Podcast

Barb McGrath 0:00
Welcome to another episode in our series women in leadership on the Secret Life of entrepreneurs. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, marketing guru and founder of the get found on Google program. I’m talking again to a leader in the business community who’s making a positive impact on our community, on our citizens in the workplace and on her stakeholders. So we’re going to hear from Dr. Renatta Varma. Today, she’s going to tell us her secrets about what makes her tick. What keeps her going, because this woman works constantly, and what helped her become successful. So let’s get started. Renatta, welcome.

Dr. Renatta Varma 0:46
Thank you for being here for having me.

Barb McGrath 0:47
Congratulations on your award with the YWCA of Regina health advocacy, correct? Yes, yeah. So tell me a little bit about that award. What? What is that award all about? What does that mean to you?

Dr. Renatta Varma 1:01
Well, it’s the Regina YWCA women of distinction award. And my category, as you mentioned, was health advocacy. So I’m a ophthalmologist here in Regina, the only female Medina and I’m what’s called a vitreoretinal. Surgeon

Barb McGrath 1:19
There, she said, for me, I did not just say it now.

Dr. Renatta Varma 1:23
That’s a mouthful.

So what that means is I repair retinal diseases like retinal detachments from diabetic retinal problems. So wide range of retinal disorders. So I’m one of at the time that I completed my fellowship in vitreoretinal surgery, I think they were about 130 male vitreoretinal surgeons in Canada, and at the time, there was two other practicing females. Okay. I think there are two more now, one or two more now. So four of us maybe, wow, so it’s a heavily male dominated field.

Barb McGrath 2:01
Why do you think that is any ideas?

Dr. Renatta Varma 2:03
Um, you know, my opinion on that has changed drastically over the years. So I think when I started medicine, and I started going to the mall, Jay would have said it was surgical specialties that are still very much, some of them are very much boys clubs. Okay, so there’s males, male dominated, and males are controlling the entrance process. Now that I am a retinal surgeon, I think there’s a little bit of that and there’s a maybe women are smarter than me. And they knew why not to do this special because it’s a very difficult lifestyle specialty. And it’s a very difficult specialty to maintain a balanced life with and a family with. So I think probably part of it is that it’s traditionally male dominated and remains that way. But a large part of it is that

Barb McGrath 2:57
Okay, so tell me a little bit about the lifestyle because when I think of ophthalmology and family doctor, I mean, it tends to be in the office, Monday to Friday, nine to five, and of course, there’s hospital and things like that. Tell us a little bit about what puts the demand on you.

Dr. Renatta Varma 3:15
Well, um, so I think ophthalmology in general is a much busier specialty than people recognize, I think, I’m sure it is or eye diseases are extremely common. There’s a, there’s a very few ophthalmologists compared to the number of patients that need care. Perhaps I think that’s one issue. The other issue is eyes are something that everybody fears of losing their vision. Yes, after losing their life, I think that’s the scariest thing for people possibility of losing their vision. So from a patient perspective, every little thing that goes wrong with an emergency so it makes our days very busy and it’s hard to decipher from somebody symptoms of blurred vision, whether that’s urgent or not urgent. So I think a lot of it is the panic that is associated with the potential for vision loss, okay. In terms of mice specialty in particular, I deal with retinal detachments and they come unpredictably and they come in quite quickly and they need surgical repair, usually within 48 hours, so, evenings are very busy and our days are very interrupted and very long. So we see a lot of patients in the day. A lot of what we do we treat macular degeneration and patients are treated with monthly injections, whether there’s room for them or not, they need to be seen as Okay, no matter how many patients you’re seeing that date, you have to make it work. Yeah, so it’s the days are very, very heavy very long and and evenings can be busy.

Barb McGrath 4:49
So and just from our conversation earlier, you have children as well. So how many children do you have?

Dr. Renatta Varma 4:56
I have three children and how old are they No. five year old girl and I have many, eight and 10 year olds It’s okay. To wrap in bunches. I was a Well, yes, very busy household and they’re involved in a lot of activities. Mm hmm.

Barb McGrath 5:09
Sports music culture, what what direction? Do they leave all of all of it? And all in different directions. Right.

Dr. Renatta Varma 5:16
You know, they all are in all directions. Yeah, yeah. So I was very active as a child. My mom is a very different person and but it signed us up for absolutely every everything Ukrainian dance Hawaiian dance, like you name it. We did it was appropriate or not?

Barb McGrath 5:33
Yeah, you got a chance to try everything.

Dr. Renatta Varma 5:35
Yeah. So sports, music, everything. So I’ve taken a bit of her personality and my kids are in way too much. If you ask my husband,

Barb McGrath 5:43
That’s exactly. So do you guys share that then when the kids have to go in multiple directions?

Dr. Renatta Varma 5:48
Yeah, we, I tend to do the morning stuff, though. Okay early and do everything in the morning because he gets a certain time. I my end of my day is very unpredictable. So he’s the one who has to leave work at a certain time and catch up to that activity.

Barb McGrath 6:03
Yeah, we used to do almost that exact same thing. I would look after mornings he would look after afternoons kind of thing. Yeah. And it worked. My husband very seldom traveled. But a few weeks ago, he had to, and I kid you not. We have two kids. They had four activities in one night, and in completely different directions. So I looked at the calendar, and I was like, how can I like you most birds with one stone because there’s like one parent, I can’t get them in two different places. So I said, Well, if we all go to baseball, at least you’ll be in the same Park, two different diamonds, both doing an activity. There you go. Just go back and forth. Right?

Dr. Renatta Varma 6:42
We do a lot of that wise and figure out where to go and what to give up. Mm hmm. They’re still young enough that we can miss things. And

Barb McGrath 6:49
Yes, exactly has has, have any of your kids sort of started to gravitate to a specific activity or

Dr. Renatta Varma 6:56
Yet my oldest is in is a very good soccer player. So okay, he’s kind of leaning that way. And they actually have their royal conservatory violin exam today. Ah, one is the musician, artist kind of cake. And the little one is just crazy.

Barb McGrath 7:13
So five, it’s allowed, right? Yeah.

Dr. Renatta Varma 7:16
He’s all over the place. They will see with two older brothers. She’s just trying to survive.

Barb McGrath 7:20
Yeah, yeah. But she’s gonna have two brothers to kind of look out for so you know, that’s a good thing. Yeah.

Dr. Renatta Varma 7:27
They’re making her tough. That’s for sure.

Barb McGrath 7:30
Right now they get to pick on her and as soon as someone else does in a few years, right, they’ll be they’ll be right in there to defend her for sure. Good. All right. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the women of distinction and the YWCA award. Did you know that you had been nominated?

Dr. Renatta Varma 7:47
Yes, the nominee has to tell the purse. Oh, they do? Yeah. Okay. You have to be a part of the process. Okay. I didn’t know I was nominated. Yes. I was surprised that I was nominated and pleasantly surprised by that. Yeah.

Barb McGrath 8:01
Okay. And so tell me like, how can you now use that award to help you further some of the things that you’re doing in the community? Because I know you’re very active between your culture involvement and the street film festival? Was it? Yes. So tell me a little bit about you know, how you can put those pieces together?

Dr. Renatta Varma 8:22
Well, I think the the whole experience was great with the YWCA and the event. And I think for one thing, it was a real eye opener as to what other people are doing and the amazing things other women in Region. Yes, certainly learned a lot from the evening and was lucky the story’s very inspiring. So yeah, I think it’s sometimes it gets a little bit discouraging doing all these things, and wondering, what am I doing all this for? And was it really benefiting? And I think it was, it’s a good reassurance to know that people do appreciate these things, and they are necessary in the community and just people who are doing more hands, no matter how much you do. There’s lots of people doing more than it’s kind of gives you the inspiration to keep going to keep throwing things in different areas. And it also brought up a lot of awareness of how much need there is for you know, I think it’ll be useful to me personally that way and just increasing my awareness. You meet a lot of other people who are interested in difference and
have bored, expensive experiences. Gives you other contacts and other ideas.

Barb McGrath 9:40
One of the things that I found most interesting when I was preparing for our series on women in leadership was reading each of the biographies and really getting to know you know a little bit about each of the first it was nominees and then the award winners and honestly, I was dumbfounded by the work that some of these winners are doing. like yourself, I don’t know where you sleep. Or when usually nevermind, where but when you sleep. Right, right, and I suppose it goes back to medical school, right? He didn’t need sleep then. So I hack What do we need sleep for now?

Dr. Renatta Varma 10:15
Yeah, it’s a I know, there’s there’s a lot of things in life that I want to do is pick your priorities and sometimes sleep.

Barb McGrath 10:24
As long as coffee. Yes, we’re all good Tim Hortons to actually go? Yes. So let’s talk a little bit about that. What keeps you going? What, what motivates you to continue to do more? That’s a tough question. Um, or is it really just we’ve become, you know, bigger and slipped.

Dr. Renatta Varma 10:41
My mind was this way to be very, okay. I don’t really know any minute I was very little i. So I never had a we had a nanny briefly. But I actually went to work with my mom, and my mom was a family. Okay, I don’t know if I should be saying this publicly. But all her patients you I used to hide under the desk. Well, my mom saw. Oh, wow.

Barb McGrath 11:03
Okay. I’ve heard stories like that before. So that’s not the first but

Dr. Renatta Varma 11:06
I even have patients that I see now. And they’ll ask me, Was I the one who is under the desk? 

Barb McGrath 11:13
Oh, yeah, I suppose because your mom’s patients could be? Wow.

Dr. Renatta Varma 11:17
So I mean, we used to go to house calls with her. And my mom was an extremely community involved persons who’s very involved with her patients, and they had problems they would often come to our house and in our lives, stay with us. Oh, yeah. So she just, she kind of gets right into everything that she does. He was like that with us with, with our East Indian community. We were, I was very involved with the depths, and all the cultural programs, which there are a lot of, yes. Ambassador for mosaic. Just just very involved since I was a kid. So to be honest, I really didn’t even know any different. I just thought that’s right.

Barb McGrath 12:01
This is what everyone does.

Dr. Renatta Varma 12:02
Every Yeah, you did this. My family did this. I didn’t. When I had kids, they were signed up and everything. And until my husband pointed out that this was abnormal. Yeah, it’s just second nature. And I think my life would be empty. I’m not a person.

Barb McGrath 12:27
Right, exactly. You know, and it’s unfortunate, because there are so often we see kids sports teams, they’re just crying for parent volunteers. And I don’t know if we’ve all put ourselves in a situation where we just feel busier now, or are we genuinely busier? Or are we just less likely to, you know, put our hand up and volunteer in the community? And it’s, it’s tough because a lot of those kids activities really rely on parent volunteers. Right. So yeah, that makes it much more difficult. Okay, so one of the questions I asked all of my guests is, you know, tell me about that typical day, how do you manage the kids manage the appointments and then possibly in emergency surgery? it tell me like, how do you make all these pieces come together?

Dr. Renatta Varma 13:14
Well, I think for me, the key to my success has been very, very good. group of support staff and family, friends, everything I have, in my office, I have a lot more staff than most physicians, okay, who work for me, most of them full time, some of them part time. But I have an office manager who is basically an extension of me. So she reads all my emails, she goes through all my messages on my phone, she organizes my day, she texts my husband on my behalf, stuff that would pick up my children, so so she’s the one who kind of keeps track of everything I do, and make sure that I go to the right place at the right time. Right.

Barb McGrath 13:59
So she got you here today, here, thank you to her.

Dr. Renatta Varma 14:04
So and I have many people in my life that I rely on might not be able to do all the things.

Barb McGrath 14:12
One of the things that you said to me when we were just chatting ahead of time was you never saw yourself as a leader. It was just something that that happened. hearing you talk about surrounding yourself with good people and hard workers, that is leadership. That is the ultimate definition of leadership is surrounding you with those people that you’re trying to build them up. It’s not about leading them or getting to a destination, but it’s about building people so that they can become the best their best selves. Right. And that’s when I hear you saying, especially thinking about your office manager, I mean, like she is somebody who you know, she is in 110%. And so often we don’t see that in the workplace. Yeah, right. There’s somebody coming in doing the job, right and then leaving again the end of the day. So kudos to you that is absolute leadership. Yes. So what’s next? What’s what? What projects come next?

Dr. Renatta Varma 15:09
You know, I, to be honest, I just tried to survive day to day. I don’t think very far. I have a lot on my plate. I don’t know, if there is a next for me, I’m involved in some things that I want to be involved in forever. So I’m very actively involved with region International Film Festival, which is something that’s been around for about three years, and I’m a board member and the principal sponsor of it. So, okay. It’s something I’m very passionate about. A little out in left field from

Barb McGrath 15:39
Yeah, so how did that how did that relationship evolve?

Dr. Renatta Varma 15:43
I have to be honest with you It probably I like the whole idea of Oscars and you know, dressing up, okay, hold that side of film and the Cannes Film Festival and that sort of thing. And when I heard there was a film festival in Regina, I heard about this gala that they were having. So I said, I want to be a part of that. Can I sponsor it? And my friend was on the board. And she said, Of course you can.

Barb McGrath 16:05
Nonprofit, you don’t say no to sponsorship. I didn’t know that that.

Dr. Renatta Varma 16:09
So I went to it with no intention of getting involved in it in any way. I had no interest in film other than everybody watches movies, right. And when I actually went to it, it was such an amazing experience. And then I met with the person who created it, john, Timothy, and then I was all in. Yeah. He’s an incredible person. And he’s got it. Yeah. He deserves to be sitting here talking about himself more than me.

Barb McGrath 16:38
So excellent. I’m always looking for more guests.

Dr. Renatta Varma 16:41
So he’s a phenomenal individual. So when I heard his story, I just, I wanted to stop everything else I was doing it. An I think it’s neat to something unique.

Barb McGrath 16:54
In Saskatchewan has not been great over the last several years. No, they’ve had a much more difficult time these last few years. It’s unfortunate.

Dr. Renatta Varma 17:02
Yeah, it is. And I mean, I didn’t know about any of that film industry until the film festival. But I mean, so the first year that I was involved, I thought it was incredible. I felt like I was at the Oscars. The real Wow. So well done. I didn’t think it could get any better. And then the second year was 10 times better so Oh, wow. It was it was a really well done. Gala. And the film, the quality of films was amazing. 70 different countries submitted and they showcase over 100 Films over three days and it’s cheap, it’s fun, it’s just amazing experience the the just the whole experience of it was very exciting. So yeah, I bet that’s really gonna be my focus for the next few years helping build

Barb McGrath 17:50
Okay, and when was the gala or when is the gala gala Film Festival goes from August 13 to the 18th

Dr. Renatta Varma 17:56
Oh, so it’s actually coming up fairly soon. So it’s at the Cineplex Odeon Southland. Okay, it’s for three days. I’m not sure about this year, but last year for $80 you got the 44 days of movie passes. He says he wanted plus the opening gala plus the closing gala so Wow. And where’s the gala held? The gala is incredible. It was held it casino so the whole red carpet if there was red on all the glass, like the logo. And the outside road was spread carpeted. Oh, how did I miss? Yeah, it was it was only red carpet for the one night.

Okay, it was removed in the morning. So it’s pretty impressive if you don’t bring it in any other film festivals. Mm hmm.

So we had film producers from actually all over North America who came in from Iran and so world people came from all

Barb McGrath 18:47
Wow, okay, so this isn’t just Regina, we’re still okay.

Dr. Renatta Varma 18:50
So is interesting. There was a producer that was there. I forget if he’s from the US or if he was from Halifax, but he had been to about 40 film festivals. And he said that ours was the most organized. No, other than the fact that we didn’t have the celebrities that it was that it was a good one too attractive. Right. any of the other. Oh, wow, that was a pretty big camera organized.

Barb McGrath 19:18
Uh huh. Okay. And then you’re culturally involved as well with the Hindu or East Indian?

Dr. Renatta Varma 19:23
Yeah, I was the president of the Hindu temple for years this year. Okay. very involved with the events both through the religious side of the canvas with each mosaic.

Barb McGrath 19:40
But yes. How did mosaic go for you? It was it was good.

Dr. Renatta Varma 19:43
I dance 27 times in three days. It’s a mistake. I could barely stand by the end. Yeah. That’s the Yeah, that’s fun.

Barb McGrath 19:53
Where is some? Where’s your pavilion?

Dr. Renatta Varma 19:56
Our pavilion was at the Kelly grilling

Barb McGrath 19:58
Or your colleagues. Okay. Trying to think, um, this is terrible is Kelly the one where the Irish pavilion also was? No, because they were there this year lay in that Chilean land was their cake. I can’t even make it out of my I know. I know. It’s terrible. So this is actually the first year in many years that we haven’t gone. We always get on our bikes. So we live down in the south, and we get on our bikes for the kids. And we go all over the place, get a little bit of exercise. And that way, if mom and dad have a couple of drinks along the way, we’re still setting a good example. Right? So and it just didn’t fit into the calendar this weekend with baseball and tournaments. Ball hockey is a busy weekend, right? Yeah, it is. And it’s one of typically one of the first nice weekends of summer because that long weekend, you know, most of the time, it’s still cold.

Dr. Renatta Varma 20:47
We had violin recital, piano recital and mosaico phones all on the same weekend.

Barb McGrath 20:50
Do you have like a third person to help dry? You know, and I have a nanny

Dr. Renatta Varma 20:57
You okay in school? So she she actually drives them to school in the morning? At the end of the day, so she does some of the drop offs. And then her and my husband’s pick up?

Yeah. Oh, good direction.

Barb McGrath 21:08
Exactly. Going different directions after school, knowing crazy.

Dr. Renatta Varma 21:13
I think it’s impossible. My my work hours are far more than full time. So yes. So it would be impossible to do.

Barb McGrath 21:20
Exactly. Well. And I think at the medical profession, it’s more than a typical work week be owning a business. That’s way more than, you know, a typical work week. So you combine those two together, and you’re asking an awful lot of yourself or of anyone else, right? Absolutely. And so much of that is just understanding and awareness, right? Because we all tend to fear what we can’t understand. And my daughter and I were walking the dog a few weeks ago and found herself literally walking in the middle of a, I believe it was Sikh parade. Oh, yeah. And it was one of those things where I’m like, looking around me, and I looked at my daughter and like, we’re in a parade, no. Dog and just happen. So I said to the gentleman beside me, I’m like, I’m really sorry. We’ll get out of your race, like, no, you’re fine. I’m like, Where are you going? Like, I felt terrible. Like they’re chatting, and we’re chatting, and there’s guys in cars and motors. And I’m like, I have no idea what we just walked into, they gave us some information. I’m like, Okay, well, we can figure it out later. In the meantime, all these people are standing with their cell phones recording the front of everyone’s Facebook page, because we like it just kind of merged together like this, right? And I’m like, looking beside me. And I’m thinking, Oh, how am I gonna?

Dr. Renatta Varma 22:47
Was learn something?

Barb McGrath 22:48
Well, exactly. But it’s just so I ask questions. I mean, I’m all of a sudden in the middle of your event. So I Mazal ask questions. Right. And so it’s just acceptance and understanding. And we are saying no, get dressed the same way. All right. So we might eat a little different food and celebrate a different religion. But, you know, at the end of the day, we are all just the same, right? So and I’m sure it’s a message that you have with your kids all the time and conversations that you have, and that’s the more open we are about our differences, the more they become accepted.

Dr. Renatta Varma 23:27
And my my husband is Canadian, so is he Yes. Okay, Britain, kind of learning everything guessing.

Barb McGrath 23:32
Is he Christian?

Dr. Renatta Varma 23:34
Ah, no, I would say he’s, he’s not religious. Okay. His family would live in Christian.

Barb McGrath 23:40
Okay. So do you do the Hindu celebrations as well as the Christian celebrations like Christmas and Easter and things like that?

Dr. Renatta Varma 23:48
Yeah, I mean, for us Christmas and Easter would just be getting together with them. Okay, go to church. Right? Actually, I grew up going to church. Oh, you did? My mom was a very open spiritual person. So I’ve behaved church. I’ve been to synagogue. I’ve been to the Gurdwara, which is the Sikh temple. I went there for years not knowing that I wasn’t Sikh. So she would just plug me in anywhere. To the Apostolic Church on a city boy for 10 years. Yes. Did all their pioneer girls and all their extra promo

Barb McGrath 24:21
Isn’t that interesting? Never.

Dr. Renatta Varma 24:22
They didn’t raise this as one. Okay,

Barb McGrath 24:26
They let you find what you were naturally drawn to

Dr. Renatta Varma 24:28
My mom is more My parents are more spiritual than religious. Okay, so they don’t care where I go as long as I

Barb McGrath 24:36
Yeah, for something as long as you have something like I do. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s very interesting. Excellent. Um, so let’s, let’s profile the Hindu community and the film festival for just a moment. I think we only have a few minutes left. I haven’t been watching the clock very close, which is usual in these episodes. But tell everyone how can they learn more about the film Film Festival and if they do want to learn more About the Hindu community, where would they start?

Dr. Renatta Varma 25:02
Um, well, the Hindu community is easy. So we have our Sunday service every Sunday morning.

Barb McGrath 25:09
And the film festival. So that happens in Oh, yeah.

Dr. Renatta Varma 25:11
Look forward to seeing lots of people come out this year. Yes, absolutely. This is a fourth year, and hopefully it’ll start picking up more momentum. I think it’s a very successful film festival, but it’s not, not a lot known about it. So in terms of the film side of it, we have tons of filmmakers submitting their work from all over the world and that Sagittarius tablets, but the rejina community being aware of it or interested, or that we’re still trying to build it’s, it starts on the Tuesday, I believe it’s I should know this the 12th of August until the 17th of August. Okay. So it was an opening gala, and a closing Gala. And then the four days of shows on tape.

Barb McGrath 25:52
And then again, public is welcome to everything, everything. Obviously sponsorship opportunities are available.

Dr. Renatta Varma 26:00
Yeah. We’re always looking for sponsors and a big sponsor. Other people consider it so

Barb McGrath 26:06
Is there a website? Do you know? Yeah, it’s riffa. All right. Oh, okay. See? Yeah. And if you just Google refund,

Dr. Renatta Varma 26:15
Yes.

Barb McGrath 26:17
Yeah. And then it will pop up. Yeah. Okay. And so tickets can be purchased probably anytime now or I think they’re available now online.

Dr. Renatta Varma 26:23
Yeah. Okay. Purchased up the door. So or if you are a filmmaker, and one made a film, actually. Next Gen that makes sense that submissions would be closed by now. Is there a screening process yet? So we actually have an international jury who screens mall and our jury consists of people who are all Oscar winners, BAFTA winners, Emmy winner, so these very high level jurors. So john Timothy is an amazing individual. And when he wants something done, he goes to the top. Exactly. He we have some very big names people who, in the film industry who do they do it remotely, but they’ve agreed to come on as part of their nonprofit work. And so they judge all the films and they pick the award. So it’s not done locally, ah, local submissions in Australia, England, India, they’re everywhere.

Barb McGrath 27:17
I had no idea like I’m, I’m not a Regina native, so Michelle’s home for me. But I’ve been here for 20 years, I had no idea we had something like this, if I have heard of riff off, but I didn’t know what it stood for, to be honest. Yeah.

Dr. Renatta Varma 27:29
So I think the 2015 was the first year and then there was a break in 16 1718. So this will be our fourth.

Barb McGrath 27:40
Wow, okay. So www.gfi.ca we think, yes, China International Film Festival. Okay, and Renata is not responsible for marketing.

Dr. Renatta Varma 27:56
But she mobilized the team behind.

Barb McGrath 28:00
Awesome. We’re not Is there anything else that you’d like to say? We’re just about to wrap up?

Dr. Renatta Varma 28:04
No, thank you for having me. Great opportunity and chatting with you.

Barb McGrath 28:08
Yes. Thank you for being here. And thank you to everyone for listening and watching today. The Secret Life of entrepreneurs and our series now on women in leadership is absolutely at the core of what I love to do. So I’m very happy to have the opportunity to bring this to you. If you’d like to be a guest, you can email me at barb@googlegirl.ca. Or you can reach out to our Facebook and Instagram pages at Above the Fold Canada. So just a reminder that you can also submit a question in advance of our live shows. And I always like to surprise our guests with those live questions. So if you’ve got something that’s burning, and you see a guest that’s coming up, you can ask those questions. I am your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember, you work hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:00
Welcome to another special episode of The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. A 91.3 FM CJ tr Regina community radio. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, marketing guru and founder of the get found on Google program. This week, I’m talking to a leader in our business community, who’s making a positive impact in her workplace. And for way more stakeholders than I ever realized before talking with her. Joanne is a part of our women in leadership series, and she’s going to talk a little bit about her role in the community. She’s also going to talk about her secret, what keeps her going, she’s in a tough job, what makes her What makes her get out of bed in the morning and not not, not hesitate to hop in the car and drive for Moose Jaw. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about her role. So let’s get started then. Our guest today is Jo-Anne Dusel. From PATHS, an organization here in our province, and she’s also an award winner with the YWCA of Regina, women of distinction. So we’re going to talk a little bit about both of those today. Welcome, Jo-Anne, tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you, Barb.

Jo-Anne Dusel 1:09
Well, I am a proud mother of two and grandmother of two. As you mentioned, I do live in Moose Jaw, I work in Regina at pavs. The work that I do now is all around trying to reduce the incidence and impact of intimate partner violence and other violence against women and girls. The way I got into this work was through really a lifelong interest in social justice. I do believe that people have the ability to make change in societies. And there’s the the famous famous Margaret Mead quote, that the only thing that ever has changed society is motivated individuals. That’s not the quote, but that’s the intent of the quote. Yeah. And I’ve always believed that. for 20 years in Moose Jaw, I was a frontline worker at the women’s shelter transition house. I worked with literally thousands of women and their children who were fleeing violence situations. And in now in almost five years, I’ve been the executive director at PATHS. Okay, we are a provincial Association, we have 21 member agencies located all over the province. And all of our members are either residential, domestic violence shelters, second stage shelters, or Hey, our counseling agencies that do work with families, individuals who have experienced violence within those relationships, right.

Barb McGrath 2:38
Yeah, within the home. So join you and and i, you and i had a chance to talk earlier. And you shared some stats with me. So let’s start off with the hard stuff. share those stats with us, please.

Jo-Anne Dusel 2:50
Okay, well, in Canada, every five days, a woman is killed by her current or former intimate partner. in Saskatchewan we have a much smaller population. So that number actually works out on average to about every three months, a woman is killed here in Saskatchewan by current or former intimate partner. However, in Saskatchewan, our rates of intimate partner violence are over double the national average. In fact, we are highest among the Canadian provinces. And a recent study by statscan was just released that showed that rates of violence against women are actually higher in northern Saskatchewan, and they are in the territories, which was actually surprising to me. It is after our last conversation, you had mentioned that you are surprised at the high rates of violence that are experienced. Another example is within one year, I believe it’s 2017. There were over 6000, police reported incidents of intimate partner violence. And we do know that this is a crime that’s very underreported. Some of the stats range, they range from anywhere from 10% being reported to 25%. What I can tell you from my years as a shelter worker, if you’re thinking about women who are in such dire straits, that they’re willing to leave behind their homes, their communities, their support systems, often everything but the clothes on their back and what they’re able to bring in a couple bags, they carry with them, right those women, according to the information we obtained from them, only about 10% of them had actually involved the police in their situations. So we know that this is something that is very underreported, and yet to put that in another another way for perspective, domestic violence calls her domestic conflict, as it’s sometimes called by police is approximately one quarter of all police calls.

Barb McGrath 4:48
Oh, wow. Yeah, only 10% are being reported. Just do the math on that.

Jo-Anne Dusel 4:52
Yes, holy. So it’s a very pervasive problem. It’s one that’s historically been considered a private matter. It’s very considered something you don’t talk about in public, there’s a lot of stigma for victims. And oftentimes, those questions are asked, Will asked, Well, why didn’t she just leave? or What did she do to deserve that? So a lot of pressure is put on the victim and very little questioning is ever done of the person using violence. Why do they abuse? Why do they use violence? Right, and that’s something that we’re very much trying to turn around, including looking at some of the motivations for perpetration of violence. Is it that that was the pattern that they witnessed growing up? You know, do they not know how to use healthy communication skills? Have they never had a model of a healthy relationship? are they responding to trauma in their own lives, which has never been dealt with. So it’s a complex issue. And there’s many different ways to come at it. One of the ways to look to intervene is through legislation and analysis. We’ve been working for about four years now on the issue of how experiencing intimate partner violence impacts workers, and how that impacts the workplace as a whole, including coworkers, including the bottom line for employers. And we’re really pleased that since we began this work, there’s been a real increase in awareness of the issue. And in fact, legislation. Here in Saskatchewan, it started off as 10 days unpaid leave for survivors, which is now five days unpaid, but five days paid leave. So that Okay, yeah, individuals who have experienced this sort of violence can take time off to go to court to see a lawyer to see counseling, or medical appointments or move right and not lose income, which is so important.

