Small Business Big World
New episodes every Tuesday discussing the challenges, adventures and fun of being a small business owner. Each week we'll delve into various small business topics, from real-world DEI considerations to selling your business, using video to market your business, unique benefit offerings for your employees and so much more. Curated by the crew at Paper Trails.
Small Business Big World
Creating a Mission Statement, Vision Statement & Core Values for Your Small Business
Unlock the secrets of strategic planning and elevate your small business with insights from Amanda Majewski, Vice President of HCM Services at Higher Level. This episode of Small Business Big World promises you a front-row seat to Amanda's journey of refining business strategies and cultivating a robust company culture. Discover how tools like DISC assessments can transform your hiring processes and enhance team dynamics, and why clearly articulating your mission, vision, and values is essential for attracting top talent, especially those transitioning from larger corporations.
Get ready to transform your approach to business planning with our deep dive into brainstorming sessions, vision boards, and the strategic prioritization of ideas. Amanda shares her personal experience with planning retreats and the critical role of management feedback in shaping a cohesive strategy. Learn the importance of community involvement and regular company-wide training sessions in fostering alignment and growth. Through heartfelt self-reflection and continuous dialogue, we'll guide you on how to ensure your team is always working towards the same objectives.
Discover the power of team collaboration and the role of regular meetings in assessing operational efficiencies and client relationships. Amanda and I discuss how empowering employees can lead to better client experiences and the tough decisions involved in parting ways with clients who aren't a good fit. By setting clear service standards and maintaining constant communication, align your team and clients on processes and expectations. We'll explore strategic planning methods like SWOT analysis and strategic alignment to enhance client satisfaction and drive internal growth. This episode is your roadmap to operational and performance improvements that can make a significant impact on your small business.
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast prepared by the team at Paper Trails. Owning and running a small business is hard. Each week, we'll dive into the challenges, headaches, trends, fun and excitement of running a small business. After all, small businesses are the heartbeat of America and our team is here to keep them beating. All right, welcome to Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast, where we talk about all things small business. This week, my guest is Amanda Majewski. Amanda is the what are you? Vice president of HCM services? Is that your official title? Vice president?
Speaker 1:That's the official title I think that's HBIC right, that's the boss lady there at higher levels. So higher level is a similar human capital HR company to us. They're out in the Midwest, they've got locations all over the place. But today we're going to talk about kind of strategic planning and building a mission and vision and values and so forth for your company, which we've kind of all been through in our growth, and I think it'll be a good conversation. So thanks for joining me, amanda.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. I'm excited'll be a good conversation. So thanks for joining me, amanda. Thanks for having me, I'm excited to be here. So it's been a wild ride. For as many years I've been doing this, but I always tell the girls on the team you can always learn something new every single day, it don't matter how long you've been doing this.
Speaker 1:So we were just doing a little pregame here. But talk to me kind of about you know, your history at the company and where what it's looked like that I've been you know with the company.
Speaker 2:I think when you are getting out of place where you have employees, you're just, you're just grinding at that point right, you're just trying to make it happen and there is no slow down. And maybe you did write down on a scratch piece of paper a business plan at some point. But I can honestly say you can do as much school as you want, work in a corporate world. I just it is just not the same unless you are working in a small business. I feel like. I feel like and there's been a lot of pains and growing pains, but I would say about the third or fourth year in working at the company is when we and which we're now we've been in business 29 years. So you know year I would say you know, after we've been there a few years was when we started.
Speaker 2:Just looking at, okay, we've seen growth, it's been fast, but how do we continue to now build a culture that we want people to work here too at that point? So we invested in consultants and we've seen a lot of them work with many of them and I would say working with more than one isn't obviously ideal, but as a business you grow and maybe you outgrow what you had hired a consultant to do. But even when I think about the very first consultant that we had, there are still things that I still utilize from that consultant and a lot of it had to do around. You know, a disc assessment and really using those four quadrants to think about who is on my team and where. Where are they strong at um, and I can't say that enough. You know, finding someone, an outside person, you know someone that doesn't naturally have to even know your industry but who just understands people.
