Kay:
Okay. So, what’s the business? Now we’re not talking about just the secret business. We’re talking about our practical business and some of the things that we’ve learned along the way.
Shi:
I feel like the answer to the question what’s the business.
Kay & Shi:
Yes.
Shi:
We are what we lovingly refer to as multi-passionate entrepreneurs and if you’re long-time listeners then you already know we have a multitude of businesses and we want to take this episode and segment here and address our different businesses and some of our lessons that we’ve learned. There’s no way we could start with anything but restaurants.
Kay:
Well, of course, as you know, the story goes when I, Kay here, was 10 and Shi was 17 our parents took over a single-unit restaurant up in Truckee, California, a little mountain ski town, and overnight we became an entrepreneurial family.
Shi:
You guys know we baked biscuits and washed aprons and served tables and bussed tables and fixed ice machines as a family of course. 10-year-old Kay and 17-year-old Shi weren’t fixing the ice machines, but we were definitely doing all of the other things. Mom was working on the books and the marketing and credit card processing and taxes, and all of the things and it was a really amazing thing. So, I feel like our restaurant advice is also really applicable and practical for family business and small business in general because whether you’re selling tires or selling flowers or selling omelets there are some fundamentals of that brick-and-mortar space business that don’t change.
Kay:
Well, over the course of the last 19 years that the restaurant has been in our lives we’ve had the opportunity to go through a lot of ups and downs to learn a lot of lessons and most importantly, to gain a vantage point from a lot of different seats on the bus. We started out, like Shila said, wiping down tables and serving within the restaurants and eventually that led to managing in restaurants. And then it led us being the ones to balance the books and do the marketing. And then it led to growing the company and growing the franchise company. And so, we’ve had a lot of seats and a lot of vantage points that have given some unique perspective onto what works and what doesn’t.
Shi:
So, some of the things that work in the restaurant we know for sure or in the small business brick and mortar family business space are valuing your community, being able to be a positive impact on whatever your region is. Now, if you are brick and mortar, or you sell widgets from a shop, that’s going to be your physical region. But if you’re an online shop or professional services, it might be a little bit more. But you’ll want to know what that community is and when we mean to serve your community, serve it in being seen, serve it in giving obviously. Serve it in partnerships with schools and charities and nonprofits. We’ve really seen that be a strategy that’s helped our restaurants grow.
Kay:
Well, when you’re an integral part of a community as a small business you’ll find that that community seeks to support you as well. Now, as you move up into that next level of then kind of working on this business instead of in the business where you might not be out there boots on the ground, making contact with your community you start making contacts with people in your community who you can partner with in order to do better. So, the next piece that we’ve learned within the restaurant realm is that networking and who you know really matters, and who you get to know over time can really benefit you in the long run.
Shi:
That’s right and building those meaningful connections has really helped our business both in big deal senses and PR senses and in the everyday transaction of people visiting the restaurant more often and thinking of it more often and recommending it more often. Those things have really been really dimensional in the way we’ve been able to receive from networking. But networking and connections don’t happen overnight. When the pandemic hit, for our restaurants, we were able to go to our community partners, go to our email list for the restaurant chain, go to those influencers around our town, our region, and tell them what was going on and how they could help and so many of them did. We would not have survived those first eight to 12 weeks of pandemic without the incredible community support that we received, and it was because we’d been investing and pouring into that community for so long.
Kay:
Now, you can’t get to a place of investing and pouring into a community if your business is not at least doing well enough to have some basic systems in place. Now you’ve probably heard in business that systems are important. If you are an independent entrepreneur or maybe not a brick and mortar, your systems look like email automation and calendar hookups. If you’re a brick and mortar, your systems look like a schedule and how to do the register at night, right? So, having certain sets of instructions or things that can be put on autopilot so you don’t have to be responsible for them is the only way to elevate as an entrepreneur.
