Erin:
Welcome to the Hourly to Exit podcast. I am very excited about my episode today. I am so pleased to have Michelle Cal Cagney. We are LinkedIn friends and mastermind friends, and we have a ton in common. So this is gonna be a lot of fun, our conversation today. But before we get started, I would like Michelle to one, pronounce her last name for me again, and two, tell me about what's happening in your.
Michelle:
Thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here today. So we'll get the house one out of the way. It's Cal Cagney, so it's a sort of an Italian name and very, very hard to pronounce, . So sorry. It's a challenge for everybody. What I do is about seven years ago, I left my corporate career behind and I started a company called Foam Box Global, and what we really focus on, we've done a bunch of different things over those six years, and I'm excited to talk with you, Erin, about what that means.
When you're an entrepreneur, your organization evolves and so your IP that you've accumulated evolves too. And you may just kind of say, that was the past. This is today's stuff, and forget, there's some treasures in there. But I started working with big companies and then I went to working with entrepreneurs and accelerator programs during Covid.
Cause I really wanted to give back, especially to women entrepreneurs. . And then as Covid wrapped up, I decided to return to my first love because you know what I love? I love being the phone call that comes in the middle of the night from a global manufacturing company saying, yeah, we've got a big thing, and if we don't do it right, jobs are gonna be lost.
Business opportunities may fail, and you know what? Our business can go just be disappearing if we don't get this thing figured out. Wow, that's when they call me, cuz I like to dive into the really complex, messy issues that get in the way, like mergers and acquisitions or global expansion or strategic initiative launches.
That's my happy place. And so that's what I've been doing and I'm gonna do even more of it going forward now that I'm really honing in on it. And we always talk about it becoming more local after Covid, but I believe that we have to function as a world. We can't just all of a sudden say, forget it. We're not gonna be a global entity anymore.
So the more help we can all get when we have to answer hard questions, the better. And that's when I committed the picture. Absolutely.
Erin:
If there's anything that Covid has taught us is that we are one world and anything that affects anyone, anywhere affects all of us. And whether that's disease or climate change or political unrest, it all affects us.
So I love that you are bringing those pieces together. So you mentioned earlier that you work with women, but I'm pretty sure that with your global business, it's broader than that. Do you have a woman focus? We do talk about gendered issues here, or do you kind of have a more generalized.
Michelle:
That's a hard one.
So I did focus predominantly on women entrepreneurs during Covid. Cause I wanted to put my energies candidly. I'd made a lot of global companies fairly successful. So I thought I'm gonna give back for a while, especially during covid and focus on women, especially women of color, who own businesses.
That's not kind of a cool part about having your own business. So I turn the page, yes, I'm gonna be back in that global space, still work a lot of people of color. My graphic designer is in India and I do a lot of work in India and all over, but I still am gonna continue giving 10% of my resources go to women entrepreneurs, especially women of color.
And my volunteer work is gonna continue. I have a secret little thing I'm working on in the back of my mind because my dream ist harness, everything foam box can earn and eventually start a capital investment fund, specifically for women entrepreneurs. We gotta have some revenue to make that happen, so that's kind of a path.
But yeah, that's where I wanna end up is with foam box capital that invests in women entrepreneurs because getting cash is impossible and human beings in general, even well-intentioned ones, figuring out which women entrepreneurs to invest in is really, really hard to do from the outside. I wanna bridge that, but it's gonna be more of a two or three year project.
So gonna build some revenue, build some resources, and then work with all the brilliant people I know like you and say, okay, I wanna go turn this around and give back. How do we do that in a really structured way?
Erin:
Yeah, I love that. And I did not mean to make you feel like you needed to defend the fact that you're working with really big Nobel companies making them richer because there's different, there's, yeah, there's different ways for us to contribute. One way can be those people who work directly with disadvantaged populations. Or those who serve an underserved business community or those who serve multinationals and use the proceeds from that and the income and the impact from that to kind of multiply the benefits or spread the benefits around to other populations.
So there's many ways to do good, including making a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with making money . There's nothing wrong with that.
Michelle:
Well, and a lot of times what's really amazing is the number of times I found myself being the only woman in the room, and I'm sure you've been through that as well.
I like these pictures of these acquisition activities or my leadership teams I was a member of. And I'm like, I'm the only one in a skirt. Mm-hmm. Or I'm the only one that never happens to me. Cause I know wear a skirt. But , no. There you go. You save yourself the hassle. I was on a merger integration meeting once as a big, big, big merger and I looked in the room and there were 20 guys and me.
And I thought, okay, yes, I'm gonna do the work because that's what I'm here to do. But also I'm hoping I'm broadening their perceptions of what a woman in this place can be. Because I'm gonna wear the colors I wanna wear, I'm gonna wear the shoes I like to wear. Mm-hmm. . And I'm gonna tell you guys the truth.
At the very least, one of the impacts I hope happens is that they walk away and say, okay, our leadership team is all men, which is ridiculously dominantly. But you know what? When we have a chance to hire a woman, we're going to, cuz we've seen an example of one that works well with us. So hopefully sometimes that broaden.
The best I can do is saying, Hey, at least you're meeting some people who are different than you. And maybe when you're doing the hiring, you'll remember that, hey, unfamiliar from you is not a bad thing, right?
Erin:
No. Every exposure, it's some battle, every exposure matters. It does. It makes an impact. And so tell me who your typical clients are with your new focus.
Michelle:
My new focus, it really is on the global Manuf manufac. I love manufacturing. My family that came over, as we were talking about earlier, my, my great-grandfather came over from Ireland and he started a business and they're still around. They make Dito stamping company in Columbus, Ohio. Mm-hmm. . But I love walking the floor and seeing people make stuff.
