Tara Landes: Letting Go of Leadership for Your Small Business to Run Without You

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The Business Owner's Journey Podcast host: Nick Berry
Production Company: FCG

[Image Gallery: American Entrepreneur Nick Berry]

Episode Transcript for: Tara Landes: Small Business Operations That Run Without You

02:00 Small Business Operations in a Pandemic

07:22 Business Consulting to Management Training

16:17 Finding the Right Successor for Small Businesses

18:41 Equitable Reward Systems

19:12 Leadership Transition: Managing Internal Perceptions

20:08 Trust, Accountability, and Leadership Dynamics

21:05 Overcoming Leadership Challenges in Small Business

22:58 Celebrating Wins: Leadership Growth and Team Success

24:37 Using Personal Stories to Teach Business Systems

26:11 Managerial Accounting for Growth

28:21 Overcoming Operational Pain Points in Small Business

30:08 Small Business Consulting Strategies

Tara Landes (00:00)

in smaller companies, administration is an expense to them. It's a necessary evil. And if they didn't learn business, if they became a business owner because they were really good at that thing that they did, then they think that the numbers side of it is just like necessary for taxes.

They haven't necessarily learned about managerial accounting and managerial reporting. They don't know where that value is. And it's hard to explain except that you got into business to make money. So if you're in business to make money, probably the person that's most important is the one that's keeping an eye on the money. And you want them to be able to find the little places where things can be more efficient or more effective.

or where an investment would have an outsized reward attached to it. the more money you can throw at the payroll of people who know stuff that you don't know, the better off you are.

Nick Berry (01:17)

is a small business operations expert. She's a founder of Bell Rock and a behind the scenes weapon for over 300 business leaders for the last 25 years. What does it really take to build a business that runs without you? Can you actually be a founder, turnover leadership of the business and still be an individual contributor? the right hires, killer systems, just letting it go at the right moment?

Today, Tara and I unpack what separates the businesses that actually scale from the ones that stall out.

You can expect to learn how to hand off leadership without burning the house down. What most owners are going to get wrong about overhead, the best and the worst ways to transition out of the founder's seat. Her take on building a management training program that actually sticks. How to spot operational blind spots before they sink you. What actually matters more, industry experience or proven

whether you can actually step back and still keep control, and the rules of engagement that Tera swears by when it comes to leadership handovers. Let's get into it.

Tara Landes (02:12)

so our business has gone through a lot of different iterations. And when the pandemic hit about half of our business, first of all, everything we did was in person and in person live. So we would be at client sites. Like we didn't have an office. We had this small little one room in a packaged office and we kept that going in case we had team meetings. We were probably there an hour a week.

everything we did was at client site. And when the pandemic hit, March 15th was the day in Canada that was sort of the day everyone got sent home and that was that. And I told my kids, I guess you have a stay at home mom now because everything that we do has to be done in person life. And I really truly believed that. Like I knew it in my soul that you couldn't do what we were doing if you were through a screen.

Except that we had these classes that were halfway through. And so we do a management training program. It's a class once a month. And then we do coaching. Before the pandemic, that coaching all happened. Like we drive around and have one-on-one meetings with people. Well, we had to finish the classes. So we had to redesign the whole program around online delivery. So live, synchronous online delivery, which meant changing

everything and learning all new tools and making it interesting and interactive. And it went from being like running workshops to being almost like a TV personality, like trying to bring things. It was just, it was a different delivery completely. We went from driving around the city to all of these clients to just sitting in this box, you know, in our rooms. I saved about three hours a day by not driving around three hours a day.

I saved.

I started consulting at the turn of the century, back when I would send in progress reports by plugging my laptop into the fax machine so I could use dial-up. And I was doing small business consulting. So I was working with little companies throughout North America, typically, you know, 20 people, 50 people, and helping them with foundational business systems. So things like job descriptions and organizational structure and process flow and

dashboards, that kind of stuff. We weren't experts in any industry. We were just experts in these business systems. And so we would implement them. We would actually embed a consultant live in their office, sitting at a desk, helping the managers put these things in place. And once they were in place, we would leave. We worked on a defined project basis.