Speaker 2:You know, that's having people is the hardest absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I'll say I mean as a small business. So we've been in business now 20 years. I've been with the company 11 years and, you know, we just kind of started truly strategic planning and building kind of our mission and values and so forth last year, and it was really because, again, we were growing. We were growing fast and, as I was trying to find people, I too was trying to find a, you know, really I was trying to attract people and try to build, like you said, the culture to attract people. And we've we've spent a lot of time building our, you know, candidate pipeline. We're doing more recruiting, we're reaching out to people, we're kind of building a bench ahead of time when we need people and we're selling ourselves as an employer.
Speaker 1:And part of that is, you know, especially if we're pulling people from bigger companies that may have not ever worked in a small business before, they want to know that you're not going out of business tomorrow, they want to know that you have a plan to grow. And that was really kind of transformational to us. As we're talking to people, they're like well, what's you know what? What is your strategic plan, where are you going, what are your goals? And you know, of course, as a small business owner. That's all in my head and, and I'll say, once I started to write it down, I don't think it surprised me or anybody who we were, we wanted to be. But now I can say, can say here, this is who we are, this is who we want to become. It's written down and that's been really powerful. So, uh, it's funny, you need those disc assessments because we too have started to do that with our new hires, something.
Speaker 1:It's like a hybrid of the disc, something else uh it's been really cool because we go through an interview process and then we'll run them through an assessment and this consultant that we use to manage that. He'll come back, give us a full report and say, okay, this person will work really well under this manager, but not this manager, or you know, or what because their motivations, their interests, their you know work ethic, whatever is different, um, or you want them in this role. Well, they don't have the right mindset or motivation or life goals for that. So that's really cool too.
Speaker 2:We, in addition to a lot of that, back to kind of scaling, and I mean when I first came to the business I was doing business development. I didn't have formal business development training or had done it, done it previously, but I had the right skills at that time that you know the company was looking for to find and cultivate new businesses. Um, and then, oh, three years ago now three, four years ago, a couple of colleagues had attended a conference and a group who manages um, um, like the Sandler training, um, they did a great presentation and we hired them to again help culture, those sales skills, especially in a lot of us, you know, veterans who'd been doing it a long time and a little difficult to kind of, you know, break some of those bad habits. But at the same time, it's that mission for us to always be growing.
Speaker 2:And I would say about 10 years ago is when we really started writing down you know, what is that mission? What does that vision look like, what are core values? Because it just seems like ever since, you know, right before COVID, the people that we were interviewing, they want to know those things like, they want to make an impact, and it was really important to us to make sure that we're continuing that mission and that we're talking about it every day, not just the interview process or our annual retreat, where we do meet at the end of the year and you know, plan for the future. What do we want to accomplish the next year? And I think the biggest thing for us for people to be successful and I think this kind of goes back to whatever you decide for what your mission or vision or core values is going to be successful. And I think this kind of goes back to whatever you decide for what your mission or vision or core values is going to be. I cannot stress the importance of this one phrase Comfortable is a slow death.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:We use the term growable. Right, that's our business, that's our industry. We got to grow or we're going to die. That's okay for some people. And and how you want to set your business up for success? As a small business, you have to be ready or uncomfortable every single day because it's gonna happen. Oh so I just cannot stress that more than anything from what even I've learned, and just setting expectations for team members when they do join our team, and just setting expectations for team members when they do join our team, that this is it's a hard job and it's not for everyone. But how do we make sure that we set them up for success in the beginning One, they're aligned with our mission, vision and core goals and that they are looking for a career path?
Speaker 1:So one of the things that we took, we went a little step further this year. We worked on our mission, our vision, our values, and we went one step further and we created kind of service standards that go along to support those kind of things. And we have 18 kind of service standards. They're, you know, one sentence. You know this is how we deliver great services, how we do this. And you know, every week at our weekly team meeting I talk about one of those standards and I say, ok, who has a win? Who can give me a good example of using this standard this week? And you know, so that helps kind of cultivate the team.
