Episode 15 - 3 Keys To Building Your Employee’s Personal Brand In Your Service Business With Julie Crisara
"Every single a company out there that has a product that they want to market are looking for these stars right now and want to pay them for their name and their brand".
- Julie Crisara
Julie Crisara joins Uncle Joe on this podcast. Julie and Joe talk about 'Building Your Employee's Personal Brand' at your home service company. You're going to enjoy this episode of The Service MVP Podcast!
Contact Joe Crisara Service MVP.
Podcast Episode Transcription:
Welcome to the service MVP podcast and my name is Joe Crisara, America's service sales coach and today we have a very special guest the one of the founders and owners and the CEO of service MVP one of my very best friends my bestie actually somebody it was long overdue to be on this podcast her name is Julie Crisara Julie welcome to our show here today and thank you for making it with us here today well thank you for having me on the show here today Joe I'm really looking forward to our discussion yes well uh today is a very special day because you know I think it's important that you get to put your vision out there because you know you've always said that you're in the business of making stars not being one yourself and you know definitely you typify that attitude because you're I call it servant leader and that the fact that you make sure everybody has everything they need to do their job correctly here at service AP and all the contractors around the world too now Julie why don't you start the sucker got Julie is going to talk about today is a really important one she's going to talk about how we can build the employees brands the personal brand of the employee within a service business so if you're an owner we'll show you how to put your employees in the forefront and if you're an employee to show you how to build your personal brand within your company Julie what's your start by telling us a little bit about how you got started in the service business and why you're so passionate about doing service go ahead well truthfully my family has been in the blue collar business of service businesses since before I was born so it's kind of in my blood really going back all the way to my great grandfather who was a construction worker had his own business out of the Chicago land area used to go and build homes and churches and office buildings along with my grandfather who worked with him too and after all that my grandmother decided to get into a service business too and started a cleaning business she would go with her sister along after my grandfather my great grandfather and clean up all the a mess that they made while they were there so when people moved into these new places a new church or a new office building or a new home that it was nice and clean and they weren't getting a whole messy entrance you know the first impression as they walked into these places so from there really I've just always kind of been in there I always kind of helped with the cleaning service had done that for many years with my family from about the time I was nine anything from cleaning people's homes to cleaning offices I've been in retail and worked customer service been in the HVAC and plumbing business with you for many years and now of course service MVP getting the help not only service business in the HVAC and plumbing business but electrical roofing solar we're kind of spreading out garage door all these other industries that we're talking to and hopefully being able to help them to discover how they can serve their clients but also their own employees as well and this is one of those subjects that I think is going to really help service their employees out there and get their brand out there at the same time well this is definitely a unique subject Julie because like I said you're talking about here on creating stars in your company and making sure that people get acknowledgement not just privately but publicly talking about building your employees personal brand so why is this such an important subject for you to cover today and why do you believe in this so much yeah well truthfully I mean there's no better time to talk about this right now the way this particular month with March madness going on you have college athletes who have been for years saying that they deserve some kind of compensation for their stardom that they get out there so going back to you know the Supreme Court ruling in 2021 to the NCAA changing you know getting rid of most of the restrictions on what college athletes can earn out there with their own names and now you have actually 2 house bills that are up for review right now currently so there's really no better time I think to even you know begin to think about this as I'm sure a lot of people have and as I was doing a little bit of reading there was a head of brand marketing Sam Weber at open doors who said for 99% of the players in this tournament right now right now like this week as March madness started this is the most marketable they were of will be for the rest of their entire lives this is the opportunity when they get to show themselves off show their skills off and there are uh businesses lining up to in order to look for that star that's going to break out anyone from Dunkin' Donuts to BMW to of course going back to Cheerios or any Wheaties on every single a company out there that has a product that they want to market they're looking for these stars right now and want to pay them for their name and their brand that they have so the opportunities for marketing employees really has never been better in the history in our history at all and can really benefit everybody both the employee and the company and marketing your brand yeah I guess that's the thing about it the rising tide floats all the ships right if you're you have star players on your team and you're able to promote those star players well the team looks like a championship team so truly key tell us why building employees personal brands is important not just to the employee but also to the business tell me some of the benefits that you can get as a business owner like we've done here you've done a great job here of making sure people like Danny or Mike Busher or Mike people here who work here has done he's done a great job of putting them as in the forefront of the star stardom as well tell us what's important to the business how's the business benefit yeah well building the personal brands for employees really can be beneficial in several ways right and it's truthfully it's a work in progress because even myself have had some doubts about things so but you know first it can really help establish the credibility and the expertise of your business in the industry that you're in so for us as you mentioned Danny with us taking over the live events training doing total immersion doing the performance coach training doing the CSR and dispatch bootcamp training if we were going to have him take over we had to be able to show some credibility there that he has and it's turned out that by helping build his brand by getting his name out there in front of people that's the best way to do that and they love him I mean the benefit has paid off to the extent of we have certain clientele like Peterman brothers who is asking for Danny to do all their training for the rest of the year here in our Los Angeles branch so building that