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Catalyst Development joins the podcast as our featured guests this week! COO Jenna Scott and CEO and founder Dr. Katie Ervin talk to Jeff Randolph about developing meaningful skills for your team at all levels. In today’s marketing tip, who are you communicating with when you respond to a negative review online?
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising & Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Katie Ervin and Jenna Scott from Catalyst Development. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
In today’s marketing tip, we’re going to talk about responding to online reviews. And we’ve said several times, you should be responding to online reviews, right? The stats say something like 96% of people will read an online review before they make a decision, but only 6% of people will write one. Now, if you think about all of the times you’ve been motivated to write a review, how often is that a negative feeling that motivates you versus a positive feeling that motivates you? We’re often going to get some negative reviews, and those may end up on balance being more frequent than a positive review would be. So we have to encourage those positive reviews, of course.
What I want to talk about today in today’s tip though is who are you writing to? Who is your audience when you’re writing these responses to a review. You should always respond to those reviews. Let’s take a good response. Let’s take a good review. And somebody said, “Hey, I love this store. It’s great. You’re responding to that person just with a very short, very simple thing, “Hey, thanks for being a customer. We really appreciate you,” or, “We’re glad you found what you were looking for,” or whatever the case may be. Just a nice, short, quick thing that just shows that you care, and you are writing literally to that customer, “Thank you for posting this review. I appreciate you.”
If it’s a negative review, who are you writing for? I would recommend you don’t write to that person. Don’t write with that person in mind, that negative review leaver in mind because that person is a terrible person. You’re just going to fight with them back and forth all the time. So instead, your audience, when you’re responding to a negative review, is someone who is going to read that review next. It’s not that person at all. It’s whoever is coming next. You’re writing to a future audience. And so the kinds of things you want to say in that review response are really positioning yourself and your service, your product, whatever that is for the next person. And so you can say things like, “Hey, I’m sorry that didn’t work out for you,” or, “I’m sorry that you had that experience. That’s certainly not what we are going for. Please contact me directly at blah, blah, blah so that we could fix this problem.”
When you approach it like that, you’re giving the next person, that next audience for that review something that they can go on and say, “Well, they’re certainly responsive. Even though this is a negative review, it seems like they genuinely care.” And that puts you back on a better footing for the next customer that walks in the door. And that’s our tip for today.
And welcome back to the show. My name is Jeff Randolph. I am here with Dr. Katie Ervin, she is CEO of Catalyst Development, and Jenna Scott, she’s COO of Catalyst Development. Katie, and, Jenna, welcome to the show.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Thanks for having us.
Jenna Scott:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re happy to have you here. Let me start out with you’re celebrating your second year in business. So first off, congratulations on that. Catalyst Development is a leadership development company that focuses on meaningful skill development. Tell us what that means and what Catalyst Development does.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Well, we’re really excited. We’ve been telling people we’re still in the toddler phase. So we’re still teetotaling through business, which any parents or aunts and uncles out there totally get it. So we’re fumbling through, but really making impact. And so what Catalyst development is, we tell people, we’re not a why you should be a leader. If you don’t know why you should be a leader, watch a TED talk.
Jeff Randolph:
Sure. There are TED talks out there for that.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
It’s fantastic stuff. Just Google leadership, you’ll get 5 billion views or clicks. So do that. But we actually teach those meaningful skills. So I was corporate HR for 14 years, and then I went into higher ed for another 12 plus years. And what I found so often was people had the skills. We just didn’t talk about them, teach them, really lean into how they use them. And so about two and a half years ago, we started talking about Catalyst Development, and I was doing it as a side hustle because so many companies know that this is important. And then the opportunity came along where we were like, “Let’s do it. The universe has told us it’s time.” And so now we work with clients, nonprofit, for-profit, local government, federal government, everything in between, and just go in and teach early career emerging leaders, senior leaders, all different levels how to use their skills that they already have or how to grow those.
Jeff Randolph:
We actually had somebody on, I think it was a group talk that we were recording and facilitating where they were talking about leadership and where leaders have great development opportunities, and we really focus there. But the emerging leaders, those middle level and below, we don’t have quite the same resources. So it seems like that’s a great spot to be in to actually care for what the market needs.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah. And we love senior leaders and the decision makers. They’re fantastic, but it’s exactly right. I mean, we see it so often where it’s those early career, or I call them the frozen middle, we’re actually doing some programming for them now, that you’re just in a tough spot. And also, you can’t just fly out of town for a week long conference. You got stuff-
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… to do, and no one’s going to send you to Harvard Business, which is lovely, but they’re not going to send you to the business school when you’re 24 years old just starting out your career. So what can we do here? And that’s why we created what we created.
