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Episode #240
Almira Bardai

How To Create Lasting Consulting Partnerships & Relationships

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Summary

The consulting business is a people business. Partnerships and relationships are vital to the growth of consulting firms. In today’s episode, Michael Zipursky interviews Almira Bardai, Senior PR, Thought Leadership & Communications Consultant, about her experiences in the space and what she learned about creating lasting consulting partnerships and relationships. She shares some of the best practices with those considering partnering and her thoughts about referrals as keys to having more clients. On working with big clients, Almira gives the strategies that helped her get a seat at the table. Plus, she also touches on providing PR services as well as negotiating the pricing and increasing her fees.

I have Almira Bardai joining us. Almira, welcome.

Thank you for having me. It’s always exciting.

It’s a great attitude to have, a good mindset. For those who aren’t familiar with you and your work, you are in PR, Thought Leadership Communications. You’ve been running your own consulting business since April of 2018. You’re working with clients like Nike, Best Buy, TELUS, Virgin Radio, and many others. Let’s get right into it. Your career, what were you doing before you started your consulting business in 2018?

I went to SFU and I often talk about this. I chose Simon Fraser University because of its co-op program. I had some phenomenal experiences even before I graduated, which is why I’ve been in the industry for so long. I like to pretend that I’m younger than I am. I worked for the government for a bit. I extended some of my co-ops, worked for the government, and then worked for a PR agency.

I worked for Wilcox PR, which is very specialized in good consumer PR but also in crisis PR. I cut my teeth in crisis PR and then I moved to the UK. I ended up becoming head of Global PR for a beer company out there, Cobra Beer. It was great and it was a niche beer brand and an amazing time to be doing that. I then traveled and worked abroad. I’ve worked in the UK, Australia, and South Africa, and then came back to Vancouver and started establishing consultancy as freelancing, which grew into an agency.

Take me back in 2018, or maybe it even started to swirl around in your mind years before, but what made you decide to start your own consulting business after being in the corporate landscape, living, traveling, and working, all around the world? Why come back to North America, specifically Vancouver, and then start your own consulting business?

I couldn’t find a job. A lot of people say that when they’ve been abroad. I’d like to think times have changed. This was in 2008. I went back into consulting in 2018 after I sold my business, but I was in the UK and I always say how in the UK, there are ultimate possibilities. You can do so much. Partially, their population is bigger. It’s the center of the world to a certain degree. You can do anything. I was abroad for about seven years. I came back to Canada because I wanted to spend a little bit of time with family and also, I’ve been to Australia and we loved it.

I was looking to make a permanent transition and needed a base. When I came back here, nobody would hire me because they said I’d been gone for so long. Whereas the attitude in the UK and particularly in Australia, given my experience, I became head of Global PR for the beer company I worked for. I was sellable within minutes. I couldn’t keep up with all the phone calls from the recruiters and everything, but I came back here. Canada is an amazing place, but it’s not always so open-minded to foreign experiences.

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I had to start at the beginning and I was very lucky that somebody has suggested that I go into Craigslist and look for clients, but I even did things like mystery shopping at Rogers Video, not the phone stores, the video store back then to be able to get cash in. One thing led to another that I ended up consulting and fell into it. It was not my initial plan. It was to go back into the corporate world to be able to then apply for my passport to move back to Australia. By virtue of the market, I couldn’t even get a job, so I started to fall into consulting.

Was this after you sold your agency business?

This was before. What happened was that I ended up trying to get my passport to Australia, but it’s so funny how your age and the world work. I turned 30, so I didn’t have enough points to get my own passport. That’s when the beauty of consulting was there. I was like, “I don’t need to have a passport or to work for somebody. I’m a Commonwealth citizen. I can move to Australia for six months and run my business.” That’s exactly what I did at a young age. I started to get that feel for being your own boss, consulting, working from abroad, and all the things that are so trendy. I did that at a very young age.

