Stop Overgiving: Build Your Dream Team Culture Instead

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving.

Hi there and welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor and also known as the Geeky Girl. And I get to bring you a really cool guest today.

And this is Casey Anton. She is the founder of Spark Business Consulting, author of Profit First for Restaurants and an adjunct professor at Boston University’s School of Hospitality. With over two decades of experience in the restaurant industry, Casey has transitioned from a restaurateur in Boston to a leading expert in business management. At Spark Business Consulting, she and her dynamic team, the Sparkles, Love that.

Use practical insights to turn entrepreneurial chaos into profitable success. Whether she’s advertising clients, speaking at conferences, or sharing her wisdom on podcasts, Casey brings a mix of humor and valuable strategies. Off the clock, Casey enjoys being a mom, renovating at home, and embracing the role of educator. Join her for a blend of fun and expertise that truly sparkles. Hi and welcome! I’m so glad you’re here, Casey. That was such a mouthful! I loved it! It’s wild to hear your own bio back, isn’t it? It is so wild. I change it up every time too because I always get bored with it.

So that was a new one and I’m like, Oh my God, that really did sparkle. You did it so well. Thank you. It’s awesome. I’m excited. I mean, I’ve never been in the restaurant industry, although my best friend who’s like my sister, she has a restaurant. So I’m, you know, adjacent. Yeah, very adjacent, very adjacent to the restaurant industry.

But very interesting that you’ve made that move. From actually being a restauranteur and now doing what you’re doing. So what led you down that path that made the switch? Well, I mean, being in the restaurant business is not for the faint of heart. It’s not for everyone, right? So, and there is a lot of burnout that could possibly happen.

But for me, it was really just a chapter change. I had kind of come to the end of how far we could take our restaurant. You know, we were there for almost 10 years. That’s a decent run in the city. We were definitely kind of trendy. When we came out, had some great years, had some slow years. And then also the same year that I had just gotten married, I had just given birth to my first child.

Like it’s the way I was in the restaurant industry. I mean, it was an easy 70 hour, 80 hour work week work till three, four o’clock in the morning. Like that’s just the, you know, the part of the industry that I was in for so long. So you to do that with a newborn would be very difficult. So I thought, okay, you know, I’m going to grow up and be a big girl and stay at home and be a stay at home mom.

And that lasted for a. About four seconds. I could not. I tried it. That is the hardest job ever. I think I was not cut out for that. So, you know, knowing that I couldn’t go back into the restaurant industry the way I had been with an infant, I’m thinking, all right, so what can I do now? I literally had to sit and think like, okay, what’s my skill set?

What do I have that’s valuable to somebody else, and it was pretty easy to figure out. So I got really good at the numbers, like really good at math and really good at financials, creating them, analyzing them, using them because I had to in order to keep my restaurant alive as long as it did so that we were able to sell it versus having to just shut it down, maybe even file bankruptcy, right?

So I had to really keep this restaurant going and make it you know, basically take 1 and turn it into 10. That’s what I had to learn how to do. So I got really fun, really fun at math, really funky at math as well. So I took that skillset figured, Oh, maybe I’ll help some other small restaurants opening up with their numbers.

So they don’t make the mistakes that I made. So I helped them and then, you know, that was small and little. And they were like, Oh, I have an interior designer, a girlfriend or a general contractor, a painter. Like they’re terrible with their money. Can you help them? And I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know.

Maybe I’d go meet with them. As it turned out, two plus two equals four anywhere you go. We like the math is the same. And I thought, Oh yeah. So then I started spark and I tell you the floodgates were open. And I think within the first three months I had about 25 clients because small businesses really need help with their financials.

So that’s why it really, really took off. And we work with now almost 300 clients now, but over the years, thousands, just really helping people understand their business model zone in on their financials, because I mean, if your business is not making money, it it’s costing you money. So that’s really down to it.

