Colette Moore, a dedicated advocate for small business development, shares her impactful journey of empowering entrepreneurs and fostering community growth. As a leader in small business advocacy, Moore brings to light the critical role small businesses play in local economies and the broader societal impact of supporting entrepreneurial endeavors.
In this episode of the Culture Leaders Podcast, join us as Colette Moore delves into her mission to use her talents in administration, collaboration, and community engagement to help small businesses thrive. She discusses the importance of providing small business owners with the tools, knowledge, and resources they need to succeed, emphasizing the significance of legacy and community support.
Notable quotes
“My why is to use my God-given talents to help our small businesses meet their goals.” – Colette Moore
“It’s really important to me that they have a better understanding of how they can be successful.” – Colette Moore
“Helping small businesses is about leaving a legacy that impacts their homes and communities.” – Colette Moore
“You shouldn’t hire until you understand what kind of culture you want” – Colette Moore
“Storytelling in doing that, you get to hear the tough stuff… and I think that that storytelling had a huge component in making people care.” – Colette Moore on the power of storytelling.
“Let’s let them tell us. And we spend quite a bit of time talking about some of those clients.” – Colette Moore on engaging with business stories to understand challenges.
“We want our businesses to think bigger because they have capacity, they have capability, they can do it.” – Colette Moore encouraging small businesses to set ambitious goals.
“Know your numbers. Gotta know where you stand… Times will get tough and things will get hard and unexpected things happen.” – Colette Moore
Useful links
Reach Colette at:
Get more from the Culture Leaders Podcast
Connect with Us on Social Media:
https://www.instagram.com/jess_kriegel/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicakriegel
https://www.linkedin.com/company/culturepartners/
https://www.instagram.com/jess_kriegel/
Visit Our Website:
Enjoyed the episode? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave us a review.
TRANSCRIPT
Colette Moore: You shouldn’t hire until you understand what kind of culture you want, what kind of skill, not just the skills that I want, but what kind of personality, who’s going to be a fit with me and my style, who’s going to help advance.
Jessica Kriegel: Meet Colette Moore, Program Manager of the Small Business Development Center at the Pacific Coast Regional Small Business Development Corporation.
As a former small business owner herself and a current advisor, Colette uses her vast experience to empower entrepreneurs through strategic support and resource sharing.
Colette Moore: Know your numbers. Gotta know where you stand. Gotta know where you stand. Know your numbers to help you to be successful. Times will get tough and things will get hard and unexpected things happen. So start preparing yourself for those things. Put those into your numbers so that you can weather some storms, leverage resources that are available.
Jessica Kriegel: I’m Dr. Jessica Kriegel, and this is Culture Leaders, where we decode the magic behind the masters of movements to unleash the power of culture. This is the story of Colette Moore, a master of a movement to help the small business owner succeed.
Colette Moore: Thank you so much for joining us. I can’t wait to hear what is your why.
Colette Moore: You know, I went back to my notes, Jessica, and I thought about my why, and my why is really to use my God-given talents. That God has blessed me with administration, collaboration, loving on people to help them to meet their goals. And so my why is to help our small businesses that we serve to help them to meet their goals as a former small business owner. It’s really important to me that they have a better understanding of how they can be successful and get some of the tools that they need and some of the knowledge that they need and tricks of the trade to help them advance more quickly if possible. So, how can they make some great strides at the right time? And the other thing I thought about was legacy. So it’s also leaving a legacy because the work that the small businesses do in their communities impacts not only their homes, helps them put food on the table, but it also helps communities, helps their families. During the pandemic, you need a food on the table. And so if a small business is working and not able to provide the services that they need effectively, then they could struggle to put food on the table. So that’s really important to me. And then also leaving a legacy for my family, doing something that I know that my family is proud of for the work that we do and how we serve and serve with excellence as well. So that’s important to me.
