[00:01] Katie: Welcome to the Focus B show where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:32] Katie: Welcome to another episode of the Focus B show. I'm very excited to be here today with Jackie Hermes. Jackie is a growth advisor, speaker, investor and founder of CEO of Xlet. Thank you so much for joining the show today, Jackie.
[00:47] Jackie: Yes, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:50] Katie: What inspired you to start Xlet? Where did this come from? Tell us a bit about your journey.
[00:56] Jackie: Yeah, I started the company. We're approaching eight years, which is pretty crazy, so it'll be eight years next month. I was leaving a full time job and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do. I think that's the story of a lot of consulting companies. Right. And I started consulting honestly, I was looking for flexibility. I had a baby and I was just looking to be home more and looking for more flexibility. I didn't have any clue that I was going to start an actual company. But here we are almost eight years later. We have a team of 20 or so and we're hiring more right now. So we're in growth mode. It's pretty fun.
[01:36] Katie: That's amazing. I love how it was basically a lifestyle decision that led you to sort of start your own business. Really? Yeah.
[01:44] Jackie: Well, and then I've kind of worked myself back into a job. Right. Because when you build a company and you have people that depend on you for payroll, it's not really an option to just run a lifestyle business at this point anymore. And it's not what I want anyway, so it aligns perfectly.
[02:03] Katie: I know. I think it's amusing because I think a lot of people are attracted by this idea of flexibility and freedom and you can have this especially in different moments of your business, but it's more that you're in control and you're the decision maker. I feel that's more the relevancy here compared to actually just being able to leave when you like. I think people that have their own business have less holidays than employees. I mean, I guess it depends. Maybe in the US.
[02:29] Jackie: It's different. Yeah, no, it's the mean. I think the US. In general has less days off and less holidays and even less when you run a business. I think when you get to a certain point where the business is more running itself, you can take some time off. I have recently been able to actually take time off, but I'm kind of always working while I'm gone anyway.
[02:53] Katie: It's very common. I think business owners, especially, like you said, if people are dependent on you for their payroll and they always have questions and come to you. I'm wondering what sort of were your main struggles in this journey? So eight years that you've been running your own business, what have you struggled most with?
[03:10] Jackie: Sorry, I'm just adjusting my camera here. We never took any funding, right. So it is very difficult to start a business with no money, really. This is my second company. I had run a vegan food company before this, which it was really small, but I made enough money to get started. But it wasn't like the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that some people start a business with. It's definitely easier to start a company in the service industry. Right, so, like selling business services without funding. But there are a lot of times where I had to pay my people and not pay myself. There were a lot of times where I was struggling to make ends meet. So I would say that's probably the biggest struggle of bootstrapping in general, of not taking any funding.
[03:59] Katie: Yes, that's true. And why did you make that decision? Why wasn't funding sort of considered or why, in the end, did you prefer to sort of bootstrap your way?
[04:07] Jackie: Most companies that are service businesses I have seen not take funding and then it's just a really slow road to growth. And we've had a really slow road to growth. We've really only started growing in the last two or three years and before that was kind of a struggle. And it's funny, because once you actually start growing is when people who could invest start reaching out to you. And by that time, we didn't need the money. So I guess it's not really a conscious decision that I made. But I've also always been very stubborn. I don't really want investors telling me what to do. I want to make decisions based on the health of the company and the good of my employees, not based on the revenue numbers that an investor wants to see.
[04:49] Katie: Yes, that makes absolute perfect sense. I love what you say about this, because I think it's a question that some people may have, but I'm with you on this. I think in any case, any company, I mean, I'm a one woman show, but even if I had 50 employees, I don't think I would like to have investors. I think it's nice to do it the bootstrap organic way with the struggles. But I guess that's a question of mindset. Speaking of mindset, one of the questions that sort of comes to my mind when I think of your journey in the last eight years, what do you feel was a huge sort of mindset shift that had a huge impact on your life, where you just started to think differently about the way you run your business, about different things that you do? And that had a huge shift and huge impact on the business.