Barb McGrath 6:46
That situation Exactly. So talk a little bit about in the workplace. You paint that picture for me, if I was an employer, how would you help me help me understand, you know, what the impact in my workplace might be? If I’ve got somebody who’s either a, an abuser or be being abused?

Jo-Anne Dusel 7:06
Well, one of the things that does impact employers and I’m, I, I’m going to say that the number is, I hate this word. I don’t I should have looked up this number this morning. But it’s literally billions of dollars that employers lose annually. And the costs are for things like last time, extra sick time, employees being distracted. And if sometimes employees actually lose their jobs because of this, or quit, because they feel are not able to do their best, right. And in that case, employers have the costs of rehiring of recruitment and retraining staff. And an important thing to note is it’s not just those who are the victims of violence that are having these costs on employers. A study out of South America actually showed that individuals who are using violence, so the aggressor in an intimate partner situation is actually causing more costing more, because they’re the ones who are obsessive. They are the ones who are constantly calling, texting, emailing, driving to check up on their partner, and potentially causing accidents in the workplace due to their distraction. Yeah, so what an employer might see as someone who typically been, you know, on time, very engaged, really doing their work, maybe they’re, you know, someone who’s right, quite friendly. Now, going now, what might be happening is they’re taking a lot of sick time, they’re showing up late, or conversely, they’re showing up too early, or they don’t want to leave, which could show that you don’t want to go home, you don’t want to go home or if you’re recently separated. Your ex partner, maybe no longer knows where you live, but they certainly know where you work. And they may know what your work schedule is.

Jo-Anne Dusel 8:52
So there, there’s issues around that. You may see someone who’s coming in and their personality appears to have changed, they’re withdrawn, where they used to be outgoing. They may actually make comments about problems at home, and you may see work disruption, that they’re not actually focusing the way that they should. Okay, now, all of those signs are not something that they’re choosing to do. It’s not part of their personality, their ability to actually do the work. It’s directly because of another person’s behavior. Oh, absolutely. And I mean, you know, talk about distracting as soon as you’ve had an argument with a spouse or had an argument with one of your kids. I mean, absolutely, yeah. So So, Pallas actually did a survey of Saskatchewan workers to see what the impact actually was, what sorts of things were happening. And we heard things like abusive partners were doing things like keeping them up late at night arguing so they would be tired in the morning in the morning, refusing to take care of the kids so that they would be late or they would have to scramble for childcare, hiding their key so they couldn’t leave to be on time, actually parking their vehicle behind the victim’s vehicle in the driveway. So They couldn’t get out and get out. And all of these things are in an effort to disrupt employment employment is a protective factor and more than adequately,

Barb McGrath 10:07
Mm, yeah. It provides you some financial means and

Jo-Anne Dusel 10:11
Yes, and a support system as well. There’s somebody who might notice what’s going on and ask you about it. There, there could be supports within the workplace, employee assistance programs or other, you know, colleagues who actually could offer support or say, That’s not okay. You need to do something you need to get out. And so that’s all things that a controlling, abusive partner does not want the victim to have access to. Mm hmm.

Barb McGrath 10:39
Yep. And I think in our earlier conversation, I asked you this as well, but your organization supports women and children who are impacted, not necessarily men who are impacted because it does go both ways. It’s just that’s not who your organization is targeted towards. If a man was being abused, where would you recommend that he would go then?

Jo-Anne Dusel 11:01
Well, as I mentioned, the last time we spoke, we don’t none of our members will actually offer residential service. We don’t have that capability currently. In any of the shelters However, if a man is being abused, he can feel free to call any one of our 21 member agencies know can talk just you know to sometimes you just need to have someone listen and believe you Yeah, you know about what’s going on. And and certainly we can do counseling off site, we can do referrals as much as we would for women who were staying in shelter or any of the the counseling services like family service, Regina Family Service, Saskatoon, some of the other ones, in different communities across the province, would probably provide the same service to a male who is experiencing intimate partner violence as they went to a female.

Barb McGrath 11:49
Okay. Okay, that makes a little bit more sense to me. So you do have resonance capabilities at some of your member organizations. So if if a woman grabs her stuff, and the kids and she goes one night, because she’s finally got an opportunity to get out, she can knock on the door and make a phone call and and find one of your partners in the community then?

Jo-Anne Dusel 12:08
Absolutely. So really, some really quick ways where people can find that out every SAS telphone book, in the first couple pages has the abuse helplines pages, okay, and they will show local resources, they can also go to pads website, or to sketch 1211, which has a whole separate kind of set of pages, all about supports for people who are experiencing abuse, right? If people are looking for supports across Canada, they could always check out sheltersafe.ca

Barb McGrath 12:37
Okay, sheltersafe.ca

Jo-Anne Dusel 12:40
Mm hmm. And I’ve heard actually, that the helpline 811 now offers safety planning. So that could be another place to call, if you’re just, you know, you’re experiencing something you’re not sure it’s abuse, you can certainly call any of our members, the shelters themselves, pretty much all have 24, seven crisis lines, it’s always confidential, most of them either have one 800 numbers, or they accept collect calls, okay, don’t have to give your name, you can just call and talk. Really important to note you don’t have to be bruised to be abused. A lot of the abuse is actually more psychological. And and people who have experienced both find the psychological abuse much harder to deal with much takes much longer to heal from

Barb McGrath 13:24
Yes, the examples that you just talked about earlier, those are all examples of psychological or mental abuse, psychological abuse, I guess, is the right word. And I would always I always think of as mental abuse when I see things in somebody’s trying to control or, you know, like, those just aren’t healthy behaviors. There is a saying, and I forget exactly how it goes. But it talks about, if you’ve been hurt, then you’re going to hurt someone else. And whatever it is about our human nature, we tend to, you know, want to pay it forward, both the good and the bad. And that’s unfortunate. So we have to heal ourselves in order, you know, to to grow healthy people, so to speak, salute, right. Absolutely. And that’s certainly something that I find myself thinking a lot about, you know, raising my kids and seeing how they interact and seeing, you know, what happens in their world and, you know, as a family, absolutely, we get in arguments, would I ever considered abuse? Absolutely not, right? But you could see if something like that happened all of the time or on an ongoing basis or to control then it’s a really different thing.

Jo-Anne Dusel 14:33
Right, the key factor is the power balance or imbalance. So if it’s one person you know, it’s one thing if both people are part of an argument, it’s a discussion. In some families, it gets loud I have some Hungarian as Hungarian blooded me No, and it tends, it can get loud. But the difference is when it’s one person and their actions are geared to control the other person, that’s when you have a problem.

Barb McGrath 15:00
Okay, that’s that’s actually a really good differentiator if we do have anyone listening to the show today, who’s thinking, Okay, how do I differentiate is this still healthy? Lots of times, our spidey senses tell us that something’s off. But we can’t quite put our finger on it yet. And we’re not prepared to pick up the phone and call 911 and say, my husband parked behind me and I can’t get out. Right? I mean, that’s not gonna, that’s not gonna say a car out very quickly.

Jo-Anne Dusel 15:28
So something that we’re very interested in at pounds now is that in the United Kingdom, they have passed legislation to criminalize coercive control, which is what we’re talking about, is the parking the car, you know, someone parked their car behind your vehicle, once it could be an accident, right? If this is happening repeatedly, or that’s in combination with, you get 20 texts a day, asking where you are, and they don’t want you to hang out with certain friends. And they feel that your family is bad for you. So you shouldn’t be seeing your family. And they want to control the bank account, you don’t have any idea what’s in there. Now there’s a pattern. And actually now in the UK, in the countries there have kind of adopted this legislation, sort of one by one, okay. But several of them have now adopted it. And you can actually, if you can prove that this is a pattern of behavior, that is actually a crime. The reason this is important is sometimes that sort of behavior is a greater predictor of potential intimate partner homicide, then actually two couples that argue a lot, or even couples where there’s like, been scuffles, where there’s some physical violence, it’s actually the relationships where this type of intense coercive control is taking place, or more likely to end in homicide.

Barb McGrath 16:48
Ah, okay. Yes, yeah. And that makes Yes, that makes sense to me. Now. The whole, the whole subject matter still just dumbfound me and I guess maybe I’ve coexisted in my bubble. For too long. I grew up in a very traditional family, I’m raising a very traditional family, I had no idea what was out there. And that’s why I find the numbers shocking to think that 10% is reported. And yet it makes up 25% of our police calls. Wow. Like that. It just says so much about society and where we’re at and and what we need to do as a society. So let’s start to talk about it from a solutions perspective. Obviously, your organization is focused on what are the solutions? And you you reference the research that you’ve done? So what are you seeing some of the solutions to me, what can we do about this?

Jo-Anne Dusel 17:40
Well, we need to break the cycle. So there is an intergenerational cycle of this type of abuse you mentioned, it’s not something you witnessed growing up, it doesn’t seem real to you. There’s other families where this is the norm, this is the norm. And when you’ve grown up like that, that’s going to be how you are in your adult relationship, you may act out violently, and you may experience the violence and not think anything of it, you may not even consider it abuse. That is one of the things that also came out in our survey. Early on, we asked a question, have you ever experienced intimate partner violence and that a certain number say yes, no. Right? Then we had comments. And people were saying, well, not in this relationship, or it was with it was only the emotional wasn’t verbal. And what what it ended up showing was that over half of the people who responded to the survey had experienced intimate partner violence, although less said that they had further in, in our survey, we asked we had a whole list of abusive behaviors, far more answered, ticked off certain abuses and behaviors in there than even the over 50% that actually said they did experience it. So what we know from that is people are experiencing and using abusive behaviors and not realizing that that’s what that what’s what it is, right.

Barb McGrath 18:57
Yeah, exactly. So how do we become more aware? How do we how do we raise children who understand that a controlling behavior or a often intimidating behavior could lead to something more and in fact, could get them in a lot of trouble?

Jo-Anne Dusel 19:22
How do we start to educate people, we have to start young. So whenever we have the opportunity to speak with government, policymakers, people who are in a in the positions to make change happen, we say our number one request, the thing we would most like to see happen is education. Starting in the schools, right core curriculum, not something there are programs out there and our member agencies provide some of them in the schools but it’s hit and miss. It’s at certain ages. What we believe needs to happen is starting in kindergarten, age appropriate education throughout The school system that actually talks about respect that is the basis of it and respect and healthy communication and behaviors in relationship. What’s okay? What’s not okay, right. And I truly believe that this can make a difference. If If you think back to the way societal attitudes have changed about something as simple as littering, growing up in the 70s, drive in your car, down the street, have a chocolate bar, open the window, shop out, throw out the wrapper, nobody thought a thing about it, right. But then there was a big education, public awareness program, and it was the kids. I remember, I was a kid at that time. And I would say to my parents, that’s littering. Yep, you cannot do that. And nowadays, nobody would even think of doing that are very few.

Barb McGrath 20:44
Oh, if you got caught too, you’d be humiliated.

Jo-Anne Dusel 20:48
Yes, yes. So society can change. And so public awareness campaigns, and starting with the kids, I think is the best hope we have a really changing not only the rates here in Saskatchewan, but worldwide.

Barb McGrath 21:02
You know, you think about those kindergarten years. And of course, they’re learning their numbers and their words and their letters and the colors, and you start to wonder, are we teaching them the wrong things at the wrong time? Should we be opening them up in kindergarten to, you know, respect, this is okay, and this is not touching, right? By the time some of these kids are in kindergarten, they’ve already experienced something that wasn’t okay. And what to do about it, who is safe to talk to what’s Okay, what’s not, okay, obviously, Mum and Dad are gonna hug you, hopefully, obviously, they’re gonna hug you and cuddle you and you know, whatever. But But there’s still a fine line. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a parent, or relative, or a stranger on the street. They’re still aligned there in terms of, you know, touching with a kid. And if that’s a passion issue for me, because we have a child who everybody loves to touch, and I’m like, they’re not a puppy in the window, quit petting Mike drives me nuts. Anyway, we won’t get up on that rabbit hole today. I mean, but it almost makes you wonder, should we be looking at some of those broader, bigger issues and starting earlier? You know what, they’re gonna figure out their colors? Maybe it’s not in kindergarten. So maybe it happens to be in grade one instead? I’m, I’m not an educator, but to me, it kind of seems like it probably wouldn’t slow the learning process down.

Jo-Anne Dusel 22:27
I think there’s room for both right? Yeah.

Barb McGrath 22:29
Yeah. And it’s, they’re hard conversations to have with you know, squirmy, little foreign five year old. So I can see why as you say, it’s hit and miss and some teachers are gonna, you know, have the conversation more passionately. And, you know, I suppose for some, then they get a phone call from the parents and tried to talk her into it. He told me that that wasn’t okay. And so I can see it from their perspective, too.

There’s education for the parents as well. But there would need to be,

Jo-Anne Dusel 22:57
You know, I think I think, again, it’s it’s about everybody understanding what’s appropriate, and what’s healthy and what’s safe for the kids and safety. Really trumps everything else.

Barb McGrath 23:10
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. All right. So you’re a busy lady, if I recall correctly, you have a dog, you commute into town for work? So tell me like, what does a typical day or a typical week look like for you? What sort of projects do you work on? And what does keep you going? Because you’ve got a million pieces on the go?

Jo-Anne Dusel 23:31
Yes, well, our organization is largely funded through project based grants. So part of me is always looking forward. What is the next, you know, project to do? How do we marry the work that we want to do with the grants that are available out there, because that’s always a challenge. We do have a number of things on the go beyond our core mandate, which is supporting our member agencies. Currently, we are. We have a really interesting project that we’re now in the third year of a four year project working with Indigenous women who have experienced intimate partner family violence, okay, and it’s reconnecting them with traditional hands on activities, including things like beading and making ribbon skirts and making using traditional Herbes to make things like teas and lotions. I’ve had the interesting experiences of buying a couple of smoked moose, moose hides, or this project and, and seeing them making lotion made out of bear grease. So some really traditional things and seeing the impact that connecting these women with their heritage, many of whom growing up in urban areas, or some of whom, who were part of the 60 scoop had never had access to this and really seeing how it improved their their emotions. stability and their sense of self esteem. It’s been really amazing. So that’s one of the projects we’re working on. We actually are just beginning a project that’s funded by the law foundation of Saskatchewan next to work collaboratively with the Ministry of Justice, hey, on, on how victims when they have experienced intimate partner violence, and they’re working their way through the justice system, what are the barriers for them to access justice? And how can we look at removing those barriers, so they so victims truly feel that they are receiving justice, ah, got it very complicated, lots of moving parts, but kudos to our provincial government for actually agreeing to partner with us in this and and setting some of their quite high level policy folks at the table with our working group, and we’re really excited to be working with them on hopefully being the catalyst for some real change within the justice system here in Saskatchewan.

Barb McGrath 26:00
Wow, that’s an impressive project. And it’s exciting to hear that that kind of work is is happening and can help shape those future campaigns that will stop us from littering and, and, and having violence in the home. Joanne Believe it or not, we are almost out of time. Can you share with all of our listeners? How would they get in touch with you or a member organization? Learn more about the organization or just reach out for help? What would someone do?

Jo-Anne Dusel 26:27
Well, I did mention that the abuse pages in the front of their SAS tell phonebook they can certainly check out our website, if they Google pads, pa th s like walking down multiple paths, the PATHS, they will find all kinds of information about the work that we’re doing information if you are being abused, how to get help. If you’re worried about somebody who you think may be experiencing abuse, we have information there on how you can support someone, what’s a good way to reach out. And for anybody out there who may be experiencing abuse or even aren’t sure that they are, I would really like for them to actually pick up the phone and make a call, they do not have to give their name that again, it’s confidential. These the phone lines do not describe to call display, hey, you can always call and just talk and just see what your options are.

Barb McGrath 27:20
Mm hmm. Okay, well, that’s very good to know. Thank you for sharing that. All right, we are basically at a time here today. So I would like to thank everyone for tuning in to 91.3 FM, CJ tr Regina community radio, you’re listening to our series women in leadership on the Secret Life of entrepreneurs. So thank you, Joanne, for being with me here today, again, to talk about a very important issue in our province in our community and in our society. If you’d like to learn more about what Joanne talked about today, please do a Google search for pads, pa th s, and whether it’s yourself that you’re concerned about, or someone that you know, well, so please take a moment and do that Google search. I will be back in just a couple of weeks and talking to a new guest in our series women on leadership. Each of these women are award winners with the YWCA Regina women of distinction, so congratulations as well, when we hardly even we didn’t get to that conversation. If you’d like to be a guest on the show, you can email me at barb@googlegirl.ca. Or you can reach out on Facebook and Instagram. And even leave us a question in advance of the live show. I’m your host Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:00
Welcome to The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. A 91.3 FM CJ tr Regina community radio. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, marketing guru and founder of the get found on Google program. This week, I’m talking to a leader in the business community who’s making a very exceptional difference, not only in their workplace, but around Saskatchewan and in their industry. Today I’m talking with Dr. Emily Bamforth from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. And she’s a guest with us during our women in leadership series. Stay tuned to learn her secret, what makes her tick? What makes her get out of bed so early in the morning, and her role as a leader in our business community. So let’s get started. Let’s welcome Emily.

Emily Bamforth 0:53
Good morning. Good morning.

Barb McGrath 0:54
Good morning. And how are you this morning?

Emily Bamforth 0:57
Doing good.

Barb McGrath 0:58
Good. That is fantastic. So Emily, start us off. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at the museum.

Emily Bamforth 1:07
So I’m a paleontologist, so I study ancient life, which is what we study, we study ancient life using fossils. And so I have a lot of different things I do in my job. This time of year, in the summer, we’re out in the field collecting the fossils, as well as all the information that goes with the fossils. So the kind of rocks they come from, and the kind of animals and plants that are associated with them. We bring all of that back here to the to the Discovery Center in East End. And throughout the winter, we prepare those fossils, we catalog them into our collections. And that’s when we do the research do we write the scientific papers, we go to conferences, we host visiting researchers. And we also do a lot of public outreach here as well to introduce Saskatchewan fossil heritage to the locals, but to the whole province as well. So it’s a very exciting job.

Barb McGrath 1:59
Oh, it would be. So Emily, as a lay person helped me understand the significance of the research and the discoveries that you’re making.

Emily Bamforth 2:08
So the most important thing about paleontology is it’s basically biology. So understanding the natural world, but in the geological past. And so understanding our world today is of course really important for for everything we do for agriculture, for understanding climate change, for community planning, for city planning, everything we do, we have to understand the natural world. And part of that understanding comes from knowing where we’ve come from. So understanding the plants and animals that have come before us, and how they have changed through periods of climate change, and really big turnovers in Earth’s history. And it really gives us an understanding of how ecosystems function. So it’s a really, really critical part of understanding the natural world is understanding where we’ve come from.

Barb McGrath 3:02
Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense to me. So some of the discoveries that you make you’re making you’re finding everything from bones to fossils, help us just understand the difference between what starts where so is a fossil bone is a fossil, a plant, where did a fossil come from, versus, you know, some of the bones and things that you’re finding.

Emily Bamforth 3:23
So the definition of a fossil is anything that is left behind by a living thing. So that can be the obvious things like dinosaur bones and teeth. It can also be things like snail shells, plant impressions, fossilized wood, or coalified wood. Even things like dinosaur footprints, or fossil poop, what we call copper light, is also a fossil, so and also Little things like burrows that were left by worms 60 million years ago, called the trace fossils. But they’re, they’re still fossils. So anything that’s left behind by a living thing is a fossil. And paleontologists study, all of it. Even like chemical signatures left by life, are a type of fossil or a biological footprint. So lots of interesting research going on in terms of the origin of life, like where life came from, when it started, all of that’s done using chemicals that are left by living things.

Barb McGrath 4:25
So chemicals that would be representative of DNA.

Emily Bamforth 4:30
Yes, so basically the the products of metabolism so you know, things like bacteria will metabolize the food just like like organisms like we do. And there’s a signature of that in the rock record.

And so we can we can actually look for that, which is neat.

Barb McGrath 4:47
So just based on what you’re saying, in other words, if we don’t always pick up after our dog a million years from error, it might be somebody fossil.

Emily Bamforth 4:55
Yeah, exactly. It could create a dog coprolites.

Barb McGrath 5:00
Kids would love to hear that. Hopefully they’re not listening today. So be like, Mom, we shouldn’t pick it up.

Emily Bamforth 5:04
We want to contribute to research.

Barb McGrath 5:07
Know, Peter Catarina, we do not need to contribute to research. We did he did contribute to using our backyard.

Emily Bamforth 5:17
It’s a balance.

Barb McGrath 5:18
Yes, exactly. Exactly. One little dog. It’s amazing. All right. So and let’s talk a little bit about the work that you do down in East End. You of course, were a recipient of an award through the YWCA, this year a woman of distinction. And you were in the area, was it a, was it scientific Sorry, I’m drawing a blank off the top of my head. I looked at it early this morning, but it’s still early. So tell us a little bit about that work and how that ties back to the to the research that you’re doing down in East End.

Emily Bamforth 5:49
So the research I started doing in Saskatchewan, I actually did was my PhD research. And I was looking at biodiversity patterns in the fossil record, leading up to the dinosaur mass extinction. So here in Saskatchewan, we have what’s called the Cretaceous paleogene boundary, or the KT boundary, it’s also called a really critically important geologic feature everywhere in the world. And it marks the end Cretaceous or the dinosaur mass extinction. So what I was doing was collecting fossils to try and understand how biodiversity was changing, leading up to that extinction. But I was also using fossil plants to understand how climate was changing at the same thing, or the same time. And then to try and understand if those two things were linked. If biodiversity was changing, why was it changing? Was it related to something that may have influenced the mass extinction. So it was very exciting research, largely based on what we call micro vertebrate fossils, so little tiny things like fish scales and salamander vertebra, little bits of dinosaur teeth. So a lot of crawling around in my hands and knees picking up these tiny fossils. And for the whole project for that project, I collected over just about 7500 fossils, like 7500 and catalogued them all. So that was a that was the five year project. And the results are very interesting. The results from the plants were also unexpectedly interesting. We were able to document fossil forest fire, and the recovery from that fossil fire in the Cretaceous forest community.

Barb McGrath 7:36
So tell us about that. Like how do you document something that happened long, long ago.

Emily Bamforth 7:41
So in this particular fossil plant site, there were chunks of what we initially thought were coal. But if you look at them under a microscope, they were actually fossil charcoal. So this was the result of a Cretaceous forest fire. And so we noticed that the plants at this site were a little bit different than the plants that the other sites were finding. And when we looked in the modern, modern plant communities, we realized that the one site had what are called early successional species, so species that come back right after a forest fire, whereas the other sites were more mature for us. So we were able to document a recovery from a falsify from a forest fire in the fossil record. And and that was a first so that was pretty exciting.

Barb McGrath 8:30
Yeah, no kidding. Like, that’s huge. So you talk about being able to document the recovery, though, do you just simply mean the reforestation, like the regrowth or when you see recovery, what do you mean?

Emily Bamforth 8:41
So basically, the the succession of plants that would follow a disturbance like a fire. So for example, in the modern world, if you have a forest fire, that goes through an area, say, say in the mountains, you first get things like fire weed, that purple flower coming through first, and then you start getting low growing shrubs, and then the deciduous trees come back. And eventually, you get the big conifers growing back in. So that that’s what’s called ecological succession. And so that’s, we were seeing a snapshot of that in the fossil record.

Barb McGrath 9:16
That’s very cool. When you say you had to catalog all 7500 items, does that mean identifying which species it was, you know what the fossil originally was? That’s what cataloging looks like?

Emily Bamforth 9:28
Yeah. So it’s identified all of the little pieces. And then they all get a number as well. So it’s kind of like, like, you know, when you go to a library, and all of the books have got a number, and that’s how the librarians know where to find them. It’s the same thing with the fossils that we have in our collection, they all have a number so that they’re easy to find if we need to find them again.

Barb McGrath 9:51
Ernie stored a lot of fossils to store to these basement.

Emily Bamforth 9:56
So all of the fossils that I collected those 7500 are currently at the T rex Discovery Center. And here we have about probably close to 100,000 fossils here in the T rex center. And yes, a lot of fossils.

Barb McGrath 10:16
Yes, that puts it in perspective, I had no idea.

Emily Bamforth 10:20
And everything from like a little tiny fish scale to a T rex skeleton, so all kinds of sizes. And then we have a collection that’s about twice as big as the Royal Sask. Museum and Regina was the past year. So how we date fossils? Yeah, we’re lucky here in Saskatchewan in that most of our dinosaurs are from the, what’s called the latest Cretaceous period. So that’s right before the mass extinction, and that that extinction boundary, the Cretaceous paleogene boundary has been very well stated, using isotopic data. So basically, you can use the degradation of isotopes to be able to tell how much time has elapsed, okay, since they were deposited. So the cape, the Cretaceous paleogene boundary has been very well dated. And so we know that most of the fossils we find from that group of rocks, we know the age is kind of associated with that. Elsewhere, we use what’s called biostratigraphy. So based on what animals are in the rocks, we get a sense of how old they are. And we also can look for certain types of fossils. So there’s a kind of pollen that is only found in sort of about half million year in one half million year intervals. So we know that we find that we to hold that that particular rock is key.

Barb McGrath 11:47
So why is Easton such a hotbed for all of these discoveries.

Emily Bamforth 11:52
So the southwest corner Saskatchewan is the provinces fossil hotspot. And that’s largely just due to the the kinds of rocks that are exposed here. So paleontologists, we do like to dig, but we don’t like to dig really, really deep. And so we look for where rocks are exposed, or fossil bearing rocks. And usually what we’ll do is we’ll we’ll find a piece of fossils sticking out. And if it’s still going into the hill, then we’ll take it out. So the southwest corner here just has the most exposure. It’s basically the place that is easiest to dig for the kind of fossils that we’re interested in.

Barb McGrath 12:37
So does that mean that there was more dinosaur and whatnot in that area at some point in time, or was it probably spread to the province, but as you say, it’s just that it’s been exposed, based on that location.

Emily Bamforth 12:52
It’s probably there were probably dinosaurs everywhere. There were probably dinosaurs all across Canada. But when the glaciers came through, they basically scraped all of the rocks that had the dinosaur fossils on them, scrape them completely off of the eastern part of the country. Except for there’s a few places in the Maritimes you find dinosaur fossils, but most are out west here. And that’s largely due to the fact that the rocks here are exposed, like the glaciers scraped to the rocks down to that level. And also, we have these big Valley systems that were created by the glacial melt water. So the freshman Valley like we have here, that’s a great place to find exposure

Barb McGrath 13:34
To these dams for two years now, are people still able to summon dope everywhere? Are there certain parts of the area that are closed off.

Emily Bamforth 13:47
So a lot of the work we do in the second area is on private land. And so we have to get the landowners permission to go out there. And so because it’s on private land, it’s not generally accessible to the public and coming out of respect for the landowners. We do have a few sites that are on public lands. And we there’s there’s one site here that we actually take people to it’s one of our fossil mammal bone beds. But really anywhere around this area, there’s anywhere there’s a road cat or so the valley side, people can poke around and generally find things. And again, that’s public land, so

Barb McGrath 14:28
So just somebody walking around might actually find something of value,

Emily Bamforth 14:33
I guess. Yeah. Yep. And also, like diefenbaker, or along the shores of Saskatchewan River is a place where a lot of people find fossils. We often get phone calls from people who have found fossil shells and Ammonites like the squid like animals, along like diefenbaker. So that’s another good place to look.

Barb McGrath 14:56
Alright, let’s go back and talk a little bit about the YWCA.

Emily Bamforth 15:03
Back to a little bit, there’s a bit of a lag between the phone and the. Okay.

Barb McGrath 15:10
And you have the headphones plugged in, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay, so we’ll keep going, hopefully the static is not too bad. I’m watching the monitors here and it doesn’t appear to be too bad. So we’ll just kind of keep an eye on it. Let’s go back to the YWCA women of distinction award. So tell me about that award. Did you know you had been nominated? And and what’s the significance of something like that to you?

Emily Bamforth 15:36
I didn’t know that I had been nominated by the Friends of the world sketch museum.

But I absolutely did not expect to win. Like it was it was a huge surprise to actually be a recipient.

And, you know, after afterwards, I said that to people, and they’re like, what, really like he weren’t you were the obvious one. Oh, it was, I was truly honored. It’s really nice to be to be recognized. For the work that you do that you don’t necessarily think people appreciate? Or not quite what I mean, you don’t necessarily think people appreciate it in the way they do. And so it’s very empowering. And again, it’s very humbling to have that kind of recognition.

Barb McGrath 16:22
Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I really, really enjoyed or appreciate it, I’m not finding quick the right word, either. But the work you do isn’t a direct link. It’s not like, okay, Emily, discover something. And now, boom, we have a new food source. Right? There’s a very indirect link. And I think that what I really appreciated about seeing that you were the award winner was, was that indirect link, and, and that recognition that the work you are doing is so important to everything else that’s happening, and contributing in a positive way to so many different aspects in our life, and research and food, and, you know, all of the different things that it will contribute to in time. So, so that’s what made it very interesting to me, most definitely. And congratulations. I don’t think I actually said that yet. So congratulations to you. We’ve talked a few times. But this is sort of the first official time, right. So that’s awesome. So like, what do you think that might lead to? will it lead anywhere? Is it really just recognition at this point in time, and, and something that you can build on in the future?