Shi:
Adding systems to the business was something our mom knew was extremely important when our family first came into the Squeeze In. When we first bought the Squeeze there was no schedule. There were no credit cards. There was no phone line. There was no soda machine. There was no fryer for French fries. There were barely any systems and many upgrades needed. But those systems began to get into play and get used and they helped us build and scale, as we did. Now, our journey of building and scaling is a little bit harrowing. It was like we continued to double down and invest in really creative ways during economic challenging times and it almost broke our family, the pace.
In fact, recently, Kay and I put together our timeline of events, our just general life timeline. Side note, super fun exercise for you to do if you’ve never done it. Draw a line on a piece of paper and put all your significant events on there. But we realized this explosion of growth and it was like, no wonder there was all of this pressure because we just kept pushing the chips in and betting it all. We wouldn’t have even been able to do that though without the systems and without the community support.
Kay:
Yep. So, those two things have become incredibly important in building the business. But one aspect of every business that’s really important that we’re going to elaborate further on in the next segment is marketing, and we discovered the power of marketing in the Squeeze In so effectively that we actually created another business out of it, and we look forward to talking with you about that soon.
/****/
Shi:
Alright, well, let’s get into marketing now and talk a little bit about that business side of things that we’ve experienced and lessons that we’ve learned. It’s one of the things that has been able to help us be successful no matter what realm we’re in and there’s so much to marketing that it’s a gigantic subject, much bigger than many people first realize. So, we would not say we are experts by any means, but we’ve learned a few things that really help and that really matter outside of advertising and algorithms.
Kay:
Yep. Let’s expand the view of marketing into relationship building, into branding, into content creation, into how someone shows up in the marketplace. It’s not just like Shila said about the algorithms and the content that you post online or the things that you pay for. Marketing is really about how you… It actually says it in the name market-ing. It is how you present yourself in the market and that is a very dimensional thing. But one thing that we’ve learned in regard to marketing that is pretty much tried and true, whether you’re brick and mortar or you’re an online business like we’ve helped to build with Joseph McClendon III and our other clients within the Launch Your Certification business. Now, if you’re in that realm, there’s one really cardinal rule and that’s never ever, ever stop collecting people’s information.
Shi:
List building is huge and it’s one of the things that we’ve always known whether it is in the restaurants building that email list or building the list of prospects for the John Maxwell Team, which is really where we have our biggest marketing juggernaut of success. Now, our mom was an advertising and PR agency partner when I, Shila here, was in high school and then they bought the Squeeze In. So, she brought in what she knew. But our family always kind of had this obsession with marketing. So, it was a focal point for us in the restaurants in a big way and a lot of really amazing, innovative ways that helped us grow. But the people started asking us, who does your marketing? And eventually, Kay and mom originally founded a little boutique marketing agency.
Kay:
Yep. It was called The Young Social, and we launched it initially to help people, particularly with social media. We figured out a social media game that was really cool. So, I went out and got a few digital marketing certifications, worked with Facebook to learn a little bit more about how the platform worked and how we could leverage it for business. We ended up–before the John Maxwell Team–actually helping run advertising for, and the strategic marketing behind the west coast expansion of Rita’s Italian Ice franchise and help them actually sell over 400 units on the west coast which was totally unprecedented for the franchising industry. But we were bringing this fresh perspective of the wild west days of social media back in 2015 when Facebook was still a little bit green in the most popular sense from what we’ve seen at least today.
So, we’ve learned a lot along the way in the midst of that. But continuing to list-build for every single client that we’ve had or partner that we’ve worked with has been so important. But when you have that list, you have to be able to communicate effectively and clearly to them. I think, Shi, that we demonstrated this well within the restaurant company in clarity around mission and company values.