Speaker 1:And again, I have some folks that have been with us, for we'd still have employee number one working for us. She's very close to retirement and I'll cry on that day, but you know, she's employee number one, the first employee Debbie ever hired when she started paper Trails, to now 20 something years later, where things have changed and she's had to change with us and the business has had to change. And then now I have to help manage the folks that are just coming on, the three brand new employees we hired this year, bringing them into the fold and making sure everyone's on the same page, and I think writing it down, memorializing it, really helped us, and me as a leader, to deliver that message more consistent, which I think was really transformational.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think again and it'll take time for anyone really to get there but writing down the things that are most important to you or back to you know, why did you start the business in the first place? Right, those are your core values. So, for whoever's listening out there, that if you're trying to figure that out, it's it's okay, You'll figure it out along the way. And no, there's not just one written book. There's millions of books out there to help you. But you just always think back to why did you start this business in the first place?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what? How did you guys go about that process? I know you said you hired a consultant. You know, did you do vision boards and all that? You know all that fancy stuff.
Speaker 2:We did, we, we did all of that. We had the which actually you can probably see you see that sticky board right behind me, those big post-its, those really big post-its. We have gone through I couldn't tell you how many of those over the years and it literally is just putting them up on the wall. Um, we first kind of would always start just like a, a big group kind of brainstorming, um, and just writing ideas down, and then we would sexualize the certain ideas and then we would break out into groups further, go through that you know particular, now smaller list and figure out what is the most, almost kind of like prioritization, because you can't accomplish it all, but what is the most important, or what is the most critical thing, or what's gonna, you know, get you to that revenue threshold that you want to be at, and then those are your priorities and the other is just going to, it's just going to have to wait, or just it just doesn't make the list.
Speaker 1:And that's okay. So, yeah, we, when we, when I started kind of writing my you know, the mission and the vision and the values and so forth, I actually I kind of did it myself as I'm like, okay, I'm the leader and I need to get my thoughts of again why we're in business and where we want to go. And I actually I rented myself a hotel room for the day and I literally went because I just I needed to get away.
Speaker 1:It was kind of my own little conference and we kind of worked through some of that stuff and I said, okay, I had been taking a bunch of notes because this had been a goal of mine personally, so I had pages of notes of different things from the last several months and I kind of did the first framework. And then I came back and I said okay to my management team this is who I think we are and who I think we want to become, and why we exist, and so forth. What do you think? And they actually came back and said said well, you're too ambitious there, right, that's that word is right.
Speaker 1:They brought you back down to reality they also said hey, you know, you forgot about, you know, this whole piece. What about our community involvement? That was one thing. That really is something. We are very involved. You know, we're very I'm very passionate about serving the community and giving back to the community. That supports us and, and, and so is my team. I encourage everyone to volunteer and be on boards and all that stuff. Uh, and it was like, so that was something we had to add right, like, yeah, this is who we are, um, and you know where we want to be. So that was really.
Speaker 1:You know, everyone has a different process and it's funny. I went to a conference earlier this year where there was a strategic planning session and that was another leader in our industry and she basically wrote like a two or three page story to herself of like what she wanted to be in 12 months and in two years. And that was her way of doing it. And I'm like, okay, well, that's a different approach. That that's not me. I'm a little more, you know, blocky and black and white I guess. But it was kind of neat, something totally different that I didn't think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great way to think about it.
Speaker 1:No, I've not been to IPPA in a while, so yeah, I've not been in a long time.
Speaker 2:That obviously is a different perspective. You know, I hadn't thought about it.