Emily Bamforth 17:41
I think, like one of the things that I have always been passionate about is women in science, trying to encourage women in to go into the STEM disciplines, and to challenge a lot of those stereotypes about why women don’t go into science and technology and math. So I have mentored a lot of, of young women. And that has been really, really important to me. I think paleontology as a science was originally a male based science, it was it was a Mad Science. Yes, yes. Although, that said there were some very influential women in the field early on, but they really had to fight and struggle to get recognition. And but even though now, I think there’s there’s about an even split in paleontology students, so you know, 50 70% women, but we still suffer from what’s called the leaky pipe phenomena, which is where if you get into the professional realm, there are still far more men. And part of that is generational, but part of it is still just women not going into paleontological professions.

Barb McGrath 18:56
That’s a new phrase, I haven’t heard that before.

Emily Bamforth 18:58
Oh, so it’s basically a it’s a phenomenon that is common to a lot of STEM disciplines where a lot of women go into study it and even get degrees in it. But when it comes time to actually get a professional job or a career, vocation, half those women disappear and go into other professions.

Barb McGrath 19:18
Interesting. And, and so is that simply based on now hiring practices, so the men are, are being hired for the job where women aren’t as much and so they need to find a job and they end up somewhere else.

Emily Bamforth 19:32
I think it’s partly that. I think it’s also the difficulty of having a family and a field based science. So in my job here, we’re in the field for four months of the year. And that means kind of weeks away from home. And I know I have a cat and a dog and it’s hard enough to try and you know, coordinate with the cat and the dog when I’m going to be away so I imagined having a family would be much, much more difficult. So I think it’s getting a little bit better. But it’s still something that is very much something that I’m interested in helping to, to get more women into paleontology as profession.

Barb McGrath 20:14
Yes. Well, when you and I had our sort of introductory conversation, of course, I talked about my daughter, who she always asks, who’s going to be the next guest on my show. And so I was telling her a little bit about you, and the award you won, and the work you do. And she just, she’s, she’s one of those kids who has to really stew and to on everything. So she stood on it for a while, and then she was like, I don’t get it. You mean? Like, she can make money doing this. And she’s kind of at that age where now she’s trying to differentiate between, okay, this can make money and this doesn’t make money, right? So she’s starting to look at all these factors. And she’s quite confusion. Really mom, like, she can make money at that. Like, yes, she can. She has a PhD, and she works for the museum, and

Emily Bamforth 21:01
Yada, yada, yada.

Barb McGrath 21:03
Okay, well, wait a second. She says she’s got to process all of this. So first, it was the financial aspect. And then I think your second question was trying to process like, what you actually do what a day looks like. Right? And I thought, well, that’s a good question, because I’m sure your days are very different. But can you talk about what a typical day might look like?

Emily Bamforth 21:25
Sure. So like, this time of the year, when we’re doing our fieldwork. fieldwork is largely batch is digging in the dirt. So a lot of the work we do is in kind of isolated places. As you can imagine, sometimes very rustic has in like there isn’t even an outhouse. But a lot of times like the work we do in grass or national parks, we do a lot of work down there. We are still tend camping, but you know, there’s things like Like, there’s water that comes out of a tap that you can drink so much.

Yeah. And so that kind of field work. We’re actually living in tents and going out every day and digging and bringing things back. I really love that kind of being being out in nature, I’m very much an outdoor person. So that kind of speaks to my, my desire to be out digging.

So if we’re doing that, we basically we head on to the fields, we’re usually carrying shovels, pickaxes, all of our field tools, lots of water, almost all of our sites are very hot and dry. So we have to make sure that we have enough food and water for the day. Sometimes we go out looking for things to dig up, for lack of a better word, that process we call prospecting. So it’s basically just walking the hills looking for fossils that are either in the ground or plant fossils you have to dig for. So basically just digging test pits and things like that.

And if we find something, what the process is basically you remove the rock that is over top of the fossa layer is what we call overburden. And that’s a lot of physical, taxing and digging. One of this our sites in excess winding that we were digging up last year, we removed about six metric tons of rock. So basically moving a hill not to get to this base layer fossils, and that’s when the fine detailed stuff works with the brushes and the you know, the scalpels and the knives. But when people I think when people think of doing dinosaurs, that’s kind of what they think about, you know, like the Jurassic Park, like clustered around a dinosaur skeleton, like just brushing the kitty litter off the surface. It’s not really like that. It’s it’s maybe that’s about maybe 5% of actually digging on fossils, the rest is getting to the fossa layer. And then the process of getting the fossils out is also quite a process.

Barb McGrath 24:00
Yeah, I think it’s a very intricate process.

Emily Bamforth 24:03
Yes, and it’s we wrapped them in plaster and burlap is what we call the field jacket. So you have to put the right amount of plaster burlap on you have to wait for it to dry properly. You have to make sure that when you flip the jacket over to get the fossil out that you’re not going to break anything underneath it.

Barb McGrath 24:19
Oh, I suppose Yeah. Cuz you never know what’s underneath it too.

Emily Bamforth 24:23
Yeah. And if you have a bone bed like the Scottie the T rex bone bed, there’s layers of bones like a phone on top of bone. So you have to make sure you know exactly where where the separation point is going to be between the rock and the bone. So and then once you get them out of the ground, you have to carry them back to usually a vehicle or to your field camp and that can be many kilometers and these things are heavy because they’re made out of rocks and so you a lot of like carrying heavy things. Sometimes we like rig up things where we can carry them like you know tarp rolled up and then we Put the we like roller shovels up and carry them on our shoulders. Or sometimes we’ll bring up something where we can drag it that happens to very occasionally, mostly in Alberta but only once in sketch one big me at a helicopter in the Scottie the T rex they had a derailment crane that came in and lift up lifted up the blocks and put them on a truck. Yeah. So it’s it’s quite a process you have to be very innovative in a lot of times because no two fossil sites are the same. No two rocks are the same. And of course, whether it rains you have to be prepared for that.

Barb McGrath 25:42
That’s That’s a lot of things to prepare for on that bald Saskatchewan prairie as you say it’s dry. It’s dusty. you’re hauling your water your food, and oh no, we’re gonna start hauling dinosaur bones. Oh, look, we got the femur today.

Emily Bamforth 25:56
Yeah, exactly. The kind of the part I love is the the variety of it like and just the thrill. Well, first of the thrill of discovery of finding something like that never gets old for me. Like it’s always it’s just like it was when I was like five or six years old. Oh, my goodness, there’s something here. Yeah. And then knowing that as you’re uncovering it, you’re the first person that has ever seen that fossils, the first human that’s ever laid eyes on it. And you know, there’s always a thrill that, you know, it could be a new species, it could be something they’ve never found in the province before. Like last year, I found or helped well found and helped to excavate a dinosaur skull. And it was the first complete skull I’d ever found. And I was just like practically doing cartwheels in the field, because it was so exciting for me.

Barb McGrath 26:50
Oh, that’s so cool. Wow. Emily, we only have about, oh, gosh, only about one minute left. To ask you a really quick question. You told your parents what you wanted to do. I know you and I joked about this earlier. How did you break this to them? Hey, Mom, Dad, I’m gonna go play in the dirt for the rest of my life.

Emily Bamforth 27:08
Tell me about that conversation. Oh, well, I think it based on my parents fault. That geologist better like God’s even better. Yeah. Well, they. So I knew very early on that I was very interested in this, this this field, I think I decided to be paleontologists and I was four. And it was my parents who took me to this exhibition exhibition of Chinese dinosaurs. And I was just talking, and my parents very much indulge that they bought me, you know, dinosaur books and well and my grandparents to dinosaur toys. And, you know, when we moved to Alberta, we went down to Drumheller to dinosaur Provincial Park. They enrolled me in a science camp for kids that had to do with dinosaurs. So they really, really fostered that kind of that passion. And, and they believed in that passion. And when I said that, you know, I want to do this for a living. They were like, absolutely, that’s, that’s exactly what you should do for a living because it’s what you love. And so, you know, I think that that kind of support has been tremendous, like to have my parents support and my whole family support for what I do is just made all the difference. Wow, that is fantastic. Well,

Barb McGrath 28:26
I need to wrap up our show today. We have 30 seconds. To wrap it up. Emily, I’m going to get you to stay on the phone while I wrap up and then even once I go off air, just stay on the phone with me if you would. So we are at a time. Thank you for joining us on The Secret Life of entrepreneurs on 91.3 FM CJ Tr Regina Community Radio. I will be back on July 24 with our next guest. And in the meantime, if you’d like to reach out, you can email me at barb@google girl.ca or you can jump on to our Facebook page. I’m your host Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:00
Welcome to The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. A 91.3 FM CJ tr Regina community radio. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, marketing guru and founder of the get found on Google program. This week, I’m talking with a very special guest, who is she is a leader in our community. She is a warm, welcoming, wonderful, wonderful lady and I cannot wait to introduce her today. She’s a leader in our business community. She’s making a positive impact in her place of employment with her stakeholders with her children. She is making a difference in why Cqr she is one of our first guest. She’s actually I guess, our second guest in our women in leadership series. And so today we’re going to talk with Nora. I got to do again. I practice a hard today Nigora Yulyakshieva. No, I still didn’t, I’m close. Okay, she’s giving me the nod. I’m close. So stay tuned to learn her secret about what makes her tick. What keeps her going? And you know, I tell you, there’s times i think that that all of us as citizens here in Regina as as Canadian residents, you know, it’s really easy to look at life and think oh, you know, life is tough. But when you hear Nigora’s story today, you’re gonna go home and think wow, do I have it? Good. So let’s get started. I would like to welcome Nigora. Nigora is the manager of roadway preservation at the city of Regina and she’s also the winner of the mentorship award with the YWCA of Regina and their women of distinction award. So welcome Nigora, please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 1:49
Thank you Barb and inviting me for the deal shop and I happy to be here. And so I just want to talk a little bit introduce myself so I was born in the summer as CEO of the world’s biggest fan and I have six siblings and five sisters and one brother and I also have like into this take opportunity my parents today my mom yeah however hot she was a physiotherapist and my dad designs so burb he was at cook and they both was raised during the second world in the world. So it’s they have very rough childhood particular my dad he’d become orphan and he was always telling us stories. And he says I put gold that Monaco kids have ever seen. I think he not only reach his goal his exceed because all our siblings we have university degree and also and one of that I got my engineering degree at summer gun engineering University and also my parents was they always believe in us and they always say that we can achieve and handle all the challenges in be successful I only as a growing up I only hear from that oh you can handle you can handle. So I guess this and now I see my siblings where we are all and I see those tools they give us and those grudges and I cannot say we all successful successful means different for

Barb McGrath 3:32
Everybody different for everybody.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 3:35
So we handling all the life challenges giving a pass. So that’s and I’m very thankful to my parents that and where I am today it’s they play a big role on it. Absolutely. So based on the life circumstances we become a refugee 1999

Barb McGrath 3:56
Might have to buy money years ago now.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 3:58
Yes. And my husband and the Bahadur Eunuch shave, and my two kids Nafisa boba and I was pregnant seven and a half months,

Barb McGrath 4:09
Seven and a half months like I just seven and a half months there were six weeks to go until baby could come and being your third pregnancy like baby can come any time

Nigora Yulyakshieva 4:18
Yeah, that’s I thankful to Canadian immigration, they helped me because otherwise my baby at the time he wouldn’t get documentation we will know what variable in doubt what will happen with him. So anyway, so I we here in Regina, and at this moment I would like saying opendoor society they will tomasetti report and since that this provides lots of support and help and welcome and I always say they are my family is my home. Yes. So that’s how we came to Regina. Actually this small thing I will say we Thought Regina. Oh, I remember always and I tell this many many times yeah on the way at the airport like landed and flight and then they say you are enjoying and I’m looking at my husband I say we get lost in the language with a no and not beginner. Right? And so anyway so when we went out we see the open door people with our names. I was very new we’re in the right place.

Barb McGrath 5:30
So just take me back in that process a little bit Nigora. How How did you end in Regina or Regina? Like why here coming from? I’m sorry, your home country name again was Vegas then. Thank you. So when we become a refugees, we applied to the United Nation. Okay. And Meantime, my sister in law got file. They also apply. It’s my husband’s sister. And they came to Canada. I had to pass so then we choose also so far, maybe two unit? Come here.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 6:05
But in Toronto. Firstly, they ask us where we go because my sister in law lives in moisture. Oh, yeah. And then my husband said okay, is the giant and it’s capital city or the most chill and they say no. So we say No, we’ll go to rich. Okay. So that’s how we ended up but we didn’t know actually that this wasn’t the right to choose the country. For her also the same they were put her name to for Canada so we follow him. That’s how we came here.

Barb McGrath 6:41
And so did she pick Moose Jaw or was Moose Jaw chosen Florida. Okay, now ironically, Moose Jaw is home for me. Yeah. So I mean, I know the community well, and our shit Laos. Exactly. We go visit and it’s lovely city, Moscow. So yes. And good for them. secondlargest moose. Just sayin. Okay, no, I’m sorry, I interrupted your story. So let’s continue.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 7:07
Yeah, so so we came here. And one thing also the Canadian Embassy, they review our education and all that the process you’re going through, and then they say, you know, your degree cannot be recognized. And we you know, at that point, you agree with everything. And in the moment happy that they told us that.

Barb McGrath 7:34
Now, what was your degree? I don’t think you said yet.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 7:36
Sorry. My degree is industrial and civil engineer engineering. Okay. So that so we can hear and drop in their society we start learning language. And it’s again open their society into this to meet the right people and right time. So they introduced to me to them, woman engineer, and I don’t like to call a woman engineer. It’s engineer’s.

Barb McGrath 8:02
Still just an engineer. That’s right.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 8:04
Stella Matson and she introduced to me two other engineers so and she gained and on me the trust that I can achieve my engineering here. So this lots of people that helped me and also in meantime, I met Pontus rubra. And she was a language teacher at the University of Regina. Actually, when we came to Canada that time she went in specie Stan, teaching English there.

Barb McGrath 8:35
Really?

Nigora Yulyakshieva 8:36
Oh, yeah. Again, so we since I call her my Canadian mom, so she helped me a lot with my English and with my speaking was writing and also she like, opened the classes because seeing that educated immigrants they need more professional language training and work placement. So it’s again I believe that destiny so you always will meet right people right at the right time.

Barb McGrath 9:07
Exactly.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 9:09
So and 2000 to the workplace meant I was the god job at the Ministry highway six months, and then they gave me another one and a half year temporary position. Okay. And then my position and that’s the rule. Yes. So the I was looking for a job and there was another temporary position to secure for China senior traffic engineer position. Okay, so I worked there, one in half here. And that time, it’s 2003. And four, it was very last time, any opening engineering position. So I applied to albertan. And I got a call Actually, I got a letter I wasn’t selected. And then after, why have I got the phone call? From the George theraplay cave, and I’m thankful for him, and he says, You go, can you come? I would like to talk to you about the job. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that’s I got my permanent position and color. But I was working and I located the city of Edmonton and providing technical support as a traffic engineer. Okay, working on them. signalized traffic intersection doing designs orders. So I worked there for four years.

Barb McGrath 10:29
Oh, good for you. Yeah. Okay. Can I ask a traffic question? Just to, just to jump off your story here for one second. So I mean, we hear people in Regina complain on a regular basis about our traffic lights and travel time and whatnot. And having lived in Toronto, I used to live 17 kilometers from where I lived, to where I needed to work. And depending on what time of day I left, it could take me 45 minutes to get here. Now in Regina time, if I was 17 kilometers from something, it probably takes me seven minutes. So I’m not one of those people who think that we should complain about our traffic lights. But you just quickly tell me. Do you guys get a lot of complaints from residents about traffic lights and how they work? And you know, oh, she’s nodding her head.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 11:15
Yes. You know, again, that’s what traffic it’s very unique. So it’s always based on the people experience. When I live in Edmonton, it took an hour to go to walk Exactly. Come back. Because you get used to this is the the biggest bigger city more travel, but city of China traffic signal. It’s all coordinated. And yes, we will have delays, maybe 15 minutes. Okay. When I was in traffic, I count how many intersection. But again, yes, people complain. And we try our best and traffic engineering branch. They work very hard. But this is the life

Barb McGrath 11:59
Exactly. Yes. No. Do you have to field any of those concerns from residents? Or is there another area that’s responsible for sort of now yielding not so right now?

Nigora Yulyakshieva 12:07
I don’t be in the front area. But yes, I was. I was a senior traffic engineer for two years at the city of Medina. Yeah, I was doing the work on that.

Barb McGrath 12:21
Oh, okay. Excellent. All right. Tell us a little bit more about your family and your work.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 12:30
So I guess, when I moved away, I got the opportunity as the CTO of Regina traffic engineer, and 2007 we move back to Regina. Okay. And my family. So now my daughter is I will not tell her age, but she working in the industry. And, and my older son, he walks them. And the two jobs because he has three kids to support him. And my youngest son still at the university. Okay,

Barb McGrath 13:07
So your youngest son is the son you would have been expecting when you first came to Canada.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 13:12
So he’s my sunshine. And I was with him everywhere learning language. And I remember one day when I was at the science, I will take him to the daycare backpack and just he was with me all the way. Yes, wherever I go, so, and my kids and the one thing was my family. I missed that because I couldn’t help them with their homework, I suppose. Yeah, the language barrier and also cultural barrier here. And I always, it’s not a regret, but I always say I missed that part. Because I become a student myself. And my kids was going to school and for them, it was big adjustment. They came my daughter at the time was 11 years old, my son, my oldest son nine years. For them. It was culture shock also. And so if I look back, I say it could maybe not to go to school and just work with them. But it’s again, you never know.

Barb McGrath 14:18
Exactly hindsight is always 2020. And when we don’t know how things would have turned out if we would have made that different decision. There’s other things that you know, may have changed so

Nigora Yulyakshieva 14:28
And my husband also for the years he worked as a pizza delivery in Cook, but he’s he had also engineering degree.

Barb McGrath 14:37
So they they cook at home then too. Oh, yes.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 14:42
Congratulations. Awesome. Yeah. So we both work so we share all the choices with the walk together. He says she taught us to so now he’s good cook actually good. So yeah, when I got mine, so he also actually Your work as an engineer starts in Alberta. And they give him opportunity to try and then they hired him. He worked for them. I don’t remember the name it was done for the oil company and designing the pumps for oil stations. Oh, okay. Yeah. So when I moved here, so he’s still keeping that job. And then until he find job, here was the CTO for China. So he’s a mechanical engineer. And so my work and as the leading I lead and support, and contributing to city of China’s development and growth, focusing and effort on engaged employees in striving for operational excellence. So how I’m doing that because I am responsible. We’re the leading one of the important branch of the city. And I can say that

Barb McGrath 15:58
Absolutely. Our traffic branch, I tell you, yeah, I thought that it’s an older roadway preservation. That’s still roads to me, but sorry, I’m not an engineer.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 16:07
Yeah, it’s all transportation. So our branch mandate is to provide safe and reliable traffic for the citizens. So we managing existing road in bridge infrastructure. Yes. And so we deliver every year, our new literally for for a million worth of improvement projects.

Barb McGrath 16:30
Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, wow. That puts it in perspective,

Nigora Yulyakshieva 16:32
Doesn’t it and my team, it consists 25 people, they all professional engineers, and technologists. So as a leader, I it’s not only I have to provide technical advice, or working on strategic plan was them. It’s also for me, it’s the big, it’s the personnel. Because we all go to school, we all learn. If you finish the university, I will say you finish university, no, you know, a person already. Yeah. And so for me, it’s the, as a leader working, and one on one with my employees, and to understand their needs. And because each person is different, okay, and so you need to know how to work not to fail that employee rate so that it’s more important for me. So I try to set the career development plan with them. And not only setting the planets, everybody can, but also I support them to achieve that. Okay, so each, so up to date, I help more than 20 engineers to get their professional

Barb McGrath 17:40
Designations, that nation

Nigora Yulyakshieva 17:43
For the walk, right, the reports, and the support that in also for technologists, I’m providing all the opportunities to get trained, and to move forward with their carrier. And so that’s all good stuff. But we still have lots of challenges Also, do you

Barb McGrath 18:03
Okay, so tell me about a few of those challenges.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 18:05
So what I say if you look back, when I started as a manager, it was 2008. So our city was smaller, and the population also it was around 180. k. And our network was it’s more than 800 kilometers of the roadway. And we had only 69 bridges. Okay. But now, we have more than thousand kilometer road infrastructure. Wow, we have 81 bridges. So it’s growing. And other biggest challenge is the different generation tape. So now, we have three generation working together. And we know they all have different needs. They need different support. And we know from our kids how it’s different expect as we ourselves. But I’m not saying the workforce. It’s not your kids, but I’m just trying to see how it changed it.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 19:10
So now is most of the employees are retiring, and young generation entering to the workforce. And they have different needs. Yes. So you have to work with them. And also you have to make sure that they all work together. So I’m very proud of my branch, they work well. And we do it’s each of them. They support community. And they volunteer, and they do different things for the community. And they work well. So that’s it’s always people say that branch work well and that’s what we deliver, and produce good work.

Barb McGrath 19:52
So can you share with us a couple of those things that that you do within your branch to help those multi generations work together.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 20:01
So I have a one on one with each my employees twice a year, just to hear not only the give, provide their feedback, the feedback, absolutely. And I, you know, it’s not always easy, I fail a couple of times. And some employees, it was very hard when they leave. It just wasn’t the right time, maybe the right feet, right. But I was really hard on myself. So actually, I have situation was one of my employees, he just say, I cannot work with you. And I sit down with him. I said, No, you know, what less, I say, I don’t want to give up on you. I say we both grown up people. So what’s the making so difficult to understand each other? Right? So we sit down, and I say, just come down and come back in, I asked Marshall, how we want to be given the work. situation was me when you have discussion. And now, you know, it’s in the past. And we just laugh about that. Okay. So that’s what happens. So it’s again, it’s very diverse. And each culture have different work ethics, right? And different challenges. So you have to overcome of that rate. And yeah, the most things I always tell not only employees to anybody who come to Canada, I say first thing, you have to accept the culture here, you have to learn the culture here. And then you will see how people start learning your culture helping you in asking the question, we cannot expect that Oh, people will learn about us. Yeah, no clueless people all over the place. They come here. And let’s work together. Culture a more easier. And one great things about Canadians. They don’t interfere until you ask, right? When you ask, they help you a lot. So that’s another good things. And yeah, so we do with my team, also some events. Okay, now, it’s how many years maybe it’s 10 years. We’re doing barbecue during the summer.

Barb McGrath 22:24
Nice. Yeah.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 22:24
So during the Christmas, overdoing this families, but then not everybody could participate in and now, still bidding twice, and you’ll be good friends. And then also, it’s social, like a social club. Okay. Other than that we do meetings we do together business planning, and planning our work employees, they put their work plan. Okay. So that’s

Barb McGrath 22:52
Wow. So you’ve actually got quite a few pieces that you sort of talked about there, right. And it’s all about building culture, building engagement, right. And so those are such core and foundational principles to being able to enjoy your work. And when you have a team that’s functioning well, they’re enjoying their work, they’re going to be able to perform at a much higher level. Right? Yes, absolutely. So tell us a little bit about the award that you won from the YWCA. I know that, you know, there was a bit of a process that they had to go through. It’s certainly a significant award. So talk about what that might mean to you.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 23:30
You know, first of all, the award, the nomination, it was surprised for me, okay. And I say, Okay, I will get that its nominated. Even that time everybody was congratulating with that I was nominated. And so it’s again, for me, it was different, because when people in my understand when people get nominated, I guess I didn’t know how because that. I think I just nominated. Okay, and then yeah, but getting the award, I will be honest, I was thrilled when I heard my name. Mm hmm. I all like pentas she was with me. I said, Pat, this this is another one or two nomination will be awarded. And then we’ll go and that moment, just a call my name. Oh, wow. I was just drilled out almost. Hmm. And it’s also my team was there to supporting me it was wonderful. So hey, you know what, this was lots of congratulations. And from the council or city council member, and our executive and the mayor and city manager. He was away in UK he sent me an email to congratulate you know, it’s event when I look back, it’s says that the work I did, it’s paid off. Absolutely. Yeah. So it’s means me a lot. It means me that I accomplished something. And so it’s rewarded. So that’s how I took. But it again, there was I was surprised why? Because there was another, there was 46 nominees, and their life story. I read each of them, it was so wonderful storage. And so you always compare yourself to others. And yeah, that’s what I was so surprised that they selected me for the award. Oh,

Barb McGrath 25:29
You know, and to be honest, I have lived in Region and now for for 20 years, 21 years, actually 21 years this year. And I’ve known about the, the awards and the YWCA, women of distinction for years. And a number of times I’ve known folks who were nominated. And a few times, I’ve had the opportunity to also know people who won. And they’ve always, always looked at that award program, and thought, wow, like, it’s just, it’s been one of those things that I suppose as a woman, as a resident, I’ve always looked at that program and just thought, it’s a phenomenal program. And for me, it’s such an honor to have you on the show and be able to learn about you and understand, you know, sort of where you’ve come from. And, you know, if I look at the last 20 years of my life, I’ve known English the entire time. So it’s been that much easier. Right. And so, so hearing your story and being able to put it into perspective for what you’ve been able to accomplish. I mean, it is just fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 26:39
So Barb, if I can talk about a, you know, they gave me an award ceremony to talk, I was so vulnerable and couldn’t say so I always want to say one thing, okay. It’s a wonderful organization, and people, all volunteer base work. Because I know I work for open door society, I was a member of director for five years. I know how much work goes into that. I want to say we’re very fortunate here in Canada that we have organization like that, supporting women and kids, I have witnesses, the woman, they broken up, and they came to parents with their kids, and they don’t have place to go, the parents will send them back saying, this is your place. And through the open door, I met lots of woman and they will tell the stories how women get treated, and how abused they go through. So I always say we fortunate we have organization like that. That’s supporting and helping. So

Barb McGrath 27:44
Exactly. No, I think sometimes we forget how fortunate we are with all of the the support and the rich community that we have. So we are incredibly, incredibly fortunate. I agree with you, wholeheartedly. negara, believe it or not, we only have about three minutes left. So is there anything else that you would like to share with the audience today in terms of words of wisdom, things that you have learned something personal?

Nigora Yulyakshieva 28:14
Yeah, so wisdom, you know, it’s not something you learn from the school. The wisdom, it’s you teach your life. And I’m not in that stage. So I say I live long life and I was not one I want to say we all have something unique given by God, right? Just find what is that and drive your life. Don’t be a passenger exam and don’t hesitate ask the question. It’s better to ask, then worry about looking like a stupid and basically put all your life. So that’s what and I always say yes. When you want to achieve you just walk up because lots of good people to help you to achieve your goal. And be Don’t be afraid. Yes. So that’s what I will leave with everybody. Oh, and yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s it’s

Barb McGrath 29:07
Exactly. I promised her today that the time was gonna go faster than she would believe. And here we are at the end of 30 minutes already. So negara. Thank you. Thank you for coming today. negara has just returned from being at home. She got back on Monday very late. And so it to her it is still you know, nine hours ahead. So she she’s ready to put her head on a pillow.

Nigora Yulyakshieva 29:28
That does it’s not that home. I was into it again. Oh, okay. So that’s

Barb McGrath 29:34
No, thank you. I appreciate the correction. All right. Well, we are going to wrap up. Thank you for joining us for another episode of The Secret Life of entrepreneurs and our series women in leadership. My Many thanks tonight Gora, and the city of Regina for her time today. I’m not sure if this becomes her lunch hour or how she’s going to squeeze this into her day but I do thank you. I will be back here on July 10 with Dr. Anna Emily Bamforth from the Royal Saskatchewan museum to learn about her secrets, and how she may have made a life out of playing in the dirt as a paleontologist, so I’m quite curious to hear her story and you know, how do you tell mom and dad, hey, I’m gonna play in the dirt for the rest of my life and make a life out of it. If you would like to be a guest on the show, you can email me at barb@googlegirl.ca or reach out on Facebook and Instagram. Just to reminder, you can also post questions in advance of the live show on our Facebook page. I’m your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:00
Welcome to a special episode of The Secret Life of entrepreneurs a 91.3 FM CJ tr, Regina community radio. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, marketing guru, and founder of the get found on Google program. This week, I’m talking to two very special guests, to leaders in our business community who are making a positive impact in their workplace, on stakeholders, and in our new series, women in leadership, so stay tuned to learn their secrets about what makes them tick. What helped them become successful, what has that journey look like for them, and their role as a leader in our business community. So let’s get started. Our guests today are Miriam Johnson, marketing director with Saskatchewan Roughriders, and Pam Klein, President of Phoenix Group here in Saskatchewan. I am so excited to have you both here. And today, we’re going to talk about an exciting event coming to Saskatchewan in September. So first off, welcome to both of you.