I did that and I ran my business from Australia and then decided, “I’m going to incorporate. I would like this to be what my life is,” but funny enough, I came back to Vancouver in the middle of 2008 and met my future business partner, and that’s when we set up our agency in 2009 that I subsequently sold to her in 2018. Again, in 2018, I went back into consulting. It’s been the thing I go back to.

I had a very similar experience where I started businesses from a young age. I remember when I went over to Japan and opened up a branch office for our consulting business over there, it was exactly like what you said, the grass was greener. If I had tried to do what I was doing at that time with my cousin’s business partner, Sam. We had it in North America.

It was going well, but by virtue of going to Japan, all of a sudden, we had an advantage, which was that we weren’t trying to help Japanese companies to sell more Japanese consumers or businesses. We were helping Japanese global organizations to sell more effectively to English-speaking markets. I’m always recommending or suggesting to consultants to look at what advantage you have because it’s likely something that you’re not focusing on.

It didn’t matter that I was significantly younger, I was in my early 20s surrounded by people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, in some cases, even 70s, but you could look and go, “I’m younger. I don’t have as much experience or expertise, but what I was bringing to the table was a fresh new perspective.” That’s what we marketed.

I want to get into the consulting business that you started in 2018, but I’m very interested in the agency as well. You mentioned that you started and grew that with a partner. Can you talk a little bit about the experience of growing the agency with a partner, and then why did you decide to sell your shares or the business and go off on your own?

CSP 240 | Lasting Consulting Partnerships

 

My business partner and I, Lindsay, we’re great friends. We met through the industry in Vancouver. She had a very similar experience to me. We’re like soul sisters that have always followed each other. She was in the UK. I was in the UK. I went to Australia. She went to India. Keeping in mind, she has blonde hair and blue eyes, and she was a Bollywood producer, which is great. I love telling that story, but when she came back to Vancouver, she couldn’t find a job either. Because she had the experience of freelance in movie, film, and entertainment PR, she ended up consulting.

We got to be friends. She was very film-based. I was doing consumer and a lot of green tech at the time when it started. It came to the point that the Vancouver market was so small. I felt like we’d start to compete. It was like, “Why compete? Why don’t we team up?” That was the idea that we had in December of 2008. Her company was called Jigsaw PR and mine was AVID PR. I had the idea of the name being Jive PR. We then had a journalist who cusses up and apparently said, “Jive Talk in the seventies was African-American talk, the word was bullshit. If you said Jive talk, it was bullshit talk.”

We were like, “We’ve named our PR agency bullshit PR,” but then we’re like, “It’s PR.” Some people do think it’s the spin. We thought it ended up being brand-appropriate, but we ended up founding the agency together that we were running our own consultancies. We decided to merge the two consultancies to form Jive, but we still needed to feel it out. We weren’t sure if you’d be successful.

The markets crashed in 2008 and we’re starting to move into the recession, so we wanted to be prudent about it. “Would our friendships survive? Would we be good business partners?” It came out of the fact that she loved to do business development and I love to run the business and work with the clients. You start to look at how you can work together and how you complement each other. We decided that for any existing business that we had, we would keep our own consultancies in any new business we would put into Jive so that we could feel our way through it.

It exploded. We had the decision to merge in February 2009, but we said we were going to give it to September and see what happens. It was great. By September, we’re both so tired of trying to do both. We said, “Let’s officially merge.” We did that. I also believe we were successful because it was the two of us. As an entrepreneur, there’s always the push-pull of business development and running the business, the ops. There are two of us to do it. I do believe that’s why we’re super successful with it.

We ended up scaling the agency to three offices, Vancouver, Toronto, and Los Angeles. We’re going into the US and it made sense, especially because we did film and entertainment PR. From a traditional PR agency, adding social media services and an influencer marketing brand, and grew it to 30 people by the time I sold to her in 2018.

What were the reasons for selling?

