Episode 22 - Growth with Purpose: Leanne Reichhoff on Scaling Firms and Giving Back

Transcript

00:12

Excellent. Well, here we are, powerhouse smart friends and colleagues. Another episode of the Cool Collabs podcast. I'm so honored to share this uh beautiful platform with all of you. So, the podcast, if you have not um ever been associated with us or been um a guest, I

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would love for all of you to know that are out there listening that we pick for um our leaders to join me on this podcast. And it's commutable, so it's 20 minutes. It's fast. Um based on three pillars under their kind of umbrella. And our today's guest is a perfect

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example of those three pillars. One, she's a cool leader who totally totally believes in collaboration. Um, which is near and dear to my heart. Number two, she lives with an attitude of gratitude. And number three, she believes in giving back to help humanity. So, I don't take um the

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pleasure of introducing my guests. I let them tell their story. So, we're going to turn it right over. I'm so happy. It's like welcoming our guest in my own living room. So, please welcome Leanne Reichoff. Leanne, I'm so honored to have you here. Please introduce yourself and tell us your story.

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Sure. I'm Leanne Richoff. Um, I started marketing agency in 2013 alongside of homeschooling four kids, my husband working a crazy job. And uh, when I started it, it was actually uh there was just a really high-end Italian restaurant in my little town in Wisconsin um, who had a really bad

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presence and their food was amazing. and I just felt like nobody would know that they existed or wouldn't even want to come looking at their website. And at the time I had a blog and so I had kind of uh you know dabbled in like uh some web design builds and things like that

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like do-it-yourself. And so I built a website for this company and um it it was it was a blast. I really enjoyed it. Um, and I charged $250 for my first do-it-yourself build on Wix, actually um, in 2013 and immediately had multiple other companies coming to me and saying,

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"Hey, could we we we love that website. Could you build a website?" And I it just became a business. So, I had to take it seriously and actually learn design, learn development. Um, when I started in 2013, I also had to do all of the things. is I did SEO, I did the

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writing, I did the photography, um I did the design, I did the development, I did logo design, which that was the one thing I was never very good at. Um but uh and so anyways, growing to a a team of 15 now. I now live in Minneapolis. Um uh in the Twin Cities with my family um

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and now have a team of 15. We office out of the International Market Square, which we love. Um we have some great clients here. uh love working with established businesses who've been doing the same thing for 15, 20 years and they're ready to be competitive. They

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were competitive at one point, but now they're com their competitors are kind of flying by them with modern um modern marketing and things like that. And so we love repositioning them, pivoting them, coming up with new ways for them to connect with our audience and and uh

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I just love love what I do, love the people we get to work with. Um, and yeah, that's that's my story. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. So, I have to back up a little bit. Where did you learn how to build a website after having four children, please? Yeah. So, uh, yeah, my So, we

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homeschooled and at, you know, in early homeschool days, uh, you know, you only homeschool for a few hours and then you have the rest of the day. So, back at the beginning when I was learning, I was really working evenings and weekends, too. I my my kids could honestly say mom

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is always working because at the time I I grew really fast and I was all in. I found something I loved and I remember uh I was a hair stylist by trade for 12 years. Prior to that I was in sales, furniture sales be after that and I was just looking for that one thing that I

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found a lot of joy in that I was really good at. I'm a very passionate person and um there wasn't anything that I had tried besid I really like sales but it just didn't quite fit yet. Um I love doing hair styling too but again was just looking for that that next better

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thing for me and it it was like a just such a blessing because I am really good at what I do. I love working with people and um helping them see bigger pictures and helping their businesses grow and really solving problems. Um it's just so fun and such a blessing. So I did I

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worked a lot of evenings and weekends for many many years. Um probably five or six years before I started really building my team. Um and so yeah, it now thankfully I have a lot of people doing all the things and I'm not doing the things I shouldn't be doing like logo

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design. Um I'm thankful for two business partners now. In 2022 I brought on Hannah and Megan as my business partners. I we were at a pivotal point where I either needed to scale down and just keep going by myself with a small team or bring on two business partners to help scale. And so that's what we