Pam Klein 1:11
Thank you. It’s awesome to be here. Yes. Thanks a bit, Miriam.

Barb McGrath 1:15
Excellent. So I don’t know who wants to go first. Miriam, maybe you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with Saskatchewan Roughriders?

Miriam Johnson 1:23
Well, I am a mother of three, I always introduce myself first and foremost, as a mother of three. But I’m also the Director of Marketing with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. So in that role, I do lead the all of the social media, all the external communication that you see outside of our media relations team for the clubs, casinos, advertising, if you see us on social, I probably get to lead the team that that leads that. So you know with with my position, I also get to be part of a lot of the new initiatives that the club does. So a lot of those brainstorms on how do we become better? So I I it’s a it’s a pleasure to go to work every day.

Barb McGrath 2:01
Oh, I bet. And what an exciting environment. I bet it is sometimes. Yeah. And sometimes there’s tough stuff, too. I bet.

Miriam Johnson 2:09
Definitely.

Barb McGrath 2:10
Definitely. Things that the public doesn’t see. And you don’t think about trying to make all those people and places and everything come together. People don’t think about those sort of details sometimes

Miriam Johnson 2:21
No, in our fan base is very articulately. So they and they voiced them. So that’s something that we we listen to, and we gauge as well.

Barb McGrath 2:29
So yes, well, you’ve got 40,000 couch fans, right? Like, and they’ve always got something to say. Excellent. All right, Pam, tell us a little bit about yourself, then Phoenix.

Pam Klein 2:41
Well as Miriam segwayed. I too, am a mother of a young adult children who are thriving and that super exciting, and they’re kind of away from home, I have the opportunity to give even more wholeheartedly to my career and what I do as president of Phoenix group and things that I enjoy doing in the community. And certainly as president of Phoenix group, leading agency in Saskatchewan, one of my joys is to be able to work with great clients like the riders and Miriam on a on a regular basis. So it’s really fantastic that we have the opportunity to connect with those who also see themselves as leaders in diverse sectors in Saskatchewan and across western Canada. And we have a dynamic team that fuels me every day to lead and try and inspire and support them as they are doing amazing things for our clients and their communities as well.

Barb McGrath 3:36
So Miriam, and I got talking before we got started today. And it sounds like the riders in Phoenix have been working together for upwards of 20 years now.

Miriam Johnson 3:44
Yeah, that is a long, wonderful partnership.

Pam Klein 3:47
We’ve seen each other grow and thrive and ebbs and flows that are both of our businesses. Yeah, it’s a awesome partnership.

Barb McGrath 3:57
Yeah. And, you know, I think what’s most remarkable to me, and I had said this to Marian, but you know, clients come and go when you’re in the agency world. But what’s remarkable to me is, it’s a relationship, and every relationship has ups and downs. And even though it’s a business relationship, it’s you’ve you’ve been able to ride those bumps along the way, I suspect that their relationship has gotten stronger, instead of what you so often see in business is, oops, we had a disagreement. And then one party packs up their suitcase and off they go right, taking my net. And I’m going home Darden, right. And so kudos to both of your organizations for seeing things through and building this lasting relationship.

Pam Klein 4:39
Well, communication is a strength. It’s not unlike with family and friends in business as well. And when you don’t have that open, honest, transparent communication and have the hard conversations and celebrate the great times as well. It’s it’s really tough.

Miriam Johnson 4:56
Yes, it absolutely is. No one thing I would add to that is the fact that you know When you look at the strength of this essential roughrider brand, there has been, you know, over the last number of years there, I think there’s been a lot of credit given to Phoenix group to help. I mean, as the organization has grown, you know, they went from, you know, not having, you know, much of even a business office to make, you know, marketing decisions based on, you know, on this growing brand. So, you know, there was a, there was a time when most of the brand decisions were made by Phoenix group to the point now, where, you know, we’re working together so cohesively as we continue to try to transform the Saskatchewan roughriders. And, and in, in, still improve. So it’s, it’s been one of those things that, you know, when when someone knows you so well, and so in depth, it’s, it’s, it’s quite priceless.

Barb McGrath 5:42
Well, and to put my marketing hat on for a minute, it’s one thing to grow a brand that, you know, in the bottom of the pile, the middle of the pile, you can only go up, but I mean, the Saskatchewan roughriders, as a brand is absolutely huge, huge. And so to maintain that momentum, to continue to grow to continue to stay above your competitors. Right. I mean, that that really speaks volumes for Pam, what your team has been able to do and Miriam, the contributions that your team is making as well. Right. So all right, well, let’s think about some of those contributions, because we are here to talk about leadership, of course. And there’s an exciting event coming to Regina at the end of September. It’s called the western Canada accelerator. And it’s powerhouse media who is bringing that event here. I understand that you’re both going to speak at the event.

Miriam Johnson 6:33
We are Yeah, we’re one of the morning sessions.

Barb McGrath 6:35
Yeah, about that. And speaking together. Kochi notes.

Miriam Johnson 6:40
We’re gonna dress alike.

Pam Klein 6:41
Yes. Twins.

Barb McGrath 6:43
Okay, no, if you don’t wear a Ryder shirt. Oh, I meant to wear my Ryder shirt today. Darn. Yeah, so what an exciting event that will be. So I know, you’re just having some preliminary conversations now about what you might talk about, and how that might flow. Any sort of tidbits that you can share with us, you know, at this point in your planning?

Miriam Johnson 7:03
Well, I think we are right at the beginning stages. And you know, as we’ve talked with Charlene who you know, is the fearless leader for, you know, everything that powerhouse is doing, you know, we’ve we’ve been given some direction on the fact that obviously, being the Saskatchewan roughriders, as as that sports brand, and, you know, Phoenix group as the agency, there, there’s a natural, there is a natural connection to discuss kind of how leadership ties into sport. And so when we have, we’ve done a couple other conference discussions, where we discussed the different layers of what that means, and sports are, you know, not just an individual, you know, but they’re, they’re a team based. And then there’s also the coaching elements, that goes into sport. And so when you think of how to articulate that in Keynote, I think that Pam and I are gonna have some unique ways of communicating that, you know, in September Mm hmm.

Barb McGrath 7:55
Yes, I agree. And sport and leadership, what an awesome time because absolutely, as a parent, that’s a drive a huge driver for me, in all of these sports that I take my kids around for, right? Plus it helps keeps them out of trouble. Pam, you were gonna add something

Pam Klein 8:10
Well, and one of the the vision that Charlene has in this, through this workshop in the session in the keynotes that we’re having is to try and articulate a leadership path. And that’s really where another one of the analogies with sport came in. Because often, we see with our kids and if you’re an athlete yourself, there’s, there’s really a path that you can follow. So you can see that season one the end game two, what is it in leadership? How What does that look like? How does someone know? What to do? How to be involved? Where Where does leadership take you and how do you become a participant on that path? Yeah, so that’s, that’s another tie that really makes a lot of sense for shorting and setting out to articulate

Barb McGrath 8:58
She’s been working on this goal for a while she’s had this will be the third event in Regina, if I remember correctly. I don’t know if either of you know up top your head.

Pam Klein 9:08
This is that this is the biggest event for sure. And okay, a series of luncheons and group workshops as well. But this, this is a big initiative. It’s taking obviously, significant planning, but sponsorship and support. So it’s one of its kind in Saskatchewan, for sure.

Barb McGrath 9:25
Yes, yes, absolutely. So Pam, you’re very involved in the entrepreneurial community. And there’s a real impetus and momentum behind entrepreneurial communities behind you know what Charlene is working on powerhouse, developing leadership. Where do you think that’s coming from? what’s what’s driving that? Do you think?

Pam Klein 9:46
I think there’s a variety of things that are affecting that. Certainly there I, I consider it a movement. There’s momentum, where people are trying to create their own opportunities and it could be attributed in large part to the opportunity, that technology is presenting connection access. You know, we’re not as restricted by physical barriers. So there’s a there’s an opportunity to really stretch. Yes. I think with younger entrepreneurs and emerging leaders and entrepreneurs, there is a mindset that is built on competence and a view for opportunity that really is shaping what can be done. Yes. It’s not as traditional as it was when I started in a career.

Barb McGrath 10:29
It. That’s right. And I think one of the conversations I had with a colleague not too long ago, I think one of the things that digital marketing has brought about is the ability for a micro business to exist and exist successfully. So historically, if you wanted to buy media, there was only traditional media, and it tended to be fairly expensive for small businesses. But now, because you can run a Facebook ad or run a Google ad for very low investment, suddenly, that micro business has an opportunity to compete in a space where historically they wouldn’t have been able to. So whether you’re a bookkeeper or an accountant, a marketer, a car mechanic, all of a sudden, you can get your message out to the same audience, where traditionally you needed, you know, much more expensive media. And I think, you know, that’s an exciting development to see, because maybe you’ve always been interested in being an entrepreneur, but it just wasn’t a possibility from a finance standpoint. So I think we’re starting to see a lot of those types of businesses springing up. And hopefully some of those folks plan to attend the event in September. So can you tell me anything about the event in September in terms of you know, who might attend or who should attend the value that they will receive for attending?

Miriam Johnson 11:51
I think, you know, I know just even for myself, I mean, I’m, I’m a younger leader in the, in the industry right now. And I’m, I know that I booked for events like this, you know, so when I was, you know, starting my career, and when I was, you know, getting into places I had aspirations, and I kind of falling was way sure exactly where I wanted to go, I know, for me, I looked for opportunities like this to either learn or, or feel like, you kind of get fed like, Yeah, okay. I know, that we had discussed to about, some of the things aren’t just going to a conference to be talked to, but actually going to a conference and outlining goals that you might have. And then here’s, here’s how I’m going to do it, which ties into what Pam was saying about the leader path. And so I think what’s unique about this event, and for any scale of really professional, I would say, because I don’t think it necessarily even has to be an entrepreneur, and really, anyone in your professional career, wherever you might want to go. You know, there’s going to be things that you can take from this. There’s a variety of speakers. And I think that, you know, you won’t just be talked to, but you’ll be invited to, to really think through your approach what that’s going to fit your path.

Barb McGrath 13:01
Mm hmm. Yes. And so you can start to think about your own leader path. And where does that go? Yes. Um, so it talks, talk to me a little bit about the relationship that you guys have because Maryam, you shared earlier than that you’ve had the opportunity to work with Pam for a long time, and she’s become a bit of a mentor to you. So tell me about that.

Miriam Johnson 13:18
No, I think when I was asked to co keynote, I thought like with Pam, you know, kokino is that excitement with Miriam?

Pam Klein 13:27
I thought usual.

Miriam Johnson 13:28
So I was completely honored. Because I mean, I should I definitely look at Pam as a mentor. I mean, I look at her career and where she is. And I think like, man, like I she’s, she’s right up there with with people that I aspire to try to be like, and so there’s, she and I have had conversations and she’s she’s definitely been one that, you know, when I think of where I want to be as a leader as well, I kind of go, I wouldn’t mind being a little bit like bankline. Yeah. So to be able to share stage with her is, is just a true honor. And so I’m very excited to do that.

Barb McGrath 14:08
Absolutely. And Miriam, I have to tell you that there are a number of folks in the city that if we had the opportunity to share the stage with Pam, we would feel equally honored. Yes. Yes. Panama’s legacy.

Pam Klein 14:20
You’re very, very generous comments and but it’s all true bamboo so much. I can draw on on one of the the comments that Miriam made in that long statement of beautiful thoughts. You know, she can look forward and say, Well, I would like to be a leader like Pam and I have hindsight being what it is, I can go wow, I wish I had it as together, as Miriam has at this stage in her career. And I think that’s also a testament of one of the beauties about powerhouses. setting out to do is to build that network, offer mentorship, and then with the culmination of this conference Bring it all to action. Like it’s great to know people, but then you really want to start learning stuff you want to dive in and have that opportunity to connect. And so that’s really how Miriam and I come together with this initiative is is how that that contact the ball contact rather evolved, and then can grow into something more something richer. And what do you take away from? Whatever stage you are in your career?

Barb McGrath 15:24
Exactly. Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. So Pam, you talked a little bit about Phoenix before, and I know you’ve been involved with them for an extended period of time. But you didn’t start out as a marketer and an entrepreneur, where’s your roots,

Pam Klein 15:38
I do not have been two decades with the with the agency. And in my early career, I never imagined that I would be in an advertising agency. It just wasn’t on my radar I had studied in educational psychology and computer based interactive training was where I was at, and I was developing learning programs for children with special learning needs. I was working on cool projects with Department of National Defense and various governments and actually working in artificial intelligence before was where it is today. And then the opportunity evolved that I was applying this skill in sales and marketing. And through one of my colleagues and a mutual friend of both of us, Daryl Mitchell, he recruited me into the agency where I started leading the interactive division. And at that time, we have two websites. But the whole idea of communication and educational psychology really is a great fit for advertising where word we set out to tell a story to motivate, mobilize and empower and persuade someone. Again, in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense. It does. Yes, in hindsight, there’s a very good fit. So leadership in 2019, what do the next five to 10 years look like? Do you think how is leadership evolving? What will leadership be for your kids Maryam or my kids? What will that look like?

Miriam Johnson 17:05
That’s a big question. Because I think we’re trying to we’re looking so far in advance, but I think that we are seeing a change in behavior in our, in our younger staff. And, and I think that, you know, there has had to be adjustments made for those changes that we’re seeing, some of that is, you know, the the use of technology, just how readily available everything I mean, like there’s, there’s just been a tremendous change. And I, I, it’s hard to say even 10 years, but I think in five years, I think leadership is just, it’s always been about people, but it’s going to be even more about people. And, and, and I think that, you know, our younger demographic, and our younger generation really feel. And, and I, you know, I when when I was thinking through even some of the things to talk about today, it’s a morale is a giant thing that we always talk about, it’s a buzzword in the workforce, you know, but I know that with our youth, like how they feel in an organization or where they are and and feeling supported is, I think it’s going to just grow because, you know, there there is going to be options, and there’s going to be things. So if you’re, if you’re if your organization is trying to either retain or, you know, build, you know, you’re really going to have to focus as a leader on on on those people. And, and I think that I know that sounds just broad, and but there’s so much that goes into that.

Barb McGrath 18:33
Yes. And what I really liked that you said is the focus on people. So how old are your kids now? 11, eight, and seven. Okay, so 11, eight, and seven. So we’ll just round it off at, you know, 10, for averages. So, but in 10 years from now, they’re 20. And already, we’re seeing how much time kids are spending with technology, to the point that some are arguing, you know, are they remembering how to talk to people how to build those relationships? And I know, we as parents, definitely, you know, we’re always on their case, put your phone down, put your gadget down, you know, go out and play. And then yesterday, they went and played, I’m like, No, just stay home next time. Because that led to something too. But from a leadership standpoint, we as parents still have such a big role to play. And when they enter the workforce, I mean, they are going to they’re going to No, no different than everything is done with technology. Why would I meet with someone when I can send them an email? Why would I call someone when I can send them a text? Right. And so those, those nuances of building a relationship, they they almost start to trickle down. Right. Pam, what are you seeing over at Phoenix group in terms of leadership, you’ve got some fairly young stuff and then your employee owned, correct? Yes. So your employee owned. So what employees want out of the organization is helps to set the direction that you’re going.

Pam Klein 20:02
Well, I think I also want to echo the importance of people and that connection and communication. And, and when I think of the agency, and I think of even my kids is that communication is more important than ever, and leadership is showing, not only in the, in the workplace, around your boardroom table, talking to your clients, talking to your colleagues, but it’s demonstrated in community, it’s demonstrated to your family, and it is demonstrated in the workplace. And I think when I think of the environment and the culture that we have at Phoenix grew, it is a blend of all of that that gives a richness and a meaning. You know, beyond the day to day, the eight to five, the paycheck, it’s that it’s that fulfillment, we all still crave technology or not. What is what is our what is our purpose? What do we what are we enriched by would refueled by? I think leadership needs to demonstrate that it embraces that. And that’s what I think, will really help emerging generations understand the power of leadership that it is not singular. It’s, um, it’s broad, and it’s complex, and you need to demonstrate on all aspects of your life.

Barb McGrath 21:17
You know, when I would think that as an employee owned Corporation, that really brings a new dynamic to leadership as well, because you’re, you’re now truly leading your peers, leading your investors. And so leadership and relationship take on a whole new level of importance, I would think

Pam Klein 21:37
It absolutely does. And it really comes down to that the shared value. Where is it? You’re going? What are you setting out to achieve? And that, that alignment of purpose and contribution and hard work? Yeah, you’re definitely tired?

Barb McGrath 21:54
Definitely, yes. So I’m just reading a couple of notes that Charlotte left with us. And she wrote this, quote, The world is calling us to live and lead at a higher level at this time. The issues and challenging challenges we are currently facing as a society and a planet require us to bring it in at a whole new elevated level of leadership. The accelerator will provide stories, examples, insights, strategies to help each attendee, explore what this higher level of leadership might look like, for him or for her. Sorry, and I should read that last part again, like for her, or him. And it’s actually that last very last word. This is not just an accelerator for women, even though power house has focused on helping to develop women. This is an accelerator and event for men and women who are looking to advance and strengthen their own Leadership Center. Right. And so when I think about the event and the types of you know, there’s luncheons, and there’s evening events, there’s a whole variety of different ways that people can get involved. They can attend all three days, they can attend just a luncheon, they could attend just the keynote on the morning of the 26. Good.

Pam Klein 23:20
My daughter’s birthday.

Barb McGrath 23:22
Oh, don’t mess up. So the accelerator is September 25, to 27th. And Registration is open. I realize all of a sudden, I don’t have that website in front of me. But it’s open and I will post it so everyone can find it. Excellent. All right. Well, let’s change directions just a little bit. And the two of you successful leaders in the community, extremely busy leaders in the community. What does a day look like? How do you get through a day? three kids 10 or 11? Eight, seven, like, Oh my goodness,

Miriam Johnson 23:57
I think I thrive on it though. Like I I I don’t do well, when I’m not busy. I’m much less productive. Like, I’m my God, I need to be I need to have pressure of a deadline, right? I need to have a bit of a full schedule and you know, but I also need to be prepared. And I think that’s my biggest thing is is I have to feel prepared. So having a full schedule. Like I’m always prepping for what’s to come. I hate to go in on unprepared but I think it is it is intense. I I don’t mind it at all. I think that’s that’s why the position is working for me right now. But it’s like I Love New I love change. I love it. I’m one that really thrives on something new and so you know, I think that that rapidly it happens every single day within my organization and with our team and we’re constantly trying to find solutions and So it’s it’s one of those things that between you know, you’re getting kids off to school and you want straight to work to go pick kids up to school. Yeah, sporting events. So, by the end of the day, I’m ready to stop and look at your calendar. What’s tomorrow?

Barb McGrath 25:12
Exactly? What does tomorrow look like? And do you find it end up season when December finally rolls around? Do you stop and go?

Miriam Johnson 25:21
Ah, for about a week. Okay, is that our budgets are due for the next fiscal middle numbers. There’s not a lot of downtime, I think that they’re, you know, you would you would you would think that there is, but we the season no more is that we go immediately into prepping and planning for for the next season. So there’s a different type of a different type of busy.

Barb McGrath 25:43
Yeah, which do you prefer the creative energy of the season or, okay, now, it’s the administrative kernel, I like both you do good.

Miriam Johnson 25:51
I like both. Because when you’re driving strategy, and you’re you’re you’re, you’re really taking, you know, the strategic plan of the organization and going in this is how it’s going to come. You know, this is how we’re articulating it through our marketing channels over the next fiscal you know, like, to me, I love that part, because it’s your big arrow for the for the next year, and positions all of us and our work with Phoenix group, and it helps us really feel good about going into that next season going like here, here is, here are the objectives. And so I love that, but I think I if I had to choose one I would choose I would choose the creative energy of creating the produce spots, the photo shoots the you know, getting it out and watching watching the the watching the numbers come from there. Okay, where’s our ROI? How are we feeling?

Barb McGrath 26:40
Exactly and adjusting? Very cool. Okay, awesome. Pam, what does a day look like for you?

Pam Klein 26:49
Well, there isn’t a typical day. And I what I do want to comment on on Miriam’s energy with what she shared her day, a constant certainly would be the kids that family is an anchor, but there really isn’t a typical day for you. And when you think of the intensity that is working within a football organization, or sports organization, or even as an entrepreneur, it’d be pretty flexible to go on the fly, and respond to demands and the times in a day are not eight to five. And when I think My typical day, I do like to have a constant of exercise in the morning. Because otherwise I won’t fit it in. And certainly, Trump worked hard to become aware of, and aware of some of the mental well being comes in and that come through, so I so that’s, that’s a constant. And from there, I certainly have a schedule, and I, I do know what’s coming over the next few weeks. But that being said, there’s lots of variety in the day and and the thing that I love the most is the relationship building that we have, we all have an agency is a pretty eclectic, diverse group of people and skills and talent. And I have a pretty good sense of where I fit and where others can fly. And, and, and take off. And I’m certainly a relationship builder.

Barb McGrath 28:08
Excellent. Those are, those are very, those are inspirational messages to hear from the two of you. And Miriam Yun and I talked before, when you’re busy, it seems like you can get so much more done. Right? If you only have a couple of things on your to do list. Oh, I can do that a little bit later. Right. So I am very much the same. were driven by deadline, when does it have to be done? Because that’s when we’ll get around to doing it. Right. So it makes it go? Well. All right. We only have about about three minutes left. So quickly. Could you each share something that you know, you wish maybe you had no one, five years ago, a decade ago? a nugget of wisdom? Is there something that you would share with listeners today?

Miriam Johnson 28:58
I’m not gonna post on there’s many, there’s many things do you mean for to be for leadership in particular, for leadership, just in my own journey? for leadership, I would say and we touched on it is, you know, our world has become so technical. And, and I think conversations and the ability to, to speak has has become somewhat of an art form. And I would I would challenge people that you know, in the last five years, I think that’s been one of the biggest changes is you know, just that phone conversation or the or the written written letter or you know, the ability to to have to have specifically difficult conversations but but you know, but being able to do it and and I would say that you know I think that we all go we all go to a device or we all go to either the the email or a text but you know, try to challenge yourself to have that face to face conversation. You know, when you’ve when you’ve met with someone, so get your pen and paper out and write them a note. You know, go go the extra to, to make the connection.

Barb McGrath 30:07
Exactly. I love it. Thank you cam, anything that comes to mind for you?

Pam Klein 30:15
Absolutely. It’s that the idea of connection and mentor that I would have benefited greatly from what I know now that it’s okay to ask for help. People want to help and there’s power in connection and being able to support each other and, and really, that’s what we all love to do is to contribute support and foster success. So it would be it’s okay to make a connection master home. Exactly.

Barb McGrath 30:41
Thank you. That was wonderful. Well, and that is it. Folks, we are out of time for today. Thank you to both of you for joining me and for everyone for listening today. This was the first episode in our series women in leadership. And I’m really excited to have the two of you here with me today to kick this off. And as well, we’ve got some really exciting upcoming guests including Dr. Timmons from the University of Regina. So it’s going to be an exciting summer around here. We found her. Me too. Absolutely. Me too. Let me see. I will be back on June 26. And I will be with Knight Gora. You’ll like kiss Shiva. I’m going to work on pronunciation between now and the 26th of June. Unfortunately, she was traveling and not able to help me with pronunciation today. But she is the winner of the mentorship award for the women of distinction is here. So she will be joining me on June 26 back here. If you would like to be a guest on the show, you can email me at barb@googlegirl.ca or reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Above the Fold Canada. Just a reminder, you can also submit your questions in advance of the live show on our Facebook page. I’m your host Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb 0:00
Welcome to The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. Stay tuned to meet today’s guest and hear their story of what makes them tick. What drives them to succeed, and their role in growing a thriving business community. The Secret Life of entrepreneurs chronicles the success and secrets of locally owned businesses and owners listening live as we discuss their secrets and learn how they are making a positive impact in their community. You’re listening to your host, Bob McGrath, business leader, entrepreneur, and founder of the Get found on Google program. Let’s get started. As never seen before and possibly never seen again. I’m talking to a group of grade five and grade six students to learn about entrepreneurship from their point of view. Before I introduce our guests, I have to tell you that the students I had the opportunity to work with demonstrated such insight and maturity when I asked them about entrepreneurialism and what it means. The one that hung them up though, was when I asked him to spell entrepreneurialism, and then of course, they asked me to spell it and no, I got hung up too. So, without further ado, let me introduce our guests. Our first guest today hails from Argyle school here in Regina. He’s a grade five student who loves all things, sports, puppies, and will seems to be destined to be a professional negotiator. He loves to negotiate. Welcome Peter.

Grade 5/6 Student 1:45
Say hi, hi. Okay.

Barb 1:48
And our next guest. She’s a grade six student, also from Argyle school here. Also from our girl school, who loves to read claims to have mastered spelling. So I think we’ll find out today, and she tells us every day, how much she loves broccoli.

Grade 5/6 Student 2:09
Ah,

Barb 2:13
All right. Are you too ready to get started? Yes, it’s a little bit like a game show today? No, it’s not. I’m gonna ask you guys some questions. And it’s the same questions I asked each of the students in the grade five, six class. So let’s see what you guys can tell me. The first question I’m going to ask you and I’m going to ask Katarina, what’s an entrepreneur?

Grade 5/6 Student 2:43
See, an entrepreneur is someone who stares or runs their own business.

Barb 2:51
Okay, someone who starts or runs their own business. Let’s listen to what some students from our class had to say.

Grade 5/6 Student 2:58
Is basically someone that starts a business, for example, a clothing company, someone who starts a business from scratch, an entrepreneur, someone who starts a business and they have this passion for it, and it keeps growing.

Barb 3:14
They Okay, Peter, what do you think once an entrepreneur,

Grade 5/6 Student 3:19
Someone who starts a business on their own and tries to make it grow and get really big, okay, grow and get really big?

Barb 3:27
Do you think that’s something important for businesses? Do they have to be big? Mo? No. Are they still a business even when they’re small?

Grade 5/6 Student 3:37
Yeah, I think so to make them grow, you should help melt motion they do become maker.

Barb 3:41
That’s right. When you support a local business, they can grow and get bigger. Let’s listen to what a few more students had to say on that question. What is an entrepreneur,

Grade 5/6 Student 3:52
Somebody that starts their own like job because they, they don’t, they don’t really find a job that they like, or there’s no jobs open. And they just want to be creative, like they can vote on themselves. Think that an entrepreneur is someone that develops a company, an entrepreneur is somebody who makes their own company, because, like, all of the things that they like, so they’re happy doing their job. Maybe there aren’t any jobs that they’re happy with. So they make their own ones so they’re happy.

Barb 4:25
Sounds like the students in your class really have a good idea about what an entrepreneur is, hey, yeah, yeah, well, that’s a good little icebreaker question. But they get a little tougher from here, I think. Are you ready for question number two? Hey, Peter, you get to answer question number two first. Why does someone become an entrepreneur?

Grade 5/6 Student 4:49
So they can help people out to make other people’s businesses grow and get bigger and make their web website better, so they track poor people.

Barb 5:03
Hmm, yeah. Because if you’ve got a good website, then maybe you can get some more customers. Yeah. Okay, very good. Well, let’s see what the students in grade five and six had to say. And when we’re all done, then Katarina, I’ll ask you that question. Well, let’s see what they have to say.

Grade 5/6 Student 5:19
Well, there’s many ways, but I would think, for the money, and probably just so they’re not like getting bossed around, but they can boss people around because it’s their own business. I think because they either go to school or have a job that they don’t like. But then while they’re doing that, they get an idea. So then they try and make that idea. That country, yes.

I think people become entrepreneur, entrepreneurs. Because maybe it’s for the cash. Or, like, if in the bay business, you can, like, go on Dragon’s Den and like, like, make it more popular and like have a business grow around the country, and maybe worldwide, or they just want independence,

I think someone becomes an entrepreneur is because they have like a lot of passion for what they do. And they want to take it to a bigger level, and show some other people if they like it, and then they can like, do it with them. I think someone becomes an entrepreneur, because they like to work independently, and it’s something they enjoy. I think it’s because they must have something like, if they really want to do a must be like pretty special to him. So they be an entrepreneur and they random business.

Barb 6:42
Those are some pretty tough answers to be Caterina, why does someone become an entrepreneur?

Grade 5/6 Student 6:50
Right? Like the job that they want to use as an entrepreneur, like start, or like the business that they want to start? Yeah. They can either get said they might like, want to be more around everybody, but by themselves.

Barb 7:15
So somebody in the answers mentioned, Dragon’s Den, is that a place where you go and get fire breathed on? You know, oh, what’s Dragon’s Den?

Grade 5/6 Student 7:24
Meet someplace that like, you go. And if your business is calling you on the go, you can make a deal with them to help your business grow.

Barb 7:34
Ah, so when you make a deal, they give you some money.

Grade 5/6 Student 7:38
Yeah, you can make a deal with them. And they’ll give you this amount of money. And you have this much your business.

Barb 7:46
Oh, very good. Yep, Katarina.

