Paul: 0:29

Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers. I have to say I, I have this thing, it's getting worse. I have to think about the title of the podcast I'm delivering. I delivered one for a client this morning. I went on a client's podcast and guests took over as host for one episode to do her interview. And then I have my content classroom newsletter and everything else. I keep mentioning this each week. It doesn't get any easier remembering which bloody show I'm on. MarketPulse. Hello, Sarah Jane. Thank you for joining me on the show.

Sarah Jane: 0:59

Thank you for having me on here.

Paul: 1:01

So those people at home who are watching along, who is Sarah Jane? She's the managing director at Roots 4 Business Limited which is a business consultancy that you founded in 2006. With a strong background in compliance, the NOH team operational support and corporate training. Sarah's got over 18 years of experience helping SME businesses grow through tailored business solutions. And she's known in her work for operational risk management, human resources, and has also developed accreditation systems for ISO, construction online, and safe contractor. Sarah's journey includes building her business whilst raising two children as a single parent. I feel like I know half of that story, and hats off to you. I don't know how anybody can do what I'm currently going through as a single parent. That is a level beyond. First up, how did you sane

Sarah Jane: 1:56

Oh, I can honestly say I probably aren't. Yeah there's no sanity involved. I think it's just total resilience and determination. And I just think. It's like being in trauma most of the time and you just get on with it. You've, it's either fight or flight and you can either just go with it. And I'm very methodical and systematic. So I think it's, my list was always a one to 10, but being a single parent, it's one to infinity and beyond. Bit like Buzz Lightyear.

Paul: 2:30

Oh, it absolutely is. But do you think that doing that has given you a bit of tenacity and grit that nothing else would've given you

Sarah Jane: 2:38

I am very determined and I think my resilience has grown, but I think having had the time with, I think the worst thing is the fact that I didn't spend as much time as I wanted to with my children when they were younger, cause they are so precious years. But I think what it's done it's given me empathy. Great deal of empathy, but also a great deal of flexibility. There used to be a toy when my son was younger called, I think it's called Mr. Stretchy or something, or Go Gadget Man. And I always used to think I used to relate myself to Go Gadget cause it was just, just got to find a solution. And I think with my business, Today it's about finding solutions and getting into the heads of other managing directors and getting it out of their heads. to wheedle a confession out of a child is probably very similar to getting information out of a managing director head.

Paul: 3:36

So I guess having two kids at home and you've made that leap, I guess that gives you a great skill set for questioning people and understanding, getting to the heart of the matter, getting to understand how they think, but how does compliance and operational efficiency fit in that business structure for most businesses.

Sarah Jane: 3:58

It basically, it comes down to regulation continuous improvement. And when you've got the parallels between a child's education and growing up and always trying to teach them the right way or the wrong way or the best way of doing something. And compliance is the same. You've got a set of rules and regulations and whether we would like it or not. We have rules and regulations that we have to adhere to as business people and we have a duty of care to our employees and our subcontractors and our supply chain. So that responsibility is far greater than people think. And that's where the parallel comes in. And then obviously the training and the continuous improvement. When a lot of the things that I do in compliance and when I'm doing my accreditations, people say, oh, when we finish, when do we finish? You really do as a business owner and as a business have to get your head around the fact that you don't finish. There is never a finishing point. If you're running a business, if you want to be competitive, if you want to have a great reputation, then you don't finish, you continuously improve and that's about monitoring. And I think those are the parallels with children. Children don't end, they just become adults and then they divert to becoming children again,

Paul: 5:22

Ah, yeah. I can see the

Sarah Jane: 5:24

or they never leave that zone.

Paul: 5:26

It's funny. Like we had a couple of guests on the show a while back who talked about how talking with business owners about their market and strategies in particular sometimes turned into a counseling session. Because they needed to get off their chest with all the challenges and problems that they had that they didn't think they could speak to anybody else about. And only when they'd done that could they really start to address. where they need to go with their marketing, for example, their marketing strategy or their sales strategy. And I'd imagine you probably end up taking a similar track, right? It's about almost being a counselor at times.

Sarah Jane: 6:01

Yes, it's, and it is a bit like that. It is, but it's about actively listening and people don't get that either. You get people who listen, but if you're really actively listening, then you could Feedback exactly what I've said. And for a business owner and business in general, however, they are planning their strategies, whatever strategy that is, they've got to be able to relay that back to their staff because it's their staff that make the business. They just lead, they're leading, but it's the staff that are the most critical part of it. And, you have to be really brutally honest. In marketing, it's really essential that you get it right first time. And people don't, because they don't do the compliance or the training behind the scenes. Yeah, and that is paramount. You tell a story, but get it right.

