From Dog Lovers to Business Leaders with Uptown Pup

Craig Anderson [00:00:00]:

The team looked at me and said, but if we share all the numbers with them, they're going to know things aren't going very well right now. Welcome to Executive Evolution. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in corporate America. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and I created this podcast so that you won't have to. There was a time running the business when we were struggling, and I had made a commitment to myself and to the team that we would have a monthly town hall where we would go over the numbers. And there was a real desire to not share the numbers because they weren't looking good. Our sales pipeline was not doing well. We were dropping business.

 

Craig Anderson [00:00:38]:

Things were looking pretty rough for us. But as I told them, the team knows when we're not doing well. The way our business was structured, if sales were slow, the team was slow and they knew things weren't looking too good. So by hiding the bad news, we actually would have made things worse. So it's really important in any business to make sure we're as transparent as possible with our team. That's one of the lessons that you'll take away from today's episode of Executive Evolution, where I interview the owners of Uptown Pup, Kathleen Schonsheck and Mandy Stetzel. It's a great interview, talking about how they've built a business over the last eight years. So let's jump in and listen to their Executive Evolution.

 

Craig Anderson [00:01:21]:

Kathleen, Mandy, welcome to the Executive Evolution podcast. I'm so glad you guys are here.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:01:26]:

Thank you. We are so excited.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:01:28]:

Very happy to be here.

 

Craig Anderson [00:01:29]:

Yeah, it's going to be great. You guys. Just in full public disclosure, I am a client of Uptown Pup, where they work. Our two dogs, Kaylee and Loki, love it there. And you guys have a great culture that you've built, so it makes great sense to have you guys on to talk about how you've grown as leaders over the last 10 years since you launched the business.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:01:48]:

Thank you.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:01:48]:

Thanks. It's been a lot of growth, for sure.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:01:50]:

Oh, yeah.

 

Craig Anderson [00:01:51]:

Oh, I know. I know. So we always like to though, before we jump into talking about that story, we always like to start off with the Lightning Round. So I will ask you each. You can tell me the answers to your three questions in the Lightning Round. You guys ready to go?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:02:06]:

Yep.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:02:06]:

Yes.

 

Craig Anderson [00:02:07]:

All right, let's jump right in. 1. What is the best leadership book you have ever read?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:02:15]:

So, for me, I love Crucial Conversations and Radical Candor because I'm actually a communications major for undergraduate. Then I got my master's in journalism. So effective communication is really important to me, especially with difficult information, difficult conversations, high stakes conversations. However, I'm naturally disinclined to delivering difficult information, having difficult conversations. I'm a people pleaser. I hate to disappoint. So those two books were game changers for me. They were huge, big game changers.

 

Craig Anderson [00:02:48]:

Love it. How about you, Kathleen?

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:02:49]:

Same for me too. When Mandy and I were talking about this before the interview and we both had our list of books, those were the books that we shared in common. And I think especially when you're raised to, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. It's good advice for an 8 year old. Is not a good policy for a manager or a boss. You really do have to say the difficult things in order to help people grow and thrive. And it's just not always comfortable. So books like that, that really help with the communication have been really helpful to us.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:03:23]:

And then another one that I want to throw out is the Great Game of Business by Jack Stack. So what he has experience is sort of like venture capitalist. He's done some rescue operations with businesses and turned them into ESOPs employee stock ownership program. And, and he. The book just goes through how to share the financial information with your team to help get them invested in what you're doing so that they can understand how the decisions that they make impact what happens in the business. After I read it, I really wanted Uptown Pup to be an ESOP. And I read that you should have revenues upwards of 20 or 30 million dollars before you do math, which is not quite where we are at.

 

Craig Anderson [00:04:09]:

So give it two more years.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:04:11]:

A couple more years. But we do share the financial information with our team and we do give out. We have a couple of different bonus programs and prop sharing.

