Tag: Operations & Leadership

Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Mighty Measure Podcast. Today I am very excited to be with LaToya “Patrice” Seawood. LaToya is the founder and principal consultant of Level Up Management, where she helps business owners turn vision into clarity, structure, and sustainable action with a background in human resources, operations, organizational strategy, and workforce development.

She specializes in helping leaders build the systems and infrastructure their businesses need to grow. Well, LaToya is also an MBA business professor, speaker, and facilitator, who brings a practical people-centered approach to organizational challenges through Level Up management. Her work is grounded in a simple purpose, build people, strengthen businesses.

Empower communities. Today we’re going to be discussing your business is not stuck. Your systems are, what a great topic. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you so much, Kim. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, it’s so nice to have you here. And also I will add that you are also one of the instructors in the Mighty Impacts continuum that my company hosts as an educational cohort and asynchronous platform for learning about these types of issues.

So thank you. Thank you so much. What has been your journey to this point and the inspirations that have brought you to now? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Local UP started during COVID, as with so many other companies, I’m sure. COVID was the time, we are all able to benefit in a way from the lack of noise. And I actually had to.

Leave my job in order to care for our young children at home. And I decided to initially build this framework so that actually my husband and I could eventually use it together later. As the world started coming back together and waking up, I knew that I wanted our business to actually help fund nonprofits.

I had started opening up a nonprofit. And really did not want to only depend on grants, but really saw a great opportunity to where business can really help funnel and support and grow and help keep nonprofits sustainable. So that led me to actually learn more about this concept of what a social enterprise is and how business can be a tool for both economic and community impact.

Along the way, I met some great people, some wonderful mentors and coaches who really opened up my horizon, my i, my ideas, my brain. To really gain more clarity for what I actually wanted to build and what I really wanted to serve the community with. So the business continued to evolve as I paid attention to where people consistently needed help, and also to what brings me joy.

So today a lot of my work centers around operations and I like to use the word functionality but particularly with workforce development and customer experience. I guess I would say that at the heart of it, we help people take vision that matters to them, and we move it towards clarity structure.

Action, but ultimately impact, which is, I really think how you and I connect so much is this idea of impact and how do we make that impact? How do we communicate it? How is it known? And that progression is just directly aligned with the Level up signature framework. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And Yes. I remember when we met as well, you were a guest speaker at the Benefit Corporations for Good, happy hour a couple years ago in Portland.

Yes. And the presentation you gave was so open, warm. And informational that I was really taken with that and introduced myself afterward. And yes, thank you. I’m the rest. Glad is glad you did the, a journey. Indeed. I can’t believe it’s been that long, Kim. I was counting and it’s like, could it really be two years?

But it, I think it’s been pretty close to it, so thank you. What are you seeing in the community you serve and how do you serve and what are you seeing that people are bringing to the table? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Being involved in the community as back in Portland as much as I am, and still now also adding to it the community here in the Raleigh Durham area.

I see so many good people with really good ideas. It’s really. Inspiring and heartwarming to see it all. They have dreams for businesses, for nonprofits, for ministries, and community programs. What I’ve noticed and seen is that a lot of times though those dreams struggle not because the people aren’t working hard or because they don’t have enough passion, but because they don’t have the administrative knowledge or the systems or the operational structure that can truly make them sustainable.

And so you hear all these stories about businesses closing, or nonprofits closing, or even scandals that are happening. It all goes back to the structure and the operations of the organization. And that’s where I like to come alongside people sometimes, we don’t need more ideas, we just need clarity around what isn’t working around.

The structure for what they’re trying to accomplish and the practical support that’s needed to move it forward. On the workforce development side, I also see people who want to work and they wanna work, they wanna contribute, but for whatever reason, they haven’t had the opportunity to develop the skills or even the confidence or the professional exposure that’s needed.

