact that it's paper, isn't normally, but sometimes when I have a lot on my plate, I just need it written out to be like, okay, here's the priorities. And I've barely made a dent in that since Monday. And I thought I'd get everything done on Monday.

So we're recording this on a Wednesday and we usually record our podcasts on a Wednesday. I really look forward to it being in the middle of the week because it gives me that opportunity to get on top of things, to finish the week strong. And I am an absolute introvert.

I feel drained having client meetings and calls all day. It gives me a bit more structure in my calendar as well. And the reason that we started doing this is because read the book called Deep Work by I think it's, is it Cal Newport?

Lib:

Cal Newport. Yeah.

Sonya:

Yeah. I highly, highly recommend people to check that out. It does get a bit sciencey, but it does talk a lot about getting into that flow state and how, if there is a disruption, it takes about 15 minutes for your brain to be fully focused again.

And in agency world, your phone rings, like goes off a million times. You get flooded with the emails, you might get flooded with ClickUp or a project management tool notifications. It's very hard to get into that flow.

And often when we're working on a challenging campaign for a client, you need to have that space in your brain for the creativity and the actual implementation to occur. So just having that time in your calendar, I think, helps so much. So much.

Lib:

And I do think in the last sort of even six weeks or so, we've become better at blocking out our calendars. So that if, for example, I know I have a deadline on Friday, on Thursday afternoon I can block out that whole afternoon.

If anyone wants to make a meeting, they check your calendar first and they can go, okay, that's not good. And it just gives everyone on the team an indicator of the workload that we have.

So for you, you can go, okay, when can I make an onboarding call meeting with this client? You see that I'm booked out until Thursday. Our web developer is booked out until Friday. It might need to wait a week.

Sonya:

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And look, I haven't been perfect on this. Two weeks ago we had a massive, massive week where we had three different campaigns launching. We had two or three new clients being onboarded in that week, just madness on my behalf. And that's because I didn't follow my own systems and procedures.

And as a result, we worked massive hours. We got it done. The team delivered incredible work. I'm so proud of them, but we've got to realize that output is not sustainable all the time. It's like occasionally it's going to happen when stuff arises, but if we can stop it from happening, then we should.

So yeah, having, I think for me, we have grown so quickly, like two years ago, Lib, was just you and I. And now we've got a team of what, like seven or eight and plus contractors that work with us daily as well. So for me getting used to the concept of having a bird's-eye view of everyone's workload, and thank God for ClickUp because that helps so much.

But on our Monday meetings now I'm in the process of trying to make them far more effective. So we'll have a Monday and a Thursday check in with the team. Everyone works remotely, so we all dial in on Zoom. And just saying, okay, do you anticipate any issues that are going to come up this week?

Are there any clients you need to go and get on the phone with? Are there any campaigns you're getting stuck on? Has anyone seen any ideas with this, or has something worked really well for another client that we can use with others?

And who has urgent work for our contractors? So I can then communicate directly back to them and say, okay, here's your priority list. Rather than them getting assigned five urgent tasks from different people in the team.

Lib:

Yeah. And again, I do think if we hadn't had that monster week, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to say to the contractors and the newer team members, "Hey, if you are swamped, we can help you with your priority list."

"We have the sort of the experience and a better view of the business to know what you can probably afford to put off until later in the week and what actually needs to get done." And a lot of the time I still do it. I think things are urgent, that are definitely not urgent, they probably don't even need to be done next week. It can wait for a fortnight.

So sometimes you do just need that extra pair of eyes on your to-do list to say, "Cross that off, do that tomorrow. Delegate that to somebody else. Even if you like, you might like doing the graphics, but we have a graphic designer. That is something that she can do." So I think-

Sonya:

Absolutely.

Lib:

Yeah, another pair of eyes on the work is always good.

Sonya:

For sure.

Lib:

And we've got a culture of that now that we didn't have even six months ago.

Sonya:

No, not at all. I think everyone kind of felt like, oh, I've got to do everything myself. No, we've built a team now. We have a team of specialists lean on the specialists in each department. And then even nailing down a process for briefing the other team members properly as well.

Which again, like everything that I'm talking about here is not perfect and things we've only really started implementing and executing properly over the last three weeks. So everything's changing very quickly and I'm very excited about it. And you've got to go through this base when you're getting so many more team members at once.

So it has been a good learning lesson, that's for sure. I did have another point, but I can't remember what it is now. Oh, yeah. Couple of things that I do that I think the new team members would've potentially felt like it was micromanagement.

There's two. So we do use a time tracking tool called Clockify. And I keep stressing to them that I'm not going to be looking at your individual daily timesheets. I do not care. I trust you. You get your work done. Away you go.

But what I am wanting to start doing, and this is just from a financial and cash flow forecasting and making sure we're charging enough for the service that we're offering is exporting a monthly report on how many hours we've actually spent per client.

What the cost of each individual team member is per hour versus what the client is being charged for retainer. And then being able to have a look at our margins and where we're losing money and where we're making money in that, because with such strong business growth over the last six months, everything has been put straight back into the business.

