Hi.

Welcome to another episode of Celebrating small family businesses.

And today we are celebrating Susan and Lindsey Trampler.

They actually have two businesses together beyond ROI and also unstoppable women in business.

So we've got so much to talk about.

I don't know.

We can get it all in one episode, but let's try.

Hi, ladies.

How are you?

Good, good.

How are you doing today?

Very good.

Welcome.

So I want to start, I think, with beyond our Eye, because that's what really, you know, I related to so much because I came from the training and, you know, the instructional design in my short corporate career.

And you guys have figured out a way to measure the results accurately of training and apparently done it much simpler than the prevailing theories prior to that.

So let's go there.

All righty.

All right.

So Beyond ROI is a company that Lindsey and I have been partners in now for 14 years.

And you're right, John.

It is really focused on how to measure the business impact.

So the lagging indicator of success, the financial impact of sales training.

And we do focus mostly on sales training.

We do some other forms of training, but really it's primarily designed for sales training purposes because there's such a direct correlation between a behavior and a result.

When you're in sales, if you make this change, you sell more.

Right.

Or you don't sell more.

So we work a lot with sales training companies to measure their engagements for their clients so that they know whether or not it was a good investment.

And when I first bought the business, gosh, it's been about 14 years.

Lindsey was just out of college, and she and I were doing something called co working in one space together, which was kind of a new concept at the time.

I had a office, and she, you know, was selling what, real estate and franchise?

Yeah, I had done some real estate, and then I was working on selling franchises at the time.

So she was kind of cohabitating with me in my office, and she was listening to the conversations I had with our clients.

And after a while, she was like, man, you look like you sound like you could use some help.

Mom, do you want me to help you out a little bit?

I'm like, yeah, if you could run some projects for me, that would be great.

And so she took that on.

And then after doing that for a little while, this entrepreneur brain of hers went, you know, you're never going to be able to scale this business.

Right?

Like, I don't know.

So I'll let you pick up from there, Lindsay, on what you noticed in the Business.

And well, it was just a, it was very manual.

Everything that we were doing was very manual.

Every project was different and every project had to be customized.

And I just saw a lot of room for improvement in order to be able to scale the business at some point.

That's kind of when I came on board with beyond roi and that is when the fun started.

What kind of fun was that?

You know, it's interesting when you take on a role.

So we had a really difficult time at first staying in our lanes.

You know, kind of everything was kind of co mingled and everything was, okay, you do this today and I'll do that tomorrow.

And we quickly realized that that was not a sustainable road for us.

It was really hard on our relationship for a while and we had to involve a coach to help us work through a lot of the communication and kind of defining our roles in a way that was sustainable for us.

It's a good way to put it.

He helped us define our roles, but he also helped us understand each other better.

Because I think I'm, I, I know Lindsay would describe this as I'm a, you know, thinker, like dreamer, ideas woman talker.

You know, I'm out there in, in just la la land, enjoying all of the big picture concepts.

But Lindsay is a little bit more balanced where she can go there and then when it's time to work, she can buckle down and do the actual nitty gritty detail stuff where I have, I have a really hard time with detail and left brain thinking.

And so I, I just remember Lindsay saying to me one day we had, you know, one day we had an ideation session where we just really reimagined all this really cool things that we could do.

And then we went home and we came back in the next day and I just had lots more ideas.

And I think she had just hit a limit on ideas.

She's like, can we just get the work done?

Can we just finish?

Can we just do what we decided to do before you start layering more things on this?

And when she said that to me, I felt like my hot air balloon was.

The word you used was squished, you.

Know, And Linds was like, I'm doing all this work and you're just like doing all this like idea thinking.

This isn't going to work.

It's just not going to work.

So that's interesting.

And you know, what's, what's jumping out for me is that the timing there in your, in your, as far as your life stages, right?

Lindsay's right out of college and you'd been in the business, you had a career for a while.

Usually in, you know, two generations of family, it's the young person that's coming in out of college all full of ideas and excuses.

The term piss and vinegar, you know, let's change everything.

