The Yegi Project
The Yegi Project
How to Be More Transparent in Your Business and Personal Life | Creating a Positive Work Culture
In this episode, Yegi goes over the importance of transparency in business and our personal lives. By becoming a more transparent person, manager, business owner, wife, daughter - whatever the case may be - you will positively impact those around you. Employees will work harder, your loved ones will feel comfortable communicating with you, and your environment will always be a more positive space. Transparency isn't easy, but it is necessary for building a strong foundation in anything you do.
Tiny Habits (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3pov2np
Ted Talk mentioned: https://youtu.be/RyTQ5-SQYTo
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Yegi is a young entrepreneur who has always been curious and hardworking. You can say she has always seen things out of the box and been able to creatively solve difficult problems. Her cool and collective spirit in life and business makes you want to be around her. She thrives on inspiring others and helps others see things from a positive point of view.
The Yegi Project, is the podcast for the young entrepreneur who may not know where to start, doesn’t have anyone to guide them in the right direction and may not have full support from others. This podcast is called The Yegi “Project” because although Yegi is happy with where she is now, she knows that she still has a lot to do to complete her mission and purpose in this world. She aims to use this podcast to work hard alongside all of you to grow to a point where she can make a lasting change in people’s lives and in the world.
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Hey beauty lovers and fellow entrepreneurs. I'm Yegi, the owner and founder of Yegi Beauty. Within five years of being my own boss, I was able to grow Yegi Beauty into a multi-million dollar company. This podcast is where I share what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur in the beauty industry. Hello hello hello welcome back to The Yegi Project. Today we have a solo episode especially for you and it is about transparency and taking responsibility - the importance of it in business and in your personal life. Let me tell you guys a little bit of why I want to talk about transparency today, here's a little story time. So I have two tiny kids six-month-old and almost a two-year-old and they are kind of driving me crazy with their sleeping patterns - we're going through sleep regressions with the two-year-old and you know the six-month-old has never really gotten a routine just yet, so we're getting very little sleep. And of course getting little sleep is affecting me being in the office more regularly or being here on time. Since I do want to balance that life and work and I think that's super important I do want to attend to my kids. So this is taking away from my work but then it's making me feel guilty when I'm coming in later than our start time or missing days of work and I really don't like talking about my personal life with my employees or colleagues and all of that so it was starting to make me feel really bad about being a bad employee myself. I I was thinking to myself hey if I was my own employee I would probably fire myself because I'm missing days I'm coming in late and you know people are probably looking at me and judging me because I also believe in leading by example. Anyways long story short I was getting these negative emotions about this and I really started thinking and then I was reminded of transparency because when I thought about okay I can either really like let the ball drop with my family situation or work situation or you know I'm human I can be transparent with my employees and let them know kind of what's going on in my personal life you know and hopefully it's temporary and they could be more understanding of why I'm coming in late or why I'm missing some days and that really just such a simple solution when you think about it right but in reality in life sometimes we don't think that just being transparent and fully clear with the people around us will make the difference, but it made me feel so much happier once I started communicating that with them and it did it got rid of that negative emotion of feeling kind of guilty in a way, and everybody was really understanding actually and very supportive and very you know encouraging. So that's kind of why I want to talk about transparency and I want to apply it to business and personal life and why it's so so important. Before we jump into the importance of transparency in business I want to talk about the "feeling good factor" I was actually reading a book last night and it's called Tiny Habits - I've mentioned this book in the past - but I was reading a section and it reminded me and this is science they've done research and research and they've come to this behavioral solution. In life if we want to create a habit or do something we're way more likely to do it if it encourages a positive happy feeling. So that also kind of stuck to my head is the importance of feeling happy or that satisfaction of doing things and that's how we're going to be able to be more productive and successful as well in our life, in our work. So before we jump into the importance of transparency I do want to say that it really leads to feeling more happy and content and therefore to more building better habits and being more successful in the long run. I guess what I'm trying to do with this podcast episode is to bring awareness of the importance of transparency so you guys can really think about your own life and how you react in situations where you have the option to be transparent or not. Why is it important to be transparent in business? So first of all this is how you're gonna build trust between your team and also have a good reputation as a company if you're gonna be transparent with your customers, with your employees and everybody. So this is a very very simple thing to be in order for you to have a very good culture with your employees and customers. And like I said more than likely when you're transparent even in negative situations your customers or employees are going to be way more understanding compared to pretending that everything is okay. Being transparent and encouraging people to be transparent in your company really is going to solve a lot of problems in the long run. For example if an employee makes a mistake and you yourself have made a mistake as a leader and owned up to it