Mom Owned and Operated
Candid conversations with and for moms about the real deal of raising a family, running a business, and remembering yourself.
Tired of the fluff and just want real talk about what it takes to succeed as a mompreneur? Then you've come to the right place.
Join your host, business growth strategist Rita Suzanne, as she dives into the nitty-gritty of building a business while raising a family. With over 10 years of experience helping women entrepreneurs thrive, Rita knows what it takes to make it all work.
In each episode, Rita sits down with inspiring mom business owners to uncover the strategies, mindsets, and tactics that are actually making a difference in their lives and businesses.
Tune in and discover the secrets to building a successful business without sacrificing your family or yourself.
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Mom Owned and Operated
Building Meaningful Professional Relationships with Dalena Bradley
In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Dalena Bradley discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.
Dalena Bradley is an executive job interview coach and career marketing specialist. For 16 years, she has had her own practice helping hundreds of professionals excel in interviews and win job offers through 1:1 coaching, robust workshops, and as a subject matter expert for publications and podcasts.
Formerly, she was a consultant with two global outplacement firms, an executive recruiter, and a corporate communications professional for Hyatt Hotels, Nestlé Beverage Company, and a leading commercial insurance brokerage firm.
Dalena is a Certified Interview Coach (CIC), and a member of Career Directors International and the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches. She has a B.A. in Communications from the University of Portland and lives in Portland with her husband and two dogs.
You can connect with Dalena on her website and LinkedIn.
Send a text message! Email, if you want a reply though. ;)
P.S. You can find more interviews at momownedandoperated.com and learn about working with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/
Hi, this is Mom Owned and Operated. I am Rita, suzanne, and today I have my guest, delina, with me. Delina, I'm so excited to have you on today. Please tell everyone all about you, your business and your family.
Dalena Bradley:I'm a job interview coach and a career marketing specialist, serving primarily senior level professionals and executives, and so what I do is I help people get the jobs they want faster with high touch custom interview prep and career marketing support, and I have had. I've been in this business for about 16 years. In prior lives, I was in corporate communications for large organizations and I was an executive recruiter. At one point I decided to put that those two backgrounds together to form my business in 2008. And really for the last seven years, I've been focused on the interview prep. I live in Portland, oregon, with my husband and I have a couple of dogs, and I do have two kids as well Notice, I mentioned the dogs first. And I do have two kids as well Notice, I mentioned the dogs first. But anyway, I have two kids, they are adults. At this, a really great park, I'm out in the park with the dogs, I'm on or near the water and hanging out with friends and, you know, binging fun shows and podcasts. I'm a huge podcast fanatic too, so yeah.
Rita Suzanne:I'm happy to be here. Yes, thanks for having me. Well, thanks for being on. So let's jump right into it and let's talk about what is your most successful service, product or offer. That is kind of a game changer for you and your business my business is based on one-on-one coaching and I have different packages.
Dalena Bradley:I would say that the so the service is is very specific and it's and I specialize in this area, so it's what I have found that's really been successful for me is bundling the services so that they give kind of a nice start to finish product for the different clients I work with at varying levels, and so bundling versus one-off sessions, and so I have an express package that's a couple of sessions. I have a success package that's a larger number of sessions and more time, and then I have a premium package. That has been a lot more successful for me than just trying to do one-off sessions and it also helps me really build a relationship with my client and see their selling points and help them think of things that they may not have thought of before, that they can build into their narrative when they are getting ready to do their interviews.
Rita Suzanne:Right, because a one-off is really going to be hard for you to figure it out. So what is your biggest source of revenue right now?
Dalena Bradley:Right, and so I'm assuming you mean revenue streams where the clients are coming from. And the two biggest are definitely because I've been in business for so long and I've got a nice long list of happy clients. I get a lot of referral business from those people and repeat business from people because over the course of their career they remember me and they come back to me. So that's really great to get to work with beloved clients again and again. I know you can relate to that. And then another great, probably one of the biggest revenue streams for me has been collaborations with other career professionals. So I have built over the years fantastic relationships with people who do something that is adjacent to what I do but not exactly what I do, and so we have complimentary skill sets and we can refer clients to one another and actually sometimes even people who do exactly what I do but maybe they handle a different type of client.