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding. Let’s talk about some of the other programs you have going on. You’re starting to recruit for your 2025 LEADERs Institute for your third cohort. I noticed that LEADER is in all caps and then the s is just on the end of that. So it makes me think there’s something going on behind that. Tell us about LEADERs and what that means.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
I’m going to let Jenna talk about LEADERs, and then I’ll tell you about the little s.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Jenna Scott:
So we love a good acronym. We call things different acronyms all over our business just because we’re cute like that, I guess.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Jenna Scott:
So LEADERs is our core program that we offer to people around Kansas City. Most of our clients come to us and we go into a business and then facilitate for a group of their leaders that they choose. With the LEADERs Institute, what we do is we bring people from all other areas of the city. We put from big corporate companies, and banks, all the way down to nonprofits, and we invite 30 of them in at three different levels. That early career that we talked about, that middle, and then that strategic leader as well-
Jeff Randolph:
Got you.
Jenna Scott:
… and we put them all together. And what we do is we have a three-hour session, and each of them goes through content with us in the first hour. The second hour, we take them in and we break them into their peer groups where they’re talking about the way they’re using that skill, how they develop it. And then we put it all back together, and we put them into a stage conversations where an emerging leader and an early career and somebody who’s more strategic can sit down and talk about what it looks like from different perspectives So that they can really start to learn, “Hey, I might be a strategic person, but this early career has some great ideas. Let me use that to implement.”
And there are six different sessions, which are the acronym of LEADER, and the s, I’ll let Katie talk about the session and the descriptions. But it’s a super fun program because so often we go to these great facilitations and we go to these conferences and then we don’t do anything with them-
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Jenna Scott:
… right? You go and you’re like, “This is great. I have so many notes.” And then you never look at that book again.
Jeff Randolph:
Yep.
Jenna Scott:
You’re like, “Well, I forgot all that great-”
Jeff Randolph:
“I put that away, and that’s on a shelf somewhere.”
Jenna Scott:
Yeah. And you might have one little nugget that you pull away. But really what we love to do there is put them together, let them go to lunch afterwards. We have some of our groups that have really just started grouping together-
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Jenna Scott:
… and networking. And then the off months that we do this, we have networking sessions where they really deepen their relationships, they find new places in Kansas City that they’ve maybe never been to. We really love to try to highlight nonprofits in those networking sessions.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Jenna Scott:
And then we put the cohorts from every year previous in with them. So they get to not only meet their own cohort and talking to them, but those who have been through it before.
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding. And yes, this s, because LEADER is all caps.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah, LEADER is all caps, and then the s is little. And so LEADER spells out our sessions, so lead, engage, except, develop, effective, resilient. And so we have core skills under each of those. And then the little s is so what? “So what are you going to do with it? We’ve given you the skills, we’ve helped you grown the skills, everything we do, whether it is a speaking engagement, or corporate engagement, or this.” We have toolkits, homework, downloads, whatever. So they have homework they have to do. “So what are you going to do now that you have this?”
Jeff Randolph:
I like the so what in particular. When we are doing analytics and we’re telling a client, “Hey, how did it go?” It’s the, “Here’s what happened, but now so what? What do we do with that and putting it into action?” So I like the way that you’re-
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
… facilitating all that. This is your third cohort.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
You’ve got two other ones, they’ve survived?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
They’re still going.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
They’ve survived. And actually, I saw one of our cohort one, and he said, “Hashtag best cohort.” And I’m like, “Let’s go.” So our current cohort, our 2024 cohort just finished their third session. And so they’ll have networking this month. They’ll have their last session in November, and then they’ll graduate in December. So our 2025 cohort will start in January, and we map that out for them. But what we’re finding is as people are getting to know about it, we only have 10 spots at each level, and we also are very intentional about how we fill those seats. There’s not necessarily an application process, but we want to make sure that there’s people from all different backgrounds, walks of life, experiences, that they can really come in together and learn from each other. So we may have someone from wildly low socioeconomic that we give a seat to to a bank executive that they’re sitting next to, and they’re going to learn so much from each other.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s about time somebody does that kind of thing. Well done, guys. That’s the right approach, I think.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Thanks. Well, and we’re so excited because, fun, we just passed trademark. So our program is now trademarked-
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… in the United States. There’s phenomenal programs out there, but no one’s doing it the way we are.