[05:30] Jackie: Yeah, I think that I've always been pretty comfortable with a good amount of risk. Right. So to start a business, you have to be fairly comfortable with risk. But I think I've gotten more and more comfortable with it. So, for example, hiring a sales team that changed our growth pattern immensely because I wasn't in charge of sales as a part time job anymore. Now we have people actually selling the company. So that has grown us a lot faster. And frankly, that's probably the only reason that we got through when COVID started and we lost a bunch of business. So I would say that's a big mindset shift. A lot of entrepreneurs have this idea that they want to do everything themselves. It's necessary when you don't have money, but it's also like outsourcing the things that you aren't good at is going to be one of the fastest ways to grow. And to do that you have to realize what you're not good at and realize that you need help. And I think a lot of us entrepreneurs just aren't very good at that.
[06:27] Katie: You mean acknowledging our weaknesses and being willing to have other people to outsource them to?
[06:34] Jackie: Exactly.
[06:36] Katie: Nice. I love this idea of a sales team. I've actually thought about this. I think my next step will be to hire at least one full time salesperson because I love the coaching workshop, podcast aspect of things. And yes, I agree with you. I think probably having a sales team is probably quite a mindset shift. What else do you feel in terms of maybe confidence? I know that a lot of women founders sometimes struggle in terms of confidence or imposter syndrome. Did you have any sort of mindset shifts in this direction?
[07:04] Jackie: Yeah, I mean, I've always been a confident person and at the same time I've always suffered from impostor syndrome. I think I actually had just shot a video on this for LinkedIn that imposter syndrome is completely normal. I think everyone feels it and the people who say they don't just aren't really admitting it. So to me, again, I think that's something that I will always have, but it's what you do to overcome it. Like trying to stop comparing yourself, talking to yourself in a nicer way. And I think just doing some of that mental and mindset work, I started doing that maybe three years ago and that's made all the difference where before I was just kind of like flying by the seat of my pants. And whatever my mindset was that day when I woke up kind of guided my day and now I'm being a lot more purposeful and specific about it. That was a big lesson.
[07:56] Katie: That's amazing. I love that you say it's perfectly normal. So for all the listeners that feel they have impostor syndrome, it's perfectly normal. Also, my business mentor told me that if we don't have it, it's a sign that we're not challenging ourselves enough and that every time we do a huge growth step, whether it's financial increase, whether it's the type of clients we work with, whatever it is, we basically feel impostor syndrome. So she said it's a good sign.
[08:22] Jackie: I've never heard it put that way, but I totally agree.
[08:25] Katie: Nice. I'll tell her. So I love this fact. Can you tell us a bit more, sort of what thoughts you were having? The last part you just said, where you said you were actually consciously reflecting on the thoughts you had in the morning and shifting that, can you sort of describe a bit the detailed process? So let's say someone's struggling with imposter syndrome, they hear this episode, they think, fantastic, I want to basically rewire my brain so it doesn't bother me or sabotages my success. What sort of thought patterns, what sort of things can I do to overcome this or to work on this?
[08:59] Jackie: Yeah, I've learned that the key is to feed your brain the right information, because whatever you surround yourself with and whatever you take in is what you believe. Right? So if you surround yourself with a circle of really negative people, or your family is very negative, or very down on whatever you're doing, or your friends are constantly complaining I've had friends like that in the past. And then you're looking at especially in the US, the news has been pretty much pure doom and gloom for the last four and a half years. Right. It's been really rough. And if that's the stuff that you're taking in, you are bound to be down every single day. So I just put some kind of guardrails and some boundaries in place for myself, where instead of listening to the news, I'm listening to podcasts about people talking about their mindset and how they're growing a business. And I find that if you start your day with positivity, like, I have some friends that I'll have coffee with once or twice a month, like virtual coffee, that they just start my day in such a positive way, it's almost hard not to have a good day. So you have to set yourself up and you have to frame it that way. And I've massively. One, I've audited my circle of friends a million times, and unfortunately, sometimes you have to part ways with people that are just not in the place or the mindset to be supportive and to be positive, because the negativity can really bring you down. And then two, I hardly even listen to the news. I want to be educated on it. And so I read the highlights. This website, The Week, puts out a newsletter every day. That's ten things you need to know today. And it's one paragraph about the ten most important things that happened in the world the day before. I will read that and that's all I will take in. I don't watch the news, I don't read it all the time because it's just stressful. And honestly, I'm focusing on what I can control in my own periphery. Right. The things that are around me instead of things that I have no control over that can kind of take you down.
