Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]:
If you ever felt like your business can't run without you, like every decision, every client question and every fire lands back on your plate. You're not alone. For so many female founders, the dream of freedom gets buried under endless to dos and the pressure to be everywhere at once. Now, today's guest, and I would say a close friend. Even though we don't talk every single day, Brooke Sellas knows the story inside out. As the award winning CEO of B Squared Media, Brooke built her company and the radical idea that connection, not just campaigns, is the real competitive advantage. After years of leading with empathy and conversation, she's transformed her business and her life, proving that you can create a culture where your team and your clients feel, feel truly heard. In this episode, Brooke shares how she went from being the bottleneck to building a business that thrives on trust, clarity, and genuine care.
Get ready to discover what it really takes to lead with heart, delegate with confidence and feel creative. And finally also create the space for the life you've been working on so hard to build.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:24]:
Now, what I already hinted on, Brooke and I, I don't even know how long we know each other and I feel like we go through our seasons. It's like I always stalk you online. I always have an idea what, what's going on. However, we also haven't talked in a while. And I think that's kind of like at the core of connection, where connection doesn't mean you have to talk every single day and you need to know where I'm at. You do know, thanks to the green room when I was chatting.
But how, I'm curious, how do you see connection? Because in a world of AI being our therapist and social media giving us all of the connections and information we could have from anybody, how do you look at connections and especially those connections with teachers, team and clients.
Brooke Sellas [00:02:18]:
You know, my very best friend in the whole wide world, I met when I was 13 years old and we're still friends to this day. And I won't tell you exactly how old I am, but it's like over 30 years of a friendship. And we have the kind of friendship where we might not talk every day, we might not talk every week, we might not talk within that month, but when we get on the phone that next time, it's like we left off right where we picked. We, we picked up right where we left off. And I think when you do connection right in the beginning, that's how the relationship should feel. And I think the secret ingredient, I'll just go off right now with like the. The secret sauce. It's authenticity, right? If I connect with you and I'm just super myself and I'm super honest, I'm not trying to put on airs.
I'm not trying to be somebody I'm not. I'm not trying to be your best friend, because we. We are getting to know each other. But I think if you start the relationship that way, you can end up with a relationship like, kind of like we did, where we haven't talked in a while, but we. We start talking and it feels like, oh, we're right back where we were.
Yvonne Heimann [00:03:30]:
It's like no time passed. And I do have a couple of people like this, right? I have people that I talk to every single day. And then I have people where months go by, sometimes even a couple of years, and suddenly it's like, oh, my God, the stars align again. I'm in your area. I'm nomadic, whatever it is, or projects align or conferences align, and it's like no time has passed. And that's kind of like where I see us. It's like we go through these ups and downs. And I think with clients, it's similar.
Right. There is push moments where a lot of gets done and we're working a lot with them. And then it goes more into kind of like an autumn winter phase. Not me using season analogy as I'm freezing my butt in Michigan, but it's this. I love how you take this off with authenticity, not trying to do something or be someone you are not. It just is that way where it's like, we all go through seasons. And I love your mantra, actually, where your guys's mantra, your company's mantra, your mantra really is think conversation, not campaigns. And it really comes down to that quote, being authentic.
Right. Because you. You have conversations with people, and that's how I see you.
Brooke Sellas [00:04:53]:
Yeah. You don't have to try as hard. You know what life, and in this case, what we're talking about, marketing, social media, all of those things personally and professionally get much easier when you focus on the conversation and not the campaign. So instead of me saying, I have this list and I check in with my clients every three weeks, and I send the email template every three weeks, and it's the same thing. No, no, no, no. I check in at different times. Sporadically, but authentically. And they know when they need me, they can reach out, and I'm the first one to jump on whenever they need a call or a brainstorm session or whatnot.
But I just think, yes, you know, you still have to keep up the relationship. But I think when you do it in a way that focuses around, like the conversation itself and not the outcomes of that conversation, you have a much easier time.