Jessica Kriegel: Mm, that’s beautiful. It’s funny because I’ve often said it’s so silly that we look up to these CEOs of these tech giants, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and the Elon Musks for their leadership. When the reality is it’s not that hard for them to lead. They’ve got access to incredible amounts of capital. They’re able to take crazy risks with very little downside. They’ve got a platform and the connections to make things happen. If you want real leadership advice, look at the person who is the leader of the local physical therapy shop in your town, who’s working with limited resources, who’s short staffed, who’s got to do all of the things they’ve got to do: the recruiting, the marketing, the leading of the team. All of those things. That’s real leadership in my opinion, and much more challenging than it is to say, well, I’m going to buy Twitter for 40 billion and oh, well, it failed. Now I’m going to do something else.
Colette Moore: I just say, you know, those are just bigger decisions and more decisions to make plus the resources. But to your point, the small businesses are making tough decisions every day, how to hire, how to do the work, how to be more efficient doing it, better at it, keeping their technical skills, whether it’s your dentist or, you know, your local store, gift shop, things like that. So everybody, they’re all strategizing.
Jessica Kriegel: So what is the role of culture in the minds of small business owners, as far as you can see? Is it something that’s top of mind for them? Or is it off the radar because they’ve got all these other fires they’re putting out?
Colette Moore: You know, I started looking at that in terms of culture. And a lot of our businesses are solo entrepreneurs to start out. So we have a workshop like hiring your first employee and culture is talked about there because you shouldn’t hire until you understand what kind of culture you want. So you’re thinking about when I think people do it when they start hiring, right? That’s when they start thinking about what kind of skill, not just the skills that I want, but what kind of personality, who’s going to be a fit with me and my style, who’s going to help advance. And so I think that it’s kind of in the back of people’s minds until they’re ready to make their first hire. Or even some of the resources that they use. So if you’re looking for an accountant, or if you’re looking for a marketing specialist, you’re looking for these different things, you’re looking for certain characteristics, you know, whether it’s somebody that’s focused on excellence and not making mistakes, but yet you’re willing to make mistakes, like there are all these different cultural things that people can be looking for. Do they want a casual workplace or they don’t? The organization I work for has been around 47 years and kind of banking focused, even though we loan to small businesses. So it’s a little more conservative. I didn’t feel right if I didn’t have a suit jacket on today because that’s kind of the culture, even though it’s losing some over the pandemic. And so I think for small businesses, it’s that first hire is when they really start thinking about what kind of culture do you want in your organization. That’s when they really kind of start putting the pedal to the metal because now you’re about to put money out for somebody that’s going to be establishing the culture with you.
Jessica Kriegel: When you’re advising people in that early growth stage, do you see culture challenges at the top of the list? Do you see a lot of errors in hiring when people are starting to grow their business for the first time?
Colette Moore: Yeah, because even though they might have hired before, you know, they might have had professional careers before in corporate America. So they might have hired before, but not necessarily for them and small businesses. You ask people to do a lot. You have to find people that I think are often sometimes more flexible. So they might be hiring a specialist. They can do that job really well, but they may need to be flexible to do some other things. And I think that if you’re coming from a corporate environment, you’re kind of used to people being a little more siloed, you know, a lot of specialists doing things. Smaller businesses, you have a little more generalist into some degree. And so I think that they are thinking about it and in terms of the mistakes that they make, making sure that you have identified the culture that you want, you know, people that work hard or they’re more family oriented. If those are things that are important to you, then you need to know that as part of your hiring process. Otherwise, you could end up with someone that kind of looks good on the surface. They may have the skill set, but when they come in, they are not going to work well with your clients. It seemed good on the surface. And so I do think that small businesses do have challenges hiring initially. But I know some of our small businesses, some of the things they do is they create culture. One of our clients started creating a video to help train. So then that could not only save her time, but it also starts to set the culture. So now you can watch this video and see what’s important, understand the processes and procedure and what’s important to the founder. And so when small businesses start to add those kinds of tools, I think that helps them better. Training is going to be part of that. So you hope to find people that blend, but you also are setting it with the training that you’re doing. I think some small businesses, which is so busy, like running that, you know, the time to train is fairly limited. So I love that idea of putting those videos together and sharing those. And so, when the next one comes in, you’re not starting from scratch and, you know, maybe you can tweak it and update it, but you have a set direction of where you want to go. And now everybody coming in gets to understand that, and you’re training them on that.
