Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #66 “How To Establish Core Values For Your Business”

Phoebe Sherman interview with Janet Mesh of Aimtal

INTRO
Phoebe Sherman:

Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business, wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.

Hello Hello! Hi, creatives! Welcome back to Girl Gang Craft the Podcast. Phoebe here. And today we have Janet Mesh on the podcast. Before we hop into all of that.

Here we are. It's almost Thanksgiving. This is coming out the day before Thanksgiving. It's wild. How on earth is 2023 already frickin almost over? I don't even know. Here to tell you about a few things as we move into the holiday season. Number one, our holiday gift guide is live. It's amazing. We have over 130 small businesses featured on this guide. It lives girlgangcraft.com/giftguide. And that will be up till January 10th. So you have plenty of time to browse and shop, maybe even shop after the holidays. Get a little goodie for yourself. We really want to invite you all to support small businesses this holiday season. And as we know, as many of us listening are small business owners.

Small businesses produce the best gifts. And your community is going to be stoked to get something that is really intentional and full of purpose and beauty and attention. So we love supporting small businesses. Obviously, our whole business exists around small businesses, but maybe people adjacent to you aren't as familiar with supporting small businesses. So maybe you drop this gift guide in your Slack channel, maybe you send this to your friends on the group chat, maybe you send this to your family reunion email chain, whatever. Pass the gift guide around. It's really easy to shop online. You don't have to go anywhere. This gift guide features small businesses from all over the U.S. and again, it's 130, so there's tons of options and really cool categories and you'll definitely find something for everyone this season. So check it out. girlgangcraft.com/giftguide

And then if you exist on one of our two, let's call them GGC Hubs. GGC Hubs. We invented that right now. We have our Salem show coming up. This is on Small Business Sunday, November 26. Old Town Hall in Salem. This is a nice, intimate show. It's all inside. We have about 50 or so vendors. It's going to be a good time, as always. This is a paid event for attendees. You can go ahead and grab your ticket now online or you can pay at the door. That event fee also gets you raffle tickets, which is really fun. And this entrance fee, this ticketing supports our efforts and funds our operations. Thank you for coming on by. Spread the word. Salem, November 26.

And then if you're in our other hub, Oakland, California, that event is at Oakland Scottish Rite. That is December 2nd. That is a Saturday. We have 100 vendors in one of our favorite venues or a venue that we've been in the longest Scottish Rite right by Lake Merritt. Come support the community again. Shop local shop small. Get your goodies. Hit up the bar, grab a snack. It's a good time as always. And then our final event of the year is at Providence, December 10th. It's our first time, and Providence are really excited to be in a new state in Rhode Island. So come check that one out. The Providence Show also is ticketed, so we're keeping our East Coast shows ticketed and Oakland, we're keeping free for y’all. So check them out. And if you're not in either of our hubs, please shop online at our holiday gift guide. Okay. We have one more episode as we wrap up the year and then we're going to take a break and then we'll return in the new year. So keep an eye out for that final episode and I hope you enjoy this one.

Hello creatives. Welcome back to Girl Gang Craft the podcast. Today we have Janet Mesh on the podcast. Hello Janet how's it going?

Janet Mesh
Hey Phoebe, doing well thank you. Excited to talk today with your audience.

Phoebe Sherman
Hey, thank you so much for being here. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Janet Mesh
Yeah, for sure. So I'm Janet. Nice to meet you all. I am the CEO, co-founder of Aimtal. We're an Integrated Marketing Agency. We're also a fully remote company. So that's a little bit of the style for that, too. So we actually work in the business, the business technology space, so some kind of mid-sized to large enterprise organizations, we offer like a range of services across marketing. And we actually just celebrated five years of the agency in August of 2018, which is really exciting. So yeah, that's a good starting point I think but we’ll probably get into more.

Phoebe Sherman
Yeah. So I would love to hear a little bit about how you got into your work, about how you decided to start your own agency.