Yvonne Heimann [00:05:47]:
And you even wrote the book on it. So, guys, if you want to dive deeper into this book world, the book conversations that connect, that dives deeper into all of this. Now where I'm curious is I can teach to do lists, I can teach processes. There is this. When we want to scale, at some point you're going to have a team, right? No matter if you're starting as a solopreneur, whatever, at some point you're going to bring somebody on. Now, when it comes to conversations, that stuff is hard to train. Not only that, it's. You are also letting go of the conversations you had with clients.
And now you are needing to trust your team. So I'm curious, let's do this step by step. Handing things off to clients and handing things off to clients. Now getting things done for clients by handing it off to the team. How. How do you deal with this? Did you have a struggle of, oh, my God, letting go? Now I'm trusting my team to have these conversations and have authentic conversations and really connect with the clients. And I'm like, me as a type A systems person, I'm having half a heart attack over here just thinking about, I'm like, I love my team. Don't get me wrong.
Yvonne Heimann [00:07:11]:
Luby is my boss and I know she can handle the conversations. Everybody else, I would be like hyperventilating and need a brown paperback to hand this off. So did you have struggles with that? And if. Yes. How did you work through this? How did you work with your team through this?
Brooke Sellas [00:07:29]:
I think I still have those struggles. Right. Well, we'll turn 14 next year. And this is the by far the biggest struggle that I still have in the business because much like you, I am type A. I'm a. I'm a perfectionist, and I like things done a certain way. And we all have our own communication styles. You know, in therapy, I've learned, which is translated into my professional life, that it's unfair for me to put my standards and the way I do things on someone else.
Because we're all angels. I know, I want to too, just.
Do it my way.
But so it's a lot of coaching and handholding and not in like a oh, you're, you know, you know, pat you on the head type of way. But there's so much nuance to conversing with people. It's so different to can, you know, for you and I to be on this podcast talking to how I talk to my biggest client, to how I talk to my biggest client when her boss is on the call. You know what I mean? Like, there's so much nuance to conversation. So I think it's getting down to the foundational piece of it. And what I. The only thing that I could really instill in the team is every conversation we have with our clients should add value in some way and should be actionable in some way. How you get there is up to you, Yvi, because I can't make you speak like me or say that.
Say it in the way that I would say it. But as long as you add value and as long as you leave them with something actionable, I'm going to step back and try to not say anything. Try being the operative version.
Yvonne Heimann [00:09:11]:
And again, you guys, if you haven't listened to any other episode, you know what's coming. If you are just listening to the episode, you should be on YouTube because the faces I make behind the scenes are way too good to miss them. Because it's like, I feel you. It's like, I feel you on this one, where it's like, okay, I'm just gonna breathe through this. She might not be doing it exactly how I would be doing it, but we are getting the same result. It doesn't matter how we get there. What I'm curious about is, yes, we've talked about the coaching. We've talked about letting go of the path as long as we get the result.
And it's actually been one of my works on working, on working. I try, I try.
Brooke Sellas [00:09:57]:
We're doing our best, and that's all we can do.
Yvonne Heimann [00:10:00]:
Box breathing. Box breathing. Have you experienced and how have you managed the balance of leading with empathy and in those conversations, but also holding accountable? Because the struggle that I can see is. Is when we have the. The understanding of people's struggle of supporting them, of having these conversations, we can get overboard, right? We can take this potentially too far. So how do you balance this with the accountability with, okay, we do have deadlines. We need to get revenue in the door. We need to turn the revenue into profit.
And all of the business side of things where we can't get around the Type A, we have to look at numbers, we have to look at the results. And how do you. How do you balance that accountability with the conversation and the empathy on the other side?
Brooke Sellas [00:11:03]:
Transparency? I think, you know, I always try to go in with a goal. The goal, the overarching goal is always transparency. And then whatever. What am I trying to get out of this conversation with it? I had a conversation with a team member yesterday, and I knew that I wanted to go in and listen more than I talked. I wanted to hear their side of things. I knew I wanted to be transparent about why things were happening the way they happened. But at first I wanted to hear them out, so I heard them out. And then I was just really transparent.