And I think that what’s really important, I hope people take away from this particular. And I talk about this a lot. It’s about understanding your strengths. Who are you? What is it that you’re really good at? And to be able to literally stand back and go, okay, let’s, let’s take inventory. Let’s look. What is it that I have to offer?

You know, People know my story. I started Geeky Girl in 2009, and at the time I was fixing computers, running cables, and fixing printers, like, I did that what I did corporately, I did in the business, and then it led me to, oh, well, people keep asking me how I’m doing the social media thing, right, and so my business evolved every time there was, like, this new little thing, which, of course, now with being, I’m in project management, which, you know, like, you have to look at these opportunities.

In your life. And so you went, okay, I’m going to be a stay at home mom, and went, yeah, nope, not cool. Right? Nope. I don’t want to do this, but what else? Right? So when you have these moments in your life, and things change, because ultimately they do, nothing stays the same, you do have an option, I mean, you could sit in the sink, if you like.

Right? You could have gone and got a J O B. That certainly could have been something that you did. But I love the fact that you stepped back and you went, Okay, what are my skills and how can I reuse them and still be my own boss? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, I think there was a brief period, and I mean brief, maybe like a month where I, I figured, oh, I’ll just go work for somebody else for a little bit.

And then I, I feel like maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s once you’ve been an entrepreneur and I had, I started my first business when I was 14, so it’s like I’ve always been an entrepreneur in some way, shape, or form, thinking that I could just go work for somebody. No, I just, and it’s not, I like the person a lot.

It’s just. It’s just my brain didn’t work that way. I needed to be in control. I guess it probably sounds terrible, but I just needed to, I needed to create really. And this is, this is the way I create is through business. Well, and there’s definitely an entrepreneurial mindset. I know that like, when I’m talking to other businesses and business owners, and we were talking about like hiring and developing their team and saying like, you have to decide, are you going to hire somebody with an entrepreneurial mindset?

Who’s going to be thinking, Up new ideas and thoughts. And here we could do this or we could change it this way, that way. Or do you hire, you know, somebody who is a JLB person, somebody who’s an employee with that employee mindset, where you can just go, here’s your list. Goodbye. Right. There are two different brains.

And if you can’t find a way to make yourself happy working corporate or any other way job placement, right? Where you don’t have the ability to be creative like an entrepreneur can, it can be stifling. Yeah. But then again, some people want the J O B and they just, they want to clock in, do a thing and clock out and then really go live their life.

And I’m actually, you know, very envious in a lot of ways of that. My, my brain doesn’t work that way. Shut off that way. And my passion comes from what I do for work. Thank goodness for me. Like I feel like very fortunate, but the other side of me is my brain never turns off. I am constantly, constantly working.

So I think, you know, it’s good and bad to both ways, but you’re right. There’s two very separate sets of skills, separate people, separate personalities for those two things. And bless those people who can do that because we need them to do those JLBs like that. We need those people in our world, right. But I think it’s really important to acknowledge.

I’m just not that one. Right. I need to be creative and I need to be entrepreneurial in the way I think. And if you don’t have an opportunity from a job perspective, then it can be stifling. I know there was times in my business when the business wasn’t doing well in the beginning and I was like struggling and blah, blah, blah.

And I would like to say to my husband, maybe I should just quit. Maybe I should just stop working, like stop trying to make the business and I should just go to work. And he just, he literally went, don’t you dare. You’ll be so unhappy. Oh, he knows you then. Yeah, right. Smart man. So when you’re thinking about like all of the success in the year, success in trials, because let’s be honest, you don’t have one without the other, right?

That’s right. And you know, before we, before we started recording, I asked you, like, do you think that you’re an overgiver? And you said, yes. how do you think that that manifests inside yourself? How do I think it manifests inside myself? Oh, I don’t know. That’s a really good question.

Well, here’s the first thing that comes to mind when you, when you say that part is that the reason why I went into restaurants in the first place, right? It was because I had a passion for it. It was because at a very, very young age, I think five or six years old, I remember the few times that my parents would take me and my two brothers out to dinner.

