This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing. If you know a leader whom you would like to see celebrated on the show, please send me a message on LinkedIn with their name.

In the interview, Nicole shares how she grew up as a small business daughter and that led her to develop a powerful work ethic. She reveals her fun side in the interview, and how she builds a culture of accountability and fun in her company. She also mentioned how she is running a remote company, but never misses on opportunities to bring people together and connect in person. 

You can find Nicole at the below links

In the interview, Nicole shares

  • I had a unique perspective of being able to work alongside my parents’ employees and hear the complaints and needs that they had, as well as understanding the management and leadership that’s needed to have employees. 
  • Having a background of being a small business daughter, I think I have an unbelievable work ethic and really, Resilience and ability to hop into any role. And I think that in my corporate life, that was really what made me succeed. 
  •  Having to let go of a team member is probably one of the toughest.
  • when you have a creative space and bouncing ideas off of each other, even though our team is remote, we like to be able to get together in person. There is a human to human connection that is really needed.
  • Most people don’t know that I have two polar opposite personalities. When I’m at work I just wanna be productive and I’m a complete goofball outside of work.   
  • We definitely love to have a good time internally and, keep things light and we celebrate wins like crazy. That is our biggest thing. 
  • It is so easy as an entrepreneur to go high as a kite and like to the bottom of despair. And just when those experiences happen, whether it’s the loss of a client or a situation that happened, we have like a three step process where we look back and say, what could we have done differently.
  • Find a mentor and it doesn’t have to be this exclusive program that you enroll in, but just find someone who has already done what you are doing. 
  • We actually have a mentorship program internally. We do open forums where our other contractors are able to meet with the current contractors and do different topics every quarter.