 

Craig Anderson [00:04:21]:

Yeah, love it. So those are all great things, right? And, and it's so interesting, like with crucial conversations, difficult conversations. You guys have it both ways, right? You have your teammates that you have to have those conversations with. And in a very customer service business, you probably have to be good at it that way too.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:04:36]:

Oh yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:04:37]:

Yes, very much.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:04:38]:

Yeah. People love their pets and are so, so. I mean our, our pets are our babies. But having to deliver hard information to the moms and dads, you know, your dog's not fit for daycare or your dog's struggling with this. It's difficult. Cause their hearts, their hearts in it. There's a lot of emotion involved. Books are a.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:04:55]:

He were a huge help. Yeah.

 

Craig Anderson [00:04:57]:

Yeah. Love it. All right. Let's jump in to the next question. Who is your leadership crush?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:05:03]:

So for me I'm huge on leaders who've just worked their whole life tirelessly to make life the less fortunate, the voiceless. So I would say in the animal world, Jane Goodall, Dr. Sophia Yin and Karen Pryor were huge for me. And Karen Pryor and Dr. Sophia Yin, if you have never heard of them, they're incredible women. Huge in bringing positive reinforcement training. This is basically getting rid of the old model of dominance based training and punishment and taking that out of training and really spreading the word about how dogs brains work and why positive reinforcement is so much better and so much more, not just effective, but beneficial for the dogs. And they did such incredible work.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:05:44]:

And then I feel like on a social level probably really like FDR, Jimmy Carter, Bernie Sanders, you know, the ones who really have tirelessly worked for people who, who've struggled and basically fundamentally changed our broken systems to make life better for everybody. And then in the business world, Mark Cuban, you know, he's such a fun person and it's not just because he's a billionaire, but he fundamentally changed the pharmaceutical pricing model with his Cost Plus pharmacy and made medications more affordable to people and got other pharmacies to kind of look at that model and start to change. And yeah, I thought that was incredible. So those are my crushes, a lot of them.

 

Craig Anderson [00:06:21]:

All right. Kathleen, how about you?

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:06:22]:

Yeah, I mean, kind of similar. I'm definitely drawn toward people who will challenge the status quo, people who will use their power and their privilege to lift other people up instead of just for their own personal gain. So RuPaul is one of my favorite people. He has always worked toward his own dreams. He has not ever let anything stand in his way. And after working really hard for a long time, you know, achieved quite a bit of success and now uses that to elevate other people who otherwise probably wouldn't have the opportunity. And it's, you know, the Drag Race franchise, it's an international phenomenon. And you know, just think of all those people who are part of the counterculture who historically have just not been heard, not been respected and they just have so much more opportunity now.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:07:17]:

And I mean that extends to hundreds of people, if not thousands of people at this point. Wow. So I think that's really incredible. And then someone that I've learned about more recently, her name is Sandrine Dixson-Declève. She was co president of the Club of Rome from 2018 until just now in 2024. And she is a climate change advocate. She speaks and advises on sustainable development, sustainable finances. She is the person who is in the room with powerful people, telling them that the way that we have been doing business and capitalism cannot continue the way that we have been elevating CEO pay and depressing worker pay and prioritizing shareholders above all else.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:08:08]:

It's just not something that can continue. And there. But there are solutions. And so she talks about those solutions as well, which is just exciting to see. And I'm excited to read more of her books and listen to her talks. And it's good work. It's good work. And I.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:08:26]:

I wish that I could be half as influential as she is.

 

Craig Anderson [00:08:30]:

Yeah, yeah. I know. That's the hard thing when we look at the crushes. Right. It's like, how do you get these huge platforms and just the power of ideas? So.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:08:38]:

Yeah.

 

Craig Anderson [00:08:38]:

Wow. All right, so now this one. And you guys can work together on this. Work separate on this, however you want to do it. But as you all think about leadership, how do you define leadership in 10 words or less?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:08:49]:

That's easy. And we both agreed on this. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

 

Craig Anderson [00:08:54]:

Love it. And I'll prove my ignorance. But I know who. That's a famous quote, and I can't think who it is right now.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:09:00]:

Neither can we. It is said many, many times and it is always relevant.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:09:09]:

Yeah.