I often say that I believe every entrepreneur knows how long they want to have a business. I do feel like it’s maybe 90% of the truth. I believe that we have a vision for how long we want to have a business and for what we want it to be. Maybe it’s my truth, but I knew I wanted to do this for ten years. A lot of it was the same. I wanted some new challenges. Don’t get me wrong. I love my team. I love being a part of the success, but the other thing that I love is growing, setting up, and scaling. I don’t love the maintenance of it. You’re the best entrepreneur or the best business owner at a certain stage of business.

Women value themselves less than men in terms of their expertise or what they bring to the world. Click To Tweet

For me, I didn’t want to keep maintaining it. I knew we needed better technology. I knew we needed better systems as you grew like a child. You go from babyhood to toddler to adolescence. As we went into that adolescence, I knew that it needed more than what I wanted to give or where my passions lay. It was a natural transition for me after several years.

Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight on that experience of coming together with a partner, merging a business, or even growing a business together, is there anything that you would recommend to a consultant in a similar situation if they’re thinking about, “Should I get involved with a partner? Should I try and do this myself?” Everyone’s situation is different. There’s no one way to do it, but are there any like, “Make sure that you look out for this. Have a partnership agreement.” Are there any best practices that you would highly recommend to people who might be considering partnering?

The best advice that I still talk about was the best business advice I ever had. We had a lawyer putting together a partnership agreement and he said, “Negotiate the divorce as you negotiate the marriage.” The two of us, as we wrote what each of us was bringing to the table, “These are the clients we’re bringing to the table. This is how much money.” We both put in the same amount of money. We’d also set up our business as a partnership of our two corporations so that we could put our own personal expenses through our own business, so there would never be an argument about any expenses going through the joint business.

We also decided what would happen in the case of whatever scenarios it might be. It was not a hugely extensive list of scenarios, but one of them was about if one of us wanted out what would happen, who would get which clients. These were my original clients that were brought into the business. For example, I’ve spent so many years in the beer industry. I love the beer industry. That’d be a client that I would keep and what would be the clients that she would keep.

It was very clear. Lindsay and I were not best friends before we set up the business and that was a nice thing because, in life, we tend to have expectations of our best friends. She and I didn’t have expectations and also, we didn’t let friendship come into it. Like any business partner, we had issues, but not a lot. If we did, we discussed it over email because we took the emotion out of it. You could have a very neutral conversation. Honestly, maybe it’d be about ten times that we would end up having these conversations throughout our ten years of business.

Knowing what it is that each of us wanted, if the business didn’t work or there was an exit, allowed it to be so much smoother. We kept it that when we did dissolve the business, I’m like, “Here are the clients.” One day, when you do a business exit, you need to know what your goal is. My lawyer was like, “What is it that you want from a dollar perspective?” For me, it wasn’t about the money, the money’s great. Don’t get me wrong, but for me, the exit was about the freedom to do the next things. “What is it that would allow me to do the next thing?”

I had found another buyer that Lindsay didn’t want to sell to because she didn’t want to work for somebody else. That exit would have been much more lucrative from a money perspective, but I would have had to do an earn-out for two years. If freedom is my goal, then which buyer am I selling to, and what is it that’s going to fulfill my desire to be able to go on to the next chapter of my life? For me, it was selling to Lindsay because I was done in six weeks and then consulted back on a few key clients. That’s also part of the process as you do an exit, is that what’s your ultimate goal that you want out of this and being able to be very clear.

That’s very solid advice. When you sold your shares, did you start your consulting business right away or did you take some time off? How quickly was that?

CSP 240 | Lasting Consulting Partnerships

 

I’d lined up the sale for when I had my son. I had my son when I was 40 years old and it was great. Any type of parenthood and entrepreneurship is a whole other ball game. For me, I loved that I had the freedom of my 30s to be able to build the business. I could do whatever I needed to and it was wonderful, but I knew that I wanted to spend time with this baby. I literally lined it up to be, “My due date is February 19th. What day am I done?”

I had some clients that I onboarded about six weeks after I had my son for my own business, which I realize is completely crazy, but I started to build up my consulting during that time and was also consulting back to Jive on some of our clients. I started to add more clients throughout the time as I had my son. Mine was more based on the lifestyle decision and now he’s older, so adding more clients as I go through.