and corrected your mistake then your employees are more likely to come up to you and say hey I made this mistake but let's solve it let's figure it out together, compared to you not knowing about this mistake and it really affecting your business. Here's an example for you guys. So my employees have access to adjusting our inventory given for whatever reason that's needed and one time an employee actually made a mistake of deleting a bunch of stuff from our inventory and you could see why this would be a problem and you know when we have a big inventory I may not have caught that online or in store that hey this item is out of inventory so therefore nobody is buying for it or shopping for it online. It might have taken some time for me to figure that out and that would have negatively impacted our sales. So by me encouraging transparency and people not being afraid to own up and take responsibility, that employee actually came up to me and really owned up to it and we fixed it right away instead of it being kind of hidden and had negative results in the long run, right, um so definitely definitely that's the small kind of smaller big example but definitely it just helps if you yourself can be transparent and encourage your employees to be transparent and that's the way you're gonna act too. If somebody makes a mistake or if you make a mistake don't make it such a big deal instead learn from it and move on. There is no mistake big enough that cannot be fixed and being in business for a decade I could tell you that there's going to be lots of mistakes and it's the way you handle those mistakes that's really going to make the difference and transparency is key since that's what we're talking about today. Another thing transparency can do in business and by you owning up to your mistakes as a leader it can really build stability and trust with your employees where they can come forward and help you with whatever is going on and have creative control of really helping you, compare them just always knowing that you're just gonna pretend that everything's okay all the time. So I remember listening to a Ted Talk and really resonated with me and it kind of gave me like a reassurance that okay I'm running my company the right way because sometimes it's I contradict myself I either want to be super corporate and be like no we have to do everything super by the book or I want to be like oh no you guys are my best friends let's all be friends so it's been really hard finding that balance in between not being super corporate and very like oh this is only business for versus oh we're all friends but we work together. So what I found that is like okay we're gonna keep it, we're gonna keep business business and we're gonna focus on our objectives and goals and get everything done. We want to keep in mind that we also have our personal lives and sometimes that may mean that if something is not going perfect in our personal life our work life no matter what is gonna you know drop the ball a little bit and I'm talking from experience like even me as a business owner my business I drop the ball on my business if something's off in my personal life so I know this happens to all my employees too and I've experienced it and been able to work through a lot of it with the employees. So I remember listening to this Ted Talk and um like I was saying he really mentioned that you know instead of us just assuming that an employee is not performing and is being bad at that moment their numbers look off or you know you just feel like they're really distracted their head's not in the game at that moment, instead of us just assuming they are not doing well, we're gonna go ahead and take a moment and try to have a conversation with them and allow them to be transparent with us. You know because somebody might really have something horrible going on in their lives and all they may need is their boss or a coworker or somebody to hear them out for a second and help them get through it, right? So always keep that in mind and encourage transparency so overall you can have a better work environment and therefore if your employees are happier and feel like they can share if they need to, but of course maintaining that balance um you would definitely have a more dedicated employee compared to somebody who's gonna you know not care about their job or their or your company. Here's another example for you guys. So I have an employee that has been with me for a long time and she also wants to pursue an acting career and that means that sometimes she's going to get a last-minute gig to call out the next day. Now as a leader if I didn't encourage transparency in the work environment and really have that culture, what could have happened is that she could have not told me that this is something that she really want - is pursuing and loves but that doesn't mean that her work needs to suffer from that right. She's also a dedicated employee of what she's currently doing for me in the company and she has her place but I need to be understanding that she's human, she has this priority or this dream of hers that she's also pursuing for herself, so that's kind of okay and it's kind of - it may be hard as a manager or a business owner to kind of come to a place to have that mentality but I want to share with you guys the benefits of it. Because this is a real life example of what happened to me I initially I might have thought oh you know does that mean she's just like gonna do her own thing during our during her work hours or she's not gonna care or be dedicated to her job, if I kind of give her flexibility to take off when she needs to for her auditions or her gigs and stuff like that, but in reality what ended up happening is us being transparent she didn't have to lie and call in sick the next day, she can freely tell me hey I have a gig the following day I'll make sure whatever I need to do on my um work responsibility is taken care of the night before, you're all set and I'm gonna you know go do this and I'll come back to the office when I'm done, and it has worked so wonderfully and she shared with me since we were talking about it because I was gonna record this episode, that it encouraged her to actually want to work harder because I'm being nice about it in a way right a simple way to put it and it really really works to be understanding of each other, to be transparent, to communicate and again it goes back to that feeling good in order to build a habit. So by doing this it makes her feel good that she can pursue what she's pursuing