Mm-hmm. , I'm just that person. So typically my clients are, the global manufacturing companies are people who have got multiple outpost. And they're saying, Hey, this isn't working, or We need some global stuff. So one of my favorite projects I did a couple of years ago was working with a global company that was doing a product launch into the auto automotive space, and I love the automotive space almost as much as aerospace, which is where my heart is.
I spent a lot of time in aero, it's addictive, but they asked me to come in because we needed to restructure how they were going to market, get their value proposition ready for this new product that was going to go to. and they couldn't get there. And a lot of it wasn't because the product wasn't good, it was because they weren't using the right language.
They were very techy cuz it's a very specific chemical thing. But then on top of it, it was the Chinese team disagreed with the German team, disagreed with the American team, disagreed with the British team and as a German headquarters. So the biggest value I added was actually getting all these, and yes, it was almost dog guys into rooms and calls and saying, okay, we've gotta come to common language, so let's get there.
And that's actually. things I do best is trying to say, okay, we've got all these globally dispersed audiences. Mm-hmm. , how are we gonna get to a common path that helps the company? Because I can leave, because I've been an expat a lot and was born outside the us. I don't have a vested interest in a specific nation winning per se.
Mm-hmm. . So I can kind of be the chameleon who walks in between the threads and says, okay, I'll joke about going to a pub with the Brits. I'll talk about doing something else with the a. Somewhere in there, we're gonna find a common language and that's what helps the business go forward because intercultural stuff often is what gets in the way.
Erin:
That is so interesting and it's a great marriage of your life experience, both growing up and what you did professionally and your passion apparently for cars and planes.
Michelle:
I love it. It's the best thing that I've ever gotten. I'm so grateful my parents, for all the opportunities to learn when I was a kid about this stuff.
Yeah. And as you said, you've gotta make your impact where you can. Mm-hmm. and bringing people together really does help that. It's funny cuz you do look back, I know we're gonna talk about this, but I look at the legacy of all these projects, you end up with, oh, wait a minute. I did this intercultural training that I forgot about, or I did this workshop that I forgot about.
You get a lot of diversity, especially when you get to go of experience, especially when you get to go play across different cultures. And sometimes it's supply chain issues. Sometimes it's just pure marketing communications. So yeah, a lot of different things to do. I'd love to say I'm crazily niche, but I've been happiest not being niche.
Erin:
I think that is absolutely an issue just because of how specific it is and so few people having your particular combination of experiences. So I think it's awesome. So Michelle is here because she wrote a LinkedIn post about the value of insights that got me super excited and resulted in an immediate invitation to come on to the podcast to talk to you.
If you've been following me for a while, you know, I like to talk about Rembrandt in the Attic, and that insights is one of those Rembrandt I like to talk about, so that Rembrandt in your attic. ITT is a takeoff inspired by the Antique Roads Show, where you have some bass that's been in the family and you take it in.
Oh my gosh. It's actually something by Tiffany and it's worth a gazillion. We talk about Rembrandt in the attic. From a business perspective, it is one of those assets that is either unvalued or unrecognized as being super valuable, and insights tends to be one of those because it's just something that we know and we use it.
Obviously, it informs our expertise, but we haven't formalized it in a way that it can be useful or directly monetized. First I wanna ask Michelle, what inspired that post for you?
Michelle:
It's an interesting question. I am one of those weird people. Weird. I'm a dichotomy. I have this creative side and I have this massive process numbers geeky side.
And I think it really came from the fact I was realizing, as I thought about the insights is how, what exactly what you said is the truth. I think we forget how much your knowledge we've accumulated to be able to connect it. Really disparate dots. Mm-hmm. through our career path. And I hadn't really thought about it that way cuz I always think, well if I'm a consultant or even if I'm working for a business, my insights then belong to.
But then when you pull back a little bit, you kind of say, well, now wait a minute. They may own the report. They may own the technical plan, or whatever they pay you for, but the fact that you've got that knowledge, I think you hit it on the head. I think we forget what we know, especially experienced women.
I am 53. I have no qualms about that , and I look and go. One of the big differentiators I have in the world is that they're just certain things you have to learn by being in the room. You've gotta learn it by going through the hard way. And part of that is insights. You can theoretically about what you think should happen, but being in the room or going through it, that stuff is irreplaceable.
So that's what got me thinking was. I just assume everybody knows this. Doesn't everybody know what it's like to do a huge merger? Doesn't everybody know what it's like to have to trademark something? Which is not my area that's yours, but Yeah, it does. That's really what motivated was. Oh my gosh. The real differentiator, especially for women who have experience.
We may think that we're on the verge of Penn being pushed out by the fact that we may not be the trendiest in social media land or whatever, but there's this core. In the experiences and the brains that we have. And so that's just getting me really passionate thinking about that idea of not just how do we monetize it, but how do we hand it down because I'm not gonna work forever.
And someday I'd like to think that someday he's gonna take all the hassle and pain I went through to learn some of this stuff and leverage it. Because that's the value. So yeah, that's kind of what got me going was the idea of, oh, right, my experience words are novel and unique. And that led to insights that were novel and unique.
And hey, by the way, now that I've worked with different clients and done different work, now I can see even more dots connecting, so I can look more broadly even now. Ooh, wow. Then the power and the value and the impact goes even farther. So that's what drove that coast and continues to really think about is how are we capturing our stories?
How's our knowledge being captured to pass down? Mm-hmm.
Erin:
I wanna back up and talk about a couple of definitions between free terms, experience, data and insights. And I think of them as being on a continuum of less differentiated. By that I mean are experienced cuz a lot of people who've been lawyers forever. Versus data, which is kinda that raw information, the numbers, whatever versus the insights, which is how we extrapolate, we combine our experience with the data to create something that, to me, the most differentiating asset is that those insights where we combine the two into something that's useful and forward looking.
So that's the way I kind of see experience, the data insight.