Shi:
Well, one thing we took our restaurant through when we realized the importance of clarity and not when we realized it for the first time. When we re-realized it and brought that focus into our restaurant company, we saw that we had a mission statement that was a paragraph long that nobody in the company, including the owners could recite word for word from memory, and everyone should know the mission. Isn’t that key to a successful mission that everyone knows what the mission is? And so, we went through a process where we boiled it down so that it’s just a very strong, clear six-word mission statement, which is “Happy guests, happy associates every day” and then boiled down our values to be, I think the whole set of four values and the words that go in them is less than 12 words. They’re all very short statements. Show the love, live to serve, provide an experience and grow. Those are our four company values and using something simple and clear like that has given all of us a matrix for decision making, a foundation for decision making, and for approaching different problems and challenges and it’s been so helpful for our brand clarity overall.
Kay:
So, we were able to take that lesson and brand clarity that came from cultural clarity within the restaurant industry and directly apply it to everything that we did in the marketing realm, which ended up creating a really cool skill for our little team around communication and articulation. So, one piece that we learned within the marketing realm is that it’s okay to take a long time to massage your messages. Sometimes Shila and I, we’ve been brainstorming on one initiative and its messaging and haven’t really gotten it right for eight months.
Shi:
Eight months.
Kay:
And we finally, I think have had some…
Shi:
Close.
Kay:
…breakthroughs. We’re really close, but we’ve been working for eight months. Our biography for when we apply for speaking engagements or anything… it’s gone through like six iterations. We are always refining our communication to be more clear and to be more centered on the user.
Shi:
Well, one thing I want to make sure we bring forward here. If you’re like, “Okay, well, that sounds great for marketing and for restaurants and for helping selling franchises, Rita’s Ice.” But what happened when we joined the John Maxwell Team in 2015 was that we were at that event getting certified and we did what millennials do and pulled out our phones and we were like, what’s the hashtag? And there was no hashtag, there was no nothing online. So, we went to the president at the time of the organization and said, just let us run the social media for the event. You guys are really sitting on an amazing marketing opportunity here and you’re not utilizing it and we have this heart to serve and please just let us. And he said yes, which was amazing, and we had some amazing results from that event.
Trending on Twitter, sales on the spot, all kinds of amazing things, and two weeks later, we found ourselves in Florida negotiating a six-figure contract to come in and architect the marketing system that they still use to this day to make over $90 million in sales. So, that’s definitely our biggest marketing juggernaut. Kay moved to Florida, helped the John Maxwell Team build it out, and then moved home and then they asked us to be their marketing teachers so that we could teach the 40,000 coaches, speakers, and trainers how to market their businesses. So, we do have a passion for marketing for sure, and helping people find that clarity and understand it is so much more than advertising and algorithm.
Kay:
Hey, fam, if you’re enjoying today’s episode, we encourage you to go check out kayandshi.com.
Shi:
We talk all about the business in this episode and we show you what our business is on the website, and while you’re there, don’t forget to download the exclusive celebrity interview series. It is so good.
Kay:
That’s kayandshi.com, K A Y A N D S H I, and we look forward to seeing you over there.
Shi:
After the episode.
Kay:
So, let’s talk a little bit about what that communication clarity has led to in us teaching inside the John Maxwell Team environment and has then even beyond that expanded to you, Shi, getting to profess at UNR.
Shi:
Yes, I am so proud to be an instructor of Sociology on the faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I got my Bachelor’s degree and my Master’s degree, and I have always wanted to teach Sociology 101 there. I don’t want to be a full-blown professor. I don’t want to do research. I don’t want to go for grants. I don’t want any of that stuff, but I love the College environment. I love the learning environment. I’m so privileged and excited to get to do that. I know, Kay, you and I both love to teach and teach together so I wish we could be co-instructors. Kay even does get to come guest appear. She speaks every semester. We do a personal growth and development presentation for my class because we love it so much. In fact, we are invited back semester after semester for several different professors within the College, asking us to come present and it’s one of our favorite things.
Kay:
Right. Educating others is definitely a passion of ours, but we would not be at the place where we would even be equipped to do that education if it wasn’t for all of the work that we have done within both the marketing and the restaurant realm. So, what we took from restaurants is the systemization. What we’re taking from marketing is clarity and communication, and if you apply both of those things into the education realm, now we educate our own communities as part of what’s the business. This is part of our work. Hi, welcome. You’re here.
