Leading a Community Through Crisis with Lauren V. Davis

Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:00:00]   Hey, welcome to another episode of We Can Do This. You're listening to episode eight, entitled "Leading a Community Through Crisis" with Lauren Davis

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[00:00:13]this year has been a hell of a year, right? At the time of releasing this episode, it is Monday, May 24th, 2021. So we're about halfway through 2021. Which really just feels like 2020 part two.

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[00:00:27]And I think it's probably an understatement to say that for many of us who are running smaller independent or localized businesses that this has been a really challenging year as of this come to running, our businesses or serving our communities. And I don't think it's too early to really look back at these past 12, 18 months and really look at what has worked, what hasn't worked, what really allowed us to get through this challenging season, and what are things that we should be doing now to prepare for the future. And I really can't think of a better person to talk about this topic with then my really good friend Lauren Davis. 

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[00:01:07] Now Lauren is a marketing strategist, a consultant, she's also a podcaster, and Lauren really learned a lot of what she knows about marketing, about branding around business and entrepreneurship through running her own local record store with her husband called Culture Shock. And we'll talk about that a bunch in the podcast. Lauren has also received senate recognition for her support of small businesses through her non-for-profit Winnebago Buy Local, that helps educate local businesses and she's also a featured marketing expert in Reader's Digest, Huffington Post  a bunch of top rated podcasts. And finally Lauren hosts her own show, the Real Personal Branding podcast, where she uncovers the various secrets of personal brand building online from some of the top thought leaders, speakers, authors, and coaches in the world. So we talk a bunch in this episode about what did she see leading her community through the pandemic?

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[00:02:01] She's incredibly active in her local small business scene. And you'll hear various stories in this episode about how she called together the mayor and other local leaders in her region to really talk through how to navigate small businesses through the pandemic.

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[00:02:16]How she gave her personal phone number out to hundreds of local, small businesses owners.  Just if they needed someone to talk to, he needed someone to strategize with and come up with creative and innovative ideas to get their businesses through the pandemic. And she talks about the real truth about what is required during times of chaos and crisis. And what are the kinds of questions that we really need to be asking ourselves during those moments?

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[00:02:43]We actually talk about how, even when we're not in times of crisis, but we're just stuck. These are incredible questions to ask as business owners, no matter what time, because they really force us to focus on what really matters. So really excited to introduce you to Lauren today, we have a fantastic conversation and I'll know you enjoy it so let's jump into the episode that would Lauren Davis.

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[00:03:03] 

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[00:03:17]Welcome to the podcast. Today I'm here with Lauren Davis. Lauren is a marketing strategist and consultant.  She's also a small business owner, as we hear about. She runs a nonprofit organization  and she's also the host of the Real Personal Branding podcast, where she uncovers the secrets of personal brand building online from some of  the top thought leaders, speakers,  authors and coaches. So I'm really excited to have Lauren with us. So Lauren, thanks for being on the podcast.

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[00:03:46] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:03:46] Thank you so much for having me. This is so much fun and I just love you, Sean. I'm so excited to be here. 

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[00:03:51] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:03:51] Yeah, I'm super pumped I've been looking forward to this episode. For those listening, Lauren and I are really good friends both online and offline. We've met really through running our own businesses and some community around that. So I'm really excited  to talk with you today, Lauren.

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[00:04:04]So first of all, I mean, introduce us just a little bit about what you do. I mean, in my little intro we understand that you keep busy, right? You are a consultant but you also have these like local expressions of what you do in Rockford, Illinois. So tell us a little bit about that.

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[00:04:20] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:04:20] Yeah.

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[00:04:21]So like you said, I, I do coach and consult and provide strategy to tons of different entrepreneurs, everyone from authors to small business owners, to  podcasters and speakers  but I really learned all of that through my real life experience, having a local record store and gift boutique  and That was something I really didn't think that I was going to do with my life.

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[00:04:44] That wasn't really something. I was like, Hey, I think I'll own a record store someday, but I loved music. I loved arts and culture. I loved going to other cities to go like check out their vibe and check out their music stores and everything that they had going on in their local business communities.