In 2008, I came to my senses and realized I didn't want to fly all over North America all the time. I wanted to move back to Vancouver, Canada, where I'm from, and just do the work there. But I couldn't find anybody doing that kind of deep implementation work when I got to Vancouver, so I had to start my own company. All I ever really wanted to do is just have my job. But it worked. We got some clients, and I hired some staff, and away we went doing this kind of work we do.

Flash forward, about half of our work now is in facilitating strategic planning and doing those process benchmarkings where we take a look at the systems and processes that the organizations have and see where they need more. But also half of our business is this management training program. And that program came about because as you're sitting in those offices, those client environments, you know, working away on say,

putting together a nice process flow for something. And somebody would come up and say, you know, excuse me, I'm sorry, I don't mean to bother you, but there's this guy over here and he's not doing the thing that I need him to do. And I think I've tried everything. I don't know what to do. Do you have any advice? And so we'd stop what we're doing and turn it all. Well, you know, could try to set the expectation well, maybe they don't understand. You go through all these things and then get back to work. And five minutes later, somebody else will come up. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to bother you, but.

we're hiring and I'm in the third round and I just don't know if this is the right person and do you have any advice on the kind of questions I should ask? Sure, let me help you with that. And so we were getting constantly interrupted from our work with like these foundational kind of management practice questions and we wanted to answer them and we wanted to help. It was just so inefficient. So we created this class that we would run inside those clients.

And we would, you there was a module on setting expectations and delegation and one on motivation and one on how to have difficult conversations. And all of those modules, there'd be, you know, training and workshops and stuff like that. We'd still have the one-on-one conversations. It's just, we'd cover off the basics in a more efficient way. And it worked really well. And we were really happy with it and our clients were really happy with it. But.

they would grow and change and they'd have like one manager join and say, can you just train that guy? And, you know, not only would it be a nightmare for that guy to be drinking from the fire hose of Tara for a week, he's not going to retain anything because it's just too much information. It needs to be spread out and you need to use it. And so we created a public class and we thought, well, we'll just do this once just to catch up all of these stragglers. And we've been running that public class three times a year ever since.

Nick Berry (07:22)

And so.

Tara Landes (07:23)

And as

I mentioned, and we switched to online during COVID, although I absolutely knew that that wasn't possible. And now when people ask us to deliver it privately in their companies, I tell them, yes, we will and we can, it's actually better online. It's actually a better program. It's actually easier to pay attention to it online. You actually get more out of it online. And people are as skeptical as I was.

until they try it.

Nick Berry (07:51)

Yeah, I can imagine. They're like, well, we're different. We're different. It might be for other people. Is that the public course that you said, believe you have one starting, it's open now and it's starting in May?

Tara Landes (07:56)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We have one that started in May and we have another one starting in September and that's how it works. We do January, May, September every year and it runs for eight

Nick Berry (08:14)

Okay.

tell me about these different chapters of Bell Rock and the history.

Tara Landes (08:19)

Yeah, well, I mean, the first chapter really is more personal with me. I did an MBA. I went to a fairly well-known school. I was very young. The people in my class were really experienced and knowledgeable and impressive people. And I was a little intimidated. And when it was time to graduate, I was really there to hide out, you know, because that's a great place to look like you're being productive. And I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I

needed a job and so I ended up taking a job with a small business consulting firm. I thought it'd a great, like a paid internship, right? I'd worked there for a year or two, get to see all the different jobs that are out there. I knew I didn't wanna do big corporate work because I don't do well in those kinds of environments, that part I knew. And so it turned out though that, you know, I really liked the job I was doing. I really liked going in, doing a defined project,

making things demonstrably better for the people who were there in ways that for me were pretty easy, but for them, it was kind of revolutionary. Really simple things like small, big, small changes that have outsized impact and then leaving. And actually my favorite thing became coming back a year later and seeing, you know, if we went from here to here,

that the improvement that they had after we left was so tremendous. And I found that really rewarding and addictive. And I just loved seeing these people succeed and get whatever it was that they wanted. And it was small business. So it's not like they wanted, and now we're going to put people on Mars. Not that there's anything wrong with those dreams as well, but often what they really wanted, you'd work with a business leader and he's like,

I just want to take a week of vacation without having to look at my phone the whole time. I just want a weekend where I can focus on my family.