Speaker 2:She basically wrote herself a story and this is what I the story. I want how I want my company to be in two years, and she kind of wrote herself like a two. I love the fact that you know that. You said you know bringing it back to the team. We do that a lot too, because I don't want to hire 10 of me, right, I want to have people that are have different ideas, that I want people smarter than me. I mean I want to be someone that I can lead you to water and you can take off and run with it, and that's that's obviously always hard to do, but I think when we know what our core values are, that always just goes a long way with making sure that we're trying to hire the right people that you know want to have the same beliefs as you do. You know the I had mentioned. You know, yeah, we've worked with consultants and we've worked with many over the years. Um, but the one that we've been working with, the past gosh now four or five years, that's the longest stint that we ever worked like with the same person. But I think sometimes you just you just know right when you finally found that right person and she gets us and her style of the training that she brings to us.
Speaker 2:We first started out where it was just meeting with management. We don't even do that anymore. It is at a company-wide. Once a quarter we meet with her and we break it up into, you know, many sessions throughout the day. So it's smaller groups, you know smaller pods, and I think the greatest thing with that, with her leading it that way, is that we're constantly going back to you know our mission and our vision, because we always have to be talking about it. We always have to be talking about it and we are really big about, you know that self-reflection. Where is my own impact? What did I do to contribute to this? What could I do to contribute to this? Because, at the end of the day, everyone has to be on the same boat as you. We all have to be working towards the same greater good and if everyone on the team does not align or, as we talk about with our consultant now, we all have to have the same beliefs and if we're not all there, we're never going to accomplish the things that we want.
Speaker 1:And that's really important, joy, we've seen that impact here as well, because when I did our mission or vision, value, so forth, then we got together kind of as the management team and we did our strategic plan for the next kind of 18 months, two years. And once we kind of built that, then we rolled it out to the team for the first time ever. Right, it wasn't just me rowing in the direction by myself. I need everybody paddling. You know we're not going to get across the finish line. So we get together late last year, rolled out to the whole team. You know this is where we're going for the next 18 months, two years. And now I can tell you we're. You know, at this point we're recording this in August. We're about, you know, eight or 10 months into our plan. Have things changed Absolutely? Have we adjusted and adapted? Absolutely?
Speaker 1:The management team and I meet on a quarterly basis to review that strategic plan and say, okay, so we're holding ourselves accountable. Okay, what have we accomplished? What do we need to accomplish? What has zigged or zagged or changed? And it is a living document. It's not something, especially in business today, like you said, every day is uncomfortable, every day has, you know, issues and that brings up. I mean, there are opportunities and changes that happen every day. So, you know, it definitely is important to kind of hold yourself accountable to your goals as well.
Speaker 1:But then we just did last week kind of a mid-year update for our team. We did it everyone in the room we did, you know, half a day, lunch, training, strategic planning, updates and fun. And I said, okay, remember what I told you. You know, last year, this is what we were, where we were going. Here are our sales goals and how close we are to getting them. And this is why this is what's worked, what hasn't worked. Here's our, you know, operational goals. We have.
Speaker 1:We told you we were going to hire this many people we have. We haven't done this or we have done that. Um, you know, we told you we're going to make some efficiencies here and there, and we have, but we're continuing to work on those um and oh, by the way, these are some things that we're adding that weren't originally there, and this is what's going to happen, what our plan is for the rest of the year. And that was a really good conversation for everyone in the room to say, you know, for them to ask me questions like okay, what you know, we we tried this a couple of months ago. It kind of fell flat. You know what happened and you know it was really really good conversation and I think it's I always no-transcript, but you know it wasn't Wolf of Wall Street, nobody was banging their chests going paper trails, paper trails, paper trails.
Speaker 1:But I feel like it was a really good day, as we were all having a good conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's just Everybody working this direction. Yeah, I think, obviously, having the team get together that's important, and we do weekly meetings as well and talk about numbers. You know where do we need to work or improve, Whether it's operating efficiencies or, you know, do we need to fire a client. There's something in life out of us, whatever it may be. You know those are things. Those are very important details and you know, at the end of the day, we're all in this together and I want the team to feel like they are a part of something that they signed up for, yeah, in that second piece, we in that kind of service standards we created.