Rita Suzanne:And I do Right, like a different degree.
Dalena Bradley:Yeah, maybe maybe they work specifically with college students and they have an executive approach them and they can't help them, so they'll send them to me. So that's really great. And you know what, rita, I mean. Once in a while I need to go on vacation and take days off and people come to me and I won't be able to help them because of my schedule. So it's really nice to have those people in my network that I can refer people to them as well. So the collaborations have been wonderful and people who are maybe their resume writers and all they want to do is write a resume but they don't do interview prep, and so they they will send people to me. So that's been huge in my business.
Rita Suzanne:I remember when I first went back to corporate and my then mother-in-law sat me down and she said okay, we're going to do a mock interview with me, and it was so helpful because I hadn't interviewed probably I don't know four or five years, and so having someone to actually put you through an interview who's in corporate is definitely super helpful and get you prepared. So I think that that's wonderful. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about marketing. What is one marketing tactic or channel that you are using that you want to recommend?
Dalena Bradley:Yes, so I may start to sound like a broken record. The collaborative collaborations is it's old school, Rita, but the I am fully online, I am fully remote, a fully remote online business, and I market appropriately. I am on LinkedIn, I'm visible on LinkedIn. That is definitely something that is a must, and I actually do get a lot of business from LinkedIn. So that's important, staying visible. But those things Just good, solid relationships that I have built have been the best marketing, because it allows me to sort of distribute the effort that way.
Dalena Bradley:I have tried. I've done speaking engagements, I've done webinars and I have collaborated on webinars, social media and all that. But what I have found is that I prefer to narrow the number of platforms and in my case, really it's LinkedIn where my people are hanging out. I could probably branch out more, but I would say staying narrow. And then also I think that the nature of my business being so specialized is helpful too in terms of marketing, because people get that and it's narrow and I can connect the dots easily for people and they and their minds can connect the dots what it is I could do for them.
Dalena Bradley:So those would be my primary if it's the collaborative relationships that are working well, staying visible on a platform where you know your people are, and then focusing more narrowly so that people can understand I talk, I talk with my clients about this all the time when you are going into an interview or or even on your resume. I'm not, I don't do resumes, but you have to. You have to really spell it out for people. You have to say this is this, is here's your pain point, here is how I'm the prescription for that Right, and that's what I do in my own marketing, and it's so much easier because what I do is so specialized.
Rita Suzanne:Right, I think, and so, because you're so well versed at building relationships and maintaining them, do you have any tips or pointers for people who maybe are a little bit more introverted and don't, and maybe shy and don't want to maybe build relationships or network? I think that a lot of people are nervous about networking.
Dalena Bradley:It's. It is very daunting for even the extroverts of the world and I teach my people networking. I also do some job search strategy coaching with some of my clients and a big piece of that I always say put 65 to 70% of your job search energy into networking and building relationships. Same goes for my business. But to answer your question about introverts, always come from a place of curiosity, and the nice thing about networking is you can just ask questions. You don't have to be on the spot talking yourself trying to have the right answer to whatever. If you're reaching out to somebody that you want to talk to, either in a that could be potentially a business partner or a referral source or a funnel some kind that you want to explore with somebody, then you can reach out. And I suggest reaching out maybe you know, on email first or something, and we don't have to get into the super nitty gritty on that. But, um, you know, just make it conversational, make it personal. Hey, I really admire what it is you're doing and I would love to learn more.