Jessica Kriegel: Yeah, and you’re storytelling, right? We say that storytelling is one of the foundational experiences in driving the right cultural beliefs to get people to take action, and those videos are a scalable way of doing that for small and large organizations.
Colette Moore: Yeah, and storytelling, I love the storytelling. I know we were watching, I was watching your video, and I know you talked a lot about storytelling, how to get people to give a, give a crap. And so I love that. And, you know, it’s so profound and storytelling became important, not just for our clients because we teach storytelling in marketing and things like that, but also for our own team. So when I first started, our team was struggling somewhat. They felt like we weren’t as transparent that they didn’t have information when I came in. And so I was like, you want transparency? You want to see how we’re really doing? All right, let’s go. And so that brought everybody in and we were struggling meeting our metrics. One of the things that we did, we were meeting every week during the pandemic, but we added a storytelling component. So we would identify the key metrics, whether it was helping people get capital infusion or helping them to start up. And then we would have the advisors tell a story or tell us about that client. And that storytelling in doing that, you get to hear the tough stuff, you get to hear the wonderful accomplishments that people are making along the way, the things that maybe they’ve overcome to get to this point and how excited you are to be able to help them. And I think, you know, we were able to then meet our goals. And I think that storytelling had a huge component in making people care. And so I so appreciate you talking about that because I hadn’t even thought the why, but it created a little competition too, because then everybody wanted to be kind of on the board to be able to tell the story about their great finds that they were working for in the small businesses that were doing great work. That wasn’t necessarily the intent, but the storytelling, I think, really mattered, do you care about the people that were served?
Jessica Kriegel: Oh, that’s interesting. So you were naturally, organically doing the tools in the TEDx, and then you watched the TEDx afterwards and were like, Oh, that’s what I was doing. How brilliant of me.
Colette Moore: That is brilliant. I was like, Oh, that’s what that is. I had never really done that before. I love storytelling. You know, I worked for Disney for many years, so storytelling, I love. Good storytelling and heart-tugging and dramatic. And so storytelling is important. But I didn’t realize really how to use that like that before. And I don’t know where that came from, but it’s like, let’s let them tell us. And we spend quite a bit of time talking about some of those clients and then we hear some of the gaps and brings up maybe problems that we’re having in the way we’re advising. So it brings up other issues too, when we are able to tell a story, I think it helps us to get better.
Jessica Kriegel: Well, I’d love to dig into that because when I, when I looked into your background, I thought, wow, that is such a pivot in your own career from being at Disney for so many years in strategic partnerships and branding. And now, I mean, you had this pride staffing transition. And then this small business development center feels maybe similar vein is. So what happened? Did you have some kind of midlife awakening of a new direction you wanted to take? Or what? How? Tell me about that pivot.