brand really is going to establish the credibility and expertise second it's going to help retain those talented employees right Danny is a talented person Mike Busher is a talented person Michael Nunez a talented person I want to keep them Shreya a talented person I want to keep them here working for us forever if I possibly can and this is one way that we're going to be able to show them that we appreciate them encourage them to grow and to develop within our organization and those are just a few of the people I say that because of the forward facing front kind of out there but a few of the people and then lastly really I think it helps create that you know brand ambassadorship I always kind of laugh at that word the ambassadorship because when I first started hearing it I remember after hiring some people out here a lot of them were brand ambassadors for different you know for different soft drinks or you remember we had one employee who had a girlfriend who we were always getting different products coming into us because she was changing jobs and who she was in basic for like yogurt one day and some kind of soft drink the next day but that brand ambassadorship to really help promote your business and bring in those new clients and there's really no better way than in order you know and being able to create these personal brands within your company right there's the moment right there right everybody the golden nugget is that instead of having a watered down effect to say hey the whole company is an expert at something it kind of waters it down when you say this person is specifically an expert at this what he does or she does she's our customer service expert in the way it holds us holds us job standard that really the employee has to live up to and #2 it tells you that the company's not afraid of making sure that you get to know our people that our people are so are we once you get to know them and do you want to be transparent with the public I think that's probably wants to know like who is the person I'm hiring to come into my house or in or to work with my team I think you've done a great job with that Julie so Julie I'm going to add to that point there I mean that's a really good point that you're making there and the truth is is your employees are the ones who are right there in front of your customers I mean we know what happens when a customer complaints it always comes back to you owners in the company but the employees are the first ones out there in front of those customers whether you're in a service business or you're in a coaching business like ours they're the ones out there so they're the ones who are forward facing the customers every day and those customers want to know that these guys you're experts adding the adding going to bring out a fifth thing there too which I didn't really think about before until we just started talking about it but at some point you know if you're looking to grow your business you can't do it all or you're looking to sell your business you can't do it all your business is worth much less if I'm the only person in the business who can do everything so if Joe Coursera was the only person who could teach total immersion really I don't know that we we'd ever be able to get out of it than at any point or even pass it down let's say we wanted to pass it down to Y and we'd never be able to even do that because once Joe Chris there it goes there be no one else to continue that work so it's so important to develop your people to be able to have that to give them these personal brands in order just to keep the business going on whatever your end game is whether it's to keep it to sell it to grow it to pass it on to children whatever your end game is if you're not developing those people internally and developing those own their own personal brands you won't be able to really do that effectively in the long in the long run Amen that makes the basically there's a financial reason is that business is more valuable and that's because when you have a team of stars that's why the New York Yankees are those teams like that the winning teams are worth much more money than they get valuated as the other teams when they wind up they wind up passing it on to the other shareholder once yeah so Julie how can a business start building the employees personal brands if it is such a good idea to share that spotlight and put your team of stars in front of the public how can we start doing that tell us a little bit about that well I think the first step really is to identify the expertise of each employee right each employee comes to us with some kind of a history you know whether it's just their family history or their work history I always think of Chris in this situation our onboarding Co chair right Chris came to us and although he initially worked at a A T-shirt shop right doing a branding you know T-shirts he also had kind of a side gig doing his comedy on the side right he wanted to be a comedian or at least you know it was a hobby I'm not exactly sure how far he was looking to take it off hand and we are able to use that we're able to we were able to identify it as he started working for us that this was a huge strength for us and him being able to come on first what started as your assistant right but you had them kind of entertaining people when they would first get on the zoom meetings you know with you then we had them doing some filling in every once in a while you had them do little segments here and there he was MC net all of our you know True Grit events over the years and then you know now to the extent of where he's the onboarding coach here and training other on boarding he was on boarding coach and now training other onboarding coaches and he's able to use that skill that he developed with comedy doing his comedy and use that skill with what he's doing right now which is either onboarding clients or training other on borders within our company right now and it's a skill that is just to me always been amazing on how I don't know how much time or effort he puts into the back end of what he does but when I see him do it he makes it look like it's easy like it like it's just like he was born to do it so first step is to identify once you've identified these areas you can really start to encourage them to your employees to create content around these topics right such as you know blog posts as a kind of you know possibility social media though for sure so I love seeing stuff I love when our people are putting stuff on social media on our page on social media as well as their own page and then you can also encourage them to speak at industry events I know we had Shreya who spoke at some industry events outside of service MP but we brought our whole team to speak at the True Grit event that we just had right because we wanted them we want to try to help develop courage them to get out there and be seen in front of our clientele so and then this you know not only helps to build a personal brand but also really helps to bring that recognition into the business that overall everybody here knows the material that if you have a question you should be able to go to anyone here to ask it or at least be able to be guided to the direct person in the company right what kind of specific strategies can a business do to build the employees personal brands what kind of specific strategies yeah well one strategy would just be offer the training