So it wasn’t a lot. We did not have a lot of money, very blue collar. I just remember that every time we went out to dinner, it was a celebration of some kind. The celebration could just be, guess what, you’re not eating at home. But I mean, but it was a celebration and I just remember like having people wait on me.

I just remember, oh, I love like the joy and the celebratory and I loved it. Take, you know, the fact that the waiters took care of me. They brought me my Chicken fingers and fries. Like the whole thing was just so, Oh, I just stuck with me as young age. And then as I went to other restaurants, as I got older and certain, then it was able to work in them and saw how every restaurant, every different concept could kind of bring a different celebration to you.

Like, I think that, you know, that is really hospitality at its best. And that is what’s really in my soul. So I just feel like when it comes to being an over giver, it also comes from that place of like, Hospitality just runs through my blood and I just want to make everyone that comes into contact With me feel seen and heard and understood and valued.

Like that’s just, and I think that stems just from the restaurant industry, but that’s just like who I am. And I know, you know, the last few years I’ve done a lot of like leadership training and personal training, all these different trainings. When you become CEO to. Be the best one. You can be. And a lot of it is about uncovering your superpowers and whatnot.

And when I have to peel back those layers or do my journaling or my visualization or whatever fricking menu board you know, board that I’m making a vision board, it all comes back to the same thing. It’s just like, I exist to help others create the thing of their dreams, the business of their dreams, whatever it is.

And to me, that’s over, you know, that’s an overgiving, but it’s Doesn’t feel like overgiving. Like that’s just, that’s just part of me. When you originally asked me the question about overgiving, I was thinking about the, all the things that I do for my staff, and that is overgiving that is over giving. Yeah.

So I think it’s interesting. I, I, I ask that in that way because. We have a different, everybody has a different definition, pretty much of all the words that are out there. It depends on what your life story has been up till now, you know, what, what, how you see the world, right? To me, overgiving is I mean, I’m the same as you.

I’m a giver. I love to give. I love to serve. I, I will say it often with my clients as well as my team members. Like, I’m just here to help. I want to help. How can I help? Right? To me, overgiving is when I help so much that I’m now not helping me.

So, do you think that there’s been times through your journey where you could say, Oh, I think I’ve done that? Yeah, I, in a sense, in a sense, I can now, and I’ll explain. And that comes when it comes to talking about my team, because there was a time and it wasn’t that long ago where I was, I mean, I guess, Lack of a better way to put it over spoiling them, right?

I was just over spoiling them in every way I could because the business was doing extremely well. I love to give. I love hospitality. So I every, you know, in the business, I designed my business to run without me. So I’ll put it that way. I think everyone should design a business to run without them.

And I did that from day one. I didn’t design I wasn’t able to not run it from day one, but every time I was building it year over year, it was, it was at some point that it would run without me. So when I achieved that kind of level a few years back, where I was like, oh, this thing, I’m like the chess player now.

These are all the chess pieces. I was like, Ooh, now I just get to spoil people. Right. So I would go out and I would, we would do these events where I bring in all these surprises. And the more and more I did, the more people were just like, eh, like there was just like, I had a lot of turnover at the time, which I couldn’t believe.

I was like, how does anybody want to leave here? Like I was like giving them everything. I got the shirt off my back. Like what? And it was just doing, and I’ll never forget sitting down with a gentleman. He’s a friend of mine. He runs a big payroll company here on the East coast. And he’s like, he, I remember him saying.

You’re doing too much. And to me, too much is just not a thing when you’re in hospitality. Too much is not a thing. So I was like, what? That’s not even comprehending in my head. And, and the way he explained it, the way I got it was kind of like where they say, you know, American children, they are spoiled because they, there’s so we give them so many toys that they’re all bored because they have too many versus you go to another country where a child might only have three or five toys.

They like, they’re the happiest kids you’ll ever see. Okay. Because they just have those few things, and they love them fiercely, and that’s what they have. And it’s, it was, I think it was, it leads back to that, right? It was just, I was giving them too much, they just kind of got inoculated by the whole thing.