And the, and the old generation has to stop them, you know, slow them down a little bit.

I've never thought about it that way, but that's true.

Well, and part of my angst in that time period was that I am that type of thinker.

I do love to, you know, I, I graduated with a degree in entrepreneurship.

Like, I knew that I was going to own and run my own businesses and I had lots and lots of ideas in college and post college and leading into beyond roi.

But my brain, the way that my brain works is more of a.

A doer.

I'm more of a kind of a on this earth type person.

I stay firmly planted on this earth.

And Susan operates in the clouds.

And we discovered that very quickly and it really, really helped to understand.

We work in all sorts of different realms of understanding.

Like we look at astrology, we look at personality types, we've done all the different quizzes to see how they come together.

And the astrological side of it actually really helped me understand it even up to this year.

And we're talking for the last 15 years almost.

We're still evolving in our understanding of each other.

But it's just, it's fascinating.

And when you look at it from the outside, it's very clear, clear how both of us operate.

But when we first started operating together as a team, it was super challenging to do that, you know, while being so in it.

But it was so good to have a coach work with us to.

Yeah, because it was.

It's all about communication.

You can know all of those things, right?

You can know your human design and, and your brain preferences and such.

But it came down to when she says this, what do you hear, Susan?

What I hear is.

And he's like, and Lindsay, is that what you said?

And so it was honestly so useful just to have a mediator there to talk with us in a way that was very hard to do without someone else in the room, without it getting the tension, getting, you know, kind of uncomfortable and people shutting down.

It just, it was invaluable.

All of the pieces had to come together in order for us to really nail a system that's now been working for us for nearly 15 years.

So.

Awesome.

Well, I should also add to The.

The conversation that at.

At the point that we did bring on our coach, we had also brought in several employees, including my older sister, one of my best friends.

We had several programmers.

It was a interesting dynamic at the time.

It was really fun to learn about everybody's different ways of operating.

And good for you for getting help because some people wait till it's way too late until the.

Till the relationship is pretty much burned out before they do that.

So kudos to you two for getting help quickly.

Thank you.

And then making sure that everybody else got that what they help and that what they needed also, because it's hard coming in, as you well know.

Come on.

Absolutely.

This is awesome.

And it makes it even harder when the two people that are running the ship are at odds.

Correct.

Or having, you know, difficulty in their conversation.

So, yeah, it was really, really beneficial.

And that's a common challenge in small family businesses.

You were very aware of how your.

The tension between you was affecting the company.

From what I'm hearing, a lot of owners aren't really aware.

You know, that's just their family stuff.

And it's so normal to them.

They don't realize that, you know, yelling at their spouse or their child in the workplace is affecting the employees.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that would just be not even an option for us.

You know, we're both development focused and individually, we do a lot of work on ourselves.

So I think it was a very quick process for us to come to the realization that we needed a third party to help us navigate the waters.

Well, I just want to grab that right there.

So to doing your work on yourself, one of our, you know, strong principles is that the business.

The growth of the business matches the growth of the owner or is limited by the growth of the owner.

So the highest return on investment, if I can borrow your term, the ROI is investing in the growth of the owner.

That's definitely.

And speaking of which, I don't want to.

We could talk about this one topic all the time, but we got other stuff that you've done, like.

Susan, you wrote a book.

Yeah, And I read the book this weekend.

I love it.

Thank you.

I could not wait for this call because I'm reading this book.

One of the things in there, it talked about intentional thinking, and I said, oh, my God, we are so aligned.

So, yes, I can recommend this book.

Whether.

You don't have to be a woman to read this book.

And I'm not sure you have to be in sales because your process for just like, figuring out and separating the story.

Basically, facts from the story.

Yes.

That's so spot on.

I am going to be borrowing that, by the way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It was really fun to write it.

It didn't take me that long because it's something that's deep inside of me.

The process that I share with people on how to really discern what's going on in your mindset is something I've, gosh, learned 10 or more years ago.

Oh, gosh.

It was even longer than that.

And has been guiding the way we talk.

And Lindsay and I, again, we bring this into our business.