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[00:05:00] And I was like, Hey, I really want that here. And my husband felt the same. He was my boyfriend at the same at this time. And he really felt the same way. And we were both like you know, he, he was like, I'm going to start this store and do you kind of want to help me? Do you want to like, get on board with me?

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[00:05:14] And I was like, Yeah, this is awesome. And then we were, we were 19, I was 19 years old. He was 25 years old. So it was like, we really had no experience. And I think the reason why it worked is because we were just so naive about it. Like we really had no idea how hard it would be to own a local business during a recession.

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[00:05:35] This is like 2006 to 2008 ish. When we first started it started in 2006 and it was like, we had no idea how hard it would be to own a business that is based on  when people want to spend discretionary income and we just went for it. We just said, you know what, we're going to just do it. And I remember, you know, we had like this thing, we called our "Barely Scraping Bible" and it was like really low.

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[00:06:00] Like it was it was $60 a day. So we said, if we can make $60 a day, We can keep the electricity on in our store and we can pay our rent at the end of the month and nothing else. And if we can make $60 a day, then we'll survive. We'll, we'll keep our store open. And so we just had that in mind. That was at the time, of course our expenses are much higher now.

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[00:06:23]But at the time that was what we needed to make. We were, we were open seven days a week, like nine hours a day. Every single day we were there at the store. We got part-time jobs. So that way we could spend the time at our part-time jobs and then go to our business, open up our business. We took shifts.

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[00:06:39] One of us, you know, we were the thing that Skyler and I have really great going on is that we're just like a great team. And so we have different strengths and we really lean on each other's strengths.  And so I started taking control of the marketing side of that, and I didn't really know what marketing was at the time.

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[00:06:55] I actually wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to do write you know, blogs and articles and editorials and I wanted to move to a big city and this is like the dream of every person that grows up in not like a huge city or whatever. And so I, I thought that's what I was going to do. But as I started working at the store, I started becoming fascinated by marketing and just by behaviors of our community and by what it takes to really bring people together in a community.

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[00:07:21] And as I started growing the store, I was putting us on every social media platform at the time that there was so, you know, 2006, that was like YouTube. And it was you know you, it was YouTube it was Myspace, it was Facebook only had the ability to go on there for college students at the time. Instagram didn't exist yet in 2006.

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[00:07:40] And it was like with, you know, Twitter came up around 2007, I think something like that. And so it was like, I was just getting us on all of these things I was, and I told my husband, I was like, we need to go out and network. We need to go talk to people. And, and people started coming to us though. They started coming and saying like, how are you getting all this media attention?

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[00:08:00] How are you getting people to come into this store? That is not like a mainstream store in the area of town that you're in right now. And you know, it's not like we're in a shopping center or anything. It was like, we're making our own place in the community. And people started saying, how are you doing this?

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[00:08:16] And so that really led me to finding my role in marketing. So I changed all my stuff in college. I started going back to college for graphic design marketing, but really what taught me how to market something and how to build community and build a presence, a legendary presence for a local business or for any business in particular is just that real life experience I had through building this business with my husband when I was 19.

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[00:08:45] It's just really, it's really funny. And, and, you know, as we were trying to network, as we were trying to get out there and get our names out there and get to know people. We were like, Hey, there's not a lot of things going on for local business owners. And a lot of local businesses owners were leaning on us like, Hey, what did you do about this?

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[00:09:02] Or what do you do when you, when you need this? And they were like asking us questions, like we were the leaders. And we were like, what, why are you asking us? Like, we're so young. Like, we don't even know what we're doing yet. You know? Like that's what we thought, because that's what everyone thinks is like, I don't know enough, you know, it's like that imposter syndrome that we all have, no matter what level we're on.  And eventually we, we hooked up with some other local business owners and we founded this non-for-profit called Winnebago Buy Local us and a  couple other amazing local business owners in our community. We kind of like put our heads together and started brainstorming. And we came up with this small non-profit fully volunteer organization where we would help local business owners come to the forefront of the community, connect with each other, get to know each other.