Grade 5/6 Student 7:48
So if, after you, like describe your business to them, if they don’t like the idea, then they might not agree for it. Like they may not give you as much money as you’re betting for.

Barb 8:04
Okay, that sounds good. All right. Well, let’s keep going. We want to make sure everybody has a chance to answer all the questions. So we’ve talked about a few different kinds of businesses isn’t always possible to take something that you like to do, let’s say, Peter, for you sports. For you Caterina reading, is it always possible to take something that you like to do and turn it into a business? What do you think Catarina? Yes or no?

Grade 5/6 Student 8:40
I think yeah, you probably can. Because if I like to read in like books, then I can become an entrepreneur and start writing books or get a library or make a library. Okay,

Barb 8:59
Peter, what do you think?

Grade 5/6 Student 9:01
I think not, because a lot of cases, like, say, you like sports?

Barb 9:15
No. I mean, since you say you negotiates on everything.

Grade 5/6 Student 9:19
Making websites? Yeah. No, you can make. No, here’s some things that if you like, living, painting picture, if you like, just drawing and pictures, you can just turn that into a big business.

Barb 9:36
Okay. Well, you know, that’s a really good example. And in fact, you you didn’t know what the kids said. So listen to what they say because someone uses the exact example that you did. Listen to this.

Grade 5/6 Student 9:48
So I’m pretty sure you just like have to be passionate. You have to have creativity. You basically got to love what you’re going to do as an entrepreneur.

And yeah, that’s it. Like, what was the question again?

Barb 10:04
How do you turn something you love to do into a business?

Grade 5/6 Student 10:08
I actually don’t know. Probably, I can’t remember what I wrote in the sheet. Yeah, I’m gonna pass, you have to be really passionate about something that you love doing, and then trying to teach other people how to do that? I think, no, because like, most people like to say something, but not everyone turns it into a business. I don’t think you can turn it into like something you like into a job necessarily. It has to kind of depend on what it is. And if it can, like, you can work off of that and make more money off of it. I think you could probably turn like your some of your hobbies into a job depending on what kind of hobby it was. Because like, I like to draw when I can typically draw, I couldn’t make drawing into a job that would like, make me money from a job.

Barb 11:17
So isn’t that funny? You guys pick the exact same example. Even though you didn’t know that that’s what they said. So sometimes it is really tough to take something you like to do and turn it into a business. Now, can you believe that sometimes people buy a business or build a business, even though it’s not a personal passion for them. And we’re going to hear from a couple of the students about people they know who started a business, and some of them likely started the business because it was a passion. Well, others simply bought the business because they saw a business opportunity to buy something, grow it and create both a job for themselves as well as for others. So let me ask you first, Peter, do you know anyone who’s an entrepreneur? Yeah, you can answer? Do you know anyone else who’s an entrepreneur?

Grade 5/6 Student 12:17
That’s cool. Today, um, you watched a video about digital printers that they showed fresh air and they go to dance and they get like fresh air and then they sell it.

Barb 12:30
Wow. So who did they sell it to?

Grade 5/6 Student 12:33
People that had like really polluted places like for example, China.

Barb 12:41
Ah, Katarina, do you know anyone who’s an entrepreneur?

Grade 5/6 Student 12:46
Fine. Hmm. You’re not up there.

Barb 12:48
Yet. Good answer. Who else?

Grade 5/6 Student 12:50
Molly’s mom is an entrepreneur because she started the desert store. And well she she started it and okay, well I Miss Miss Luba son is an entrepreneur because he started 10 tree. And Juliet’s mom’s and was an entrepreneur and she did marketing.

Yep, who do you think of? I forget her name, but her dad shirt and a dry cleaner.

Barb 13:25
Oh, a dry cleaner. And people always wear clothes and their clothes get dirty. So that’s probably a good business to own. Well, let’s see what kind of businesses the kids in your class. Let’s see who they know because there’s actually quite a few.

Grade 5/6 Student 13:43
My parent my mom’s an entrepreneur, the Nortel lanes does all the work there by yourself pretty much. Nobody.

Hi grandpa.

He’s an entrepreneur. He started his own accounting business and he has lots of clients pretty good work gets that much amount of money. That’s my take my grandma’s nephew owns Richards moving company. And the person

I know.

Today is long is a patient and she does nails and that’s that’s all I know and entrepreneur and it’s my mom and she’s an esthetician. And watching means that she basically does like nails and facials and waxing. And I think she did that because when she was younger she was into like nails and facial and like beauty stuff and kind of all that As she turned it into something she liked entered into business.

My dad is an entrepreneur and he owns br Gaffney and Associates. And he does appraisals for buildings.

Barb 15:15
Very good.

Grade 5/6 Student 15:17
My brother does a clothing company, and he’s planning to do another drop of clothing. My mom and her boyfriend have a company called for days, they sew coats, fake fur on them, because she’s a, like, she likes the island. She doesn’t like to feel animals, because the environment and animals are important to her.

Barb 15:40
Okay, so there’s actually quite a few kids at your school, who know people who aren’t who are entrepreneurs. So that’s actually kind of cool. Now, here’s the big question. What does an entrepreneur actually do in this time? Oh, sorry. Would you like to be an entrepreneur someday? So this time, we’re going to hear from the students first, and then we’re going to hear from you guys. So what do you think? Would you like to be an entrepreneur someday?

Grade 5/6 Student 16:15
Yes, I do want to be an entrepreneur. Another one to like, wait and find out things that I like to do in the future or make a YouTube channel gonna be a good way to make money.

I don’t want to be an entrepreneur, because I think it’s too risky. And I really know what to come up with.

I want to be one because I love soccer and I want to make my own like soccer shop or like sports. So yeah. No, because it will give me headaches. And I would like, either, you know, I don’t think I would like be an entrepreneur, it would be the stress would be too much to handle. And I’d rather be professional hockey player.

Um, my parents would like me to be to be an entrepreneur, but I really don’t want to I kind of want to be a professional hockey player.

Barb 17:19
Okay, theater, Katarina, would you like to be an entrepreneur? Someday? I’m going to make your question a little bit harder than what those guys have to answer. Doesn’t matter if you say yes or no, you have to tell me why.

Grade 5/6 Student 17:32
Wants to go first. Okay, Peter,

Barb 17:36
Did you like to be an entrepreneur someday?

Grade 5/6 Student 17:42
Yes, and no.

Barb 17:44
Okay, why vote then?

Grade 5/6 Student 17:47
Well, no, because it might be risky and your business might die. And then you won’t get very much money. Hmm. But yes, because if you’re the opposite to what I just said.

Barb 18:02
That’s right. Very good. So there’s a little bit of risk involved in being an entrepreneur, especially when you have overhead like buildings, and equipment and machinery and inventions. Right. So it can go both ways. Katarina, what do you think? Would you like to be an entrepreneur someday and have no boss?

Grade 5/6 Student 18:25
That might be good for you. As Yes, and when would want to do if it was an entrepreneur would probably be like, starting a restaurant or coffee shop.

Barb 18:51
Okay. All right. Well, let’s start to talk about summer holidays a little bit. Peter, you counted on the calendar? How many days of schools you have left?

Grade 5/6 Student 19:00
24 2004 Now 2324.

Barb 19:07
Okay, so only 23 days of school left. So that’s not very many eight. Is there anything entrepreneurial that you guys can think of that you would like to do this summer?

Grade 5/6 Student 19:18
Do you want to hear from the students in the class first?

Barb 19:24
Yes. No. Okay, let’s see what they came up with. Because they came up with some good ideas. Oh, to make extra money if anybody owes my me I have one. Okay, what’s yours?

Grade 5/6 Student 19:37
Um, well, I kind of started making my own website because you’re kind of teaching me and my finish that hey,

Barb 19:45
You can finish your website and then hopefully the person will pay you some money for it. Kate, what were you going to say calorie not.

Grade 5/6 Student 19:54
Things that I could do to make money in the summer would be like Like, lemonade stands maybe?

Mm hmm. Okay.

Barb 20:09
Well, let’s see what the kids had to say.

Grade 5/6 Student 20:14
I don’t think I’d like to do something like really big, but maybe like a lemonade stand or something. And this summer, I might try to spend lots of time. Hmm.

I don’t think like about doing anything like entrepreneurial like, like maybe something small. Like for the most of it No, because I’m doing like dirt bike races and going like swimming and hanging out well for two weeks in the summer, I am basically one because I walk dogs for two weeks. And then usually I just spend my time in July doing really going to the pool or something. But in August, I can’t really because I’m going to Vancouver and doing some stuff there. But I’m going to be biking and like walking dogs there as well.

So I’m really excited. You know, my plan is on summer is learn how to swim because I don’t know how to swim. My dad never teach me how to swim. And ya know, and

I what I want to do this summer is go to Cyprus and go to my cabin.

Um, yes. And it’s amazing. Because if I want to if I had something that entrepreneurialism, I would either want to have a fashion line, or just like video games. I want to create video games and learn how to code. Well, if I don’t do that I’m probably just gonna go to camp or visit my grandparents at Casper we can maybe look after my sister and get some money from my parents.

All around my neighborhood as they have a bunch of dogs and they don’t like walk in their mouths? Well, I’ll ask them if I could walk them up for their permission and then I could get money by like $3 to walk a dog or to walk it off.

Barb 22:32
So what do you think, is getting money from mom and dad? Is that entrepreneurialism? No, it sure wouldn’t be in our house. Would it know what happens when you guys want extra money? You have to earn it. That’s right. But everybody’s house is different. Right? So for some people if they do work at home, lots of times mom and dad will help them out a little bit. Will you get allowance? Do you want to talk about that now?

Grade 5/6 Student 23:02
No, I didn’t think so.

Barb 23:03
No. Okay, entrepreneurialism. Our last question. How do you spell entrepreneurialism? Who wants to try first? Katarina it is. Let’s let Katarina try. And then we’re going to let two of the students from your class try.

Grade 5/6 Student 23:28
Ready? Away you go. e and t. E. PR E and EUILI SM

Barb 23:52
Close. Let’s see what b

Grade 5/6 Student 23:56
And t r e p r e n e u r a l i s e t r e p r e n e u r a l i s

Barb 24:15
We almost need to have that one up on the board while we do it. Peter, are you going to give it a try? Nope. Okay, let’s see what two more students said

Grade 5/6 Student 24:27
E and p r e PREEUR a li SM

Barb 24:39
Where you guys okay Sam for being honest entrepreneurialism. I can well you guys do Good, fantastic. Wow, did you ever have some good answers today? Peter or Katarina? Is there anything else that you would like to say?

Grade 5/6 Student 25:12
Oh entrepreneurialism seems like a lot of work. And you got to use your time wisely.

Barb 25:21
And that does sound like a good idea. Well, we’re just about out of time. So I’m going to ask our special guests to step back out of the camera so I can wrap up our show. I want to thank everyone for being here today for this special episode of a secret life of entrepreneurs. And thank you to Peter and Katarina, for joining me to talk about it and sharing a few of my secrets along the way. I’ll be back on June 12, with Pam Klein from Phoenix advertising group, and Miriam Johnson, the marketing director for the Saskatchewan Roughriders Kevin Marissa will join me to kick off the series women in leadership and talk about powerhouse media groups Western Canada accelerator happening here in Regina in September. Tune in June 12. At noon to hear their secrets and learn more about how you can become involved. We are at a time, I’d like to thank you for joining us today on The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. As always, if you’d like to be a guest on the show, please email me at barb@googlegirl.ca or reach out on Facebook and Instagram at above the fold. Ca just a reminder, you can even submit questions in advance of the live show on any of our social media channels. I’m your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, digital marketer and Google girl. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:00
You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, marketing guru, and founder of the get found on Google program. As always, I’m talking to a local business owner who’s making a positive impact. Stay tuned to learn her secrets, what makes her tick and meek, what helps her keep going? What helped her become successful, and her role as a leader in our business community? Before I introduce our guest today, I want to encourage everyone to stay tuned till the end of the episode, my guest is going to make a very special offer, but you must be an audience member. So stay tuned. All right, are we ready to get started? Let’s go. My guest today is Tiffany Wolf from Helium Communications. And she’s going to talk about the difference. Great communication makes in an organization. And it’s the difference between being successful or not. So welcome, Tiffany. Thanks for having me, Barb. Let’s start off tell us a little bit about yourself and your business.

Tiffany Wolf 1:07
All right. Well, born and raised in Regina, straight up through university got a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, which by the time I got it, I knew I didn’t want. So the most obvious track after that is to go into communications. So I worked for about six years of the government and then I moved into nonprofit and advocacy work. And then early last year, started my own business figured I would offer these fantastic brains to more than one organization.

Barb McGrath 1:43
Okay, so the first question for me is Tiffany, it takes a lot of Lady balls to quit. So It is and has always been equal parts. exhilarating and terrifying. That’s what I said before I did it. Exhilarating.

Tiffany Wolf 2:08
Yeah, it’s what makes it worth it. Right. You know, entrepreneurship is certainly rollercoasters. And I think the UPS make up for the lock downs, but I’m not entirely sure. Yeah, it was terrifying. But I just knew I needed to do it. And it was the right time in my life. So figured nothing risk nothing gained, right?

Barb McGrath 2:32
If you don’t take the risk, you can’t make the game. I agree. 110%. Okay, so organizational communication difference between great and like, in the toilet? So, tell me, like, how do you help organizations do that?

Tiffany Wolf 2:46
I think I do it in a lot of ways, right? Good communication goes from every end of your business. And you have an opportunity to do it. Well, every time you have a communication with somebody, whether that’s email or face to face, or some kind of presentation or the things that people think of when they think of communications, right. So you know, I’ve written my fair share of newsletters in my day. But I also understand that good communication will make the difference when you’re talking to your employees. And if you’re doing that correctly, what a difference that will make in your business because it doesn’t matter where you work within a business or what your industry is, if you’re communicating well is much easier to reach your goals.

Barb McGrath 3:36
When you work with your organization, what are you finding makes a difference?

Tiffany Wolf 3:42
I think the biggest difference is making sure a you know your goals are and be you know who your audience is. It never ceases to amaze me how often people don’t consider either of those things. They go straight to their message, and then they distribute it however they would want to hear it or however they think it should be distributed based on goodness only knows what metrics. So you know, you have folks who are communicating in the same way that they’ve always communicated, because that’s how they’ve always communicated. And then you’ve got people jumping on bandwagons, because it’s what everybody else is doing. And neither of those are good ways to choose how where and when to communicate. You got to know what you’re trying to do and who you’re trying to talk to to make that will happen. So you

Barb McGrath 4:25
Know, I’m pretty good at calling a spade a spade. Yeah, so this is the easiest and fastest thing for us to do. And the measure of was it effective?

Tiffany Wolf 4:42
Yep. Oh, absolutely. Setting goals and setting metrics and metrics that actually matter. Very rare, particularly in an organization that doesn’t have a group of communicators. The you know, I have been the one person team at an organized And it’s very difficult to set goals, it’s very difficult to find good metrics. And then it’s very difficult to track those metrics and go back and make changes, according to what you’re seeing. So that’s where people like me come in, right? Because I am somebody who can pop in and out and can do things that the rest of the team just doesn’t have time to do.

Barb McGrath 5:20
Yeah. So are you a freelancer? Like, what kind of business is Helium Communications?

Tiffany Wolf 5:26
I am a solopreneur. Just I am Helium Communications. But I am lucky enough to have a network of people that I work with. So if I take on a giant job that needs more than just one, me, I’ve got folks that I can call on so we can bring in a team if we need to, whether that’s a designer, or folks who have more expertise in something like marketing. I, you know, I know good words. But marketing requires a bit of a skill set that I don’t always have. Sometimes I do. But I’d rather you know, we bring in somebody who really knows their business. So and then. So yeah, it’s mostly just me, but I got other people I can call.

Barb McGrath 6:06
Okay, can you tell us the biggest fail you’ve seen an organization make without naming an organization? Oh, boy.

Tiffany Wolf 6:17
I did not, I did not. Um, I see huge fails in internal communications, all the time, all the time, all the time, even when you’ve got communications folks on staff, because you’re so busy communicating with those external stakeholders, with a lot of buzzwords in one sentence, but you know, you’re talking to your members, or you’re talking to the media, or you’re talking to, you know, consumers or whatever. And they don’t think about the difference that good internal communication can make. Because if your management team is just having conversations at management meetings, and then rolling up and just sending things out to the staff, good luck with your culture, like it’s just not gonna work.

Barb McGrath 7:07
Well, and you know, so you touch on an interesting point, culture and good internal communication are so closely tied for sure. I want to tell you that my favorite fail of all time, obviously, I won’t name the organization don’t give any specifics. But I saw an organization, I used to do quite a bit of work in internal communication as well. And I saw an organization do exactly what I referenced earlier, it was easy, it was fast, let’s just get the message out. Let’s not think about you know how or how it’s going to impact people, let’s just send out an email for 30. On a Friday afternoon, this will go well, we’re sure of it. So out goes the message. And of course, there is an outcry. But because it’s being done in a hurry, the two line was used instead of the CC line in that email to thousands of employees, which then proceeded a reply all chain that it could not stop. So there were hundreds, upon hundreds upon hundreds of replies to that message with regards to the original communication that was sent out. And it was one of those like bums in chairs, kind of messages that really matter to employees. So there was absolutely nothing that could be done to stop it. Everyone from the president, to our frontline staff received the exact same message and continuous replies. And my favorite part of this was, on numerous occasions, the president interjected in the email conversation and said, you know, could you please respond to your supervisor, could you please, and tried to sort of last the conversation. People weren’t having anything to do with it. So then, here’s my favorite part. Got it gets worse.

Okay, it gets better, you’re ready for it. Just like when your son was little, he has this tantrum. If he gets his way, he’s gonna throw the tantrum again, isn’t he? Well, guess what happened? The employee tantrum led to management rolling back the decision. So employees got what they wanted. Guess what happened next time.

Tiffany Wolf 9:35
Oh, that just hurts me on like so many levels. Because I’ve said so many times Friday afternoon is where news goes to die. You know, it’s and I think things have changed. But I think even if it’s not necessarily true, there’s also a perception that when you drop something on a Friday afternoon, people assume that you’re trying to hide something, and then they’re watching it that much more closely. So You know, and then you’re sending it out to thousands of people who are paying very close attention to that, because they think you’re trying to pull something over on them. And then you commit the horrible sin of not using the BCC, like, that irritates me enough in like some of the volunteer capacities that I’m in and, you know, at at previous jobs where you know, there’d be like 10 or 20 people, then it wasn’t BCC but thousands like I, that just makes me want to lay down on the floor and like, weep for a while. Yeah.

Yes. Try not to cry cry a lot. Yeah.

Barb McGrath 10:35
Okay, so, Tiffany, you know, me well enough, Google, and I tend to be pretty good friends. Indeed. Definitely some days where I’m not a big fan. I like Google. Google likes me. Yeah. And he helps me out with a lot of my work. What is someone googling when they find your business?

Tiffany Wolf 10:53
I think you’ve got folks looking, I want to believe that people are searching for communications. But if Google has taught me anything, is that when people are looking for communications, and Regina, they’re looking for access communications, not for me. And but PR public relations is one of the bigger things folks that would think, to Google when they’re looking for me. But I can do a lot of things for a lot of people in a lot of different ways, like, good words, will go a long way. So if you’ve got somebody on your team who knows how to wield them? Well, with a good strategy behind it, you’re on your way.

Barb McGrath 11:34
Yeah, you’re cool. You know, when the other thing I think that businesses confuse a lot of times is the marketing function versus the communication function. And because they’re so often blended into a single department, there’s a thought that everything that’s marketing is communication, and vice versa. And as to professionals that have worked in the field for years, that is not the case. There are two such different functions. Both require creativity, yes, both require, you know, good grammar, spelling, but somebody who can wield words to help impact behavior and decisions is completely different than marketing, who’s gonna hopefully swing the doors open, you know, on a retail location, or help you sell stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I think there’s

Tiffany Wolf 12:22
Tons of confusion like, since I’ve started my own business, it’s been delightful to watch my family not ask me how it’s going. Because they don’t know what to ask because they don’t understand what I do at all. Like they would understand if I was marketer, they would understand if I’d stayed in the journalism field, but this weird gray area in between, they just don’t get at all, particularly because most of them didn’t work in a career where they had communicators around and could sort of see what they were doing to them. It’s just like this. So it’s a lot of like, how are things going? Okay, good. No follow up questions. So,

Barb McGrath 12:57
Yeah, yeah. No clue what you’re doing. Yeah. In my mind, LinkedIn, I know I’ve done it, right. Because the jobs change constantly. Absolutely, constantly. So tell me about the communications professional, you have a journalism background? Um, what else you have to do you have to keep up to date on the latest words in the dictionary, what do

Tiffany Wolf 13:20
You do? Well, I think every communicator is going to find their own niche, and what they really love to do within the industry, we’ll go with that term. Because it is a really wide ranging industry. And you can do all kinds of different things, I ended up falling into a niche of editing. I am the phrase I like to use a lot is utterly obsessed with words, and how to use them while like I just, I, I have said, and I truly believe this, that I can do anything with a red pen and a dictionary. And I love them. Like that was that was my moment where I was like, I’m really doing this was when I went out and bought my Canadian Oxford Dictionary like of my own to put in my office, I was like, I have arrived. But that’s just me, right? There are folks out there who, you know, are in love with strategy. And I like strategy. And I believe a strategy is absolutely necessary to good communications. But it’s not the thing that when I think about it, like I get goosebumps, but like good words, and like Yes, I’m here for this. So and that’s, that’s where my niche is, which means that I can really help all kinds of different people, you know, from a small business to a large business to the interpersonal part of communications is another thing that I really love. You know, it verges on therapy, really making sure that you’ve got that audience really in mind and that you’re using the right words so that you and the other side of that conversation are getting the most out of it. So

Barb McGrath 14:52
It sounds like a lot of the work that you’ve done are for some larger organizations. Do you ever work with local businesses or how could you help a local business improve Communication.

Tiffany Wolf 15:01
One of the things that I think everybody needs on their communication, regardless of how large or small their businesses or who they’re talking to, is a second set of eyes. And sometimes that’s just real simple like a proofreader. You know, this is my deal, I do it all the time. But whenever I can, I want to send something to somebody else to look at. Because if it’s your baby, you know, what’s supposed to be there, you know what you meant, but somebody bringing in their outside perspective is always gonna make you sharper. So that’s something that I can do on all kinds of things, whether it’s, you know, helping sharpen up the copy for your social media, even the

Barb McGrath 15:53
Alert alerts. I am somebody who desperately needs those. Yeah.

Tiffany Wolf 16:04
Well, and I do it for like, folks that I know, like, if I’m scrolling through Instagram, or whatever, and I see a typo in the main body of the message. Any buddy that I know that I’ve done this to, I think appreciates it, and I’ll just like fire them a message. And I’ll be like, you mean the other form of too, or you forgot this word, or there’s a rogue period. And like, I never do in the comments, because I’m not a monster. But I’ll just send them like a little message so that they can, you know, they can update it. But if you can have somebody doing that for you before it goes live, like that’s just reputation management, right? Because when you, when you miss that kind of stuff, people automatically assume that you don’t know that and you therefore don’t know, anything.

Barb McGrath 16:49
Standpoint, that can make a huge difference for a local business. Right? If you’ve got social media that’s going out and is inaccurate and has errors, well, what’s gonna happen with my monthly billing from that organization? Am I gonna have to check it over exactly each time? Right. And so that’s where I think a lot of people are coming from, it’s like, I judge you by your appearance, I judge you by how your business presents itself. Yeah. And just like your customers judge you by the employees, you hire your customers judge you by what you put out there?

Tiffany Wolf 17:23
Yeah, yeah, I’ve been talking a lot lately about how everything we do is communication. And it’s not just the words that you use, it’s not just the tone of voice that you use, it is how you look, whether that means as an individual, the clothes that you choose to put on whether or not you decided to brush your hair that day. And you look at your good, you know, straight down to, you know, those really, really small things. And we have to keep them all in mind. And again, keep them in mind in relation to our audience. Because if you and I were just sitting here and Facebook was not involved, if your hair wasn’t brushed, it doesn’t matter. Because I know you and if your hair is brushed isn’t brushed, I don’t care, but like those people might care. So that’s a different audience. So you have to treat it differently.

Barb McGrath 18:07
Yes, absolutely. So what do you see happening in your industry? How is it evolving? Where’s it going? recognizing the value of

Tiffany Wolf 18:23
Where the industry is going, I think I would be a fool to even attempt to predict because the amount of changes that I’ve seen in the last 15 years, hurts my brain a lot. Even I mean, the world is changing. If you had asked me five years ago, if I figured this would be where we would sitting, we were sitting in 2019 there’s absolutely no way I could have imagined, right? You know, I know 2015 was a wild ride. But even then I would not have have been able to see the political climate and all that sort of stuff that we’re sitting in today. So to guess it, that would be foolish, but I do know that that means that things are going to change. So we all have to learn to be adaptable. I am really grateful that that is something that I think I’m naturally good at, you know, push me in the deep end, and also and we’ll be fine. And so that’s really served me well, because, you know, social media wasn’t even on the horizon when I was in journalism school. And the shift that that has done to media and communications and all that sort of stuff is is just wild. And now it’s at the point where it has to be its own separate function. I’m I can’t keep up with everything that’s going on on social media. So a plus work to those who can and, and so I think we are going to see more communicators. I think we’re not going to call them communicators. But they are going to need to understand the basics. And if they don’t, it will be to their detriment. I was talking with a client the other day and they were telling the story. Worry about somebody that they brought in to work on on their social media. And all of the conversations were about Instagram and the grid, and making sure the grid was good. And she was like, okay, but what are you saying? And they were like, but the grit, and they just couldn’t figure out how important strategy and good content was, in order to reach those goals, they were just like, it needs to look pretty. So I think we’re gonna have a lot more stumbling blocks before things really get better, particularly because those big changes are scary to the older folks. And so what tends to happen is that they hire the young people who understand the platform, but maybe just don’t have the strategy angle figured out. I know, I didn’t get strategy. When I first started my career, I was just like, Yeah, I was like, I write newsletter, bang, bang, bang, done, right. But the older I got, the more I understood the necessity of strategy and how much better it would make the work. So, you know, it’s interesting, there was

Barb McGrath 21:01
An article not too long ago, I want to say within the last week on Instagram, and, you know, people’s need to, that’s what we’ve done is we’ve created the grid. But in fact, there’s a push back the opposite direction already, which is quite quick, in my mind. People want real, I want to see real pictures, you know, great. We can all look fantastic with a filter. And almost every one of us has a profile picture on on social media, and it’s a great picture. It’s not our everyday stuff. Yeah, in some cases, it might be 10 years old, because it’s, you know, 20 pounds ago, and it’s two kids ago. Yeah, and whatever else, right. And I’m equally guilty of that, because we all want to, you know, present our best selves. But social media has made it that much easier to present the best because they’ve got all these filters. And the only thing Instagram doesn’t have is the ability to like, bring your waist in like this yet, right? Yes, exactly. Even as we’re speaking, I guarantee you there is a designer somewhere working on that. So like, I’m actually kind of excited to hear that we might go back to real write stuff, even on Facebook, but the content that you read from a person and from a business, only put the good stuff out there wants to hear that a crappy stuff. And in fact, when you do put the crappy stuff out there. Yeah.

Tiffany Wolf 22:40
Yeah, I think authentic is the word of the day. I’m terrified of the day that the backlash comes for that because anything we do we overdue. And I mean, do you right, if that’s what you want to do, and decide if your audience wants to see it. But I think we are already seeing what I’m seeing referred to as curated authenticity, where people package their pain in a way that’s acceptable, so that it makes them seem real without us actually being real. But I think most of us are pretty good at sniffing the BS out.

Barb McGrath 23:22
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. There’s there’s tons of stuff. And I know, I would never relish pain, but when someone puts something hard, I stop. I read I comment. Because that is what social media is intended to do. Right.

Tiffany Wolf 23:44
Exactly. And I mean, that’s, it’s in the name, right? It’s social media.

Barb McGrath 23:50
Yeah. So we talked a little bit earlier about, you know, what is someone looking for when they Google you when they find your business? They might be looking for marketing, they might be looking for a variety of different things. How do you intentionally market yourself, then? How do you let people know that the service exists? Because you’re a business to business service? Right? You’re not available? I suppose if a politician wanted to hire you, they could. They’re an individual. Yep. But most people hire a publicist. Yeah, so how do you market yourself?

Tiffany Wolf 24:28
And that is a question that has been extremely difficult for me to answer over the course of the last year. I ironically, have struggled with explaining to people exactly what it is that I do and how they can benefit from it. I was lucky enough to work for organizations that got it and understood what it was about. So that also means that I built a pretty decent network of folks who understood me understood what I did and understood where I was valuable. So the bulk of the last year and a bit has been me reaching out to people that I know will people that they know. And sort of, you know, one step leads to the next step leads to the next step, person to person marketing as opposed to business to business marketing.