It sounds like your first clients when you started your consulting business came from prior relationships and clients you had at the agency where you sold your shares. How about over the last few years, is there any marketing that you’ve done for your own business that you’ve found has not worked that well?

It’s funny when Lindsay and I first started the business, I wanted to be on the pitch list, as I called them. We all want to get the big brands. We all want to be called in that pitch room, but I had to get clear on how we got our business. Something that I’ve carried through into my own consulting is that it’s all about relationships.

For me, I don’t do any marketing now. I’ll post on LinkedIn to be a thought leader about business, especially women in business. That’s very precious and it’s so dear to my heart, and I want to be an advocate for women in business and women in leadership. It’s all been referral-based. That’s something that I took from my previous business about how you build those relationships.

I still have clients coming back to me from years ago or clients that worked on a project before and who are now in a new place of business will reach out to me. I’m blessed that I’ve got a great reputation and I’m known for what I do. I do have the clients who are coming into me or referring me because they’re like, “You have to talk to Almira. This is what she does. She can help your business or your brand.”

When you say that referrals and relationships are key, what specifically are you doing? What do you find is most impactful? Most people say referrals mean being passive, sitting back, and people reach out to them. It’s great while it comes. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to always come, but other people are more intentional in their strategy around referrals. They know the specific things they need to do on a regular basis or pay attention to. Where do you sit on that passive versus active referrals? If it is more active, what specifically are you doing that you would recommend others do?

Mine are more passive in the sense that when I trace back all the clients that I bought, I haven’t done anything to get them, which is a nice place to be in. For example, one of my clients was the VP at a digital agency that’s gone to another business and was like, “We need Almira.” That’s literally what it is, “We need some Almira on this,” because I have this vision for the client and where their communications should be.

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I call myself a Chief Marketing Communications Officer. I don’t say marketing because marketing is different from comms and PR. I’m able to see the vision that the CEO or brand owner might have and be like, “Here’s what you need. This is what you need for visibility or awards. Here’s what you’re missing.” Oftentimes my clients are in tech and they have incredible marketing directors or marketing teams, but they are usually in their 30s and more digitally savvy, but they won’t know about an award or about the brand strategy.

I’ve been doing this for years and so all the things I’ve seen about how to build that brand and what the C-suite leader, typically the CEO, loves is that they get to focus on the business. They can literally parachute me in to be the puppeteer and I get what they want. You know gifts in life, clarity, and communication are mine.

I’ve done so much study into the human design, which is so much of how things are being generated now at this time of my life, but they’re like, “I need somebody to deal with this. They know what I want. They’ve had the experience to do it. They know the pieces that I need and to oversee it.” I’m the puppet puppeteer. I can be like, “You need this agency because you’re going to get X, Y, and Z.” “Let me do it.” That’s what I’m known for, getting things done. It’s the strategy to get things done in terms of your communications or your PR.

Especially now the media environment, we’ve been saying for the past many years, “It gets harder every year.” It does get harder and harder every year. It’s about building up their profile but also having the time and the grit. It’s not like the old days where you call up a reporter, have a relationship in a few weeks, and you can get a story. You need six months to build a brand to get that first piece in. How do you do that? Again, having that strategic bird’s eye view to be able to build that story, brand, and visibility and to get it done. That’s why my clients call me.

Many of your clients are multibillion-dollar organizations. Are you partnering with other firms to get a seat at the table? For some of these companies, let’s say, Nike or whoever it might be, wouldn’t they typically go to a larger firm or some other agency? I’m wondering how are you getting a seat at the table and what have you found to work best to land those clients?

The Nike’s of the world did come earlier in work when I was working for another agency, but they got that through partnerships. At the time, there was a whole thing about West Coast and East Coast. “We need a West Coast Agency,” and I do believe that as an independent, you want to have those collaborations and those partnerships. That’s also what I got in my business when I had Jive is that he was a Canadian partner, for example.

