Business Growth: From Chaos to Clarity

Part one of a three-part series to give helpful tips (beyond interior design) to our listeners: Introduction and Business Identity.

Ever felt like your business was a wobbly "block of jello," slipping through your fingers faster than you can grasp it? Escape that chaos with the insights from our special episode where I, alongside my husband and fractional COO, HB, unlock the secrets of business growth and design collaboration. Celebrating both a 30-year marriage and business partnership, we recount the pivotal moments when HB's compassionate intervention helped transform our design firm, Pasley Commercial Interiors. Through defining our unique offerings, streamlining our processes, and prioritizing client satisfaction, we've created a thriving environment not just for us, but for our business-owner clients as well. Learn how to turn your business challenges into opportunities for transformation and success.

In the latter part of our discussion, HB and I venture into the world of crafting a strong business identity and the art of staying focused as an entrepreneur. Drawing from personal inception stories, we illustrate how carving out a singular value proposition can help you resist the myriad distractions vying for your attention. As we share tales of early influences and the relentless drive for business efficiency, you'll discover how to keep your goals front and center, ensuring your efforts are always aligned with growth and value creation. This episode is a treasure trove of strategies for entrepreneurs ready to streamline their journey and enhance the impact they make in their industries.

Randi Lynn Johnson is your host for the Pasley Commercial Interiors podcast conversation on everything that connects business growth and interior design. Each episode features powerful insights from Robin Pasley, NCIDQ, Founder & Design Principal.

We welcome your questions! If you would like to learn more about us or connect for a conversation, please visit www.pasleycommercialinteriors.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Business Growth and Design Collaboration
• 4:22 Crafting Your Business Identity
• 10:24 Creating Greater Business Identity Clarity
• 15:39 Staying Focused on Business Growth

Transcript

Robin: 0:13

And e've been talking for weeks about design and different elements of design and things that we at Passable Commercial Interiors can help business owners with. But we've decided to do a little give back and invite some other business owners in to address other parts of business and how to help your business grow in other directions.

HB: 0:34

Why not invite your husband?

Robin: 0:36

Why not? He's sitting right here. Yes, HB, you're my number one first fan of all business owners.

HB: 0:51

I'm also your man for 30 years. That's right. We just celebrated when did we get married? On election day, november 5th 1994. You remember that period of time that you kept thinking we got married in 93? It went on for like a decade. It's true, the boys were small and your brain had melted, it's totally true. And you kept creating passwords. You know the really bad ones that have your birthday or your kids' names in it. And you'd always put 1993 in. And I would say, why'd you do that? And she goes. She'd say we got married that year.

Robin: 1:17

No 94. She doesn't remember.

HB: 1:19

We did fall in love in 93.

Robin: 1:21

That's true. That's what I remember most importantly.

HB: 1:25

Business growth is what I spend my career working on. Yes, and it has been a privilege at your invitation, I'd like to point out to your listeners.

Robin: 1:33

Yes, that.

HB: 1:34

I have served at your request.

Robin: 1:36

You didn't wake up in over Wheaties. One day demand that you help me with my business.

HB: 1:40

No, Matter of fact. I think a healthy part of our marriage is giving each other the space that we need to become the best version of ourselves. Yeah, so this is your commercial design firm. Interior design firm. Yes, but it's been really fun this year to rather than maybe be an encouragement to you on the side, like out in space, to come in and spend time with Zane, who is also our son. Who's your?

Robin: 2:04

Design assistant.

HB: 2:04

Design assistant number one, like Kato. Yeah, and then Randi Lynn Johnson sitting right here, I can see her. Can she hear us?

Randi Lynn: 2:12

I . can hear you, hi, everybody

HB: 2:20

S o it's really been fun for me. How do you think we should go about our interview so that I want to really help your clients with a few of the things that I do in business, because your clients are business owners?