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[00:09:48]We would host educational events every other month, every month at the time now, every other month. And soon that started growing. And so more local business owners started coming into our vernacular and we started like getting to know more local business owners and building that community. So it was that's like my origin story.

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[00:10:06] It's  a lot of things here, but they all really work together and they're all things that are hugely meaningful in my life , right. They're like they they're big deals to me, my record store and gift shop. We're celebrating 15 years in 2021 here. The non-for-profit was started in 2010.

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[00:10:23] So we're celebrating  11 years now of the non-for-profit. And my business was also started in 2010, my marketing business, because as local businesses started needing more marketing I started working with them. Then I started branching out and going all across the country and so that started in 2010 too.

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[00:10:40] So I'm celebrating 11 years of that now. And I'm 33 years old. So I feel like. Like, oh my 

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[00:10:45] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:10:45] Significant portion of your life. 

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[00:10:47] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:10:47] things. Yeah.

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[00:10:48] So many cool things have happened in the last decade. And I'm just so grateful to be here and to be able to help so many local business owners, but just help entrepreneurs in general find their communities, build those communities, really find who their people are and just help them shine. 

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[00:11:04]Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:11:04] I love it. During that you said like real life experience, and I think that's really what draws me to the work that you do and teach is because you don't just talk about these things. There's a lot of people on the internet that teach about marketing and branding and different things.

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[00:11:18]And they may or may not have experience doing those things. And you have put in the work. Right. And so many different ways. And like you said, in the beginning, like you never planned to open a record store. And I think there's a lot of people probably listening to this podcast that might consider themselves accidental entrepreneurs.

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[00:11:35]We've been saying that in the last few episodes, actually, when Mike was on the show, Mike Kim is a recent  podcast guest. He's a mutual friend of Lauren and I's, and we talked about this idea of being an  accidental entrepreneur and not really knowing what you're going to walk into.

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[00:11:49] And if you knew the full story or everything that was involved,  like you said, seven days a week, you were there and nine to five, right? If you really knew what that felt like, he probably would've never done it, right? Like, no way. There's so many things like me starting my own business cause I, if I knew what it really took I don't know if I would have done it originally. I'm grateful. I'm sure you're grateful that you have these 

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[00:12:10] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:12:10] so grateful. 

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[00:12:11] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:12:11] it's almost like good to be a little bit innocent and not really know. 

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[00:12:15] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:12:15] Yeah. 

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[00:12:16] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:12:16] what's ahead, but, so thanks for sharing a little bit about like the origin story of really all three of these big initiatives, big things that are a part of your life. And I think it's gonna be relevant to alot of listeners today. 

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[00:12:26]So tell us a little bit, like you said, you started your record store during a recession and 2020, I mean, we're recording this, we're halfway through almost halfway through 2021.

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[00:12:37] And this past year, year and a half has been. You know, kind of hellish for a lot of people. It's been difficult to run a business of any kind, let alone businesses that are at the local level businesses, like organizations in the nonprofit space, as well as, you know, people that are like solo consultants.

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[00:12:56]So tell us a little bit about, like, what has this experience been like for you and how have you been able to support other small businesses as part of your nonprofit and clients during a time that's  uncertain.

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[00:13:08]Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:13:08] Yeah.

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[00:13:09]Well, first of all, let me say that I'm still so humbled by where, where we are today, but I'm also humbled by the fact that I feel like I'm always a student. Like I learned so much in the last 15 years, but I'm still learning so much.

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[00:13:27] Every day is like this crazy new experience for me, where I get to learn more. And I truly believe like I truly, truly to my core believe that that I'm not done. I'm not even close to being done learning. So that's one thing.

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[00:13:43] But Yeah, the last year of business was interesting. And I'll just give you like my, the real deal, like exactly how I actually felt when this all, when everything happened with the pandemic and things started closing businesses started closing.

