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Interview Transcription

Jasna Burza 0:00
 Becky, welcome to Business Spotlight.

Becky Brunner 0:04
Yay, I’m super excited to be to spotlight today as not being you

Jasna Burza 0:07
are the spotlight. And we have actually, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to you more than once and getting to know you and your business a little bit over the last few months. And I’m really am excited about to have this conversation. A just out of curiosity be because I also think that you’re offering something that’s so unique and unusual in the marketplace yet so incredibly necessary for all of us who are trying to, you know, have a harmonious working environment. And we’re gonna get into that. So Becky is the founder and the owner of the Choose happy assisting, and she’s really specializes in helping people lead a team of highly productive and happy team members. I cannot wait to dig into a little bit more. But tell us a little bit of about, Becky, about your background, and how did you start this company? What propelled you to do work around teams network, we’re going to get into what that means.

Becky Brunner 1:12
Yeah, so after college, I spent about 16 years in the corporate space working for two different businesses doing marketing, communications, project management, and then in 2019, decided to start my business. After just a lot of change. In the corporate workspace, I decided I just wanted to go out on my own. After doing project management, just quite fluently, I decided to do that as the start of my business, and realized, like what I really enjoyed the most, and what just truly lit me up was working with teams, and kind of diving in with different business coaches and business friends of mine. They reminded me, what lit me up the most. And what lights me up is talking about connection talking about connect themes, and that it really is possible, you just have to get creative. And when I think back over the last 20 years of work roles. And also in my personal life, I’ve been working on team culture and bringing connection to the workspace and any group that I’m in this entire time, it’s just very natural. For me, it’s something I’ve been doing my entire life. So I decided this last year to just really make the leap and start working with primarily online business owners, as well as anybody in this space that has Remote Staff, which is a ton of people, especially since the pandemic, just helping them understand what the power of connection really is, and how they can work on team culture in their business. So often, there’s solopreneurs that have been working on their own for a long period of time, they’ve started to get some team members and they’re like, I have no idea how to kind of create some sort of connection, and team culture amongst these people. Like I know how to do the work. And I know how to tell them what to do. But like that’s, that’s about it. And so really helping them and guiding them along that way. So that they can work on that together. Because it really it’s not hard. It’s just creating those steps, baby steps together. So I’ve really enjoyed doing that. I love that.

Jasna Burza 3:19
So So tell me this right that why is that team culture important to me? If I’m an online business owner, and I have some team members explain what team culture is? And what are some of the things give me an example of something that you would do. The words that would make my life is so much better and easier, because you’re writing so much so many of us are working, and we’re working together, but we’re not connected. So what are the pitfalls of that? And how can we fix it?

Becky Brunner 3:50
Yeah, so team culture really is like made up of kind of this, your values, your beliefs, your attitudes of your team and kind of how you work together. And if you think about teams that you may have been on or teams that you’ve heard about where maybe people are leaving, like they’re just not happy, they’re leaving, and going to other businesses. Maybe team meetings are just like a crapshoot like nobody’s paying attention, nothing really ever gets done. You’re, you’re there, you’re visible, but that’s about the extent of it. People have trouble collaborating, communicating, like that’s just not happening very easily. Maybe there’s not an enough organization of you know, roles etc. As well as they don’t connect on a personal level. Like they’re coming to work. They’re doing their job, but they have no idea that maybe Yasna loves the all the exact things same things as you do. And you could Kirk connect on this deeper level, which what the biggest thing that I try to remind business owners of is the productivity that I’ve seen increase amongst teams. This just by working on these, and it’s just incredible. An amazing story that I have from just recently was, I did a team training for this business. And they thought, Oh, we’re fairly connected. There’s a group about 10 people. And after the training, the online business manager said, like, wow, we really realized that we kind of had this very face level connection, it was like, how’s the weather? Did you have a good weekend like, very, very basic. It wasn’t until they started using some of the prompts that I have in my connection toolkit. And just really going through some of the things in the training, that they dove in and realize so many things that they had in common, which then like created this huge ripple effect of connection and communication that was happening, whether it be before a team meeting, whether it be in Voxer, like for fun, whatever that may be. So for example, two team members who never had really worked together on projects, they realize that they both loved like sci fi books. And so they were just like, oh, wow, I love this book, this book, this book, they’re all connecting, she just happened to bring up that she was working on a certain project. And she was struggling with a part. And the other woman said, Oh, I know how to do that, they were able to get through an issue in a quarter of the time saving hours of work for that project, that they were able to move forward and get to the client that they’re working with even faster. So just really thinking about creating those connections, because most likely, if I’m working with you guys now, and we realize we have this connection, we just start talking a little bit more, I then feel more comfortable to come to you and be like he has now like I know that you’ve done in this this in the past. Could you just answer one question for me, instead of me taking hours of time to try to figure it out myself? than just asking a quick question. I’m one just from having many years in project management, I just asked the questions. Sometimes they may seem dumb or repetitive, or whatever that your brain may tell you. But it’s way easier to ask them right away than to just keep waiting and sometimes struggling through how to get it done yourself. And so creating those relationships really does help projects and client work go even faster. So it’s been super fun to see that girl.