Whenever you hear something or think something, you really have to stop for a minute and say, is that really true?

Or is.

Is that a fact?

Or is that something my mind is offering to me, you know, to kind of protect me from going places that are uncomfortable?

And that's usually where challenges come into play, especially when you are in sales.

Yeah, definitely.

The way we.

We learned to describe that is, is it externally verifiable?

Like, could you take a picture of it?

Or could 10 other people see it?

Or is it only internally verifiable, like a feeling?

And like, you know, everybody's mad at me, really.

The whole world, all 20 billion people.

And the emotional, you know, like the emotional content or the emotional.

The level of emotion that's attached to it is pretty good clue, isn't it, Susan?

Yeah, it is.

Needing to ask that question.

It is.

It's.

Again, it's another thing that happens.

I think that's another thing that you can use to work through partnership when you're.

When you're in business with people and you're working towards a particular goal or.

And you're not getting the results you want?

It's like, where.

Where are we?

Is it the actions we're taking, in essence, that are not getting us the results we want?

Or is it perhaps some way that we're looking at it or thinking about it that's blocking us from making the progress that we want to make?

And so just being aware of every tool you have to make life a little easier is, I think, important.

I think, too, that's where a coach can come in.

As you've set that they can help you organize that and kind of see past yourself sometimes.

Because we kind of get caught in our world, don't we?

Absolutely.

And cunningly.

It is a lot of fun sometimes, and sometimes it's not a lot of fun.

I love that.

Let's talk about your other business.

Yes.

So, and.

And did your experience with bringing in the coach in the early days of beyond roi.

Is that what led you into coaching and into the sheboss cafe community?

An unstoppable win?

Yeah.

So it was a really interesting genesis because I, I've always wanted to have a coaching practice even before I bought beyond our Y and we went through that whole journey together.

It was just something that I really was passionate about and the time just never seemed to be right.

And then about six or seven years ago Lindsay said to me, you know, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to do this Beyond ROI thing.

She's a starter, you know, she just loves getting things and building them but you know, the ongoing thing isn't really what gives her energy.

And so she said, I think I want to just move out and do something else or move on and do something else.

And she said, you can have the business mom, you can, you know, you can go from here.

And I'm like whoa, whoa, no, wait a second.

Not interested.

It had become like I couldn't even imagine being in this business without her.

It just would be not the same.

And we'd been doing it long enough that it was like eh, I wouldn't mind moving on myself.

And so it felt like the right time to start moving towards building this second business, this coaching practice.

And as I did that I kept saying to Lindsay, I really would love it if you'd want to be part of this.

And she was like, no, no, no, enough of you already, enough.

And I ran it for about five years as a typical, you know, coaching practice with one on one clients and group coaching.

I loved it, but I can't even remember.

I'm going to ask you if you remember Lindsay at some point this idea of a community, creating a community of women entrepreneurs to put as like an umbrella over the coaching practice came into my mind.

Lots of ideas.

I said, come on Linds, do this.

I can't do this without you.

Do you remember, do you remember the genesis of that?

I don't, honestly.

I do remember that.

I remember saying to you that I was not passionate about coaching and I knew that I myself did not want to be a coach.

And so I think when we started talking about community I thought about something that I could build and we didn't really touch on this but our roles with Beyond ROI ended up being very clearly defined where I was the back end and I was the person that put all the automations into place and I did all the technology things and continue to do all of those And Susan was always the client facing person because just she loves talking on the phone.

She loves it and I don't.

And so, you know, I didn't really see a need for my set of skills within her coaching practice and didn't feel like I had the energy to kind of define that again.

It was not until we started talking about a community that I even saw a place where I would fit in.

I think that was the key to the.

To Lindsay agreeing to come into unstoppable Women in Business was this idea of building a community portal, in essence a platform.

And thank God she did because it has really exploded.

I'm really glad that she decided to come into it though, because again, anyone who would ever consider running a community and having a place where people can come for resources, for events, there's so many moving parts, so many moving parts.

And so she manages all of the operations in the back end of that particular business as well.

