2191 - Fostering a Safe Space for Ideas by Leading with Empathy: A Talk with Sara Frasca

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1:05With us right now, it is Sarah Frasca. Sarah, you are an innovation keynote speaker, and you are the CEO of Point Northeast. Your websites are sarahfrasca.com and pointnortheast.com. We've got those linked in the show notes for a friend that's listening so you can follow along. Sarah, it's great to have you here. Thank you, Josh. Really delighted to be here. I pointed out immediately as we started talking, it sounds like you're a fellow Midwesterner in terms of like our origin stories who have each now transplanted to some points in Florida. But it's great to have you, Sarah. But before we start talking about your work and your impact in the world, what are you geeking out on lately?

1:45Like, what are you into? I don't know if you're watching anything that's interesting or you have watched anything or hobbies on the side that you're passionate about. Yeah, well, I'm always, always interested in something. So you've got me pegged. Right now, I'm really working on the spring cleaning of my yard. I've been weeding and doing new mulch and planting plants. And that's what I'm. Yeah. Okay. We need to talk about this. Me too. Do you have St. Augustine grass? We do. Yeah. Yeah. Most of us in Florida have St. Augustine grass. It's not a traditional for those not in the area. This is really fascinating because it's not a traditional grass.

2:26It's more like it's a vine. It's just a bunch of vines that creep all over your lawn. and then it'll kind of drill down into your soil at certain points. And then, of course, the grass blades will shoot up. But yeah, it's a different beast. Winter always stinks for us. We always lose our St. Augustine patch. We lose big patches of St. Augustine grass, and these invasive grasses get in there. I don't know if that's what you're dealing with as well. Same, same. We just sodded a pretty good chunk of our backyard. we had to re-sod because of that but you know it's so lovely here we get such good springs and you know summer rainfalls that it's it's not long before it's lush again oh yeah it's going to be gorgeous in no time at all well congratulations on all of that by the way for those invasive grasses the only thing i have ever found that works is a product called celsius and you buy in a powder granular format, uh, form, and then you, you kind of mix it yourself.

3:28That's the only thing that I've been able to find. I mean, short of like your broad weed, you know, weeds or whatever, those are easy to control, but the grasses are really tough. So, so there we go to our friend, uh, welcome to grass talk. Uh, all right. So Sarah, let's talk about the work that you do and your impact in the world. You as a keynote speaker have spoken for pretty much the best of the best. I'll list off a couple of your accolades of like where you've keynoted Google, Procter & Gamble, Sherwin-Williams, Target, Optum-Siemens, General Mills, Welch's Smuckers, Coca-Cola, the Army.

4:05I could go on. It is an enormous list. And by the way, I also see a United States Navy emblem on your website. So thank you for serving my fellow shipmates. I was in the Navy long, long, long time ago. That's awesome, Josh. Thank you for your service. Yeah. Always like to say, I get to be the person that helps the people helping people, right? So it's really fun for me. Well, tell us about, tell us about your work. Like what are you normally presenting on as a speaker? Well, you know, I would say my passion is to inspire an audience to think of things in a new way. Oftentimes, as working adults, somewhere along the lines of our work or our schooling or whatever it is, we've kind of dialed back our creative problem solving.

4:57We think, oh, well, this is just the way we do things, right? Or, oh, gosh, I can't do it that way. That's been tried. And so our creativity gets stifled and we no longer are willing to challenge the status quo. We're no longer trying to come up with new ways to serve, new ways to build a team, new ways to communicate, whatever it is. So in my work, I like to bring everyday examples of people who have done just that. People who have thought of new solutions, new ideas, cultivating, again, new ways that we can serve the world, we can serve people. And, you know, I built a coaching firm as well.

5:41So Point Northeast has been a really great add on to that because now I coach organizations how to set up the foundation so that the business systems and processes are set. because when we have chaos, when we are living day to day, we can't see straight because we have so much on our plates and there's chaos and we can't get above the fray. We can't start to innovate and think of new solutions. We have to have a better base that our teams are coming from so that they're in a solid, stable team and then they have the opportunity to start thinking of new things. So that's how I've built the business coaching firm And then I try to kind of once people are really kind of set in their foundation and they've got a great team that's doing things the right way.

6:33Now we can talk about really challenging what they're currently doing. Yeah. Well, so I bet that you end up working, especially on the consulting coaching side, you probably end up working with leaders who say that they want to have a culture of innovation. Like they, they don't like, they, they hope that everybody within the organ. Well, I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe not every leader believes like that. I know within my organization, there's nothing. I mean, one of the things I think that is really frustrating for me is when I see something that's being done, I'm like, well, why are we doing it like that?

