[00:00:02] Speaker A: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Welcome to Passage to Profit, the road to Entrepreneurship, where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories about their business journey and also share helpful insights about the successes that they've had.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Did you know that 2 in 5Americans want to start a new business or are business owners? Well, we have lots of information to.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Help them too, and we also talk a little about the intellectual property that helps them flourish.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: So now we are on to our next guest, Christie Pretzinger, and she has WT content. She's the founder and CEO, but she's really trying to change society, I think, and the way workplaces operate. Please tell us what you're doing.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: I built my business and I've been doing that for about 20 years. But when I first started it, I said to my accountant at the time that if I couldn't build a business based on kindness, I would go back to being a freelance writer, which is what I had been doing. And so when you build a business, you know, you put on every single hat and you put your head down and you start working. And it was really only in retrospect, when we were working with some consultants about five years ago, when they surveyed the employees to discover what the core of our business is, the thing without which we would not exist, it came back that it was our culture. And that was really interesting to me because I. It reminded me back to that conversation. So as a result of that, I started kind of pondering the idea, kind of building on what you guys have been talking about here, that you certainly do need to have financial acumen. I have lots of mistakes around that, but looking, I believe personally and in my own experience, if you look only at the balance sheet, at the bottom line, it's aberrant thinking in terms of how we are as human beings, because we are actually literally hardwired to connect and for community. And so I was talking about it with some friends and I came up with your cultural balance sheet. I said, it's almost like I look at my business through the lens of a cultural balance sheet as opposed to only a financial balance sheet. And so I wrote a Book that's coming out in January based on that topic.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: That's fascinating. And if you're talking balance sheets, right, the assets and the liabilities have to equal each other. So how do you fit that together with culture?
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Yeah, well, when I first came up with the idea, I wasn't even sure it was going to work. So then I worked through it and there's cultural assets, cultural liabilities and cultural equity. The similarities are, I mean there are similarities, but major differences as well. Obviously you're talking about people and processes and all sorts of soft skills and things when you're talking about a culture as opposed to just numbers. So the assets obviously begin with your people. That's huge. There's a lot of other ones, like I said, your processes, systems, things that you, any IP that you may have. The interesting thing about cultural liabilities that I discovered through working on this is that cultural liabilities, if you give them both intention and up tension, can be turned into assets. So that can be sometimes true financially, but not always. But in cultural liabilities it can always be true. When I talk about self awareness, a lot of it is around that, that the more self aware you become, you become a better leader and you also become a better human to the point that Elizabeth said. And so for example, if you have a, if a cultural liability for you is that you catch yourself or your team saying things like this is the way we've always done it and you know, finding that you have some rigidity there that might be really stifling idea creation and innovation, that if you have the intention to address that rigidity, to develop more flexibility and then you actually put attention towards your intention, your rigidity can turn into flexibility that then can move into your asset side and then in terms of a cultural equity, it becomes the entire culture that you build. And I really would encourage anyone who is building a business to understand and appreciate the importance of psychological safety at work and the importance of creating a community. I mean, we spend so much time there. It's really, really important to create an environment where people can thrive. And in my experience, that starts with letting every single person know that they matter. That is a human need. And it doesn't matter whether it's work, family, friendship, people want to know that they matter. They don't want to be a cog in the wheel. They want their hopes and dreams and fears and all of those things to be considered and appreciated. That goes very far towards creating an environment where people can thrive and where they want to stay. Because what happens when you Build this cultural equity. I think most people know that on a balance sheet, the only place people show up as a liability, which is again, aberrant thinking, but that human turnover is a hidden cost on a balance sheet. So not only does, in my own experience, kind of hearkening back to what we were talking about earlier, is that you really need to come at this from a place of purpose and meaning. You can absolutely build a business without that. You can focus on the bottom line. There are myriad examples we could all probably cite without even blinking an eye, of people who have been highly financially successful and are not necessarily good humans. But in my experience, what leads to joy in my life is the purpose and meaning of having the privilege of feeding into the lives of the people who work for my organization.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: And we were talking about kindness, and some of these kind of leaders you just referenced view kindness as weakness. But you say they're not the same thing.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Not even close. I think that kindness in many ways is actually strength. Kindness, clarity is kindness. That's an extremely important element of kindness. Boundaries are enable kindness. Kindness should not be mistaken for weakness, just as vulnerability should not be mistaken for weakness. Because as Brene Brown says, the only way to get through courage is through vulnerability. The data show it, your own experience shows it. And yet at the same time, people resist, almost to a ridiculous point, vulnerability. And the sad thing about that is that you can't get to innovation and creativity without vulnerability. I mean, I always give examples of, back in the day when I was a freelancer and I would go to brainstorming sessions back before they had all the tools that you use now, and you would just sit in a room and have to give ideas, you know, do idea generating. I was constantly intimidated and didn't really want to say anything because I didn't want to be vulnerable and look stupid. Well, guess what? How many good ideas did I have that didn't come out because I was not willing to be vulnerable and certainly not with a group of people that I didn't really even know that well. So that's a learned skill that needs to be practiced.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say it becomes a real kind of upward challenge. So how do people cope with that?