And then they were like, yeah, nothing felt special anymore. It was weird, because I don’t think that way, but I have to realize that others do view it a different way than I meant it. So I had to dial that way back, and that was hard. That’s hard though. It’s interesting because it doesn’t matter whether it’s our team members, staff members whether it’s our clients or potential clients, being able to understand other people’s Perspectives is very helpful to us as business owners in order to pivot, right, to be able to make the right choices and the right moves.

And when we, when we come at it with this full heart of like, I’m giving you these things and for them to just go, man, it sucks. And then, you know, like, it’s like, but I gave you these things. They’re my shinies. Right. Yeah. Right. You know, having to really figure out a different way through that. Can be difficult.

I’m glad to hear you’ve made it true. Yes, I am on the other side. But it’s interesting because it, like I said, it doesn’t matter which portion of your business we always. I say that entrepreneurship is like the biggest self help program on the planet because you have to grow in order to, like, as a human, we have to change and grow otherwise the business isn’t gonna.

That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Absolutely wild. And I appreciate, like, as a restaurateur in the restaurant business, it is all about service. It is all about how can I make, you know, the person on the other end of that service Love what we’ve done, right? We want a return customer, blah, blah, blah. Like it’s a big deal in the service industry to give, give, give, right.

But we’ve also been trained to think that we under promise and over deliver, but I don’t, but I think that over giving takes us one step past over delivering. It does. Yeah, I agree. And I often explain it to people in that if you feel, especially when we’re talking about clients there’s in that, in the piece of over, over giving or over delivering, over giving to the client.

Of course we want to give our clients a great experience. That’s not, there’s no question about that. And yes, it’s nice to give them a little extra carrot at the end. Yes. Beautiful. But if you’re giving them so much. That you’re now feeling like you’re being taken advantage of you’ve tipped over. Yeah. Oh, yeah so this comes back to lots of people have trouble scope creep, which of course I’m sure you’ve had to deal with some of that too, right?

Oh my God. We’ve definitely had to deal with that. I mean, these are all my, this is bringing me way back and all the things that we’ve been through in the business of like, yeah, there’s, you know, and there was scope creep and there’s everything you said is a spot on. There was, you know, wanting to really over deliver and the whole dog and pony show.

And then, then, you know, the Vegas show with the Morocco’s, we’re going to bring it all out here. And you have to remember that that actually, and as you said earlier, it’s about their perspective, like the, the client perspective. You don’t, you may like that. I may like someone to bring me a Vegas show to my house and be like, this is the greatest thing ever, but not everyone does.

So yeah, it’s. You know, all of this kind of leads back to, I think, why there are corporations, which is, you know, sad to me because I’ve never, ever been in the corporate world. I’ve never been a corporate employee. And I want to say, thank God that I don’t think it’s for me, but there’s a reason why they exist, which is like, you create standards.

There are expectations set. Everybody’s on the same page, whether you work there or you’re a client of that corporation. That’s where I had to kind of go with this is that I had to be like, Oh, I gotta get really corporate about this stuff. I have to have like an employee handbook that like says like what the days off are, what, like you really have to get corporate, which is like, nah, boring, but like I had to in order to not deal with what felt like crazy personalities.

They’re crazy, just not my personality. But it was just, that was it. It was like, okay, everyone has, I think all it comes back to is expectation. Like everyone needs to be at the same starting point and the expectations need to be set in stone to avoid like some of the crazy stuff that can go on. Yeah. You know, I think that like as a business owner, the nicest part about this concept is we can create our own business culture.

Right. So we have the ability to say, Hey, here’s what our expectations are as a company, or here’s what we are going to present. And here’s how we’re going to present ourselves. And here’s what’s acceptable and not acceptable inside the business. Sure. That’s corporate y. However, We also get to choose what that looks like, right?

So we don’t have to choose black and white, harsh corners for our expectations, right? We can say, you know what? Yeah, we have X amount of days off, but you know, whatever, like you can choose what it is that makes your organization work the way your organization does. And so I think that what you said is really valuable.