Paul: 6:56

You don't get a second chance at a first first introduction, right?

Sarah Jane: 7:00

No, I don't think you do. You adapt. Just be truthful from the very first go. Your reputation is about integrity.

Paul: 7:10

Yeah. I see a lot of business owners who there's the older Daje that I think it was Richard Branson. Started, which was fake it till you make it which I do to an extent agree with, right? Like when you first start out for a business, you really understand what it is that you're about to do. You're not even sure, like your confidence levels aren't there. Imposter syndrome is very real and you're scared to say yes to anything. So you've got to fake it until you make it in that regard, but there comes a point and a lot of founders never seem to get there where they realize that actually I need to stop faking it now and actually just knuckle down on what we've. what we've done in the past and make that run like clockwork, operationalize it, make it smooth and stick to my guns on what we do best. Is that fair? Yeah.

Sarah Jane: 7:58

I think when you say fake it to make it, I think there's the other side of that. I think we all, when we start business, we say yes to everybody, because we say yes to everybody with a fear that it all might crumble away. But over time, You become, you begin to trust yourself and build your own competences and then you learn within your marketing strategy to know what your vision, value and purpose is. And for me, everybody needs to know their VVP. If you do not know your, what your vision is, the value behind why you're doing it and the purpose for what you're doing it for, you cannot steer anyone else. And your marketing becomes false, I think. That certainly is for me. I really needed to know what my vision, value, and purpose was because everything I do, everyone finds boring. So to market boring stuff is actually quite difficult because you've got to make it engaging, you've got to make it readable, and actually, you've got to make it fun. And if anyone Says to me, always say, how on earth can you make health and safety fun? I went there's always an element of fun, but there is always the seriousness behind it.

Paul: 9:16

Having come from a role that was linked very heavily with EHS, I've seen a lot of people getting involved in the same thing. And you're right, there's nothing worse than even a training session from an employee standpoint where There is no fun element and it's all just being battered with information that seems irrelevant because it will never happen to us because these things only ever happen to other people until they don't. So what are, I mean that being probably one point in case, but what are some of the more common compliance mistakes that you see businesses making, especially around marketing and communication? And

Sarah Jane: 9:55

the very, the biggest one throughout all of my years, unfortunately, I'm going to say some, a couple of horrible words that everyone hates. And the first one is register with ICO because people forget about it. Information Commissioner's Office. You have a regulatory obligation to register with them when you are holding personal data and an example of that is I had a client a few years ago and I asked him this, have you done that? I don't even know what it is. I don't even know ICO. So I've given them the website link and I've said, oh I don't actually hold personal data. I said, I beg your pardon? I said, have you got any, have you got any customers then? Yes, I've got lots of customers. All of their data is personal. So you are holding them. It's only on my phone. Irrelevant where it is. You're storing it, you're holding it, you're processing it. So that's the biggest one. The next one in the marketing is ensuring that you are Compliant to GDPR. Anything that you are marketing with people's personal data, anything about them that you're storing or passing on, make sure that you're doing it right. And let's be honest, make sure you've got their permission to do I think that's the biggest problem with marketing. Oh, let's just stick this photograph up. That's fine. There's 10 people in the background in that photograph that you've just put up on social media. Have you asked them? No, just blur them out. So there's, it's not just about the wording, it's about the illustrations and I think sometimes it gets missed.

Paul: 11:31

have you seen that come unstuck? Cause like I'm sure there's a lot of business owners out there right now sat there going for photos for people in the background that would never nobody's ever going to complain about that.

Sarah Jane: 11:43

Ah, there you go, you said it in that, the answer was in what your statement just said and that is no one's going to complain about that. But someone might, especially if there's children in the background as

Paul: 11:53

No, definitely.

Sarah Jane: 11:54

Protected. Children are our future, you have to look after them, but under the Equality Act and all of the other legislation that we have, that's just one of. Hundreds. We have to think of everyone else and give everyone the same opportunities and that means giving, asking their permission first. Just be really careful what you're putting up there and what you're saying

Paul: 12:19

So

Sarah Jane: 12:20

in your marketing strategies.