Speaker 1:one of them is you own the client experience and I trust you to do whatever you need to do to either take care of that or take care of the business. Right, and sometimes that might mean you coming to me and saying this client isn't right for us for X, y and Z reasons, right, and I mean I have told my staff probably more than once fire them, right, like not all clients are right for us. And, of course, even if we ever do that, it's not like. You know, it's not the Donald Trump you're fired moment, it's. You know we just don't feel like we're the right thing for you.
Speaker 1:Let's work on a transition out. We will help you do whatever you need to find a better provider. You know, whatever that may be, there's a right way to do it, of course, but but we've learned, and that is giving good service to that client, but also to all of your other clients, because nine times out of 10, that bad client is is sucking your resources, resources they don't want to pay their, you know, their bring morale down. Uh, it's just not a good thing for the organization, including for your employees, who you obviously want to come to work and be happy, uh, but the organization has a hole yeah, they.
Speaker 2:We actually just recently started, um, um, I wouldn't say a campaign, but but you know, back to you have people on your team that you expect, that they're inspecting some work, and we know labor is expensive and we have to be constantly looking at our efficiencies because we don't want to have to hire more people to do the same amount of work, etc. Right, and so, um, you know, we really just have been focused on where can we improve our time, our time for processing, right, our time for getting payrolls done, and because now team members, especially some newer team members, they're just so focused on that that they forget, oh, um, I need to have a conversation with the client. Well, how do I have that conversation with a client? You know, um client, you know, and at the end of the day, a client has to be now retrained on a process.
Speaker 2:When they're like well, it was working before, why did it change? And so then it's slowing down and having that, you know, I wouldn't say fierce conversation, but realigning with the client what we are capable of doing, because we've talked about it internally the the team, they understand it and they're like yes, let's do this. You know, I want to make more money, well, we've got to streamline these clients. And then they forget that next step. So I think again, when you are building, you know to your point service standards or what your core values are that communication and over communication is important for a small business because, as we know those big box providers, why do clients come to us? Because they're know they're.
Speaker 1:They're getting service, and service is also helping your clients with things they didn't know they needed help with, which sometimes are those efficiencies right, and I tell people that all the time. You know, just because I'm providing the client with the resources or the tools to do the work better, that's not bad service. You're helping them be more self-sufficient and you know they're going to get the things they need or know how to do things on a Sunday afternoon when we're not in the office and we're not going to be responding to that email and and whatever, right. So, again, stop and take that second and say, hey, can we help you figure this out so that you're not so reliant upon me? Uh, I think that is good service. So.
Speaker 2:I know, and it's so strange because then now you've got to explain that to the client and you forget that they become so dependent upon you. And we love every client right, we love all our clients but at the end of the day, we're here to make higher level, better. We're here to make money and we are here to make an impact, not only internally. You know I talked about I want the team to have career paths, what do they want to learn? What do they want to get to know, but there also has to be, I feel like, when it comes to clients, and you know, again part of your strategic planning who is an ideal client for you? I think that is so important. That's something you have to consider in your strategic planning. Who is an ideal client for you?
Speaker 2:I think that is so important. That's something you have to consider in your strategic planning as well. And who do you want? Who do you want to do Exactly? Who are you going to target? And I think, again, we've been able to identify those things with working with. You know, the sales consultant that I talked about, you know that follows the Sandler model. It just really just brought a lot of that to light, because otherwise you're wasting time.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You know we started our strategic planning kind of with a SWOT analysis. You know our strengths, our weaknesses, opportunities and threats and to be honest with you that you know quadrant project, you know thing. We did the same thing. We took the sticky notes and the big sticky notes, put them on the wall and everyone wrote you know what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses, what are the opportunities and what are the threats. And we tried to say, okay, how do we capitalize on our strengths and continue to manage that? You know what opportunities are out there. How can we retool our business to take advantage of those opportunities? What weaknesses do we need to work on and what threats do we need to be aware of and defend ourselves from? And that formed our strategic plan. I mean that, right, there was like gosh. We basically took everything off and put it in different categories and that was our strategic plan and I think that alone was how we got there. It was a couple hours in an afternoon. We went off site.
