“How to lead a happy, successful team who is client-focused” with Kara Hoholik, Social Impact Marketing Founder
Rosa Ponce de Leon
Building bulletproof work cultures and resilient teams through small business consulting, leadership training, and executive strategy.
In the world of social media marketing, Kara Hoholik believes that building a true connection with your audience takes research, vulnerability and authenticity. When it comes to creating a team of high performers, the same principles apply.
In this Powerful at Work Radio podcast episode, Kara talks about how she built a team of nine employees in just two years. Her secret to building a rock star team? It starts with embracing humanity in the work and understanding that we all have lives outside of work.
Kara Hoholik helps social impact business leaders create compelling content to build community around their work. As the founder of Social for Good, she works to amplify positive messaging, connect others online, and spark belief in a vision for a better future.
Kara lives on a farm outside of Grand Rapids, MI with her husband and 3 bright and wild children. When she’s not wiping muddy feet, you can find her reading with a cup of cold coffee still sitting in the microwave. Growing up in New Jersey, Kara studied sociology and Spanish, and made time to travel to Costa Rica. She then moved to Michigan to pursue a Master’s Degree in Education, fell in love with the slow vibe (and a guy), but stayed for the craft beer.?
Kara feels most like herself when she travels - immersed in a new culture and place. She openly struggles with anxiety, though she admits it often fuels her passions in a good way.?
Kara, great to talk with you today. Let’s jump right in.
One of the benefits of being in this quarantine is that we have learned to embrace working from home. You’re a mom who works from home with kids in the background and you share that in your social media.
Is that something that you encourage others to share on their professional social media? Obviously everyone is different and not everyone's going to be okay with putting their kids in front of the camera, but for those who choose to, it's an added value because it does attract other people.?
Absolutely. First I'll say that to be authentic online is to do what you're comfortable with and not do what you're not comfortable with. There is no prescribed way of doing things. If you're not comfortable sharing certain personal things on social media or talking about your family or your children on social media, that’s totally fine.
But for me, it's a huge part of my story, both just as a person and as a business owner. I have three kids that are elementary age. And so in starting a business during the pandemic during virtual school, it was a huge challenge and it was a huge part of my story in how I started this business and why I started it.
And now, almost two years later, we're a team of nine. Most of us are also moms and it's created now an opportunity for moms with children at home to work, to earn an income, to use their talent. They are able to support these social impact businesses and not have to sacrifice their family life or, have to sacrifice their career either, because during the pandemic so many mothers had to choose.
You couldn't do both because schools were closed and childcare options were very limited and things like that. So, for me talking about the kids and talking about being a mom is essential to our story as a business. It's definitely something we talk about.
I love that you're creating opportunities for other women. A great leader creates other opportunities for people to flourish and fulfill their own calling.
For you personally, there has to be a great satisfaction in knowing that you're surrounded by nine people that are amazing and that have your shared responsibility of raising the kids. That creates a special type of connection, right?
Yes. It makes our work together so much easier because there's a level of understanding between us. We might be in a meeting talking about marketing strategy for a client when one mom is nursing and the other one is on mute because the baby is crying or whatever.
There's a common understanding that we can be really good at our jobs and really effective, but we're also still managing life at home. It's a very delicate balance, but there's no apology needed. There's no stress about being interrupted by kids or having to reshuffle priorities for the day.
If more workplaces are able to accommodate everyone's real life, we'd all be in a better place. We'd all be more effective employees, effective business owners. If everybody would take a step back and realize that we're all kind of in the same boat in that way, whether you have kids or not, we have lives outside of work. And the more that we can understand and respect that, the more we can have that work to our benefit, instead of it working against us. We're all better off.
Yeah. I love that you brought this insight into your company because you're talking about bringing humanity to the workplace and these women are very competent. They're very capable.?
You're not making assumptions, you’re being realistic in that this person just needs me to adjust some things. And you can be totally good with it because when you do that for them, it helps that person deliver a greater result for you.
Exactly. Sometimes I need that gray area too. Things come up for me and I need help or extra support in getting something done on deadline. That happens everywhere. Instead of trying to deny it and cover it up, we can embrace it as being reality and use it to our advantage.
The traditional framework would say that you have to be “responsible” by being present at work. You need to do all these things. But then there's also, now when we introduce this humanity, this idea that she is being responsible, she's got a kid she actually is very responsible.
We should trust that she's bringing that same responsibility to the work that she does and we should trust her. She's a grownup.
Right? Exactly. And so since we are providing the service for social impact businesses internally we can't really be like, “You have to be working these hours and there's no room for flexibility and no room for your humanity, but we're going to be working on these businesses that support other people's humanity.”
That doesn't make any sense. And there's a lot of businesses that operate that way. There's a double standard.
We have to practice what we preach. If we're going to be that type of business that is bringing good to the world, we need to start inside of our own business and be good to our people.
We're going to screen for competencies and to make sure they're in the role that they need to be. There are other things that we can certainly look at, but when all those things are in place, these are good people that want to do good work. Nobody wants to go to work and intentionally do a crummy job.
These women on my team are incredible at what they do. And if having a nursing baby on a Zoom call would be the reason that you wouldn't hire them, you'd be missing out on her incredible skills. And so to me, that's all the more reason to have her on the team, because she is capable of doing so much more than a lot of people would have given her credit for.
Catch the full interview in Powerful at Work Radio podcast episode #64, “How to lead a happy, successful team who is client-focused” Click here to tune in…
Connect with Kara:
Website: https://socialforgood.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socialforgood.co/
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