Jasna Burza 7:23
Oh, I love that you just explained it. So incredibly well, because I was going to ask follow up questions, but you literally nailed that. And that is at the heart of it. When we connect with each other one another. There’s a level of that bond, we feel more comfortable interacting with each other, collaborating with one another and also wanting to help out right just like with a friend, like all do that. Don’t even worry about it versus just feeling like I’m on my own. You know, I just gonna do my own thing. My question to you is, how does that relate to someone who may have a lot of girlfriends who have a variety of contractors. So these are not people who are working for them full time. They’re not very committed, for example, Jenna and I have a great relationship. She’s I love her dearly. We have like very, we’re very different. And we’re fully aware of that. But yeah, we have this integrity base, love for others genuinely wanting to support, like, our values are very in sync, but also work with a lot of freelancers and contractors that I only need on an occasional basis. So I do consider them part of my team. But they’re really not on my team, if you know what I mean? What suggestions you have for that, how would you come in and create, you know, a kind of a cohesion is it a monthly call where everyone comes in, and we just talk about all the things that are happening in the company?

Becky Brunner 8:52
Yeah, so I’ve worked with quite a few times myself as a contractor kind of and as the consultant coming in to talk to them. So I really suggest having those calls. So I would schedule a monthly, whether it be a happy hour, or kind of depending if they have team members or contractors from across the country, it might be a mid day luncheon, or whatever the case may be. And everybody just comes on whether I had a fun game that we did, or like random questions that we talked about and answered, but really just bringing everybody in to feel that connection. And I would say 90% of those calls that we did were unpaid time for them. They just wanted to come connect with you know, fellow humans and other people that did things like them. And, and just to really feel more at home and connected to the team that there were with, but it’s just incredible to find some of those connections. For example, I did a game night one night with a team of 10 people and you can find name that tune on YouTube, so it’s free. It’s practically a free evening. You just find it you would click it open, they could watch it and hear it on their screen. And then they would guess like what song that was, you know, from all different genres, and listening to the people that were like, Oh, wow, like, I didn’t realize you were so into music like this one woman answered literally every single question. She was just on it. And we would laugh, and then talk about like, do you remember that song from when we were in school, or when we were younger, and just kind of creating those connections there because I try to remind people that every, every one of us has commonalities and things that are similar, no matter if we think we grew up in completely different ways. We both maybe rode a bicycle to school, we both loved to have, you know, butter on our toast for breakfast. You know, we both painted our nails on Saturday mornings with our grandmother, whatever it is, there is commonalities that we can find with each other, to create those connections and really reminding people to, to put their guard down like you, no matter if you are the CEO or the janitor of a business to to really bring together that you have commonalities, and to come forth together

Jasna Burza 11:11
to just connect. And the more and more we live in a world that seeming disconnected. And what I’m seeing is that people really crave that connection and coming together. And that’s something so close to my heart. Because when we can be ourselves and most authentic selves, and we can connect with others, that to me, that’s such a such a beautiful, beautiful thing. Tell me about the toolkit that you that you referenced a little bit earlier. Yeah. So like toolkit, what do I want to know?

Becky Brunner 11:42
Yeah, so I recently relaunched just earlier this week, a my subscription, which is the team connection toolkit. And every month, you receive the 30 days worth of Team connection prompts. So you could either use them daily in your team, whether it be email, Slack, Fox, or however you communicate with your team. Or you could use them once a week, I, for example, use them on Mondays, there is appreciation ideas, like how to show appreciation to your team. So every single month, you get some new ways of how you can show appreciation. Oftentimes, people just think of like a bit a bonus or a large gift as appreciation. And that’s not necessarily what people are yearning for. I also have ideas for team engagement. So little things that you can do at the beginning of a team meeting, to get some excitement and engagement going before the meeting gets started. Oftentimes, people jump into a meeting, they’re kind of preoccupied, you get started. And not everybody is on the same page. So really bringing everyone together, getting that excitement. Getting people to really care and connect with one another is really fun. And then there’s also graphics and a private Facebook group, so many things that come along with it. So that is on my site, Choose happy assisting.com. So definitely check that out.