And that’s partly why I developed my Thrive in Program and why workforce development continues to be such an important part of Level Up. I want to build stronger workforce pipelines, not just help people get a job. And these stronger pipelines, support those same businesses, nonprofits, ministries, and community programs that I mentioned earlier.

So essentially level Up is the bridge that brings those two together and helps functionality take place at work, and skill people in the community to work at those places. And that essentially should bring economic wellness to the community. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, and that’s, I think, is so important because it sounds like what you’re doing is taking some groups that may not know each other.

But are missing the same elements or maybe not being strong. The same elements that structures they need, and in a way bring it together. 

To make an entire community stronger. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Yes. That’s the goal. That’s the vision. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Wow. What are some of the obstacles and challenges? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: The most.

Immediate obstacle is my own season of life. A challenge for me personally is simply the fact that, I’m a mom first. I have three children, ages eight to 15, and so I’ve had to build this business. But in respect to that priority. So when time I look at growth opportunities, I, it has to be sustainable given my current limits of life.

And so it’s not for me, it’s not growth at any cost. It’s all extremely measured. So that’s my number one challenge, I would say, and just in understanding and respecting and loving the season I’m in while I, my children are at home. The other challenge I see when I am speaking with people, bus business owners in the community.

Is the fact that we know oftentimes people don’t recognize the value of operations and investing in operations until something isn’t working. It’s much easier to invest in what’s visible than it is to invest in the systems underneath it. And so helping to educate and just bringing awareness to that has been a challenge.

I’d also say that this work that I do requires a great deal of trust. When I’m working with leaders and founders and entrepreneurs, this is their baby, right? This is their passion. And in order to bring someone alongside that and look into and potentially make some changes, it requires a lot of trust and, that just takes time to build. And it’s understandable why it would take time to build and you can’t rush that relationship. And so I have found that my pipeline, if you will it’s, it lasts. It’s a longer pipeline. And learning just to be patient with that has been, part of the challenge.

I would say that I’ve learned that sustainable change isn’t just operational, it’s emotional too. And that’s a part of what that trust people are attached to what they’ve built. So part of my job is helping them navigate change, not simply just handing them a solution.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love how you said it’s also emotional ’cause people are throwing their hearts into this. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Absolutely. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And what are some of the challenges and obstacles for them? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: What I have learned is. They often are very much caught and engrossed in their passion, right? Whether it’s a somebody who loves to bake and now owns a bakery, or somebody who loves to coach and now owns a coaching business.

The, the service is the passion. The operational administrative structure that supports that passion often isn’t the strength of the individual and. Passion only goes so far and is only so sustainable if you don’t eventually have the right structure to support it. And so that’s the main challenge I see that they’re dealing with this understanding when is the right time to invest in that structure and to have that internal reflection and knowledge that.

Passion isn’t gonna take them all the way, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: It’s so true. And it made me think of a, an example of a, a friend of mine who was ill and yoga helped save her, helped her heal through a 

A chronic illness to the point where she created a yoga business that she then grew to hate. Yeah.

And partly it was because. Because it started to feel like a ball and chain. And as you were talking about that, that’s exactly what I thought of is sometimes without that knowledge to keep something upright, to know when to hire, help, to know when to delegate it, it can become the thing you don’t want to do anymore.

The thing that drags, drags people down. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: And when that person decides to leave. Their business lead the passion because of that burnout. That is something I feel deeply and that also I go back to COVID, but that’s so many businesses closed and.

I don’t I don’t know. I, all I can say is I felt that that, it broke my heart to hear that continually, these businesses didn’t make it, these businesses didn’t make it. And knowing how hard those people worked to get to where they were, to not be able to be sustainable through that type of crisis, it just, it was.

It’s kind of a motivation for me. I want my clients to be strong and sustainable so that they can ride through the market up and down. Now, obviously that was more than just a market down, but just in general to create resilient businesses, that is something I care deeply about. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And that helps an entire community and it helps people be happy.