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[00:13:58] At first, I had this moment of just freeze. Like I was like, What do I do? Like this is the first time I have no control over the situation. And I can't find a place where I can have control. Like there was no,  and it wasn't just for my business. It wasn't just for our retail business.  It was for me feeling as if I represented all of the local businesses in our county, 

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[00:14:23] I was like, how am I going to help them?

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[00:14:25] I have no idea what to do. So the first thing I did was I pulled together as many resources as possible. I asked the mayor to get on a zoom call. I asked like all of the different organizations, like the tourism organization, all the local business organizations, the restaurant organization all of the organizations that were kind of like us moving in a similar path.

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[00:14:47] I asked them all to come on a panel. And then I invited every local business owner in our county to be on that zoom call, upgraded my zoom, to like be the biggest it could be. And I just moderated and I just said, okay, submit your questions ahead of time. If you have them put them in the comments, I'm in a moderate, this I'll pass the questions to everyone in all of these organizations and the mayor, they all showed up for us.

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[00:15:10] They all took our questions, but like nobody really had answers yet. Right. So that's when I kind of got to work thinking of like, okay, what resources can I bring them? So I just really stayed busy trying to bring as many resources as possible for marketing, for being innovative to as many local businesses as possible during this time.

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[00:15:31] So I brought them specifically to my non-for-profit the businesses that are involved, which is about a thousand people and about 300 businesses. I really wanted to focus on them because I knew that I could focus on them. You know, I had to pick something that where I felt like I could make a difference and just go for that because I couldn't fix everything.

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[00:15:49]And then on top of that, I sat on lots of different committees and just gave my input on whatever I could. Right. So, but honestly, I felt like I could, like, no matter what I did, I felt like I couldn't do enough, you know? And what it really boiled down to is like, we all have. The thing we have the most control over is what we do with our own situations.

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[00:16:10] So I also really focused down on culture, shock me and my husband culture track is the name of my record store. I don't know if I said it yet. My husband and I really focused on a culture shock and we said something that I've heard from Mike our mutual friend you just spoke about, but also he heard it.

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[00:16:23] from someone else.

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[00:16:24] I think it's been passed around a lot, but the, the thought, what does this make possible? And That's what we had to ask ourselves. We had to say, what does this situation make possible for culture shock our local business. That meant finally getting our store online. We didn't have a store online before we were one of the last remaining record stores without a store online. And it wasn't because we didn't want to, we just hadn't had the time or energy to focus on it.  And We had our whole city shut down. We were closed for, I think it was 13 weeks. We couldn't even let people pick things up in our parking lot. We couldn't even do curbside pickup.

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[00:17:01] We couldn't deliver, there was a rules against delivery too. So we had to like, Okay. We have to figure this out right now. So we got to work. We got our website up in record time. We were selling things on our Instagram. We were we were buying new things. So we were like, okay, let's, let's make more merchandise.

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[00:17:21] Let's make more of our own merch, which was just a total risk. You know, we were like, how do we, how do we make something out of this? The next thing we did is we took little opportunities to help. Our customers who wanted to help us, we wanted to help them help us. So what I mean by that is we said, okay, well, we're going to be shipping out these, these merchandise items.

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[00:17:44] Let's put a note, a handwritten note in every single piece of merchandise that goes out. Well we printed it, we printed notes, but then we also left a handwritten note on it. But it said like, this is where you can post about us on social media. This is why it makes a huge difference for you to post about it.

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[00:18:00] Are your purchases on social media. This is where you can find us, if you would like to buy more new records. This is like just things like that. And then we covered the note in handwritten notes and said, thank you so much. Like this means so much to us. We signed it. We like we went above and beyond for every person, like in a way that we want to do for every customer even now, but we didn't have the ability or time to make that happen before.

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[00:18:22] So we asked ourselves with our shore of what does this make possible? We got to work. We took action. And we started innovating. And what I saw was the local businesses in our community who innovated and who got creative we're the ones that really made the best out of this last, the 20, 20, the year of 2020 you know, cause it

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[00:18:42] was, and it was a few years.

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[00:18:44] of 2020 because it was not.