[11:08] Katie: Amazing. I love what you said about focusing on what you can control and also the sort of compromise that you found regarding the news. This is a very common struggle for people who are used to watching the news and then realize the impact it has on their well being. But they can find it hard to be cut off because they still want to know what's going on, they still want to be educated. So I love how you found a compromise on this. Also really nice what you're saying about basically being consciously aware on how you manage your energy, how people impact it, how what you read, it's, what you read, what you listen to, what you see. All of this hugely impacts our well being and our thoughts and our emotions in terms of energy. Do you have other practices? I love the one you mentioned with the virtual coffees with some friends. Do you have other practices that help you to increase your energy level or sustain a high energy level?
[11:56] Jackie: Yeah, energy is something that I've really been focusing on lately because I found that some days if I'm just tired enough, I can waste 2 hours sitting at my computer, like trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing and just responding to emails and not really making any impact. I did that yesterday and I have this journal actually it's sitting right next to me, the High Performance Planner and it's The High Performance Habits by Brendan Birch, I think his name is. Yep, this is the planner that is like the companion to that book. And every day it makes you focus on what you are doing that day. And then at the end of the day it's what you could have done better. And I kept noticing that the things that I kept saying I could do better was managing my energy. And if I am feeling stuff, just getting up and walking away, which I'm still clearly working on doing because I just did that yesterday. But as far as energy management, I would say working out every single day. If I skip a day now, I kind of feel like garbage. And it doesn't have to be a hard workout, but at least I'm doing something every single day. And then I begin to caffeinating through certain times. So I'll take my pre workout in the morning if I'm doing a hard workout and then when one or 02:00 P.m. Hits, then I will drink a little bit of caffeine again to kind of push through that, whatever. There's a book called Make Time by John Soraski that's I finished it two.
[13:26] Katie: Days ago and had a video. I literally finished it two days ago. But they do talk about caffeine, it's true.
[13:33] Jackie: And they talk about lots of different strategies. That book is so cool because it's not like here is a system that you must implement step by step. It's like here are all of these ideas find what works for you, so it's just much more attainable. Actually, John Sarawski moved to Milwaukee a few years ago and he and I have become friends. So I think that's pretty cool. And I love that book. I'm obsessed with it.
[13:54] Katie: That is so cool. It's a great book and it has so many fun drawings and yes, it was really good fun to read. So it's so funny that you mentioned it and I literally just read it and I read so many productivity books and it was just like, I haven't read this one and I found it in the library. Anyway. Random coincidence. Nice. Yes. So in terms of energy management, while we're on the topic, so when you notice, for example, that you've spent a couple of hours being unproductive, what do you do to sort of shift that and to pivot your energy so at least you get the most out of the rest of the day?
[14:24] Jackie: Yeah, it depends how I'm feeling that day. Sometimes I get headaches. Fairly often if I have a headache, I have to go lay down. There's no amount of caffeine or anything else that will get rid of it. So yesterday I took a 20 minutes nap. I have perfected the midday nap and I encourage my employees to do the same thing because if you're not productive, it's not worthwhile to just sit and stare at your computer. Otherwise, when it's nice out here, I go for walks. I haven't been going for walks quite as much lately because it's been so cold. But even going to work out, like I'll get on my peloton for ten or 15 minutes. That can change your mindset too. I was super, just cranky and not feeling energized on Sunday, and I played a game with my kids and that changed my mindset. I guess it kind of depends where I am and what I feel like doing, but I think there's a phrase that says change your state to change your state of mind. So you can't just sit and do the exact same thing. Like if I'm sitting at this desk and I'm feeling crabby and tired, continuing to sit at the desk is not going to get rid of the crabiness and tiredness. So you have to change your state, be it by going for a walk, getting some exercise, or taking a nap or whatever it is. My husband does not nap and he's always like, oh, I don't even know how you do that. I can lay down for 22 minutes and sleep for 20 of it and I am a different person when I wake up. So I love it.