Colette Moore: You know, I had always wanted to start a business. My family, or a group of business owners. My father had a business with a partner for many years in Chicago, a juice business. I worked for them. I worked for a smaller organization, Soft Sheen, earlier in my career as well. I always thought I might want to have a business. And then during the downturn, in like, 2010, transitions were made at Disney, and I find myself looking from the outside after a wonderful time there. So I took some time and thought, okay, this is the time to start the business. And so I started looking at the franchising model, and it was a departure from what I was doing on the staffing side. I had done HR-like things. I had always hired staff and trained, and those not just for my team, but also for our broader marketing teams and things as well. So I was always in that area, but I had no idea how tough the staffing side could be. So that was a key learning for me, and I always laugh. I say, you know, I’m smart. I got an MBA and all these things, but running a business was tougher than I knew and trying to figure out how to spend your time and spend it wisely. So looking back after 8 years, I just decided that it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I had been advised by the same Small Business Development Center. And so I’ve gotten great counsel and I tell people I was a good client and I was a bad client. I did a lot of great things and follow great advice and insights, and there were some things that I probably could have done better in terms of follow up. And so, when I had the opportunity, and the director was leaving here, because of all the work I’ve been doing in the community and with chambers, people knew the work that I was doing, they, and we were, you know, delivering, I was providing staffing throughout the area. And so my name came up. And so to have an opportunity to come and work on the other side was just awesome to me because now I got to help smaller businesses in a broader way. And that’s really how the transition began, how that transition happened, and I really do love this work when I think about getting up every morning to be able to help our clients and how hungry they are to learn. You know, we try to work with people that are cultural, that want to be in it together. And we don’t just do the work for you, but we’re trying to guide you along the way. But when I see those clients that are actively engaged in trying to grow and looking for resources to try to help, you know, let’s see how we can get in and help you and our clients and our advisors are dedicated to our clients. I see the work that they do. I don’t advise typically directly just on occasion, because we have really great advisors and they have a heart to work with the small businesses.
Jessica Kriegel: You know, it’s funny. I look back in my own career and I had a similar transition. I spent many, many years at a Fortune 100 tech firm. And then my next job after that was C-suite at a small business. And so I’m wondering what key lessons you pulled from the large organization versus the small business that you were running and how those lessons help inform what you’re doing now.
Colette Moore: I think that in the larger organizations, you know, you do your annual planning, you do your strategic plans, you’re working on your marketing and directing that. And I think sometimes in a small business, one of the things I experienced was it was planning, but I struggled to really hone in on my client. So when you’re starting a business, you’re trying to get money in the door. And I call it that purple squirrel syndrome, where all of a sudden you’re like squirrel, and you’re chasing business. Sometimes it is not a good fit for me. And so it takes you a while sometimes to write that ship. But the difference is with a small business, you don’t have a lot of capital. You’re typically capitalized on your own or your family. And your name’s on the lease and all of those types of things. So I think really understanding before you open what those things are and really doing your research first. So we’ve started a new workshop which talks about doing your research in advance. So don’t spend your money before you really, really know where you’re going. But entrepreneurs are like, hurry. I’m in a hurry. I got to open. I got to open. It’s like, but open well and keep your money in your pocket until you’re ready. I think that that is probably the wiser course of action. Larger businesses can absorb those errors more easily. Smaller businesses, it can really hurt if you are misdirected initially. It takes a while to kind of turn that ship back. Even though it’s small and nimble, you can turn it around, but you still need resources that aren’t flowing as easily.
Jessica Kriegel: Yeah, well, the limited resources challenge is what makes these leaders more inspiring, in my opinion. They have to do a lot more with a lot less and that takes a lot of skill, much more so than, you know, here’s your annual budget, decide how you want to spend it and be smart. It’s interesting. So what’s next for you then? What are your current top of mind challenges or goals for the near term?