Barb McGrath 25:11
Yeah. Okay. Believe it or not, we’re just about at a time. So I’d like to ask you a final question. And then we’re gonna move into wrap up. Yes. So is there something that you could share with our listeners and viewers that, that you’ve already taken away from being a business owner, tidbits, wisdom, that sort of thing? What would you share with folks

Tiffany Wolf 25:32
That asking for help seems really, really hard. Like, you’re admitting that you’re not good enough, or you’re not smart enough, or you’re in over your head, or whatever. But it’s the best thing that you can do for all kinds of reasons. One, because in my experience, people just want to help. Right? And but they also don’t want to impose, so they’re probably not going to offer but they’ll be happy to take you up on the request. And also, because everybody is an expert in something. But nobody is an expert in everything, I am really, really good at what I do. I’m maybe not the best at running a business, which means that I need to ask for help, because I need somebody else to make up for the things that I’m not great at if I want this to be successful. So, you know, it was every time I’ve had to ask for help. It’s been terrifying, but worth it. Okay, that sounds awesome.

Barb McGrath 26:33
All right, we are going to move into show wrap up here. So let’s see here. Um, thank you, Tiffany, for being here. At the beginning of the show, I talked about an added bonus that Tiffany was gonna put out to all of our listeners and viewers. So tell us a little bit about that.

Tiffany Wolf 26:50
So I have discovered the hard way and through working with all kinds of people that is really, really difficult to talk about ourselves. about pages. And BIOS are, I think universally, the worst thing to write people hate it so much. And so what it often ends up looking like is a Mad Libs like so and so went to school here, and then they worked here, and they like to hang out with their dog, like it’s the same thing. And if people want to do business with you, or want to bring you in to speak with their organization, they want to get a sense of who you are. But we really have a difficult time explaining that. So I will do what I call a bio brush up, or I did special earlier this year, New Year new about me. And so I will take folks bio, or their about page, and we’ll have a little chat and then we’ll write them up a new one. And so I packaged that little special at $120. For your listeners.

Barb McGrath 27:50
Oh, that’s amazing. You can you can spend hundreds of dollars getting your vote page done. That’s fantastic Tiffany. So for any of our listeners and viewers if you are interested, and you’d like to take Tiffany, Tiffany up on our offer to brush up that bio, drop me a note down in this video or shoot our page Above the Fold a quick message and we will pass your email address on to Tiffany, is there a time limit on that offer? Somebody listens to this in three years because

Tiffany Wolf 28:22
I will be willing to hold that open for folks until June 15 2019.

Barb McGrath 28:28
So sometime in the next month, if you listen to this podcast, please drop us a note on our Facebook page Above the fold. And we will get that message over to Tiffany. All right, then thank you, Tiffany for joining us today and talking about great organizational communication, the changes that are coming within the profession, and you know, sharing a little bit about your lady balls, how you found them. Thanks for having me. I will be back on May 29 with a number of very special guests. So I can’t name them because there’s actually too many to name. I’m not quite sure how this is all gonna turn out. But if you can imagine there will be 30 guests with me on that particular day. little crazy. Well, I’m intrigued, and they’re going to talk about what it means to be an entrepreneur, so it’s gonna be a great conversation. If you’d like to be a guest on our show, just drop me an email at barb@googlegirl.ca or reach out on Facebook and Instagram. You can also shoot a message over to our Facebook page with questions in advance of the live show. I’m your host Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb 0:00
Welcome to The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. Stay tuned to meet today’s guest and hear their story of what makes them tick. What drives them to succeed, and their role in growing a thriving business community. The Secret Life of entrepreneurs chronicles the success and secrets of locally owned businesses and owners listening live as we discuss their secrets and learn how they are making a positive impact in their community. You’re listening to your host, Bart McGrath, business leader, entrepreneur, and founder of the Get found on Google program. Let’s get started.

Our guest today is Charlene Oancia. And she’s the owner of a company called Springer and Oake. So she’s going to talk with us today about her sustainable approach to bath and beauty products and what that means to her. So Charlene, welcome.

Charlene 1:00
Thank you for having me on the show. Which is obviously a big passion of mine.

Barb 1:11
Awesome, so pleased to have you here. So let’s start off with a bit of an introduction to Springer. And oh, tell me, tell me about the company. Okay.

Charlene 1:16
So Springer, and oak was really born out of a learning process. In 2016, June 2016, I just complicated with my EMBA, from Levine School of Business here in Regina. And I, that was in June, and I took time just to focus on work and the family during the summer months. But being in school full time, plus also working full time and we’re having a family. By September, I was finding that I was had more amount of time on my hands and what I had been previously used to.

Barb 1:49
So you know, so Charlene and I know each other because we both done, you have our MBA program or EMBA program, and I didn’t have kids when I went through the program. And it wasn’t until I had kids, that I was like, Oh my God, how do people do it? Right? I have no idea. I have so much respect for you and everyone else who goes through that program. With kids. It’s crazy.

Charlene 2:15
Well, I have to say it’s a huge shout out to my husband through that time, because without having a huge supporter at home and a partner. There was, you know, it would have been tremendously much more difficult had had not had that support. You know, just go just go do what you need to do. And we’ll make the rest happen. That was awesome. Yeah. So what happened was in about September, I thought always had a little bit of a creative bug. And I like learning. And I like creating, and I absolutely, obviously love the business side of things, too. So starting to think about Christmas, and I’m an early Christmas planner.

Barb 2:58
Yes, I’m one of those can you said this was about September, September, months in advance, right?

Charlene 2:59
It’s not like eight or 10. Yeah. But so what happened was, I started looking about, you know, what about creative ideas for Christmas gifts giving to, you know, close friends and family to something a little bit more unique to give to them. As an added special, thank you. And so I started, you know, looking at soaps, and I was very interested in looking at how do you do? How do you make soaps. And so originally I went to Michaels and I bought a kind of a little starter kits and all this kind of stuff. And you know, it’s just a Melton pour and tried a few different recipes that way. And then I then those things worked out, I thought, well, I’m going to try this on my own. So then what I did was after a few samplings I made and created a bar of soap, a sugar scrub and a bath bomb for the gift giving for that for that Christmas. And people absolutely loved it. And they really appreciated it. And once they were finished with it. They said you have some more because I really enjoyed what you what you made. So that was great. And then they use that up. And then it was do you actually have some more? And then people say great, we just heard it was right, exactly. And then what they were starting to say at that time, it’s like maybe you should think about doing this as a business and going and doing some trade shows and craft shows. And I thought about it for a while and I just thought I don’t know about this well then I took that took the chance and did a couple of springtime trade shows. And just to see if there was a market there, see if there was an interest or people really did like my products or things that I was making. So that’s really kind of where it really started. And then as I was starting to research more products and soy products and how they were made and then more Bath and Body products. I really started to understand the ingredients that were going into things and I’m very much I need to know what’s in things I need to know why. Why does this ingredient work with this ingredient and how they interact and and all that bit of a science side to the whole thing then to He’s a bit of that too. And I, you know, one of the things one of I love science in school, but chemistry was my least favorite. And now really, this is all about chemistry. So you think what a practical application can do for your interest in the subject. But I thought, I’m never going to use chemistry in my life. This is now as popping up people, it always comes back. Yeah. So at the end of the day, what I really found and what really got me passionate about, about developing a line of Bath and Body products, was the amount of chemicals that are being used in in our bath and body products. They what was happening was I was researching and looking on YouTube for different tutorials and how to make different things. And I kept talking about a certain ingredient called SLS and, and you need to have SLS and and I didn’t know what that was, so I googled it and thought, well, do I need this have I missed something, you know, in in making the recipe or, or things and how the products actually going to perform for the end user. And so then I did the research, and it comes up with sodium lauryl sulfate. And it’s a very popular ingredient. And it’s pretty much an every product that we use, from our toothpaste to our laundry detergent, all of our bath products shampoo, everything that we find as a foaming agent. But what the foaming agent is, is it’s a surfactant. And so it was actually born and used as a surfactant cleaner for industrial cleaning, so industrial cleaning of like engines and oils and grease and things like that. So then what happens is I started to research more and look at different articles and why and how, you know, how does it affect our skin is it actually it will foam and bubble in, you know when we use it and have a great lather to our products. But what it also does is because it’s a surfactant, it strips the oils and natural oils out of our own skin. So that’s why sometimes when you use a store bought a soap or cleanser or something, after you’re finished using it, your hands feel so dry. And they feel like oh gosh, I need just to put so much lotion on it. And that’s likely what the issue is. So when people who have Zima, or suffer from psoriasis or any other type of skin conditions, this is often compounding the issue and they’ll never overcome, you know, some of the uncomfortableness and the condition that they’re that they have with things. So that is that’s just one of the products that and ingredients an ingredient chemical that I absolutely do not use in any of our products whatsoever. We use very traditional methods of of creating soap and foaming hand soap and everything is 100% natural. And if and I do a lot of research into if people are asking for certain products, looking at recipes, and challenging myself to find recipes that and a lot of times when I first find a recipe, there will be a tremendous amount of chemical added into it. So I challenge myself to look at okay, what are the what are the other what are the natural substitute for these things? Because that is really our differentiator with Springer. And oh, because everything does have to be natural, natural ingredients and derived naturally as well. What did you find for replacements and

Barb 8:35
For SLS,

Charlene 8:36
you don’t really need it. Now it can be a challenge. So for instance, our bar soap, so bar soap, just a regular old bar hand soap, we use a very traditional method of making a lie creation and your oil creation. And when the two come together, you mix the two together, you you mix it all together, you pour it in your mold, and it goes through a process called saponification. And I know it’s a big word so the saponification process takes about four to six weeks of carrying on the shelf. So before we can actually go out and and sell this to to the customer and through that process what happens is that the lie then begins to leave the soap and it’s in it turns into soap where then you are going to have that nice lather and everything so our our bars of soap lather perfectly all on their own using natural techniques.

Barb 9:34
So from a mass manufacturing standpoint, which isn’t how your products are made. The reason that large manufacturers started to use the ingredient was to speed up the manufacturing process so they could get soap on your thing in a much shorter time period. Absolutely. It’s not even necessarily a cost thing I’m sure there’s a cost to but but when you shorten the cycle your cost goes down To be able to keep it sitting on the shelf. So it’s really, it’s really driven by cost like, right.

Charlene 10:05
Well, and another interesting one too is so a lot of the foaming hand soaps or liquid hand soaps, you make a, again naturally trying to do it without the SLS. And if you look at your bottle of soap at home, that you’re just pumped foam bottle at home, likely the first ingredient will be water, the second ingredient will be some sort of form of sodium lauryl sulfate or a certificate or things like that. And that’s the foaming agent. And really, there’s no soap components, soap ingredients, bass or anything being used in your liquid soap, you definitely do need some type of chemistry degree to decipher all of the ingredients that are on that list. But in our foaming hand soap, we start with a natural castile soap that we make all naturally as well. And that’s again through a whole natural process. And that ends up being a concentrated form. So then what we add with that, then is distilled water, our fragrance and things of that nature. So then, again, it folds completely on its own, and you don’t have any of that foaming agents or chemicals to help with the foam. We naturally assume that if there’s bubbles, it’s got to be good. But that’s not always the case, we need to question what’s making the bubbles with things to you know, isn’t that interesting.

Barb 11:21
And I suppose I’ve done a little bit of homework and a little bit of reading and things over the years. When I when I purchase something that does phone a lot. Like right away, I know that there’s something wrong, or there’s something in it that I can be to be concerned about. And it’s funny, because when I was getting ready for today’s show, of course, I was talking about it at home and what you do and the kids had been in the store with me and we keep referring to everything in the store by flavor.

Charlene 11:50
Takes a while.

Barb 11:54
But I talked with the kids and I you know I said all that I should give a shout out to them because they’re sitting at home having lunch right now. So Peter and Katarina, get your lunch finished, and then you got to get back and come home, you’ll have fresh open all the bathrooms. There you go. That’s right, but but we’ve started to talk to the kids about, you know what’s healthy for us. And just because we consume something, that’s not the only way that our body is impacted, when we put things on our body, we’re equally impacted. So as you were building your business and learning all of this, did you start to find that there’s a lot of those chemicals that we absorb and sort of their chemicals you avoid now,

Charlene 12:33
There is certainly my level of awareness has, has increased. Absolutely. And so not only now when I go to a store to look at grocery shopping, or just running errands or whatever products there might be, and not only looking at the ingredients that are on our food packages and things, but now I’m starting to read the ingredients on what’s in these other products. We have teenage girls at home, they love everything smelly, they love everything pretty they’re into makeup, and cosmetics, all those types of things. So we have a variety of things in our home. But now it’s the education of what what is in these things, trying to teach them as well to just be you know, be diligent and be aware of what we are putting on to our skin and bodies just as much as we’re trying to be more conscientious about what we actually feed our bodies. So oftentimes, people forget that our skin is our largest organ. And it is it absorbs everything that’s in and around the environment around us and what we put on it as well. I was doing a recent study into research, I wouldn’t call it a study, but propylene glycol, and it’s used in a lot of lotions and things as well, that what makes it slippery. I’m not 100% sure about that. But the propylene glycol is, again, something that’s used in a lot of fat fabrication into plastics and like really hard, hard plastics. And so, and I was noticing that this was popping up in a lot of ingredients of products that I saw on the shelf. And so I’m like, I’m gonna look into that and what exactly is it and why is it and so actually it won an award and notorious Award from the American dermatologists, dermatological society. And they give what they won this award for was they awarded can’t think of the name just off the top of my head. But it was an award for the chemical in 2019 That is a known factor in causing contact dermatitis.

Barb 14:51
And they give them an award for that right.

Charlene 14:53
It’s a notorious award. So it is so it’s the dermatology American dermatologist and doctors who are going Okay, this is a chemical that we’ve recognized in 2019, that has increased the amount of causes in cases of contact dermatitis, which is, you know, a skin irritation. And it can very much a lot of times be an unexplained skin irritation. But what they’re finding is that it’s not it’s not a food allergy, it’s not an allergy to anything else, or water or anything else is happening in the person’s environment. But it’s from the propylene glycol, so Wow. So it’s kind of interesting that way. Yeah. So that’s one of the things, one of the things that we really also looked at, and I looked at the community is very important to us, as well and as a family, but then also as an as an individual and a business owner. And because we’ve been really striving for all natural products, and we really strive to have environmentally friendly packaging, and as minimal packaging as possible. And we encourage people to recycle, we actually have a partnership with the Saskatchewan Environmental Society. Yes, in in Saskatoon. And so they look after, they’re a very small organization, but they look, they have a variety of programs. And one of the programs that they that they have is a k, a kindergarten to grade six education program where they go into the classrooms, and they work with students and an education, curriculum, and programming to help live a sustainable life and the choices that you’re making at home. So what we did at Springer and oak is I’ve developed a line of products called ocean waters, that 20% of the proceeds from that line go directly back to helping support these education programs for for the Saskatchewan environmental good ideas, you know, it’s a small way of giving back and, you know, living with what is truly, truly valuable to us as well, you know, not only making healthy choices for our body, but living a sustainable life that none of the ingredients that are in our products are toxic to water. Water plants are water life, life forms and things. So if by some chance, maybe you’re out camping somewhere and you accidentally spill something in the water, it’s not going to affect the wildlife is all natural, all natural that way,

Barb 17:21
You know, and that’s made me think of a great use for the product. I’m thinking back to soap. One of the hardest things to find when we go up to the cabin in the summer is soap that we can use in the lake. And so yeah, absolutely, we can hop in the shower, and we do have a shower now bless my husband. But prior to that, you know, and even sometimes now, like we’ll send the kids down to the lake, and we can’t send soap with them, right? Because there’s nothing healthy about what’s in there. And so being able to grab a bar soap and here go and get clean after you know weekend at the lake and it’s been hot and sand and yeah, right. You want to be clean, you gotta get that grime off. Never helps because now you gotta get back out of the lake. Back up the beach. The time you get to your towel, you’re up to the knees and stand again. Anyway.

Charlene 18:12
It was a brief moment anyways, where you were fully clean. felt so good. Yeah.

Barb 18:18
Surely I’m just gonna do a quick station ID and then come back and let’s talk a little bit about how you find balance between the teenage girls. You mentioned the business building partnerships. So that’s going to be my next question. Okay, do a quick check in here. Sounds good. So I just want to tell everybody about the look and listen lottery. CJ TR is holding a look and listen lottery and it’s a very important fundraiser for the station. You can win a Grand Prize of your choosing to one of four great destinations. You can go to Anaheim, California, which back in January, I think it would have enjoyed Orlando, Florida, Toronto, Ontario or Niagara Falls, the flights, accommodation activities and $500 spending cash for four days are included. And second prize is $1,000 travel voucher, which that’ll still get you a fairways in Canada. The third prize is the Regina folk festival experience Package, which includes two weekend passes to the Folk Festival in August 2019. So you can buy a lottery ticket for $20 Each and there are only 1200 available. The draw will be made on Friday, May 3 at 8:45am. So if you’re interested, you can check out the website at CJ ter.ca/donate. Or you can give the station a call at 306-525-7274. We would certainly love to have your contribution and good luck to everyone who does buy a ticket. So Charlene tell me balance. How do you find it amongst a very busy life?

Charlene 19:53
That’s well I’m not sure if I have found balance. I don’t know if there’s there’s a necessarily I think if we were if I was to try and strive for balance, to have equality and all things in my life because everything is, is equally important. I think I would really be disappointed in myself. So I think one of the one of the mindsets that I had very early on, is this has now become a lifestyle. So this is a lifestyle of this is, this is who I am, this is, this is who we are. And now does that mean that we don’t have balance or that I don’t have schedules? Yes, we definitely have schedules I have, we have a big huge family calendar on our fridge at home, I have a day timer that is full of to do lists that are never ending, which I’m sure it’s all like any entrepreneur. But again, I also balance working full time as well. So Springer and oak is a growing business but still currently want to have a side hustle. For for me with the with the intent to grow that business over time. So it’s about managing the priorities with both working full time and in a leadership role in the company that I’m at, but then also being a founder and business owner for for Springer and Oake, and a mom and, and a wife and a daughter and all those things. So definitely that that time blocking is huge. You know, when you do have so many priorities time blocking to what you want to achieve. And and probably finding that balance, especially if you’re if you’re an entrepreneur who’s still working full time and and building you’re building your business. So there is definitely time blocking those priorities. And then time blocking with your family to to make sure that you are at the important events that they’re that they’re at, that you can spend that family time and carve carve out both times and also making time for yourself. So you know, is it sitting and reading a book that has nothing to do with business for half an hour or an hour?

Barb 21:58
You do that? It’s like, tell me just listening to you. I have a hard time imagining Charlene with like a trashy novel, right? Unless it’s a holiday?

Charlene 22:08
Well, yes. So on a holiday abroad recent holiday, I honestly I did finally finish a book, but I was probably reading that book for about six months. It takes that long. Besides my bedside table, I have you know, books with intention that I would really like to read. But then that just made more practical sense in our in our business books, I usually get my attention. So you know, it really is about that, that time management and blocking and giving yourself the okay to not beat yourself up if you didn’t get it all done in one day. Because those lists are always going to grow. It’s about finding the prioritized priorities that are actually going to make the biggest impact to your business. And, you know, in in that timeframe or in, you know, the next the next few months, so the next six months and the next year and doing those activities first. Even though those might not be the fun things to do. Those are the necessary things that we have to do for our for our businesses. And yeah, and really making sure that you are spending that time with your loved ones. And that is that is critical that you have that no good.

Barb 23:16
Congratulations, that sounds like a lot. So we are hearing more and more all the time about healthy products, natural products organic. Where do you see this industry going in the next number of years?

Charlene 23:30
Well, I think the health and beauty industry has been around for years. Standards. Yeah, centuries in the end years. So I don’t think that that industry is going away anytime soon. But I think that and there’s always going to be big business, that is really setting the stage and setting the tone and and through mass market media and attention. You know, there is always going to be that, that that presence there. But I think that the industry in particular to natural products and chemical free products is going to take some time I think it is definitely is a growing industry for sure. I think what needs to get out there is the awareness and education piece for for for people, individuals and consumers who are making those those choices and purchasing choices. So that they understand that there are health benefits to the products that we use on our skin. Yes. And and being able to have businesses who can provide them those options. So the more people know the more people that they’re going to consumers will demand that manufacturers do provide those those options. And unfortunately, there’s no real government regulation on a lot of products, a lot of ingredients that are going in and chemical usage. There’s always a variety of studies But they come back inconclusive or there’s not enough testing yet or there’s not enough this even though a common usage in in so many of cosmetic products is parabens, and they have done numerous studies to date that already in women, they find parabens showing up in breast tissue and it’s it’s a chemical that mimics a hormone and creates more estrogen in your body and unnaturally so it’s, it’s about the education and awareness piece of it and I for one took that for granted. You know, I took for granted that you know what, I’m gonna buy this product and we’re gonna be completely fine and say for me, because it just has to be right and we’re selling it it looks pretty, it looks wonderful. Smells great. That’s that’s what I’m going to buy. And you know, when you actually start looking at that and researching it and Googling the ingredients, you really find another story quickly.

Barb 25:56
Surely we’re almost at a time. Can you quickly tell everyone how they find Springer?

Charlene 26:01
For sure. Well, Springer and Oake has its first bricks and mortar store in Northgate Mall it opened in October of 2018. So we are just right there in a small little shop. To this can be. And you can also visit us at Springer and oak.com If you’re out of town and listening and want to shop online or view some of the products. Excellent.

Barb 26:23
Well, thank you very much. I can’t believe that. We’re done already. today. It was a very quick show. So I’d like to thank everyone for joining us today on 91.3 FM si de ter retana Community Radio. Thank you to Charlene and Springer and Oake and be sure if you go and purchase some of the products don’t eat them. They smell very good.

Charlene 26:43
They’re not toxic, but I don’t I don’t recommend it.

Barb 26:47
And one of these days I’ll stop talking about flavors and all remember, it’s all good. I will be back next time with Jeff can ash from Paragon farms, and he’s going to talk about chickens, honey and vegetables and how that has become his livelihood.

We are at a time, I’d like to thank you for joining us today on The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. As always, if you’d like to be a guest on the show, please email me at barb@google girl.ca or reach out on Facebook and Instagram at abovethefold.ca just a reminder, you can even submit questions in advance of the live show on any of our social media channels. I’m your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, digital marketer and Google girl. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:00
Welcome tonight views The Secret Life of entrepreneurs on 91.3 FM CJ tr Regina community radio. We’re live with a local business owner who’s making a difference in y qR. Stay tuned to learn their secrets about what makes them tick. What the heck keeps them going, what helped them become successful, and their role as a leader in our business community. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, marketing guru and founder of the get found on Google program. Our guest today is Dan Benesh, president and franchisee of BarterPay Regina, and he’s going to talk about his how his company is helping local businesses thrive. So welcome, Dan.

Dan Benesh 0:46
Thanks very much for having me. Barb.

Barb McGrath 0:49
Great to have you here. Let’s start off tell us a little bit about yourself. We won’t do your whole family history like we talked about. But tell us a little bit about yourself and Barterpay Dan

Dan Benesh 1:01
Yeah. So when I tell people a little bit about myself, I typically start with a little bit around when I graduated high school, I was 100% sure I wanted to be a doctor. Someone told me they said, they said, Oh, you just have doctor hands. I for some reason that stuck with me. And I always took all my maths and sciences like they said, and so that’s what I that’s what I was into. I went into pre med at the U of R and I was super excited about it. But in the first year, they have those things called wieder courses. And I got weeded out by biology was just not my cup of tea, to look at slides and to study all of those little genus and phylum and I don’t even remember, but it was

Barb McGrath 1:39
Oh, come on. Be honest. You fainted when you saw blood, right?

Dan Benesh 1:42
Oh, no, no, totally was fine with blood and all of that. But it was no just this the rote memorization, I realized it was totally not for me. And in hindsight, I just, I should have realized that if I could have gotten through that the rest would have probably been a lot more practical. But what I did was I what I what I had to do a gut check and think like, what do I What do I really care about? And what kind of makes me tick, or what am I passionate about. And I had already taken a couple introductory courses or one introductory course in marketing, and also had taken some science courses. And my mom had just become a teacher a few years before. So I kind of just pieced everything together. And there was this really cool program at the U of R called business education. And I believe it’s no longer around anymore Just for lack lack of enrollment in it. But it’s really a shame because the students in school today are really wanting those type of courses that business educators are the best at teaching. I agree.

Barb McGrath 2:35
Yes, there’s a there’s a lot of demand for anything that high school students and even elementary students can get their hands on. Yeah. So yeah, I didn’t realize that program was gone, right.

Dan Benesh 2:44
And so we’re talking all of these business said grads are out there teaching personal finance, which is now being taught and offered by banks as something that’s extremely important that the business community when they’re hiring, they want people that understand that aspect of it. And it also just helps with, you know, your regular life finances. They’re teaching entrepreneurship, they’re teaching computer related courses, computer science, information, processing, keyboarding courses, a lot of that stuff that students are saying is a lot more practical than some of the courses that they’re mandated to take right now.

Barb McGrath 3:15
Yeah, absolutely. And my my god is marketing courses, business business education course, and that call to you.

Dan Benesh 3:22
So that that really called to me that the small kind of tight knit group and then the Dean of the of the program was just an amazing, amazing person, Cyril keston. And he, he kind of, you know, almost like handpicked and really got to know his students. And, and when I, when I did my internship, he just placed me with just an absolutely perfect fit of a teacher. And I did something called the digital internship project through Alec cortos and Ed Tech profit, the U of R. And the whole mandate of it was to try to get technology more into the classroom. And so it was just integrating it however you could and so the coolest thing was you just got a free laptop, not to keep but just to use during your internship, okay, and I didn’t have a high tech laptop at the time. So getting a getting a laptop that I could use and, and use it to integrate everyday into my courses was really fun.

Barb McGrath 4:12
You know, that’s such an interesting statement to me, because now students all have the technology. And I’m going to guess University was only 10 years ago, give or take for you.

Dan Benesh 4:24
Um, yeah, I don’t want to date myself here. But yeah, it’s prob about 12 years ago, I would say what I when I attend,

Barb McGrath 4:30
You know, rounding error 10. But for me, I had a laptop in university and it was more than 10 years ago. And it was a big deal. Like, I remember when I bought this thing. And like I was one of very few who had one. So it’s amazing how much it’s changed and how quickly it’s changed.

Dan Benesh 4:49
Yeah, I had one but I had like, you know, whatever. The cheapest model, the best buy offered at the time and it was still huge and the battery only lasts for an hour once you unplugged it and everything’s good.

Barb McGrath 5:03
About laptops 15 to 15 years ago that running for the plugin because you had just worked on a paper or something, or like running for the plugin when you’re at what percent

Dan Benesh 5:10
Trying to trying to get it saved before it shuts off anyways. And so and my minor is in chemistry. Oh, and the reason why the doctor chemistry thing that makes sense, right?

But the reason why I said people never understand that they say, why would you? Why would you do business and chemistry, those two have nothing to do with each other. But I realized what they do have to do with each other is the fact that I am a serial entrepreneur. And so when when people were telling me, or when I got into education, I thought to myself, why would I want to get a degree that everybody else has, right? Because when you’re looking to get hired, and there’s a limited number of spots to fill, and there’s more graduated teachers that are looking for positions, you need to make yourself unique.

Barb McGrath 5:49
Exactly, yeah, to find your niche. And you’ve got to be something that you can differentiate yourself with.

Dan Benesh 5:52
Yeah. And I, and schools were saying that they wanted, they wanted more male teachers, I was like, got that covered. They said they wanted. They wanted male teachers in the math and sciences and stuff like that. So I thought, This is great. I just love chemistry, I had a, I had a high school teacher, Mr. fleagle. That was just awesome at Miller. And he really kind of got me going in that regard to just that I had a real affinity for chemistry. And so that kind of made me I think I took three or four courses of it in in university.

Oh, you did good for you.

Barb McGrath 6:24
Yeah, chemistry would not have been high on my list, though. To be honest. When I started I, I did kind of like chemistry, and I took a few classes. And I think I went into one of the old you have our labs once. And I was like, yeah, this isn’t gonna be for me. Yeah, that was the end of it.

Dan Benesh 6:39
Yeah. And so just like after I, after I started teaching, then my entrepreneurial brain kicked in again, I started teaching at sketching Indian Institute of Technology. So I was teaching First Nations adults, mostly in business courses. So it was nice to be able to take my business education degree and immediately put it to use Yeah, in a practical sense, we were doing small business courses. We’re doing accounting, marketing courses and stuff like that. How do I forget that that was really my my favorite course and being able to teach the students about that and, and being able to kind of examining, marking the way that it changes over time and over those years was was really cool. But what I realized is that I’m not the type of person to just sit around in the summer Yes, sipping sipping drinks on a on a chair on the deck and or going up the lake that was just not me. I was more of a hands on.

Barb McGrath 7:28
And you know, what else I would I think would have been difficult for you is, in some ways, teaching. And once you teaching, you’re in a box, but you’re teaching the same course, year after year. And by the second time you’re doing that course, I think you would have been like, okay, I can’t do this anymore. Right? Get rid of what’s in your eye.