And I'm out there, the front woman running the actual events and talking with people and doing the coaching.

And it's just a perfect fit for us to work together.

That's really helpful for me to hear because I had the same sense what we're doing with celebrating small family businesses.

I can see a community gelling around that at some point.

But I'm also aware that running a community would be a major commitment and I would have to have a community manager.

I can't.

Absolutely.

You can just see Connie behind you.

John.

Yes, it's a lot.

As a matter of fact, it's our first anniversary in the Shivas Cafe, which is the name of the community.

And I added up the.

We've run over 250 events over the past year on the platform and countless threads and it's just resources and courses.

It's really a robust community.

There is no way that one person could do this.

It's almost a full time job.

Oh, but that sounds like a really valuable community.

I've.

I've participated in a few communities and a couple of them, when they started, there was a lot of activity.

And then I came in like six months later and it was almost.

It had trailed off and they'd moved to a Facebook group or, you know.

It'S now ours is getting stronger.

We've got almost 400 members in the community now and we're hoping to be able to hit 500 well before the end of the year.

So it's good, it's a lot scalable model as well.

So way to go, Lindsay.

Yeah, well, it's it's taken both of us for sure.

It's been a lot of work.

But, yeah, I can see why the one that you joined would trickle off, because it is a marathon, not a sprint.

You know, it is an absolute marathon.

So.

Well, for listeners, if there are other businesses that see, you know, a community as part of their.

Their growth, you know, we'll be forewarned.

Yeah.

And now they know who to call.

I know.

I keep telling Lindsay, she does such a great job, she should have a consulting package available.

And she's like, no, thank you a lot.

Susan, do you still do one on one?

So many variables.

Do you still do one on one coaching?

Oh, yeah, I do.

I do.

I have.

Let me just say my preference is to stay in group coaching, just from a time constraint standpoint.

I'm training some coaches within my community to be able to do more of the group coaching and then I'll have time to do more one on one coaching.

But until we get there, it's just only so much time in your calendar.

You know how that goes.

Yep, yep.

Exactly.

Well, you also have a podcast, so there's a Shebots Cafe podcast.

I've listened to your most recent episode and because you featured is.

It's Jim Donatelli.

Jones, right?

Yes, yes.

Jen Jones.

Donatelli.

Okay, Jen Jones.

That's how it shows on Facebook.

Okay.

So I wanted to give a shout out to Jen because she's the one that connected us.

Yes.

And I want to thank her, but she's also a media relations expert and that's a really interesting episode that you've got, so.

Oh, she's been such a great.

She's been such a great resource to us in the community.

So we have.

In our community, we invite other experts to come in and be guest contributors.

And Jen happens to be one of the people who comes in and does webinars for us and comes on the podcast.

To me, a community truly is where everyone has input.

It's not just one somebody's platform, but where people can come in, they can share their expertise, their ideas, their questions, and anybody can answer.

So we're lucky to have Jen as a contributor from a PR standpoint.

Wonderful.

Well, so we haven't even touched on our standard questions that we ask, but we've already answered a challenge that you've overcome together.

That's definitely done.

And you've made very clear what you love about working together as family.

Because you've said, I couldn't imagine doing it without Lindsay.

What would be a piece of advice or a Lesson that you've learned something that you know now that you wish you'd known back then that you think other family business owners could benefit from.

That's a great question.

I think it really just comes down to understanding yourselves and then understanding how you can benefit the other person and vice versa.

It's incredibly important.

I think we were very lucky because we had the built in respect for each other already.

And so to understand how we could stop stepping on each other's feet.

Feet.

The faster you can define that and figure that part out, I think is the key, honestly, to be able to work with family.

It's not an easy combination.

You lose some of that kind of formality, I guess when it's a family member, you lose some of the built in.

The built in respect, for lack of better words.

But to hold that and to maintain that is critical.

Yeah.

Because family members, you don't have a filter with.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

And I think the filter comes in handy.

It does.

And when you lose that, it's a prize.

It is.