7:09That just doesn't seem very effective. Right. And they're like, well, you told us to do it this way, like two years ago. I'm like, yeah. So how can we prevent this from happening within our organizations? Yeah, you bring up a couple of really great points, I would say. And I have a couple of comments for you. So first of all, I find that we may have good intentions, but we actually have to build the muscle. And one of the most important components in driving an organization that is willing to challenge conventional wisdom, challenge the status quo, there cannot be a fear of failure in the organization.

7:49If people fear, I'm going to lose my job, I'm going to be ostracized, I'm going to be made fun of, I'm going, they will not come up with new ideas. It is just simply human nature. So we can go back to kind of the human nature, I would say, go back to our humanity and ensure that people feel protected. People feel safe. We may still test and learn, right? We're still making baby steps with the things that we're trying or testing, but they feel confident. My boss will be so thrilled that I'm coming up with an array of ideas and not just saluting the flag of the past. Then they can start to kind of feel it out and start to test and learn and lean in.

8:38So first of all, no fear of failure. The second thing is that I do believe it is a trickle-down effect. So the leaders at the top have to buy into this before the people at the bottom are able to actualize that type of creative problem-solving culture, meaning that the whole organization is in the same philosophy in terms of no idea is a bad idea. Let's keep coming up with things. Let's iterate to great. Let's use Kaizen as a philosophy. These are the things that if the entire culture believes in it, top down, then we start to have a lot of momentum. Because honestly, the thing I like to remind business owners or business leaders, you came with your best ideas when you built this organization.

9:30Now you need the rest of the squad to bring their best ideas in order to propel the growth forward. You bet. As the leader, you may come up with one, 10 great ideas a year. But if you enable that type of culture throughout your hundred person, hundred thousand person organization, I mean, now we have some real potential. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. Well, and listen, it's exhausting to have to be the idea person for your, or for your core organization. Like if it's always just on your shoulders to be the sole innovator, that's not fun. So naturally, my next question, Sarah, is going to be, how can we, because, you know, I think folks are coming into a company or an organization and the fear of failure, I think, you know, is likely just innate in many of us.

10:19Like we want to do a good job. We, you know, our desire for security, like is based upon not failing. Now, I'm originally Finnish, or my mom is 100 % Finnish. And they have a day where it's just go out and fail at something. And that's like a holiday that they treat very seriously, which I absolutely love. But how can we start to take, or how can we start promoting this idea of like, I want you to quadruple your rate of failure in our organization? That sounds scary to say this, but maybe this is part of that path forward. I don't know. I mean, I will tell you, Josh, that the big guys are doing it.

11:02I mean, Google has the type of programs where they actually send people on paid vacations when they fail. There are organizations out there that have a get out of free jail card. I mean, they are promoting this philosophy. And so I would say we can do it as well. You know, the other thing is, it comes with or it is set forth with practicing the muscle on a daily basis in small ways. If someone near you is like, oh, I just tried something and it didn't work. The response is the important part, right? Well, that's okay. Now we know that doesn't work. Let's try again. Let me help pick you back up and let's try it together.

11:45I mean, it's the same things we teach our children. It's the same things we try to have in our personal world. We have to kind of fold our arms around our team to make sure that they feel our presence of, well, you know, no problem. I mean, the opportunity for failure is always out there. You just eliminated one of the possibilities. Now let's try to find the winning possibility. And so, you know, there's countless examples out there of business leaders and innovators who have struggled and tried and tried and tried again and again. And finally, they had that win. Well, when we're doing that within our teams, again, I think to lower the risk, to lower the chances of having a massive catastrophe that, you know, we have we go into bankruptcy or we have something where we've launched a product that hurts someone.

12:39heaven forbid those examples, right? So why not make baby steps? Let's try one. Let's try a prototype. Let's have a, maybe it's just having a sample size of folks that might be in your target market who are actually able to tell you what they would pay, what they think about that, how would they use the product. Now we're just making baby steps and not having those huge failures. We're just having little failures. Your book, which I neglected to mention at the beginning, is called Up and to the Right, The Journey Northeast for Business Success. Do you mind sharing a little? By the way, I just downloaded it on my Kindle.