Jasna Burza 13:03
Oh, that’s really really helpful for for people who just want to at least have a taste or whatever look like on in a in a non invasive way. Because sometimes they feel people may hesitate reaching out, because that may be indicative of I need help. I’m not doing my job, right. And I thought anything that was going to show it show it to them just like wait a minute, like I actually do doesn’t mean that I’m lacking just means that I want to get to a whole different level that my team.

Becky Brunner 13:33
Exactly. And I try Well, I just my really goal when as I was developing this, this past summer, was that I wanted a simple tool for business owners, because we’re so busy, we’re busy and all the things and we we want this we want connection, we want to work on team culture, but it’s like, there’s not time, like what am I going to push to the side, I don’t have time to prepare. And so I wanted something that you could easily have, copy and paste into whatever tool that you’re using. I use it in a Google spreadsheet so that it’s easily copy and paste. But I also have like PDF documents if you like it that way. I want the ease of use to just be there for any business owner, so that they’re not struggling to to use this the same with any of the other documents that you receive during the month. So I just want them to be able to connect with their teams, and really grow together. Without having all this extra work that they’re thinking about.

Jasna Burza 14:32
You’re making it easy, which is what great service providers and coaches and consultants are supposed to do make it easier. So where can people find a toolbox again, and where can we come go and follow you and what is the best way I suppose to get our feet wet and working with you? Is that the toolbox or is it something else?

Becky Brunner 14:53
Yeah, definitely the first step. You can find my website at Choose happy assistant dot com and click on the team’s connection subscription in the menu. It’s very easy to find on my website. Otherwise, you can find me at Choose happy assisting on Instagram, I have tons of great educational information and pieces that you can find out kind of a little bit more about me and how I work. But I’m just super, super passionate about helping teams get connected. It is possible you have to get creative, no one businesses like I wouldn’t come to your business and say, well, Jane Does xy and z and this is how we’re going to do it. Well, Jane’s business is different than yours and how you work together how you communicate, you may have a team of introverts that are like we are absolutely not doing X, Y and Z. And you may have a group of extroverts are like, let’s do it, you know, we have a dance party every day before our meeting, or whatever the case. So just really being cognizant of everyone. Something also in my prompts that’s really important is I have a section at the bottom that are extras. And I try to remind people that are their holidays from across the world because not every team member celebrates the staple holidays that are on the calendar that’s printed on the wall. People celebrate other things. And so being cognizant if you have a team member, you know, maybe it was this past week, and you have a team member from Canada, and they had Thanksgiving, trying not to schedule meetings for that person on that day, because they’re going to be probably be celebrating, or you know, that you want to say Happy Thanksgiving to them. And just other holidays or things throughout the world so that you’re trying to be cognizant of what others believe and what others celebrate. And not just yourself. So just trying to be a good human. That’s one of the things that I talk about the most throughout the podcast that I’m on and other things that I’m a part of, that Let’s just all try to be better humans. And in turn that really helps, you know, create the connection and stronger team cultures.

Jasna Burza 16:56
I love that. So like I said at the beginning, this is why this stuff is so service is so incredibly needed because we’re yearning, that connection. So for all of you out there listening, who may have a team of any team team of, you know, whatever kind of a project that you’re working on, if you really feel like you could be working better together with your team or if you feel like you want to uplevel your game. Becky is here is she i know her and I know that she’s goes above and beyond that she really, I hope that you can tell the passion, I can tell and that you will reach out and get in touch with her. So choose happy assisting.com She was happy assisting on Instagram with all the tips and get to know Becky. And we’re also going to link in tag Becky and tag the website up above the law on the sides wherever this piece of content shows. Love that. Thank you, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing and also for coming to talk to us today. I always really value people’s time immensely. And I really, really appreciate you and appreciate you sharing with us.

Becky Brunner 18:06
Thanks so much for having me today as and I just absolutely love the work that you do and can’t wait to continue finding all the spotlights that you share.

Jasna Burza 18:15
Oh, it’s such a pleasure. Thank you all and until next time sending so much love to you all. Bye bye Becky.