Michelle:
I love that because you're right, data in and of itself, you can buy data. You can access data. Mm-hmm. , but interpreting it, yeah, that's a place for the experience really does help because you can see contextually what the big things are. The little things are where the storyline is that you share with your stakeholders as opposed to what is just so what kinda data which exists.
That's a great way of looking at it. Darren, I love. .
Erin:
And so when you think of insights, when you talk to your clients about it, when you think about it in your business, how do you think about insights?
Michelle:
Wow. I'd love to say that I had it as well articulated as you just did, but I probably don't , but I think it is very much what you said.
It's that piece. For example, I just worked with a client on a survey about mom entrepreneurs, and it's really fun. I love what we did. Results aren't out yet, so I can't talk too much about that. But there were a lot of times that the experience was the critical piece, even in developing this survey and the data gathering.
Right. They wanted to ask a lot of questions that were kind of, so what? Let's get this kind of information that's nice for you to know. Mm-hmm. , but that's kind of a curiosity thing, not an applicability thing. So I think that that's really where you see a lot of the insights, the data, and the experience tying up together is to say, well, let's not get caught up in just curiosity.
My mother has her phrase to describe me is, I'm a ruthless pragmatist. gonna choose to believe. That's a compliment for my mother, but I think that's true. I think that it is that experience that adds that pragmatic piece of the so what? Mm-hmm. . So you know that mom entrepreneurs are working this kind of hours a week.
So what? Mm-hmm. and for companies. Okay. You did your of fully engagement survey, you did your analysis. You gotta get a lot of feedback about people feeling like processes aren't consistent or something. Right. I think the experience is what lets you go to the leadership team and say, here's the so what, what this means to you, and here's how you translate that into action.
Mm-hmm. , because otherwise it's like reading a Buzzfeed survey. Really fun to do on an evening when you're just kind of cruising the. But it's not what you wanna use to have guide your business.
Erin:
I love the so what, because that is kind of really what it's about. And I think about, for instance, some what we call vanity metrics.
Like, oh, what's, how many people are on their list? Or how many likes on whatever? That's data, right? But where's the value in it? Is there a So what that's attached to that? Is it something that we can use to make decision? For the benefit of our business or for the benefit of our clients' businesses. That is the magic of insights.
Is it answering the so what? I like that a lot. And so it's kind of like a translation.
Michelle:
If you think about it. You're almost translating the data into something that is manageable. It's something that you can't understand in of itself, but you're giving it form. That then becomes a story which people can internalize and act upon.
Erin: It sounds like you do some market research or do you help your clients with market research?
Michelle:
I do actually, and it's really fun because what I really, I have to confess, my favorite kind of market research is the kind that tells somebody not to go some. So a company I worked with, amazing company, woman owned.
She does cosmetics for women who are over 55, which is wonderful based outside the us. Wanna come into the US market, maybe to focus groups who did all kinds of stuff, which is just fun. You're just learning stuff. But again, you got two hours for this group of women who are gonna give you whatever's in their brain.
You can't ask them everything in their lives. You just don't have the time. You gotta centralize it into data you can use to make a decision. And the end. This recommendation was, you're not ready for the US market because look at what it's gonna take for you to get here based on this focus group. You've got a receptive audience, but the geography's gonna kill you.
I mean, we're just a little bit bigger than England, but you're right. So the market research plays in there. I do a lot of diagnostics and analytics, but I try very hard, as you said, I don't do surveys separately of themselves. Like if somebody says, call second and says, can you do an employee survey for us?
Yes, I can. One third of the project is the survey. The rest is coming in and talking to you about what's your action plan? How's that gonna impact it? Let me socialize this with your leadership team, because without that piece of it, it's just a quiz. Throw it up on SurveyMonkey and send it out. But that knowledge of what does this really mean to us and what do we do with it now, that's really critical.
Yeah, there's a plethora of data. There's too much. There is a ton of data and it really is about like how do we organize it and make it useful? When I think about insights and market research, I mean insights is an industry in of itself, but so few of us in the service based. Side are thinking about insights.
I mean, we market research, obviously having all the time in the product space and in the consumer space. But when I think about my business and I think about insights, and I'm one of those people who is guilty of not turning my experience into insights. And so now it's gonna be something I'm going to do now, but I haven't yet.
When I think about, you know, I mean I exactly, but I've been practicing law for 30. And I've negotiated thousands of IP based agreements, whether it's licensing or distribution or assignments, quick claims, you have it, film, data publishing, and so I've got my experience, my 30 years. I don't really have the day to organize, but I know in my head somewhere it's all fair.
Michelle:
You got someplace in there, you've got processes you don't even know you use. They're so things, they're probably like, I put my makeup on this way and I do an IP thing this way. And it probably seems equivalent because they're just so baked in.
Erin:
Exactly. They're, they're all, so dump it around in there and then.
There are the insights that I get from that. I've seen trends over those years. The ubiquity of confidentiality agreements. That's new. That wasn't 10 years ago. No, it wasn't like in order to talk to someone, you needed an NDA in your hand before you came to talk to someone or when someone was hiring you to do services.
It used to be very simple and now, In order to get in the door, you have to sign their master services agreement and do all this stuff. And it's been this change. And so I have these things that I still don't quite know what I'll do with it, but I, I'm gonna have to think about it. But I have never used it as a way, you know, when I think about the questions that people ask me, if I meet someone new and you're having a conversation with them, they're asking me about what do you see out there?
What's happening in the space? They're not asking. How long have I been in business? Things like that. They wanna know, what do you have that's different than the other person? And because I have staked out my space and kind of the licensing space, They wanna know what I see there and what the trends are.
I think for our audience of service-based people of experts, they probably have something similar where they've been in the area for a while.