I said, look, here's what's happening in the business, and here's how the way you do things and the way the business standard operating procedures happen are at a disconnect, and here's why. Normally that's not a problem, but right now, with X, Y and Z going on, you can see. And then I. And I usually try to say, like, so if you were me, right, what would you do? How would you feel? Put it. Put the scenario back on them and don't do it in a condescending way. Again, this is all transparency. You have to be vulnerable in conversations. I think, you know, personally, this is an obvious.
Brooke Sellas [00:12:08]:
But I also think this happens in business. You know, my business is telling brands how to have conversations with their potential customers and customers on social media. It's the same thing. Nobody wants to be vulnerable, but you have to be vulnerable to get to that place of connection where that person's going to have your back. So at the end of this call, because I was transparent, I was vulnerable, I said, here's what's going on, here's why it's not matching. Tell me, what should I do? They were like, huh, you know what? I see where you're coming from. Let me go back to the drawing board and see what I can do to meet you where you are. And that's literally what I wanted to happen out of the call.
I couldn't make it happen, but I knew if I went in, being my best self, listening, being transparent, authentic, and really being vulnerable and saying, like, let me lay it out for you. Here's what's happening. I mean, it's like any relationship, right? I mean, any relationship thrives of this. It doesn't matter if it's personal, professional, your team member, your client. I just think. And yes, it's nuanced, as I said earlier, but it all comes down to, like, those tenets of any basic relationship.
Yvonne Heimann [00:13:17]:
I got a little anecdote for you here. You're gonna appreciate this. We've been going through a. A hiring situation right now. Multiple different positions, multiple different things. And interestingly enough, in our application, the focus isn't actually on your skills. And yes, we ask for the resume too, but it is more about the personality. And it's been interesting.
You know me, I'm a data person, right? It's been interesting going through the applications. There's two things in our application, two Easter eggs that you need to answer without specifically being asked for. Because I am really detail oriented. But I'm also ADHD and I can go off. I need my team to pay attention. 95% of the people do not find those Easter eggs. And then secondary to that, we also. I added in there because I'm not the first one actually approving people we added in there.
Yvonne Heimann [00:14:19]:
Don't friend Yvi, don't DM her, just leave her be. It's going to hurt you more because she's not the one that makes the first decision. And how many people I actually still had connected. So coming back around to, yes, having the conversations, but in an authentic way. And it's. We've been through a couple of hiring processes and had actually some good people. One I needed to let go because the comp. The.
The communication, the conversations were completely missing. I'm like, yes, you are in a country right now that is getting slant with weather. I get it. I told you three times, just let me know how we can help that you are okay. Because we literally worried that she is not well and potentially doesn't survive this weather. And it's three times I went back of, I don't care if you're getting work done right now. I don't care. I just want to know you are safe.
Yvonne Heimann [00:15:19]:
And I had to say it three times. And I'm like, I can just do so much if you are not communicating with me. Even just, hey, I'm fine right now. I'll get back to you next week. There was no communication whatsoever. So that's the. The opposite of having those conversations and having that communication. This being mia, we all understand life.
I'm like you, we talked about it in the green room, right? I don't care what happens in your life. I don't care that I don't have the perfect video backdrop right now. I don't care if there is AMU's going crazy or the yard guys making noise outside. I don't care. Literally just communicated. We all live our life. We all do our things. So when you mentioned just have this open and honest communication, I had that with my team when my business took a fucking nose dive.
Yvonne Heimann [00:16:16]:
And I'm still waiting to see if the IRS is going to call me. That's how bad that year was. And I had the open conversation. I'm like, guys, this is. This is what's happening. There is nothing I can do right now. We need to dig ourself out of this again. Here's how I'm approaching it.
Same with everything else, where it's like, just tell me what to do. Just tell me where you at even if you can't tell me what to do and I can act accordingly. So I love how you come back around to this open communication. Just. Just share the damn thing. We are all humans. Life happens. But I can't do anything about it if you don't tell me.