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[00:18:47]And I, I, you know, it's really hard to talk about this because I don't think that everyone had the same experience, even though some of those that got really creative, they still weren't able to make it work. And my heart breaks for those businesses. Like no other, like it just breaks, but I can't express how important it was for businesses to try to get creative during this time and to try to ask themselves what it makes possible only for their own sanity.

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[00:19:15] To keep us sane. It was to keep us from freaking out, completely freaking out. We had to ask ourselves, you know, What can we do next? What, okay. That, that worked now, how can we improve it? And like, just keep asking ourselves that all year, even when we opened back up that there was like tons of protocols that we were following, you know, we had our Christmas season, everyone was masked.

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[00:19:39] People had to stay outside and align in the cold. We were freaking out about that because we had, could only let a certain amount of people into the store at a time. But, you know what? We made it, we made it happen. We made it through, we were kind to our customers. We were creative. We came up with creative ideas to help them get through it themselves.

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[00:19:57] We blasted music outside at all hours of the day and night. We just, we did whatever it took to just stay creative and stay innovative. Sorry, I'm a little rambling here, but I just can't express enough. How, how meaningful it was to the local businesses in my community. The ones that got creative are the ones that succeeded. 

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[00:20:15] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:20:15] Yeah, I, I love it so much. And I think part of the reason I think That I just resonate so much with what you're talking about is I think we've talked about this in the past. Like, it seems like our local communities, even though we're,  you know, hours and hours and hours apart, I'm in like Western New York, Lauren is in Rockford and there's so much that seems like so similar of these communities.

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[00:20:35] And we experienced like so many of those same things, like a very strong local presence, and  it was really the ones who.  Took risks and were innovative and stepped out and did things that were uncomfortable. Or if they didn't know what to do, they just did something. What they thought was maybe the best opportunity in the moment and like really shot their shot and  made it work.

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[00:20:58] And  so I love that like question that you pose, like, what is, what does this make possible? I think that's something that we can kind of like stick in our pocket for after 2020, 2021, whatever this decade is and keep that mindset because I think that's huge. 

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[00:21:12] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:21:12] And one of the tactical, I mean that was a little bit like. Okay, Lauren, that's great. But what, like what could I tactically do it in a challenge situation like that? Or even any time that you're presented with like, "okay, what the heck do I do now?" situations. What I really like the things that I came up with for local businesses, and this is what I kind of walked as many people through as possible because my phone was just a revolving text message for any local business in town.

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[00:21:41] I sent out my phone number to the entire nonprofit. And I said, just text me anytime. 

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[00:21:46] Like, let me pump you up and make sure that you get through this, you know? But the things that I walked them through was the first thing you have to do is you have to accept that it's a challenge and you have to accept that it's this is how it is right now.

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[00:21:59] You know, you can't say, Well, why can't we go back to this or what, blah, blah, blah. Like we can't, you can't go back, you just have to accept it in order to move forward. Right. So then you have to take time to understand your customers. So I mean, really understand them and I am happy to walk through like what I do to kind of help people understand their customers a little more, but yeah.

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[00:22:18] You have to really, really get to know what your customers are needing in that time. And a lot of them at that time were needing either health safety, or financial safety. They were trying to figure out which, you know, which side they were leaning on, but then you have to audit how you're showing up for those customers.

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[00:22:35] So figuring out like actually where you're showing up for them, how they're receiving their news, how they're taking in information, audit where and how you're showing up for them. Then you readjust your messaging. So you might readjust, like, are you like what messaging are you putting out there into the world?

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[00:22:52] Is it messaging? That's gonna make them feel sorry for you? Is it messaging that's gonna make them want to support you and encourage you? Is it messaging? that's kind of want them to make them hype you up after that? You partner and collaborate. So you, you partner up with other businesses, you collaborate and you come together to build that community and get that excitement flowing even in the most difficult times.

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[00:23:14] And then at the end, you buffer in time to repeat that process every month or every three months or every quarter, however you want to do it. But walking through those steps and figuring out a way for you to repeat those steps is so beneficial, especially for small and local businesses.

