We had our first interview on the show with a smart and successful business woman who I highly respect…My Mom!
[Transcript]
Adam: On this episode we have my mum with us. People enter business for the first time, they don’t just get it.
Diana: No.
Adam: I know, and you saw when I first started I did not just get it. It took a long time before…and perhaps there’s like a difference between… Like when you stepped into your business there was an entity, there actually was something, there was the…
Diana: There was the foundation.
Adam: Exactly, there was the auto glass shop, whereas I have to make something up kind of thing. Mind you, I did kind of copy what other people are doing…
Diana: And almost not as tangible as what I have because it’s a storefront, people can see it. And I felt good because I’m a people person and people were flowing in. Maybe trickle lies [SP] that time. I wanted…
Rianna: What’s your business?
Diana: It’s an auto glass business, yes. And the other thing is the aspect that I’m a woman to get into that business.
Adam: What’s the name of that business so we can plug it in the show.
Diana: So it’s Van Isle Auto Glass
Adam: And that is in?
Diana: Langford, British Columbia, which is on Vancouver Island.
Adam: And for people who don’t know what Langford is, it’s just like a suburb basically…
Diana: Of Victoria.
Adam: Yeah, Victoria. So we were talking about how you were able to…and this fascinates me to this day…is you were able to just jump into this business and just sort it out and that was it. I’m oversimplifying it obviously but most people with no previous real business experience, you drop them in that situation and they would struggle.
Diana: Peoples would expect them to sink.
Adam: Absolutely, but you not only me swam you… I don’t know what would be more than that greater than just swimming, greater than just paddling.
Diana: Yes. I think…
Adam: What do you attribute that to? Are you saying that you attribute that to the immigrant type upbringing?
Diana: I got two…
Adam: Two things.
Diana: Areas that are super attributable to this. Well, number one is I’ve done this before. Most people would not relate this but I see it, but I’ve already done this once before.
Adam: How so?
Diana: If you had to get yourself out of a bad situation financially prior to being in business and taking on a business that was in financial trouble and you’ve done it already. You just pick up that same pattern. It’s just a little bigger.
Adam: Got you.
Diana: So if you’ve gone through a divorce or any kind of relationship breakup where you end up having to fix things financially, you make it… You try to structure it out. It’s a list you’d call all the creditors it’s not as daunting. You’ve done it before, you know how it goes. And if you’re a strong person in terms of patience and perseverance and know you can do it, because you’ve tried it and you’ve done it before you’ve been successful at it. I’d say that’s where I got that understanding. Then there’s…
Adam: So you kind of looked at it just like it was just you knew the structure, you knew you the process, you knew I’ve gotta do this this and this and I know because I’ve done it before in my personal life that it’ll sort of work out this way.
Diana: It immediately started out as a communication thing. I started out… I actually had a journal every single day, questions asked…
Adam: Interesting.
Diana: Those, and then answered, every single day. Just like…
Adam: Questions asked of yourself or?
Diana: I asked the questions and I received the answers through a mentor who was actually the previous business owner. So however he had [Crosstalk] that business…
Adam: The fellow you bought it from.
Diana: Yes.
Steele: Got you.
Diana: He had not been on site and therefore could… I can’t attribute the downfall of that business to him operating it, simply he was not on site. You really have to be hands on in a business, especially that nature.
Adam: Absolutely.
Diana: So honestly I went in the first month saying, “Wait a minute. I don’t know if I’m gonna take this over.” You may know that.
Adam: Yeah, I do.
Diana: But after a month of overseeing everything and how it looked, and seeing the potential, I decided I was gonna take it on.
Adam: So what was the second thing that you attribute?
Diana: I would say hard work, because you can’t be afraid to pour it on seven days a week if necessary and sacrifice. You need to have that kind of work ethic or it’s not gonna happen.
Adam: Especially with a business that is already in the hole, like you’re not, you’re not starting from scratch here, you’re already…you kind of already got an uphill battle on top of everything else that comes with new business ownership or running a business for the first time kind of thing.