[15:50] Katie: Amazing, the wonderful power of power naps. I've never been able to do that. But that's nice. It's nice that some people can do it. Parts of the world really nice. And do you have specific boundaries? Because you were mentioning Sundays, you have boundaries in terms of time that you work so do you say, for example, I'll finish at six, seven, eight, or I won't work Sundays? Or do you manage sort of your boundaries that way? Or do you have another system to manage your time?
[16:17] Jackie: I don't have those boundaries. I guess when I put a rule on myself, I immediately want to break it, right? Being on a diet, which dieting is terrible for you anyway, but anytime I've been like, okay, I am not going to eat X or Y, then I immediately want to go and do that. So I found that restricting myself is just like I have this habit of bucking the system so I don't restrict to the hours that I work. My life just kind of flows together, right? So it's like my kids have been home. They're just starting to go back to school. They've been home for almost a year now. And so they're in my office all the time. They need lunch in the middle of the day. They're like ******** around and punching each other outside my office door. I don't know. They're crazy. And there's three of them, and they need me all the time during the day, right? So I'm not getting the kind of focused work that I used to get during the day. But that means if they are having their screen time, they get an hour of screen time every night. Then I will sit down and work during that time. Or sometimes I'll work at night. Or if we're just sitting around on the weekend, I'll work for a few hours. Then it's really whatever feels right to me and whatever I need to do to set myself up for the next day. So I typically do work on Sundays because I like to spend even just an hour or two, like setting up my whole week, making sure I have my lists every day of what I want to do, making sure my inboxes are clear and all of that good stuff. So I think that work life balance is kind of a croc, honestly. And I think that it's just about letting your life flow together in whatever way works the most for you. I've had employees that have worked 45 hours and they're exhausted. And then I have some people that consistently want to put in more or less, right? Like our work week is 38 hours, and some people are getting every single thing done in that 38 hours, and some people want to put in more. So I think it's kind of a personal thing.
[18:20] Katie: And you don't find then that with your sort of work flowing in between things. You also mentioned earlier that it was sometimes hard for you to switch off, or you never really fully switched off, but maybe you don't feel the need. Do you sometimes feel the need to be switched off from your work? Or do you just like it being a part of your sort of everyday life and just fitting it around what you do.
[18:40] Jackie: I've always just liked, again, letting it flow together. I've literally always been like that. It's not even like I started a business and I started working all the time or being a workaholic. It's even when I was in corporate, corporate America, I liked working at night, I liked working on the weekends. I felt like it was just quiet time when there weren't people asking me for stuff or talking to me or whatever it may be. Like when I worked in corporate, I liked going to the office on Sundays because there was no one else there. And also, I mean, I didn't have a family at that time, so it was a lot easier. Now it's not quite the same, but frankly, before COVID my kids were regulars in the office because we would go there and do different things all the time. So I think I'm just trying to show them what it's like to integrate work and life together. I'm not working to fund my life and I'm also not working to get away from or living the weekends to get away from work either.
[19:39] Katie: Nice. I like maybe this sort of integration of work and life is your version of work life balance. And I think especially in today's context with your kids at home, it's great that you have that flexibility and that mindset. Because if you were the sort of person who thought I work these 8 hours and then I'm off, but then during those 8 hours, you actually do have to take lunch breaks and other moments to support your kids, then it wouldn't fit in that structure anyway. So in the end, people like you adapt a lot better, I think, to the current context.
[20:08] Jackie: And I would be mad at my kids every day, honestly. My son maybe walks into my office 30 times a day and if I didn't learn that flexibility, it would be a lot harder to be happy every day. And so it's just kind of been like, let's do the best we can. I mean, no one saw everything that has happened coming. And my kids just started going back to school for four half days a week two weeks ago. So they were home for almost a year. And it's just like I don't know, you kind of got to do what you got to do, right?
[20:43] Katie: Absolutely. It's amazing that someone can run a business and take care of three kids all at the same time. I'm just running a business without the kids and in my own private office. So yes, it's amazing how efficient we can be, I think, when we have that sort of determination and clear way forward.
[21:01] Jackie: Yeah, absolutely.
[21:03] Katie: I'm wondering what advice would you give to yourself? Not regarding this, because this current context was not predictable, but if you were to look back, maybe in the beginning when you started off your own business, now with all the experience you have, what advice would you give yourself that could help?