And there are months that we make a profit, there are months we make a loss. We're still stabilizing. And so I have said to them a few times like, "Don't feel like it's micromanagement. Don't stress about it. And also don't undersell yourself in terms of the time that you're spending on things."

So I think some team members were like, "Oh, this should have only taken me an hour, but it took me two hours." I don't care. It takes as long as it takes, just focus, do the best work that you can.

And then that's not on you to determine whether or not that's too long that you've spent on it. It's on me to make sure I'm charging enough on our retainers, in our projects for the time it takes to do that work.

Lib:

Yeah. And I think the whole concept of it takes as long as it takes, we learned that from a lady leadership podcast about a year and a half or two years ago, and Samantha was saying that women are so much more likely to underestimate how long something should take and then feel like it's a reflection on their skills, their ability, their time management.

Whereas men will say, I'm going to do this task and I will record how long that task took. So for us, it's been a real, like it's a learning curve. So we go, hang on, Aubrey internet is often terrible and that can add 35 to 40 minutes to a project on any given day.

We get interrupted by clients very regularly and it's not always sustainable to, hang on, I need to pause my Clockify and I need to enter in that you've called me. And then I need to... There's a workflow that happens and we're not going to log on and off to make a cup of tea.

We sort of look at our workday as a whole and go, okay, I spent three hours on this project. And it's a good tool to maybe go, did that need to take three hours? Did I get distracted? Did I go down a little Instagram rabbit hole researching for that client?

Do I need to put a system in place where I set a timer that this research should take 15 minutes, or I expect this task to take 25 minutes. And follow something like the Pomodoro Technique where you go really hard for a time, record that time accurately as it was. And then you can look at how your are working.

Sonya:

Yeah. And I love now that ClickUp actually has a vigibility known on each task for a time estimate. So if I'm feeling really overwhelmed, I can look at my ClickUp list and go, right. Well, I think I just need to start this task. I'm procrastinating. It's only going to take me 15 minutes.

Just get into it. If it takes longer, it takes longer, but at least you've started. And if I do assign a task now to a team member to go and do some research on stuff like that is like, how long is a piece of string? You could go and do a thesis on something. Or you could just have a five minute Google and give me some links.

So I now pop, if it's a really open-ended task like that, I now pop on a time estimate. So that tells them the depth that I'm expecting. So if they thought, oh, I've got to come back to it with four different options, but I've only added a 15 minute time thing on it. No. Quick Google, get me some info. That's all I need. So I think that's been really useful.

Lib:

And I think also as we are bringing on new team members, we've learned that we need to be a bit more clear in our briefing. So not everybody speaks fluent Sonya or fluent Lib.

So while you and I have worked together long enough to have a shared common language, it's been really interesting to see where is the line between giving someone enough information and maybe being coddling a little bit, or give them a bit of credit for their skills and experience they bring on board, give them space to be creative where they need to be, but make sure that people have enough to be able to do the task.

Sonya:

Absolutely. And I think what I was saying before, how we've built a processor around briefing people now with, okay, what's a bare minimum that you need to give them.

And if it is a more in depth task, I mean, Nams and I had our director's meeting on Friday and he gave me the feedback that, "Hey, I know you'd love everything to be in ClickUp. I know you love everything to be in writing, but I communicate a lot better verbally. I really need to talk through it."

And at the time it was that really busy week and giving him a task, and I was like, "Everything's in ClickUp. Just handle it." But he needed me to pick up the phone and just have a five minute call with him, for him to talk through it and get his head around it.

So realizing that different people, I guess it just comes down to learning communication styles, what people prefer. There's definitely team members that are like me that love everything and writing, hate calls. And there are some that like a combination of both.

So you've got the hard facts inside the project management tool, but then you also talk through what the expectations are as well. So definitely been a massive learning curve for me in terms of working out the fact that no one's brain works the way my brain does. Thank God.

And we pay them to come up with their own ideas and not think exactly the same way that we think as well. So we've got to take advantage of that, like you said, with their skills and their experience, but also make sure that they feel completely supported as well.

Lib:

Yeah. And sometimes that's as simple as just giving a couple of examples, like sending them a link, sending them a screenshot, even just, I know you hate voice notes.

I love voice notes because I can refer back to it later and I don't miss anything, but I can also have a little bit of a ramble, go off on a tangent and be like, "Oh, and also check this website. They might have something useful." So again, yeah, our communication styles are all very different.

Sonya:

And I think for me, and I hate that I can't multitask while I'm listening to a voice note. It makes me hold up my phone to listen to it and then, yeah, I just like to be able to glance at it in writing, but each to their own.

I think another thing that probably came off as being a little bit micromanage as well that we've introduced is each morning I have the team send me through dot points of what they're working on for the day.

And then in the afternoon, I like an update on where they got to with everything. Because it's amazing the amount of times that I look at their to-do list and I'm like, "Girl, that is not achievable today, push this back, push that back. That's already handled. I've already sorted that out. Don't worry about it."

And me having to stress to them that, "Hey, this is not me micromanaging. This is so I'm not picking up the phone or giving you ClickUp tasks or send you messages on Slack being like, where is this at?" And helping them with that workload and that delegation as well.