Dalena Bradley:Do you have 20 minutes and and and making it so that it's a really finite amount of time and sticking to that and just just coming from a place of curiosity how did, how did you get your start? Why do you do what you do? And then, eventually, would you ever be interested in a collaboration? I mean, unless the person on the other side of that is completely I don't know a robot or something, then they're eventually going to ask about you a question or two and things will flow more naturally. So to the introverts of the world just ask questions, have a few questions they don't have to be a long list and eventually it'll swing back to you and probably in a more natural way. Whether it is an in-person setting or an in-person group setting or if it's more one-on-one, whether it's somebody you're approaching as a potential partner or whether it's somebody that you just want to, you just want to connect with because they seem like what they're doing is really interesting to you.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, I have been saying lately, just because of the way our market has kind of switched, that it is important to do in-person networking and online and social networking.
Rita Suzanne:Online is, you know, like your SEO, your Google, my Business and your website. All those things need of have to work together because the way that our market is oversaturated, which we spoke about earlier, I think that it's important to have those relationships, nurture them and kind of work together. And what I encourage my clients and people to do is, if you do go to a networking event is to follow up. Don't just take somebody's business card and have it sitting on your desk or like, do something with it to invite them to a call and at least get them into my emails so that they can kind of get in the system. And then, if they don't follow up with the scheduling a call, then I get a reminder to my email address that says hey, you need to reach out to them, and then I'll reach out to them on social or something else a different way, so that it's a different approach versus it coming automated from my email, you know.
Dalena Bradley:Yes, yeah, I always, if I meet somebody in a group setting, I will always invite them to connect on LinkedIn, and I mean, most people are on LinkedIn, and so that's a good starting point often.
Dalena Bradley:But, I feel like people don't follow up, right? Yeah, I mean, sometimes it can be a one way street and you know what. It's okay, you just move on. There are more people, there are millions and millions of people in the world, so it's. That is a tough one. As a business owner, it took me a while to develop a thicker skin. If people would, maybe they'd express interest in my services or something and and I would follow up, and then they'd ghost me or just would fall silent, and that that took a little bit of getting used to. And and now I have fully compartmentalized and depersonalized. If somebody isn't getting back to me, whether it's been at a networking event or whether it's somebody who reached out to me I mean, they were the ones who reached out to me in the first place. Often, and you know, I just have to think that people's priorities change, or they got busy or what have you, and they're not trying to be mean.
Rita Suzanne:Well, no, I mean like you, if you only connect with them on LinkedIn, right, then that doesn't really prompt them to schedule a call, typically, right. So that's why I'm like putting them into an email sequence or something, because if I just connect with them on LinkedIn, then I'm not probably going to even remember to follow up with them.
Dalena Bradley:Yeah, yeah, and you know what, often for me and this is what I share with my clients too if they have their email contact information on their LinkedIn profile, if that's the route I've gone to follow up then that's always a preferred way to connect with somebody, because they have their eye on their email a lot more closely than they do in some social media platform. I say that maybe that's not the case actually, but certainly for LinkedIn, the daily active users are. There's a lot lower percentage of daily active users on LinkedIn than on many other platforms.
Rita Suzanne:Right. So let's talk a little bit about any marketing mistakes or mishaps that you may have made, that you have learned the lessons from.
Dalena Bradley:Yeah, I would say, early on in my business and and this probably is not going to be to surprise you but early on in my business I was trying to do all of the things and the, the speaking engagements and the uh, you know social media and everything, um, and and multiple platforms on social media and all that, and it's just not sustainable, right? If you, when you're, when you have, when you're raising a family and when you are just trying to be a person in the world who has multiple aspects of their life, you know it's just not sustainable. So I would say that would have been a mistake, a marketing mistake. And then I have had a couple, a few instances where I put money into ads, especially Facebook ads. That's a hard code to crack and, unless you have good guidance, my advice to anyone listening to this is to, if you haven't dipped your toe into the world of Facebook ads and you want to go that route or some other platform, get help. And you want to go that route or some other platform, get help. Just invest in getting help and getting some direction.
Dalena Bradley:But I would say I've I've not had the best traction in Facebook ads. The other thing that I would say is I there? It's all about the numbers. So I had a decent size email list, but in the hundreds, and so when you go to have your webinar, you invite those people to come to your webinar and then hopefully, they'll want to eventually buy your online course.