Jeff Randolph:
So if you could, as you listen to the podcast, go back and put an audio TM next to LEADERs. That would help us out a lot. You’re also an author. Who wouldn’t love the title of your book? It’s called You Might Be an Asshole, But It Might Not Be Your Fault. We’ll link to this in the show notes, of course, because three of our listeners are, in fact, assholes. So I appreciate that you’re writing to them. It’s a book about good leadership for everyone. Tell us all about it.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
And it’s funny because I start in the beginning of the book and I’m like, “There’s no science behind this. I haven’t done the research. I’m not that kind of doctor. I’m a qualitative researcher, not quantitative.” So I love stories instead of numbers. There are some people out there that just want to be an asshole, and this book is not for them. Get your money back. Pass it off to your friends.
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
You’re not going to like it.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
And that’s okay. Everyone’s on their own journey. But it tells the story of a guy named Mike who, at the beginning of the book, everyone thinks he’s such a jerk like, “How did he even get here? What is he even doing?” And then what we find out as we get through the book, spoiler alert, is that he’s really not. He’s just never had the skill development. He’s never gone through the LEADERs program, and nobody’s had a kind conversation with him. So instead of pulling Jenna aside and being like, “Hey, you’re a jerk,” I just go behind her back and I’m like, “Jenna’s a jerk.”
Jeff Randolph:
“What a jerk!”
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Right. And so that’s the story we tell people, and that’s why I was so compelled to write the book. The fun thing about the book is they’re all true stories. They’re mistakes I have made in my career coming up, they’re mistakes we’ve seen other people make. It’s really funny. People who know me are like, “I know who that person is.” But it just really is. And then in the spirit of at the end of every chapter, there’s reflection. We have a companion guide that goes with it. We don’t want you to just read the book. We want you to work through the book.
Jeff Randolph:
Sure. And on that topic of working through the book, you have other products that you’ve put around this book, right? This is the book club and book talk, and you’re speaking on the book, and workshoppy type things, right?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah. It’s really funny because someone told… Well, Alana Muller who wrote Coffee Lunch Coffee, who’s so fantastic, she was like, “Once you write a book, people are going to be like, ‘Now you have all this experience.'” And it’s like, “You know what? I don’t have any more experience today than I had yesterday. I just know this stuff really well. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t.” But it’s really fun to do talks about the book. We go out and I’ll do keynotes. But then also we’ve had some people reach out to us and start doing book clubs and book talks and bringing us into their business. And we thought, “As we’re working through the next half of the year strategy, we really need to put some flyer behind this and some work behind this.” And so that’s what we did. And so we’re going to start offering that, and so people can get discounts on the book and they can bring us in to facilitate conversation around it.
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jenna Scott:
The coolest thing about the book though is that it’s also all of Katie’s doctoral research. And so there’s 1,000,001 consultants out there doing wonderful things. We love them. But having her doctoral research that shows the three pieces that really make a difference when it comes to people being happy and motivated at work is such a gift to those who are in charge of those leaders and those are who below those leaders, because you’d then see like, “This jerk has been missing this one piece this whole time.” And once we fill that one piece, they really just start to be the leader that they’ve always wanted to be. You just had to give them those tools and resources or the autonomy or that relatedness that they needed.
Jeff Randolph:
Would you describe that as helping fix people or helping people fix themselves?
Jenna Scott:
All of the above.
Jeff Randolph:
All of the above. It takes a village.
Jenna Scott:
Yes.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yes, absolutely. Well, and we tell people all the time, you just don’t know what you don’t know. And until we do some self-reflection and self-awareness or have someone really kind sitting next to us that helps us do some of that self-reflection-
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… it never feels good to know that you’re not performing in your standards. But I would rather know I’m not performing in my standards and here’s something we do about it than having everybody talk behind my back and then me never getting where I deserve to be.
Jeff Randolph:
Right. Absolutely. You’re also launching a new product called SUPERVISOR 101.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yes.
Jenna Scott:
We’re super excited about this one.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yep.