Diana: And then you have to take into consideration what your talents are and what the talents are around you. And you have to utilize everybody’s talents. And give them credit for it while you’re doing this because they need to be encouraged and they need to be rewarded for these talents. And they need to feel just as good as you do about the success that’s coming to be.
Adam: So that work ethic, that hard working attitude, where does that come from?
Diana: Well, my parents for sure. Yes. I have to say that if I look at every one of my siblings they have the exact same work ethic as I do. So it could be a curse because we don’t really…it seems like it’s hard for us to actually have down time. We…
Adam: When is the last time you took a vacation, exactly?
Diana: Before I took on the business exactly.
Adam: Yes, which was how many years ago?
Diana: Four years ago. That is correct.
Adam: That’s awesome. She makes me look lazy, like actually.
Diana: No, not true. It’s very efficient. If we want to switch gears and talk about Adam now.
Adam: No, it’s not about me.
Diana: Because I really see how efficient he is. He can pack stuff into one day that many people would take weeks to do. When you’re in that mode and you really believe that you can achieve and you see the success, it just drives you. And I think that you receive that. You can really see the future and how it’s changing before your eyes.
Adam: I think once you discover the carrot. Once you’ve seen or created or…once you’ve kind of seen the carrot, all you want are more carrots.
Diana: Exactly.
Adam: You just wanna start collecting because you’ve had that success and you’ve been given that confidence. Or you’ve earned that confidence that, “Okay, so I see what I did there I applied X. and Y and I got Z. So what if I just do that again. Could I just do that again and get that Z again?”
Diana: And you can’t stop doing it. But it seems like what we’re describing is a passion to do this but some people…
Adam: But it’s not a passion. It’s a passion for business or it’s a passion for Auto Glass.
Diana: I’d say it’s a passion for business and for doing something that you actually do enjoy even though you never thought that this would be it.
Adam: What did you do before? What were you doing before?
Diana: Sales would have been my primary vocation.
Adam: There’s definitely some crossover there for sure.
Diana: Yes, and prior to that I was working towards a degree in education. And I think I’ve always had a real affection for working with people. That I really enjoy because I get to meet new people every single day and I’m actually making friends with people every single day. It’s fun. It really is. I couldn’t do it if there weren’t the people. It just, it wouldn’t be doable.
Adam: I’m sure you get some interesting characters into the shop here and there.
Diana: We do. of course.
Adam: That’s always nice.
Diana: And you just have to enjoy the good parts of every person that comes in the door. And if they don’t have a good part, you find it and you bring it out of them, because we try to make it fun. For them too, because it’s supposed to be a boring thing to do right. Or maybe they haven’t had a problem and they’re having to deal with that where you just…
Adam: It doesn’t have to be painful.
Diana: No.
Adam: And I think if you can show them that, show them your passion, kind of bring down the wall a little bit, and show them how interested you are in what you do, then I think that kind of…it brings them along.
Diana: It does.
Adam: It brings what is a monotonous kind of pain in the ass type activity and all of a sudden now it’s kind of an experience. There’s the customer service and they’re enjoying the interaction and there’s more to it than that.
Diana: I’d really like to see what percentage of people come in that are women. I think it’s more than 50%.
Adam: Why do think that is?
Diana: I don’t know. First of all, we have…
Adam: Because of you?
Diana: Obviously I think that word gets around. Women share with women, they’re really good at sharing.
Adam: You don’t say.
Diana: Yes, and it’s a good example this morning. So one of the things that I do incorporate is the teaching aspect. So most people when they buy insurance they don’t know what they bought. They just walk out of there going, “Okay, well, I must have done the right thing because the broker sold this to me, and basically recommended this, this and that,” right? Well, in fact a lot of times they come out of there with not the correct package for them. So I teach them what they have.
Adam: So some education [inaudible 00:10:12]?
Diana: Yes, and they feel better, more empowered.
Adam: Which I bet they don’t get elsewhere.