We had a global wine brand, who’s the Canadian agency, and then we opened up the US office and started to grow more business from that perspective. How the independents can manage to compete in the industry is by aligning with like-minded businesses. As for me, I do still get incredible referrals, but mine are very different now. I get referred to cryptocurrency exchanges, for example. My clients now are very much with what’s happening in the market.

Now, venture cap and private equity that’s always busy ones, but that’s one of my clients. It’s those things that, where people are looking to gain more visibility to be able to grow as a thought leader or because they’re one of the coolest and amazing things out there that have a great brand story. Those are the ones that I’m cutting my teeth into is that it’s less of the billion-dollar brand, Nike’s of the world, but it’s the cooler things, like a cryptocurrency exchange that needs somebody who is nimble, smart, experienced, and can hit the ground running. Those are the types of clients calling me now.

CSP 240 | Lasting Consulting Partnerships

 

When you look over the last several years of your business, have your services changed like what you’re focusing on or offering? If so, how are they changed?

I don’t want to say standard PR offerings. It’s not a standard in the sense that, especially in the relationships we had with the clients when I was at Jive, we had our retainers for ten years, which is unheard of. It was so much about the relationships and about doing a great job on PR or nailing the clients and influencer relationships, and again, it’s about the vision of what we could build for the client through PR and social media.

Now, it’s more strategic and more high level in the sense that I work with the CEO, not the marketing director, but the CEO on the bird’s eye brand that we’re building. I get the comms piece out of it. It is usually an entrepreneurial environment, or it is the president of a company who has carte blanche to do whatever they want.

I do find that all my clients are men. They want somebody who’s going to hit the ground running. Partially what it is, is that you do your thing and do it great. I’m only going to tell you when you’ve done a bad job. It’s such a fun environment. I find it to work in words you only ever hear from them if you’re doing a bad job. Otherwise, they think you’re doing a great job. It’s much more strategic.

I do offer public relations services where we pitch the media because that’s often how people come to me looking for a publicist, but I do so much more than that. It’s very comms and PR, a combination there, but they will come to me because they’re looking for somebody to be able to oversee the experience level again, and then we do very strategic pitching.

I would never say that if you wanted to do some mass pitching campaign or something like that, you would come to me. We’re very strategic. We’re very clear about the placements that we do. We’re going to let the media know about you. We would never say, “No, we’re not going to pitch them,” but again, it’s very clear. There’s a clear intention behind who we’re pitching and what we’re trying to work up to.

The focus has become much more strategic. Has there been a shift or change to your pricing strategy over the years? How are you charging now compared to a few years before?

The pricing would be the same. I charge as much like an agency, but I charge more for my own time. That’s where the difference is, is that before, it would be blended billing because I would not have had as many fingers in the doing of the work. There would be ten hours of me, whereas now, “Almira’s prices are higher,” because there’s more of me.

Most people think that to accomplish more, you need to go faster, but, in some cases, you need to go slower so that you have the time to make the right decisions and plan how you want to accomplish your goals. Click To Tweet

The client wants to deal with me and not be like, “I have my own team. I’ve got five people on my team,” but I’ve increased my own personal prices. I tend to have a lot more client involvement because one thing I’ve learned is that when you have a boutique agency, the clients are typically hiring your agency because of you.

How this works is that you have to step into things all the time. It was always often that push-pull. They love their account manager, but they wanted me there as well. In this incarnation of my business, it is about how I build this amazing support network around me. I have very senior people who I will pay more to do a media list because they know how to do it better than the coordinator I’d have to mentor, but because it’s more about me that the clients are hiring. My personal prices are higher because I’ve been doing this for such a long time.

Do you have any desire to extract yourself more from the day-to-day delivery work and again, build an agency or more teams and scale this, or are you very intentional and keeping it at a small size?