Brooke Sellas [00:16:58]:
Yeah, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. So, you know, after those three times, if somebody can't meet, it's not even a communication style. They weren't communicating at all. That would be a problem. I would. I have difficulties as well when there's a lack of communication. You can literally, you know, in three clicks. Is it three, hit reply.
That's one. Type no, that's two. And hit send. In four clicks, you can tell me no, and that's it. We're done. That was, that was communication. I'm okay. I tell people all the time.
This is one of the lines that I share with clients and team members and friends too. I'm like, listen, you can't hurt my feelings. Just tell me what you need so that I can take the next step. You know what will hurt both of us is if you don't communicate with me.
Yvonne Heimann [00:17:54]:
There's nothing worse than non communication. It's. I'm like, yeah, I have a client right now where I literally have to. To talk to the general manager because the project manager is not communicating at all whatsoever.
Brooke Sellas [00:18:08]:
Those are nightmare projects, and we all have them.
Yvonne Heimann [00:18:10]:
It's. It's Thursday. The rest of the team is fine. I'm like, it's getting to the point where I'm afraid I might cost them their job. But, like, at this point, what. How I came in to help them.
Brooke Sellas [00:18:23]:
Yeah, you have to do. You have to communicate your side of it. You can't just stop communicating because they stopped communicating. You know, that's. That's unfortunate. I don't. I don't know what that is. You know, we see that from time to time.
Maybe not in a while, but with certain people here and there. But I just have to assume, like, they have something going on in their own lives where they can't they just are have like analysis paralysis? But I just feel like if they could learn, if someone took the time to teach them or something helped them understand, like even communicating that like I'm underwater, I can't help you. Like I don't call me, I'm out.
Yvonne Heimann [00:19:01]:
You know, I seem to be having this communication projects right now because I love, literally with a sales team, had this conversation, it's like, okay, if you don't know what the next step is, that's what I'm here for. Just freaking tell me rather than ignoring me for three days.
This is, this is where communication can turn into burnout. When communication is not happening. And huh, that was, that was a perfect sideways yes. Guys, I'm explaining to you how I'm running my podcast because I find it hilarious because Brooke also, as you all know, I always ask my guests questions beforehand. So I have an idea of where to take the episode and get the best out of my guests for you. And Brooke brought something up in her submission that also really hit home for me. And you mentioned burnout kills creative. Now my burnout has gotten so bad that we literally stopped our YouTube channel, our how to YouTube channel at this point point, because I wasn't creative anymore.
Yvonne Heimann [00:20:08]:
I was fighting it and all the things. So I'm curious of a time in your life where you had that full on burnout, that full on creative lack of, oh my God, I'm supposed to do all these things, all this, whatever was happening in your head at that point. I would love for you to take us back to that moment. Let's not re-feel it, let's just retell it of that, that burnout and being completely out of creative because you are also working in creative. Creative is your revenue, creative is your income. How was that? How did that feel like? And how did you get back out of that?
Brooke Sellas [00:20:54]:
Yeah, it was this year. It was, it was very. It was. This year was a very difficult year for me, both probably professionally and personally. You know, personally, my, my parents house burnt down, my grandfather died, my sister got cancer. You know, there was so many things happening. And then add to that the professional side. For a lot of people, this was a really rough year.
The market was wobbly, topsy turvy. A lot of our clients went on like hiring freezes, budget freezes. We lost a few clients who were, you know, lost their biggest client and therefore couldn't afford us anymore. And I was carrying so much on both sides that I found myself inside of WordPress trying to put out a blog. We've blogged weekly for 14 years almost. And I was like, what am I doing? Like, what am I doing? I could feel it in everything that I was writing. I wasn't. It was producing.
Brooke Sellas [00:21:55]:
I can't explain it. I was producing. I wasn't writing. I was producing because I had to check the box that every week we had to put out a blog post because for 14 years, this is how we've done it. And I just said, I'm done. I cannot do this anymore. Now, in the moment, it was an emotional I'm done. But what I was able to do was take a few days, recollect myself, and come back to my team and have an open and honest conversation and say, look, I've got these things happening personally.