Jeff Randolph:
SUPERVISOR, excited. No, that’s a terrible… I’m sorry. I apologize for the dead joke. Let’s move on. SUPERVISOR 101, tell us all about it.
Jenna Scott:
So SUPERVISOR 101 is really for that lower level. We started this calling it super employee to supervisor, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Jenna Scott:
So you have those star employees who’ve been really great employees. All of a sudden you have a new title, you maybe hopefully got a little bit of a pay increase, and now you have to go lead your peers. So how do you actually do that? And we break it into four modules with four lessons inside of each one of them. The coolest part is this is probably going to be one of the very few programs that we offer asynchronous where they don’t need us to go through it, but they can go through it all online together, and really go through pieces and take as much time as they want.
But the one thing we want to be really intentional about is making sure that it wasn’t overwhelming. So each module is only about 40 minutes in total because we want each section to be about 10 minutes for them to really be able to think, do the same things that we were talking about with that reflection and things like that. There’s homework, there’s a toolkit for each one of those, but it’s really that love note to that early career who’s starting to move up into some leadership positions to say, “Hey, we don’t want you to be a jerk later on in your career. Let’s give you the tools now so that you can understand how to set your foundations and then build into the leader you want to be.”
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Well, and we think, “Congratulations. You’re getting promoted today.” And then you go home and you have a celebratory dinner and you tell your loved ones and you pop whatever you pop and have so much fun. And then you go to sleep, and then you wake up the next day and you have no more new skills-
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… no fairy delivered you these management skills. And so these are truly those people skills that you need. And I had a client say, “Is this just for new supervisors?” And I’m like, “If you guys need to create some common sense, if you need to base level, then I recommend to everyone go through it.” And so the asynchronous is really cool. I’m really excited about that. But then also we have some clients that say, “That’s great. We want to pay just a little more and have you all come in and facilitate it-”
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
“… and take a deeper dive.” So there’s both those options.
Jeff Randolph:
And the facilitated version, is that a better experience that people would have or is this going to be equal footing?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Well-
Jeff Randolph:
You’ve written it very intentionally to be a self-guided-
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
… kind of thing. And so I’m trying to get at the… What extra do you bring too? What is the gravy that comes on top of that?
Jenna Scott:
They get to spend time with us. I mean-
Jeff Randolph:
I know. That’s the best part, right?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Why are you even asking that? No. The benefit of that would be that you have us coming in and there’s that group conversation. So if you’re just sitting at your desk just taking SUPERVISOR 101, that’s lovely. And we’ve actually created a report out. So you then take it to manager. We don’t want them to take their toolkit where they’ve done all the reflection. We don’t want them necessarily to share all that with their manager unless they want to. But we’ve created this report out-
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… that they can share. So during their 101, they can say, “Here’s what I’ve gleaned from SUPERVISOR 101. Here’s what I’m working on, blah, blah, blah.” But to have us in person, then what they’re going to get is that group synergy of us all sitting in the room learning from their peers. They can do that intentionally on their own, but what we find with Catalyst is so many organizations want to do what we do. They either don’t have the time, the expertise, or the resources to do it. And so we don’t compete with HR or learning and development. We come alongside them and really work and support them, because I know, sitting in the HR chair, I used to have pages and pages and pages of notes of things that, one day when life isn’t crazy, I’m going to get to.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. There’s a to-do list a mile long-
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
… I’m sure.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
And you can never get to it. And unfortunately, the things that are typically on those to-do lists is this type of work. And so we just come in and do that with them.
Jeff Randolph:
Help them out.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Provide that extra service.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
We’ve learned all about Catalyst development. We understand the products that you have, the services you provide. I think it’s time to go into the lightning round, and we’ll find out more about who you guys are and what you really do. I’m going to reiterate in the lightning round that this is Dr. Katie Ervin. Your dissertation research was on adjunct business faculty motivation and perceived organization support at face-to-face off-campus locations. Now, that’s a mouthful.
Jenna Scott:
That’s a lot.
Jeff Randolph:
There’s a lot going on there, right? That sounds like a dissertation. As an adjunct, I feel also like there’s a lot I could learn from that. Can you give us just a takeaway or summary of what that research is all about, what you found?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
So essentially what I was looking at is it’s not all about the money. People always say that you do things for the money.” And I’m like, “No, we don’t because we’re not all cashing a million dollar checks each week.”