Shi:
We are communicating.
Kay:
We are currently communicating and educating and so what we’ve done is found ways to bring systems and communication clarity to concepts that people are looking to learn in order to help them grasp those concepts and move forward.
Shi:
Right. The theme for this series here is, ‘What’s the Business?’ I’m so glad you brought that forward Kay. Our business is restaurants, our business is marketing, and our business is education and educating but we also love getting educated. We are obsessed with learning and with growth and consuming it. So, naturally, when you have an obsession like that, you also want to reciprocate in return and we’re so lucky that we get to do it in a variety of different ways both for making money and for making passion and purpose alive in our lives. Education, whether we’re teaching the John Maxwell Team members about how to market their business and use software solutions to do that, or we’re getting to teach alongside Joseph McClendon III within the Neuroencoding Institute or teaching at the University. We really love teaching. We really love learning.
Kay:
You know, I’m so glad that you brought forward the value of getting educated in being an educator and I think that many people have this idea that they become a master and once I become the master, I have no more learning to do, and I can just get out there and teach. But it turns out that stuff is changing all the time.
Shi:
All the time.
Kay:
All the time including science, including facts that you think you know, that are absolutely 100% facts are changing all the time. So, constant input when you are somebody who is dedicated to being an educator or a communicator. If you’re someone who’s going to give that constant output, you’ve got to be ready to have that kind of educational intake happening in your life. You’ve got to practice what you preach.
Shi:
Exactly and preach we love.
Kay:
We do.
Shi:
We like to call it the preach and teach because of course we’re going to get energized and excited, and we love to bring forward information and it’s one of the parts of our businesses that we love the most anytime. Sometimes our teaching looks like teaching our associates in the restaurant company about…
Kay:
Or the local Rotary Club.
Shi:
Or the local rotary club. We love doing that. We recently got to do a speech for an adopted grandparents group. These are older folks from a Church who go into elementaries and be an adopted grandma or grandpa to the young folks. We got to go in and give some communication strategies and tools to them that they all found really revolutionary and helpful. We got the sweetest thank you card from them. It was so cute. When we get to do that, we’re on fire. We love that.
Kay:
Yep. Educating is definitely our passion and it’s part of our business so much so that we’ve even come to a point now where we help other people do it in curriculum development and we’ll talk about that here soon.
/****/
Shi:
Welcome to soon.
Kay:
Yes! That was the best opening. Seriously, welcome to soon. We’re glad to have you here. Now, we want to talk a little bit about curriculum development because we’ve taken our passion for education, our passion for systems, and our passion for communication clarity, and we’ve actually built a whole business around it.
Shi:
We sure have. It’s called Launch Your Certification and we help others who are looking to develop their, what we like to call ‘apex offering’ into the marketplace of a certification and license program, whatever you are an expert in. We like to say we take experts and turn them into educators and get their material boiled down to a way that is transferable to others and hopefully even licensable to others.
Kay:
Yes, that licensable piece is really what starts to kind of light us on fire because one thing that drives us and that likely drives you if you’re here. If you’re part of our family, then you’re probably someone who wants to create an impact in the world. We certainly want to create an impact in the world and to us creating that impact in the most efficient way possible looks like if we have this expert to educator funnel equipping the people that they’re educating not just to know the knowledge that they have but to go out there and spread that knowledge to other people.
Shi:
So, if you’re wondering what does this look like in play? We’ll just share it with you. You’ve heard us talk about Joseph McClendon III and the Neuroencoding Institute. So, what does that mean exactly if somebody joins the Institute? Well, what this means for us is obviously that we partnered with Joseph to develop the curriculum for the Institute, whether the classes and the certifications that are going to come with it? But what the licensed material is, are programs that are already created that the students of the Institute once certified can then take those programs directly to their audience and sell them and have totally ready to go programs with modules and PowerPoints and worksheets and scripts and all of the things that they need so they could literally just “plug and play” a program. They’ve got content already to take out. They’re not teaching their own material. They’re teaching what they’re certified to teach through the Neuroencoding Institute and it’s amazing. We have hundreds of members so far. You’ve heard us talk about the Institute before. We’re pretty dang proud. But this is revolutionary for folks who are looking to equip themselves with tools to maybe be a little bit more in charge of their own entrepreneurial journey.