Colette Moore: We are always looking to serve underserved or what I’ll call under-resourced businesses in the black and brown community because there is capacity for growth in neighborhoods. There are areas that need services. There are businesses that want to set up in places to be able to serve their communities. We want to be part of helping them to do that. That means getting them ready financially. One of our goals is to help people to be more financially fit. Entrepreneurs and people in general, even lower-income people, understand money. When I was working in staffing, I had staff that would be like, “Oh, no, I’m not going over there because that’s too much gas.” So people know how to count their pennies, but how do we develop a common business line? That’s one of the things that we are working on. We offer seven financial fitness workshops for people to start developing a common language of how to do their cash flow, make sure that they understand their income statements are balancing so that they can plan for the future and that’s paper. Review before you put money out the door on certain new activities or new initiatives and things like that. So that’s one. Financial fitness for our clients to help them perform and be able to evaluate data because how do you know what you’re doing if you don’t have any data? It’s back of pocket and there’s no reason that businesses have to do that. They can do it. And we’ve seen some of our smallest businesses. Once they start working on understanding money and realize that they have an opportunity for change and, “Oh, I can raise my prices because my competitors are doing that.” Or, “I didn’t even know I wasn’t making as much money.” You have to have the data to be able to make good decisions. So that’s one of the things we’re working on. We also have a cohort of black women entrepreneurs. It was started during the pandemic because black women got more of the hit, larger wealth gap, more care for families and elders, actually more working outside of the home. There were a lot of hits that some of the black women and entrepreneurs took. So we’re able to put together a cohort program that offered them not only six months of training but a grant at the end of it. We just finished our third cohort that graduated. To hear the stories that they’re telling, whether it’s goal setting, helping them with their goal setting, knowing their numbers. One of our clients said that she dates her numbers. Now, every Friday. That’s the kind of conversations that we want people to be having about their businesses, working on their businesses and not just in the business, stepping away, making sure that you’re doing those things to be healthy financially and healthy whole. The other thing is PCR after 47 years, we purchased a new building. We’re working on that new building, which is in South LA to be able to serve more people. It’ll have some entrepreneurial support places where people can come and work in addition to staff offices. We’re excited to be able to support that and to have clients to be able to come in and host events and things as well, training events, training, networking type events to help them to grow.
Jessica Kriegel: Wow. Most of our clients, and I think most of the listeners of this podcast, are in the enterprise world, not small business. The things that are trending in that world are things like AI and mental health at work and DEI being embedded in the organization versus some performative initiative that’s a one-off kind of thing. Are those things top of mind in the small business world, as far as you’re seeing?
Colette Moore: Absolutely. On the AI side, we were one of the first in our area to host an AI workshop for AI marketing and had over a hundred people just in our first workshop, which was huge because small businesses can help close some of these gaps by using AI products properly and well and understanding the opportunities and the limitations of them. Help write proposals, help do some of those things that it would take you a long time to do that. Maybe now you can help draft up instead of five hours. You’re writing it yourself. Maybe it’s an hour and a half where you start with a template and you make it your own. I think that is going to be transformative actually for small businesses. It should be a tool that can be used by all now, but of course, making sure that people know how to leverage it and buying some of their own services. Organizationally, PCR, we’re having this debate ourselves. Everybody’s talking about AI. My boss thought I was a little dramatic. I walked into our team meeting. I was like, “AI or die.” They were like, “What? That is over the top.” We have to. We have to be helping our small businesses so that they can leverage it to work with larger organizations and on the procurement side and suppliers and things like that. Let’s help everybody grow. We are very focused on things like that. As it relates to DEI, making sure that suppliers, small businesses, and diverse businesses have an opportunity to provide supplies and services to organizations like that. When large organizations are saying, “Hey, we can’t find anybody,” our role is to try to help them to get ready. The Olympics is one of the things in our area locally that we’re looking at. How can we get the right clients for the services that are needed to really be ready before? Kind of the road to the Olympics. Whether it’s soccer, or the next event, all these events leading up to the Olympics, how can we help our clients to be prepared so that they have capital ready? They’re able to pivot and provide some scale, and our clients need some help and work to do that. DEI is definitely, I think, part of the work that we do and try to help our clients to do as well. But when you’re dealing with black and brown small businesses, they often hire locally and people that they know and family and things like that. So you’re naturally going to get a little more diversity, at least initially in the starts of the organizations.
Jessica Kriegel: For those looking to make a significant impact in their communities through business, what advice would you offer based on your experiences?