Speaker 1:We had a few minutes where everyone could be together and be focused. And I can't stress that enough too. I'm just as guilty of this getting sucked into the day-to-day and sometimes you have to take a step back, you have to get away. I've done it where our operations manager and I were working on doing that kind of career development plan stuff and I said let's go to my house, let's sit at the kitchen table and let's work on it there, where the phones are ringing and you know people are walking into the office and you know there's not you know, comes into the dining room table for an hour and we can get this done.
Speaker 1:I think that's really important as well, and you just you have to know when to do that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I agree, I think once you've gone through all of that and you're doing this, whatever, on a regular basis I know you talked about even quarterly revisiting, you know and then, of course, annually revisiting what did you do well, what do you need to do better on, you know, the SWOT analysis. We've done that as well, but at the end of the day, though but I've talked about this a little bit but you know, your team has to be all on the same page with you, right? So we've have then even gone to the level of all right, we've met as a management team or, you know, small group to come up with these things. But now we're going to do it again with the entire team and let's see if their SWOT analysis is somewhat similar to ours. And it, it, oh my gosh, it's just, it's so. It's just such refreshing to see that, okay, they know where we are heading towards because they also are writing down the same things as well.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest element to the almost like an extension to the strategic planning really is, you know, meeting on a regular basis with your team members. We do monthly we call them monthly either strategic sessions or roadmap recaps, and sometimes I feel like I'm. You know I'm a coach for some of my clients because a lot of them also are struggling with you know finding'm a coach for some of my clients because a lot of them also are struggling with, you know, finding the right talent or keeping the right talent, or you know what challenge that they may be having with. You know something HR related, but it's always around performance, it seems like. But the roadmap or strategic session is designed to. You know, recap what you reviewed last month.
Speaker 2:Um, you know people, they we have like a formal sheet they fill out um goals that they're working towards. You know their individual goals. Back to their own professional development training um, what do they want to accomplish? And we're not big on titles. Yeah, higher level, I don't really care for them, but it does mean a lot to people and I'm fine with that. But at the end of the day, I want to know that you have found some sort of passion or career path that gets you up every day and makes you want to come to this job and do it well every single day. So I cannot stress. You know, while maybe you do the big stuff, planning, you've got to bring it down every single level with each team member and know where they're at on a monthly basis when it comes to you know, what are they owning their impact on? You know, are they staying focused on what things that they said that they're going to do? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, since you've been kind of working you've had.
Speaker 2:You know you've been strategic planning you've been. You know you've had your, you know high goals and and and and vision and and values and so forth. What have you guys seen in terms of results in for you know, operationally and performance wise, you know they have the same level of investment. You know, back to the folks that want to work an eight to five job, they don't work well in our company, maybe in others that aren't organization the level of just expectations to do the work that we do is really hard and challenging anyway. But when you know I'm out selling the bill of goods of higher level, the number one thing that I'm selling, because you know obviously you and I we all bring the same software right, I can't say that my software or my products is better than yours absolutely.
Speaker 1:I tell people that all the time listen, our, our product that we sell is essentially the same as almost anybody else in our industry. You know, give or take a few features, right? Um, but what it comes down to is how we take care of you. You know the service that you expect and and so, yeah, that's, that's really what.