Dan Benesh 7:46
And what makes you think that about me like how do you how do you know me so well, that you kind of are diving deep into my soul here?

Barb McGrath 7:53
Those two two times we’ve been for coffee down? I know a lot.

Dan Benesh 7:57
Yeah, like that. That was exactly it. Like when I’m going over the same, like tests that I’ve used the year before. And I’m just like, how could I can I possibly do this for 25 years? can I possibly just continue reusing or or redeveloping the same the same content over and over again? And yeah, after the third year of teaching, it was kind of like, Okay, I need to figure out, make a decision of what I’m going to do. And what I was doing at the time was my my old intern teacher from my, from education degree. Yeah, I was, I had taught me how to do vinyl siding. And it’s not it’s not a very difficult thing to do, but it’s a very difficult thing to do well, so he taught me all the tricks of beat one from when he did siding for 15 years prior. And, and we did a couple houses together and some garages, sheds, things like that. And so then that was what I’d started doing in the summers is I started doing exterior renovations for people. And again, it was the whole entrepreneurial thing if you’re just going to be another siding company. And nothing differentiated. So you’re not necessarily an entrepreneur, but I saw need the need at that point was the government had this grant called the home rental tax credit, they would give you back they would let you write off up to 20. I think it was $20,000 worth of renovations that you did to your house and exteriors was something that Reginas were begging for. They had these old wood or brick exteriors, and they wanted to rip it all off. There’s also the inner guide for houses program at the same time. So if you ripped it out, you put on insulation, and you did a bunch of new windows and a bunch of other things. You could you could like do renovations almost for free. Meanwhile, the house your house value would skyrocket. Yes. And so I was doing. I was doing 10 houses a summer and people were begging me when teaching started, oh, please just do our house in September. And so I’m supposed to be teaching and they’re saying do your house do your house and so when it came to the third year, I finally said, I can make more money in in if I just did renovations for six months then I could for doing 12 whole months or nine months of teaching or 10 months of teaching and then doing two months of renovations. Yeah

Barb McGrath 9:57
Wow. Not That puts it in perspective, doesn’t it?

Dan Benesh 10:01
Yeah. Yeah. And so that was the whole, like, entrepreneurial aspect is and I said, Okay, you know what I’m gonna, I’m gonna just stop the teaching, it was becoming more more of a stress and it is it is kind of an at risk environment, there’s not the students that are there necessarily, but in the the life situations that they’re in, they’re trying to better their lives and, and get an education and, and create a different path for their families in the future. But some of the people in their lives are not trying to do that. And that made it very difficult for them and, and tangentially stressful on the teachers as well.

Barb McGrath 10:31
Exactly. And postsecondary has changed a lot in our province in the last few years. I know, I’ve seen funding reductions within the post secondaries. And so what seemed like a secure job, when you started, may not have been a secure job by the time, you know, at the time funding cuts were made and things so that’s true. I haven’t chose a secure path, even though most people would think entrepreneurial is not a secure path.

Dan Benesh 10:54
And that was the funniest part is the only reason that allowed me to do it was my wife had also just graduated from university and got a job at viatera. And so with her doing that, and having the secure salary, then we also had a basement tenant. And I said, That’s breakeven, like all of our bills are paid with that, that gives me the freedom to take a chance on myself. And so thankfully, Lauren, my beautiful wife, yeah. She supported me and said, You know what, okay, I trust you. Yeah, you’ve done well for us so far. So I trust you to kind of go out on your own and, and let’s see what you can do. And it was right then, that a friend of ours introduced me to what was previously known as trade bank, which is now known as barter. Pants barter, fake. Yeah. And so when you’re starting a business, and you want to be busy, 100% of the time, even 110%. Yes. And I certainly was not. And so I was looking starting to think of creative ways. What should I do a billboard back then even yellow pages within the consideration? You know, website wouldn’t be now, or do we?

That’s why I said back then. Okay. Yeah, yeah, some I mean, there’s still certain industries or certain places, yeah.

But anyway, so. So I started looking at all these creative ways. And one of the things I never would have thought of was barter, you don’t really think about barter and trading until somebody kind of introduces you to it or tries to barter and trade with you and just happened that nobody ever had. So after I’d heard about it, I started thinking about all the things that I needed back at the house, we had just gotten married, and we wanted to do new shingles, and a new fence to expand our backyard. And in doing so, we need new sod. And we wanted to build planter boxes, and our garage was crappy. So we needed all of these things. And I thought to myself, is there some way that I could, that I could say to someone, I’ll do some siding for you. And you can do a roof for me, right? And it turns out trying to do direct trades like that are nearly impossible.

No, it’s much more difficult in there, the value never matches, and you often feel like you’re pressuring people to do something that they don’t necessarily want to do. And so that was the what really intrigued me about the the bartering concept through through Barterpay was that you’re not, you’re giving them a currency that you can use with the entire group, instead of a direct trading. Now I kind of kind of buried the lead that we can, we can go back and talk a little bit more about that.

Barb McGrath 13:12
So um, so one of the things is interesting to me, I have traded with folks many times long before you and I ever met. So I’ve traded with folks, and you know, I’ll do this marketing work for you, for you and right. I never found so much that the value didn’t match, but the value that we place on something. So here’s my standard price for whatever work I might be doing. And someone will come back and say, Oh, well, here’s what I’m charging. Right. And so it’s much more difficult to trade in that environment. Because I may not really want siding to your point, you feel like you’re pressuring someone. So if I really don’t want siding, well, then I’m kind of doing it because you know it that because I feel like I should write right? Yeah. Versus, oh, I can do this work. And I can trade it for things that I’m going to place a value on, at the point in time where I find value.

Dan Benesh 14:08
Yeah, exactly. So we kind of jumped in a little too far ahead, I’ll back up and give the 32nd elevator pitch for Barterpay. Yeah, essentially what it is, is it’s a business to business barter network, where business owners can pay for goods and services that they need without actually spending cash. And we do it through a currency that’s called trade dollars, which are one for one with the Canadian dollar. So as you spoke about value, you value your services, you build your hourly, your same hourly rates or your contract rates that you always build. When you do the service, you acquire those trade dollars, they go into your Barterpay account. And now you have access to the entire membership list. Not just in Regina, but also Saskatoon, also when a peg Edmonton Medicine Hat Victoria, soon to be Kalona and a bunch of places in Ontario. So your trade dollars can be spent anywhere across Canada. It’s a lot and potentially other places in the future too. So it’s not it’s a lot more like, like cash. I mean, it’s a lot more than Like cash than it is like trading in the sense that you’re exchanging it for a utility token. Okay? which you can then give back to somebody later on to get your value back for. Hmm, yeah, something that really, really kind of made this all come together for me was when I when I heard about what’s happening in Venezuela, where the currency became so devalued. And it was just not accepted anymore. There’s there’s videos and pictures of paper money just blowing around in the gutters in the streets. And so when people when people tell me cash is king, I think to myself, and are you why is cash King? Why do we say cash is king, we say cash is king, because the government takes it as payment for our for our taxes. And the bank takes it as payment for our mortgage. And, and, and because people take it as payment for food and water, and for protective services, or whatever, whatever it is that we want. And that’s why cash is king. But the only reason why we all value it so much is because everybody else accepts it. So if you can have some other thing that everybody else accepts, or even just like, like Barterpay a small group of people, except as long as you manage it properly. It functions just like cash.

Barb McGrath 16:09
You say small group, though, based on what I’ve seen. I mean, there’s thousands of businesses across the country. Yeah, you have to deal with that number is

Dan Benesh 16:16
Yeah, it’s right around 4000. And with with every region that we start or acquire in some, in some situations, that number just grows. Our CEO wants it His goal is to get up to 20,000 members across Canada, essentially as quickly as possible, and then also expand into the states. Okay, I wonder if there’s a US connection at some point.

Definitely. Yeah, it’s all options are on the table. So really, he can’t do it himself. So probably looking for a strategic partner at some point for all of those other large areas.

Barb McGrath 16:47
Yeah. Is there an organization similar in the States? Do you know?

Dan Benesh 16:50
There’s yet nothing that’s that’s really as national as Barterpay? would want to be? Yeah, I mean, when when you want to have a national bartering network, you really want to have them coast to coast and Coast coast, Moon is going to mean like in all of the major cities, and so we’re not even there yet. In Canada, where we really want to be in the states there. There is a trade bank, like we were trade bank previously, okay. But their market penetration is not as deep in the USA as ours is in Canada, percentage wise, if you understand kind of what I’m getting at there.

Barb McGrath 17:23
Yeah, that makes sense. So let’s just bring it back to local for a second talk about some of the types of businesses who are members of Barterpay. And maybe there’s, you know, crazy business that you never expected would want to be a member but has become a member or, you know, some of those kind of funny shirts.

Question wasn’t on your list, but I’ll try to think about that one as we go.

Dan Benesh 17:43
So the, the the membership base is Yeah, that’s every single business, every single business that’s signed up. I know the owner, personally, I would highly likely I would recognize them on the street, although there have been times when when I haven’t, because I’d have context as it’s Yeah, exactly out of context, wearing different clothing, etc, etc. So but yeah, we’re up to about 250 businesses in Regina and Moose Jaw, they’re all locally owned us, most of our members are like one to four employees. Okay, that’s like a typical, or like a smaller business size. But we also do businesses with with, we also do business with businesses that have, you know, 2030 employees, okay. One one business in particular, that’s, that’s signed up and done a lot of business and trading with us. It’s very prominent, that community gives a lot back. It’s very involved in volunteerism, and everything is like a granted company called CMG. Stone, granite, and quartz. Yeah. And so we met him at a trade show, and he said, what every good barter or should say, when they find out about Barterpay is, why aren’t you guys here five years ago, because they think about all of the things that they’ve bought over the past five years that they could have traded? That’s right, they wrote a check for it, they paid on their credit card, and once you write that check, once you pay that credit card, that money’s gone, yeah. And that person or business that you gave it to has no obligation now to spend it back with you. Right? And in fact, even worse, they could go spend it with your competition. Oh, sure. And so that’s the major benefit of bartering is that it’s a it’s a closed loop. So everyone in the system is all supporting one another. So when Wow, when Scott the owner of cng stone buys solar panels for his house, which he recently did, he knows now that I need to go out and sell a bunch more granted for him. So we start promoting a more heavily when people are doing renovations we say Hey, have you ever thought of doing doing granite or course they’ve got this really cool product? That’s the sink that’s hidden and the counter slides overtop of it? I don’t if you saw that at the whole show. I did. Oh, it’s so cool. You got to look it up on Facebook. It’s a deadly Yeah. Okay.

Barb McGrath 19:39
So let’s talk about Home Show and what women want And so you’ve done a few trade shows lately. Tell me about that. Because you know, I think of myself serving other businesses. I don’t usually go to a public trade show. But you did. So tell me about it and tell me what how that went.

Dan Benesh 19:54
I did and that the last one I did was super cool. The one my mom won’t show in Regina I set up booth that was designed as like a vendor haven where they could just come I had a massage chair there. I had some luxury products from Paradise, Caesars, gapes, who was a member of this, who’s been a member with us for six, seven years as well. Okay. And yeah, and I just I went around and talked to as many vendors as I could and I said, Come to my booth 40 to 43. Just come there, relax in the massage chair, grab some chocolates and candies and gum and mints, hairspray, anti static. Like to get the lint off of you. I had everything I had everything I could think of that a business owner or a vendor at the show might want a water cooler to refill your water bottle. So you know what, and I didn’t even like, I wasn’t, I wasn’t there for sales. It was just there to be like, hey, like, I care about local businesses. I care about all of you vendors. I love all you guys. Yes. Because there was I think there’s about 10 of my clients in that show who had bartered for their booth space. And so that that really just tied it all together. And because I was able to go around, give them some signage that says Like, I’m a Barterpay member, I take trade dollars for this. Sure. And it just gets people thinking the other vendors look at it and see, like, what am I missing? Mm hmm. And so I did end up signing up to new members from that show that had kind of saw what I was doing, saw what the other vendors were doing, and then pieced it together in their mind and said I could do this too.

Barb McGrath 21:20
So you just made me think of something. Does Barterpay, allow members to put a copy of their logo on websites and promotional material to say, you know, probably a Barterpay member to bring more awareness.

Dan Benesh 21:35
Is that something that people definitely we love linkbacks where you put us in your like, you know, partners on your website, we we love you,

Barb McGrath 21:41
How do I get that logo?

Dan Benesh 21:43
I was supposed to send it to you before the show, but I think so yeah, we can we can get you that. But basically, we’ve also have members that have Barterpay as a payment method right on their ecommerce on their website. So while our although our back end API doesn’t link directly where they can actually process right on their site, okay, we normally have it almost function like a cache button where it just kicks back an email to the owner, they see that this order came in with the Barterpay number, they process it then and they verify inventory, etc, etc. And they and they go and just do e commerce like that.

Barb McGrath 22:12
Ah, that is cool. I never would have thought of doing something like that.

Dan Benesh 22:16
Yep. Yeah. If you’re not, if you’re not in the retail space, then it’s not something that you typically think of Yes, it’s a nice way puzzlemaster from Saskatoon is the first one that comes to mind. Okay, that did that. So they sell all sorts of those, you know, the metal puzzles that that you sit on your table and never can never figure out.

Barb McGrath 22:31
You can never Yeah, you can never get them apart in two pieces, but you hand it to a five year old, you’re done.

Dan Benesh 22:36
And then a bunch of woodblock puzzles and even board games and stuff like that. Right on right on their website, there’s a procedure where you can type in your Bartercard number and it pops up.

Barb McGrath 22:44
Yep. Very cool. Okay, so let’s see, I told you, we weren’t even going to get past the first set of questions, because we have two minutes left,

Dan Benesh 22:51
Two minutes. Okay. What’s the two? What’s on a two minute warning?

Barb McGrath 22:53
Oh, well, you know, a little bit about Yeah, exactly. You’re, if somebody does want to become a member, what do they do? And if others are thinking about, you know, something similar being a serial entrepreneur, like, what are those those nuggets of wisdom that you would share with folks?

Dan Benesh 23:10
Sure. So first of all, I’m extremely reachable. You can add me on Facebook. I’m pretty much except everyone who requests you can find me Why are you telling me your easy? Social media lies, yes. Find me on LinkedIn, find me on on Facebook, you know, Facebook, Barterpay Regina, just go to barterpay.ca that has all the frequently asked questions and talks about how Barterpay makes money and what that means for your business. And then, in terms of wisdom, I would say I had four little nuggets here. So we got about a minute left, I would say the first thing that I learned is focus only on what you can control in business because there’s a couple times one with an unscrupulous competitor, and one with a disgruntled franchisee from the United States. This one’s really hilarious. I could talk about it for an hour, but they sent an email out in my first year of business that had the Titanic sinking and it said, ss tradebank is a sinking ship. And they sent this out to all my members that they had required an email list before they quit. And all terrible I was I like was in cold sweat. When I woke up and I got that email. My client started forwarding this to me asking what it was, oh, anyways, that was scary, but I got through it. I’ve also learned that when people when people treat you poorly, like with in a in a on a phone call or in an email or something like that, it usually has more to do with something that’s going on in their life and less to do with with what you’ve with what you’ve done or not done that that’s made them mad. The third thing and this came to me from my days when I work back at Domino’s Pizza. If you try to chase two rabbits, both will escape. So it’s a good one. I like that when I started trade bank or Barterpay. I was also doing the window coverings and renovations at the same time. And my CEO kept telling me, you got to you got to focus you got to focus you got to focus and when I finally done divested myself out of the window coverings and renovations and pass that off to my brother. I was able to take Barterpay to the next level. And I’ve never looked back since it’s been a great decision for me.

Barb McGrath 25:09
Wow. Well, good for you. Well, believe it or not, we have, oh, 17 seconds. So I’m going to wrap this up really quick. Thanks, everyone for tuning in today. I’m your host, Barb McGrath. You can reach out to me at barb@googlegirl.ca. We’ll be back on April 17. With Charlene Oancia from Springer and Oake, and she’s going to talk about her. Her natural products company that she’s building here in Regina as and has seen some very early success. Thank you everyone for tuning in. Dan, thank you for being here. Again. It’s Dan Benesh. From Barterpay Regina. find them online, reach out and become a member and final words. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:01
Welcome tonight views The Secret Life of entrepreneurs on 91.3 FM CJ tr Regina community radio. We’re live with a local business owner who’s making a difference in y qR. And in fact, we’re live with the leader of local business owners today. So stay tuned to learn her secret about what makes her tick. What keeps her going and what helped her become successful. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner, and marketing guru. Our guest today is Prabha Mitchell from the Women Entrepreneurs of Saskatchewan, or WESK, as we often hear them called she’s going to talk about what motivated her to look at an opportunity working with hundreds or thousands of entrepreneurs across our province. So welcome Prabha. Thank you, Mark. Such a pleasure to have you here today. So let’s start there, hundreds or thousands of entrepreneurs.

Prabha Mitchell 1:09
So we have about 750 members that are part of WESK across the Saskatchewan.

Barb McGrath 1:14
Wow, that’s a very significant number, and fairly evenly spread across our province, north and south, east and west.

Prabha Mitchell 1:22
Most of our members reside in Saskatoon and Regina,

Barb McGrath 1:26
Of course, okay in those two larger cities, larger cities. Okay, awesome. All right. Well, let’s start off. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you come to work with women entrepreneurs? And I guess maybe I should ask at the beginning of our broadcast. Is it better for me to call them women entrepreneurs or WESK?

Prabha Mitchell 1:44
WESK is the new brand. Okay, thank you. And it is one entrepreneurs couch one but known as WESK. Now, in my previous role, I was the leader of an accounting designation. That was at a time when we had three accounting designations, the Chartered Accountants, the CA’s, the CMA is the Management Accountants and then the certified general accountants. They’ve been around for 330 years as rivals and competing designations. So in 2012, it was the third time in the history of the accounting profession that the three groups came together to unify the profession of accounting, to create CPA. And so I was part of the core group that created CPA in Saskatchewan and the legislation in Saskatchewan. Wow. Needless to say, was one of the most political undertakings,

Barb McGrath 2:39
Yes, I actually remember that I have a tire

Prabha Mitchell 2:42
Allergy, to put three, you know, rival groups in a room and then come to a consensus on several aspects of creating the new organization. Once CP was created, I was looking for my next opportunity when I was phoned one day by one of the board members and asked to consider this opportunity as the CEO, then known as women entrepreneurs sketch one very nice.

Barb McGrath 3:09
Yeah. That sounds like a very interesting time, probably. And I can imagine that the lessons learned from something like that were probably fairly significant. Is there anything from that time in your life that you found that you’ve carried over now to your role with WESK?

Prabha Mitchell 3:27
Absolutely, um, you know, through the merger discussions, I mean, one of the critical aspects that that stood out was our ability to negotiate. And we would often spend our days talking about, is this really a hill to die on? And, and, you know, picking our battles, and focusing on those wins that are really important and really critical that we, we might have to give up a little to gain more, right? And that’s an important lesson, even as an entrepreneur.

Barb McGrath 3:58
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You can’t get caught up in the small details. Right? You really have to look at the big picture and the long term salutely. And it makes a huge difference in your business. Absolutely. Yeah. So tell me what it was about the West opportunity that called to you.

Prabha Mitchell 4:18
I think it was working with the business community working with women in particular, I didn’t know too much about WESK at that point in time. But what I will say is, I love my job more today than I did four and a half years ago. Okay, I have the privilege and the opportunity to meet some incredible female entrepreneurs across the sketch on a bet. And I enjoy that. It’s very inspiring. I’m very passionate about it. But I also have the opportunity to meet some very unique, interesting male entrepreneurs as well. And I mentioned that simply because in terms of what we’re doing, I think it’s important to have men become part of the change. We want to see happen. Sure. And I’ll talk a little bit about the change we want to see happen in a little bit. Okay. But men need to be part of that conversation. And they need to help mobilize that change..

Barb McGrath 5:11
Excellent. Well, you know, I’m thinking back to I think it was late in the fall, and WESK at press conference here in Regina. And I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to attend. And I remember you talking about funding and how funding varies depending on if you are a man or a woman? Can you touch on that for us?

Prabha Mitchell 5:32
Yeah, absolutely. So So, you know, I use I use this all the time, and I talk about this all the time, men and women start businesses at the same rate, and maybe women actually start businesses at a greater rate. Okay. women owned businesses do not achieve scale, to the same extent male owned businesses do. There are several reasons because women entrepreneurs face some unique barriers. One of those barriers is access to capital. Ah, and so we’ve several things happening there. One, women don’t ask for money, they tend to rely on their own money. So you know, they dip into their personal savings to when they do ask for money. They’re not asking for enough money. So female owned businesses are what we call undercapitalized. And that really impedes one’s ability to scale.

Barb McGrath 6:25
Oh, absolutely,

Prabha Mitchell 6:26
To grow, to hire to innovate, to diversify products to go to different markets. So that’s a second barrier. And thirdly, I mean, this is quite alarming. The rejection rates for women are something like 65%, and I and our capital. And I have to qualify that by saying, because of lack of collateral, lock I lateral and and for men, it’s about 35%.

Barb McGrath 6:51
That is a big contrast. Eight, that’s huge. Can you explain that a little bit more for me, so I think about my own business, if I was going to apply for a loan. from a business standpoint, the only collateral I have, and you might be able to tell me different is me. I’m the brains behind the operation. And I’m not about to attach my house to a business loan. So do men do it different? Or do they have something else that they can attach to it,

Prabha Mitchell 7:19
They will often have other things they can attach to it. And women these days do have their home attached to it. Okay, that is becoming a fairly common practice it is we are in the lending business as well. And that is becoming a common practice. Okay, but because women don’t know women are starting off. They haven’t had that many years in business. They haven’t don’t have the business assets and the inventory, perhaps that a male entrepreneur die. So there are several barriers. And so, you know, they often rejected because of collateral. And I also talked about conscious and unconscious bias. And so when you look at venture capital funding, women actually don’t acquire venture capital funds to the same extent as male owners. So venture capital, funders tend to be a little more skeptical. And the questions about female owned businesses are quite different than male owned businesses. Okay, so there is unconscious bias in that regard as well.

Barb McGrath 8:14
So events very interesting to me. Do you also find that there’s a difference between the number of men versus the number of women starting industrial or equipment or hard skill, tangible type businesses versus soft skill? freelancing? Right?

Prabha Mitchell 8:34
Are you seeing that as well? Absolutely. So most female owned businesses tend to be in the health human services sector. And we don’t have enough women owned businesses in manufacturing, agriculture, technology. So these are the sectors that would be characterized as higher profit, higher growth. Yeah, we don’t have enough women entrepreneurs in those sectors. That’s great part of the change that we need to see happen as shifting, you know, shifting where women are starting their businesses and growing their businesses. And this is what we call the gender entrepreneurship gap, the lack of representation in some of these sectors. And then the fact that women owned businesses don’t scale to the same extent, as male owned businesses creates the gender economic gap.

Barb McGrath 9:25
So I recognize that this next comment doesn’t necessarily tie to what you’re talking about. But one of the things that I learned when I became a parent 10 years ago, was all of those fallacies that we had had had always heard about how boys are encouraged to do different things in girls. I never really believed it because I had never lived it. And I’ve always had a very strong propensity towards technology. So for me, I never felt it, but I’m seeing it in my own kids at the earliest of years. So my son is 10 My daughter is 11. And yes, I only became apparent 10 years ago. So do the math there. But, but I see how in the classroom, girls are being rewarded, and they have fantastic teachers like, this is not a teacher criticism, criticism at all. But I can see how girls are rewarded for following the rules, staying in a box being quiet, where boys are bouncing off the walls, and again, not a criticism, but they are encouraged to think differently and see differently. And, and I was quite taken aback by that, as I saw, I didn’t, of course, here’s me, the ultimate parent behind both my kids, you know, telling my daughter, who cares fight back, you know, push out of that box. And I don’t think as society, we don’t see that enough, right. And so from the very beginning, we have a very traditional idea of what a boy is, and a girl is and you know what they’re supposed to do. And I tell you, if you don’t fit inside that box, it’s no wonder 20 years later, when they’re looking for funding. It’s it’s still a different game. It’s not the same level playing field.

Prabha Mitchell 11:18
And this is not just about stereotypes, and I think that is really the the role that WESK is playing is getting people communities government to understand this is not just about gender, it is about an economic case, it is about a business case, to support women entrepreneurs, because advancing gender equality through entrepreneurial activity, could potentially add another hundred and 50 billion to 400 and 20 billion by 2026.

Barb McGrath 11:46
Wow. So that’s not that far away. That’s seven years from now.

Prabha Mitchell 11:49
So this is not just the right thing to do. It’s the smart thing to do. Mm hmm. And so I think it’s important for communities and people and governments and business sector to understand this equation.

Barb McGrath 12:00
So probably let me ask you, if that business case is complete, and we we can see the additional revenue that would be earned? Why aren’t more businesses saying yes? Why aren’t more capital Thunder saying yes. And taking that risk?

Prabha Mitchell 12:18
I think we’ve taken a long time to make that case. Okay. But I think we are here now. And it’s gonna take some time to make that shift. It’s an economic shift. It’s a cultural shift. And it’s a paradigm shift. Hmm. Because people tend to see this as a gender and a diversity issue. And we’re saying, hey, it’s more than gender. It is an economic issue. It’s a lost economic development opportunity. So it’s going to take time for people to buy into that paradigm to understand that paradigm.

Barb McGrath 12:48
Yeah, but I think we’re making some change. Okay. Well, that sounds good. All right. Well, let’s move on to some lighter topics, because that’s certainly a very, I think, intense topic. And I just sense that it’s something that you really have some personal passion about. So I’m glad we got to talk about it. Um, tell me, what does a day look like for you? You actually work in Saskatoon, but you’re down here in Regina for a couple of days. So tell me what does a day in the life of probably look like?

Prabha Mitchell 13:16
Yeah, I’m insane. We capture it. And, you know, I, I tend to thrive in a in a fast paced, dynamic, unpredictable environment. Quite honestly, my day begins at 5:15am. And, you know, I, it’s because I go to the gym to work out or I’m on a plane early Sunday and plane to China. And I spent a lot of time meeting with people or working with my team. And I have a management team. And so providing leadership providing direction guidance, working a lot with people in the community because I’m quite involved in the community. I’m in Regina, as much as possible for the uncorked events every third Thursday, I mean, every third Tuesday. And I just love being here. And I have shaken with a twist in Saskatoon that I try not to miss. And so I think, you know, just like any entrepreneur, my day is actually consumed in terms of people, managing people, making sure the organization is financially sustainable, making sure we’re building the brand and building the profile of the organization. And essentially, making sure what the organization is moving towards the vision.

Barb McGrath 14:29
That’s right. Yep. And what is WESK’s vision that a day will come?

Prabha Mitchell 14:32
When, in Saskatchewan, when men, male entrepreneurs and female entrepreneurs have an equal opportunity to achieve success and be recognized? And essentially in a in a nutshell, it means that a day will come when organization like wesc does not have to exist.

Barb McGrath 14:52
Yes. I remember when WESK was founded, and so I can’t remember how old I was. But I remember the news coverage from back then, because it was very pink and fluffy and pretty perfume and it was very feminine. And the media was not particularly supportive at that point in time, because it was another initiative that many saw as funding something that was unnecessary. Mm hmm. So how many years later, are we now?

Prabha Mitchell 15:25
How long has what was the sound in 1996 1996?

Barb McGrath 15:28
Okay, so you’ve been around for 20 years?

Prabha Mitchell 15:31
More than 20 years?

Barb McGrath 15:32
Yeah, yes. 23. Thank you. Yeah, I’m a creative type note. Okay, so for 23 years. So let’s talk about that long term vision. You alluded to men early in our conversation. What can you tell me about that?

Prabha Mitchell 15:47
Yeah. So, WESK, I have to say this WESK will always be focused on women. That is our mandate. And that is a cause cause and that’s what we’re passionate about closing the gender entrepreneurship gap. But in order to make change happen, we need to deal with and work with male entrepreneurs. We all know that male entrepreneurs are part of some incredible networks. And you know, male entrepreneurs benefit from some incredible mentors, and that male entrepreneurs are quite well connected in the community. And so we need to make sure women have access to those networks, that women have access to those role models and mentors, and that women can be sponsored by male entrepreneurs, meaning that some of these established male entrepreneurs can open some doors for women entrepreneurs, get them connected to the right people to the right opportunities. So I think it’s really important for men to understand what we’re doing, and understand the business case, but behind what we’re doing, and to be part of this change.

Barb McGrath 16:49
Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk about some of the early ways that men are getting involved?

Prabha Mitchell 16:55
So one thing WESK has done is we’ve got what’s called an associate membership category, okay, so men can become associate members. So we finding that men come out to our networking events, and support are female entrepreneurs. Okay? When they’re being showcased, and featured. Men are speaking at a conference, men are supporting our annual conference. I think men are much more open to have that dialogue around how can we support women entrepreneurs, and the businesses scale? So possibly, you know, in a mentorship role? So I think I think we’re engaging men. Okay. And I think it’s important for men to understand that we want to have that conversation, and we want to collaborate with them.