So I think definitely they're coming around to it and embracing it more, but again, it's a mindset shift. I'm not doing it to micromanage. I'm doing it to support you, but still wanting to give you the autonomy throughout your work day.

I don't want to be looking over your shoulder going, "Ooh, maybe you should change this word or that." I've had managers like that. There's nothing worse. It does my head in.

Lib:

There is nothing worse, but also I think from a team member's perspective, having that list and knowing that I have to get back to you at 4:00 to say what I've done and what I haven't done often gives me that sort of 2:00 PM kick in the pants to actually get moving again, once you've sort of had your lunchtime lull.

So I think it is valuable. And then also from a sort of a HR people management point of view, if someone is regularly not hitting those tasks, you can then go to them and say, "Hey, is something else going on? Do you have too much on your plate? Am I expecting too much? Do we need to split this client between someone doing the creative and you doing the words?" It's all just getting data so that we can work better.

Sonya:

Absolutely.

Lib:

I think with the bigger team, it's becoming easier to look at everything as data points and not this person is struggling, this person is being a bit lazy. What is going on? I think it makes it more almost like, yeah, data.

Sonya:

Absolutely. And this is going to sound super corny, but we're a team and we are building a team that's strong as a whole and people are not robots. There's going to be times that people have bad weeks and there's going to be times that they have great weeks.

And if we're all supporting each other and everyone's pulling their way, because I've been part of teams where there's that blood jar that does nothing and takes all the credit for everyone's work. Can't stand that. And I never want us to get so big that's happening and someone is resting on their laurels like that.

But if someone is going through a tough time or need some time off, making sure the team is there to step in and support them. And I'm really, really proud of that. Like I had a couple of days off a few weeks back, I had a procedure. And I almost feel now it's got to the point that the business runs better without me being there because everyone just really steps up and into it.

Lib:

[inaudible 00:36:32].

Sonya:

Exactly, exactly. So when you're listening to this, I'm actually going to be on holidays. My longest holiday I've ever taken in the business and I'm a little bit nervous about it, but I genuinely feel now that the business has got to the point after nearly six years that I can do this.

I can go away for two weeks and not know when I'm going to have Wi-Fi to check in and like, don't get me wrong. This business is my baby. I'm still going to be checking in, but there's not going to be that level of anxiety and stress around it that there has been previously.

And I fully expect to come back and things have been improved in my absence. So it's just, it makes me really happy. Yeah, I feel the team is being empowered. They're embracing it and they're just doing a great job. And I finally get what people mean when they're like, it all comes down to having the right people in your business.

And we're about to record another episode soon actually about how, I think it'll be the one that's released before this, Lib. How, so you want to be a digital marketer. And if you go and listen to that episode, you'll see that Nams is pretty much the only one that's come from agency background, like in the stereotypical sense, the rest of us haven't.

And we've really hired on their other skill sets and their attitude and their hunger to learn and work things out. And they don't have those bad habits from other agencies. So yeah, it's quite interesting.

Lib:

Yeah. And when we're creating these processes, having people who do have a diverse skill set and different experiences. So for example, a couple of us come from an event management background and-

Sonya:

Event trauma, we were talking about it yesterday, event management trauma.

Lib:

Definitely, definitely. But I think that we then have that longer-term vision because when you're in events, you are planning for Christmas in June. And then we have others who come from a more administration type of background so that they like things to go in order.

And they really like having a checklist and knowing that every project starts and finishes the same way. So it's been really interesting for us, I think to expand the experience of the team, but also just different temperaments. We know different people work differently, and maybe sometimes that's a good thing that we can adopt.

Sonya:

Absolutely. I'm seriously the most stubborn person out there and I've had to get off my high horse, so to speak, and accept that sometimes maybe I'm not always right. And maybe I could try things a different way. And I didn't think I was capable of doing that. That's very like it.

Lib:

Lots of leadership growth in the last six months.

Sonya:

There has been. Yeah. And I'm definitely feeling a lot more comfortable in terms of the people management side of things, whereas I felt very uncomfortable with it 12 months ago.

Lib:

Yeah, for sure. And I think we had a conversation the other day where I said there are people who like to have a hand in creating the system. And there are people who just like to be told what the system is and to be trusted to follow it.

Sonya:

Absolutely.

Lib:

So I think, yeah, lots of different personalities and it's only made us stronger as a team.

Sonya:

Oh, absolutely. So I think in summary it's really been a massive mindset shift into how we respond to feedback. And then what we do with that feedback and the debrief process to refine our systems.

And as with any business, well, I think any thriving business, we're constantly refining those systems and processes. And as those new team members do come on board with experience in other businesses, we are learning from them. In a nutshell, that's what's changed for us in the last two years. Would you agree? Anything else to add?

Lib:

Yeah. No, I think that's pretty much it.

Sonya:

Awesome. Well, Lib, thank you so much for making appearance on this podcast. It's always great to have sort of the perspective of someone inside the business who has seen us go through all of the ups and downs over the last four years. So thank you.

Lib:

Thank you.