Janet Mesh
Yeah so I went to school for marketing, so I've always worked in marketing. Well not always. Well my first roll out of graduating college. Now feels like a century ago, was in marketing. I was like a marketing admin. Worked my way up to become a marketing manager at a IT staffing and recruiting company and I was there for several years. I actually met my co-founder. We were working at like similar companies. They were like owned by the same kind of investment company. They were on the same floor. So meet people in like the kitchen water cooler moments. And I learned a lot. And then they were acquired. It was kind of a good time for me to like one move on and two have a quarter life crisis instead of going right into like a new job. I actually took time off, traveled in South America for four months and really like decided like, what do I want to do in my career? And I really want to continue going deeper into digital marketing. My specialty is like content marketing, copywriting and social media. So everything was just starting to like skyrocket in that direction. Digital marketing actually becoming like a serious discipline within marketing, which is super exciting. So I'm based here in Boston, Massachusetts, actually. So I came back after traveling to Boston, and part of it too, I wanted to be like work fully remote and that was not. Now it's like a norm. There's more opportunity to work remotely, but this was probably 2016 now, that was not a thing. So I was like, Well, I want to get to the range of experience. So I decided to work with a couple of different agencies. So really learning everything as much as I possibly could, getting a lot of experience like account management, client services and pre-pandemic obviously, Boston had like a lot of good marketing, networking, women and business kind of groups and events. So I met a lot of people through that and that also simultaneously led to me getting my own clients and doing my own freelancing and like kind of my direct clients, which was really exciting. So that actually was kind of the catalyst of everything coming to a head in 2018. I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably feel this where you're like, This is something especially your service based business and just getting a lot of clients, which was amazing and was kind of at this point of like, I need some help. I can't do this on my own. My co-founder and I, he always wanted to start a business. We didn't one hundred percent know what it would be. We want to start like a fully remote company, have that flexibility. So we started the first business would be an agency, so we decided to create aimtal in 2018. Started off with like a couple of contractors, people on my network that I have known and worked with historically. And then within like two years we will offer like full time employment, kind of all those fun, exciting benefits and experience of being a full time employee of an agency. And now we got five years later, we're almost like 20 people in the company, but still like working with some handful of contractors as well to help with like project based work so.

Phoebe Sherman
That's huge.

Janet Mesh
Yeah, thank you. I feel like it's somewhat of a linear path but it also just went in a lot of different directions and I don't know if I'm 100% kind of think any entrepreneur listening, you don't always know exactly what you're getting into, but I'm glad that I did it. Honestly, I don't regret it at all.

Phoebe Sherman
Okay tell us a little bit about the kinds of companies that you work with.

Janet Mesh
Yeah, so we're in the business to business space, so it's like businesses marketing to businesses. It's like our specialization. Most of our clients have like a product or a platform. I would say like some of our most notable clients, people may have heard of one of them, it's called Atlassian, and one of their products is called Trello. So we've been doing like Trello’s content and social media marketing for years now. They're actually one of my first consulting freelance clients. That definitely gave me the confidence to be like, I can do this, which was really huge. That's I think if you kind of think of like the Trello’s of the world, those types of tools, that's kind of where we specialize in helping to build a client's like kind of-- we go in and really help out with like the strategy and then help execute upon that, like their marketing strategy and then execute upon that. They're very much either have like a product or a platform that we help market to like their audiences. But it's also kind of cool because a lot of it's not just only on the product or platform where things have evolved, which is really exciting and we've helped with this like a lot of around like the content or like articles, like blog articles, resources like that. I feel like sometimes that in itself is like our product and that's a lot. We've done well with our clients creating like video content and like educational content that their audience is looking for and help them solve problems.

Phoebe Sherman
I guess let's bring it back to a little bit about our audience and what we can learn from you and like content marketing. Let's start with that. What is content marketing and why is that important?

Janet Mesh
Yeah, obviously we work with like, with aimtal we work with like larger organizations, but I think a lot of the best practices are the same. And at the end of the day is like any audience is like, that's kind of what distilling it down to is like you're helping them solve some sort of pain point or challenge, or you're helping to help them discover like a solution. I think that at its core is the driver of content marketing is what can we create for our audience, you know, help them in their job, help them, their career, help in any way. That's where that new layer that and the types of content. So of course, I kind of think of content across any channel or can be anything from written format to video audio of course. And then depending on the channel in terms of like social media versus email on your website, that's how I was kind of think like strategy first, like audience first. You can kind of get, I think any entrepreneur or anyone within the organization, you can kind of get like shiny object syndrome where you want to like, great, everything I know, I'm like that. I'm like, Let's do all the things. Always start with the audience first. Like, what does your audience actually want for the content? What are they consuming? Where are they right now? Like, where are they showing up? Is it actually on Instagram or is it on YouTube and focusing in there first? That's how we always look at it and advise too. Content can be in any type of format we really want to invest in is like creating what your audience is either like looking for or currently consuming and not doing. Like when we say like integrated approach to marketing, we're not saying like you gotta do all the things. It's actually more of what can you create? I feel like you do this well. It's a really good example. You have the podcast, you do the video, and then you're able to take that content across channels. You can consume business content and then across channels, and that's where you're pretty much heading where anyone consumes it. I hope that answered the question.

Phoebe Sherman
That was totally great. I guess, how do you figure out where your audience is? I think a lot of our community immediately goes to Instagram, but maybe that's not always the right choice for people. How do you figure out what platforms to focus on?