Nick Berry (10:13)

I

Tara Landes (10:14)

So it was very rewarding work and I loved it, but it was taking me away from my family and it was taking me. So when I had my first child, that's when I decided, okay, I can't be flying all over the place helping these people. I, you know, I got to take care of my kid because it's really frowned upon when you leave them unattended for a week at a time when they're babies. So ⁓ yeah, that's.

Nick Berry (10:31)

I really got it.

Tara Landes (10:34)

hot tip for your audience there, don't do that. And so I just wanted to do local work for a while. And so I started my own business there. And in doing that, it's also very challenging, because I didn't have a professional network where I wanted to start. And so there I was trying to sell this consulting work to companies that really didn't even think that they were big enough to have a consultant, first of all. And

Nick Berry (10:36)

Yeah.

Tara Landes (10:58)

really believed that what consultants do for a living is give you a slide deck that you're then supposed to leave on a shelf somewhere. mean, like literally had no idea of the value that could possibly be unlocked. In fact, we're aggressively against having somebody come into their organization. And so it was really challenging to find a way to break that, break that open ⁓ in the market that I was in. So that, that was my first big challenge, just trying to get one

Nick Berry (11:22)

Mm-hmm.

Tara Landes (11:28)

project.

Nick Berry (11:29)

And so then I think if I, if I understood correctly, there is this transformation, maybe seven years in, is that right? Do I have my numbers right?

Tara Landes (11:38)

Well, that was so in 2008, that's where I started this and had to get that first client. And then there was another transfer. So I got one, I got two, we got a number of them, things started to grow. But I was also hiring a lot of juniors and trying to train them up to be consultants, know, leverage is how you make money in this kind of business. And, and that just didn't, it didn't work. It didn't make sense. I was hiring too many junior people who it turns out

weren't like me and didn't come into this and then fall in love with it. They came into it. They saw it as a paid internship for a couple of years to get to see what they might want to do for a living. And then they would leave. And that was really expensive to pay people, to train them up so that just when they're getting good, I lose them. And so then another transformation occurred in the business where we sort of stopped doing that. And we just hired more experienced people. They were still employees.

but they were able to sort of work under less supervision and they required less training. And now we're coming to another place, I think, with AI, where I'm really not sure what's going to happen because there is absolutely no place really for these junior consultants at all anymore. AI does all that work for us. And as new as it is, we've already eliminated so much of that work and it's getting done faster.

cheaper, better, you know, all the things. But I'm not sure how we're going to develop new people with that when you can't bring someone in at the ground floor. It's a it's a conundrum.

Nick Berry (13:10)

Yeah. And can you imagine even having that question thrown at you when you started this business? Like, I would not have thought that we would ever be considering these things.

Tara Landes (13:16)

No.

No, it's wild. It's wild. Then my kids go to university in September and I'm just like, I don't know, study whatever you want. Cause who knows what the world's going to look

Nick Berry (13:29)

So then now getting closer to current, then you've had another major change for you in your role.

Tara Landes (13:37)

Yeah, well, I just didn't want to run the business. I never wanted to run the business. I started the company so that I could get the job that I wanted. The job that I wanted wasn't there, so I had to invent it and I had to put it in a company. And then I needed support around that company, but I never wanted to run the company. I wanted to do those projects. So eventually I was able to find somebody who, like me, sort of came in with not as much experience, but really loved the work.

And fortunately, he also wanted to run a company. And so I was able to, in the last couple of years, hand off that president title. And now I'm just a consultant and the founder. And I do a lot of the instructing and I do a lot of the work, but really my job is as an individual contributor, not as the leader of the business. And I'm so much happier there. Yeah.