Dalena Bradley:And I just realized that I really needed to have a much bigger distribution list, email list on the front end, even though you hear from a lot of online marketing gurus that, oh, you don't have to have a big list to be successful in marketing your online products, and the reality is that you are going to naturally be more successful if you have a bigger audience from on the front end. So I would say that would have been a mistake. I should have spent more time building my distribution list through, you know, via freebies and online giveaways before I did the did the webinars, but it was successful. The webinars themselves were successful in terms of building my list on that other end of that, but that's those are a couple of things that come to mind. It's a lot of trial and error.
Rita Suzanne:Right, but you got sales on your course and you, you know and you learned, you know feedback from your course and everything too, so that's really good. Okay, let's talk about how do you define success in your business. Is it purely financial or are there other factors that contribute to your definition at success?
Dalena Bradley:The. What I've realized over the years is that I am way more money motivated than I ever thought. I really do attach my success as a business owner mentally to the amount of money I'm making, more than I would care to admit. That said, in the hardest days, because it is not easy running your own business, because you can't just do what it is you do, you have to run the operations and all that, but. But what I tell people is I would still never go back to working for someone else because flexibility and autonomy trumps everything. So I would say, yes, financial success for me is huge, but the flexibility and the autonomy to run my business on my own terms and my own schedule is a very, very close second.
Rita Suzanne:It's probably right across the line, but Right, I find that most moms definitely are seeking time and financial freedom, like equally right. Like we want, we want both. We want, first of all, we want it all. Yeah, we want it all, which is fine, Okay, so what is one tool, app or software that you're using that is maybe helping you become more or be more efficient in your business and or life?
Dalena Bradley:This is a really basic one. I wish that I had this really cool sexy app that I could talk about. That's amazing and I do in the client process P aspect. But the one true time saver that I don't know has saved me, I'm sure, countless hours is a good old calendar app. I use Calendly and I don't know what I would do without that.
Rita Suzanne:It's like my right arm because you just I realize it's a, it's a real basic thing and but I love it and but I love it, but you'd be surprised at how many people don't necessarily use it, because I also do some in-person workshops and speaking here in my area and some people have reached out to me and they're, you know, want to schedule time with me. And then I'm like, oh, okay, like send me your calendar, or I can send you mine. And then they're like, well, okay, like send me your calendar, or I can send you mine. And then they're like, well, can you just send me yours Because I don't have one. A lot of people don't use a calendaring app like we do, so I think they're definitely missing out by not using some type of calendaring system.
Dalena Bradley:Yeah, and it was. I didn't. I was resistant to it earlier on because I felt like, oh it's, I'm going to lose the autonomy over when I schedule and you just have to train yourself to really block the time on your main calendar. Whether you use Google calendar, outlook or whatever, you have to be really disciplined about making sure, even if you just want a planning day or something like that, you have to block that stuff and then it'll show you as unavailable on the app. And so that's the main thing is just training yourself.
Dalena Bradley:But it is because of the one on one coaching that I do and that it is because of the one-on-one coaching that I do and that it is so appointment intensive. It's really key to me. And you know, another thing is well, you said the one thing, but I will say having and this is another really basic thing is just having a password manager that you don't have to continually enter your password all the time. I mean I would love to know for an average person I mean not saying I'm not, but who's who's constantly keying in their passwords all day long at the end of a year, how much time they spent doing that. So I really love having that password manager and being able to mix up the passwords, and it's I must have.
Rita Suzanne:And for your security, it is better that you mix them up. I think that's what happens is, a lot of people are using the same password for every single thing that they're using, or they have a spreadsheet with all their different passwords. So, again, that's time, labor intensive and also not secure. So using something like you and I use, which is LastPass, is really smart and there's also one, one password, I think is what it's called as an alternative. But LastPass is what we use and that's a great product.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, it's a great product Because you have shared your passwords with me before, which is also a secure way of you know sharing your passwords with your clients.