and development opportunities for your employees right so to make sure that you're training developing them in these areas to become expertise in certain areas as I mentioned even with True Grit for us when we started doing that last year we started getting everybody involved and maybe not in the speaking element of it we had a some people who were involved in it but everybody getting involved in the actual escape rooms and the challenges that we did and when they did that that meant that they had to learn the material that we actually taught people at that time so training developing them this is going to help them of course develop new skills and the knowledge base which then they're going to be able to share with others and then you can also encourage them to network build relationships I love seeing how everyone of our team members and is able to talk and feel very comfortable with either you know an event that we're at or the people that we bring here for our events it's like I can tell that either through osmosis or hopefully through the training that we're giving them that it's really helping to increase their visibility and their credibility with our clients that we have out there and prospects as well that's really great Julie is there anything else you could think of that you know that any other benefits we can get from that that we can see as part of the culture we think definitely well you kind of hit the nail on the head there because the other benefit really is creating that culture of innovation and creativity within your business when employees are really encouraged to develop their own personal brands then they're more likely to be engaged and be motivated in their work on a day-to-day basis which of course is going to lead to that productivity and creativity so and it leads to them coming to us you know with ideas or ways to put ourselves out there in front of customers it doesn't mean everything has to come doesn't mean everything has to come for us which is great because they're coming to us also doesn't mean we have to accept everything that they want us to do at this point either but it's nice that the ideas are flowing there and maybe from that we're able to build on some of that creativity that they have oh Julie this is definitely a subject that I think I think it feels to everybody with the TikTok generation everybody sort of being a star and we had Alicia here at our company was like I didn't realize she was the TikTok star until I saw her I'm like whoa I got to learn from her and she could teach me what we got to do I she helped me create my brand to be better based on what I saw her do and I think it's a synergy that I think we can learn we we're trying to always train our employees but sometimes when it comes to this element of you know stardom with today's social media sometimes the employees can teach us a few things really think of that oh I it's definitely I mean I'm the worst at social media to be honest with you so I'm always trying to call upon them to help me figure things out Alicia particularly she is our one of the ones who is the star here when it comes to social media so I love being able to ask them you know what it is that we need to do to kind of stay I don't always know ahead of the curve on social media but at least with the times of everything that goes on because you know that's a whole other element of it it's like you can't always know everything as a business owner and people are going to bring other things to you that you may not even be aware of out there that are going to be able to help your business get that brand awareness that you're looking for yeah I think what does this say about your company when the biggest problem is recruiting other employees when all the current employees are out there in public saying how much you love the place how does that impact something like recruiting Julie would you say oh definitely I mean when really right now we have no problem recruiting anybody because when somebody is interested in our business they they've seen how the rest of our employees it's one thing that we hear over and over again is how it seems like every employee just loves us and in part This is why you know because we do in part let them go out there and be the star of service MVP from that standpoint I know we like to joke you're the Mickey Mouse you know of that company but we've created these all these other brand characters out there too who really are their stars in their own right and they're the ones who are helping us attract and recruit other new employees which gives us that ability to really kind of handpick who we want to bring on and who we might not want to bring on so that we can continue you know to develop and give the kind of service that we really want to give our clients out there with the people we know are going to be able to do that going forward well Julie thank you for being here today again always amazing when the conversation goes by so quick like it did here today Julie any final thoughts and we'll wrap it up here well I guess you know my thought as far as wrapping it up as I know that I know a lot of people will probably be afraid you know to really to try to develop brands within their company but I think if you can get yourself past that fear what you're really going to find and I know the I know one of the reasons they're afraid is because it is always hard to find employees out there but I think if you can uh see fit to get past that fear right now and just do this anyways help develop these brands which you're going to find is you're going to have much more loyal employees who are going to want to stay with you who are going to help want to service those customers in the way that you want really to be serviced and I always look at it like going back to my original the comparison to college or March madness this month and the NCAA it's one of the longest fights that have been going on for forever really at this point about paying college athletes it's not that you have to pay your people extra money even to do this but the fact that they have this opportunity to put themselves out there is really going to be beneficial to you and the company and getting your brand out there and creating the loyalty giving them the credibility that they need when they're in front of customers and they're going to be much more confident and competent employees as well about what you're nine to what your service is out there to the world what kind of services you're going to provide out there that's really some truth there I think a lot of times there's a negative impulse like what they just built this star and they leave me well I mean you know if you're a college team you don't mind if you're building stars because there's other stars coming in remember like we're if we're good at building stars don't worry if one leaves you can just build another one that's you keep doing it over it's like a cycle everybody it's not like something like that employee you know has a birthright to stay here forever we got to remember we build that brand and we make them bend remember we're the ones who will build it and that's going to be noticeable to other public and also noticeable to other future employees Julie thank you so much for joining us here everybody have a great one we will see you on the next service MVP podcast goodbye everybody, bye.
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