Janet Mesh
Yeah, that's a really good question. There's actually a new tool that we use. It's called SparkToro. It came out in the past couple of years and you can put in like a website or you can put in a social handle of like maybe like your competitor. That's kind of a fun thing to do, like see if you had a competitor or someone else that you're interested in, then you want to kind of tap into a similar audience that they have. There's a tool called Spark Tour and you can put the link in there and then they actually pull for you, like where your audience is consuming other content, like other types of podcasts or YouTube channels, other social media channels that they follow. That's one that we use is like a real example of an actual tool you could take away and start using. They have like free version. You can get started on. And that's kind of in the technical side. But I think it's just kind of even thinking through-- we also look at if you have a competitor in the space or someone who's doing something similar to kind of take a look at like where they're promoting their content or doing their marketing, if they're specializing on maybe one or two social media channels like for our industry and the types of companies we work with, it will be LinkedIn, of course, is the most popular social media platform, but actually Instagram is also one of them that does really well for our clients. And I think overall stuff on like a power channel for us actually it works really well, kind of on like the recruiting culture side, which is cool. Maybe not necessarily like the service side. Yeah. Then kind of like layering and like that data with more that empathetic approach of where is my audience kind of trying to like, step into their shoes and see maybe where they are online and seeing what other people in the industry are doing or where they're targeting as well.

Phoebe Sherman
That's great. I kind of want to hear a little bit more about implementing a LinkedIn strategy because I think that's a little bit foreign to a lot of listeners who are specifically in the artsy craft small business world. I think probably people listening who have maybe nine to fives are maybe more familiar with it. I'm totally ignorant to LinkedIn, but full disclosure, I've been sort of thinking about it. What would that look like for me as someone who's B2B, and I think that would be the best use of it if you had some sort of B2B business.

Janet Mesh
Yeah for sure.

Phoebe Sherman
I wouldn’t really do it. If it was direct to consumer necessarily.

Janet Mesh
Yeah, that's a good question. I wouldn't say like the direct to consumer is as popular on LinkedIn. I can see it kind of so being like a space for maybe even more on that. So one thing that LinkedIn is they're moving in the direction of in like what's becoming more and more popular is a kind of more like editorial style content, more storytelling newsletter style. They have like a newsletter feature now. Regardless of your company, if you have like stories or advice or experiences to share, they want to have conversation starters on the platform. So that content also performs really well as like starting a conversation prompting people engaging with them. So pretty like standard social media approach, but I'd be curious to see it being a bit more industry agnostic, like it's only a B2B platform because I don't think it has to be. I think with business to business, It’s still human to human. It doesn't mean that's like robots marketing to robots. We're not that level yet completely. So whoever is on the platform, they're people and they don't just like only defined by their job or their career. I could see that kind of applying on the B2C side. I'd be curious actually, to hear from anyone who's like tried it out and it's been working well for them. Definitely what we see is like for our kinds of performers kind of things. I've touched on really on that educational conversation, starting content is not overly promotional. Some of that performs well I think if you're really looking to like convert people or to sell something, it may happen organically on the feed, but really that's where you maybe want to invest in considering some advertising, but very much where, as I mentioned, what works well on LinkedIn and what to consider building out kind of your strategy in the content is really like sharing stories, especially if you're an entrepreneur. People like to hear the entrepreneurial journey, like what's working for you? Productivity tactics or stories of success, stories about maybe like client wins, like we do things like that too. It's also a really awesome platform. Like if you're building your business and you want to show that culture side of your company or your team. LinkedIn started as like a job platform, like helping people find and connect with companies and get jobs. So I think that's still a little bit at its core and can lend itself. If you're looking for ways maybe outside of Instagram to connect with like a wider talent pool, definitely like incorporating that and like, like LinkedIn posting kind of sharing a little bit of behind the scenes works really well too that type of content.

Phoebe Sherman
I think that's so interesting because like everything that you said is applicable to any other platform, basically.

Janet Mesh
For sure. For sure, Yeah. I think in a way they all kind of are pretty similar. I mean, LinkedIn is interesting because you can kind of test out different formats of just like long form written or you could do like images and video. We also see like all of it, like some of the working kind of just is dependent. I think it's really more of not always like the exact like format but like the quality. It's like, is this going to be interesting to someone? Is it going to be entertaining? Is it going to be educational? And then using that as the guide of what to share? You'll probably go check on my LinkedIn. I'm like, the worst I feel like I spend so much time on my client side posting. Then it comes out for myself. I'm like, Oh, it feels like a lot of work.

Phoebe Sherman
That's so interesting because like, it feels like a scary platform to me a little bit just because I'm not in the corporate world, but I'm thinking about all the things that I post everywhere.