Michelle:
You really forget about it, don't you? One of the things that really helped me was during covid, the Y W C A of Rick Pops in Chicago asked me to come teach some intro marketing classes.
Your basic. What is a target audience? What is the value prep? What is messaging? That kind of thing. Just having to do that deck, oh my gosh, it should have taken me 10 minutes. It took me like way longer than I'm going to confess to on a public forum, but it took me a while longer than 10 minutes. But it was so refreshing to sit there and go through that process and go, wait a minute.
I actually do have a process I follow. I do have in the long run. It actually became a framework that I started using with when I was working with women entre. I started using it as a structured framework. I couldn't have seen that for the life of me at the beginning. It was after the training when I sent it to a very smart friend who wrote back and she said, oh, you've got a framework now.
And I was like, . Oh, I do . No. Nice. It was kinda like serendipity. I have framework, but you're right. Sometimes it's that piece of putting it down on paper and saying, how would I talk somebody else through this? And then you. I've talked a lot of people through this. Mm-hmm. and the same ways over and over, and I think you're right about the insights and the trending.
That's another thing I think is really critical, is that piece of where are those trends going? How have you seen them? How have you responded? How has your framework changed or will it protect somebody from it? Those are huge things, but again, we're so busy just doing our businesses. We forget that that is actually core value in and of itself.
Yeah. We've got the brain and the experience and connect those dots. That's not something somebody can just pick up in a book. That's not something you can Google. There's no LinkedIn training that will just say how to connect.in this context. Exactly. And so yeah, you're right. Capturing it's, that's a demonn that's a challenge.
Yeah, it is.
Erin:
I do one-on-one services, and as I think about is there some other revenue stream I will add to my business? That is maybe not one-on-one anymore. Where do I kind of capture experience, data insights in order to create a framework or some other product or a service when we start thinking about diversifying our revenue streams?
That's definitely someplace I would like for all of us to consider. Those experiences and insights.
Michelle:
Well, you're so right. I've worked with a lot of coaches to help them get their businesses up and running and yeah, that's one of the first conversations I have is at some point in time you physically run out of one-on-one coaching hours.
Mm-hmm. . And also, by the way, you may not be able to reach everybody you wanna reach because people have financial constraints or time restraints or whatever the obstacle. So, yeah, make it that you can do one-on-one, and that's wonderful. But as I always tell people that, I said, you know, the best thing you can do from a marketing perspective is have a VW option, an Audi option, and a Porsche option.
There's probably an American version that I don't know. I'm not a car person, as you can tell, but if everything you're doing is the Porsche, that's great, but there's finite resources, right? You only have. Could you do a moderated cohort, which is a little bit more than just an online class, so you're getting some direct engagement, but it's not 24 7 one-on-one, it's Q and a's online with six people, and then you kind of streamline down.
So yeah, I think there's a lot there. And I know this is gonna sound a little bit less businessy, so I apologize. I think there's an emotional reward that comes with it too. The reality is, is that for most women who have been in business a really long time, there were eras in our career where we weren't listened to, where we had a fight to be having our voice.
Isn't it glorious to have the opportunity to say, wow, not only do I have this insight and this expertise and I can share it, so for you, all these amazing IP knowledge you have, but isn't there also the emotional reward of saying, oh, when I put it out there, my voice is being heard and I'm now the expert.
So it's almost like a karmic redress of all those times that we had to sit there room and just acquire all this knowledge. Now we get to be the one sharing.
Erin:
Yeah. No, I love that. And obviously this audience is mostly women and definitely the emotional side of business is a very important one for us to talk about.
Huge. And making sure our voices are heard, so, absolutely. So speaking of trends, Well first in your post, you talked about a number of tips in order to capture insights and that were very, very helpful. So are there a couple of them that you'd like to talk about?
Michelle:
I actually don't have it right in front of me.
I freely admit. So do you have a couple that you'd like to go, Hmm, I wonder about that. I happen and have them here. So I was, well, thank goodness. This is why you're the host and I'm not,
Erin:
and by the way, your post was about how like you're talking to. And helping your clients understand their insights, but this also applies to our fellow experts for them to be thinking about the insights that they can be in their business as well.
One, my very favorite one, maybe the first one was to update your NDAs and contracts so you make sure that you are protecting your unique information and your confidential inform.
Michelle:
Oh, absolutely. So I had this amazing boss one time and I asked him when I was leaving the company, I said, what your feedback for me as an employee, you've led me, you've been my mentor, you've been everything to me in a lot of ways.
And he said, I learned early with you, Michelle, that I just need to give you boundaries because once you get in the range, you're fine. And if I tried micromanaging, you're probably gonna kill me or self-destruct or something bad was gonna happen. But you needed boundaries cuz you're gonna go right up to them.
But that's what makes you a good leader, is because you actually can go up to. And one of the things I got out of that was, and I've worked a lot of pr, so I've been in a lot of rooms with executives and the press having to kind of give them the winx and the nudges saying, please don't say that. And I think you're right.
The great thing about legal stuff, yeah, it kinda seem like a hassle. And I get that right. That's something that I'm sure you've heard more than anybody is, oh, this is such paperwork. Why? But if you don't know where the boundary line is, you might self censor and pull yourself off a lot earlier in the curve.
You may choose not to push to that boundary. I went to the Cliffs of More in Ireland a few years ago with my mother, and it was foggy, so we couldn't see where the cliff was. Literally . We have no idea. Yeah. So we didn't get out of the car. We stayed on the road in the car because I was like, mom, if we don't know where the cliff is, we could theoretically just go cruising right off it.
That would. . And so I think a lot of this IP stuff and the NDAs and stuff, you need to have those boundaries define it, know where those cliff edges are, because if you don't, you are gonna stay in the car way behind on the road and not go up to that edge and explore. And sometimes the really cool stuff is at the edge, and you need to have that freedom and flexibility.