Robin: 2:31

Yes, well, I thought I would just give a little um for like review why I invited you in when I I'd had my business for about seven or eight years, maybe seven years when I first started complaining to you about how I felt like, as it had grown it, I would describe it as a huge block of jello that I just couldn't get my my hands on it. I couldn't get a grip on what was happening. I mean, there was growth and I was making good money and all of those things were right. It's just that I couldn't. I could not get a handle. I just felt like it was. I was going to be at its mercy all the time and it was in control of me.

Robin: 3:12

And I remember you coming in my office one day and sitting down with so much compassion for the state I was in and we just you just started talking about things that you were already, you know, working on with other people and other clients, and over time, you I began hiring you to do those exact things, and so at the end of last year, I told you I needed you to come in and be more of a fractional C-suite kind of COO in our company where you would help execute those things like being able to identify what we did as different from someone else. Processes, because our industry, where we're dealing in details all the time and that's the stuff that can make or break a project was processes. And most importantly for me was client experience, because I wanted that to be kind of our shining golden part of what we did.

HB: 4:18

Okay, so why don't we break our convo into those three sections? I love those. Okay, I've loved working as a business coach for several years, but I do enjoy fractional work, which to me if you've heard this term before and you're not quite sure how to place it it just means instead of having a consultant or an advisor work for one day or you go see them once a month or whatever that looks like they are able to join your team, sort of as a temporary special member to accomplish some particular work with you, and for me it feels a little bit like a part-time work. But of course I love you full-time, but part-time work to be fractional with you.

HB: 4:55

We did work on those three primary areas and I find that with all of my clients, these three are essential for growth. But part-time work to be fractional with you. We did work on those three primary areas and I find that with all of my clients, these three are essential for growth. So if you're a business owner and, like Robin, sometimes the business has grown to a place where it really feels a little more like chaos than like a clear plan, if you have grown to a place, that you're pretty thankful for but you don't know how to grow to the next place, like you feel like you're plateauing a bit, everybody's skills are starting to tap out. Or if you've got a really smart team but you have trouble getting everybody to work on the same thing at the same time. Or the old dilemma not knowing what to work on next. All of those things are covered by what you just said and I think that would help our listeners to your podcast know is this a worthwhile journey to stay with us for?

Robin: 5:43

a couple of episodes maybe. Yeah, does that seem okay? That?

HB: 5:45

sounds great. So the first topic was I call it business identity.

Robin: 5:51

Yes.

HB: 5:53

It's that conversation I had with you many years ago, when you, like many other geniuses who have expertise right, realize you could do more than one thing. You're really good at it. You could do residencies, you could do offices, you could do restaurants, you could do renovations or you could do new builds. I mean, you were discovering that your skills and natural graces could just get you anywhere. And then you ran into the problem that everybody runs into, which is where Randy Lynn comes in, because she's putting an event together.

HB: 6:24

Right, randy Lynn, and because she's putting an event together, right, randy Lynn? And she goes hey Robin, here's a microphone. Tell us, give us five minutes on what you do.

Robin: 6:32

Right, and what happens? I do everything. Yeah, you start going through a list, right?

HB: 6:41

And almost all the nerds do this. So if you're a nerd and you own a business, I bet you're guilty of this. Somebody asks you what you do and you start listing your capacities, you start listing your skills. It's like reading a menu and I don't know if you've been paying attention, but usually when you do that people's eyes roll back in their head Because nobody wants to hear a list.

Robin: 7:00

Because they just don't know. Where would I associate you on a map? Where would I put you?

HB: 7:07

That's exactly right. So maybe there's a couple of components that I would brainstorm up right now as we're working on this together. How do you start to firm up your business identity so that when somebody hands you the microphone, you can pull off a five-minute awesome and then drop the mic, kaboom at the end? I think the first part is to realize that people actually want to know you, not what you do.

Robin: 7:31

You remember what we started working on first.

HB: 7:34

And now, if I say Robin, what do you do? How do you begin that story?