It's also, I think it's also a really good strategy to ensure that you can keep personal conversations personal and not let business come into play in all of your conversations.

Susan is my mom, and sometimes I just want to talk to my mom.

I don't want to talk about business.

I don't want to talk about how, you know, what the week looks like or what it's going to look like next week.

It's just sometimes you need to have a, you know, let's not talk about work for these 30 minutes or whatnot, you know, so you set up, you.

Set an intention and you agree to some boundaries on the purpose of the conversation.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We heard one group, they had different hats.

So when one of them was wearing the mom hat, we knew who you were talking to.

The other was boss hat.

Yeah, you knew the.

Who you were walk talking to.

And so that made it clear so that the intentions were straight up right then.

So.

Yeah.

You know, that wouldn't have worked with us as well, the boss hat thing, because we're definitely partners.

Okay.

And we have been since pretty much day one.

And I think we both, we both knew that.

I don't.

The reason why I majored in entrepreneurship is because I didn't want to work for anybody.

I wanted to work for myself.

And Susan respected that.

She's always respected me, even since I was a wee little one.

Yeah.

We were partners since I was a teenager, so it kind of.

Yeah.

For us it worked to Define that.

Yes.

You know, yes.

And you're so your hats could have said partners, you know, you could have biz named and then, you know, partners.

But clarifying those roles, that is a very common, very important theme that we're seeing in the, in the companies.

The businesses that are really got it figured out, really doing well.

That's everybody's real clear on their goals.

Oh, I got, we got a couple things we've got to share with you.

I want to make sure we connect you to somebody in our network who is a karmic astrologer for 42 years experience with, you know, in family.

And I want to make sure we connect you with a guy who has a very different take on the personality stuff.

Since you've done that work.

I think you might really like that.

I love that.

So yeah, because we're big on all that stuff too.

We finally did the Clifton strengths and it finally after being together for since God was invented, he finally learned that, no, I hate the computer.

It's not your strength.

How many years have I been telling him that?

No, leave me alone.

And but you know, once he saw that, he went, oh yeah, that's true.

You really don't have a different framework.

There you go.

So what is the most valuable thing you've learned from one of your employees?

You want to answer that, Susan?

We automated our employees out of our business.

We did.

What we learned about employees is that we don't want to have employees.

We loved our time with our employees.

However, I am not a manager.

Susan is definitely not a manager.

Employees don't work for us.

Technology does.

Wonderful.

So that is what we figured out pretty early in our business.

And God, we miss our time with them a lot of times.

You know, we went on amazing retreats and we had so much fun.

But from a day to day process, it didn't make sense for us.

And beyond our why and it definitely doesn't make sense for us yet in Shiba's Cafe.

And when, when we bring them on in Shiba's Cafe, they will likely be contractors.

Yeah.

Similar to what we ended up doing with beyond roi.

I have a few programmers that live internationally, so I don't need to be constantly managing.

They just do the projects and, you know, deliver the results.

That's really interesting.

When there's a task to be done that's clearly defined with an outcome, you know what to expect.

It's fine managing somebody, but to have people full time or part time and this whole thing about, you know, like what are they doing and are they getting it done and how long?

It just.

It was.

It was an energy drain, so.

And we just.

Yeah, we're not good managers.

We're just really not good managers.

Is the.

That's the answer.

And we don't want to be like.

It's not something.

Yeah.

You're okay with that?

Yeah, we're totally okay with that.

Yeah.

So you don't.

In order to have a group of full time employees, you'd probably have to find that manager.

Yes.

That would manage them.

And then you would just.

And not need us to manage that person.

Yeah.

Right.

They would have to be very independent.

Exactly.

Wow.

So know your role.

Know what you're good at.

Again, just.

Connie, just like you, you're not a computer person.

We are not manager people.

You just know what you're good at and design your business around that and you do better.

Right.

All right.

Oh, man.

And so my last question.

What's next?

Yeah, What's.

Where's it going?

I don't know.

What do you think, Linds?

I mean, I think sky is the limit with Shiva's Cafe.

I think what we're doing now is so fulfilling on so many different levels.