Paul: 12:21

Going back to your business, then I, read it, reading through your information, obviously you rebranded post lockdown. What was the point of that? What did you want to achieve with that

Sarah Jane: 12:31

Okay, first and foremost my rebranding came about was people didn't actually know what I did. They didn't fully understand. The moment I said, oh, do compliance, health and safety and la they've gone to sleep by then. Yeah, sorry, wiki. So for me, I had to, Brands and put a brand on something that was, that fitted me as a person, fitted my vision, value, and purpose, but also explained what I did. And to me, Roots 4 Business does that because I nurture the roots of every business. If you do not get the fundamental foundations right, you will not grow your oak, which is why my logo is a tree. And I'm the one who sits underneath and all the businesses that I help hopefully flourish into the lovely trees that we don't really look after in my world.

Paul: 13:26

I'm just going to say I can see that from the website that you've got there, it's like really focused on that learning and development and employee upskilling environment, like a lot of people in your situation, your, in your sort of industry and compliance and operations, they just want to kind of stick rules on people, but education's the answer, right?

Sarah Jane: 13:46

absolutely. Every day is a school day. Gone are the years of doing an apprenticeship or doing five years training and you finish. You never finish. I go back to that and I go back to it all the time. Every day in my world has to be a school day. If I don't learn something every day, then I don't feel I've lived. And continuous learning, lifelong learners, that, that's what we have to be. If we didn't continuously improve, every day we'd be behind on technology. That's another big thing. Big one, that there's not enough people in the business world really ensuring that their staff are up to date on training of software. They put all these lovely new pieces of software in, but they don't train their staff fully. So they're spending all this money out on software, but the staff can't use it to its full potential. That's a really big one, but training is absolutely key. Continuous training.

Paul: 14:43

And

Sarah Jane: 14:44

Yeah.

Paul: 14:45

I've gone about this the. The wrong way

Sarah Jane: 14:47

There's no right or wrong way, if that's what

Paul: 14:49

yeah I know I was going to say, I've come to this from the, from back to front, but how did you get involved in compliance in the first place? Because I can't imagine anybody graduates from school, gets out of school and goes, Oh, I want to work in compliance for the next 20 years.

Sarah Jane: 15:02

Don't know if having three brothers probably helped on the health and safety side of things, cause I've always had to, I shouldn't say it, but, shout twice as loud and fight just as hard to be, get anywhere. But I had a job and exactly something happened. There was an incident at work and. There was lots of employees cleaning in the cleaning industry. And for me it was, how can I make these people safe? So for me it was more to start with researching to make sure people are safe under policy and systems. And then it was, the only way these people are going to learn how to work safely in a safe system of work is to train them. That's where it started. It then flourished into a teaching degree and internal quality assurance and

Paul: 15:55

what was the turning point for you then where you decided that I have to run my own business?

Sarah Jane: 16:00

Being made redundant too many times and actually I needed the flexibility when my children were tiny. And with the greatest respect, having my children was a while ago, cause they're in their late 20s now, and there weren't the schemes that there are now. You have, you had to work if you wanted to your children to have better things. So it was a really big juggling act. So I had to do something I was passionate about. And for me with a son who was extremely accident prone to the fact that he Went through every single colour of the plaster casts in my local hospital. Keeping people safe seemed to come as the next best, next step, as well as keeping my son safe.

Paul: 16:49

I've often heard it said, and I do believe it's true that, that plan B is the biggest killer of plan A. And if you have a plan B you're always going to hedge your bets. If this doesn't work out, then I can go and do that. But for those of us who make the leap of faith and get rid of plan B altogether and just run with the plan A you have to make it succeed, right? And I guess that's the same as what you're doing now for the businesses you work with as well is. How can we help

Sarah Jane: 17:15

Yeah, making them grow, absolutely, and making them succeed. And, yeah. None of it, none, no one goes into business wanting to fail. And I don't like that word. There's always a solution. And there's, there is, and people, I think the biggest thing is when you go into business, people think that if you ask a question or you ask Why do you want to do that? Why are you here? What is the purpose? We all get scared to do that when we first start. And there is a lot of support out there. And if there isn't, ask somebody. Ask the question. We don't ask the question.

Paul: 17:53

The only daft question is one you don't ask, right?

Sarah Jane: 17:55

Absolutely that. No question is a silly question, is it? You just want an answer.

Paul: 18:00

I've got a few silly questions. I've got a seven year old. We come across silly questions all the time. I always ask him if he wants me to really answer that question and he knows he's done a good question. What's one outdated practice around marketing or strategy of marketing that you just wish SME business owners would stop using?