 

Craig Anderson [00:09:09]:

Love it. All right, so let's take it back. So you all launched this business 10 years ago. You met doing a similar business somewhere else. Yes. Made a decision to do this. So when you first kind of came up with the idea, I'm sure you had a lot of solid ideas around how you wanted to treat the animals and the experience for the customers. But how did you think about how you wanted to build the business and the team that you were going to need to support that vision?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:09:36]:

That's a great question.

 

Craig Anderson [00:09:37]:

Yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:09:37]:

I mean, neither one of us has any formal management training, leadership training, even business training. We just so basically don't do what we did. But, you know, we both come from prior work experiences where we weren't treated well. Yeah. And, you know, not just in one place, but a lot of places. And for me personally, my management style comes more from just how I'd been treated in the past. I learned a lot of what not to do, and I did learn some what to do. The past managers that I had worked under, that I respected and that I worked really well with, were the people who were also doing the work right next to me.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:10:16]:

The people who really listened and understood and seemed to care about me versus other places where I'd been in that treated their staff as just disposable. It's like they don't expect them to be there for very long. So they don't treat them like they want them to be there for very long and it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy. So we really just wanted to create a place that people wanted to come to work at.

 

Craig Anderson [00:10:42]:

Nice. And as you did that, did you kind of lay out that. And it's part of your vision statement for the business. Was that kind of people management side part of the larger vision when you were, and I know you said you didn't have all this formal training, but you probably had some ideas, right, of this vision of this business you were going to create. How much of that vision included the people side of the business, not just the operational side of the business?

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:11:06]:

I think a lot of it.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:11:07]:

I mean our motto, the first thing that we thought of when we were in the business planning stage and writing the business plan was happy, happy pups, happy people, happy planet. So it wasn't always just about the dogs. A huge focus of us is creating a fun, happy, phenomenal environment for the dogs, but also the people involved, especially the staff. Because it's a very physically demanding job working with animals, but it's also emotionally demanding. We, we're taking care of living creatures who have feelings and emotions and we watch them learn and grow and struggle and we become attached to them. We see them pass through the different phases of life and there's a tremendous amount of emotion involved. And we knew that having worked in the field before and so a lot of our preparation and planning was how do we, how do we treat our staff in a way that they feel ownership of the business? They feel like they're critical figures. How do we train them? Well, so they understand the dogs, the dog language, they recognize medical signs and symptoms.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:12:07]:

How do we support them to continue their education and further their learning experience and the dogs behavior and medical. It's a big portion of our business plan and what we set out to do. It's always been important to us.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:12:18]:

Yeah, I mean we chose this business because dogs are where our expertise is. But I think we chose to make it our business so that we could provide a great place to work and where people know what it feels like to be respected and appreciated by their management in the workplace and really feel like they're valued. And if my people are not feeling that way, then I have failed somewhere.

 

Craig Anderson [00:12:43]:

As you started that, so you had that kind of vision of what you wanted to do. How did that inform who you hired? You know, were you very intentional to say, people we hire are going to have these characteristics? This is what we're looking for in the people we're hiring? Was that something you had to kind of come up with over time, or did you just stumble in through some difficult conversations that didn't quite work out?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:13:07]:

That's a great question, and I feel like it is something that we have gotten better at over time. Looking back at some of our earlier staff and our initial hires, we were young. We hadn't done any. We hadn't had any training or done any hiring ourselves in any prior position. The only interviews I had ever been to were where I was on the other side of the desk. So I think it's something that we've definitely perfected over time. I feel like that's taken time and energy and focus. And we've always been involved in the process of interviewing and filtering and assessing the new staff coming in.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:13:38]:

But since the beginning, we've actually gotten our existing staff more involved in the interview. So every interviewee actually stands with and works with our existing staff so they can ask questions to the staff and the staff can ask them questions back. So you have your existing team members playing a role in assessing potential future team members and giving us their feedback on whether they think that this interviewee would make a good potential team member. We have interviewees do working interviews a little, not heavy work, but they go into our big dog daycare area with us, usually with the manager. And so we can see how they interact with the dogs. That's our most raucous, excitable physical area. And how they respond to the dogs in the room, coming up and greeting them, jumping on them, inspecting them. Some of the dogs are shy and nervous of new people, and how the interviewer reacts is noticeable to the staff that are in the room and to us as managers.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:14:39]:

And it really helps us, I think, assess. That's something that we developed over time. So we can kind of see whether someone is the right fit or not. Not just for the team, but for the dogs and for us.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:14:49]:

Yeah, and that swings both ways, too, because the interviewee coming in that we don't require that people have dog experience, because at one point I didn't have dog experience, and then I went and worked in a daycare. So it's a good experience for the interviewee as well. If they haven't had it. To know is this Something you actually want to do. Are you okay with big dogs coming up and jumping on you and grabbing your sleeve and drooling on you?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:15:14]:

Yeah, you.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:15:15]:

And some people, some people find out like, no, I don't want to do this. We don't necessarily have specific questions that give people like a pass or a fail. I mean, obviously I want to know their past experience with dogs. I want to know their prior work experiences with customer service coworkers, things like that. But more than anything, it's like a vibe check. I want to know, can I comfortably have a conversation with this person even if I can see that they're nervous? And I've been in those shoes so many times, of course they're nervous. But I always, I reassure them, like there's no wrong answers. If we can have a nice free flowing conversation in the interview, then I have found that to be a really good predictor of.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:15:58]:

Are we going to have a good working relationship if you come and work here?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:16:01]:

Yes.

 

Craig Anderson [00:16:01]:

Yeah. Love it. So something you said before is, you know, you kind of started this business because you love dogs. You didn't have a lot of business experience. Right. And that's a lot of the entrepreneurial journey. Right. I love this thing.

 

Craig Anderson [00:16:13]:

I want to do this thing as my business. And then it goes well and then you start hiring people around you and suddenly you can't do the things you were passionate about because now you're running a business or you're getting in the way of the business being run. Cause everybody has to say, hey, Mandy. Hey, Kathleen. Can I do this? Can I do that? Over time, as you've grown over the last 10 years, how did that start to become aware to you that that was happening? And how did you kind of build a happy medium in that where you're kind of running the business, but in the business or you are just working on the business, how did you kind of grow into the leadership role?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:16:46]:

So for me, a lot, you know, a lot of it's been trial by fire. That's something that we all experience. But one thing that, that really helped, that has, I think benefited me is having good leadership underneath us or the hiring the right people and cultivating the right people to be our managers and our, and our team leads. Would you say, would you say that's a fair.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:17:07]:

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, and it's, you know, of course it's taken a while. Yeah, it has, it does in any business. But to get to a point where you have, you know, because we do have general manager and assistant Manager now, and we are definitely in a more oversight type of role. So we're. We work on mentoring our managers, but we still make it known to every team member that we are available to them, you know, if they have any needs. For me, my happy medium is being able to have the freedom to work on the business administration that I am responsible for, which is a lot of the financial side of things. And the more that I can stay on top of that, the better I do.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:17:48]:

But then every once in a while, if I go into daycare and work a shift, it's a delight. Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely still want to be close to the dogs, but if we're spending too much time working with the dogs, then we're not working on the business. So it's really great when we can have just kind of a mix of everything and not too much of any one thing.

 

Craig Anderson [00:18:12]:

Yeah. And I would imagine when you're passionate as you are about the business itself, it's a real tension because it's probably fun at some level to go in and be in the frontline, work with what you do, but if you spend too much time there, everything starts to fall apart on the business. What was that moment, that aha moment where you said, boy, we really need to hire another layer of management? What triggered that idea for you?