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
“Give me a break.” Especially for adjunct faculty, everyone thinks you’re making big bucks. You’re really not. And so at the time I worked at Webster University, and I had phenomenal adjunct faculties that weren’t doing it for the money.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
And I was sick and tired of hearing that. And so that’s essentially what my research was. It was more that intrinsic motivation of, “I want to share and I want to give back.” And the more intrinsically motivated we are, the happier we are in our job. And that’s not that carrot and stick like, “I’ll give you a paycheck and you do the-”
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
“… to the job.” And then very naturally through my research, it was like, “There’s no workplace model around this type of work.” So then that’s where I dug my research deeper.
Jeff Randolph:
Fascinating though. Again, I am an adjunct marketing professor, and so I get to teach all the marketing courses in the graduate program at Avila University. And so-
Dr. Katie Ervin:
I love that.
Jeff Randolph:
… lots of fun. But we don’t do that for the money. That is definitely not it.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
Fascinating research.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Jenna, you grew up next to Worlds of Fun. What is your favorite ride of all time? Because you’ve seen things come and go.
Jenna Scott:
Yeah. What was the name of it? So my favorite ride when I used to go every summer and have a path where I could just get dropped off and let to be wild was the Thunderhawk.
Jeff Randolph:
I don’t even know the Thunderhawk. Tell me about-
Jenna Scott:
So the Thunderhawk used to be over next to the Timber Wolf.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Jenna Scott:
And it was a water ride in the summer where they turned on the sprayers, but it was the ones that had the big arm and then the middle of it rotates, and it flips you over and around as it tumbles. It was one of those… I don’t think I could ride it anymore.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right. There is a limit.
Jenna Scott:
Yes, there is a limit to that, but that was probably my favorite because it was a water ride, but it was also a roller coaster at the same time. So that one was probably-
Jeff Randolph:
That’s fascinating. I don’t think I even… Did I blink and miss that?
Jenna Scott:
That was there for a long time.
Jeff Randolph:
Maybe that was probably just not my era.
Jenna Scott:
It was in the back corner of the Timber Wolf area. When you got off the Timber Wolf, it was right there.
Jeff Randolph:
I would stop at the fool of the guesser booth. That was really… See if you can guess my age within three years. This will be an all-play. If you could have more money or time, which would you choose?
Jenna Scott:
Time.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Time.
Jenna Scott:
I would choose more time because I can find ways to make more money if I have more time.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah, time for me.
Jeff Randolph:
Who are the best clients to work with? And I’m not saying by name, but by their qualities. Who would you love to keep working with every day?
Jenna Scott:
We always tell people, we want to work with everybody. We talked a little bit about how professional development is unfortunately a privilege, and usually at the higher level. So what we really love is when we see, especially that higher level say they really want to invest in their people, and they have that growth mindset that they say, “This is important.”
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Jenna Scott:
“And while the economy’s doing whatever it is and we’re cutting budgets, this is still important enough. We want to do that.” So as long as our clients have that mindset, we’re more than happy to work with anybody. We try to make sure that nonprofits can afford us. We try to make sure that the big corporates can afford us, all the things in between, because nobody should not reach their full potential because they didn’t get the training.
Jeff Randolph:
You had me a growth mindset.
Jenna Scott:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
I’m in for that.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Well, and I will say once we get in the room, my most favorite person in the room is the crotchety.
Jenna Scott:
Yes.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
No offense, guys. Love you. But it’s just typically that crotchety, grouchy guy that’s like, “I’m here because I was told to be here. I don’t want to be here.” And then if they do our corporate LEADERs program at the end, so we do pre-assessment and post-assessment. And those people make me cry every time I read their post-assessment because it is transformational, “You changed my life. I did not want to be here.” I mean, there’s one in particular that he just did his assessment. And I mean, it was like day one. I’m like, “If you’re having fun, you need to tell your face.” And he’s like, “I’m not having fun.” I’m like, “Okay. Well, good to be here.” And I am so in love with him because he’s like, “I realized through your program that I was not just damaging my career, I was damaging the career of the people that worked for me because I was not being a good leader for them.” And I mean, if that’s not why you do what you love… I mean, still today, they make me cry all the time.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, you’re changing lives.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
We are.