Nick Berry (14:26)

Yeah. I mean, so

congratulations on that aspect of it. Kudos. Cause I don't know that it works out like that for everybody. is that something, were you actively searching for someone to fill that role or did it just kind of.

Tara Landes (14:33)

No, it's hard.

I was not actively searching in the sense that I didn't think I could hire it from outside. So I didn't think I could find a person to run. I mean, it's a weird thing, right? I want it run the way I want it run, but I don't want to run it. Right? And so I didn't know how I could find that by a search. I'd hired a few experienced people, but things always seem to like veer off in a way that I just wasn't so happy with. And I also,

really recognize that you have to be overly subservient when you hand off the leadership. Like you really have to let people put their own stamp on it, make it their own thing. So I couldn't figure out how I was going to do that with somebody I'd never worked with before.

Nick Berry (15:27)

So how have you done it?

Tara Landes (15:29)

Well, so I hired someone and trained him up. So he was with me for eight years before he took over. So it was a long process.

Nick Berry (15:37)

Okay. So how long did it take you to figure out that like maybe this could be the one?

Tara Landes (15:42)

I knew when we hired him, but it took about five years for me to think he was ready. And then it took another three years for him to agree. Yeah, not the best business model.

Nick Berry (15:54)

Okay. I mean, don't rush into

anything. I mean, all jokes aside, I think that's fantastic because patience was demonstrated. It always gets rushed from what I've seen.

Tara Landes (16:05)

Yeah. Yeah,

it's well, and I, you know, I had some false starts as well and I had some different people along the way that I thought maybe and then it just didn't work out. And so, but we're pretty happy with where we are today. Yeah.

Nick Berry (16:18)

That's great. Good for you.

So what is it? What's it like? How do you make it work? If you are, you're an individual contributor, but you really, I mean, you have control or at least perceived like you're, you're.

Tara Landes (16:27)

Yes.

Mm-hmm. No, I, yeah,

like I have the majority of the shares. So I have ultimate control. But that's kind of what I'm saying is you really do have to kind of be overly deferential. And I think so we can, I can have a quiet word. can certainly express my opinion just as any individual contributor can express their opinion and have a quiet word. But at the end of the day, I do have to give up a lot of control and trust. Like I have to trust that

the right decisions are going to be made. And even if they're not the decisions I would make. And the only time I'd really step in on that is if I saw a significant financial risk that was coming or a significant reputational risk. ⁓ There are certain.

Nick Berry (17:15)

It's something that's probably

big enough deal that it happens. It doesn't happen in the day to day anyway, right?

Tara Landes (17:20)

It

doesn't happen in the day to day. And we have very, very set core values. core values are, you know, the behaviors that we will accept or not accept. And we have a purpose statement and we have a big hairy audacious goal. We have brand promises and those things I won't compromise on. so leadership knows they have to operate within those boundaries. So for example, one of the things that's really important to me

is that everybody who works here is an employee. And that's really important to me because I would always rather somebody leave a project if they don't think they can do the job well versus worrying that they're not going to get that money. Like we can afford, we have a buffer and we can afford to walk away from work. But when people are in this kind of role are paid by the project or by the hour, they have an incentive to

do maybe the wrong things sometime to try and keep the project. I never want that to happen. And so one of the stop gaps is we have all employees. So they know just because they lose a project, that doesn't mean they lose their job. Another thing we have is, and we may not have this forever, but the way our bonus structure works is we split it evenly. There's a pot and we split it evenly. Because I never want somebody on the team

I never want to think, oh, that person didn't really deserve it. Because if they didn't really deserve it, they shouldn't be on the team. And so, you know, we should all be contributing equally. And so we should all be rewarded equally. So there are a bunch of rules of engagement that we've got in place that helped me to be confident that the decisions that are being made will be made within those guidelines and therefore will be okay.