I do not want to scale. I had to do a lot of coaching around this. I felt bad or weird for charging high prices for my own time. My coach laughs at me because she’s like, “You’re this bad-ass woman entrepreneur, but you’re afraid to raise your prices.” I had to work on my mindset about it, but no, I don’t want to scale with multiple offices. I like the freedom and the flexibility. I love mentoring other people in the industry. I look at all of the people in the industry and I’ve trained half of them, but I feel like I’ve done that part of my life.

I want more flexibility in my life. I want to be able to work with the client one-on-one where needed, work with my team, who does a killer job on the comms and the PR, and continue to scale that way and also the partners. Rather than having specific services within my own business, now I’ll bring in a search agency. I will bring in a digital marketing agency. Those are not services that I ever planned to offer in-house under my brand because I don’t have to supervise it. I bring in the experts and I work with a number of agencies to do that.

You mentioned pricing and increasing your fees as an area that you had struggled with, or at least there was some hesitation or pause, and you’ve got some coaching and support to overcome that. What was the big shift for you? What changed in how you viewed things or what did you do to be able to overcome that and be able to increase your fees successfully?

Not to gender the conversation, but there was a lot of it and very much into personal development. There’s been a lot of talk about how COVID and the world that we’re in is bringing up a lot of old stories and subconscious and all this stuff is happening. It was gender thinking that women value themselves less than a man does in terms of their expertise or what they bring to the world. I realized I had so many subconscious limiting beliefs because of my gender and the color of my skin.

I was having a conversation with somebody and saying, “I don’t know if I ever equated myself to perhaps a white woman or a white man in the business world,” and it’s crazy because I look at all the awards that I’ve won and everything that I’ve done. Again, subconsciously, I don’t think that I believed that I could or that people wanted to pay the high prices for me. That’s been a lot of what I’ve been unpacking. When I started to look at this weird stuff and was like, “It’s not true. It’s not real.” That’s when I was like, “I’m letting go of this and I’m owning my expertise or how much my own knowledge is bringing to the table.” Now, I’m like, “There’s no limit,” but it was funny.

CSP 240 | Lasting Consulting Partnerships

 

We all have limiting beliefs in one form or another. It’s great that you’re sharing that. You’ve been working through it, so that’s fantastic. Knowing what you know now, if you were to go back in time, is there anything that you wish that you would’ve known earlier? Anything that could have maybe got you to that next level of success even faster if you had done things differently?

I believe that everything is learning. Everything was meant to be done as it was done for it to transpire. I’d wish I had more knowledge about how to be a better leader or coach. I’m a great leader. I always thought I was great, but things like, “I work fast,” which I knew anyway, but that’s alienating for people who work for you. It’s very intimidating.

I changed my relationship with my team when I started working slower. When you tell your employees, “I always have the time to listen to you. My door is always open,” but you are multitasking. You’re on the phone. You’re walking and talking as you’re making coffee and getting all those things done. What you present is not very approachable, frankly.

One of my hardest lessons is that you think you’re doing something right but you’re not genuinely thinking about that. I don’t think things could have changed. I don’t because you have to learn your lessons, but it would have been nice to have been more aware. Having more awareness of our own leadership, that’s where the difference could have been. Perhaps, it didn’t need to come with people feeling alienated or unappreciated. I had a lot of coaching on slowing down and listening and things like that, and that was my biggest lesson.

You mentioned negative feedback that you received might be from an employee or team member. Can you give an example of what that is? Now, knowing what you know, what have you done to overcome that, or what are the steps that you took to get things to a better place?

People don’t feel like I’m present with them or I’m listening. You might be able to tell. I’m a very high-energy person. When I want to coach people, I’m always talking. I’m not like sitting back listening, having softer listening energy. That sounds completely weird as listening energy, but it’s about the energy, the changes that we make so that people feel heard.

Also, when people are asking me questions, I listen to respond. That was a big thing. People don’t want you to respond. They want to be fully heard. They want to take their time with it. Again, because I’m so high energy, my view of coaching people is to give them all the options for all the things that they could do on the receiving end of that, which can come across as bossy.