I think that we're truly empowering women entrepreneurs to do what they want to do and do it in a more fun way, in a way that makes them feel connected and not, you know, soloed.

You know, as an entrepreneur, you can tend to feel really alone.

And I think our greatest desire is to be able to be successful while doing that, you know, and if we can continue to stay in both of our lanes and continue to work like we're working now, I think we'll be fine doing that.

I think it's definitely.

This is what's next.

Absolutely.

I love it.

Yes.

We have so many more places that we can go with the cafe.

And especially I like to think of it more as a cooperative for women entrepreneurs where women get certified, for instance, as coaches, or they get, you know, they become really good at what they do, but they don't enjoy the marketing and the sales aspect of it.

If we can collect enough women entrepreneur and bring them under the cafe level and then they have, they.

They can offer services within the cafe to other members.

They don't have to go out to find their own audiences.

It's almost like, you know, the old country market where everybody's got a booth set up and everybody has something that they're really good at, and whatever you need, you go to that booth and you get what you need.

So eventually we Would love to see that.

Be where Lindsay and I are just overseeing the cooperative and we travel.

Lindsay and I love traveling together.

We.

We will be over in Italy drinking limoncello and watching the cafe from afar, going, look at those ladies go.

This is awesome.

Wow.

That would be.

What's next.

That definitely is a good.

Right now, we're just in the.

We're in the thick of it.

We're growing it.

We're, you know, creating the infrastructure.

And hopefully that is exactly where we can head.

So if people want to.

Where would you like our listeners to find you?

Let me say it that way.

Come join us in the cafe.

It's sheboss cafe.com.

they can find out all about it and sign up.

It's free.

We have multiple levels of the cafe.

The lounge area is free.

And that's where we have a majority of our events and resources, classes, different things that we have available.

And then we also have.

They can.

We should.

We should say it's free right now.

If you're really listening to this podcast, after a year from now, it will no longer be free.

Okay.

But there are tons of resources in there and endless amounts of events that you can take advantage of in the meantime.

See, she's got the business mind.

That's wonderful.

I've already referred somebody to your free level.

I have a friend who does personal branding in the healthcare space for executives in the healthcare space.

And I said, I think this might be a fit for you, too.

Thank you.

Appreciate that very much.

You're welcome.

Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us.

Any last.

No words, questions?

Just good luck with everything.

Can't wait to see where you're going to go next.

Thanks, Connie.

You might see me there.

That's right.

Yes.

I'm gonna join.

I hope so.

I would love to.

I would love to.

Oh, such a pleasure meeting.

Congratulations on your success.

Is there any words of wisdom that you'd like to give, you know, your fellow entrepreneurs out there?

Oh, yes.

Is that okay if I go first?

Linds go first.

Don't expect the first thing.

You tried to work and don't get frustrated.

It is.

I know.

It's so trite to hear it.

It's like, oh, you.

You're either winning or you're learning.

But it's true.

You gotta try a bunch of things.

And that's where the partnership comes into.

Linds and I are there for each other, you know, and it's so.

Cause sometimes it does get lonely and frustrating to be an entrepreneur.

And so having somebody to lean into when things are a little tough are great.

But just expect that things that you try are not always going to work the first time, and it's all right.

It really is.

Okay, Absolutely.

I second that.

And to piggyback on that, there is value in failing quickly.

Absolutely.

You know, fail fast and be okay with it.

Just don't, don't overlook it.

When something says, this isn't going to work, say, okay, I did my best.

Next.

But what did I learn from that?

What did I learn from what didn't work?

Take away everything.

Absolutely.

And write it down, if possible.

Fail fast, fail small.

Right.

Yeah.

Take little, little chances.

Don't put all your chips on the first thing you try.

Right.

Fail fast.

That's right.

Fail small and fail often.

Yeah.

Failure is a requirement.

Awesome.

Oh, we're so aligned.

I can't wait to see where this goes and to have more interaction with you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Righty.

Well, we will put all of the contact information in the show notes so our listeners can find you easily.

Thank you again.