Barb McGrath 17:37
Yeah, absolutely. So probably, how would you respond then to the question, as a member? What’s a good example? Well, let’s use one of the speakers at the conference in May. He’s a male from Alberta, very well respected in his field, he competes against a number of your members. So how would you respond to that concern from members? How would you sort of help folks understand why it’s important for for, I don’t wanna say outsiders, but that’s a word that pops into my brain to an outsider coming in and and talking with members as opposed to a member.

Prabha Mitchell 18:13
So I think if we remove the gender aspect, and let’s put min Manjeet min, Haas in the equation, okay, we’re looking at one of the strongest female entrepreneurs in Canada, coming from outside of Saskatchewan, that’s right to share her expertise and her knowledge and her wisdom and her skills, right. And so I think it would be the same, we’re not taking something away from our women entrepreneurs. But how do you use this opportunity where you have somebody that’s really an expert in their field? How do you use that opportunity, being in the room with them to tap into that knowledge, that skill set that experience? How can you gain from it grow from it? Right? So I think it’s an opportunity. When we are in the room with those kind of people like like Manjeet min, Haas, for example, there’s a tremendous opportunity for us to learn, right, grow?

Barb McGrath 19:02
Yeah. So what I really like about what you said, and I think what I would add to that is, the value that someone else brings to the table far outweighs the value of keeping them up. So it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, you’re going to compete with someone. And competition is a healthy thing. So, you know, I think about some of the questions that I’ve been asked based on the work that I do with you folks. And and there are there are lots of competitors out there. But the more value that you as an organization can bring to your members, then the stronger your members will be as a whole.

Prabha Mitchell 19:38
Absolutely. And it’s exposure, right? I mean, if WESK can facilitate that exposure and and that connection with people that you and I would generally not be able to connect with value to that. Yes. Male or female.

Barb McGrath 19:53
Yeah, I gender is probably not even a factor that influences something like that. Right? Yes, no, I agree wholeheartedly. Okay, so tell us about some of the initiatives that you have happening at West then you’ve mentioned chicken with a twist. You mentioned uncorked, which of course happened last night.

Prabha Mitchell 20:12
So it it’s today, last night, or last night.

Barb McGrath 20:17
So tell us a little bit about some of the other initiatives.

Prabha Mitchell 20:20
Right. So I’m really excited about uncorked and Regina I have to I have to emphasize that it’s a it’s a signature event. I mean shaken with the twist has been happening for many years and Saskatoon but uncorked is new. We started with an event called Connect last year and then last fall, we created uncorked. We’ve had some spectacular speakers, some online, wonderful speakers. And last night was Dr. Gina grandi, the Dean of the hill Business School, always very inspiring and dynamic is a fantastic lady, right. And the one other initiative that I think is really important for the future of wesc is matchstick and matsya. program to support Indigenous women entrepreneurs start and grow a business. The project is done March 2020. But we’ve had some incredible traction. We have an advisory council for that project. Right now we’re in phase two. So business planning training in seven communities across the snatch one. So we’re in the middle of the Saskatoon business planning, training six weeks, three hours, each week, we have something like 30 women, we had a workshop, we had a six week series in Fort capelle, Regina will be going to not North battleford and PA and so it’s just incredible to see Indigenous women really participating strongly. And we know we’re making an impact. And phase three is having them come back to us for business advising and financing. Excellent, very excited about that project.

Barb McGrath 21:56
Yeah, and you know, probably I would think that if women are being declined 64 65% of the time, then Indigenous women are probably being declined 95% of the time.

Prabha 22:08
That’s an else, you know, unique barriers, women entrepreneurs, but Indigenous women have those unique barriers. And a few additional barriers. Right, exactly. matchstick, so is a big one for us as well, this year, you can expect to hear from us about a new program to support women scale up their business. Okay. So stay tuned for 2019 that should happen this year. But I think you will still see us in the news in the media, absolutely working with government pushing our advocacy agenda around closing the gender entrepreneurship cap, we’re not going away, we’re going to keep pushing up that we’re gonna have to have people understand that, and it’s not going to be done in 2019 we want to make that business case for why we need to invest in women entrepreneurs.

Barb McGrath 23:00
Excellent, that is fantastic. We are nearly out of time. any final comments that you’d like to share words of wisdom for someone who’s maybe thinking about, you know, a career like yours, or becoming an entrepreneur,

Prabha Mitchell 23:15
I would say courage, you know, and in when people ask me about the most defining quality of attribute about being a leader, and, and and leading the organization I lead, I think we need to mirror the attributes of entrepreneurs, courage, resilience, you fall down, you pick up, pick yourself up, and you know, do battle the next day, you keep moving and you don’t give up. I think it for me personally, you know, I see life in two segments, the first part of your life and the first half of your life is spent building legitimacy and credibility. And the second half of your life is spent building a legacy. And I am at that point in my life, where I think about, you know, what is the legacy? What’s the impact, and it’s an important part of one’s lifetime?

Barb McGrath 24:04
Absolutely, yes. Tell me how should someone get a hold of WESK.

Prabha Mitchell 24:11
And you can go on our website, which is wesk.ca. Or you can call us at 4777173? or you can email your general inquiries, which is west.ca.

Barb McGrath 24:24
Excellent. Well, and probably I can certainly say as a member, I know, I have always had some fantastic support from your team. Anytime I’ve had a question anytime I’ve had something that I wanted to talk about. Your team was always very, very open, open to the discussion, open to ideas, open to suggestions. And so I have certainly enjoyed my opportunity to work with WESK as well. We have an incredible team. You do definitely. Well, folks, we are out of time. So I’d like to thank Prabha for joining us today to talk about WESK and the changes that are happening in that organization. And I need to find my notes here. Go. I will be back on the third of April and I will be back with Dan Benesh from Barterpay another local regional business, really changing the landscape in how businesses scale and grow and drive new revenue. If you’d like to be a guest on the show, you can email me at barb@googlegirl.ca or reach out on Facebook and Instagram. Just a reminder, you can submit questions in advance in advance of the live show on our Facebook page. I’m your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Sherry will be here with you next Wednesday at 12 o’clock. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.

Barb McGrath 0:00
Welcome tonight views The Secret Life of entrepreneurs on 91.3 FM CJ tr Regina community radio. We’re live with local business owners who are making a difference in why qR Stay tuned to learn their secrets about what makes them tick. What helped them become successful and their role as a leader in our business community. You’re listening to your host Barb McGrath, marketing expert and get found on Google and founder of the cat found on Google program. Apparently I don’t know who I am today. Our guest today is Terrie Dunand. And she’s from the REMAX crown realty brokerage. Make sure I get all that right. But Terrie’s gonna give us some real insight into what’s happening in the Medina real estate market. Of course, we’ve all seen over the last few years, it’s gone up, it’s gone down. And let’s see if we can find out why today. So welcome, Terrie. Thank you. Glad to have you here. Especially on another chilly March day, what the heck is going on. It’s not supposed to be chilly in March anymore.

Terrie Dunand 1:04
So hopefully everybody staying warm out there. As Barb said, it’s Terrie renowned at REMAX crown real estate. And thanks for having me, we’re so glad you could join them. Maybe a little bit about myself, before we get going. I been 15 plus years in the industry. And I come from the property and casualty industry, insurance, whether it be life and disability or whether it be houses and buildings. And I was one of the people that were impacted by 911. So I needed to make a career change. And I was always looking for something where if I worked really hard, I could be compensated for the hard work I did. And I always loved working with people. So I thought that real estate could be the solution. So I come to the industry at a pretty good time prices were still average home prices were still well under $100,000 very different than what they are today. And so then I got going and I made a couple sales and I got some training, I took my licensing I showed up at our board office. And I took the final training, and there was 10 people in the room. And the woman that was doing the class told me that in five years from now, there would only be one person left in the industry. So Oh, wow. And I knew that the person that I was sitting across the table from was one of the broker owners sons. So I thought, wow, I’m going to have a long journey. And it’s going to be hard work. And I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to fail in this industry, and that I was going to develop a business in the city of Regina selling real estate. So that was the beginning of the journey.

Barb McGrath 2:43
So that’s very interesting. So you sat at this table, the brokerage owner son is sitting there. And Terrie, just a little bit that I have had a chance to get to know you, knowing that you made a decision that you were going to be successful doesn’t surprise me at all. And the fact that you have been able to achieve as much as you have in the industry. I think that’s phenomenal. If I saw correctly, in my research for today, you’ve been one of the top performers in your brokerage for a number of years, correct?

Terrie Dunand 3:09
That is correct.

Barb McGrath 3:11
Yeah. Good for you.

Terrie Dunand 3:12
So the philosophy that I developed early on is if you work hard, and you work, you always keep the best interest of your clients in mind. They are going to report you by repeat and referral business. And so on my journey along the way, on the learning curve. You know, that’s how I develop my business. So and it’s worked obviously, really well for me. in those early years, it wasn’t easy, because we never know what’s going to come in the industry. And so the fall of the first year that I was in the business, we had a huge market correction. And it was the door slammed shut in real estate, and no one was doing any business. Okay, so which brings us to where we are today, right? We’re in a really difficult market again. So it’s really as real estate agents or myself personally, what I’ve come to understand is, I don’t know everything about the industry, I always have to be learning, I need to be preparing my clients for what could change, as we never really know when that will, when that will change. And so sometimes we might be partway through a year, we can have a really awesome market and somebody says, Well, I just really want to wait another month because we’re going on vacation or you know, my yard looks nicer. And my suggestion always is, if it’s good right now, and you’re ready to go, because we don’t have any control of where things are going to go in the future. And so all of a sudden, you know, back to what I said, we have all of this inventory, and we don’t have a lot of sales, although right now, let’s keep our fingers crossed, hey, our inventory is not growing so much right now and we do have more transactions, but not necessarily higher prices. Okay. So that middle of the road, that middle of the road, absolutely. That is you know, that is sell thing that is selling, but it’s not selling for more money, the prices aren’t on the way up, okay, there are some things are they holding steady, they are holding steady from what I can see. And especially in that mid price point, you know, the, you know, the entry level to the two to 400 is still moving quite well. Okay, in established areas of the city.

Barb McGrath 5:20
Okay, so mine established is,

Terrie Dunand 5:22
So I go from the Leuven to, you know, maybe north and south boundaries, not so much. But you know, and then over to the ring road, you know, so I call it in the Old City shirt.

Barb McGrath 5:35
Right, the

Terrie Dunand 5:36
Yeah, you know, some of our newer neighborhoods, of course, you know, harbor landing, you know, greens on garden, or some of those areas, you know, another new area, the towns, they have, you know, we’ve had a lot of construction going on there, we have a lot of inventory, and they’re still building so okay, you know, which is really packed at our pricing.

Barb McGrath 5:56
Right? Okay.

Terrie Dunand 5:58
Um, can you give us an idea of what kind of volume would we typically see in a month? Like, how many houses typically sell in a month? Do you have any idea? I do? Believe and, you know, so January, our numbers within the city limits were 147 units. On February, we had an increase, you know, we were under the 200. So, you know, then once we go to the spring market, that increases, because that’s when people seem to move more inventory. Yes. But with that being said, lots of times our market starts in, perhaps maybe mid February to the beginning of March. And believe it or not, my listings are getting lots of showings right now.

Barb McGrath 6:41
Oh, they are? Yeah, he’s minus.

Terrie Dunand 6:42
Right. Yeah, the the sellers are shoveling the walks and people are out looking for houses and our inventories, you can see that the movements really actually happening right now.

Barb McGrath 6:52
Okay, so it has started. Do you think once this cold weather finally breaks? Will it speed up even more? Is that your gut instinct?

Terrie Dunand 7:02
It may okay.

Barb McGrath 7:05
But yeah, there’s a little bit of uncertainty there, there is uncertainty

Terrie Dunand 7:07
Because you know, to move our real estate market forward, we need some things, you know, we need optimism in the province, you know, our oil and gas industry, you know, our government, and all those kinds of things need to be moving forward. And the consumer needs to have that kind of certainty. Yeah. Now, I think our stress test has kind of settled out the federal government put that in place for those who don’t know. So whatever the mortgage rates are, you need to add another two points on to that to qualify for a mortgage. So it makes buying homes a little bit more difficult. The federal government is coming back to revisit that again.

Barb McGrath 7:42
Explain that a little bit, Terrie, because I actually don’t understand what that means two points on

Terrie Dunand 7:47
So um, if the mortgage rates a five year fixed mortgage rate is at, let’s say, 3.69. Right now, okay, you qualify for the mortgage, you need to add 2% on so you would need to qualify as if you were buying with a 5.69% mortgage. Ah, and so when it’s time to, right, exactly. So you know, which is really good idea. The federal government is just protecting the consumers, people don’t really care for it. But as our industry, it’s had a bit of a correction for us. And it slowed our because it took a whole piece of, you know, consumer out of our markets, and so they can’t afford to buy or they can afford to buy less than which of course, back to pricing. That puts downward pressure on our pricing.

Barb McGrath 8:26
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, that makes much more sense to me. I didn’t realize what that meant. And then you know, this is off the wall. So if you can answer this question, that’s fine. But there was a, some sort of a grant for first time buyers as well, this past winter, was there not?

Terrie Dunand 8:43
Not, to my knowledge, your knowledge, okay.

Barb McGrath 8:44
Yeah, it was something that I sort of caught in fleeting, one day, and then now there

Terrie Dunand 8:49
Is some, there is some product out there, but it’s very specific. And it’s very hard to qualify there. There could be something and actually the city Regina did a couple years ago have some some incentive. So there could be something out there could be something out there but stand out in the marketplace. Absolutely.

Barb McGrath 9:07
Okay. So one of the questions that I ask almost everyone that comes on the show with me, Terrie is, you know, tell me about an average day or an average week like how do you plan out your time? How do you make sure you have time for your clients, for the administration and for everything that you need to do to continue to be successful in your role?

Terrie Dunand 9:25
So what does my average day look like? Morning? I do all my follow ups. Okay, follow up. You know, I a big part of how I do my business is making sure that my clients hear from me on a regular basis. So whether they be in my database, or whether they be it’s a listing that I have or buyers that I have, or they hear from me on a regular basis, okay, either email, phone call text, however it is a communicate with them. try and do that in the morning. And then of course, I connect with I do have a full time client care manager. So I connect with her and make sure that she’s doing what she needs to be doing on the connecting side, right guys and crossing the T’s. And then, you know, because we work in an industry, that’s a lot of evenings and weekends, then I try and block out my evenings and my weekends to actually spend, you know, face to face time with my clients, you know, either out showing or meeting appointments to do a listing or, or those kinds of things, everything else is done during the day.

Barb McGrath 10:27
Okay. And so like, Do you find that you’re working from morning till night? Especially when it’s busy? I mean, I actually never thought of that until you just said, Your evenings and weekends are primarily clients. So are you in the office at nine in the morning? Or when do you traditionally start your day?

Terrie Dunand 10:44
I get up and I start my day, I do what? Okay, I do what all the people that train and coach tell you to do, right, I get up in the morning, of course, I have a cup of cups of coffee first, okay. And then, you know, I try and go to the gym first thing in the morning, I get that out of the way. Otherwise, it doesn’t happen. You know, so if you get let’s exercise, you know, the mind is, you know, follows the body. Right, you know, right. And so then, you know, I get home, go home, get showered up, and, and I get going. So I mean, it’s not that I work every day I don’t I block out my personal time at times when my clients don’t need me. Right, right. So when I make that commitment to a client, though, I have to know that I have to be available for them.

Barb McGrath 11:29
Right. And when something comes up, or there’s something on the market that is going to turn over quickly, you might have your client in there. Yeah, exactly.

Terrie Dunand 11:37
So and I know, there are several agents out there, or there are people that talk in the industry. And, you know, it must have been so nice, you know, when the market was really busy, and you know, that, you know, competing offers. And as an agent, I wasn’t able to really educate my people in the way that they needed to be because they didn’t really have time to think about it. And I know that multiple times, I was in the middle of a dinner somewhere, and I just had to get get up and leave, get up and leave. Yeah, man. I mean, I’d actually prepared a whole dinner, I had a group of eight people in my home. And I had it already. And I just said, Help yourselves. The back doors open. Everything’s ready to go. The food’s there. They serve themselves, they cleaned up, they put the dishes in the dishwasher. And I showed up at 10 o’clock. Oh, no. So did you at least get to have a glass of wine with them before they did get to have a glass of wine before they left. But you know, we aren’t working in a market like that right now. Which is really, I mean, it’s not only good for me, but it’s good for the consumer too. Because when you’re making decisions in a hurry like that, you know, are you really making the best ones, right? And then people get that sense of urgency, and perhaps they do things that maybe aren’t the very best for them.

Barb McGrath 12:52
And if you’ve made a decision in a peak time period like that, chances are a year from now or even two years from now, if you decide, well, we we bought too high, it’s much more difficult to sell. That is correct. So yeah. People, what’s the average timeframe when people switch houses, buy new houses? Five years?

Terrie Dunand 13:12
Okay, so five years, that’s the magic number. I can pretty well, I can track it, you know, I go through my database to these people, but and they can, you know, you know, either people want something bigger, they’ve got a promotion at work, you know, so they have a little bit more money. Yeah. You know, they may be bought when they were they had a baby on the way now they have, you know, number twos coming? Or maybe number three? Yeah, don’t really get that. But whatever works for everybody else, you know, and two hands.

Barb McGrath 13:40
Yeah, we were not meant for three.

Terrie Dunand 13:41
Yeah, exactly. You know, and then the other thing is, is that a lot of my databases, elderly people, right, so, um, they’re transitioning, you know, they sell their home, they move to a condo, and when the time they moved the condo, then they’re moving to a care home. Yes. Right. So that five year rule really doesn’t apply there. You know, I’ve got some good long term clients, you know, they’ve been original homeowners for two years, right? Then they move to the condo, and they try and stay there as long as they can. And I really actually, I don’t know whether that their family agrees, but I try and encourage them to stay there as long as Oh,

Barb McGrath 14:18
Absolutely. You see so many people who do make that transition to any kind of long term care. And health actually seems to deteriorate more quickly, instead of being able to maintain it. And I don’t know why that is. But maybe there’s a bit of a mental piece there.

Terrie Dunand 14:35
I don’t know. So I I, I’m going to just tell this little story. Okay, please. Yes. So I had met this lady and I don’t know how many years ago it was and I don’t even know how she got me Got my name. Anyway, I went out and saw she had a lovely home in in older Albert, an older Albert Park, and I met with her I gave her a price, you know, and then she called me every year for about five years, right? Okay. Yeah, she never, you know, didn’t sell and then all of a sudden one day she called me and she says there’s a condo and I want Want to buy it? And I said, Oh, are you sure you’re ready to do that? And I said, Have you talked to your family and, and anyway, we went, we had a look at it and, and she wanted to write an offer. And I saw it was kind of like, ooh, you know, I’m not really comfortable doing this, because I wasn’t really Claire, how old she was. But you know, I kind of figured 80 Plus, right, and she’s gonna sell her home and buy this condo. And I said, Well, we should really talk to your kids about this. Right? And, and she was very firm with me, and stern. And she said, I can make my own decisions. I do not need to check with my children. Right. And I said, Well, have you explored the option of, you know, maybe some of the supportive care facilities instead, you know, and I put some names out there of you know, and there’s lots of great facilities out there as she just made it in no uncertain terms that she said to me, you know, what, there is just a bunch of old people that live there, and I’m not living there. Anyway, she went ahead and bought the condo. And I did actually, because of the criteria that I need to take in real estate, I did find out from her that she was 91. And you know, what, I stay in contact, or I talk to with her about every other month or so. And you know, what? She’s still not condo? also. Or she’s been there three, four years? Using 95. Yeah, pushing 95. And, you know, you know, I’m so fortunate to get to know some of those people. Because, yeah, this particular lady, um, you know, she talked about meeting the queen and how she wore the white clothes and all the protocol that went along with it. And, you know, so, I mean, there’s a lot of my clients that they kind of become a part of me.

Barb McGrath 16:35
Exactly. And you know, what, and I think that for so many entrepreneurs, the people you work with, become so much a part of you and your everyday and, you know, you’re texting at all hours of the day, because you build personal relationships, because you, you talk with these people on a regular basis, and you see what happens with their business. And so yeah, I’ve seen the exact same thing on my side, it’s like, Oh, is this work? Or is this personal? And sometimes that’s a little bit tough to find that dividing line.

Terrie Dunand 17:06
Right? And even with her, well into her 90s, she’s still out there, you know, telling people about how you got to use Terrie in real estate. I’ve had several referrals from her.

Barb McGrath 17:19
Now, were they friends the same age or younger?

Terrie Dunand 17:22
Just you know, and I mean, because of the interesting person that she is, she has a wide variety of people in her life. Right. And so you know, and then she can just, you know, oh, anything that happens about real estate, you know, it’s slavery. Yeah. And then, and then when she runs out the card, she calls me, can I pop by? Well, I mean, it’s a dual purpose thing, right? We have a cup of tea in it and a cookie and, and, you know, I dropped off the business cards, but you know, and then we get a chance for a visit, right?

Barb McGrath 17:45
Oh, wow. Oh, that’s interesting. Okay, it looks like I have a little check in that I need to do here partway through our show. So let me see what I can tell you is happening here at the station are looking listen lottery is now on, and it’s a very important fundraiser for the station. So if you decide to participate, you’ll have a chance to win one of four great destinations. And having just come back from a warm holiday. All these warm destinations still sound good. So you can head off to Anaheim, California, Orlando, Florida. Gosh, if my kids are listening, they’re gonna go wow, let’s go to Disneyland.

Terrie Dunand 18:22
Okay, let’s actually, Toronto

Barb McGrath 18:24
Okay, Toronto is not going to be quite that warm, or even Niagara Falls, Ontario. The prize will include flight accommodations and $500 spending cash. The second prize is $1,000 travel voucher. And third prize is a Regina Folk Festival experience package, which includes two weekend passes to the Folk Festival in August, August, winter, the temperature will be in August plus 40. Oh, I hope like you know, we deserve the best summer now after.

Terrie Dunand 18:59
Well, that’s cool. Okay, you just go right ahead and put that order in.

Barb McGrath 19:02
I’ll get right on that. Let’s see what else we have to tell you. If you buy your tickets by March 20. You’re also eligible for an additional early bird prize, a $500 travel voucher to more tickets to the Folk Festival and an early bird draw. Oh, sorry, the early bird draw will incur on March 22. Which, oh, that’s a Friday. It is Friday. Oh, because I thought oh, that’s five days after St. Patrick’s Day. 845. March 22 Ides of March, right? March 22. Tickets are $20 each. And there are only 1200 available. So if you’re interested, please contact the station. You can find us online Of course at cd tr.ca slash donate and tickets will be on sale until just before the draw. My paper doesn’t tell me that. All right. Well, let’s get back to Terrie here today and the regional real estate market and what’s happening So, back in was it 2007? Is that kind of when we hit our PCs

Terrie Dunand 20:04
789 and actually totally peaked in in 1213? Oh, those were the, those were the highest. Those are the peak of the peak.

Barb McGrath 20:12
Okay. And so has it just slowly and steadily come down since but the last 18 months phase were hardest. Yes.

Terrie Dunand 20:20
Yeah. Like it came down. But the last 18 months was the hardest was the hardest.

Barb McGrath 20:25
Now, when it when we talk about coming down, is that property value? Is that number of properties, changing hands, what is coming down actually mean? So all of the above, okay, so our pricing is down, and our transactions are down.

Terrie Dunand 20:41
Okay. So of course, the less transactions there are, if someone does want to sell, depending on when they purchased Sure, they just set the price, so that they can sell so you get another precedent, which creates the market to come down even further.

Barb McGrath 20:56
Okay. All right. So the the turnover that you’re seeing now, so this is 19. Thinking about your five year average, many of these people bought even in 2014 when prices were particularly high is correct. Okay, so if I was selling my home and I bought Well, 2012 I probably paid somewhere in that premium. That is right. What kind of and let’s assume that my house is in that two to 400 range? What kind of decrease? Might I be seen?

Terrie Dunand 21:28
Okay, I’m going to give you exact set of circumstances then it’s going to be on a condominium. Okay. In harbour landing. Excellent. Because I have that number. I just ran the mall yesterday. Okay. So purchase price was 318,000. And your 20 1414? Eight, yep. Apartment style condo. And the list price. Currently 279 nine.

Barb McGrath 21:52
Okay, that’s list price. So that list price.

Terrie Dunand 21:55
And so our list to sale ratio is running in like city average is running 94 to 95%. So that puts you at a sale price of 263 to 268.

Barb McGrath 22:07
Wow, so about $60,000? That is correct.

Terrie Dunand 22:11
So you’re down, you know, you’re gonna get about 83 to 85% 83% of ask prices were actually which you run the numbers, you know, average apartments, condos. $200,000. In 2014 was the average today, year to date? 168. Okay, so you put the numbers into the formula, and it works out to about 83%.

Barb McGrath 22:33
So is that slowing a lot of sellers down making them think, okay, we’ve got to wait a year or two.

Terrie Dunand 22:39
So it depends on what the circumstances are. Um, you know, if you currently have had this really great opportunity to take a transfer for a job. You just set the price and you move. If you think that you want to do your change, you’re in five year you’re in the condo, and you’re expecting Mm hmm. Most people can’t do that. Yeah, I need to stay exactly, because they have to read a check. You know, if you’re maybe a 5%, down buyer, you maybe 10% you pay down for five years, you have to write a check. Plus, you still need to come up with your down payment. So what’s stopping those people from selling? Now, if you lived in Lakeview all your life and you’re in a 10 or 1000 square foot bungalow, and you’re the original owner, and you paid you know, I don’t know. $12,000 it is it doesn’t really matter, right? You know, when you’re at a, you know, place in your life, you know, if you’re like my client that was in her 80s that she was selling? Well, I mean, it doesn’t really matter for her. Yeah, she just sets the price. And so you know, those people are they’re leading the market, and they’re leading the pricing, because it doesn’t matter. They’re just setting and they’re pricing the product so that it’ll sell and the consumer is buying at that price. Okay. But a neighbor that bought in the peak of the market, they can’t sell, they can’t go anywhere. They can’t go anywhere.

Barb McGrath 23:58
Thursday, what does downpayment look like? Nowadays, it’s still 5% to 5%. Okay, still 5%. And so, the 5%. So if I’m buying $100,000 house, I need to have $5,000 set aside, but there is no such thing as a five. That is, that’s where it’s like 10 and 15 and $20,000. You know, and I’ve often made the comment that I’m very glad I got into real estate when I did, because I bought my first home when I was in my 20s long before I met my husband. So I had my first I sold he had his first he sold, and in fact he sold right at the beginning of the boom, right right. So I can imagine what his house would be worth today. But, but we were very fortunate we you know, both got in when we didn’t even need $5,000 because it wasn’t $100,000 house at the time.

Terrie Dunand 24:48
We see a lot more parents helping in that area.

Barb McGrath 24:51
Okay, yeah, go So you mean I don’t have to pay just for school now. I got to pay for a house you Yeah, yeah, no wedding. Yeah, that’s correct. Great. Yes. No, I’m working till

Terrie Dunand 24:58
75 Or I guess the other option would be just make sure that they get the education and then they’re on their own. Mm hmm.

Barb McGrath 25:05
Yeah. And that’s why kids stay home longer. That’s right, right. I left it at you probably did, too. I did. They can’t anymore.

Terrie Dunand 25:13
Yeah. So it just makes it. Everything’s more expensive. Mm hmm. But you know, so sometimes a lot of people get doom and gloom about real estate, but people have to live somewhere, right. You know, they, you know, they have babies, they want to upsize. You know, they want to transfer they want to move those kinds of things. So,

Barb McGrath 25:34
Exactly. Terrie, it looks like we’re pretty much at a time if somebody would like to talk to you, where can they find you? And how can they get a hold of you? cell phone 306-530-9050 you can always get me there. And of course, Google me.

Terrie Dunand 25:51
I know that our method topical.

Barb McGrath 25:54
Excellent. Well, that sounds fantastic. That brings us to the end of our show. So I’d like to thank everyone for tuning in today to Nate views The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. Thank you to Terrie from REMAX crown realty for joining us to talk about what’s happening in the Medina real estate market. And just to share a few insider tips to to help anyone who is thinking about buying or selling as the market is changing. I’ll be back on March 20. With Prabha Mitchell from the women entrepreneurs of Saskatchewan. And she’s going to talk a little bit about the impact women have on the entrepreneurial community in our province, and what you the listener and viewer can do to support entrepreneurial ism for women. So if you’d like to be a guest on the show, you can email me at Barb at Above the Fold dot live, or find us on Facebook and Instagram. Just a reminder that you can submit your questions in advance of the live show on our Facebook page. I’m your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl Sheree will be here next Wednesday at 12 o’clock. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.