Diana: They’ll never feel like they can’t come into a shop like ours, an auto shop and…
Adam: And feel pressure.
Diana: Feel like that they can’t do just as good a job at it as perhaps their partner or whoever might have done it.
Adam: Well, that’s interesting because I know when I get on the phone with people…and I too, like that’s one of the better parts of my day is when somebody gives me a call. When someone gives me the opportunity to try and solve one of their problems or look into something that has gone wrong and to try and find a solution for it.
That, that opportunity to just…and maybe it’s because I work in a little office, and it’s quiet and I don’t hear from other people. So maybe there is that sort of want, that desire for human interaction beyond…
Diana: Of course.
Adam: Skype and things like that which is sort of my day to day communication or Slack or what have you.
Diana: You’re true response…
Adam: It’s a treat. It is absolutely a treat. And I don’t know like, I’ve had some back and forth with a couple people about my sales approach. And my sales approach has been to date educate, kind of explain to them the whole process. And that slightly changed as of recent. But I take a lot of pride in educating them and kind of showing them…kind of taking the mystery out of the whole thing. Because I think a lot of…at least in my business…you’ve never really worked with another sort of marketing company per se but…I think you’ve worked with one.
Diana: I’ve actually…
Adam: Do they go out of their way to explain how everything works?
Diana: I get very little interaction with these people, no.
Adam: There’s no…and hope I can say the same thing and I’m pretty sure I can say the same thing about like Alex and Surge and everybody else on our team that interacts with clients. I have seen it, I’ve witnessed them I’ve been on the calls with them, is they take…they enjoy their craft. So they love talking about their craft. And so there’s, there’s always that education component. And I’ve only received good feedback about that. However, at the same time, I think…and this was the argument that a gentleman, a colleague of mine was making was that people want…at the end of the day people wanna know what am I getting. Like what…
Diana: Bottom line.
Adam: Yeah, exactly, bottom line. How much money are you gonna make me? How many more leads are you gonna make me?
Diana: Often it’s about I just wanna know what success I’m gonna have…
Adam: When I’m gonna have it.
Diana: Is my money gonna be spent wisely, and I don’t have a lot of time so I want you to do it all for me, basically. That’s how it is done. Like some my customers…there’s a real difference in customers. Some of them are super busy people. You have to understand. They just want it done. They’re gone.
Adam: I want to…before we get too far, already and we’re already kind of…I don’t wanna spend too much time here because we want to go enjoy our weekend.
Diana: Exactly.
Adam: Because I don’t get to see my mom very often, I wanna provide just a little bit of further context. So when you took over Van Isle Auto Glass, as you mentioned they were in deep water. They were, I guess…
Diana: Financial distress, close the doors, that was it.
Adam: Pretty much on the brink of bankruptcy, you would say?
Diana: Yes.
Adam: So that’s been four years now and… You don’t have to give me like strict numbers or anything like that, but how much would you say revenues have grown since then, and obviously they were not profitable at all?
Diana: Well, we started a profit the minute I got in there. That’s the truth of it.
Adam: God damn.
Diana: Because I can say that for sure because Ron, my partner, is an accountant and he…
Adam: That helps, I’m sure.
Diana: He could tell right away that we were already in a profit zone. The only thing was is that we had so much…
Adam: So was that cutting people like getting rid of people or… Okay, so you…
Diana: No, I didn’t get paid. We had to account for that, that was an understood. However…
Adam: How long did you go before you got paid? How many…was it a year or was it six months or was it?
Diana: One year.
Adam: One year not paid.
Diana: One year not paid. I could’ve been paid…
Adam: Who does that these days? Who can take over like a business and be like, “I will work my absolute ass off…”
Diana: And not be paid. I know.
Adam: And not be paid.
Diana: And that’s the perseverance part of it. You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve gotta have a dream…
Adam: Yes, you really do.
Diana: And you truly have to…
Adam: You have to believe that you can get there.
Diana: You have to make it happen.