Nick Berry (19:06)

I keep coming back to like the internal optics, like what does staff members think? How do they perceive

that to me would be a big challenge,

Tara Landes (19:14)

it is a big challenge and I think it's a big challenge but it's not an unusual challenge. So where you see this a lot is in family business where maybe the person who started the business and maybe the primary shareholder and considered the leader but the kid has taken over now. And so you actually see this a lot in business. It's not that unusual. And the way you handle it is by having in those cases,

you have family meetings and you have ways to split out what the family is from what the business is. And people have job descriptions and there are expectations of performance around those job descriptions. Well, so there are expectations of performance around my job and I have to be held accountable to those expectations. And there are expectations for the president and they have to be held accountable. And you're right, it's a bit of a leapfrog, right? Like I'm at the top evaluating the president who's evaluating me.

but we have enough trust and respect that it can work for us. And then for the staff, they don't need to know about that top one, that ownership one that's evaluating the president. I mean, they know about it. I don't mean it should be hidden, but they need to understand that that leader, that's their job, not mine. I'm happy to give advice or to talk to people, but don't follow what I'm saying. You got to follow what they're saying because they're the boss. And it's incumbent upon me

to reinforce that in the same way it's incumbent upon in that family business, you know, that person, that leader who's standing in the background, that founder, they have to let them go. They have to let them try it on their own.

Nick Berry (20:48)

And then the first time that there's a situation where it's uncomfortable, The rules that we put on paper are now going to be challenged. see how do we all leave this conversation and then how do we show up the next day? Does everybody show up the next day? And how does that look? And that's probably when you get the buy-in.

Tara Landes (20:54)

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And I got to say,

like, I did not do this very well. The first strategic planning session that we had when I wasn't the leader anymore, I behaved like a three-year-old. And I was just, I was, was frustrated that I wasn't getting my way. I was frustrated with so many things. I was just, I, I like just completely threw that meeting off. It was, it's embarrassing, frankly, how I behaved.

Nick Berry (21:32)

Yeah.

Tara Landes (21:33)

But

the next day, upon reflection, I apologized to everyone who was there. I knew what I had done. I knew the way I behaved might have been leading me towards some short-term goals, but definitely not toward my long-term goals. And so really took a step back and reflected and made a lot of changes in myself after having done that embarrassing thing.

Nick Berry (21:58)

Yeah, I've done some things, been through a couple of things kind of like that where, you you, you can kind of anticipate going in, it's going to be uncomfortable, but it's just, it's very different. Like you, you've kind of been operating in this construct where, yeah, like some of these patterns are just, you can't just like flip them off. Maybe you can, I don't know, I couldn't. ⁓

Tara Landes (22:12)

Yeah.

That's right. No,

you can't flip off a habit. Somebody has to... And actually one of the things we did is I set up, we call it a verbal upfront contract, but basically I said, if I do that again, will someone please say something? Like don't let me ruin a whole meeting. Like point it out. If you point it out, I can do something about it because in that moment, I just wasn't thinking properly.

Nick Berry (22:43)

Yeah. it can be so complex. mean, even that construct that I'm talking about, like they're, they're operating by two. So we might've changed our titles, but you're still you in my mind. And we've acted the way we've acted with one another for a long time. It's hard to look at.

Tara Landes (22:51)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep, really hard. Yeah,

and so you have to give it time and you have to really, really search out for the wins. Like when it did work, you have to celebrate that in an outsized way to reinforce that behavior. And even after that meeting when it had gone so badly, but then came back and said, okay, let's not do that again. Even that, that's a win. That's a win because we figured it out.

Nick Berry (23:11)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tara Landes (23:26)

I wish I'd figured it out in real time. That would have been great. But even if you figure it out after the fact, that's a win. That's a win. At least it wasn't just happening. And so we have to celebrate that kind of conscious incompetence, that ability to see after the fact. That's a celebration. That's not a loss. That's a victory.

Nick Berry (23:42)

Okay.