[21:19] Jackie: Yeah, I would say people always talk about shortcuts like they're a negative thing, but there's a faster way to do everything. And I think that I have always been the kind of person that just is like, I'll figure it out on my own. I've had a business coach for a long time and she's been super helpful, but I think I would have had more of those conversations early to learn from. Like, if there's someone that's ten years ahead of me and they're where I want to be in ten years, then start meeting with them and learning from them and reading. I mean, I wasn't as much of a reader when I got started either, and now I feel like I read at least a book a month. I have a business coach, I have mentors. I learned all of that a few years in and I think I could have gotten started faster and maybe avoided some of the really tough stuff if I had learned some of those lessons early. So that's probably the best advice I would give my former self.
[22:18] Katie: Do you think that would work though? Because with your type of personality, like you described, you'd, like the sort of the persistence and the going through it and bootstrapping it, do you think your former self would have accepted the idea of having mentors and coaches and helping her?
[22:33] Jackie: Probably not, no. But it's a learning process and hey, we're here now, so I'm happy to be here.
[22:40] Katie: I think a lot of the times these types of experience happen to make us realize that we actually need business mentors and coaches and reading. But until you have those, whatever it is, two, three years experience, when you suddenly come to the realization that you need to outsource or that you need a coach or a mentor, then it's more powerful. I think if someone tells you right at the beginning you don't necessarily see the need, what's your thoughts on that? A lot of people have to learn.
[23:06] Jackie: The hard way, and I'm one of them.
[23:09] Katie: I think it is extremely common and a last point, we haven't really gone in this direction, but because you manage a team of 20, what would be your sort of main leadership insights and things that you think help you on a daily basis to lead other people?
[23:26] Jackie: Yeah, I think a lot of leaders have a hard time letting go. And on the flip side, I am not and I never have been a micromanager. And I think that it has really helped me just managing to results and giving my people a lot of leeway and kind of letting them work their own process, make their own decisions and get there. We are a marketing agency, so we track our time. I'm not checking their timesheets. I don't really care when they're working. I just want the results to happen, and that has been extremely helpful. The other thing, too, is in giving feedback, I have learned to ask questions versus talking at people. I think that a lot of times, when you have feedback to give, even if you have something like really tough feedback, you can start by asking questions because odds are that person knows what's happening too, and you can turn it into a conversation instead of you coming down on them. That's helped a lot and something that I'm working into my parenting too. So those are probably the two best leadership tips I have.
[24:41] Katie: That's amazing. I love the asking questions instead of telling. It's the sort of thing that they drill into you when you study coaching that never give advice and only ask questions. After a while, you go back to giving a bit of advice. But it's true, the most efficient way to motivate people and to get things out of people is to ask them questions. It just works better.
[25:01] Jackie: It really does. And frankly, no one likes being told what to do, or no one likes being told they're doing a bad job. And most people that aren't performing up to standards, they're not doing it on purpose. And so asking them questions and helping them arrive at their next steps and how they can improve and encouraging them and helping them along the way is just leaps and bounds better than constantly coming down on people. That's something I'm trying to instill in my company right now, too.
[25:31] Katie: Amazing. So you have sort of coaching pods or different colleagues that are working together and function that way.
[25:37] Jackie: Also, I'm trying to teach my managers to manage a little bit more like that right now. I think a lot of them, they've all come up through the organization, right? And so they all have these strategies and what has worked and being really precise and really thorough with their work and then moving into managing a team is a completely different ballgame, right? Because you go from being really picky and precise and detailed to being more like you have to kind of let go and you have to let other people do the work. So it's an interesting transition, but they're doing well. Amazing.
[26:14] Katie: Yes, it is a totally sort of different perspective to a job. So I like the fact that they sort of have to adapt to this way of functioning.
[26:22] Jackie: Any books that you would OOH, I think we already went through a few of my favorites, so make Time, like I said, and then Sprint is a book also by John Zaretsky, that I love for anyone that's starting a company.
[26:37] Katie: Amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show. Jack. It was wonderful to have you.
[26:41] Jackie: Yes, thank you. I appreciate it.
[26:44] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired. You keep buzzing.