Adam: But once you made that investment, once you paid that money…
Diana: Well, I had to pay all the debt off. I could have been paid.
Adam: So you took on their debt.
Diana: But I was paying debt instead of paying me.
Adam: Got you.
Diana: That’s why, while we were making a profit, it was going into paying the debt. And the way Ron phrases it is, “Diana, don’t fool yourself. You are actually making a wage, but you’re making the wage in the equity of that business. You’re now earning the asset of a business. So what…basically you can sell that now. That’s your wage, right there.”
Adam: How much…and this is a small little auto glass shop, like they can…you guys, you can do like one, maybe two cars at a time?
Diana: We can do four at a time.
Adam: Oh, you can do. Okay.
Diana: Yes, and we did four today. I wasn’t there, but…
Adam: No, I mean like at a single time, at an instance.
Diana: At a single moment? Well…
Adam: Because I’m trying to compare it to like an oil shop where you have four cars pull in and they’re all getting serviced.
Diana: If I had four technicians it would be four at a time, but it’s two technicians.
Adam: Got you.
Diana: So you’re correct.
Adam: One or two at a time kind of thing.
Diana: Two at a time yes.
Adam: Okay, so small outfit. How much…and you can use a percentage, you can give me a dollar figure, it doesn’t matter. How much more revenue are you bringing in now when compared to when you took over four years ago?
Diana: We’re…
Adam: Two times three times four times?
Diana: Yeah, let me just think about that. It’s…on our good months, which summer’s our busy season, it’s almost four times.
Adam: Four times in four years
Diana: Gross, yeah.
Adam: It’s amazing.
Diana: Yes.
Adam: And, I know we’ve been doing a little bit of work for you as of recent, that’s a recent thing, because we just weren’t doing it before. But that didn’t happen because of me. Because of my involvement, that happened because of not digital marketing, or not necessarily radio, but rather like guerilla marketing. You were knocking…like tell us about some of the things you did in the early days to market the business.
Diana: Well, the first kind of marketing that actually took place was SEO, no doubt about it. You came in in April…
Adam: Oh, yeah, we did a little, a tiny little…
Diana: There wasn’t any money to do what you…
Adam: We did a little initial optimization.
Diana: That’s right. The huge success started to show up in SEO probably a year in. And then we started having a little bit of money towards doing more marketing.
Adam: Guerilla type.
Diana: The guerrilla marketing though is different. It is connecting with…
Adam: Because this is SEOs, whatever. I’m not interested…
Diana: Guerilla marketing.
Adam: I’m interested in the stuff that people don’t do. Like no one does that. People don’t. They just say, “Let’s buy more ads. Let’s pay some money to this radio station and not measure it.”
Diana: I have to say that the Guerilla marketing is probably 50% of our business, and I’m not kidding.
Adam: Give me some examples of what that looks like.
Diana: Okay, how about…
Adam: Feel free to use the example where you go into parking lots.
Diana: Okay, well I started off in our little parking lot, which is in the little plaza that we’re in. I had created cards that were specific to one job. It wasn’t just a business card that had our name or…it was specific to one kind of repair.
Adam: Chip repair.
Diana: That’s right. Chip repair. And I would take the card and if I saw a chip I would stick it on the door panel. So you come in your car, “Yeah, I see that…”
Adam: That’s old school.
Diana: It is old school but I can tell you… And the guy said, “Diana, you’re going to be in trouble with that. I won’t do it I’m…” Then they started seeing results. People were coming in. And then they realized that it was okay for me to do it because I was a woman and I could get away with it, is what they said.
Adam: Maybe. Have you ever been stopped by anybody? Has anybody ever said anything?
Diana: If someone approaches their vehicle, it is amusing sometimes. And I can see that this is their car that I just placed that on, I say hello.
Adam: Okay, that’s good.
Diana: And I politely say, “Well, I hope you don’t mind that I put that card there.”
Adam: That’s a pleasant way to go about it.
Diana: “I’ve noticed that you have a chip in your windshield.” That’s all.