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:18:37]:

It sort of happened when we were actively starting our physical expansion. Yeah, the.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:18:43]:

The expansion.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:18:44]:

Yeah. So we started laying the groundwork to expand in 2021.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:18:50]:

We were doubling in size, physically doubling.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:18:52]:

In size, and we were set for the bulk of the work to happen in 2022. And we actually had two of our senior staff members come to us and ask, can we be your managers to help support you as. As you focus on this expansion?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:19:07]:

Yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:19:07]:

And it was a little bit sooner than what I had been thinking or was prepared for, but it really just made a lot of sense. And so we said, yes, let's do that, because.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:19:20]:

Yeah, it was very fortuitous. Yep.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:19:22]:

The. The expansion was just going to take a lot of time and energy and attention, and it was so helpful to have more management through that process. And. And now that it's done.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:19:33]:

And they were our. The two that came to us were not only longtime staff members, but they were trainers. They were two of our dog trainers, and not only exceptional trainers, but it. That oftentimes, you know, that positive reinforcement training ability translates well to humans too. And they. We could see that they were good candidates for training and supporting and cultivating the humans on our team. It just made sense, and it Came at just the right times. It was pretty fortuitous.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:19:58]:

And, and the expansion did end up taking up way more time and energy and focus than we. We ever thought it would. I mean, we knew it would be rough that, like, but it was, it was crazy. It was straight crazy. So we're glad that that happened.

 

Craig Anderson [00:20:11]:

Yeah. And it sounds like just by the way you've kind of hired and the culture you've built, that for them to stand up, it wasn't just to say, hey, I want to make more money and be a general manager. It was, we can help you help the business grow.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:20:24]:

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Craig Anderson [00:20:25]:

So that's really something to be said about what you guys have built around the team.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:20:28]:

Thank you. Yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:20:29]:

We have some absolutely wonderful people that have been with us for five and six.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:20:33]:

Five, six, seven years.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:20:34]:

Yeah. And they're very much invested. Like, I'm, I'm so proud and humbled at the same time by how, how much our staff cares.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:20:45]:

Yeah.

 

Craig Anderson [00:20:45]:

So. Yeah, so. So that's what you've kind of built over the last 10 years. So as you sit here now, you know, with your successful business, you just had the big expansion. I don't know, you probably doubled or tripled in physical size, if not number of dogs you have running around. What is leadership like now with a more mature business? Right. Everything's like, well, if you get past three to five years, you. You probably can get to 10.

 

Craig Anderson [00:21:08]:

And you did. So what's leadership like now for you all as you kind of look at the business?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:21:13]:

I mean, you're right. At first it was when we were. We had a skeleton staff and she and I were working, you know, 60 hours a week. And we were very much in the fray. We were the only managers. We were directly training, managing, overseeing, monitoring, and cultivating our staff. And we didn't really have a lot of support. It was just the two of us.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:21:34]:

And now it very much is. We have a hierarchy. We have fantastic managers and leads that are under us. So a lot of it is how do we support our leaders and use the lessons we've learned over the last eight years to help them be better leaders, to make their jobs easier, to support and keep our staff happy and healthy? And I feel like it's a little different where in the beginning it was a lot more hands on. We were very in the weeds. And now we have a team that, that is, they're exceptional leaders in and of themselves, but they're kind of young. Like we, you know, like we were. So we're sort of.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:22:10]:

They're like our babies. We're cultivating them and helping them where we can and keeping regular communication and meetings and continuing education opportunities for them. However, we can support them so they can maintain, so they're so their work life balance is good and they're, they're happy. But also our staff is happy and healthy, if that makes sense.

 

Craig Anderson [00:22:28]:

Yeah, it does. And as you've kind of evolved and grown and kind of built kind of a couple, a layer in the organization, how have you found the best ways to kind of keep that mission and vision driven down through the business? How do you make sure everybody understands this is how we treat dogs. This is how we treat clients. This is how we show up every day. How do you kind of keep that culture alive when you're not touching it every day?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:22:52]:

Lead by example.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:22:53]:

Yeah, I was about to say the exact same.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:22:56]:

We have the same brain.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:22:59]:

There's a lot of overlap.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:23:00]:

There's overlap. Yeah, absolutely. Lead by example. No, no question. You know, one of the things that's really important to us is to follow the science and canine behavior and communication and, and the science is very clear that positive reinforcement training and principles are what's best for dogs. And we, we know now ways to enrich their lives through games, activities, puzzles. That's very important to us. And not just our training component, but our daycare component, our boarding component, our grooming component.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:23:31]:

And so we, from the very beginning, from that first interview, we, we talked to them. Like Kathleen said, we don't have any right or wrong answers, but if there is any indication that they are familiar with dominance based principles or punishment based training, we kind of recognize that. And we're very clear in our communication, our day to day work, our employment manual, the learning opportunities and certifications that we encourage, that these are where our principles lie and we live that every day. Like Kathleen is Fear Free certified. I'm working on my Fear Free certification. Our trainers are all Karen Pryor certified positive reinforcement certified trainers. We allow continuing in for our leads and really anybody in the building to get their certifications and those principles. And we're very clear about it in everything we do.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:24:17]:

And that starts when we walk in the door, you know, back to the leading by example. Like even, even though we're not directly supervising every person in the building every day, it's just, are we coming in with a positive mindset? Because if we do, then our staff is more likely to follow that lead. If we come in and we're grumpy and harsh and short with people, then that's how our staff is more likely to treat each other. You know, they're always watching you.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:24:47]:

Yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:24:48]:

And the way that you conduct yourself as a leader, it just always sets the tone for anybody under you. That's. That's how you are allowed to act or how you should act. And you just really have to be careful. And then when you are managing the team, if you are seeing somebody who's starting to slip up a little bit, knowing how the emotional contagion can work, whether it's someone who's, you know, starting to have, like, a consistently bad attitude, not speaking kindly to their co workers, things like that, like, we have to take those people aside and have conversations. That's where crucial conversations comes into play. And we always start those kind of conversations with, how have you been doing? We never come at people with a, this is a problem.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:25:38]:

Why are you being this way? Why are you doing this?

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:25:39]:

It's never like that. We. We kind of let them lead, and that often inform how we're going to direct that conversation and get to the point of what we need to see improve. But, yeah, just in general, being very protective of how we treat everybody and how they all treat each other and how they treat the dogs and just not letting things slip by.

 

Craig Anderson [00:26:04]:

Love it. All right, so I always like to close with the opportunity for you to jump into a time machine. You can pick anyone you want. DeLoreans, time cubes, however you like to travel in time, go back to yourselves eight years ago, or whatever it was when you started building this business. What's the one piece of advice you'd give to yourself that would help you be a better leader and grower of this business?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:26:26]:

That's a great question. First of all, I choose the DeLorean. That's one of my favorite movies. One of the things that I learned, my very first leadership position was being an older sister. And a lot of people may laugh at that. But older siblings are not only about monitoring and babysitting and driving them around when you get your license and setting leading by example. But one of my siblings has been medically challenged her whole life and has special needs. And so as an older sibling in my family, it was a lot about being the buffer or the filter.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:26:56]:

And how do I deescalate this family stress? How do I support my mom and listen to. Listen to what, you know, what she's been struggling with, but still make, you know, still keep the family happy? Deescalate, mediate, negotiate. And I think one of the. One of the early lessons I learned As a leader, as an older sibling, and also in my professional life is that no matter how hard you work, what your intentions are, how much preparation and planning you do, and how much you work by the book, you can still fail. You can still not achieve your goal. And it, you know, it's devastating. But the lesson you have to take is you pick yourself back up, you readjust and recalibrate, and you keep pushing yourself and you try again. And I feel like I, early on in owning a business, I took the failures really personally, and some of them were hard to come back from. But I feel like if I could go back and tell myself that lesson that pick yourself back up, recalibrate, keep pushing, and try again, I feel like that's the lesson I would tell myself, because it's going to continue happening throughout your business life, and you have to have that backbone and that strength and keep pushing. And sometimes it's easier. Forget that. And Kathleen has always helped me with that, too. So it's nice to have a partner that helps you with that.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:28:03]:

Yeah. I don't. I don't know how people run businesses by themselves.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:28:08]:

Oh, my God.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:28:09]:

I know. So many people do.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:28:11]:

I know. I'm.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:28:12]:

I couldn't.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:28:12]:

It's bonkers. Yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:28:14]:

We're. We're a great. A great partnership and a great compliment to each other. And we both say that we couldn't do it without the other one.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:28:20]:

So. Yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:28:21]:

My time machine would be the H.G. Wells. Fancy schmancy.