Janet Mesh
And you know. You could just start with reposting it. Yeah, like if you already have a bunch of stuff, then it actually is kind of fun to do that to test out. We did that with like we created like a YouTube short series called Marketing in a Minute for aimtal and then we like repurposed that content on reels and Tik Tok to see out of the three which one would like perform the best. And I like doing that with like tweets or even Instagram posts, seeing like which posts perform on which channel. So it's kind of fun to even just like start there to be able to compare your audiences or what's performing better on one channel versus another. And then that gives you like the direction for your strategy to be like, okay, where do we want to customize certain content? Where does it perform better? And just like then focus on that instead of just trying to do everything on every channel.

BREAK
Phoebe Sherman
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Phoebe Sherman
Yeah, I think that's totally something that I talk about a lot to this repurposing thing. Not only do you get like good data from that, you also reach more people and it's less work.

Janet Mesh
Exactly. Work smarter, not harder. Let's put some stuff on all the platforms, like we're really trying to develop that system.

Phoebe Sherman
I mean, I'm someone who has shiny object syndrome, maybe shiny object system also.

Janet Mesh
Yeah, you could turn into a I love that.

Phoebe Sherman
Also, what was I saying? Just like trying different pieces in different places and like seeing how that works and also revisiting some of our stuff on Pinterest too. Because Pinterest is again, another one of those sort of foreign platforms to me. But I know also it has longevity and some of these pieces that we already have, like our podcast videos, for instance, like throw them up there, put them on TikTok, put them on all the things, send them in your YouTube, send them in your newsletter. Let's make things simple for ourself. And I always have new ideas. I want to do new things, but like maybe we back it up a little bit and like talk about some things we've already talked about in a different way. I know there's this person on Tik Tok, I forget his name, but he has like the method of some three method. I don't know what the title is, but I've been thinking about that lately. And by lately I mean like literally this week. How can I make each piece of content three different ways? I think that is really interesting. For instance, I posted a sort of longer form thing about the Adobe Conference, and it actually didn't do as well as I thought it would. And I was like, okay, well how can I make this like half the length? How can I make this same piece of content? Because I know there's value there. I know that there's good clips there.
Can I turn it into, like, lessons learned? Can I turn it into like a 15 second thing? Something with a trending sound like, how can I take that exact same piece of content and change it up to create that impact? And then to furthermore, like test all of those pieces on the different platforms too. And like, I know that's a lot of content to work with too, and can be like a little bit chaotic. So like use a tool to figure out when you're going to post all that stuff on different platform.

Janet Mesh
Oh, for sure. Yeah. scheduling platforms is really cool for social. I couldn't agree more. The other thing too is like just because you shared it once, it doesn't mean you can't. That's what's nice about repurposing and having like kind of different formats too, because then you can share it again later just because you put it out once, especially if it's only organic, like there's no guarantee someone's going to see that. I couldn't agree more with their approach and I'm excited to see what comes from it. I think that's like one thing just to kind of like layer into the process of the system is like taking the time like we do like biweekly to like monthly. Looking at the analytics, I try not to obsess about it too much going in and seeing because it's just going to drive you crazy, but just kind of have that in like kind of your core routines of content creation and analytics and see like, okay, let's look at this, see what perform, what didn't and try to like, I think sometimes as much as possible, like remove your ego from it kind of we were saying like I thought this was gonna perform well but then you're like, actually maybe if I try it this way or that way, that will perform a bit like better or different timing and stuff. But I think my advice on that would be like, don't drive yourself crazy on it either, because if you get so in the numbers, in the data, I think that like you can easily lose sight of like who you're creating the content for and that's at the end of the day, what matters is like your audience and like who it's for. It can always be like a 1 to 1 tracking on it, but it will resonate with someone. And that's what I get excited about personally.

Phoebe Sherman
I would love if you had any like exercises or tips or just like, how do you figure out who your audience is? How do you really zero in on that and figure out who you're talking to? And that can apply for all of the platforms in your whole business.

Janet Mesh
Yeah, for sure. To be honest, like to start if you already have maybe like customers, I'll speak first and to those contacts you already like have, have maybe kind of an idea or like one or two customers. Like if you've started a business, then you kind of have someone in mind of who that customer is, to be honest. A lot of the time I just like sit there and try to like very much think of like what is like their experience. Honestly, I think if you just like Google it, we don't have one aimtal specific, but it's just like an empathy map. You're kind of thinking through like the who, what, where, when, why of the persona. And you're not just only thinking of their job or like specifically what you're selling them. It's like kind of even thinking like, does this person have children? Like where do they live? They live in a city or a suburb, like kind of thinking of almost someone's like day, like I like to almost be like this person, like how to day, like, how am I envisioning? And the kind of getting into your creativity there. I like to kind of start of like more of that, like ideation, dreaming, brainstorming, empathetic approach to this like think of, like their worldview and experience. And then from there, layer in the data. There's another framework called jobs to be done. So it's like thinking in the context of that person's like day to day it applys well for B2B. But I think it applies to everything. What is a job that they need to complete at work? What are their goals? How is like whatever we create and market to them, something that help them achieve that. It's kind of that like qualitative. That's where I like to start is like qualitative ideation and thinking. And then if you kind of find that person online, if you follow people, it's like to be honest, a lot of this is a little bit-- if you're not feeling like you're stalking someone or like looking into stuff, then you're not probably going about the research in the right ways. Only do things that are publicly available. Yeah, don't do anything that would be illegal of course. I think that's what's cool is actually we have like access to a lot of this on like people sharing on social kind of like their day to day, even on LinkedIn. What are they posting about, What are they like sharing or reposting and trying to get into that mindset?