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did. Um and it's been amazing. It's been awesome. So, so I have to go back to how did you learn how to do a website? And the answer I'm hearing is you selftaught yourself. I did. I am selftaught. Yes. A lot of online learning too. There's lots of resources online. Um, I think that I've

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I've pulled from lots of different resources. So, it's um it's been a a really good experience. Um, I I tend to still be the person that if our developer who's very technical savvy, I'm kind of in the middle like I'm I'm I'm half creative, half technical. I'm very strategical. So, um, but even now

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to this day, there's sometimes when our developers are stuck and I'm the one who ends up being able to fix it. So, I definitely learned at a really deep level. It wasn't just surface development. It was um deep development, lots of technical stuff that I never knew I was capable of.

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Right. And you're and Leanne, you got to be like super smart. I mean, obviously, we can all try to do the tutorials and there's chat GPT and all of the wonderful. It wasn't ChatGpt when I started. I know. I know. But even today, like you know, you you can't just go online and

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entrench yourself in all these tools and come out with incredible work like what you do. So, you're obviously very super smart. And what's really interesting is you're very entrepreneurial. A lot of companies start like start up like you did and they get stuck and then you

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immediately as you just described said I I need I need to take off some hats and I need to be able to pass those off and and really allow those people to run with those talents that you either recognize either you're not the best at that or you don't want to do it. Maybe

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you are the best at it but you you don't you know that's not your best use of your time. So that was the hardest thing to like to do because I am an entrepreneur. I like to have control. I I'm good. I know that I'm good at what I do. Even the things that like technical things um one of the

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team members that I've had for the longest, Tim, he's very technical and and better than me technically. Um it's it was still difficult to pass things off because you want people on your team to treat your clients the same way you treat them. You want them to love them

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the same way you love them. You want them to be as passionate into their project as much as you are. And and I think delegation is one of the biggest things that I actually help my clients with as well. So we not only do marketing, we're much bigger than marketing. We do a lot of business

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growth and development starting with even processes and leadership and tasks and um processes, CRM stuff, operational things. And delegation is one of the biggest things that leaders, presidents, CEOs, even general managers have a hard time doing. And it's the usually one of

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the one of the things that is part of our process of hey the reason you're not growing is because you're not willing to set this aside or give this to someone else so that you can get to that next step. So it was a big learning thing for me for sure. Right. And you then you took that

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learning internally and then you you're now teaching other people which I have had the pleasure of working with you because you've been so kind to um we started off our relationship a couple three years ago and you immediately joined in as an inkind sponsor on the

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graphic design side right and now our relationship has blossomed and I see so much of what you're doing and how our audience could actually tap in and really take their companies to the next level. So, we're going to get to that in a second. But before I do that, I want

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to start with how do you and if somebody first met you, they'd say, "Boy, I see a tough, smart, entrepreneur, direct woman, but how do you and I know you do this. How do you bring your heart side, your soft side to your relationships, your business relationships? Because in

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collaboration, not only do people want to connect with you because that you can help them and they can help you. It's this uh love, you know, uh crossc collaborate collaboration, but how do you tie in that heart center? I don't think I'm tough anymore. I know that I used to be tough. I used to walk

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around with, you know, a face that everyone was like, I don't want to I don't want to talk to her. And I've worked really hard at changing that. Um, I I think my gift is being allin with my heart. Um, and I I could cry just thinking about it because I really do care deeply. Um, when I meet someone, I

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am trying to connect with them. We might not see eye to eye on everything in life, but it's important to me to get to know the people that I'm going to work with really well. And any of my clients, I I believe that you could ask any one of them and they would say, "Lean really

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cares about me. Leanne even loves me." Um, and it's obviously like a friendship love. It's a it's a deep respect love. Um but I I truly do care and I think that's just my natural gifting and sometimes it plays to a fault, right? Sometimes you love people too quickly or

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um you get too passionate too quickly. Um and so I I'm mindful of that, but I think it's just who I am. I used to actually hate that about myself when I was in middle school and high school. Um, I was so passionate and I got so excited about things and I didn't really