and therefore she's going to be more likely to be happier in her work and perform and and move on and be better. Now let me jump into the importance of transparency in our personal lives. I really think as human nature as we grow it has never been encouraged to really be super transparent because we think that people may judge us or I don't know we're afraid to even say no I think that's like a whole other topic, but I really think just being transparent and really like saying what we're thinking and feeling will solve a lot of problems. For example, if my friend has invited me to an event tomorrow night but I'm really exhausted or I'm not feeling that well to go instead of me making an excuse to cancel on her and I can be honest with her and tell her look I'm feeling really tired it's not personal like it's me I really want to be there for you but I really need to sit this one out, more than likely they're gonna understand, but if you find an excuse and say for example, I know because a lot of parents use this one, my kids are sick and you don't go, more than likely they're going to know you're bs'ing them and again creates negative emotion and whatever results, right. You feel guilty you lied or your friend knows you lied you're like oh whatever this person always is kind of trying to find an excuse right but if we're more transparent and we explain ourselves I promise you people will understand you. And in the past in my personal life I really initially had a really hard time saying no to people and this was causing almost stress in my life because I never had enough time to do the things that I really wanted to do until I worked on myself to pick and choose and how to kind of say no as well again a whole other topic, but um again being transparent was a huge part of that. And one way that I was saying no to certain things was saying look it's not that I don't want to help you with this item but it's just that I really don't have the time to right now with my current work or school schedule. So here's another example and it's kind of making me want to laugh when I talk about it because it's about my mother-in-law. Um I love her so much and she's such a sweet lady and her - I know her love language is giving she always wants to give and do stuff for you and just give and buy stuff right and it's great but sometimes it's hard for me to be transparent for the things that she brings to my house. Here's a very specific example - a raspberry cake. I think one time I mentioned that I liked like Porto's raspberry cheesecake or something and then she took it as an I love raspberry cake so she kept on bringing over this raspberry cake to my house almost like every week when we had an event, but I didn't really love that cake and she was so excited to give it and it was so hard for me to kind of break it to her that, hey, I don't love this cake and I was forced to eat this cake that I didn't love every week because she was so excited for it, um, until finally actually I was still having a hard time being transparent so my husband broke it to her and said um you know she doesn't love that cake so maybe instead bring like a chocolate cake cause that's what she likes and then you know she still bought the cake, it still made her happy but she brought the cake that I wanted to get. So yeah symbolic but literally this happened, um so pick the cake you want and be transparent so you get what you want instead of feeling like you know and then I felt like I was lying to her, I was feeling guilty that she was like it's good yummy. Anyways I hope that helps um but yes think twice. So the way I want to wrap up this podcast about transparency really is it's a habit right, I feel like lately I'm realizing everything is a habit and we need to constantly work on it and maybe because I'm reading that habit book right now but really like everything almost that we do as humans ends up being a habit that we're doing or a habit that we're not doing. So for right now if you guys want to practice transparency, one way you can do it is literally pay attention to any time that you can be more honest with yourself and the person in front of you with what's going on, compared to trying to kind of cover it up or sugar coating it and see how that works out for you. And I want to share one other thing about building a habit is it is practice too and the best way to build it is with having positive emotions when you're trying something new. So for example if I'm gonna try to be more um transparent what I can do is that every time I'm more transparent about even a small thing I celebrate right and again that's a behavioral theory that this book Tiny Habits really focuses on, is you have to instantly celebrate something if you're trying to make it a habit, because that feeling good right after you celebrating is what's going to encourage you to want to do it again. If there is negative emotion more likely you're not going to want to do it again. So now the way we're going to practice to make transparency as a habit is we're gonna every time we notice we do it or we're gonna actively seek to be transparent we're gonna celebrate. So if you're a person who goes woohoo when you celebrate, or if you're a person who goes yey or if in your head you're smiling like oooooh - you know I'm a person who kind of does like a stupid silly happy dance, that's what you're gonna do and literally right now I have so much happy emotions in me that it makes me wanna do this more. So hopefully that makes sense but yeah I would really recommend if you're trying to build new habits really read that book called Tiny Habits um it's not sponsored or anything I really like this book - it's a way it puts habits it makes you think oh this is simple let me try it and see if it works. So I'm still personally applying it to my life, I will share more more with you guys how it has it has helped me build certain habits in my life um once you know I have a little bit more data within my myself, but with that said I hope you guys enjoyed this episode please um comment, share, let us know what you think - I'm very curious about uh what you guys think about transparency and how it worked for you - let's talk about it. I hope you guys have a great rest of your day see you next time bye! Thank you for listening. Please rate and review this podcast. Follow and engage with us on social media under @theyegiproject and if you’re interested in being a guest, email info@theyegiproject.com and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out on any future episodes.