Colette Moore: Know your numbers where you stand. Gotta know where you stand. Know your numbers to help you to be successful. That’s not the only thing, but know your why. So that when times get tough, you can stick in. Times will get tough, and things will get hard, and unexpected things happen. So start preparing yourself for those things. Put those into your numbers so that you can weather some storms. Leverage the resources that are available. There are a lot of free resources that small businesses just don’t know about. So look, start getting help when you need to. I love working with my advisor. Typically, initially, you know, you’re meeting sometimes every other week, or once a month, and then once a quarter until oftentimes businesses start getting into trouble. Then they don’t want to see an advisor. I say, do not hide. Do not run from your resources. Stick in, go in and get the help that you need, even in the difficult times and leverage resources, and then build your own community so that you have other people to talk to. Sometimes being the leader, it can be very lonely on the entrepreneurial side. You don’t want to tell everybody where you are, what’s going on, but you have a few trusted places where you can go and get some additional insights and help people kind of write your thinking and say, “Girl, please get back on that horse and ride,” you know, it’s like, no drama, you know, that’s not a good excuse. You can do it, so you need to have that community of people that are going to support you. Sometimes your staff can be part of that. I had some great staff when I had my business that helped to help to do that as well. But oftentimes it’s other business owners that are growing and that you can lean on, and they can lean on you to help you to grow up and get better and bigger. That’s our goal. I’m like, hey, everybody, let’s get to a million dollars at the start. Let’s go, like, what are we doing? Come on. So trying to raise that bar. I want our businesses to think bigger because they have capacity, they have capability, they can do it. I’m excited to see them when they are starting to meet those new milestones.
Jessica Kriegel: So much of what I just heard you say is about mindset more than skillset and believing in yourself so that you can do more, not getting down on yourself, not being embarrassed about failure. I mean, I’m 40 years old. I’m still figuring that one out. I feel like I finally just cracked the code a little bit on, wait a minute, making mistakes doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person, you know? I mean, there is a mental model that I think a lot of people, maybe in particular entrepreneurs who are driven to succeed and to build something that if we make a mistake, then we are bad. You know, and that’s not it. It’s part of the journey. We’re all on a journey and that’s going to be where you learn your lessons. And it can be hard though.
Colette Moore: I really believe nothing is wasted. So that was the one thing that I learned from transition to transition. Every skill set that I developed, every person that I met, it’s all part of the step ladder up. Nothing is wasted. All the things that I’ve learned, I can apply here. Nothing, you just carry those forward and carry those forward and carry those forward. The mistakes, nothing’s wasted. You learned it. You learned it. You probably won’t repeat it again, but if you do, tweak it and fix it again. So nothing is wasted along this journey of entrepreneurship. I’m proud of the entrepreneurs that go out there and make it happen. The larger companies, they started small too. They start out their garages and backyards or whatever their offices at home. So that’s okay. That’s part of the journey also.
Jessica Kriegel: Well, you know, it’s interesting. Sometimes the mistakes when I, when I feel really down on myself about having made a mistake, I think about in five years, in 10 years, I’ll be able to serve someone by telling them what not to do because I made that mistake. And maybe that’s why I got to go through it was to have the ability to be more useful later with someone that I’m mentoring or that asks me for advice, you know, and it seems like, you know, you probably have made a lot of mistakes in your career that have been very useful in the work that you do right now in terms of service going back to your why at the beginning of this conversation to help people succeed.
Colette Moore: Yeah. And I wanted to add one more that I would mention. Really manage your time as an entrepreneur. I talked about kind of the purple squirrel, but really, I think managing your time. The pandemic probably helped about this as we’re coming back and doing outreach again, and really looking at your time and managing those things that are must-dos, nice-to-dos. Really don’t have to do. So they really don’t have to do. That’s your hour to get your workout in, right? It’s like, you don’t really have to do that. Nobody’s looking for you to be there. So it’s okay. If you don’t go and giving ourselves, I think, some of that leeway that we don’t have to do everything and really starting to better capitalize our priorities. I think that entrepreneurs really have to do that. I see some entrepreneurs. I don’t know where this thinking of, you know, how many jobs you got on, you know, kind of thing. It’s like, you don’t have to have seven jobs. You don’t have to. I tell a lot of the ladies, it’s like, you got this, like, you are doing too much. Like, you need some focus. You need some focus so that you’re not scrambling all the time trying to do so much and then you’re exhausted and everything is starting to fall through the cracks. So I really think for entrepreneurs, helping to prioritize, really stepping back and looking over all of what your goals are and how you’re going to do that, and then give yourself permission for the don’t really have to do so that you can do something that is going to help you to stay healthy and strong along the way.
Jessica Kriegel: It really is true. I had multiple side hustles as I was trying to build businesses, but also make money for today’s mortgage payment and all of that. And then when I finally did focus on one thing, that thing blew up. I was so afraid of doing that because what if it didn’t? And so I had these side hustles as a sort of security blanket, but it, when I look back, they were right. Everyone told me the whole time. I just didn’t want to believe them. You know, you have to jump in with both feet in order to really see the growth that you’re hoping for all along.
Colette Moore: That’s a wonderful story. I’d love to hear that. But you know, we don’t want to operate by fear, but mortgages and things like that will help you make you scramble. You got to scramble. So listening to some good advice and really digging in and doing the best of your work and the one that’s got the biggest opportunity. That’s where I’m like, focus on where, which one has the biggest opportunity and go for it.
Jessica Kriegel: Absolutely.
Colette Moore: Apply all your resources and your guns and watch it take off. So I’m happy to hear that about you. That’s wonderful.
Jessica Kriegel: This has been such a lovely conversation. My last question is my favorite, which is what’s one thing that you don’t get asked about very often in these types of interviews that you really wish more people would ask you about.
Colette Moore: What can we do to help?
Jessica Kriegel: Beautiful. Well, what can we do to help?
Colette Moore: What can we do to help? And so, you know, when you’re looking at your small businesses or organizations like PCR and the SBDC, each of these organizations is dependent on a combination of federal and state funds and also private donors and organizations and foundations. So continue to support organizations that do this work because it is good ground. It is watering ground that has been set for small businesses to grow. That small business may be the very one that you’ll need in the future to help you provide a service. Use these, help these, help these organizations like ours. The other is buy from small businesses. If your organization doesn’t have a small business program, making sure that you are getting some of the work that you guys are doing in the supplier activity out to small and diverse businesses as well. Lastly, visit your local businesses. Go to the corner market, the gift shop, whoever’s selling things on your block and in your area. Visit them sometimes and support them and buy something from them. When you have an opportunity, speak a kind word of support and help give a small business some insights into helping them to grow. A lot of people know things about small businesses that they can help or ask them, “Hey, is there anything that we could help you with besides buying these products? What kind of things do you do? Do you need a connection for anything?” Those are the types of things that we can all help small businesses to move ahead and to advance.
Jessica Kriegel: What a great idea. I have never thought about that. Go into your local shop and ask the business owner what kind of help they need other than having their goods purchased, right? Love that. Okay. And where can people learn more about you and your organization?
Colette Moore: If you go to pcrcorp.org, that is the website for PCR. Under that, you’ll see all of the different services, including the SBDC. We also have a pcrsbdc.org for those that might be clients for workshops and registration and things like that.
Jessica Kriegel: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Colette.
Colette Moore: Thank you, Jessica. It’s been a treat talking to you today. Thank you so much for asking me.
Jessica Kriegel: Thanks for tuning in to Culture Leaders. I’m Dr. Jessica Kriegel, hoping you found inspiration in today’s story. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review and share your thoughts. Thanks for listening.
Narrator: To connect and learn more about today’s guest, visit the link section on this episode’s show notes. Please be sure to connect with Jessica and the show at JessicaKriegel.com. There, you’ll be able to see all the episodes and learn more about transforming culture at your organization. This episode is a Culture Partners production. Until next time, keep shaping a positive culture. Thanks for listening.