Dalena Bradley:So yeah, or your VA, or or your business or whoever your collaborators. Yes, yeah, it's a great. It's it's great. I mean, the two things that I mentioned are so so basic, but save so much time.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, I agree. Okay, so what are you currently listening to or reading right now? It doesn't have to be business related, but it could be.
Dalena Bradley:Well, I mentioned earlier that I am a podcast fiend and I so I'm always listening to podcasts. It's kind of interesting because, depending on the day of the week and the time of the day, my mood changes about what I want to listen to. Are you like that? Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely yeah, but one of the ones that I would listen to on a weekday in the morning maybe because I'm more in the work mindset is is called Rethinking by Adam Grant, and he for people who are listening that don't know he is a renowned social organizational psychologist and he's a professor at the Wharton School of Business at Penn and he is great he.
Dalena Bradley:What he helps me do is stay connected to the pain points of people who are working in business or corporate America teams and executives, and it's beyond that. Sometimes he'll go, he'll interview celebrities. Sometimes he interviewed a linguist last week and he was talking about Gen Z slang and stuff like that, and anyway, it's a great lesson for anyone who is interested in the business world and how companies operate better with people who are working together in a healthy way. And he's got all kinds of very interesting episodes and good books too that he's written. I'm happy to check it out.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, you definitely have to check it out. So, as far as self-care, what are you doing for you?
Dalena Bradley:Mm, hmm, did you? You cut out just for a second, did you say self care?
Rita Suzanne:Yes, I said as far as self care goes. What are you doing just for you?
Dalena Bradley:Uh huh. First thing, I'm, I'm, I roll Practically after I've rolled out of bed. I go through this whole. I'm a big yoga person and I've been doing it for many years, and so whether I'm, if I'm not in the studio, I am at home doing a series. So that is non-negotiable for me.
Dalena Bradley:I do that, and then I get out with those two dogs that I mentioned earlier and I am hiking around, walking around that I mentioned earlier and I am hiking around, walking around, that I schedule around that because if I don't, I notice myself, my energy level isn't there, my mental um ability to do what it is I do and stay with my clients and stay engaged with my clients isn't as sharp and attuned if I'm not exercising. So that is a really big one for me, and I am doing that most days of the week. The other thing that I would say that I do for self-care and this is more as a, it's a more holistic thing. That is, uh, the reason I did. It has to do with my business too, which is I have a four day work week.
Dalena Bradley:I I am the boss and I get to decide, and so I do not schedule clients on Fridays for uh, and, and maybe those Fridays I use for content batching or some administrative thing that I have not had time for, or there's some technical things problem I need to sort out.
Dalena Bradley:That's wasn't an emergency, you know, I'll get to it or I'll do my website updates, rita, those kinds of things I'll do on a Friday, or maybe I won't do anything at all and I always just know that that day is protected and it's not on my calendar as available ever, and it's kind of non-negotiable for me. It's really I stick to it and it's really hard because sometimes in my business people have very urgent. You know I've got an interview on Monday and they called me on Thursday night or Thursday afternoon and, um, you know that's what the online course is for, as as another alternative, right For the another way people can work with me. So those are the two things that I would say. One is much more personal and the other is business, but uh, spills into personal as well.
Rita Suzanne:Love it. Okay, so where are you? I know you're on LinkedIn and then tell everybody how to connect with you. So on LinkedIn and your website anywhere else, yeah so I am.
Dalena Bradley:I am definitely primarily on LinkedIn LinkedIn, delina Bradley, and then I have my website is delinabradleycom. I have a Facebook company page, delina Bradley Career Marketing Services that you'll see information there as well. Those are the primary ways to find me, and then you know know, people can always just reach out to me on email delena at delena bradleycom as we were talking earlier. Uh, a very direct way of doing that. So, yeah, well, thank you so much for being a guest. It's been my pleasure. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, rita.