Sarah Jane: 18:18

Cold calling and hitting you with constant rubbish emails. I think that if we all do research, we're all on the internet. We're on the internet, on our phones, on the, all the time. I was recently in London and every other person, if not every person, has got earbuds in. No one talks to anybody and they're just slapping on their phones. So they're going to be on the internet. They're going to be looking at marketing. And the moment you ask for some information or a question, you give your email away. That's fine. But on that, you don't always want trails and trails of emails. So I think the cold calling by telephone and the communication by email really does need to be addressed and tightened up. I think We all have to put filters on our emails. Cybersecurity is absolutely critical. Just done some posting on cybersecurity and cybersecurity training. Happened earlier. It happened the other week with me. I had a major non conformance at a client where an email came in, someone clicked on it because they thought it was safe. It was totally unsafe, but the managing director just said, delete it. So I think. I think there's lots of work around that and there's lots of people out there who really are specialised in knowing what to do. Go and get some pen testing and things like that, making sure your systems are safe.

Paul: 19:50

Yeah, I was going to say I do believe that for certain businesses, call calling, call emails do work, but it's not the mass volume crap that we see these days on mass. I had somebody literally today ask me, I've got a friend, they're starting, they've started a business up and they want to do some called outreach emails. What do you advise? My honest advice is they'd be better off spending their time figuring out how to write posts on LinkedIn. That's good. How to record their own videos and put them out there. Because unless you have years and years of experience, you have an overall mock sales strategy, you have. Detailed personas of who you want to reach and why, and what their trigger points are, and what their pain points are. And I guarantee there's no small business, nor is any of that, when you start out from even month six, I would be very surprised. And then you've got to have the understanding of neuroscience, behavioral science, sales, practice, experience, iterations, and the tools. to be able to put it all together. I've tried it and it's horrible. It's a horrible feeling.

Sarah Jane: 20:55

Absolutely. I think from experience over the years the time, what is absolutely critical for every business owner is time. And you can spend, when you first start out, learning all these things about email marketing, and then it takes you at least an hour, maybe two, to write a decent email Mail for marketing. Utilize that time and go online and do some face to face or face to face networking. You are better off in a room like we are here chatting to six or ten other people or to go to a local networking group and market yourself. People buy from people. Social media, absolutely. We can't move. We need to do that. That's an essential. But I think email is A little bit of a dying breed, I would say personally, we can, we are all got legs, go out and use them. We're all saying we've got to keep fit and healthy. We all like the fresh air. There is nothing wrong with going out networking. Fully promote that. Absolutely, walk and talk.

Paul: 22:04

Flip that on its head then. What's one thing that you wish business owners would consider more with regards to their marketing practices?

Sarah Jane: 22:11

Definitely get their compliance right and their website is right and make sure they've got privacy policies on their website. Make sure they are registered with ICO from the compliance point of view. But with their marketing, make sure every single thing that they're doing And they're saying they're doing it is reflective right the way through. So social media, face to face talking, marketing, merchandise, and website. There's no point having a story or you're saying you're doing something on your website and then you go out and you say something different. So make sure you get your VVP right from the start. Vision, value, purpose, and streamline it through every single word. Action you're going to be doing on your marketing strategy. If you're going to promote your website, make sure you're saying the same thing. Branding is absolutely key. But it has to flow right the way through the company. And that includes communicating that branding to your employees.

Paul: 23:12

And that's why I don't want any. It's a lot simpler when it's just you. Yeah, I spent 15 years in corporate and I wouldn't have a leadership position if you paid me a considerable amount of money and a few bottles of rum, probably I still would say no. that says something.

Sarah Jane: 23:26

Leadership, leadership is great. But what I will say is every leader Has to know that they need to be going out and making a coffee or scrubbing the toilet or doing whatever they have to do. They have to be applying themselves at every single level.

Paul: 23:44

It's not a fun job and it's not a, I don't need to do the hard work anymore job. It's a, you've got to do the hard work and look after your team now. And you're a parent again. It's fun. Sarah Jane, thank you very much for being a fabulous guest on the show. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Probably a little bit too much to be fair.

Sarah Jane: 24:00

My pleasure.

Paul: 24:01

if people want to know more about how you could help them or compliance challenges, et cetera, et cetera. If they've got any questions, how can they reach you?

Sarah Jane: 24:09

Definitely on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where I put The majority of all of my social media posts and everything that you can get to me on on my website and also on WhatsApp. So those are my three main channels of communication and WhatsApp is something that's very much rising in the communication systems out there.

Paul: 24:34

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Lovely. I will pop those details into the show notes so anybody who wants to get all the view can see you there. And if you're watching along or listening along at home, thank you very much for joining us for this episode. And I will see you next on MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers.