Resources:

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kathi Burns: Hi there. I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you, who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming.

The Organized Energized Podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at thepodcastdotorganizedandenergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organized Energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now, let's get into the show.

Hi everyone. Thanks for joining the Organized and Energized podcast today. Today you're in for a treat. We are going be speaking with Charmaine Hammond. She's been in the business of changing lives and raising dreams for more than 25 years through teaching the principles of collaboration, partnership, and sponsorship.

She's known to my circle as the sponsorship queen. As a certified speaking professional, 11 times bestselling author, yes, 11 times bestselling author. Charmaine shows her unmatched speaking sponsorship and entrepreneurial experiences with business owners, nonprofits, authors, and speakers looking to expand the funding and reach of our of their projects. And that includes you and me. We're all looking to expand our reach. So hold onto your seats and get ready for this amazing interview with Charmaine. You're going to love it.

Hi everyone. I am back and I am with Charmaine Hammond. She's a certified speaking professional. You're going to learn all that and hear that she truly is through this interview. So welcome to the show, Charmaine

[00:01:35] Charmaine Hammond: Thank you so much, Kathi. Looking forward to the conversation today.

[00:01:38] Kathi Burns: As I call you Charlene. Yeah, there you go. It's good to have you on the show. You've been speaking for quite a long time. How did you get into that? What's the backstory of how you became a speaker and how, and also we'll talk about sponsorship a little bit later. Yeah. Let's hear your backstory a little bit.

[00:01:55] Charmaine Hammond: The backstory actually started out in jail. I was a correctional officer after I finished high school. I worked in the correctional system for about 10 years, and then when we moved to another city, the city that we moved to the jail wasn't actually open. So I needed to go find a new career. And I ran a nonprofit organization, worked for health, and in the meantime I went back to school, got a degree, a master's degree in conflict analysis and management. And then shortly thereafter, got certified as a mediator and opened up my own mediation dispute resolution and training company. And that's where I started getting into training and speaking was about 30 years ago now.

[00:02:36] Kathi Burns: Wow. So the jail was closed. We need to close all the jails, in my opinion.

[00:02:39] Charmaine Hammond: Yeah, there was a lot of people in the community that could have easily filled it, but it wasn't open for business at the time.

[00:02:46] Kathi Burns: What were you doing in, in the jail?

[00:02:49] Charmaine Hammond: I was a correctional officer. So a jail guard, yes.

[00:02:52] Kathi Burns: Okay. So that had a lot of probably mediation happening with it, didn't it?

[00:02:57] Charmaine Hammond: It did. It did. And a lot of deescalation a lot of negotiation skills to keep the inmates and the staff safe and just to get through having a good 12 hour shift. And it was when I left the correctional system that I actually found that I was missing that the process of how people come together in a really difficult conversation and figure out a solution together. And that's what kind of spurred me on to go get trained as a mediator. And of course, all the skills that I had working in corrections, being able to respond, in violent situations, deal with some really nasty conflicts that came in very handy when I became a mediator.

[00:03:40] Kathi Burns: It's so funny. I think a lot of times for us entrepreneurs that we bring forward all the past skills that we've had and then combine them into what we love. Do you consider what you're doing now, like your dharma? Is that what your life has progressed towards naturally and you feel like this is the skin I'm in?

[00:03:58] Charmaine Hammond: Yes. Yes. I love speaking and training. I know that even growing up, I always had this tendency to be the natural mediator and the facilitator of problem solving, not necessarily my own, but for other people. And I just en enjoyed the process of challenging situations coming to a healthy closure. And now the work I do in corporations and government and business, I'm really passionate about making sure that people look forward to Mondays, that Sundays is not full of panic attacks as that the workday comes upon them. And conflict really creates a lot of stress for people.

[00:04:40] Kathi Burns: It really does, and don't when everybody handles it different, like some people would run away, some people would cower some people I can see little Charmaine on the playground going, okay, Joey, don't hit Sally.

[00:04:51] Charmaine Hammond: You're absolutely right, Kathi that we all have these different tendencies to how we respond to conflict. And sometimes that'll depend on who the situation is with and what the conflict is about. But some people have a natural tendency to avoid conflict. Other people have a natural tendency to almost become competitive. It's my way or the highway. Other people tend to be more of that collaborative let's work on a solution together approach. And then you've got some folks who really just wanna strive for a compromise. Let's meet in the middle. And the key is to figure out what your style is and be able to shape it differently so that when you're in conversations with people who have a style that's different than your own, you don't keep hitting roadblocks.

[00:05:39] Kathi Burns: I can see that totally. Do you use a different like there's DISC and there's all the different personality analysis tools. Do you use those frequently whenever you walk into a corporate environment or to a situation?

[00:05:51] Charmaine Hammond: A lot of the companies that I work for have taken DISC or Meyer Briggs or True Colors, and they're great to help people understand personality. And one of the tools that I love to help understand how we work, how we approach work, and where we get into conflict is called the How Stacks Working Style inventory. It's an oldie but a goodie. And then the conflict instrument I love to use is the Thomas Kilman instrument. It's a fantastic tool to help people determine what their predominant reaction or response to conflict is and then when we understand more about ourselves, it's easier to understand more about each other.

[00:06:30] Kathi Burns: And we can see it in each other too. We can see that, oh, that's not me. Oh yeah, that's Joey, right? Oh, that's very interesting. So when you're called in to what's your most common scenario? When do people call you in and hire you?

[00:06:45] Charmaine Hammond: Now I don't mediate. I focus purely on training and speaking and bring all of those skills and experiences and case studies into the work I do as a speaker and trainer. I find that for speaking and training where I get called in it there's a couple of very common scenarios. One scenario is old conflict has continued to resurface. We're seeing a lot of that post covid. So these old conflicts that people thought were gone and buried have just cropped up again. Another scenario is where the leader has attempted to address the issue and it has gone sideways and the leader has determined perhaps the whole team, including the leader, would benefit from some guidance around conflict resolution and training on the skills.

And then I think the third scenario that I get called in a lot for is where teams are being challenged. A team that's going through a lot of change. For example, a team that has had a lot of sort of disruption, so that might be new people coming in staff retiring, changes, restructuring and helping them learn the skills together around conflict. And sometimes the leader or the organization wants. To have me facilitate what we call a team charter, which is really a facilitated process to help the team figure out how they're going to work better together.

[00:08:10] Kathi Burns: It's kind of like a team mission or a team vision. I bet you have been busy girl. Because my clients, they're still just, the ones that are working in corporate, they're still in shock. Some people in the office, some people are out of the office, no one's around. The people that are in don't know what they're doing. Yeah it's been a little crazy ride. So you've probably been in big demand.

[00:08:29] Charmaine Hammond: It's interesting to hear the scenarios of what workplaces are dealing with right now. So a lot of them are having significant not only change, but structural change. So the working environment is different. The mission of the organization may have changed as a result of the pandemic.

And then we have other teams that are just so excited to be working back together and being in the office. And then we have teams that are still trying to figure it out. They're still in a state of fluxx and we know that with change, it's very common that when organizations go through any type of change, it is very likely that conflict will emerge. And that's sometimes our how we respond and cope with change. Not all of us welcome it. Not all of us have great skills to deal with change, and then inevitably, conflict starts to bubble up.

[00:09:21] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. Tell me a story about what your most recent tell me a post pandemic client situation. Gimme a story.

[00:09:29] Charmaine Hammond: One, one scenario that I can think of was an organization that had gone through Not only a lot of internal change, so some people working from home, some people in the office, but this particular team had amalgamated with another team. And it was an interesting amalgamation because both of the teams, both of the departments it didn't appear on the surface that there was clear alignment for these two teams to be matched.

However, as time went on, it became very apparent. But what had happened is there was one, one of the teams that was amalgamating. Was very seasoned. So these were people that had worked together for a very long time, several of them approaching retirement. So there was a really strong footing with the team.

They were able to just look at each other and know what each other meant, or it was thinking or was feeling. And the team that was coming in to join them was a team of newer employees. It was a newer team in the organization, so they didn't have years and years of working together to build their structure and build those relationships.

So there was a lot of I'm going to use the word apprehension, so just this sort of distant apprehension between people. And you could actually feel it when I went in to do some training. You could feel an odd energy. And what we determined was that the team never had time to build relationships that the amalgamation happened during Covid when everyone was working from home. So they only saw each other on whatever platform they were using Zoom or Teams. And they never had those kind of inter-office connections, the being in the same room, popping down the hallway, meeting at the coffee station. And so what became really clear is that this team actually just needed to do some team building before they got into some of the heavier work.

And then we did some training with them around communication, because it also became really apparent that these two groups communicated very differently. And part of that was the relationships that existed. So communication and lack thereof was one of their biggest sources of frustration.

And so the team we did a a shortened version of a team charter where the team basically agreed. They created it and agreed to how they were going to work together, how they were going to handle some of those challenging, tough conversations, what they expected of each other, and then how they were going to continue to build team together.

And you know this is a team now who, the advantage of being trained together is they're all working from the same set of reference, the same language, and they all went through this together. That being said, not everyone responds with excitement to conflict resolution training, because sometimes training brings up triggers for people. And so it was it was also a really good opportunity for the team to actually build relationships through the training process.

[00:12:24] Kathi Burns: And they're actually hopefully in person doing this at this point.

[00:12:28] Charmaine Hammond: Yes, correct. And some, I think that they have a, what you call it, a bit of a hybrid situation, but some of the things that still happen as a group in person are their regular team meetings, and they have those weekly now, which has really allowed more opportunity, for the team to build trust because there was two groups and two different levels of trust. And so each group trusted their own group, but they hadn't yet formed the bridge to trust each other.

[00:12:55] Kathi Burns: So do you do team building activities and all that as well?

[00:12:58] Charmaine Hammond: We do. We do. And even in training, when I do training programs, I always build in interactive experiential training, so we're not just talking role plays, which generally scare people anyhow. We're talking different opportunities to practice and to build confidence with the skills and role plays might be one of those ways, but we also do other activities so that individuals are learning about themselves and learning about their colleagues.

[00:13:26] Kathi Burns: Yeah. And they can throw away their feels and fears and just have a little bit of fun and then get insight on each other. I can see how you would be invaluable. I worked for a Mar the Port, and they had combined the marketing and communications department. I was called in. There wasn't someone like you, which could have been very useful. Because again, I could tell that there were two completely different dynamics going on. And between marketing and communications, you would think that it would be congealed, but it really was it was challenging. And obviously I was for other things than conflict resolution. But, I think anytime there's any type of a shift in a corporate structure, there's always going to be that tension. There's always be like, who's doing what, oh, they know it better than I, or they think they know it better than I. I can see how your service is completely valuable for any corporation going through change. And when it comes to smaller companies, because I know a lot of our, a lot of our people that are listening here are women entrepreneurs, solopreneurs who are building small teams. Is there any advice that you would give them as they're starting to build and enlarge their company?

[00:14:28] Charmaine Hammond: Yes. Yes. And one of, I love how you said is you're building and enlarging your company. Often we get so wrapped up in all the tasks of doing that, and then we don't take the time we need to nurture the team, to help build the team. And then when some kind of crisis or big challenge comes up, the team will often become very frazzled and fragmented very quickly. And then this leader or this small business owner is trying to figure out what's going on and pick up the pieces. So I always say, don't just do team building when the team is doing great or the team is falling apart. We need to do this on an ongoing basis and to help teams be resilient. The other piece that's important for small business owners is often they don't have a support system.

So they don't have an HR department they can go and talk to. They don't have perhaps their own counselor coaches. So it's very important for small business owners to find their circle of trusted alliances. This could be colleagues, this could be a mastermind group, it could be a coach, but making sure that as a business owner you have the support to be able to get guidance on issues that you might be struggling with, because sometimes it's not the team that needs to help with that.

And then the other piece of advice is to take time to learn about team building and conflict resolution skills. Most of us as humans have less than two hours of training on conflict. Yet as a company owner, if you have a team, I can promise you're going to have disagreements between people. That's it's life. It's what happens. And leaders are often fearful of upsetting the apple cart. They don't wanna make things worse, and they often might avoid the conflict or they may not feel that they have the skills to handle it. So they avoid it. And I've got a great quote, it's not my own, but a an individual once said that conflict is not like wine. It doesn't get better with age. So you've gotta deal with it quickly. Leaders and small business owners can get that kind of guidance and training so that they feel comfortable and empowered when they need to deal with situations that are messy and bumpy.

[00:16:40] Kathi Burns: Yeah that's really good advice. Grab it by the horns and deal with it as it, and get the tools to learn how to do it. That's what I'm hearing you say. And yes, and I agree, that you don't really get trained in that, just like people don't really get trained to get organized. People don't get trained to resolve conflict and and every business owner is different. There's some business owners that won't do any conflict at all, and then yes, heaven forbid if something arises with their team.

[00:17:05] Charmaine Hammond: Yes. And I think what you, what the area that you work in, Kathi, and what you speak and train on as well is so critical because when I go into teams, one of the exercises we often do is a, it's called the Pebble exercise. So I give a story about basically going for a walk and you've got this tiny little pebble in your shoe and you don't take your shoe off and you keep walking and 15 minutes in, all you can think about is the stupid pebble in your stupid shoe. This is the thought process that goes on, and that little pebble feels like a boulder.

And in business we need to take care of those little pebbles so they don't become boulders. And one of the common frustrations I hear in workplaces is about, lack of organization, we can't find what we were looking for. What is the system or the process? So the work that you do is highly related to preventing some of those unnecessary conflicts that didn't need to happen in the first place.

[00:18:03] Kathi Burns: Yeah I agree. And in fact, what I'm called in usually is to get everybody on the same page with the file protocol. Someone is gone from work can Susie come in and find the file that Janie had somehow? Is it like all, everybody makes their own little system and then, the only person knows it is that perfect admin out there that is now out sick.

[00:18:23] Charmaine Hammond: That's right. Yeah. You're describing my past life. When I have my mediation office, that's me. I file it under what makes sense that day. It doesn't make sense on Monday.

[00:18:32] Kathi Burns: Yeah. And then anybody else coming in, it's what was Charmaine thinking? How would he think, what would he have called that?

[00:18:38] Charmaine Hammond: Yeah. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

[00:18:40] Kathi Burns: The average the average entrepreneur will waste three hours a week trying to find missing documents. It adds up, a month, a year.

[00:18:47] Charmaine Hammond: That's unbelievable. And then you tack on the frustration and the emotional toll that it takes on us. One of the things my, my team member, Stacy, she has all the skills that I lack. So her very systematic thinking, very process oriented. And she creates systems and standards of practice for pretty much everything in my other company. And it is, I've gotta say, it's so refreshing because I can find everything. It doesn't matter what I think it's called. I can find it. And the other piece though is that, loops don't stay open. She's exceptionally skilled at closing the loops and or holding me accountable to close the loops that I need to close.

And that's really important because it's some of those elements that cause frustrations in the workplace and especially in small businesses when companies are doing more with less. And when we can handle those and get the organization you're talking about, we really reduce the stress for people. We make it easier for them to work together.

[00:19:53] Kathi Burns: Yeah, because stressed out, you can't really think clearly. So speaking of stressed out and thinking of these situations talk to me about a time where you really were feeling down and things just weren't happening for you, and give me, a little story about what you went through, because I like to do this on the podcast, Charmaine.

Because we all go through the ups and downs of pies and love. Yeah. And when you hear about people who are very successful like yourself, who've also hit the bump, hit the rutt, fallen off the horse or whatever it helps to hear that other people have gone through it and what you've done to pull yourself out of it.

[00:20:25] Charmaine Hammond: Oh, what so many times that I can relate to that. I think probably the most profound learning and how I had to really change things around was when we moved from one community to another. So it was a really big move. I was closing down offices to relocate in another community. So there was a lot of grief and a lot of feeling of loss and change.

But I found when I got situated, I just felt like I was spinning my wheels. I didn't have What would I call 'em? Kind of routines set. Yeah. I didn't have the anchor yet, and what I found was without that anchor, I wasted so much time just spinning my wheels, and then I found that I would work on the things that jazzed me.

So the fun tasks. That, which generally don't pay the bills by the way, creating all kinds of things that never got to completion. So where this became apparent was fast forward a couple of years after that and I found that I had two half written books in my computer and I thought, how did that loop not get closed?

And so what I discovered is that, I actually really like routine and structure, even though I might bucket and push it, I actually function best when I have routine and structure. But it took me a while to figure that out and it also forced me to look at, there's all kinds of things in my business that I am, it's not my highest skillset, for example.

And maybe I will function best if I focus on what my genius is and hire people. Who have the genius that I don't have and let them do that. And when I figured that out, it was firecrackers in the sky. You've got it, you've figured it out. That was just a pivotal change, but recognizing it didn't come quickly.

[00:22:15] Kathi Burns: Yeah I get it. I can't believe you had two unfinished books. Now you've been 11 times bestselling author, friend. How did you, how do you manage to do that multiple times?

[00:22:25] Charmaine Hammond: I know, it's just I get probably like a lot of people listening, you get these bursts of creativity or energy around something and then you start this and you work hard on it, and then something else pulls you away. I call it B S O, bright, shiny object syndrome that a lot of us a face in business and probably. Squirrels, yes. Squirrels. Exactly. And again, it's where those systems and processes and organization. And so Stacy, on our team, she, we use Asana as one of our project management tools because it's simple. It's Charmaine proof.

[00:23:02] Kathi Burns: You can't break it.

[00:23:02] Charmaine Hammond: No, and I love it. It sends me little reminders. It keeps everything in there. We have links to the document, so it really helps with the organization, but it also helps with holding myself accountable.

[00:23:15] Kathi Burns: I love that. So when you have a big success, this is my year of celebration. So how do you celebrate success? When you get, when you went to that 10th bestselling book, not your 11th, your 10th, what do you do?

[00:23:29] Charmaine Hammond: I'm a big proponent of Happy Dancing so often if I get off a call or land a new project or client or launch something, I just, I like having that kind of physical release and happy dancing. Then typically I run and tell my husband the good news, not once, but 10 times in 10 different ways, and then I celebrate with people who are part of that. So that might be in, even if it was a project I did on my own, it's the people who gave me ideas. It's the people who listened to me when I was frustrated and go and share that with them. And so those tend to be the types of celebrations they all have to do with people. Going out and shopping, things like that doesn't feel celebratory for me. So it's always something to do with people.

[00:24:13] Kathi Burns: Ah, people person. When you were talking earlier about you know how you can just, I wanna do the stuff that's fun. It reminded me of Mark Twain quote, "If you have to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning".

[00:24:24] Charmaine Hammond: Yes, exactly.

[00:24:25] Kathi Burns: That's what we all need to do. Although, it's fun to do other things for sure.

[00:24:29] Charmaine Hammond: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You're the toughest things when you have the most amount of energy.

[00:24:35] Kathi Burns: Yeah, and I was thinking about that quote a lot lately because, the very first top of the day is not when I'm most productive. So I'm going to have to argue with Mark about that. I would eat the frog at one or two in the afternoon. That's when I'm on fire and jamming out. I'm sure when you work with teams too, that you have some people, if you're a 9:00 AM meeting, some people are like half comatose and some people are like, have been up for six hours. So yeah. How do you work with that dynamic? That seems like that would be bit of a challenge.

[00:25:03] Charmaine Hammond: Yes, absolutely. So I think one of the things that's important is to have a way I do this by different activities and exercises of bringing the group together so everyone is on the same e energy, because you'll have people who you say maybe aren't, they call themself, I'm not a morning person. And then you have other people who say they function best starting at 6:00 AM. And so when we can find a way of uniting everybody, getting them on the same page as you said earlier, they're going to do whatever it is they're doing much better. And it's also about understanding that about each other. One of the teams I worked with, they had a couple people who were clearly not morning persons, and that was the I guess the hunch that I had when I walked into the room, but it was being perceived by the teams as, oh, they're disengaged. They don't wanna be here. Oh, they don't care. So there was some pretty big assumptions going on, and when we had a chance to do a bit of an exercise and these two individuals said, I don't do well in mornings. If I could start my workday at 10 and work till six, I'd be great. And other people were saying, six, you wanna end at six. I'm doing dinner with my family then. And so it was important to talk about the differences that our way isn't necessarily everyone else's way.

[00:26:19] Kathi Burns: That's fantastic. So if you had to look back, I've been asking like what would you tell your 18 year old self? And then twist on that. What would you, if you had to tell your 18 year old self right now some advice, what would you tell her?

[00:26:32] Charmaine Hammond: Ooh, that's a good question. I think the advice I would give is not to struggle with things too long. Allow yourself a little bit of struggle time, because often in that moment of struggle is where we come up with our best solutions. But don't struggle at the sake of hurting a project or creating a negative impact, just ask for help.

That was my biggest struggle in the early days of opening my businesses was asking for help and it actually took one of my staff becoming very frustrated with me, and Matthew made a comment one day he said. Why don't you just ask us for help? You have capable, qualified, caring people and we see you struggling.

Ask us, and they were offering, and I would say, oh no, I'm good. And when he shared how that impacted him, when he said, when you say no, I'm good. I hear that as. You don't want my help. You don't think my help is good enough? You don't think I'm capable? And I thought, oh, that's not what I meant at all.

And that's when it changed for me, again, the big firecrackers in the sky. And I realized that my trying to do things on my own was actually causing a negative impact for people. I care deeply about.

[00:27:45] Kathi Burns: That's really, that, that's profound advice. I think, the fact that you already had staff in place, obviously you're a good judge of character to have the staff that's there to support you to begin with. And to have someone it's oh, yeah. You don't think I'm good enough to help you. And you're just off in your own world, like dealing with a hammer of your own challenges. I think that's a common scenario. If people were looking to hire, I have a few few clients who have three or four employees and they're getting onboard other people. What would be your advice for how to discern the right person for the right job?

[00:28:20] Charmaine Hammond: Oh, that's, I love that question. One of the things, there is a tendency for us when we recruit team members to look for people just like us, because we like us and we wanna work with us and so I love it when I see business owners, small business owners, even if they are hiring their first contractor, 0.25 of a contractor, for example, to look at what are the skill sets that you don't have.

And those are some of the skills that you want to be able to hire out for, because if you always hire people who have the same strengths and abilities as you, there is a whole part of your business not being nurtured. The other piece is, and this is really important. I really encourage people to not only hire based on skill, but to based on personality confidence.

So for example, I've seen so many organizations and businesses and nonprofits and small businesses who will hire someone because of their technical skills. They have everything they need to do the job, but they don't fit in. They're not a team player. They don't know how to handle conflict. So there's like all these explosions all the time, every time there's a problem.

And so we need to kind of balance those. I would strongly suggest good interview questions. What we call open-ended behavioral descriptive questions, so don't ask what would you do if, because we can all just make up the perfect answer. Ask, tell me about a time when, much like your questions today, Kathi, those are like behavioral descriptive questions.

Always ask a question about conflict. Always ask a question about, tell me about a time that you made a mistake, and how did you deal with that? Because a lot of times, People really wanna impress the person that they are being interviewed by, and we want people who we know people will make mistakes. We make mistakes as company owners, how they handle it is really important.

[00:30:24] Kathi Burns: That's really sage advice. Yeah. Really good. And I think that, for those out there listening, I hope you're taking notes about this because this is very important as you onboard somebody. We do have a tendency to hire people that we like. When I work with people on time management is what do you have to do? What do you want to do? What do you hate doing? What can you not do? Let's job out what you hate and what you can't do. Why go there? Because you're in charge of your own ship. So why do stuff you hate? Life's too short for that. Then you lose in your company. And those who do the things you hate typically aren't going to be like you. I'm with you. That's right. They're not, they don't even look like you, which is a good thing.

So here's, I have a new twist of a question. So your five-year-old self, what would your five-year-old self tell you now? Charmaine? What would the advice for your five-year-old tell you about your life?

[00:31:17] Charmaine Hammond: My five-year-old would probably come bursting into a room with colorful toys and a ball saying, stop. It is time to play, take a break because I love what I do. It doesn't feel like work. And it can very quickly you can put in a lot of hours. I bought a Fitbit so that it forced me to recognize I, my, my wrist vibrates every 50 minutes to tell me to get up.

And when I'm done the podcast with you, I get up and I do my steps and it. I could become rooted when I'm engrossed in something that I love to do, and that's what the five-year-old would say. Come on, step away. Time to play. Time for a break.

[00:32:01] Kathi Burns: I think that's what every five-year-old would tell any of us. I would say, where's your bubbles? Let's go blow some bubbles for a little while. That's so funny. Yeah, it's a good question. Okay, so you have something valuable for these kiddos here who are listening and for our esteemed entrepreneurial audience what would you like to offer them?

[00:32:19] Charmaine Hammond: One of the things, I'm happy to hop on a call with people, so happy to set up a discovery call and you can just email me, let me know that you heard about me through Kathi's podcast. That's important. And then the other piece is that we have some amazing eBooks that I would be happy to send the links to Kathi that can help people with not only building relationships and navigating conflict, but also learning how to work collaboratively with other businesses and other organizations.