Robin: 7:37

Well, before I tell you what I do, let me tell you why I do it.

HB: 7:41

Exactly.

Robin: 7:42

Yeah.

HB: 7:42

And then you've got a couple of different stories that explain why you do what you do. I coach all of my clients to learn how to do this. Start telling a story from your childhood or your early years in high school, maybe college at the latest where you discovered something about yourself through a success or a failure, or maybe something that happened with you or to you, your family, an influence of a mentor. Usually there's a human in the story and it was the moment where you realize you had a strength in an area. Sometimes we realize that we love a thing because it causes us pain when we fail in it. Sometimes we learn we have strength in it because we're just amazing. We start getting trophies when we're really young. I was just talking to a guy yesterday who literally started getting math trophies. I can't even imagine this.

HB: 8:29

I can never have one he was in like the second or third grade and he started amassing math trophies and he never even calculated until I asked him this question. This guy's over 50. I asked him over a beer yesterday with some other business people when did you first know that you had these really great math skills? Because he's a financial analytics guy, a super nerd. And he sat there for a second and he went. I was in like the second grade, I started getting math trophies and he goes. Nobody's ever asked me that before. So we all have these inception stories. If you begin your microphone time with a personal story that tells me a little bit about where you came from, then that's the first step in developing your business identity, because you don't have a business without you.

Robin: 9:13

Oh, that's really good. You know, what I like about that too is that when you're in these business gatherings maybe it's a mixer or a networking thing, or you're in a meeting, or you're at a retreat or whatever You're meeting new people we're all doing the same thing. What do you do? Well, what do you do? And to hear somebody start with a story, I think it's almost like a reset for conversation, because no one's been doing that in the room, most likely, and I find we all are drawn to story I mean just as humanity and so when you can start with a story, I think it's way more engaging.

HB: 9:52

In the same way, if you opened a technical magazine right now that was related to your industry and you just opened to any random page and there's a person's face on one side and then a list of technical drawings on the other, you will not be able to control yourself. You will unconsciously study the face first. We're designed to look at human face and to want to see humanity. That's the way that God made us so. Telling a story is how we bring our face into every business identity combo. The second part of business identity maybe that we could throw in today to kind of keep this going is a very simple concept and, as you know, I like word pictures or pictures. If you're from Alabama, that helped me understand how to develop a story that has a point.

HB: 10:44

And when you're a business leader, you can't afford to take the microphone and start listing things. So what does that mean? It means that you have to come up with one primary value that you offer. Everybody knows this. You've read tons of articles by now. If you're listening to this podcast, you know that you're supposed to have a singular value proposition, right, okay, if you're in sales, you've certainly been beaten about the head with this a whole lot. The challenge is you always have to say no to a bunch of things to say yes to one thing. So how do you decide what that's going to be? Now, the word picture that I use I call it the archer bow arrow target. Or my friend Eddie recently told me HB, stop calling it a list.

Robin: 11:26

Now that's really funny from the guy who didn't want people to give him a list.

HB: 11:29

Isn't that ironic? Is it ironic or just sad?

Robin: 11:33

I think it's ironic.

HB: 11:34

Okay, let's just call it the archer. Okay, I like to envision an archer, and that's the person's heart, it's who they are, it's the story. Then I like to see the bow, which means that's their skills and their giftings and their abilities, that's you and all your technical nerd powers. And then I like to see the arrow. That is the value proposition. And then, across the field, is a target, and that target represents your ideal clients, the people that you're trying to deliver your unique value to. And all four of these elements are super important. They're integrated. But here we are at the arrow. Have you ever seen an arrow with more than one tip?

Robin: 12:10

No.

HB: 12:10

Thanks for answering correctly. I hope all the listeners home were able to answer that correctly. But at or before, robin, no, there's no such thing. So you would never think about shooting a value prop with three pitches on it. The only reason people do that is they think somehow internally that it's generous. I don't want to withhold all these things that I can do.