Adam: Instead of like stealthily sneaking away and them watch you slink away.
Diana: And that’s my opportunity to have that fun conversation that… They say, “Thank you.” I have never seen a card dropped on the ground. How about that?
Adam: Well, maybe people who don’t litter people are not littering.
Diana: No, no, that’s not true. I think it’s because the price is right. And they actually think, “Well, that was thoughtful. I can use this.” And that’s it.
Adam: Got you. What else, one more.
Diana: Okay, well, I connect with people in the community that have local businesses. I support a woman who makes calendars with her own artwork. And when I connect with these people that have businesses, they all get these really awesome calendars with pictures of places that we all love on the island.
Adam: So you hire this woman, this local woman. She produces these calendars for you and then you take those calendars around to…
Diana: Yes, the message is people, businesses, like local businesses supporting local businesses. I’ve created a circle of businesses in the plaza. Everyone that gets work done at our shop gets a free cup of coffee at the diner at the end of the mall.
Adam: Got you. I remember that.
Diana: Those people…
Adam: There’s little bizdev [SP] opportunities.
Diana: Yeah, everyone in that plaza comes to us. There’s no doubt about it, right? We just, we help each other. Peninsula Co-op, another local business on the island. It’s a gas station. We provide our customers with a car wash voucher. It’s all local. It’s a circle.
Adam: I think there’s a lot of people who, for fear of being denied or shut down, they won’t go do that stuff because they just don’t have the sort of confidence to get out there and knock on some doors and do those kind of… It’s kind of like cold calling a little bit.
Diana: It is.
Adam: And I don’t know if that’s, maybe it’s a generational thing. We’re kind of behind our phones, behind our computers kind of thing. We don’t interact with people as much, or what do you think?
Diana: I think if you don’t approach it as in you want to help them and they help you, then they’re…
Adam: So how can you help them first?
Diana: Yeah, I wanna help them, too. If they just hold a collection of my cards for just that one repair job, and hand it out because they have an auto shop, too, they’re expressing concern for their customer. “Look, we have a place for you to go. It’s half price. Why don’t you take your car there.” It’s a mutual thing. It’s goodwill in the community. And not only are we receiving business, they are because they’re showing their goodwill aspect towards their customer.
Adam: Yeah, that makes sense.
Diana: It really is. That particular… Like you asked about that kind of marketing that I was doing, that was our first marketing approach, that chip repair business. While it isn’t…
Adam: It’s kind of a loss leader almost, you could say.
Diana: Well, it’s not a big money, a revenue maker…
Adam: But I guess people are familiar with your brand for the first.
Diana: It truly is the introduction to our service.
Adam: And they may not pay for something more that time, but the time after that perhaps?
Diana: Yes. Well, they’re taking pictures of this card, they’re sending it off on Facebook. They’re really, really connecting with us because of that goodwill gesture that we are selling it for half the price of our competitors.
Adam: Got you.
Diana: It’s definitely made a difference.
Adam: Yeah. I have a thing called an audit. Basically we do an audit of their links essentially, links pointing to their website or roughly, something called a citation audit to be exact, $7 and we lose $3 on every single one that we do at minimum.
Diana: Yes.
Adam: And sometimes it can be a little bit more, just kind of depends. And the folks that are… My team, when they do it, sometimes they’re putting in more work than they’re paid for as well because they do it on a unit basis. So we’re both a lot of times taking a loss. But what we found is we are newer to the game than some of the other people, and we aren’t as perhaps well branded as some of the other guys who are just a little bit more entrenched, they’re doing speaking, and they’re doing this.
So it’s kind of a way for people to come in and… People are kind of…their little bit skittish when it comes to internet marketing because quite honestly, most people that come to me have already been scammed twice, at least. So when they’re talking to me or looking at my website, they’re already assuming I’m a liar. And so I need to convince them otherwise. So for $7 they can kind of engage with our company in a meaningful, but very low cost low barrier type of way. And then that gives us this opportunity that we wouldn’t have otherwise had, because they would have to pay $400 kind of minimum to do anything with us. No risk, 7 bucks, the price of that…well, a little bit more expensive than that.