[00:32:49] Kathi Burns: I love that. That's very valuable. And what I'll do is I'll put the links below the podcast so that you folks can grab the link and call, definitely grab the call with Charmaine. That's hugely valuable. That's worth a lot of money there and very gracious of you. Is anything that you wanted to talk about that we've not discussed here?

[00:33:06] Charmaine Hammond: One of the links I'll send you is for a film called Back Home Again, which I'm the executive producer of, and I raised that because the film was created to be a conversation starter about mental health and a lot of organizations right now, it doesn't matter if it's a one person business or a large corporation.

Mental health has really been impacted for people during the co, during the pandemic. And the film is actually based on a community that went in Canada that went through a extremely expensive and impactful forest fire in 2016. And the film is based on that story. The characters in the forest are all little animals, and they're voiced by an incredible voice cast of celebrities who all contributed their time and voice to the movie.

Michael J. Fox Martin Short, Kim Basinger, ed Asner, and the list goes on, and I would love people to take a look at the film. It's a 30 minute film, so it's not a big time commitment. But it really challenges us to think about the importance of community connection coming together to support one another during difficult times, and taking time to nurture our own mental health or wellbeing.

[00:34:26] Kathi Burns: Congratulations. That's that's you your life encompassed into a film. That's so I can't wait to watch it. So that's great. So you're going to send a link for this?

[00:34:35] Charmaine Hammond: I will send you the link for that.

[00:34:37] Kathi Burns: Oh, I'm I can't wait. Okay, that's going to be really good. We'll put the link below in the show notes as well for you folks. And if you can't find the links if you're on Apple or Spotify, just go to organize the podcast, organize and energize, and you can find it there. Perfect. Okay, great. One more thing. I know you're the sponsorship queen.

I had forgotten to ask you about that. So talk to me a little bit about if people are looking for sponsorship, how does it work? What's your, what's the first or second step? We don't have a lot of time to go in, but Yeah. Everybody's looking for, there's a lot of people out there looking for sponsors, so put it that way.

[00:35:10] Charmaine Hammond: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So sponsorship is a marketing relationship. And I say that right off the bat because a lot of people think that sponsorship is free money or it is a handout. It's not, it's a marketing relationship where you can work collaboratively with other businesses or businesses that are larger than yours.

The key is that you need to be aligned. There needs to be some alignment in values. There needs to be alignment in kind of the objectives of why you're going to work together, but sponsorship can really be a way of helping small businesses grow their business monumentally and being able to tap into other other people's audiences, quite frankly.

So a couple of things to know. And I'll actually give you a link for an ebook, Kathi, that walks you right through our seven step model. So it shows you from start to finish what has to happen for sponsorship to become a reality. It's, we need to research the companies that we want to partner with or the businesses we wanna partner with.

We have to know in advance, how can we recognize a partner or a sponsor. It's more than just slapping people's logos somewhere. How do we recognize sponsors in meaningful ways? How do we build those relationships? How do we create opportunities in our business for sponsorship? So my first 40 sponsors that I had as a small business were, I had a clothing sponsor.

I had a travel sponsor, a printing sponsor. I had a makeup sponsor, I had my makeup. My salon would actually do my hair and makeup. Every time I was appearing on TV or at events, I had a health product sponsor and the list goes on and on. So the big tip is with sponsorship, you always wanna start local with people that you know or have a relationship or brands and products that you use and love.

So a great little exercise is to look at your credit card statements in your bank account and see where are you spending money, probably on your cell phone, probably on clothing, probably on going out for dinner or coffee, and these might be the very first businesses that you approach to be a sponsor or to collaborate with you on projects.

[00:37:29] Kathi Burns: Wow. Okay. That's great advice. And I know that people are going to jump at that. I'll definitely put that link in there. We all need a shoe up. We all need partners who will help each other. Partners who will help us, that we can also help them grow their base we all have more assets than what we think we have as far as working with sponsors, and you taught me that as we went through last year through the EBC sponsorship.

So yes, I really appreciate your time and it's been really a pleasure. I can't wait to watch this movie back home again. I love forest and I love animals, and we're approaching fire season, so I think it's going to be very, yeah. For those out here, everywhere, you know what? So it's, thank you, Charmaine, for your time.

[00:38:10] Charmaine Hammond: Thank you so much, Kathi.

[00:38:12] Kathi Burns: And until next week gang, I'll be back and I'll see you then.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me. Have a stellar day.