00;25;43;25 - 00;26;03;23
Unknown
Yeah, I think from there you can of course like layer in that like quantitative data. If you have I mentioned like that tool called spark to you could start to try to use also like if you have Google Analytics on your site, on your website, if you have a company website or like a product page, just kind of taking a look to see what's the traffic coming in, what's the demographic data.
I don't know if there's like a hard and fast like rule to it. I always just kind of pull in a bunch of different things, really like to think through what someone's goals, motivations, pain points and challenges and then like how we can solve for that. And then trying as much to kind of see if the data aligns with that or showing something different than what we were kind of thinking it could be or that person is. The only other thing I would say is if you have customers already, that's the perfect place to start. It's like, what's the profile of that person? Ask them directly, Do you have that relationship? I get scared sometimes, like ask my customer like, Well, what do you want? Is this working for you? Is it not? Like, what would you improve? What would be better service, like a better product? So I think you can kind of figure out, Oh, like if you have that relationship with someone like a customer or your audience kind of polling or asking them directly, That's your research and data point right there.

Phoebe Sherman
I love that. Okay. Kind of switching gears a little bit, going back to when you guys decided to start the agency and when you decided to start growing your team, can you talk a little bit about how you knew you were ready to hire and sort of what does that expanding of a team look like?

Janet Mesh:
Yeah. Oh man, how long do we have now? Yeah, I think it was like really a lot because we're an agency, so is like the quality of our work and the need definitely was the accelerator of having to build the team and like bring folks in. So I mentioned we started off with people in my network that I had worked with before or kind of wanted to work with as a contractors. And then for a couple of years they were doing contracting with us. We didn't have like the infrastructure or like the capital. With aimtal, my co-founder, like we completely bootstrapped the agency, like we never got investment. We never have anything that we ever, like profit wise, just invested back in the business, especially the hire, because we're an agency like you need the people to like, especially on the client side and then like creating the marketing and all that. That was primarily the main catalyst or just the demand of the services, which is a great problem to have honestly. And then it led into, since we were fully remote too, that led us to be able to kind of hire wherever in the United States. And we weren't beholden to just being in Boston, only having to like work with people in this geographical location. So that kind of opened up our eyes to like the opportunity of being able to kind of identify the best talent or just have that flexibility in hiring. And I think in terms of building a team, I feel like at the core of it, I always just kind of wanted to like we wanted to build an edge, like a company that we never could find. Honestly, I think that's what a lot of people in business, like an entrepreneur does. Like, I just couldn't find it. It didn't exist or didn't match what I want it to be. So that's kind of always been the vision is like building the business and the agency and the culture and the team. And so like where I always wanted to work and the people I was want to work for. So that was kind of I feel like in reflection, some of it has been intentional or like how we kind of structure the team like, and it definitely lends itself to like the services we provide. So we have like an entire creative team. We now have like a full growth marketing team, but before that we have content demand separate. Now it's like all in one, but very much in terms of like our specialty areas of services and the people that I was hiring. That's how the team started to kind of like evolve of like who was kind of like managers and then growing out those teams and like now we also have like a strategy team, project management and under like account management. So it definitely has been like a driver of the needs in the clients and the direction of the services, if that makes sense. So there's another question you ask in there that I missed.

Phoebe Sherman
I don't remember, but I would love to talk to you about like building team culture because that was my next question anyways. But you touched on it too, like building something that didn't exist. And I really identified because I don't come from any sort of 9 to 5 like I was in restaurants and teaching yoga. So it's been really interesting to build a team from scratch and it's a really interesting and I'll just talk to my own experience quickly, like it's an opportunity to be anti patriarchal, anti-racist, all of these things like really hold space for a team and like hold space for trust and also friendships and like have all these like nuanced relationships that maybe doesn't exist in corporate America or doesn't exist on a big team or I don't know. So I would love to sort of hear maybe a little bit more of the esoteric, how are you developing those team relationships? And also like you had to start somewhere. What did that look like? How did you build the culture from scratch? Like what sort of tools did you use? I know that's a huge question, but maybe you can speak to it a little bit.