And what we found…and I’m not very good at doing the math, but we kind of figured it out more or less is that enough people were coming back. In fact, way more people were coming back to buy other stuff, it more than made up for the the loss that we were taking.
Diana: I love the referrals. And I’m sure that you’ve found that there’s gotta be people who know other people in business and they refer. Those are the best, because these people have already been qualified as good people. We are so lucky we have the best customers, really. I believe it 100%. It’s very rare that we don’t have a good customer. I think part of it is that we bring out the best in people because they’re happy. And they love… One lady sat in our shop, she said to me the other day, “I love coming here.” I couldn’t believe it. She is an elderly lady but she sat there and enjoyed herself just sitting in the reception.
Adam: Because you kind of made a little, not an oasis, but like it’s a little sort of area where we people can kind of do their own thing and it’s pleasant. It’s not like your typical…
Diana: It actually feels like…
Adam: It’s not like an auto shop where they’ve got a coffee pot on and that’s like it. It’s just this dry sort of smelly environment.
Diana: They tell me their stories, so that’s how comfortable…
Adam: Well, it’s because you’re so close to them. You have that desk and they’re sitting right there, it’s like almost natural.
Diana: I know so many people’s life stories. I’ll drive them home, by the way, sometimes. That’s when most of it comes out.
Adam: Good God.
Diana: It’s fun because really, people just need to share. And if you have that opportunity to connect with somebody, even if you’re just getting your vehicle worked on. Empathy is everything. If you connect with that person and they can connect with you…
Adam: There’s a quotable right there. Sarah, we got to use that.
Diana: Empathy is everything.
Adam: Empathy is everything. We’re gonna do like a little picture of you and then it’s faded out and then we’re gonna put some text on top of it. Empathy is everything, Diana Steele.
Diana: Thanks you.
Adam: It’ll look good. I’ll send it to you. What’s the plan for the future? Are you going to continue to… are you gonna keep this? Are you gonna potentially buy into another? Or what’s the plan there?
Diana: Well, I ask myself that every day, really. Most of my days are good days, although there are times when I think that I don’t have enough time with family. I think every business owner struggles with that.
Adam: Balance, no such thing.
Diana: Exactly. I think what it means…
Adam: Or balance is what you want it to mean. Like you can have balance if you want but that is a choice. You either have it or you don’t. And it’s a matter of weighing priorities and what’s important to you at that moment.
Diana: Well, there’s been a lot of progress in the area of growth but…
Adam: Well, that’s addictive, isn’t it?
Diana: It is addictive and that is part of the problem.
Adam: Yes, of course. I can relate.
Diana: Things just keep growing and then there’s more demand for your time. And I actually remember the first year I had more time. I truly had more time to do things. But now it’s almost like I got a ball rolling and I’m not even having to market as much because my people that come in are marketing for me.
Adam: And that only drives that desire to want more and more because now you don’t even have to do as much work. Now you can just sort of tinker and sort of watch it from the sort of the top and just adjust the dials.
Diana: What about all the friends I’ve created in the community? Right? Like people that own local businesses that constantly come through. I just don’t know how many fleets we’re doing now.
Adam: What do you mean fleets?
Diana: Well, moving companies.
Adam: Got you.
Diana: Just everyone.
Adam: Cable companies whatever bringing in there…
Diana: Pest control, everything, they’re all coming in, right.
Adam: That’s pretty sweet.
Diana: It’s pretty nice. And you really get to develop the relationship with these people.
Adam: Brandon, Rianna, you guys are business owners. Is there any anything that comes to mind for you guys that you’d be kind of curious about as you’re kind of growing your own business? Anything, any questions that you might have for this young lady here?
Diana: He’s messing with me.
Adam: And I’m putting them on the spot, too.
Diana: I know.
Adam: Pressure, pressure, pressure.