13:22I can't wait to read it. I'm going to read it. It's in the queue. I can't promise it's going to be this weekend, but it's in the queue, and I'm going to read it over the next week because I'm really resonating, Sarah, with what you're sharing. But would you mind maybe just sharing like the transformation that you would hope the reader would have as they journey through what you've written with your co-author, Michael Smith? Thank you. Yes. So Michael and I are the owners of Point Northeast. And as you mentioned, in the last year, we launched Up and to the Right. So if you think about a graph, right, we want to take a business from where they are to where they want to get to.

13:57And that is the journey up and to the right. And so lots of times businesses will come to us and they'll say, I want more revenue. I want better profitability. I want better retention with my key employees. But a lot of times folks will say other things too. They want a better balance. They want to build a legacy that they are leaving in some sort of a succession plan. They want a better partnership. They want X, Y, and Z. So our job is to help them get to that point, whatever that point may be. Sometimes those are components of people. And this means having the right people in the right seats, doing the things that really fill their hearts, light them up from the inside.

14:39If you have a team of people that are empowered and inspired to do their work, and again, we've talked about innovation. Think of it. If they are coming to work every day, kicking off the sheets, ready to make a difference, they know how their work affects the organization. How wonderful to actually have a team of people doing that. So the people is one component. Making sure that we have good finances. And I would say, you know, there's not really one right system. There's not really one perfect path. We like to customize it based on the client, right? Based on their organization, based on their industry.

15:20How can we help set them up for success? thinking through and letting the finances steer the ship, not the situation where you're looking and saying, hmm, what did we do this year? I wonder what we can do again next year. No, no, no. Let's know now. Let's have a plan for how we're going to get there and then manage to the plan. Folks oftentimes are artisans of their craft. They are an orthodontist. That is their craft. They're so good at it, right? But what they don't know is all the back-end business components. And so I've mentioned a couple, the people, right? The HR world, the finances, the marketing, how to leverage technology, how to build a system of communication for your teams.

16:03And so those are all the components that build the foundational elements of a business. And we help our clients to do that. Your website, Sarah, is Point Northeast, obviously for your personal brand, your authorship, you're speaking, that's at sarahfraska.com. But I'm curious, who Point Northeast can solve, help solve problems for? You know, we have a number of different clients in a number of different verticals. I would say most often our clients are professional service organizations or leaders of mid-sized companies that want to get to the next level. They want to scale, They want to grow, but they're not sure how.

16:52And so we can come in and we can offer some consulting, kind of like training wheels, where we'll help them for a while to build those muscles, to build that foundation. And then off we go and up and to the right, they go. So professional services, we do a lot in healthcare. We do a lot in the law field space. So working with law firm owners. So pretty fun. But we've done cosmetic companies to retail, restaurants, any number of different industries, actually. Yeah. So when somebody goes to pointnortheast.com, what would you recommend they do? Well, if they need immediate help, one of the tools that's on there right now, and we have a free month's offer.

17:37But we have all of our kind of database of knowledge downloaded into an AI coaching tool. Yeah. It's a pretty inexpensive way to get kind of our team's knowledge. 24-7, you can have a coach from our team that's kind of helping you on the fly with whatever topic you have. So that's the first thing. The second thing is just reaching out. I would say I have found that it's very lonely at the top. And so what I mean by that is that when you are the leader of an organization, whether it's a functional area within a business or the entire business, and your employees are not your friends, right? So you need someone who is a business leader and oftentimes an outsider can give you a new perspective.

18:25So just let us know if you are suffering with something or needing help with something. You know, it's interesting. We have really found that, again, sometimes it's just asking the right questions and folks, you know, leaders will come up with solutions or we could provide some, here's what worked over here. So some ideas, some suggestions. Oftentimes it's just those mini breakthroughs that will kind of allow people to have an idea, a light bulb moment, and then they can move forth. So I guess my point is we just love to help if someone's out there and needs some help. I love it. And I love the AI coach as well.

19:09I think that that is brilliant. And that is, you are on the cutting edge of, I think, something that a lot of folks are going to be doing. Like they get virtual Sarah, which would be amazing. If they haven't, if they can't afford the real Sarah anytime soon, they can get there. So Sarah Frasca, again, wonderful conversation. You are, again, innovation keynote speaker. You're the author of the book. Oh, gosh, up and to the right. Sorry, I just, it was on a, I started going down the rabbit hole in your world, but the journey Northeast for business success. And again, the founder and CEO of Point Northeast found on the web at pointnortheast.com.

19:51Sarah Frasca, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Josh. It's a pleasure.

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