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know what to do with that and I always felt like why am I why do I have to be so excited about something so silly and and I still to this day and now I embrace it. Now I'm like, you know, I I just I love I I am a lover. Um, I do get really excited. But I think that's why

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people get excited to work with me is they see that I'm allin. They see that I'm I'm I really truly care and I'm, you know, want their success and I care deeply about them. So, when I hop into a partnership with someone, it is long-term. It's not just we're done. We

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do their website, we do their branding, we do their brand positioning, whatever, and then we're done. It's like, no, we're here for a long time. We're going to have lunch every quarter. We're going to, you know, I'm going to call you, I might write you a card, and there's just

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this long-term relationship. So, I don't think I think about it. I think it is just it is just it is what it is. Well, you've you've done a beautiful job. if you felt like you were more at least perceived as more, you know, direct, you know, very, you know, formal and now

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I can put that face on when needed. Yeah. And and I it's comes out, you know, at least I feel it, especially as I got I've gotten to know you better and you know, you here you are this really successful woman, 15 people, partners, your your hands are in a lot of different things, which is all also

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music to my ears. Um, but you also really want to learn about your clients and so they never want to let go of you. You know that you're going to be part of their life for a long time, which is beautiful. So, um, one of the things that I said was the pillar and you fit

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under these pillars beautifully is, um, so not only do you help your your your clients, but you also help people that are just new people. You meet, new contacts. Um, tell me about how you feel about collaboration and connecting people, kind of being a power connector

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and maybe even a success story. No sex success story that you recently had and I could probably say you probably have five on the top of your mind, but go ahead. Yeah. So, I love connecting people. Um, as far as collaboration, it gets a little tricky. So, I used to collaborate

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a lot with other creatives doing like let's just say we had a client that already had their branding done or was already working with someone doing their graphic design, but they needed a website. We used to collaborate with a their graphic designer or their writer,

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but I really felt like the project was not as successful as it could have been because we weren't working together. It was peacemeal um services. And so that's one of the reasons that we like to do everything that someone needs so that we don't have to collaborate with outside

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sources. I am the strategist. I'm setting the stage. I'm setting the parameters for strategy. I'm telling us what lane we go in and everybody from my team gets in that lane and we all go together and it we've had a lot of success with that versus collaborating. However, I love collabor collaboration

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outside of project things. I love bringing people together and even just through powerhouse smart and attending events. I and so we even host our own networking event called Meet and Mingle every quarter. And what's cool is a lot of our clients come from different

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industries. And to see, you know, our um software company sit across from our um lighting design company or, you know, it's just really neat. They don't necessarily have anything in common, but they have a business and that's what brings them together. And the conversations have been super

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interesting and we've gotten a lot of feedback just how like there's been partnerships that have been built out of our meet and mingles. Um just recently our our my my client and friend um who is um a lighting representative company um meeting with one of my other clients

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who is in construction and design and now they are working together and that's I love that. That's probably at the top of my thing for collaboration and bringing people together. It's we've been doing meet and mingles for probably 5 years and at the beginning no one was

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really coming and it was really hard to get momentum and I did not want to give up because I believe in bringing people together. I believe we were created for community that we need to be with one another and so seeing people come together and then having that partnership and stuff come out of it is

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so exciting for me. Love it. Love it. I love it. And that is why I am so proud to tell everybody on this uh podcast that you're um an advisory board member for the Minnesota um powerhouse smart chapter and you're actually taking a leadership role which means it's just

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going to be like steroids for everybody in Minnesota. They're in for a treat. I'm just so excited and our other advisory board members are so excited to have your leadership. So it's going to be totally awesome. But another example of your collaboration and actually it falls under also giving back

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is um our first time we met we had an event at a nonprofit um with Vicky Bachmann who happened to be the vice president of partnerships at that nonprofit and you immediately jumped in the first time you've ever met this nonprofit and said I'd love to do an inkind sponsorship with them and you