So I'd recognize that NDAs can be ridiculous and they get a little bit overdone, but I definitely see those as getting those things in place. All of a sudden your conversations just change. I've worked with this copywriter who I adore in the UK for years, and he and I have had an MBA since I think day two of me starting my business, and he's known me for years.
He was never gonna do anything. There's a huge trust, but what I love is that now I can also assure my clients that that trust is there. So now when I bring him in on projects, I can just be full on, as I say, in the corporate world, open kimono. I can say This is everything because I have no issues with you.
Knowing where the boundaries are, you're not guessing. The boundary is you can't take any of this stuff outside of this conversation, and I know it. You know it. So let's really fill it, fill it with robust conversation and dialogue. I think that's a really firm foundation. Once you get that out of the way, you don't have to worry about it.
Erin:
That is cool. I've never heard that framing of NDAs. I really like that, of just accelerating kind of the relationship by adding that trust element.
Michelle:
You really are kind of aiding and embedding in a positive legal context. I'm working with somebody on some potential training, some partnership. I love that we signed the nda and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I can tell you this random story from this client.
I can tell you this. Mm-hmm. . But a lot of my experience is big public companies. So those are not things I can discuss publicly. So the nda beyond the fact that I feel free to say it, it's also I can access insights and experience in that conversation that I couldn't have otherwise. People have stock prices and I know very well where the line is on what you can say and what you can't on trading and whatnot.
So it sounds really strange, but it's kind of like that armor that lets you go into battle, feel uncomfortable, you're protected. So now you can focus on other stuff. Cuz who wants to worry all the time about saying something out of context and seeing it in the press? You don't know. Just sure. Just get that off the table and not even have to worry about that.
Then we can be free with each.
Erin:
That is awesome. Now, there is another one here. Look at all your tools. You might be surprised at the volume of information held in your s sap or tracking other systems.
Michelle:
That is where our information is
Erin:
I mean, almost all of us use some sort of productivity tools, CRMs, dashboards, whatever, third party software of some sort, and we probably have information everywhere.
And so, yeah, how do you corral all that?
Michelle:
And then how do you prioritize it? And it has a flip side, right? Because think about it, even if you are working with a company and you're getting employees salary data, ooh, well that's a dangerous beast. So I do a lot of work with employee engagement. We're gonna do this big activity.
We need to know where people are. Well, I know I have to find out where people are located geographically. I'm gonna have to get employee data. That gets pretty sensitive when you start getting into pay and reporting levels. And God only knows what else is in some systems. Mm-hmm. . But you have to be able to have those conversations, dive in and see what you already have.
And then also give people permission to say it's okay to sanitize the less relevant data. So one of my clients, I needed tab body counts about where their people were in their geographic dispersion across their. Great. They didn't wanna release the data to me because of the fact that it includes employee names and employee compensation levels, and my feedback.
Yeah, but that is a major tool that you're using. I don't remember if it was PeopleSoft or something like that. You can download it and just delete those columns. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , because I think everybody's in that mindset of I have to give everybody all the information I can and let them weed through it.
Sure. There's context for that. Mm-hmm. , but they needed me to do my job. I needed to be able to help them make decisions. And by saying, look, I've seen what the whole option is, that everything is available. I only need these. Mm-hmm. , I ended up with this. The answers I need it as opposed to a no, you can't have all the data because it's too much.
Mm-hmm. . So I think that is a challenge. A lot of these tools, I'm used to it yourself. If you're a service provider and you're doing your own marketing, the data, I mean, you could spend decades in Google Analytics and never get
Erin:
you made outta it.
Michelle:
That's one of the things I work a lot with, especially with women entrepreneurs that I work with, is pick your few key metrics that matter and track them.
Mm-hmm. , it's a rabbit hole. You can go down the la like you said, obsessing. Whether or not your post got five connects or five shares or whatever, every day will drive you clinically bonkers. Yes. And you also won't be able to make decisions that move your business. So a lot of these tools, the one I really see that people don't look at a lot is you get through it.
I do it. You're so busy doing the work that we don't always take a look. One of my favorite things that a mutual shared colleague of ours, Sylvia Lee, suggested I do is look back at the projects I loved the most that I had done and look at their profitability. Mm-hmm. . And I thought, oh, that's great cuz I don't really look back at the profit.
I look back at one or the other. Right? Oh, I love that project. I hope they come back. Or I say, wow, that was really profitable. But to put those two pieces together. That was something I did. And I think for a lot of us, I don't know about you. I run PNLs, I run income statements out of my accounting system.
Mm-hmm. , do I go back in there to do an analysis of who paid on time or to see what the profitability margins were? Right. Should I, yeah. That's probably some pretty powerful data that I could access. I think we all have that, but sometimes you do need, it's like going into a dark room. You just need a flashlight because if you put on a strobe light, you're gonna see everything and you just need the flashlight to like be like, oh no, I just need to look in that corner.
And that's gonna give me something I can act upon. Yeah,
Erin:
that's great. Yeah. I recurring episode, I think last week with Patty Block, who we talk about calculating profit on project levels, not just over your whole company, but we need to know what projects are profitable, what clients are profitable, what services are profitable so that you are doubling down on those that are profitable and not so much on those that are.
Michelle:
She's so right. And that's the hard part because I don't know about you, but if I finish a project that wasn't profitable, which let's not get ourselves, we've all been there. We didn't spoke up it right, something went wacky. Capturing that lesson learned is really important. Plus giving ourselves a space to look back and say, okay, so now we're looking at different numbers.
Now you, like you said, maybe it's profitability. Maybe that's where you also look and say, okay, but I'm seeing a trend and the profitability of this is not. Could I convert this into an online class, which would be a lot more profitable for me? Is my one-on-one? Will this help me redifferentiate, who my clients really shouldn't be?