Jeff Randolph:
That is a wonderful thing. And at the end of the day, if I have that experience, I’m going to feel really good about what I do that day.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
That is outstanding.
Jenna Scott:
The best part about these skills too is that yes, they’re great for the workplace, but so often people come to us and they’re like, “You changed my marriage because you changed the way I communicate with people. You changed my friendships because you allowed me to say, ‘Hey, you’re treating me this way and I don’t love it,’ and have a hard conversation. You gave me these skills and tools.” And while, yes, they’re important for leadership, they’re life skills. That’s why we don’t call them soft skills anymore. We call them human skills.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jenna Scott:
You need these skills to be a human being.
Jeff Randolph:
I’d love to have the class where it teaches you how to have a hard conversation, right? Should we not have had that in school?
Jenna Scott:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
That seems like a wise use of time.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah. And we call it don’t be nice, be kind. Stop being nice to people. Be kind. Pull them aside and have that really difficult conversation. There is nothing I love more than when I’m walking out the door and my husband’s like, “I think that dress shrank at the cleaners. Are you wearing that today?” Because I would rather have someone that I love and care about me give me feedback. And so when he says, “I’m not sure that was your best moment,” it doesn’t feel good to hear, but I know he’s coming from a place of love and caring.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
And that is a powerful skill to have. So we actually are recording a download part of our… We always have a homework. And one of the downloads we’re recording is us having sample difficult conversations for people.
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent. I look forward to that
Dr. Katie Ervin:
One’s going to be a Gen Z. Little teaser.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Jenna Scott:
Yes.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yep.
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent. Let’s see. You’re celebrating an anniversary, of course, with the business. If you go back and talk to that day one you, right? What would you say, “Hey, it’s going to be…” What advice would you give? As you’re going back through space and time, what would you risk it all for to give advice to yourselves?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
I would say, “You fool, take some business classes. Use the resources in Kansas City-”
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
“… that are available.” There’s so many great-
Jeff Randolph:
A ton.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… entrepreneur programs that I didn’t know exist. Now I know and I’m like, “I wish I would have known.” So what I would’ve told myself is, “Breathe for a second. You’re going to get there, but also lean into some of these resources.” You just don’t know what you don’t know. And it’s probably good because if you live in fear, you won’t move forward. And so it’s probably good. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But now looking back, it’s like, “I could probably learn to balance this checkbook. That would be great.”
Jeff Randolph:
A little bit better.
Jenna Scott:
And so my background is actually marketing, like sports marketing. So I have the business background, but I think I would just tell us like, and this is really to any entrepreneur, “Hold on.”
Jeff Randolph:
“Just hang on.”
Jenna Scott:
“Just hang on.” Because if you can consistently keep going, I think what people forget is that people who get lucky or who are successful probably just didn’t quit. When you find a way to just keep pushing through when it’s hard, you find a way to celebrate the wins, but also keep going. Small business is exceedingly difficult. And if you can do it and you love it, great, but it’s not for everybody.
Jeff Randolph:
It is not for everyone.
Jenna Scott:
Not for everyone. And so if you can find those ways to really just celebrate the journey, enjoy it, and if you love what you do every day, just keep going.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah. Well, and we’ve had to have some real authentic, honest conversation with even some of our clients that are like, “Some of these massive companies are like, ‘Our policy is we’ll pay in 30 days.'” And it’s like, “That’s lovely. Our policy is you need to pay on booking because we’re a small business and we’ve got to pay our bills, and we don’t have a $20 million federal contract coming in. We’re depending on you.” And so what we have found is our clients are phenomenal. When we’re like, “This is what we need to serve you,” they’re like, “All right. This is how we show up for you.”
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding. What part of the business do you wish you knew more about?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Well, obviously, finance. I hate finance. I told someone the other day, they were like, “You’re so good at this.” And I’m like, “Yes, I should be. That’s my background. That’s what I’ve done for 26 plus years. I should be good at the stuff we do facing the public.”