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[00:23:31]Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:23:31] That's amazing. So that's, there's so much there that I think we could probably tap into a little for a little bit, but accept, understand audit, readjust, partner, and collaborate. And then buffer and time to repeat. I think that's, that's so good. And I think a lot of people. Even, you know, cause people are listening to this.

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[00:23:49] We might be, you know, miles from this pandemic situation. But even like that, I don't think there's a bad time for us to really do what you just mentioned, like accept the, our current state that we're in. Right? The current reality that we're living in, you know, understanding and taking time to really pause and think through who are we looking to reach and who are we looking to impact?

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[00:24:10]So take us through for those listening today who are, who they may have small business, they may have like a personal brand type business like you or I or they might be just have like an initiative right there. Maybe it's not even their for-profit business, maybe this isn't their income generating thing, but they they've identified something that they care about and that just needs attention. So walk us through this if we're looking to take seriously our, our current reality, right. Except what we're. Where we're at now and looking to make some changes or implement some things, especially in the online space, which is really your specialty.

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[00:24:46] Right. Take us through once we've accepted where we are now, like what are the steps that we take to really take seriously our, our online presence and grow?

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[00:24:54] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:24:54] Well, I think there's the first step is asking yourself,  how do I want me or my business to be remembered like 10 years from now, you know like three years from now or a year from now, how do I want my business to look? And how do I want it to be remembered and how do I want it to be perceived based on the actions I took right now?

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[00:25:14]So. What do you want your team to remember? Even if you have a team working for you? Like we have staff members, you know who, I can't even say enough about how thankful I am that they just stuck with us throughout this whole thing. We, I literally just got chills thinking about it. Your customers though, how do you want your customers to remember how do you want your family or your spouse to remember how you handled the situation?

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[00:25:36] So asking yourself after you've accepted your reality. What you want to be remembered for? What do you want to be remembered for being innovative for being kind for going above and beyond? Not because you had to, but because you were truly genuine about it, do the, you want them to remember that you took the challenge and you maybe have been frustrated at times, but you created something beautiful from it or that you were open-minded to other people's ideas.

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[00:26:01] So thinking further, do you have a six month plan, a nine month plan or a year plan? The, you know, the, like at first the thought is like, it's tempting to just want to say, I just want to stay afloat. That's my, that's my plan for right now. Right. But finding a new zest in the middle of. Of doing really hard things can really make you stand out.

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[00:26:26] So asking yourself is the first thing and then understanding where your customers are at. And then sometimes if you don't know where your customers are at, you can just ask them. Right. But I bet you, if you've been in business for a little while, You probably are starting to get the hang of where your customers are at.

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[00:26:46] And these are a couple of questions that I always ask small business owners or non-for-profits to identify about their, their customers. it's why do your customers care about your small business or organization? not why you want them to care, but why do they truly care? Like, because there's a difference, right?

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[00:27:03]Sometimes we want them to care about certain things, but they don't really care about that. They care about something in particular and you're like, why do they care so much about this? Okay. So why do they care about your small business or organization or your personal brand? Where do they find their information about you. Is it on Google? Is it on your website, your Instagram account, your TikTok like what, where do they find information about you? Where do they go to when they want to find more information, then what channels of marketing are they paying attention to? So is it the news, social media? Is it NPR? So really determining where, what marketing channels are affecting them are affecting your, your key customers, your key players.

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[00:27:42] What keeps them up at night. Of course, like, we've heard that before, you know what pains them, what's their pain point. What kind of things keep your customers up at night Right?

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[00:27:49] now? For a lot of people during the coronavirus situation, it was health or safety, Right. How do we want them to interact with us?

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[00:27:58] So how do you, how do we want our customers to interact with us right now? How can we communicate that to them? How can we guide them to take those steps? What barriers might hold them back from communicating with us? And then these two are really important. What do we wish they knew about us, but they might not know.

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[00:28:17] And what do they already know about us? Cause sometimes there's a huge disconnect there. And then the last and final question I like to ask is how are they influencing other customers? Like, how are they working? how are they talking about our store or my personal brand, or my podcast? How are they talking about it to other people?