Yes, you had to start putting this stuff down. You do have to start. Whether you write it down, whether you type it out, whatever the case may be, you still have to put some lines and boundaries around things, but boundaries are important across the entire entrepreneurial journey. You need boundaries around yourself.

what you’re willing to accept and what you’re not willing to accept. Then you need boundaries around your business. What’s your business willing to accept? What’s your business not? Your business is not you, right? You got to be separate. That’s right. Oh, amen. So true. And so each of these pieces, the boundaries are important.

It’s, it’s important not only to identify them. It’s also important to communicate them, but then it’s really important to reinforce them. And that’s what you’re talking about there. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And that’s, that’s the climb up the hill. That’s the hard part is to reinforce. It’s hard I think for, hard for me.

I think it’s hard in a lot of different ways. And it’s, I think mostly it’s because you’re just like, why is everyone just happy? Like I create such a great work environment, why? But you will always, especially the bigger you get, I think, the more you’ll find personalities that might not agree with your, might agree with things, and you’ll always come up against that.

And that’s just, you know, the refining on, on making it, you know, corporate, but really, I mean, you can be creative, like you said, like you, you can be. But you have to make that so crystal clear as you grow and grow and grow and bring in all these new people to organizations so everyone can be on the same page because if not they’ll push back hard and they do.

Well, it’s interesting because I’ve been a part of different corporations before I became my own boss, even though I was like literally like I didn’t have a high school job. I managed babysitting jobs, right? So I was running my own businesses. In that way as a kid. Right. But one of the best things that I saw in the, all of the JOBs that I had, and there was only a few of them before I decided that I was out.

But one of the best things was. understanding that there was a community called a corporate culture, right? So the company actually put all of their new employees through the exact same training course and it was Covey, the seven habits of highly effective people. Oh yeah. And we were all Covey certified.

That was one of the things everybody had to go through. So I did first and second level while I was there. Not everybody did too, but and what was great was, is that because we had the same training, we had the same language. So when I said to a coworker, when they walked up to me and said, I have this thing I need you to do, I was able to say, is that a Q1 or a Q2?

And they knew what I meant. And it was defined. It wasn’t how important is this? Because we knew that based on the quadrants that are what is in Covey, we knew what those meant. And it was a stronger ask than it was to go, well, how important is it? Well, of course his butt’s on fire. He left it to the last minute because I worked in the car industry.

That’s just the way it works. So I think that having that as a company culture makes it so that as you grow, you have less bumps. You will end up, you literally end up filtering out people fairly quickly if they’re not willing to get on board to that company culture. It was very valuable. Yeah, I would agree.

I’d agree with that. So it’s just, yeah, it’s like you said, creating it making it a standard, putting people through it and then sticking with it. Sticking with it can be hard, but yeah, that’s, that’s the secret sauce. And if anyone tries to fight against it, like, Oh, I’m not doing that. I’m never going to incorporate.

Yeah, you are. If you want to grow, you have, you will. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually you have to get to a point because you can’t, we can’t do everything. Even as you first start your business, we try. That’s how we end up anyway. Right. Right. Yep. But as you start to build and you have team members and those team members, then we have more team members.

And especially if you’re not hiring, especially if you now have grown to a point where you now have other people hiring for you then you’re not in control anymore of all of those little tiny pieces having the company culture and having all those things worked out is really important. So it’s not, it’s never too early to start thinking, what do I want my company culture to look like?

That’s right. That’s right. So I asked you another What was that? If you’re not creating intentionally your company culture, there’s one being created for you, that you’re not in control of. 100%. It’s either being created by your employees, or it’s being created by your customers. Yeah, somebody has taken a hold.

That’s right. So I asked you another question earlier. And of course, because I’m neurodivergent, I always like to find other people who are. And so I’d asked you if you’re neurodivergent. You said no. And I said, do you think that you work with other neurodivergents? And your answer was, I believe I do.