Because some of 'em aren't really ready for me? Is there something I can give to people who aren't ready for one-on-one so that I can keep them in the environment and help them learn and grow? But I can't give the stuff away for no profitability either. Right. Yeah. There's so much data out there. I mean, that's the thing.
It's so much data, but yeah, I do think there's a lot, like you said, my point that I made there. Go figure out where it is and how to access it and then use it and then go away. Like I said, don't get lost in Google Analytics for 17 hours. That is probably not constructive. iron expert, if you need that,
Erin:
I know people do love it.
They do and it makes you feel like you're doing something when you look at them.
Michelle:
Oh yeah, I do it too. I mean, the number of times I've looked at my LinkedIn upticks and all the, uh, yeah, it's easy to sit there and do that. And I think the other thing too, it's challenging is, and this is a big part of insights as well as you know, is getting out of the habit of measuring action versus outcome.
And I think the Google Analytics and the stats on LinkedIn and all that can get, you really caught up in this post and did this. Mm-hmm. , but maybe the metric really should be is how many people contacted you about working with you. Yeah, exactly. And you can get very distracted very quickly. I mean, then what you do is you say, okay, of those people, how many did it spike with something related to my post?
But yeah, it's always helpful when you're looking for insights to say, what are the two or three questions I wanna ask? Not what data is here, let me pull something out. It's kinda like a magician and a rabbit and a hat. Yeah.
Erin:
So this is the Hourly to Exit podcast. Yeah. And so when we are here, we talk about building a scalable and saleable expertise based business.
So on the exclusivity side, we develop assets such as IP or our market positions, something that we own exclusively that would be valuable to a buyer. And then the other is predictability. So we need to have independence from our owners, our founder. So that a buyer could look at that business and comfortably look at those numbers and go, yes, I can predictably continue the success that it's had in the hands of the seller.
And so in the context of building a scalable and scalable business, where do you think insights falls into that journey?
Michelle:
I'm going to pull back a little bit and then we're gonna go in. Now I work with entrepreneurs. I always say it's when you start, it's like a venn diagram. And the Venn diagram is one circle because it's you and your business.
And when you first start, there is no difference Yeah. And as you get bigger and grow, especially if you want to have an asset, I mean, if you're just doing it thinking, I'm just going to spin it on down when I retire, that's different. But if you want to have a saleable. You've got to start pulling those apart. Yeah. I like that.
Mm-hmm. . And I think because nobody wants to buy, they can't buy you for, right. Other than many ethical, rational reasons, they can't. Also, you wanna go sit on the beach when you're tired, right. So as you pull these apart, I think the challenges where insights can fall in is the insights have to get out of you and they have to go over here with the company.
They've gotta reside there Some. And maybe that's a place where we can all help each other as women, especially where you can add a lot of value. Erin, I know, isn't that piece of looking from the outside in and saying, I know you think this is just something you know, or something you picked up, but let me help you translate it into something that is actually a tangible asset because this is what you get to sell.
This is who's gonna go on a beach. They're gonna have to be separate at some point, and you're gonna have to get there. So I think insights can play a big part of it, especially when you. , and I know this is the dream world, so I'm gonna freely acknowledge this and I do not do this myself as much as I will preach it.
I do not practice. If you can capture your insights contemporaneously and archive them. Mm-hmm. , and then you have the opportunity to go back and see trending, but you also see the evolution. So if you've done the same training for 10 different clients, say you're a great HR culture person and you've done the same values workshop for years.
If you've kept them alled over the years and then you say, I wanna convert these into something really valuable and tangible because it can't be me, you're gonna see how you evolved it over time. So now you're gonna see how stable it is. Cause I think that's what makes us. Is if I'm making an asset, what if I change my mind about what it is tomorrow?
Can I not change my PowerPoint deck? I'm the continually editing kid, so I'm not the best example. But I think if you can see that, that history and you can say, okay, this is now stable enough that it no longer is in my brain, it now is actually part of the company, and somebody else could pick this up and run.
That's incredibly powerful. It's part of what the people wanna get from the company, but they do have to get it out of your brain. And so if you can get in the habit of recording it as you go, I just redid my entire company archive. I do not recommend this for everybody, but I migrated from one backup system to another.
I gotta say for the four hours it took me to download everything and re-upload it from the last six years. I think everybody should do that. I should have done it way more often because I'd forgotten what I did. And as I started looking through it and I was struggling through it with your mindset, Erin, having the then read all your posts and knowing what you do, I started suddenly looking at it with, oh wait, if I put it on with my IP filters on, suddenly I was spotting all the insights of, well, wait a minute, I learned this and then I did it again, and I did it again.
So now I can get the trending analysis, oh wait, I did this training five times in a row and now it's a f. I don't know if I would've gotten to some of that as much as it's not the most exciting thing and taking a look backward, especially for a finite period of time. I think there's some great assets in there.
I think you're exactly right. You gotta get outta the brain of the founders so you can make it be something tangible to buy.
Erin:
I think what you described as very exciting, just saying ,
Michelle:
it's wacky. You just don't realize, right? Because you're trying, and I'm sure you've done it too. I'm sure so many of your listeners have done that.
If you look back over the last year, they're gonna say, oh, I got a ton of stuff. But they, they didn't have the chance or weren't motivated by choosing to migrate all their archive to something else. There's not that catalyst to say, Hey, what if I look back and my dream for me, for my business, and we'll see how it goes, but you'll see on LinkedIn how it goes as I report out, is that at the end of every year, I should be taking some time to say, yes, we made our profitability.
Yes, I had a good life and saw family and friends and didn't have bad work life. and what did I do over this year that now I look at it and I could reapply it to something else? And could that become ip? Yeah, I think dedicating time to that lens is critical. Cause then I can call you and say, Erin, I've got these diagnostic tools I use over and over.