Janet Mesh
I can definitely answer. So like one thing that I think that we did really well from the beginning is that my co-founder and I, we determined and established core values from the beginning and we've actually added on two over the years. So we started out with five and then we added like on two more. So I can mention what they are. So like the number one also kind of our team culture is like we're a fully remote company, so everything always had to be thought through with this like remote first mindset. We put time in to really think of like our core values. It wasn't like from the very beginning, but like within the growing a team. And I realized pretty quick, this is pretty much like our common language. People are from different perspectives and speak different languages or just have different worldviews. This becomes like our kind of shared language of how we work together, our expectations of working, communication and collaboration with each other fully remote. The one that we have, I kind of think of them as like two pillars of excellence and empathy, and that's kind of what we want to be known for as aimtal is like high quality, excellent services and work and like a very empathetic approach to each other and like our clients. The five we started with were communicate clearly is like a big one. I also have a communication degree so communication is super important to me. I think within that is setting clear intention and expectations of people and that's something I really put a lot of effort to communicate expectations is what I'm expecting of you and trying to make sure that people are like clear about that. I think everyone kind of wants to know where they stand and like where they're going. We're fully remote, so it's like, I can't turn around to someone and say, like how you send me that thing or We got to work on this, or What do you think? It all has to be very intentional, the communication. And then the second one is understand the customer is like that's like kind of like really thinking of like the other person of like what you're doing. Like we, we just talked about their worldview, their experiences. We're a small company. So the third ones like take the initiative very much like we need people to kind of take ownership and take initiative like tackle challenges like head on together. You can't just be like, Oh, I'm telling you, every single step along the way, the other one was Keep an open mind. We like to celebrate and like respect diversity of ideas and thought you may have something like a strong opinion, but like someone could challenge that. And being open to that I think is actually like a great thing and an important part of like team culture. The other one is be exceptional. Those are like our ones that we have always had at our core from the beginning. Be exceptional is like that passion, really want people with like passion for marketing or other craft that they have in their specialty area and the ones that we've grown over the past two years is like, find a solution. So really like coming. I mean, working at any company is challenging and like you're always going have challenges to solve. So really, have that core values been kind of a game changer to like layer in just find a solution is like you may not have to know exactly what the solution is, but like showing that you thought through things and then the final one is like collaborating with intention. So very much like making sure that like those who should be included in decision making or discussion like are involved and like inviting them to the meeting, making sure that they're like in the Slack channel, that they're like participating and like their perspectives being heard. So that's kind of, I would say like definitely starting with team culture that comes from like if you have those core values, like I've learned like previous company like so it's like kind of plastered on the wall or the employee handbook but how we kind of make sure that this is like part of like our routines and rituals is like we actually have like I'll go in a little bit of like the routine, the structure of how it makes sure this happens because I find a lot of the time, like team culture and you want it to happen really organically. I found my friends got to be pretty like, you really kind of have to set up a like structure for it to operate. Some sort will happen organically. I think that that's like you have to allow that, but I don't think it's going to happen as much as people think it will. You really got to like put in the effort to make sure that people show up in the ways that they're expected to. For example, at aimtal how we do like all hands meetings like Zoom calls every Monday, Friday and Monday is of like, look ahead of the week. We're all getting on together, looking at cross projects and priorities. We also kind of take a look at it like our workloads and see if anyone needs to like reprioritize or get some support at certain days and talk about that openly. And then on Fridays we treat it as like kind of like a wrap up, all hands, like a reflection of the week. And we start every single call, giving each other like kudos. High five like call it kudos and every kudo, every reflection or something that you want to say to your team member about something, do that work or like celebrates like our moment to celebrate every week because we're just like constantly moving forward, looking ahead. So it's really nice. It was pause and every time you give a kudo to someone it needs to be connected to like a core value, so you're like, Hey, like I saw that you took the initiative in this way or you communicated clearly. We collaborate with intention in these ways. That's probably one of my favorite things of like just taking those moments to reflect. We use a tool we've used for a couple of years and still using called 15 five. They have like this like kudos feed so you can just like add your kudos to like the feed and then associate to the core value. And it's kind of cool because I'm like when you like hashtag the value and then it calculates like what the top trending like values every month are. So that's kind of a fun way for everyone to like, see. Like, oh, like, yeah, it's like really fun little data point kind of out of the data, but like find a solution is the top one. So everyone's kind of like operating within that and there's seven of them. So there's kind of like a lot. Every quarter we do like a quarterly review across like the agency and departments.
We kind of like look at this like holistically, like where were the top trending like values? What are some examples? Ask people to share more examples of that. So I think like starting there in like reflection of five years, it's like really easy to put off and like not put the work into. But if you're building a team and your plans to build a team like that, common language and like setting those expectations and like really figuring out how is like part of like your daily, weekly working with everyone is really important. It's easy to kind of just like forget, and then you're like, Oh, a month has gone by, we haven't talked about this, or three months have gone by, a year has gone by. I have other examples, of course, too, but I think I'll pause there because I know that's kind of a lot to in potentially, but yeah.