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helped them with a new website. Fast forward. Talk about that was a win-winwin. A a good example. We just launched We just launched that site in like March or February. Wow. Cool. That is so cool. But now you're doing an entire inind sponsorship for Vicky Bachmann's new relationship

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with another nonprofit. That's the brand new startup stage. Share with us about that. So, Revolved, um, I met some of the people a part of Revolved from another nonprofit. Um, and really, again, like there's this magnetic thing that happens between people when they,

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you know, you just know you're supposed to do something with them. And, um, and when they started their new nonprofit, they didn't even have their name picked out yet and now it's now revolved. So, I worked with them from the ground up. Again, I do the strategies. So, I help

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with what do they want to be? Who do they want to be perceived as? Where do they want to stand in the market? how are they going to stand out in the market? Um, and working on all of that, what their process looks like, how they're going to communicate, what that

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communication sounds like. So, I wrote out email frameworks. We built out a custom CRM for them. We created all their positioning. We did all of their brand identity. So, logos, t-shirts, um, all of their stationary, every all of that stuff. And we're currently in

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design of their website. We just showed them the concepts of their homepage. We do five concepts um, typically. Um, and so they got to look at all of them. And we're about to continue to do the design on the other pages as well. I love these people. They're my people. Uh again, I I

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kind of like hang on when I'm when I when I find people that I'm really connected with. I'm I'm really loyal and I'm I'm just excited to walk alongside of them as they as they grow this thing. And you were just in Africa and you got to see some of their stuff firsthand, which is really fun.

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Yes. Well, that's what I love. I mean, like how this is all like the single thread and it twists through. I mean, so I got introduced to them through you and through Vicki. We did our first powerhouse smart Africa impact trip. We want to do this every year. I met one of

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the founders of Revolve, Savannah. She lives in Zimbabwe. I mean, or Victoria Falls. Uh she is absolutely insanely talented. She was schooled in the United States, master's degree in nonprofit. young, take note, you know, just just take it to, you know, just give it back

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and and move it forward. Take no prisoners is what I was going to say, but I don't want it to seem like there's any any sense of anything that isn't perfectly beautiful here. So, um, so we'll be able to watch what you do with Revolved as a case study, but even more so, so for companies that are not

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nonprofits, because that's mostly what you do, the fact that you're giving back and helping humanity with Revolved is sensational. and you're also doing a very similar for a profit which is well our our trade association powerhouse smart. So it'll those will be two beautiful case studies if you're

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thinking about um really hiring a marketing firm and serious about growing your business because this is definitely a full service professional team. Um there'll be links below and how to reach Leanne, how to learn more about REIT3. R3 is just an unbelievable team of

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talent that Leanne leads beautifully with her partners. Can I say one quick thing? We actually don't work with nonprofits often. It's mostly for-profit businesses, just so you know. So, we do have a you mentioned uh working with nonprofit mostly, but yeah, most mostly for-profit companies.

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Uh again, medium to medium to larger companies who are established, but we do also love to work with nonprofits as well. Yes, exactly. Sorry about yes, sorry. Good clarification. Thank you for that. So yeah, and you'll see from your website, you can see some of the other

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beautiful firms that you've helped grow and the results of where they are now today since you started working with. Actually, I love that as an example. Give me one of the give us a an example of one of the companies you've worked with for for a significant time and where they were and where they are

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today. I think that's a great case study for us. So, a lot of a lot of businesses again have been doing the same thing for a really long time. And um one of those companies, I mean, I have several um uh one of those companies is a a venue. I I'll talk about a venue that we work

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with. Um their location is is working against them at the moment, but they have a they have a really good history of events. They do a lot of corporate events, lots of weddings as well, but their high ticket is corporate. But their last agency was using AI for all

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of their marketing stuff. Um they didn't have any not much collaboration. They they tracked a lot of metrics which was fine which is great but everything was very impersonable. And when I work with companies you mostly need to think about talking to people across the table

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rather than talking like a company down to your audience. And as soon as we switched that the engagement uh we have we're about to redo their website. We started with phase one, which was taking over all of their um like social media, their advertising. Um and we also run