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[00:28:37]That's another really key spot of listening to your customers and getting to know them and really figuring out who, who those customers are. Right. And like I said, you can just ask them sometimes too. Like if you, you can ask them by sending an email from the president or CEO or the, you know, the person behind the curtain, you can ask them in an Instagram or Facebook poll. You can create a Google form and create a survey with just three questions, especially if you're a non-for-profit, that kind of thing works really well. You can literally send a personal email to 20 of your favorite customers, which is what we did when we started our new website, we sent an email to 20 customers and we then mowed them each $20. And we said buy a record and let us know how it goes. Like by whatever record you want. The website's yours. Here's $20. so we, we got great feedback by doing things like that. You can offer value to people when you ask,  you can check out Facebook groups and see what people are paying to buy and see what their pain points are. Right. You can do a personal follow-up note. And last but not least, don't forget to ask your team. Your team hears a lot more than you do, and they might be privy to information that you don't already have.

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[00:29:47]Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:29:47] Right. I'm just imagining how valuable these questions actually can be for people. I mean, people listening to this podcast can go through these questions with their team or this, this could literally be the survey that that someone could send. I was literally just this morning, I discovered a brand reached out I'd never heard of, and they asked me to fill out a, a survey very, very much like you just said for it was incentivized. Right. So it, it made me want to want to answer the questions. And I was, I was literally like, just a couple of hours ago and I was filling this out and I'm like, these are such valuable responses, like thinking, you know, thinking of it as a marketer, right?

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[00:30:25] Like not every person is thinking like, oh, like these answers, these questions are gonna be so helpful, but I'm like, no, they could, this could literally transform how they do their work if they know this information about their customer. So  these are incredibly helpful. And I'm imagining, you know, we've been to workshops and things together.  Like these are questions that you would potentially ask around at a workshop for people to think about. And  there's immense value in answering these questions.

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[00:30:51] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:30:51] Yeah, answering them for yourself. If you're a coach or consultant like me or Sean  asking,  those types of questions to your clients and asking them to pinpoint things that can, that can move you towards them. Having incredible breakthroughs, which really in turn helps you as well. 

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[00:31:09] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:31:09] Okay. Yeah. Literally I started keeping like just a folder of good questions because these things, like, they just channel your thoughts in such a different way. And so, I mean, I love that you actually got a little emotional when you're talking about your, your team, right? Like what do they think? They're the ones who are, depending on the kind of business you run,  they're the ones who are.

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[00:31:30] Really at the front lines, interacting with your customers or your audience, and they might know things or hear things, or have stories or experiences that you just because of your proximity to the business you might just not have the opportunity to see. And that can just be so incredibly helpful to actually hear that.

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[00:31:50] And a team member or an employee standpoint what it means to them just to have a voice right at the table and be cared enough about to be asked those questions and to care about the responses.

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[00:32:01] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:32:01] Absolutely. I like 100% agree. Your team members are so important. And my friend, Joshua Binning he owns an incredible restaurant here named Lucha Cantina. He always says that his employees are his first customers. Like they're the people that matter so much in the grand scheme of his business.

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[00:32:23] And I just think that, I think that's so powerful. 

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[00:32:26] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:32:26] Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I actually had the opportunity to jump on the zoom call with Josh and, and Robby. And you could tell, like, I, I think I heard him, like in the first conversation that we had  say something to the effect of like he exists to really improve the lives of his team. So I love that.

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[00:32:42]Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:32:42] Oh, Josh is the best. Yeah. He and I geek out about that.

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[00:32:45] many things, marketing and business building, and he's actually on the board of our non-for-profit as well. so if anyone's ever in the Rockford area, Lucha Cantina is a great restaurant. 

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[00:32:55]Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:32:55] Cool. Well, this is, I mean, this is extremely helpful I mean, I'm, I'm taking notes because. Not just cause I think these would be good to put in the show notes. So if you're listening, you know, some of these things will be in the show notes, you can of course find Lauren online and she has a bunch of great content around this, but I'm taking notes because I want to remember these things that we talked about after that, after our conversation.