[00:06:47] Speaker C: I would posit that your issues around vulnerability start even earlier than work. They start in the. In the home. I think almost everyone has some level of dysfunction, and if they say they don't, they haven't been paying attention because we're human. So in my case, I learned through my childhood and young adulthood that being vulnerable people might use it against me. And like, you know, you show somebody your bruise and then they kick you in your bruise. So I had to learn to overcome that. And I think that in the workplace, that actually happened to me. And one of the reasons I left and became a freelance writer was because I was young and I had come up with some idea, it doesn't matter what it is, but I obviously didn't have the whole picture because I was just in one spot. But I had this idea that I thought was great and oh my gosh, they practically belittled me. And the great thing, the learning for me in that was, first of all, I left and it was fine, they did fine, I'm fine, it's all good. But I have some young employees and, and some of them have said things, had ideas that weren't workable because they don't have the full picture. And I made sure to tell my leadership team, don't shut those people down. Urge them to continue to share their ideas. They're literally engaged and trying to tell you that they want to know more. And that's a wonderful thing to have. So again, going back to the vulnerability in your question, Richard, is that I think that this is again where self awareness comes into play. You have to understand and be able to read the room, you know, you can't just go be show everybody, open your kimono to people who haven't earned your secrets. So you have to, you have to learn to gauge the safety of being vulnerable. When I, when I talk to my people who have teams and I'm teaching them about leading with vulnerability, I see, you know, especially in a large organization, you know, that you can be vulnerable out and down, you may not be able to be vulnerable up. And you need to gauge that and help your team understand, you know, that your team that you're leading with vulnerability, that's a safe space. They need to gauge where else that's a safe space and that's where the self awareness comes in.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: So what would a conversation between me and that young person look like? How would I address them or approach them? Not discourage them, but also let them know that this is probably not going to work for us.
[00:09:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I've had to do that on multiple occasions. And I try to lead with kindness. First of all, I am very appreciative that they are engaging, that they are interested in improving the environment or offering ideas. Our values are empowered, curious, kind and fun. So I recognize that they demonstrated empowerment by sharing this idea. And then I share with them exactly what you said that you know, this is something, it's a good idea actually on its face, but we kind of dug through it and, and realize that at this time, that's not a direction we are going to go. But again, you're on the right track, you know, so reinforce that because you want those behaviors from people to feel like they can contribute. Frequently I will demonstrate vulnerability by reminding people that I don't have all the answers, but something that I just learned from a coach that I wanted to share, that was like a throwaway comment for her and was an epiphany for me was we were talking about leadership teams and she was saying that back to the point of everyone having dysfunction, that the amount of dysfunction on a team is a direct reflection of the amount of dysfunction that the leader will put up with. That's interesting because if you're comfortable, like I did a lot of therapy, I've been through a lot of coaches, I've worked with a lot of different things. So if on my leadership team someone started demonstrating passive aggressive behavior, I would recognize that very quickly and shut it down because I won't tolerate that kind of dysfunction. So I would say, again, looking at yourself and trying to see what your own strengths and weaknesses are and what your contribution to the situation is, and then work from there.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: That's great advice. Christy Pretzinger, you said you have a book coming out.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: It's called your cultural balance sheet, keys to creating an environment where people can thrive. And we did it in digestible keys so people can read them in any order. It's not necessarily, you know, don't have to read it start to finish. And hopefully it will help people get on the right track to creating an environment where people can thrive.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: And how can people find you?
[00:10:57] Speaker C: You can find me at our website, wgcontent.com and you can also find me on LinkedIn. Christy Pretzinger.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Excellent. Thank you very much.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer, Noah Fleischman and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Rishikat Busari. Look for our podcast tomorrow. Anywhere you get your podcasts, our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright need. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