Yeah, could, I could totally see being one of the people in the room for during that meeting. And then all of the things that I had bought into leading up to this now I'm like, okay, this might not go as well as I'd hoped. And then the next day, up until you, you know, come in and say, Hey, until you owned it, I'm still probably on shaky ground, but then I could be bought in here. Like, okay, you know, she sees it. I think we.

I can give this a shot. think, but yeah, man, that's a roller coaster for everybody. Yeah. But coming kudos to you guys. I mean, you stuck with it. and obviously you said you're happier now than you've been, right?

Tara Landes (24:18)

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard.

Yeah, it's great. I'm very happy. I'm very happy that I started with the end in mind and kept focus on that end, even though it took a long time.

Nick Berry (24:35)

Mm-hmm.

Do you get to use your story or any of this story in your training?

Tara Landes (24:41)

Yeah, can. mean, so the training is one thing, but what I use it more for is coaching. So with our training, we really want the training to stick. And so every class also has one on one coaching involved with it. And so this story comes out particularly when we're training leaders and I'm coaching, if I'm the coach and I'm coaching about, you know, how things worked or for me or or if they're I'm working with their second in command or

their kid in their family business who's coming along. We can talk a lot about the lessons that were hard won in our own company.

Nick Berry (25:13)

Yeah,

I can imagine. mean, to me, having been through a few things, I think it would be a really good way to reinforce the impact of some of the resources like role clarity, organizational chart, like things that we take for granted. But you guys, the rules of engagement are what I would say has probably helped you navigate your way through all of this. And you need all of those, like those are the artifacts that

Tara Landes (25:30)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Berry (25:40)

make up the rules of engagement, right?

Tara Landes (25:42)

Yeah, absolutely. that's, mean, and that's what we implement in our clients. Like we put in that strategic framework with the core values and the purpose. We help them uncover those things and we help them put together dashboards for measurement. So that I don't actually have to be in every single project to be comfortable that things are going the way they should. I can look at the report and the report tells me whether things are going the way they should. Now,

it takes a long time to figure out what those right metrics are. Like this isn't easy to do. But once you figured it out, then it's fantastic because now you don't have to be in all the weeds. You can just trust that someone else is in all the weeds and you can look at the indicators to see if it's working or not.

Nick Berry (26:30)

I've listened to a little bit of your podcast and, do you have an episode over on dashboards?

Tara Landes (26:35)

I don't think we have an episode on dashboards, But we do have one on why you should hire a controller, which is one of the most common recommendations that I have the most difficult time convincing people to do.

Nick Berry (26:51)

Why is it such a challenge to convince them?

Tara Landes (26:54)

Because, in general, in smaller companies, administration is an expense to them. It's a necessary evil. And if they didn't learn business, if they became a business owner because they were really good at that thing that they did, then they think that the numbers side of it is just like necessary for taxes.

They haven't necessarily learned about managerial accounting and managerial reporting. They don't know where that value is. And it's hard to explain except that you got into business to make money. So if you're in business to make money, probably the person that's most important is the one that's keeping an eye on the money. And you want them to be able to find the little places where things can be more efficient or more effective.

or where an investment would have an outsized reward attached to it. But they don't see it that way. They see them as like just a bookkeeper data entry, not with the not that there's anything wrong with those people, but the more the more money you can throw at the payroll of people who know stuff that you don't know, the better off you are.

Nick Berry (28:08)

Yeah, that makes sense. But I understand that perspective of the founder who, like if it's not production, it's overhead and getting them to see things a little bit differently.

Tara Landes (28:17)

Yeah!

Well, I just sort of that idea that overhead is bad.

Overhead isn't bad. It's a necessary part of the business. But it's easier for an owner to figure out like, okay, I could buy this piece of equipment and I'm gonna run it at this rate and it's gonna bring in this much revenue or I'm gonna have this human over here that's gonna bring in no revenue directly but is gonna make sure that that piece of equipment is running more frequently.

That leap is hard.

Nick Berry (28:51)

so what is the future look like for Bell Rock?