I've got these things happening professionally. I'm the only salesperson for our company. I'm the only, like, marketing team for the company. And I'm underwater. So here's what I want to do. I want to pause the blogs. I want to do these things. I want to revamp this, and I want you all asking me the hard questions.
Brooke Sellas [00:22:44]:
I'm not saying this is not the time to shrink. I'm not going to go get in bed and stay there, even though I might want to. This is the time to reinvent. So come to me with all your reinvention ideas, what we can do. But it has to involve taking stuff off my plate for this time period. And they did. And that's what we're doing. And it still doesn't involve blogging.
And funnily enough, I stopped blogging and we revamped one of the newsletters, and I wrote the most honest piece I've written in. In. In years. In year, like, years. I looked back and I was like, this is writing. This is. I haven't done this. It wasn't even just a little bit of time.
In a lot of time, I hadn't been writing really writing. I was just producing. So I think, you know, sometimes we have to slow down to speed up. That's the. That's the lesson, I guess.
Yvonne Heimann [00:23:41]:
I don't know how my podcast always does it because it's like, yeah, great. This aligns perfectly with what's happening behind the scenes.
Because it's like, yeah, it's like we took December off of the YouTube channel, right? I've been doing YouTube for a while. I have 8,000, 7,000, 8,000 subscribers over there. We've been fighting the YouTube algorithm because I'm done just doing how to ClickUp videos. And we took December off to recalibrate. And at one day, I was like, Luby, I don't want to do YouTube videos anymore. I'm done. It. It feels like producing.
Yvonne Heimann [00:24:18]:
It feels like I'm just trying. It feels like my narcissistic ex. YouTube gives you a couple of views and comments are finally starting again, and you feel like, oh, my God, we finally turned. We finally turned the corner. YouTube likes us again, and you get smacked in the face again. That's literally. It's like YouTube feels like my narcissistic ex. And it was difficult because it's like I have a community over there.
It's. It's how I build a lot of relationships. And it's like I literally had two days of grieving once I made the decision. We are pausing YouTube. I am not producing anymore. I broke out in tears.
Brooke Sellas [00:25:01]:
Oh, yeah. I was crying for a couple of days before I came back to the team. Yeah. Like, literally crying. Like. But it's because we feel like we're failing when we do these things. We put so much pressure on ourselves. On ourselves.
My Southern tried to come out. Sorry, I think. And especially women. I'm just gonna go there. I think we have so many internal pressures that we put on ourselves. Correct. There might not be anyone else in this world who feels like we failed, but we do. And that's all that matters.
Is that inner self talk, talk.
Yvonne Heimann [00:25:36]:
Yeah. She is not always the nicest. I'm curious for. For all the women listening right now that feel like they are in the weeds, that feel like we feel in the middle of our burnout, what would you say is the first step you would recommend for them to help them get out of those weeds? What's. What's the first thing? Now that that bonus is behind you, what's the first thing you would tell them to do?
Brooke Sellas [00:26:09]:
Yeah, I think first, like, feel your feelings. You know, we. We try to. We try to just go and do. Into the next. We're producing. It's still producing. You know, we're going into the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
I think whatever that looks like for you, pause and allow those feelings to happen. Write them down, voice, record them, Talk to a friend, talk to a therapist.
That's my chosen method. But that doesn't have to be yours. And, you know, when you feel those feelings, allow whatever that is to happen. You. You know, you cried. I cried. I did a bunch of yelling too. Like, there was a lot.
Brooke Sellas [00:26:44]:
I was feeling my feelings, but it's cathartic and. And it's science too, literally. Your body, when you cry and yell and, you know, release all of that, it helps your body reset. So feel your feelings and then collect yourself and then again, go to your support group, whomever that is. For me, it was my team and I just said, look, here's where I'm at. You got to have that authentic, transparent, vulnerable conversation. You have to have the uncomfortable conversation. Here's where I am.