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
“It’s behind the scenes stuff that I don’t love.” We do the working genius, which is where you get energy from work. And so I don’t get energy from tenacity type work. So sit at the desk, check things off a list, I actually am drained by it. So now that I know that I’m drained by it, I can lean into it more. But I just wish I knew more of those of areas.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, I mean, really, it’s the same reason that you started the SUPERVISOR 101 program, right? You don’t want to fall victim to the Peter Principle where-
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
… you’ve been promoted to that level where you’re not good at anything anymore, right?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
You need to gather those skills-
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
… and get better.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
And I’ve had people say like, “You started a company and you have two women working for you.” Unfortunately, Emma is leaving the company. We love her so much. If you don’t know Emma Joe Music, what are you even doing? She’s fantastic. She does our marketing, bringing stuff like that. She’s stepping away from the business, but we will still be pulled in. But for me, it was wildly hard. And there were times that I couldn’t make payroll, and that I have yet to take a real consistent paycheck. And I’m really honest about that. It’s really hard. I could have done it on my own, but Emma and Jenna fill gaps that I know I have through my self-awareness. I know there’s areas than I am not strong, and they make me stronger. Oh, tears. They make me stronger every-
Jenna Scott:
I can’t believe she made it this far.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
I know.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s good.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
They make me stronger every day. And so it’s worth it.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect.
Jenna Scott:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
What do you wish you knew more about, Jenna?
Jenna Scott:
So I am tenacity, funny enough. So that’s why she says we compliment each other so well. And so just having the business side that I already do, I really have been diving more into the actual process of sales, right? I went through some business classes, but didn’t necessarily do a sales class. And we are not salesy type people. I will genuinely want to sit down with somebody just to talk to you just to understand who you are, where you come from, what your background is, why you are the way that you are, but that doesn’t bring you dollars, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Yes.
Jenna Scott:
And so sometimes I think as businesses, we forget that you can do a lot of really great things and you can be relationship-oriented, but you also have to think about KPIs. You also have to think about processes that bring dollars in the door. You have to know how long they are. You have to know what it takes you to close a sales cycle. You have to have these things down. And if you don’t, you’re just shooting fish in a barrel, right? Good luck, because you have to have a full process in place. And that’s hard, especially in a consultant type business. And if you’re providing a service, it’s difficult to actually make that trackable and quantifiable-
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Jenna Scott:
… and put numbers to it, because relationships are great, and I can have a relationship with you for five or six years and all of a sudden it comes back. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to keep our business moving.
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Jenna Scott:
So that side of it is always really neat to me. I’m just a nerd like that, and I love the numbers and things like that, and just those little tweaks that we can make to make things really work.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
If I weren’t sitting here in front of you, I’d think perhaps you’re AI, because everything you’re doing so far is amazing. You’re just tenacious and getting out there and starting this business and very self-aware. And you’re really hustling with all of the new products that you’re creating and all of the work that you’re doing in the community. You’re building a business at the same time as you’re helping all of these other people.
And I’m going to end my lightning round questions on something that makes it where I have to question. Are you guys really real? Does this happen? Because it’s the volunteer work that you do as well. Katie, you’re on the board for Goodwill of Western Missouri & Eastern Kansas. And Jenna, you work with Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Jenna Scott:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
One, how do you even have time for this? Don’t answer that, but tell me a little bit about what you’re getting out of those experiences that just provides that extra warm hug of a blanket at night before you go to bed.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Well, in our family, we are wildly privileged and we are wildly fortunate to have the family that we have and the connections and relationships we have. And I know that not everybody has that. And I know not everybody has the opportunities that I’ve had through life, good and bad. And so I believe that it’s important to give back and to show love and to use what I have for good. And so it’s funny because I was having a committee meeting for Goodwill, and I’m on the finance committee, because, again, I hate finance. And so I thought, “I need to learn more and lean in and do this.”
But I’ve also told every nonprofit I work with, and we have a nonprofit rate because we know they don’t have the budgets that everyone else does, and they’re doing the best they can. But I think it’s critically important just as a human to be able to share my skills and resources with others. And that gives me energy and gives me life. And I encourage everybody to find a nonprofit that speaks to them. And you don’t have to serve on a board. I mean, just-
Jeff Randolph:
Volunteer.
Jenna Scott:
Yeah.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… volunteer, show up, shop at Goodwill. It’s funny, I just had this conversation the other night. Someone’s like, “So Goodwill like the stores.”
Jeff Randolph:
There’s so much more.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
The stores is what then funds the job placement and the job services. And we’re getting ready to bring some huge initiatives to Kansas City that is just going to be life changing-
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… for individuals. And every nonprofit, it’s so much deeper than just diapers or-
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… whatever. It’s hope, it’s opportunity, it’s optimism, it’s whatever. So I’m a firm believer-
Jeff Randolph:
Absolutely.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
… in giving back.
