Managing Your Businesses: Interview with Emily Frisella!
While most people are thinking of starting their own businesses and growing them to success, you will be surprised to see how many businesses fail every day. Having a great business idea can be easy for many. But starting something from scratch, scaling it, and making your investments earn high returns can be very tough. It’s even more challenging than before with the COVID-19 pandemic that has affected several sectors of businesses, including the supply chain and how employees work. So, how do you manage your business in such situations and ensure it’s growing?
We interviewed our first ever recurring guest on our podcast, Emily Frisella, who shared some tips and insights on managing her businesses despite the challenges.
Emily is the founder of the Paper and Plan Co., an author for the best-selling cookbook, co-host of the Curious Me Podcast, and the Women In Business Workshop founder. Emily was our guest in Episode 12, where she talked about women in business and how to overcome the mentality that females cannot be successful.
In This Episode
[02:51] What’s been going on
[04:01] How Emily is handling the troubled supply chain
[07:21] The greatest resignation
[10:15] How Emily built her company culture
[14:13] Women In Business Workshop
[17:33] Structuring your workshop to fit different people at different growth levels
[24:04] Setting an effective routine
[27:45] Adding the three critical tasks
[21:29] Staying disciplined in business
[31:30] Writing and tracking your goals
[33:00] Figuring out what to delegate
[41:33] Controlling your emotions to perform at your best
[43:30] Only fans inquiry: Start/not start a business during inflation?
[47:24] Why you should start your own business
How Emily Frisella Is Handling The Supply Chain Issue
With the supply chain disrupted due to COVID-19, several businesses have difficulty getting the crucial products they need for their production. With sales going up towards Christmas and the new year, Emily says the supply chain is essential for any business that wants to profit.
With her Paper and Plan Co. business being one of the most affected, she had to adjust and have a strategy to ensure she didn’t run short of papers for planners. She is now dealing with the situation by ordering x amounts each month. However, she says that the main problem is that you don’t get the best discount for bulk orders since there’s a cap for every order.
“It (supply chain) is quite a big issue, and people are seeing it from all effects, and it’s a trickle-down. So, if you haven’t felt it now, you will end up feeling it as a business owner.”
Emily says at some point, businesses will have to adjust their pricing to cover for the inflation. However, it will be hard to convince customers to pay more for the same product due to the situation. For this reason, she has sacrificed to take a cut of her paycheck in 2023 as her easiest fix. But she is also doing this with her Paper and Plan Co. because she knows she has other businesses that will sustain her.
“If it were my only business, I would maybe have to rethink that, but I do have other streams of income. So, it’s not a big deal to me.”
Emily’s Company Culture
Emily adopted all the nine values that she has always had in all her companies. The co-values are posted on the office walls. Workers have books to read and develop themselves and instill the values in them.
She has bought books like the Automatic Habits and Leadershift for her workers and changes them every 60 weeks.
“Everybody here wants to win. Anybody with my company or has an affiliation with any of the businesses that I have, that’s what they want. We all want the same thing.”
How She structured her Women In Business Workshop
After starting her women in Business Workshop, she has capped the maximum number of attendees to 75. She says this helps make people build personal connections with each other.
“I don’t want to have 300 people there, and they can’t make those one-on-one connections.”
With just 75 individuals, you can make people have a meaningful conversation with everyone in a three-day workshop. More questions also get answered when speakers speak, and more people are heard.
“I think that a lot of people are most exhausted by these massive 2k events. You just go, and you sit, and you hear somebody talking, and that’s it.”
Structuring a workshop to fit different people
Workshops and events usually have different people; starters, experienced entrepreneurs. It’s always challenging to find common ground for the two extremes to discuss and benefit from each other. However, Emily has some tips on how to blend the two.
She says, for her workshop, the women starting can look at the women that are further down the journey and draw inspiration from them. Similarly, those further down their journey use the opportunity to remind themselves of the little things that got them there. Most people forget how they got to where they are.
She also gives out questionnaires to help her group them based on their skills, strengths and weaknesses. She then encourages the women that have the strength and weaknesses of others to help each other and vice versa. People immediately have a connection with those who have strength in areas they don’t.
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