I cannot keep doing X, Y and Z. What can we do instead? Do we need to be doing X, Y and Z? What does it look like if we revamp it? What does it look like if we never make another YouTube video again? Run the scenarios and then pick what feels most comfortable, but also aligns with what those feelings were. Don't forget those feelings. We tend to, as women and perfectionists and business owners, just move to the next thing because that's what we do. We survive. Right? We've got grit. But I don't want you to leave those feelings behind. Take them with you so that if you start to get into another cycle of getting close to burnout, hopefully you see it earlier next time.
At least that's my hope.
Yvonne Heimann [00:27:58]:
Oh, and find yourself a Luby. For anybody that hasn't heard about Luby yet, yeah, she's like. She's literally my. My second brain. It's like I've been through body tuning coaches right now, working with a shamanic astrologer and all the things. And it's interesting because they're always kind of. I'm. I'm one of these people.
I'm like, I'm a little bit vuvu, but it's also weird. Why should this work? I'm the one in between. I'm the type a vuvu person. Really weird combination. You don't want to be in my head.
Yvonne Heimann [00:28:31]:
And in one of those calls with. With my shamanic astrologer, he is like, does it turn you on? Which actually is my sacral energy, which is where I make decision. It's what it is. And I'm like, this is weird because looking back at my processing of the YouTube channel, it's like I was fighting it. I was like a little child on the ground throwing a temper tantrum. That's how bad I didn't want to record videos. And I made the decision. Suddenly my creative came back within 24 hours.
I was like, I had ideas. I want to do this. I want to try this. I want to have fun with this. And that energy, that excitement that does it turn you on? Came back with so many other things. I'm like, now it's been about a week since making this decision. I'm like, I was just talking with my assistant Luby today again where I'm like, you know what? We have auto dubbing on YouTube. I don't care about doing YouTube produced videos and all the shit and all the stuff.
Yvonne Heimann [00:29:31]:
I'm like, I love what Lucas is doing, but I don't need that on YouTube. However, I need an update to the specific process. What do you think of just putting it onto YouTube? Are we gonna fuck up our YouTube channel even more? And she's like, you already passed the damn and don't want to play the YouTube game anymore. So what the are you talking about, woman?
That was kind of her reply. It's like, I love having somebody literally that knows exactly how I self sabotage and be like, shut the up and just do it.
Brooke Sellas [00:29:59]:
Yes, your Luby is to my Tanya. So I think that is important though, like Tanya and I agree she knows me inside and out. She helped me write the book, so she knows my voice, completely knows how I think. But she also, we fight like sisters, right? Because she knows when to push me, which I'm like. But I'm always so happy that she did. So you have to find whomever that person is for you and surround yourself with people who, yes, are your cheerleaders, right? Because they need to know. They know our insecurities. They know when we need lifting up, but they know also when they can push.
It's not push all the time. It's not cheerlead all the time. It's very situational. And. And finding someone who can read those situations and, and pull you along is so helpful in business and in life, right? Like, I guess you could say Tanya's my. My work bestie, much like my personal bestie who I met when I was 13. They know how to read you and they know how to then apply whatever to that conversation in that situation.
Yvonne Heimann [00:31:05]:
And as you've heard, guys, ladies, however you would like to identify, Brooke's story is such a powerful reminder. No matter if business bestie or personal bestie, you don't have to do it alone. Simply have those conversations. People that can't have the conversations, let them fall away. And you finally are skipping the whole burnout. You're going to have the conversations you want to have and you're going to have the support you want to have. And if you want to hear more stories like Brooke's, make sure you subscribe and you know the whole the chabang. It's all in the description.
I'll see you in the next episode and book. Let's not wait another year.
Let's kind of like go back to Type A and maybe set a calendar or something. Because I always love our conversation. I love when we hang out. Let's not. Let's not let the universe decide. Let's actively decide to catch up pretty soon again.
Brooke Sellas [00:32:04]:
In agreement. Let's get it on the books.
Yvonne Heimann [00:32:08]:
Bye, everybody.