Brandon: [inaudible 00:29:18]
Rianna: [inaudible 00:29:20]
Adam: Passing the torch.
Brandon: I enjoyed more about what you were just talking about. And [inaudible 00:29:29]
Adam: You guys get to interact doing weddings and things like that and all the other videography that you guys do.
Diana: You get a lot of happy occasions, I’m sure.
Adam: So you get to really engage with your customer in one of the most important moments of their entire life. If not the…
Brandon: Yes.
Diana: But they might be stressful moments, too.
Brandon: They are stressful. But I really appreciated everything you said about empathy and connecting with people. That’s something we decided would be a big difference from us to other videographers, too. Which are very… Just they approach their job as technicians, which we realize we’re storytellers and we’ve gotta be there with the people.
Adam: I remember you were telling me that you guys do this kind of, sort of an interview far before the event. You like go and just hang out with the couple or hang out with the company…
Diana: Get to know them.
Adam: And just kind of get to know their quirks and things that you can maybe be…
Diana: Capitalize on.
Adam: Yeah, well, maybe they don’t see them because it’s just them. They’re just around each other all the time, but you from an outsider’s perspective can kind of pick up on that stuff and bring it out when it’s time to shoot that wedding or what have you.
Diana: Like who has the sense of humor. How do you bring that out?
Brandon: I look for the characters, right. That’s just exactly… We met with the couple I think twice before, not on camera, just hanging out. And then we met with them twice before the wedding with the cameras, and we got footage [Crosstalk]
Adam: You did like some test filming of them before even the wedding.
Brandon: Yeah, we met up with them when they were hanging out with friends and going to talk about wedding stuff. And one time they were having like a dinner with friends. Another friend was getting married. So a lot of…and then we kind of prompted questions and then we just wanted… We had a certain story in mind, so we’re just trying to bring it out. And that was from meeting them off camera, we thought like, exactly, we made the characters and were going for a certain arc and stuff like that.
Rianna: I have a question.
Adam: There we go.
Rianna: All right, so I’m just wondering what has been your biggest challenge so far if there’s been one that stands and how?
Brandon: I got a question too.
Rianna: And how did you overcome it?
Adam: Guys, we don’t have that much time.
Diana: Biggest challenge.
Rianna: Yeah.
Diana: Can you please everybody. And I’m talking about employees. Can I…and do I need to please them all the time. I am their support network, for sure. I need to build the foundation that they need to do a good job. I need to make sure that they are taken care of. My commitment is taking care of…I did that right from the start. A couple of them didn’t know if they were gonna to get paid. They knew what the conditions were there. I never failed them that way. But then there’s all those other areas, right? Yes, you can pay them, okay, but can you meet all their other needs. Because employees can be high maintenance at times, right?
Adam: Everyone is different. You have to manage everyone just a little bit differently.
Diana: Exactly, and if you have good staff that understands that, okay, well, yeah Diana is giving more to so and so in that area, but that’s because that person needs that. I don’t. She’s going to give me something more in this area because I need that in this area. It’s just like doing… Hey, I raised two kids. You’ve gotta understand personality, guys…
Adam: You don’t raise them the same way. You raise them sort of a little bit differently.
Diana: Individually, exactly. Everybody has different needs and you need to support those needs. And sometimes it can get a little bit crazy.
Brandon: So that’s the hard part is figuring… The hardest is figuring out their needs?
Diana: Yes, people, your [Crosstalk]
Adam: Because you’re managing personalities, essentially.
Diana: Exactly.
Brandon: Okay. I got a question too.
Adam: That’s a good answer. I like that.
Brandon: It sounded like the first year was like a real hustle, right? Kind of like what everyone thinks the first year of a business is when they kind of imagine it. It sounds like you had one of those real hustling year. What is the biggest difference from year one, year two, year three, year four.
Adam: I know the answer. Go for it.
Diana: No, you tell me.
Adam: Well, I imagine it’s kind of like, for me, confidence.
Diana: Yeah.