Phoebe Sherman
No, I like that. Okay. What is your day to day look like and how do you I guess how do you take care of yourself all running the business? And maybe those are two questions here.

Janet Mesh
Let's ask the hard questions now. I can give the classic answer like every day is different. What I try to do, like I can kind of expand like my morning routine. I'm still overseeing like the client services, like marketing of like the team, like delivering services to the client, like I'm so client facing. I do actually enjoy the work, like I'm a marketer at heart. So it's like what I like to do. But of course at the same time, like I have a team that is also client facing in a lot of meetings and like leading the charge on a bunch of accounts. So there's certain ones that I'm still involved in. Some of my meetings are like client facing external and then but also a lot of like on the internal side helping like run the business, doing our own marketing, like things like this, and then also like coaching my team and helping the problem solve and kind of working with them and our projects and accounts. I mean, kind of typical unfortunately is like I am in a lot of meetings for a majority of my day, but like to kind of take care of myself and like balance things I very much like pretty much make sure I don't have any meetings unless it's like absolutely necessary before 10 a.m.. Like I really like to have a slow morning. I'm not a morning person. I like, don't talk to me. I like to talk a lot, obviously, but I need to have a kind of slow chill morning. I don't have children yet, so I have the luxury of being able to sleep in a bit. When I can I do. Sometimes I like to work out in the morning, like go for a walk with my husband or I like to cycle. We have like a bike at home. I'm not the best with exercise. I will be honest, I've been slow a lot, but I always feel better when I wake up and move. So I try that as much as possible, especially if I can have a slow morning. I start to kind of get into when I get into work mode, like between nine and ten, it's more of just like getting organized. So like seeing the lay of the land, like, what do I have for meetings or like things I get to work on. I so honestly, like, write down, I have like a digital to do list. Like we have our project management digital to do list, but I like to look at it and then like physically write down. I think everyone can identify with the satisfaction of crossing things physically off a list. I like to write down like top three priorities for the day because like I have a lot and I think any entrepreneur, like you're kind of like, take one hat, put the next one on every hour is like a lot of context switching, just looking at like the full list and then being like, okay, what are the top three things I like will get done today to feel productive and accomplished and successful? I like write those down at the top of my like page. One thing I like put a lot of time and energy into is like my own personal development, like productivity styles and like trying different ones. And the one that I found is like work the best for me is time blocking and like task batching. So looking at my calendar and being like, do I have gaps of time blocks that I can like fill in with kind of similar things I got to accomplish in between meetings or things like that? That's worked really well for me. So I kind of map out my day based on almost every hour, to be honest, or even half hour sometimes and not forgetting. I literally like today, I was like, eat lunch. It's sometimes it gets to the point where I, like, have to be like, I got to make sure I write it down.
But I think that's a problem. I think that's actually like because I'll forget, unfortunately, I'm one of those people that's like, oh, 3:00 and I forgot to eat lunch, unfortunately, which I don't recommend. But I found that kind of a system there to like make sure that I'm just kind of staying on track. And then at the end of the day, But that's what I like about working remotely is like sometimes I just don't have the kind of oomph or the energy. So like sometimes in the middle of day, like go for a walk or if it's nice out or just get some air, just like sometimes even just like, do things around my apartment or my home just to like, kind of move, kind of change up my energy a little bit to bring it back. And that's what I actually enjoy because It doesn't always have to be always on sitting at my desk from 9 to 5. That was kind of not the point. At night, I just try to it can depend, of course, like if I have events, I like to go out with friends or my husband and family like dinners. I like to go to like networking. But now that we can like do events in person, I like to kind of like get out. And I live in downtown Boston, so I'll go for a while. I kind of see what's happening in the city or just kind of chilling out. Honestly, sometimes I'll just put my face mask on and hang out, make a good dinner.

Phoebe Sherman
I love it. Okay. We are going to go on to our lightning round. I think we've talked about a couple of things already, but what is your favorite app right now?

Janet Mesh
Okay, I was thinking about this I’m like Instagram? No. but actually I feel like this would not be like a common one, but I think everyone has access to it. Maybe not everyone. If you have an iPhone, you should have access of part of it. But we've recently got this like the subscription to like Apple News Plus, and I've been really enjoying that actually, because it's like I can subscribe to like articles or like magazines that I like to read on there. So I've been enjoying Apple News, which I read that question and I was like, Hmm, I feel like that's not going to be that interesting. But at the same time, it kind of is like, I want to stay informed. So it's a nice way to feel like I have like a one place to go and stay informed of what's just happening outside of my world.