Robin: 12:30

Right.

HB: 12:31

It would be more fair if you just told somebody what you love to do the most and then let them sort out and find out the other ones later, because there is an okay thing with priority and even in a conversation, when you first get to know someone, you don't yell all four things that you want to talk about over the first cup of coffee.

Robin: 12:47

Just weird.

HB: 12:48

I want to list these four things. We're going to talk about these over the next 15 minutes. Just weird. So one of the ways the question then comes. Well, how do I find that out? Well, let me ask you this question If I interviewed 10 of your best clients, the people that you love the most, and said, what magic thing did this company actually do for you? Like if I did that for you, Robin, that's it.

HB: 13:07

What one thing would these people say was the magic thing that Robin did for them? Let me put their answers into a little data pool and turn that into a sentence that's going to be very close to your value proposition, to the point on your arrow. This is a quiz for you. It's unfair. You weren't expecting to answer it, but in the last year, let's say even in the last six months, we took 10 of your best clients and I asked them that question what do you think, what are a few words you think that you would hear from them at this point?

Robin: 13:39

You've done this before. This is a new exercise for you. I help them see what they can't see, visualize space that's not there, or visualize what could be done with a space that is there.

HB: 13:50

Yeah, now you're pointing at something really important In interior design. People have opinions and they have ideas, but they're frightened that if they don't make the right decisions, they end up with a product and paid for something that cost but did not actually produce profit. Right, your unique ability is to come into a space and see on behalf of a business owner, not just to make it pretty, but how do we make this thing function and make you more money? Make it profitable, because your brain works that way. You can visualize not only the end game that serves them, but the steps to get there. Aha, that's the person I want to hire. Take me through this. I need a guide.

HB: 14:27

Okay, I think that in your businesses if you're listening to the podcast, I bet there's something like that in your business where people would. They might not name your product like you think they're going to, they might not say the phrases that are on your sign, but they'll describe something that you solved an emotional problem, a feeling problem, Like for you, robin. I think you solve a fear that I'm going to spend a bunch of money and not get the outcome, and I'm trying to make this place look great, but I need it to function. I'm not sure what to do. It requires an expert. That's really close to your singular value proposition, which is what I do interior design that helps businesses grow.

HB: 15:09

Yes, you do, and that's very specific. A lot of people do interior design, but yours is specifically focused on the business owner. So and that came, not because you didn't know it already, but when we worked together over time we pressed and pressed and pressed and smushed and distilled and boiled it and pressed it and filed it and hammered it until we got down to as few words as possible. I'm looking at the back wall of your office right now and it says on the back wall designed to help your business grow, and now you're comfortable with that singular value proposition. You do a lot of different things, a lot of different things. Yeah, how does it make you feel to go out into the world and lead with that singular value proposition and not list everything now? What has that done?

Robin: 15:51

It has helped me stay focused, first of all, and not get distracted, because I am an entrepreneur at heart, which means I'm always thinking about another business. This helps me stay focused, because I have a problem with that anyways. But I think the other piece of it is it naturally links back to the first question you asked about. You know who I was, because it draws upon what's naturally in me. So since I was a little girl that played business instead of house, I think about.

Robin: 16:23

I've been thinking about business since I was a little girl and how to make businesses happen and how to make them grow and how to make them profitable and how to cut the waste and, you know, trim things off and how to make this thing expand and do what we want it to do. And because I'm wired like that, I'm wired to think about my clients' work, my clients' businesses and their projects. That way, it's natural to me. I don't go in thinking about how we can pull the newest, hottest trend into their space. I am always thinking about how can we make their business grow and how will what we're doing meet that end goal?

HB: 16:59

Cool, I love to hear you talk that way, because that means that focusing your singular business identity around this Archer concept is not only for sales or for the acquisition of the new client. It's to keep your team focused, which is what you just described Exactly.