But you said, you followed that up and you said, It’s not discussed. Right. This is cool and interesting to me. Do you, do you, What makes you, what makes you think, Oh, I do, but it’s not discussed. So this is for my leadership team. I had brought in an expert in emotional agility. About a year, maybe a year and a half ago, I brought in an expert, spent a lot of money on this program.

I thought it was important. I there’s four of us on the top of my leadership team and we were not gelling and I couldn’t have it. I couldn’t figure out why. To me, it’s so simple. We do, we do math. We please our clients of what’s going on. There was something going on personality wise that I couldn’t figure out myself, brought in this expert and over a three day period, we did all these different assessments and it that and that was the first time I even heard the term neurodivergent.

I didn’t. I’ve never heard it until then. And it was brought up throughout there. And she the woman who was leading the doctor that was leading this, certainly wasn’t going to call, I mean, wasn’t, I think it’s like almost HIPAA protected, right? She wasn’t going to call it out, but it came up. And then from there, I was just kind of able to figure out like, Oh, that’s what that means.

That’s why it’s coming up. And it actually ended up explaining a lot of work styles that were not meshing or, you know, that I was even like, I don’t understand this work style. So. In that way, and I know that’s not a very eloquent way to say it, but again, like that was the first time I heard it, and then that’s why it came up is, is this intense emotional agility training that we did, like, why are we not all just getting along on the same page?

And it was because all of our brains work differently. Yes. So, I loved these people, I love them to this day, like, people that work for me, I want them to work for me forever, they know that, and then from what they say, they want to work with me forever, how are we going to make that happen where everybody’s getting something from this?

So that’s where it kind of came from. So do you think, so I don’t know the ages of the people that you’re working with, whatever, I just know that I mean, I’m in my fifties. I didn’t know until I was in my thirties that I had ADHD. And like when I was a kid, there was no, like, you’re different, you need a diagnosis.

Like, I mean, it just didn’t happen. We just, everybody just had to survive the best way we could, right? Yay, Gen X. So are your, were those people that you’re talking about in the same age bracket as that? Yes. Yeah, I’d say late thirties, mostly forties, early fifties. But yeah, so yeah, for that, for that, yeah, I’d say late thirties and forties.

Yep. Because the concept, so part of the concept is that no neurodivergent isn’t new. It’s been around forever. Right. But we’re starting to talk about it more. We’re starting to be more open with it. We’re starting to say, Hey, this is who I am. Like, that’s what it is. Do you think that people are not identifying because they just haven’t spent the time to look at who they are?

Or do you think that maybe they know what they are, but they’re hiding it?

I think it might be a combination of both. I don’t think, I don’t think there’s anyone, I think, I think maybe they were, yes, they were trying to hide it early on, I would say. I mean, I, and I could be wrong. I actually could be wrong about that. I’m thinking, I’m thinking they were trying to hide it. I’m now that I say that out loud, I’m wondering if Maybe they just didn’t know.

Maybe they were wondering, like, why, why, why is my brain going this way and everyone else is going this way? Like, maybe they were figuring it out too. And since then, I think there’s been I think some, some of our children, so most of us are moms, it’s all sparkles, right? And most of us are moms. And I think some of their kids have been diagnosed with ADHD.

So now that they have that and now being, you know, protected Cabo bear moms, like, we’re like, what does this mean? How do I get help from my counsel? Now we’re all being somewhat educated because we’re just close in that way of, what does it mean? What’s going on? How can we help type things? So now I feel like it’s, it’s, it’s pretty much out there, but it’s not like, yeah, I mean, it’s out there, but it’s not so I mean, it’s hard to really put my finger on that because it’s, again, it feels kind of new.

Yeah. But back to that original conversation when this came up, yeah, I think it was a combination of maybe a little bit of hiding, but hiding more because they just didn’t understand why they were different. Fair enough. Yeah. And it’s interesting to, it’s the more I understand my brain, the more I understand the way that I think.