I was talking to another friend of mine, who’s a guy because I usually get some female entrepreneurs and bosses who get the same feedback as I do, but talking to a guy who was very high energy and he’s like, “I come across as intimidating and overwhelming.” To me, he’s the nicest guy on the face of the earth. That was finally where I clocked it, that it made sense that I could be very overwhelming, but I could be coming across as very bossy, but also has this much energy coming at you.

Most businesses tend to subtract or remove things because complexity doesn't scale. Click To Tweet

I talked to an energy healer at the time and she’s like, “You need to do some energy planning or work with a plant.” I was like, “What? This is crazy.” She was like, “Sit in front of a plant. How do you feel? Do you feel calmer?” She wanted me to check my own energy and how it was coming across. It sounds so completely weird, but when I was in front of something that couldn’t talk back to me.

You’ve realized how there’s this flood of energy going at people. It must be so overwhelming to have that hit you in an environment where you’re trying to be mentored and to learn if this is making any sense whatsoever. It was about this flood coming at you and about when I needed to stop talking to be able to allow people to digest information.

What you’re saying brings up, for me, that sometimes it’s doing the opposite of the status quo. Most people think that in order to accomplish more, you need to go faster, but you set in some cases, as you’re saying that you need to go slower so that you have the time. You can make the right decisions and plan out how you want to go about accomplishing your goals, so you can do it faster. Another one is maybe you will think that in order to grow your business, you need to add more products and services, and we found time and time again that in most cases, looking at most businesses, they tend to subtract or remove things because complexity doesn’t scale.

I probably had talked to a plant before as I watered the plant or something. My stepmother has always talked about how there’s energy in plants. What you’re saying to me, it doesn’t sound that out there, but I’m sure for some, it would and I understand that. Giving yourself some pause or time to reflect, think, or process is powerful.

I want to ask about you and your daily practices. As you said, you’re very high energy. You have your team, you’re doing your client work, and your family. If you were to identify one or two things that you feel contributed most to your success, productivity, and level of performance, what habit would you say you have that you’re coming to on a regular basis?

It’s doing nothing. A few months ago, I would’ve said probably meditation, and don’t get me wrong. I absolutely believe, especially for a high-energy person like me, in meditating and getting grounded. Again, it’s so funny how I’m such a high-energy person, but I’m also a yoga teacher. When I teach yoga, people are like, “Who is this chill person talking about mother earth and connecting to mother earth? We don’t recognize you.” Even sitting quietly because it even got to the point that meditation became another thing that I did.

There’s a difference between doing and being. I just need to be. Especially with all the things that I do throughout the day, like drop the kids to daycare and to do all of that, you’re going. As an entrepreneur and you’re constantly moving, you realize you’re moving at breakneck speed. At the end of the day, you’re like, “I don’t know what I did because I did so much,” that my brain is still processing.

That’s one of the things that come with age. I tend to talk to a lot of people that they’re like, “I’ve spent so much time in hustle mode that hustle has taken over how I do everything.” I’m like, “I love the hustle. It’s great, but I want to go at a slower pace and enjoy.” All of a sudden, I’m 25 years into my career and I love it. I love my life, but I want to sit down a little bit more and be more intentional with me and with my time and how I think. It’s been a bit of a transition in learning to sit and do nothing.

A busy brain is not good for our mental health. Click To Tweet

What advice would you have to somebody who shares what you’re saying or is looking at the situation saying, “I also want to be able to teach yoga or go to the gym more often or do more exercise, but I feel bad because that’s time I’m taking away from working on growing my business, and so here I am working on the business for as many hours as I can every single day. I don’t have time to do the stuff for myself?” What would you say to that person in that situation? It sounds like if you’re making time to meditate and to teach yoga and to do all these things, that’s time away that you could be in your business. What advice would you offer somebody in that situation?

The boundary’s about your time. What are our working hours? 9:00 to 5:00. That’s a pretty simple one, but I get that there are things to do at night or whatever. Get up even fifteen minutes earlier, but for me, it’s outsourcing. I ended up having a very heavy workload these past months, it was crazy. Finally, the project ended a few weeks ago and my own personal to-do list was massive.