Speaker 2:Well, is yes, exactly, you know I. You know I'm selling, I'm selling my team, right, I'm selling that. They're getting. You know these certain people on my team that have great skillsets, and now then it's their turn to deliver. What if I'm outselling that bill of goods? You know the people that they get on our team. So I think, ultimately, you've got to have those check-ins with them on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean sure I know you said it we do this as well. You know we do a weekly team meeting, but that's everyone on the team. There's now like 25, 26 of us on on our team, and that's hard to do from a level of like. Okay, we're going to do this strategic meeting every Friday. We can't take our entire Friday to do that, but these monthly sessions allow for that one-on-one time to meet. Go through, pull out your notes from last month. Go through, pull out your notes from last month. Where are we at? Where are you at? Because I want the team to be able to hold themselves accountable to the strategic plan that they're putting in place for themselves too.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that's really cool. So obviously we're in the same industry. We are very similar mindset, but I think the one thing that I want to let everyone know this is something that any business can do, you know, at any. And again, you, you know, you guys were in business for almost 20 years. You know 15, 20 years before you really started to do this. We were in business 20 years before we really started to come get our shit together and get you know to some strategic planning and figure out who we wanted to be when we grew up. Right? So it's there's, it's not.
Speaker 1:You know, we're not saying we're not saying we're perfect, but certainly anybody has the opportunity here to to start at any point. You know it's never too late and it really can make a difference. I think we both have seen really big impacts by by creating our missions and our visions and values and our common purpose with the team and setting those standards and sharing that and working with the team and developing the team. Um, and you tell your clients, right, hey, these, this is who we want to be, this is who we are. Um, you know, we we've created our brand video for the website and it talks about our values and who we are and why we do what we do, and so, as we're looking for clients and employees, we're finding people that are like-minded and have the same principles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's funny that you say that, because this client call that I had yesterday late was really about that, you know. I mean she's been with us three, four years now and now we're asking her to change her ways and she's like, well, it wasn't like that when I signed up. I know it wasn't, but as a company we have grown and just like you, I understand, you know you have, I mean, I think that 30 employees or so, like they're starting to experience that I mean they've not maybe have been in business as long as we have been and at the same time, though, it's finding that common ground as listen, you know it's hard hiring people. I see your turnover. I know what's happening we are. We're also in the same boat. We have to find ways to improve our processes and at the end of the call it ended up being really great and she's ready to do some training.
Speaker 2:After beginning the call she didn't want anything to do with it, but that is such a key piece in the work that anyone does, and this doesn't have to be just in our industry. Like you said, it wouldn't matter if I was. Honestly, I don't know where I would be if I hadn't been at higher level but at the same time, I know that I want to be somewhere that I can have a voice. I think is obviously critical Having those touch points on a regular basis with your team members so that you are aware of what's happening in your company Absolutely Well, good, well, hopefully everyone got a little bit out of this and certainly I think I've had a fun.
Speaker 1:This is fun for me anyway, but you know, I know it was right down.
Speaker 2:a couple of notes I was like I do too.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, I got to look at this, I got to look at that, so it's definitely been good. So, as a reminder, everyone please like, follow, share rate, review, subscribe. We are everywhere. You get your podcasts Small Business, big World and at smallbusinessbigworldcom. If you have any questions for us or any of our guests, you can always email us. At podcast at papertrailscom. How do folks get in touch with you, amanda, if they instagram you guys at higher level on instagram?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, we have all the social media that you can think of facebook, instagram, snapchat. I mean you name tiktok. I mean we have all of the handles.
Speaker 1:So their tiktoks. They actually do funny dances and yes, we uh.
Speaker 2:They've spent a lot of time on that, but I'm more of an Instagram type of person. But they definitely post some fun stuff out there, and that's.
Speaker 1:H-R-I-E level E-L-S. They're hiring employees Exactly.
Speaker 2:yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, Amanda, and thanks everyone for tuning in this week and we will see you again next week. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of a small business, big world. This podcast is a production of paper trails. We are a payroll and HR company based in Kennebunk, Maine, and we serve small and midsize businesses across New England and the country. If you found this podcast helpful, don't forget to follow us at at Paper Trails Payroll across all social media platforms and check us out at papertrailscom for more information. As a reminder, the views, opinions and thoughts expressed by the hosts and guests alone. The material presented in this podcast is for general information purposes only and should not be considered legal or financial advice. By inviting this guest to our podcast, Paper Trails does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific individual, organization, product or service.