I use this over and over and I use it over and over cuz I feel like I'm lazy. But what it really is is you've developed great ip.
Erin:
Exactly. And efficiencies. And that increases the value to the client. Cause they know they're going to get the results that they're gonna get and that they're gonna be there.
I think that's fantastic.
Michelle:
I have a question for you if you want one. Oh, sure. Do you think sometimes, cause I've run into this, you create a spreadsheet hypothetically, so you can capture your insights, you're gonna capture trending or whatever, but you think it's just a spreadsheet? Cause I think what also gets in our way sometimes is the idea that that working document actually is ip, that it's gotta be some formal PowerPoint presentation that's given 800 people.
Do you see a lot of that where the working documents actually have IP power too, that we forget? Pretty much everything that we do is IP , right? I mean, that's, that's a big mindset. Ship is all gotta work on , whatever
Erin:
we're doing, whether we're working in our business, creating tools for internal use, creating SOPs for clients or contractors, hiring contractors, or we're doing client work, whether they're gonna own it or not, it's still.
The fact that you don't own it doesn't make it not ip.
Michelle:
That's huge. I know you said you're doing a live soon, a Alexa. Yes. Is, that's huge.
Erin:
And uh, as we're recording this, in a few days I'll be doing a LinkedIn live just talking about like, IP is everywhere or the tools that we get from third parties is our CRMs, or what?
I mean like Zoom, everything is ip, honestly. So it doesn't mean you have to obsess about all of it, but you should be mindful of it, that it's not just like, we're not only creating IP when we sit down to write a book. We're not only creating IP when we sit down to create a white paper or marketing materials.
I mean, it's literally, if we are using our intellect, then we're probably making intellectual property. That's kinda what it's, you think
Michelle:
That's kinda what it's, you think that'd be so self-evident, so . But that's, that's why we need people like you who can help us say, Hey, this wasn't. Something I came up with. This really is something tangible and sellable and valuable.
Erin:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. How you run your business is valuable, and so documenting that so that employees or a buyer can replicate your success, a hundred percent required.
Michelle:
That’s fascinating. I hadn't thought about the internal processes. I thought about kind of the insights that I gathered for others.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. , but I never thought about the fact that when I started my business, I had already run other businesses very early in my career, so I had a specific project worksheet that calculates profitability and estimates and tracks it all over history. I had never thought about the fact that that was ip.
It was just, I have to have this spreadsheet so I can manage my business. That's amazing. Boy, you're right. You've got a treasure trove of things. Yes. Everybody's got a treasure.
Erin:
Yeah, I think too many people think of IP as a, the things that they sell. Like if they're selling it somehow, yes. But it's also all the stuff that's happening internally as well, and they get caught up on the work.
Michelle:
I don't think in my working documents is IP because they're working documents.
Erin:
But I mean, to rethink that, if you have employees and you have them sign employment agreements, you wanna make sure that you do that to make sure that everything that they're developing for the business that you own, I mean, For the most part, it's about ownership and control.
That'll stay confidential, and so it's not just about the stuff that's publicly available.
Michelle:
That is true. Oh, I love that. I'm already thinking. Now you got me thinking about a ton of stuff. Aaron. This is why I like your podcast. I always think like 15 other things I need to go track down or hunt down or put in place.
So thank you. Yes, it's my job. It's my
Erin:
Yes, it's my job. It's my job to make people's to-do list as long as . I'll take that.
Michelle:
That's okay. I can live with that .
Erin:
So this is a very meta podcast as well. I'm a female founder of an expertise based business that I hope to sell someday. You are the female founder of an expertise based business.
Michelle:
Are you building your business to perhaps sell it? You've really started me thinking, cuz in the long run I do wanna sell it. And the other thing that you've really sparked my thought about, as I think about, I mean I'm 53, I'm not gonna be working forever. I'm starting to think a lot more about where can I partner with people.
Cause I think one of the things that's really hard for me as a woman entrepreneur is I think I've gotta do all this myself. So, oh, I want this to be ip, so therefore I'm gonna create a training module. So therefore now I've gotta go do the training module. Mm. And I'm starting to really think more about the fact of what if my exit strategy is a little bit more about downshifting?
What if it's more about I'm licensing instead of me doing the training and selling it to people, I'm finding partners today and licensing the IP so that I still have the passive income. Yeah. You know, supporting me on my chosen beach. But I'm really starting to think differently about the whole idea of exiting ever since I bought, since I started your post.
Because I guess I thought, well, again, I was stuck in that ben diagram of me equals business, right? Yeah. I actually, I wanna sell it, but I don't feel the need to sell it all in one chunk the way I used to. Now that you've got me thinking differently about mm-hmm. . Maybe this part, the client services goes to this piece.
Maybe the part that is about my future EL box capital that I wanna have invested in. Women, maybe that goes to a board and maybe I've partnered off on a lot of the IP related to training and knowledge, and somebody else just uses that as the engine to keep going. It definitely sparked me to think differently because I really did think it was gonna be a case of one day I was just gonna turn off my computer and be done.
Pay my last taxes and I was gonna be off to the beach. But I definitely think that foam box's assets have got life after me. Mm-hmm. , which I should, even if I never hire people, it still does.
Erin:
Yeah. But that's a great way to think about it as an engine, like even through licensing or through partnerships.
And decreasing the intensity of your involvement in the day-to-day. It still provides that revenue stream to finance other things that you may wanna pursue. So there is the chunk of change from sale, but also that downshifting, I likely like that as a way of getting more time. I love downshift having money.
Yeah. I'm still having that revenue stream.