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the LinkedIn account. And LinkedIn is a huge uh marketing tool tactic that companies can use because people want to buy into other people. They don't want to necessarily buy into a company. So, it's really good for companies to have a face, someone that is making

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connections. And LinkedIn's a great way to do that. So every month we have a spreadsheet where we're bringing in between 30 and 100 leads for this client for every client that we work with with with doing LinkedIn tactics like and we have this six week secret you know

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strategy that we use that is very successful and we're getting people in our clients doors whereas before they were just posting on social and it wasn't converting to anything. So, um, you know, having a a website that speaks directly to your audience's pain points,

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doesn't talk about what you do and how good you are and all the awards you won, but reversing it and talking about like, hey, we know what you're feeling. We know where you're at. And really addressing the pain points and walking alongside of them is a much better way

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of addressing and connecting with your audience. Um, so really just a lot of our clients need people to get in the door. a lot of people, you know, booking that appointment. And we've seen a huge um increase in in all of our clients. Our roofing client that we do as well,

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like we're kind of shifting our roofing client does the doortodoor sales like every other roofing company. We're actually trying to shift that for them because that's what everybody else does. And so um it's it's different with uh roofing company when they've been doing

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the same thing for forever. Um trying to make them stand out. But again, we're getting them a lot of leads through um their advertising and their social media. We did their website. they now have a, you know, a quote um tool on their website that their competitors

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were using. So, we're trying to keep up with they they're not a large uh organization, but they have some really big competitions. They're kind of like the the beasts of the city for roofing. And so, you need to be able to use some of the tools they're using. And there's

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so there's lots of things and every business is so different. Every every business's um results or answer is not the same. Like, if you were to come to me and say, "Hey, I need this." um because that's what you think you need. It might actually not be what you need

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and not every business is going to have the same needs as far as marketing goes and the way that they connect with their audience. I love it. I love it's beautiful. Sensational, my dear friend Leanne. So, I always like to end my podcast. I know it goes way too fast. We could talk for

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a lot more. We could give some really golden nuggets. So, you'll have to stand by as Leanne and I do some more social media from this podcast. Um, but my my final question for you today, my dear friend, is how would you define a well-lived life? So, I made the mistake of putting my

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work in front of everything else that I was doing at a time when my family needed me to be present. And I think being present is um what helps us be better at everything we do. And we need to be able to find balance in being present with our work and our family and

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our friends and the things that we love to do. Um because when one takes precedence, as everybody knows, and everybody's been there, you know, like I even struggle with that, like just getting into a cycle of like cuz I love to work. I could work 6:00 a.m. to midnight every day. Like I would have no

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problem with that. I would love it. Um and just trying to step aside and put boundaries in place to make sure that you say, "Hey, I'm going to take time and be present." And I actually put it in my calendar. Like I do one-on- ones with each of my kids now because I

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wasn't really taking that time to be present with them. And now they're like, "When is it my turn? When's it my turn?" And I tell you that my business is better because I'm taking time for my family and my family is better because I'm taking time for my business. Like my

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business is helpful for my family to survive and to to thrive. So I think the balance and just really being honest with yourself about that. For a long time, I was lying to myself. like I don't work very much and you know blah blah blah and and I was I was lying to

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myself. Now I I help drive my kids to school and I help pick them up. So I'm done work by three o'clock so I can pick them up and there's a couple evenings when my kids have um external activities that I still pick up my computer and work. Um but I'm just really mindful of

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the times that I spend with my family and my work. So beautiful being present and really appreciating the most valuable things in your life like you do. You are a beautiful soul, my dear friend Leanne. And uh I love watching you. I love your energy. Thank you so much for sharing

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with our audience. They can all connect with you. There's lots of information of how to reach out to you. Plus, you'll be at a lot of powerhouse smart events as we go forward. And namaste. I wish you health and happiness. Those four beautiful and your husband. And oh, it's all all a big hug.

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Thanks so much, Wendy. Enjoy your day. Thank you.