I went on to Fiverr and I’ve found an incredible VA because I looked at everything and I said, “How is this much work possible?” It’s not. The old me would have kept going doing it and trying to find time in the day, but then I’m not present with my son. I’m very nice to him. I snap at him. He’s four and doesn’t deserve that. I don’t like myself, frankly. It’s that simple. It’s not his fault that mom has a busy brain and so I need to check myself and say that this is not okay.

It’s funny how I have to do it for somebody else at first and not me. Whereas, why do we not put ourselves first and be like, “This is not good for my mental health,” because a busy brain is not good for our mental health? It always happens because we’re entrepreneurs, but how do you manage it? For me, it was about outsourcing and saying, “I can’t do this.” That was hard for me to say that, not so much that, “I can’t do this, I won’t do it.”

That was hard because I’m a person who can do anything. People would be like, “If you want somebody to get everything done, call Almira.” This sense of feeling accomplishment and productivity is what I was driven by. Especially being a PR consultant, I’m like, “I don’t want to do it anymore,” so I outsourced and now I feel like I have manageable control.

For the last few months, best business book, non-fiction book, and fiction book that you’ve read or listened to, what do you recommend?

I’m reading Jay Shetty’s Think Like a Monk and it is epic. He’s giving us the pause and the knowledge that we need for the busy world that we are in. For entrepreneurs, Spencer Sheinin, who is my own mentor, the book is called Entreprenumbers. It’s the numbers that every entrepreneur needs to understand because, let’s be realistic, we don’t always understand numbers. It’s not our forte. We don’t set up our businesses because we’re good at numbers. Spencer’s book Entreprenumbers is brilliant for every entrepreneur.

Almira, I want to thank you so much for coming on here. I want to make sure that people can learn more about you and your work. Where’s the best place for people to go to check everything you have going on?

It’s my website www.AlmiraBardai.com. You can also check me out on Instagram as well. I do a lot of talking about personal empowerment and women’s empowerment, and that’s all over my Instagram at @AlmiraB.

Thanks again so much for coming on and sharing some of your journey and story with us.

Thank you for having me.

 

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About Almira Bardai

CSP 240 | Lasting Consulting PartnershipsAlmira is one of Canada’s leading experts in brand building and communications. She has spent the last two decades creating powerful narratives for both domestic and global brands including Flight Centre, Granville Island Brewing, Nike, Best Buy, Future Shop, Molson, and TELUS.

As an entrepreneur and advocate for women in leadership, Almira has been honoured with a number of prestigious awards including:
– PROFIT and Canadian Business W100: Canada’s Top Female Entrepreneurs 2016
– Enterprising Woman magazine’s 2016 Enterprising Women of the Year Award
– Business In Vancouver Forty Under 40 2016 Winner
– 2014 Vancouver YWCA Women of Distinction Awards finalist

Launching her career at premier national agency Wilcox PR, Almira spent many years abroad heading up global PR for Cobra Beer, one of the UK’s fastest-growing beer brands. She also drove corporate public relations and communications campaigns for top brands in Australia and South Africa.

Almira co-founded Jive PR + Digital, an award-winning, top public relations firm specializing in media relations and social media marketing services with offices in Vancouver, Toronto, and Los Angeles. After exiting the business in 2018, Almira began consulting exclusively for C-Suite executives and entrepreneurs, looking to magnify their brand impact and take their businesses to new heights.

With an enviable network of influencers and a storied career, her expertise lies in developing integrated, brand-building communication strategies that deliver strategic, massive results.

Almira is a community player who donates her skills and time as an active philanthropist, mentor and board director in organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity Greater Vancouver, Aga Khan Foundation Canada, SFU Beedie School of Business, Entrepreneur’s Organization and Brands for Better. A thought leader in her field, she also frequently appears as a commentator in the media.

 

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