Michelle:
But people at universities do you right. My mom's a retired university professor and she taught until she was 72, 70. And the reason she could is because she downshifted. She said, look, I'm not gonna teach as many classes, but I'll teach a couple that I know really well, so I don't have to be recreating the wheel and I'm gonna do whatever else she was doing on the side.
But yeah, I think we all think about how do I hand over my workload as it sits today? So maybe, I don't know. I kinda like the idea of all of us women, this is my theory, we'll see if it plays. What you think? I kind of think we all need to think of ourselves as many conglomerates, and so you can break off a piece and get rid of it.
You can break off a piece and license it. You can break off a piece and make an employee own. I think even if you're a small entrepreneur, we need to think of ourselves as many conglomerates to find those pieces of value we can get rid of. You certainly help shape my thinking about that. Awesome.
Erin:
I like that.
I'm gonna borrow that cuz I like the idea of yeah, having those multiple kind of offerings and being able to do different things with each of them because they all need different support, different amounts of your time and attention. Some are more easily sold or licensed or turned into a different type of product than others.
And so, Hmm. I like. Borrow that one.
Michelle:
If you think about this with the big guys, the big companies get to do that. Absolutely. You know, they say, okay, we're gonna shut down our leasing service, but we're gonna keep our, your ge we're gonna keep our stoves and our refrigerator business. Well great. There's no reason we can't do that.
We need to steal a little bit from these, that bigger businesses and think of ourselves as company first, not person first. Oh, absolutely.
Erin:
Well, that is essential for sure. You know, and if you wanna continue to have, if you wanna continue to think of yourself, I love your imagery, what's better in print?
Michelle:
Yes.
Erin: So there's nothing wrong with that, but in the event you want to have other things you might wanna pursue or that you wanna just have a different lifestyle. I mean, that's why we set these things up. As we wrap up, I have a couple of final questions for you. First, is there something that you're promoting or an offer you'd like to share with the audience.
Michelle:
I'm obviously very bad at obeying my own advice cause I'm gonna say no, nothing immediately. But what I'd like to say is connect with me on LinkedIn if you can, because I love hearing about what women are doing in business and with my goal eventually of creating a son that invests in them. I need to learn as much as I can and see as many different perspectives about how you think as I can.
So that's gonna be my big request. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me or chime in on a post because A, that makes me so happy cuz the world's better when we all connect, and B, because then I can learn and grow and I think that that matters. And you never know. Our networks are huge. We can all help each other.
That would be my one that I would say I don't really have a call to action beyond just connect. I love hearing from people I love. Know who people are. Yeah,
Erin:
Michelle has very thoughtful posts, very helpful. So I encourage you to connect with her and follow her as. Here at Think Beyond ip, we believe in creating an economy that works for everyone with an emphasis on getting more wealth in the hands of women.
So is there an organization or person you'd like to give a shout out to who's doing some great work in that space?
Michelle:
Yes I'm gonna breakthroughs, I'm gonna mention two. One is the Y W C of Metropolitan Chicago has some great stuff going on with their small business entrepreneurship program and the things they're doing to help, especially recent immigrants and people in the underserved communities in the Chicago area, because the reality is we need jobs in the areas of the city.
We do. It's not all blue. I love what they're doing. Another one that I really like is called Pass the Torch for Women, which is a fabulous name. Mm-hmm. , they're based out of Indianapolis, so they're still pretty localized, but they really are focused on empowering women of all ages to get mentoring throughout their career journey, which I think is really great because I've been a mentor myself and it's been delightful.
It's amazing talking to young women, especially young women of color, who are graduating from college and figuring out what they wanna do and hearing about their experie. I love the idea that the mentoring goes on throughout because I think that is one thing that's really hard. It's very easy to read a book, like Lean and go find a mentor, but I love the idea that find a mentor wherever you are in your journey.
Cause there's gonna be somebody to help you. So I think they are on the cusp of doing some really remarkable things as they just recently got some new leadership.
Erin:
I love that. Well, these will of course be in the show notes for everyone to check out, and so you did mention that you hang out on LinkedIn Any place do I? People can find you.
Michelle:
I feel admit, I am a Luddite. I have chosen to only be on one social media feed other than the ones that I do personally because I have young nieces and nephews who I would never know what they were doing in their lives if I didn't see them on a social, but I'm on LinkedIn. I like that context a lot because it is the one thing as an entrepreneur that I.
Is that ability to, you know, walk through a food court, run into somebody from work and have a chat. And so I think LinkedIn is kind of my substitute for that.
Erin:
Yeah, I agree. I have a Twitter account just because that's what you did 20 years ago, whatever it was. , it's still the same one. I've got one and my LinkedIn's automatically connected to it, but otherwise it's, yeah.
Michelle:
That's usually what I recommend. Everybody who's starting a business, an entrepreneur say, go reserve your name in all of them, just in case. As you well know, generating good content is a huge time commitment. I'm always a fan of you pick a couple that work. Mm-hmm. and use those well and just make sure the other ones don't get taken by somebody that you don't wanna have using your name.
Erin:
Yep. Agreed. Well, this has been such a delight. Thank you so much, Michelle, for being here.
Michelle:
Thank you. This is great. I mean, I love that. I think you're a great example. I, I tell people this all the time. You never know. You may meet somebody in one group and then you meet them in another, and then you see them in another context, and that's how it is with you.
So I'm so glad I got to be here today because I've been a fan for ages and there's so much power, emotionally and financial that comes from really recognizing the value you've brought to your career. We all.
Erin:
That was awesome. Thank you again. And yeah, everyone please connect with Michelle on LinkedIn and we'll talk and again soon.
Michelle:
Yay. Thank you.
Erin:
Thanks for listening. Do not forget to check out the show notes for links to connect with today's guest and for the resources, offers and organizations that we discussed. You can also find the. Hourly to exit.com/podcast.If you got value from this episode, please subscribe and I'd be so grateful for of you.
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