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[00:33:17]Now as we, as we really kind of get to a close, is there anything else that you want to share today before we wrap up?

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[00:33:23]Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:33:23] No. I mean, I'm really thankful for being on this, on this podcast and being able to kind of share some things about being a small business owner. A lot of times I come on to podcasts and I talk about marketing, but I have a huge heart for small business owners, small businesses. So, you know, anyone who might be listening, who would like to connect with me, like, please feel free to connect with me.

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[00:33:44] It's really me behind all of my social media presences. And I am, I'm here to connect with you and get to know you and if you have you know, any listeners that are like, I just don't know what to post. I want to be more genuine online, but I have no idea what to post on my social media to really.

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[00:33:59] Make that come through or make who I am come through online. I do have a free resource and I'm happy to give that to you for people to download. So they have over a hundred ideas prompts of what to post. With those ideas and you know, kind of give them some creative inspiration as they're determining, like why do I post an Instagram?

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[00:34:20] What I posted on Facebook? How do I get connected with my customers? How do I let them see the real me, a lot of people kind of have this writer's block when it comes to that. So I'm happy to also give you that as well. 

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[00:34:28] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:34:28] Absolutely. Yeah. So for everyone listening, Lauren's like one of my favorite people I follow on Instagram. So definitely find Lauren on Instagram, but also she's on all these other social channels. I don't know if you're on TikTok. I'm not Oh, follow  Lauren on TikTok. Maybe follow me.

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[00:34:43] Maybe I'll post a video.  Probably not. Yeah, so follow Lauren. And then yeah, definitely download that free resource. I'll include the link to that in the show notes for everywhere, where you can find Lauren where you can download her free guide.

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[00:34:55]So that's all going to be included, but hey Lauren, thanks so much for being on the show. I'm excited, I feel like I'm introducing like other friends of mine to my friend Lauren. So thanks. This is so fun.

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[00:35:04] It's like my favorite thing to do is connect people with people I really care about and and value. So thanks for being on the show. And I'll see you soon, but again, thanks for being on the podcast and hopefully we'll have you on again soon.

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[00:35:15] Lauren V. Davis: 

[00:35:15] Thank you so much for having me, Sean, this was amazing. And you truly do an a great interview. So I'm so happy to be here. 

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[00:35:22] Sean Pritzkau: 

[00:35:22] All right. You're the best Lauren

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[00:35:23] 

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[00:35:37]All right. What a fantastic conversation with Lauren. If anything that we talked about in this episode today resonated, whether it was that list of questions we talked about of what kind of questions that you should be asking yourself during times of uncertainty, if you're thinking about, Hey, I really need to sit down and talk to my team members or my staff members and get their input. If you're thinking I really need to begin surveying my customers and seeing how they talk about my business or  the feedback or input that they have, anything like this resonates, you really need to go follow Lauren on social media.  I wasn't joking, she's really one of my favorite people that I follow and I just really respect her teaching and the kind of experience that she has because she, like I said, she's really lived out these things and she's really implementing the things that she's talking about in her nonprofit, in her own business and even her small business that she runs with her husband. So I had such a great time talking with Lauren today. Hope you enjoyed the conversation and if you did, it would really mean the world to me. If you would jump on iTunes, and leave a review of this show, just sharing your honest feedback, it would really help me grow the reach of this show. And if you haven't followed us on social media, yet you can follow, @wecandothisco on Instagram and on Twitter and get updates about the show. You can hear a little bit more from the episodes, shareable content if you want to share any of these episodes with a friend, that's the best place to do it. So thanks again for listening. And next week for episode nine, I'm excited to have Maitri Sha and Gibson Chu together. They co founded a website called Do One Better, and we'll talk about what it looks like to take an idea and take it  from concept to launch and they'll actually, we talk about how they built their initial product and how they ultimately launched it on a site called Product Hunt.

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[00:37:28] So they go through that in detail, really interesting episode. And that will be my first episode where I interview multiple people on the podcast. 

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[00:37:34] So thanks again. And I'll see you next week.

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