Adam: Once you’ve done it and seen that if I just do a little bit of this and a little bit that…
Diana: Confidence is…
Adam: It snow balls and then you believe in yourself. So every year you’re just a little bit more confident, a little bit more able to take those risks. Which, chances are because of that experience which has led to that confidence you’re able to just do more. You’re more at peace, almost.
Diana: I think once you understand that your customers actually trust you, it builds your confidence, too. The trust factor, right? When I originally took over the business, seeing as there wasn’t another woman glass shop owner on the whole island, I didn’t tell people that I owned the shop. No.
Adam: That’s interesting.
Diana: I did not. It was very seldom that they would know. They thought…
Adam: Why did you do that?
Diana: Well, because I was not totally convinced. I thought it was too risky. And we were on a precipice. Like we were just like teetering at the beginning. That no, why risk it. If they really truly believe that it has to be a man that’s running the shop to feel competent about the job being done correctly, because this is the auto business, right? Even if it isn’t mechanical, it is still technical in a different way, right? I just let it be.
But then I started realizing that my guys were saying, if they were asked, “Do you own the shop?” “No, no, she does. That’s our boss over there.” They’d smile and they thought it was neat. And we had done the cleanup of the shop, too. Like we had basically cleaned everything out and reconditioned everything. We rebuilt it, basically.
Adam: There was a woman’s touch in there obviously.
Diana: Oh, yeah. And you retool, you clean out all the stuff, you feel better about being called the owner, as well. I don’t know if I wanted to tell everyone I was the owner when it wasn’t as perfect. So what I was trying to create, right.
Adam: And now has that changed four years later?
Diana: I don’t feel any reservation about saying that I’m the owner of the shop at this time.
Adam: And why do you think that has… Do you think it’s just time has passed and…?
Diana: It’s like, you know, I know enough people now that…and we’ve done enough, like thousands of jobs that I just feel like…
Adam: You’ve proven yourself kind of thing.
Diana: Yeah, we’ve proven ourselves and myself, I’ve proven myself. too. But as a whole we have, right?
Adam: Cool. Well I think let’s leave it there. I don’t know that more can be said…
Diana: I don’t know…
Adam: Oh, I’m sure more can be said but we’d be here all day.
Diana: Maybe I won’t say another word tonight. I only brought one business card with me, is that?
Adam: Whenever I’m around her or whenever we do anything as a family, it’s Van Isle this, Van Isle that. Every conversation there is a way for it to end up with it Van Isle.
Diana: I’ll find a way to sneak something in.
Adam: So maybe we got it out of you now. We’ll see.
Diana: It’s a passion. I gotta say one last thing. I was speaking to my hairdresser the other day and he says, “Diana, I really truly believe that we don’t necessarily have to take what we think is our passion and pursue it. It’s more like you do something really well and it becomes your passion. Because you’re doing it so well, now it’s your passion.”
Adam: It’s interesting that she says that given the episode previous to this one where I talked about passion and how passion is kind of overrated. It doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to like wait for this passion to come along to take action. You find something you’re good at and you can become passionate about that.
Diana: Exactly.
Adam: That’s interesting.
Diana: It really rung true with me, and I thought about you at the same time. I thought well, we just grabbed on to something that we felt we could do a good job of and just ran with it, and it has become a passion.
Adam: Cool. So many similarities. That’s weird. Cool. Well, guys, thank you for being here, for your attention. We appreciate it. I hope as always that you got some value out of it, that I didn’t just waste your time. And I hope you will check out the next episode. You can hear about it by subscribing. You’ll get a little notification from YouTube, or obviously from Facebook if you follow us, you can follow our page. If you like our page on Facebook you’ll get a little notification. Let you know when the next episode comes out.
Yeah, we’ve got lots more, lots more coming. So I think I like this interview thing. I think I wanna do one every, maybe every five episodes or every 10 episodes, and find someone new and dig deep and get a little bit of knowledge. Knowledge that I can’t maybe provide each time. So thank you again, guys. I do appreciate it, and until next time.