Kay:
Now, right now in our society, we are faced with something called The Great Resignation.
Kay & Shi:
Ooh.
Kay:
People are quitting their corporate careers and their jobs period at a record pace and many of them are finding that the gig economy or the entrepreneurial world is a little bit more suited to their needs. Oh, and it turns out that the entrepreneurial world kind of suits us better as humans.
Shi:
Yep.
Kay:
Just being able to be a little bit more flexible with our timing, with our hours, and with our decision making is really, really good for humans and so as many people start making this leap there is a need for entrepreneurial equipment that goes beyond skills, that goes beyond what is it that I need to know in order to do the thing, but is what is it that I can get out there and sell? Because not everyone has the skill with PowerPoint and the script and communication clarity, but they might be one of the best deliverers out there. They just need the content to make it happen. So, creating real-world solutions that can be implemented by individual people, utilizing experts’ ideas is really something we’re very passionate about.
Shi:
It’s a lot of fun. Another way we get to apply the curriculum development piece is in that John Maxwell Team teaching that we get to do. For instance, we had a teaching schedule, so we’re like, alright, well, what do we want to teach? We’ve been kind of formulating on this idea around prioritization within a business, let’s put together some curriculum on that. We did, and we had a beautiful PowerPoint thanks to Kay. You slayed on that PowerPoint.
Kay:
Thank you.
Shi:
And we put together some teaching points and some best practices and we delivered it and it was clear and it was extremely helpful and lots of folks have already implemented it and so we know we’re in our flame when we’re doing curriculum development even more so when we get to also then teach and help equip that curriculum development to others, and it’s something that we truly love to do.
Kay:
Okay, two quick tips for you before we go today. First off if you are creating any kind of curriculum do your best to think in threes and fives. If there are the three steps to this or the five things you need to know about that, it can be really helpful for a human brain to absorb and do so well. So, think in those threes and fives. Then second, if you have to choose between clever or compelling and clear, always choose clear communication. Now, you might think that you’re being really clever, and you’ve got the super compelling message or whatever it is to say. But when you are teaching, when you’re developing curriculum, when you’re giving somebody something that they need to absorb, always choose clarity over maybe some more of those clever things you might find.
Shi:
Or getting into industry lingo and all of the features in marketing. We talk about benefits versus features, focusing on how you’re going to benefit from something, not all of the features of a product. In “Building a Story Brand” by Donald Miller, he talks about how Apple transformed from running a seven-page ad that totally bombed that had all of the technical aspects of their computer down to a single one-page ad with two words that was massively successful. Those two words were “Think Different.” So, being extremely clear and concise is so much better than just being features heavy and bringing that forward and that’s going to be the same when we develop curriculum. We’re also seeing this real trend towards:
(a) gamification, which we don’t have time to get into, but is super exciting in the curriculum development world and
(b) shorter is better. It’s better to have six, 10-minute videos than one 60-minute video. For the nature of our attention span here in society, designing curriculum in that way just sets up everyone for success.
Kay:
So now, you know what’s the business.
Shi:
Right. Restaurants, marketing, education, curriculum development. Like we said, we’re multi-passionate entrepreneurs and we’re so glad you tuned in for finding out what the business is family.
Kay:
Hey family, thanks for joining us this week. Next week, we have such a special podcast for you. We cannot wait to introduce you to our business partner and one of our most favorite people ever, Joseph McClendon III.
Shi:
I am so glad Joseph is going to be our first official interview here on the Kay & Shi Show. We hope you tune in next week. You do not want to miss it. He is incredible and this interview is fire.