And the more I sort of look at, you know, the way other people behave or they act or they think, right. You think, ah, okay, that’s why I just don’t understand that person, the way they speak. Like I need to hear it in a different way. Right. So it’s interesting for me, I think that the more that we can make the conversation on how do I think normal regardless of whether I’m a, you know, whether somebody is neurodivergent, whether they’re neurotypical, whether there’s some sort of smash between them all.

We all have different ways of thinking and it isn’t necessarily a neurological thing. Sometimes it’s simply, Oh, here’s what I grew up with. So that’s what I believe. Yeah, definitely. Definitely is that. Yep. And I just think that, you know, we all just need to just. chill and go, you know what, tell me how you think so we can make a better way.

Like, it’s like you were saying, you brought in that person so that you can all figure out how we can all work together because we know we can do great things together. We just keep banging heads. Exactly. And I will say that there was, you know, the person that I’m thinking of to the most in this conversation as a, as a human being, an individual and a lot in the way she produced, I’d be like, God, I really love this person, but man, they’re just not like, I don’t know.

Maybe, maybe, maybe they’re not. For my company and I was kind of going down that road but once all this kind of came out in the open and I just thought differently I was able to like oh so when I think this plus this equals this she’s again this minus this plus this you know over here we’re coming to the same place we’re arriving there differently once I could like understand that in my head it’s been like a dream I’m thank god I didn’t go down the road I’m like I think that we’re just going to part ways because all I had to do was kind of tweak My thought, because I’m like, okay, she just thinks differently.

I mean, there’s not, one’s not better than the other. It’s just different. It’s just completely different. So now that I know that we communicate beautifully, I mean, and, and sky’s the limit and thank God she’s my rockstar, like my number one rockstar on the team. That’s awesome. And it is neat because when you when you are open as a business owner slash CEO, right, like on a team leadership wise, when you’re open to hear other people’s opinions, some people might even if it’s just like, oh, that sky’s blue.

Well, no, it’s more teal. And rather than go below, it’s not as blue go, well, how did why do you see it’s tool teal, right? And you start to understand each other. When we hear each other, we have two ears, right? One mouth, two ears, right? Stephen Covey actually has, there’s an entire section of the book.

It’s called seeking first to understand before being understood. And so when we do come to these situations seeking first, then we can learn so many new things. And sometimes them having that little different way of seeing things can really make a huge difference to the outcome of the project. Oh, it does.

100 percent it does. Yeah. Yeah. It’s super valuable. It’s like the dessert. It’s the cherry on top. It’s great. Yeah. It’s awesome. That’s amazing. I’m so glad that you were able to find somebody who was able to come in and actually work with your team that way to find those, you know, nuances to make you guys come together.

Me too. We’re very fortunate. That’s awesome. So I’m super excited that we were here today and that you shared all these really cool things with me. I would like to know if you could, well, I don’t want to, I want you to tell everybody in the audience where to find you and how they can get best get ahold of you.

Yes, thank you for that. So as you said earlier, I own a company called spark business consulting. So basically what we do is we help small businesses create the business, build the business of their dreams. So that’s what we do. We do bookkeeping, accounting, and consulting where profit first certified.

If you don’t know what that is, definitely look into it. Profit first is Transforming businesses across the world. So a great way to kind of see who we are and what we’re about in any industry would be sparkbusinessconsulting. com. That is our main hub of information. And then specifically, I wrote a book called profit first for restaurants.

Because of my background being a restaurateur, I also teach at Boston university in the hospitality school. So if you, you or anyone, you know, is in the hospitality industry I have the website that goes with the book and there are so many great. It’s a free downloadable tools that will help out any restaurant or anyone even in the retail space or any hospitality company, and that is Profit First, the number four restaurants.

com. So Profit First, the number four restaurants. com and you can get all free tools there. Perfect. Thank you so much. I hope that everybody takes you up on that offer and goes and checks out that website. We’ll have everything in the show notes as well. It has been such a pleasure to have you today and thank you so much for this beautiful chat.

Thank you, Angela. This was great. I appreciate it. yourself a fantastic day. You as well.