 

Craig Anderson [00:28:26]:

Oh, yeah.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:28:26]:

Thing’s amazing. I love it. So that's my time machine. And yeah. My. My advice to my young baby business owner self is basically to go with the therapy.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:28:39]:

Yes. Know yourself. Know your boundaries. Know your triggers, your stressors and where they come from, and work on that. Yeah. Know how to take care of yourself and how to make yourself happy. Because when you are able to be your best self, then you can show up for other people in the ways that they're going to need you to.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:29:05]:

It radiates.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:29:06]:

You can't pour from an empty cup. And there were some times, and I would say, first half. First half of our business life, that my cup was incredibly empty and overdrawn. And I have learned the lessons, and I hope to always keep. Keep growing and keep improving and take care of myself so that I can take care of other people.

 

Craig Anderson [00:29:27]:

Perfect. All right. Thank you so much for being on today. If people want to find out more about you or about Uptown Pup, what are the best ways for them to do that?

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:29:36]:

So with Uptown Pup, we're on Facebook and Insta and we have a lot of cute dog fodder to share constantly on Instagram.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:29:42]:

We are uptownpupindy, uptownpupindy.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:29:45]:

On Facebook, we're uptownpup. But we just started something new and I'll let Kathleen fill you in on that if you're okay with that. Yes.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:29:54]:

Our new thing is we are on Bluesky as The Uptown Girls.

 

Craig Anderson [00:30:00]:

Oh, okay.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:30:01]:

So that will be some dog stuff, some business stuff, sort of our, our little brain droppings from our lives that hopefully we can just share good things and cute things and things that add.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:30:15]:

To people's lives about our partnership, our business, our dogs, leadership stuff. It's The Uptown Girls on Bluesky.

 

Craig Anderson [00:30:22]:

Very good. Well, we will drop all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today and talking about the story of your Executive Evolution and all the success you've all had. So thank you very much.

 

Kathleen Schonsheck [00:30:31]:

Thank you, Craig. We love you. You're the best.

 

Craig Anderson [00:30:34]:

All right, bye.

 

Mandy Stetzel [00:30:35]:

Bye.

 

Craig Anderson [00:30:38]:

I really enjoyed that interview today. Such a great story of a small business just growing from really the ideation of it to eight years on growing and really serving their customers. I hope it came through to you as it came through to me, the strong sense of servant leadership that they have, the strong sense of how much they want to give back through their business. So thank you, Kathleen and Mandy, for telling us the story of your Executive Evolution today and of the evolution of your business. As always, I like to kind of summarize my key takeaways from the interview by focusing on the three areas of competence, confidence and calm. In the area of competence, they talked about how, you know, they really didn't know anything about running a business when they started it. And they were self taught. They went out and they read books on leadership, on communication, on how to run a business.

 

Craig Anderson [00:31:29]:

And when you're not sure what to do, there's lots of resources that you can go draw on to help you grow a successful business. In the area of confidence, I appreciate they admitted sometimes they messed up and they didn't let them bring them down. They actually levered that into building their confidence into making better decisions in the future. I'm not a big hey, we all should try and fail guy, but when we do, let's take away the right lessons from it. And then in the area of calm, it's such an important area for all of us to kind of maintain our calm when we're leading organizations. And, and I loved what Kathleen talked about, about knowing yourself, knowing your triggers. It's that self awareness that I've talked about before on the podcast. Self awareness as a leader is really the key to kind of maintaining calm.

 

Craig Anderson [00:32:15]:

Cause we know why we're reacting the way we're reacting. So thanks again to the team at Uptown Pup for sharing a great story today. As always, you can go from being an accidental leader to the greatest leader of all time. All it takes is developing your competence, confidence, and calm. See you next time on Executive Evolution.