Jenna Scott:
Big Brothers Big Sisters, for me, has been just a love. So when I started with Big Brothers Big Sisters, their mantra was Defenders of Potential. And from the moment that I was there, I was like, “Fine. What do you want? Because I’ll do it right,” right?
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Jenna Scott:
Similar to Katie, I am very fortunate. I had fantastic parents. They told me I could do anything and everything I want, even though they were co-parenting and divorced. And I learned to split houses. But I can be a little bit of a bulldozer if I want to be, because I’ve been told I can do what I want. As long as you work hard, you can get anything you want, is what my parents told me, right? Not every kid gets that. Not every kid-
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Jenna Scott:
… has the stability that I had. I had plenty of friends who still to this day call my mom mom, call my dad dad. They were great role models of that you can do anything and everything as long as you work for it. Not every kid has those things. And we can change Kansas City so much if we take kids who are maybe in those lower income areas, who don’t have that. The statistic that really got me when I first joined Big Brothers Big Sisters was that 90% of juvenile court cases come from single family homes. That is a staggering statistic that shows you that kids just need somebody else to show them a way, right? And if I wasn’t as fortunate as I was and didn’t have somebody to say, “Hey, have you ever saw this? Have you seen this? Have you been here?” To show them what potential is.
Some of those kids live eight miles from downtown and have never seen what’s here, have never seen the opportunity and what they can become. And so if I can help them to believe in themselves… We talked about mindset a little bit earlier. I eat junkie, like, “Can I read every book humanly possible?”
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Jenna Scott:
“Let me absorb everything.” And if I can just give them a little shed of light and show them that they have this capability, I’ll do it. And so Big Brothers Big Sisters just does such a great job, just like Goodwill does such a vast programming. I mean, it’s not just matching Bigs to Littles. It’s their Match Maker program. It’s the Bowl for Kids’ Sake program that they’re doing this summer. It’s the Savers program that they have that gets money. It’s such an incredible organization. And then you meet amazing people. I mean, we have so many connections-
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jenna Scott:
… through our board work of people who have been like, “My gosh, I didn’t know you guys did this. Let’s talk. Let’s do that.” I mean, getting ready to kick off a really fun program with a VR group of how to do leadership development with VR. How fun, right?
Jeff Randolph:
That’s exciting.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jenna Scott:
So it’s just board work and being involved in the community. Yes, it’s fulfilling. It’s great, but you meet amazing people. You do all these amazing things. You get to go out and see new perspectives. And it’s just something that I’ll never stop doing, even though I’m on my third year with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and I think they’re going to make me stop.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Term limits?
Jenna Scott:
Yes, that’s all.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Well, and I will say too, we can’t come to everything we sure try, but also, we do a donation to nonprofits. And so we do a LEADERs tote bag where we’ll put my book, some of our favorite books in there. And it’s usually Kate Spade book because Kansas City or Kate Spade bag, Kansas City. Why wouldn’t it be?
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
So it’s a green Kate Spade bag because if you know Catalyst, I wear green every day, Catalyst green. So we’ll donate a leadership tote. And we’ve heard from some nonprofits that there are some juggling and jarring and fighting over the silent auction item. So if there’s any nonprofits out there, we have a limited number we do each year. But we do love to donate silent auctions.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, I couldn’t end the lightning round any better than on that. That is outstanding. You’ve survived the lightning round. Congratulations to both of you. You’ve done it. Dr. Katie Ervin, and, Jenna Scott, tell us where people can find more information about Catalyst Development. How do they get in touch with you or get the right programs and the right offices?
Dr. Katie Ervin:
The best way to do it is go to katieervin.com. We wanted it to be catalystdevelopment.com, but it was going to be $10,000. So it’s katieervin.com. We’re also really active on LinkedIn, both Jenna and myself. But we’re just out and about all the time. So go to katieervin.com. You can learn about SUPERVISOR 101. We’ve got a page on there about LEADERs. We’ve got a page on there about the book. So you can just learn everything from there.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. Thank you both for being here. Dr. Katie Irvin, CEO, and Jenna Scott, COO of Catalyst Development. Thanks for being with us today.
Dr. Katie Ervin:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks so much to our guests from Catalyst Development, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating and a review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.