Tara Landes (28:55)

Well, I'm hoping we get to keep doing what we're doing, although I mean the world these days, who knows? But we really enjoy working with companies and really enjoy seeing humans reach that full potential. Seeing them really get what they have worked hard and deserve to get, whether it's the person on the shop floor that just really wants to be able to just be amazing technically at what they do to the leadership of the organization who

wants to build something successful and everything in between. Those are the rewards that get us up in the morning.

Nick Berry (29:27)

You're trying to help people unlock, kind of have that same unlock that you have achieved, right?

Tara Landes (29:32)

Yeah,

exactly, exactly.

Nick Berry (29:35)

I

you, so the, audience is, small businesses. I think it's over 10 employees, right? But regardless of industry.

Tara Landes (29:42)

Yeah, typically over

10. Yeah, we're industry agnostic. If they're looking for help with things that are specific to their industry, we're not the right people to call. That said, we've worked in pretty much every industry from DNA manufacturing to funeral homes and everything in between. But most small businesses know their industry. That's not what they're struggling with. What they're struggling with are more internal operational challenges.

because they may not have seen things done in different ways. And because we work in every industry, we have a very broad perspective on what they can do and how things can work for them.

Nick Berry (30:19)

What are the signs that they should look for? Like if you're dealing with this or this or this, we should talk.

Tara Landes (30:25)

Yeah,

if you're dealing with something that's been driving you crazy for more than a few months, we should talk. I mean, it's that simple. If they just can't see how they're going to get through this, then a fresh perspective, having a conversation for 30 minutes to unpack that issue and see what's possible is a really, really good investment. And it doesn't cost anything but time.

The way I started this business in Vancouver when I was just trying to get going is I would do mystery shopping at trade shows. And we're not particularly sales consultants, but I would go to trade shows and I had 20 best practices I was looking for. 10 of them, which was like the visual representation and 10 of them, which was the interaction. And I would mystery shop these booths and then I would call up the leaders and I would say, can I come and give you this free report? I was there anyway I was doing it.

Some very rarely, but sometimes they said yes. And when I went in and gave them to give them the results, you'd think I thought that they would actually want to know how they did. But what actually happened is I would just explain the best practice. You know, when someone walks up to the booth, for example, you should greet them actively. Don't ignore them. Say hello. And there are better greetings than hello or can I help you? Like what have you seen that you like at the show or?

Have you worked with us before? And so I would explain these best practices and they would just be sitting there going, yeah, I know my people didn't do that. yeah, I know my people didn't do that. And so all I had to do is tell them what the practices were. I don't even have to tell them how they did. And they'd be like, do you train this stuff? What else do you know? How can you help us? And it was all just based on this mystery shopping, but I didn't even actually have to mystery shop. I just had to tell them a few.

Nick Berry (32:04)

Thank you.

Tara Landes (32:11)

best practices and it was like an unlock where they're like, okay, what else can we do here?

Nick Berry (32:16)

That's great idea. And I want to add something to, you mentioned something's been driving you crazy for a few months, having that conversation. Have the conversation before you start to accept that this problem is how things have to be. Everything doesn't have to always be hard. doesn't have to be.

Tara Landes (32:18)

you

Yes.

Nick Berry (32:34)

constant state of firefighting or whatever you do, how you would describe it. Have a conversation.

Tara Landes (32:38)

Absolutely.

Absolutely. And keep in mind, especially in smaller business, there isn't a lot you're going to come up against that somebody else hasn't already solved. So you actually usually don't have to solve these problems. You have to find the solution. It's a completely different mindset.

Nick Berry (32:56)

Yep.

somebody probably knows how to fix it. So just find that person.

Tara Landes (33:01)

Yep. Yep.

Nick Berry (33:02)

Tara, this is fantastic.

thank you. I appreciate you sharing your story and your information. Congratulations on getting yourself into the role that you were looking for, like you'd planned for, or I guess dreamt of from the beginning.

Tara Landes (33:15)

Thank you.

Nick Berry (33:16)

you.

Tara Landes (33:16)

Thank

you, Nick.