Phoebe Sherman
Absolutely. What is your favorite thing on the Internet?

Janet Mesh
Oh, favorite thing on the Internet. I'm like so terrible because I feel like I'm a classic marketer like the moment I can get off the Internet I try to. Actually I don't know. This is like I guess only it's like it's on the Internet, but like something I've really enjoyed and I feel like I'm in this mode of like because I'm switching from since I'm in New England too it's like switching from summer clothes to winter and like, they’re obviously clothes I don't want to be wearing. And I guess it's kind of on the Internet. It's like a company called for days f o r d a y s. And I really like their site and like they're kind of like whole approach. They send you like a bag, like a physical bag for your clothing so you can recycle it. So it's like all sustainable too. So you can recycle your clothing and then you can go back online and they give you like a credit based on that to like do online shopping. So I guess it's an Internet thing because I like online shopping in some ways. I guess I would go with that one because I feel like I was looking at the bag and the like how to do all that switch up.

Phoebe Sherman
Perfect. Is there a book that you love lately?

Janet Mesh
I started reading a book actually, and I like just started it, so I'll let you know if I love it, but I love the title and it's called Surrounded by Idiots. It's called like the Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate. And I find that's really interesting because I think a lot of the time, like it's interesting so far and just learning more about like people's communication styles and the differences. So I'm kind of looking forward to reading that book. This book I just started because I think a lot of things in life are just a matter of like great communication or miscommunication. So anyway, I can like kind of learn new tactics I get excited about.

Phoebe Sherman
Let's close it out with what is something like you wish you knew when you were starting out with your agency.

Janet Mesh
I would say the biggest one is like very much on to kind of wrap up our conversation today is like around like setting and communicating clear expectations. I think that's really important. And like I said, like people want to know where they are, where they can go. And like if you're building a team or a company, like that's kind of stuff that it evolves to that, which I didn't fully realize. I guess I enjoy it, but it's like one of those things I like. You kind of go into your company as an entrepreneur because like, you're really great at what you're delivering to the customer, but as you start to like build a team and like a culture and like kind of all the other stuff, you got to think through, like people are starting to think of their own careers and like career paths. So for anyone would be like, maybe starting out would be like, maybe you want it to be more of like proactive, of really starting to identify that and build that part. I think actually you've done a pretty good job, but it's a lot of work. I think it's kind of goes back to like identify for yourself as a business owner of like is that something that you really want to be doing? Like what do you really like to be doing and want to kind of invest your time and energy in or like, do hire someone to like help with those things. We wear somebody has, But it doesn't mean that you should be wearing every single hat that really like really honest reflection of what's a good way. I like to frame the question as like, what's de-energizing or energizing? You can probably do it, but is it what you should be doing? And I think what we're talking about, too, is just like putting in the work to set that kind of common language with your team. If you're building one or just starting and like, what is our mission? What's our core values? And just having that be part of discussion and conversation. Honestly, if you feel like you're if you're repeating things all the time, then that's probably a good thing. Like back to your thing of three. It's like if you haven't said it in like three times and three different ways, then the message probably didn't land. I was like, say to my manager was like, Did you say it in three different ways? Written, verbal or like a video recording or something like that? It could be in range of formats. But yeah, I think just like very much of kind of thinking through as much as you can, of like how do you want to show up in your business and like, what do you need to build and build that infrastructure for everyone to be able to help you achieve the goals and support your customers? I love the three times or three ways thing, and I think that applies to so much, and I think you can take that to social media and say, actually you have to say it seven times. And yeah, it makes you feel like you're doing something wrong, but it's actually like you're doing it right If you're kind of that repetition.

Phoebe Sherman
I love that.
Okay. Well, Janet, this has been so great. Where can listeners find you?

Janet Mesh
You can find us on our website, aimtal.com. a i m t a l .com. Definitely I would say like just follow us social if your-- we’re defiinitely the most active, I would say on Instagram and LinkedIn and yeah, and we also are just like launching an email newsletter. So it's called marketing in a minute. So if you wanted to kind of get like a one minute marketing lesson and just kind of stay in contact with some of the content recruiting, you can go to our website and go to our newsletter section and sign up there too.

Phoebe Sherman
Oh, that's great. We'll definitely make sure that you give us that link and we'll definitely share that.

Janet Mesh
Yeah, sounds good. Awesome.

Phoebe Sherman
Thank you so much, Janet. Thanks for joining us.

Janet Mesh
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.

OUTRO
Phoebe Sherman
Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for shownotes and more. See you next time.