Exactly. Yeah. Do you have any examples and what makes you optimistic about what you do in your work and what you see out there? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Yes. When I first read this question, the first thing I thought of were my clients. I get to work with really good people who generally want to do good things and not just want to do good things.

They are willing to put the effort in to make it happen, to take the risk, to make it happen, to just move forward with action. I’ve been able to help support management development. For people who are once outh, who are once unhoused I’ve been able to work on systems designed to support economic mobility for people experiencing generational poverty.

Another client helping build an organization that will that helps to support like the whole human, so that people leaders can grow, perform, and build sys and build sustainable businesses and their careers. And then there’s the individual coaching ones. When I’m working with people one-on-one.

Sometimes impact isn’t this huge organization transformation. Sometimes it’s just getting to watch somebody have their aha moment, as I gain clarity and confidence and then they’re, being able to take that next step. So all of that keeps reminding me that this work is important and continually makes me just so thankful that I get to do that.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. What are some of the best ways people can reach you and how can we help you? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: In terms of helping, I think it’s just, keeping eyes and ears open. One area I’m talking about more is called when systems speak. Systems are always communicating something and you learn a lot about an organization by looking at its operations and particularly the experience those operations create for employees and customers.

So paying attention to that and keep me in mind if leaders wanna talk more. I’m also continuing to expand our workforce development work, and that includes workforce pipeline development, professional training, leadership development, and helping organizations think beyond filling positions to actually developing people.

And definitely if there’s organizations within the network that are interested in that, I’d love to have a talk with them. But ultimately Level Up is about building people, strengthening businesses, and empowering communities. And so since those three things are connected, any, anything in those areas are really interesting to me.

In terms of reaching out to me, I am on LinkedIn and that’s probably the best way to connect with me. It’s where I share a lot. About what I’m seeing and learning through the work, especially around leadership operations, workforce development, and how systems affect people. And then I’ll also give you a link that you can use, that people can use to connect with me and just talk through what you’re dealing with and see if there’s, a way I can help.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Thank you. And you mentioned something that popped into my brain, and if it’s okay, I’d love to ask you a little bit more about how you’ve served unhoused people and others in perhaps those marginalized areas that haven’t been their fault. Because we’ve seen mass layoffs, we’ve seen a lot of situations that have been out of some people’s control.

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Absolutely. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: What are you seeing there and how does Level Up. Respond and the other things that you’re doing. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: So I have been able to partner with community serving organizations who have been entrenched in the work for years, and because of that, they have a large amount of credibility in the community and they have graciously brought me in to partner with them as they do their work.

And so for the clients that work with those who are unhoused, they’re already doing workforce development through internship programs and through training and now looking at that next step for their participants and for their staff, and, one of the challenges in that particular project is a lot of leadership development or manager development programs.

They’re template. And our partnership really has worked out so well because I customize the program to meet the participants where they are. And with that one in particular, there was a recent example where we were doing a debrief on where we are so far in the program and realized that it wasn’t working for all of the people and needed to make some adjustments again to meet them where they are and.

Equip and provide the support and the pathway needed to get them to where they want to be. And so that is one of the things I’m learning a lot through my clients who are these community serving organizations, is the ability to meet somebody where they are is how you have the great impact, coming to people who have been marginalized, who have had any type of barriers you wanna mention with a template program, it doesn’t work. And so while I know that other business models do that and they do it well, and that’s great, I just want it to be different. And so I work with leadership very closely to design a program that will work for their participants.

Kim Allchurch Flick: That tailored approach must be so important. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: It is. It is. And there’s a need for it. Definitely. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah. Absolutely. Where do you see the future of leveled up and thrive? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Just for it to continue to grow as I have, as I continue to work with different organizations and touch more lives with workforce development.

I mentioned earlier about being the bridge between the two. I really want to continue to build this pi to build the pipeline. So on one side where. Equipping people and helping people get back to work in a lot of situations. And then I’m working with businesses to be great places to work, and so the more that we can do that, the greater economic wellness we can bring to the community.

And I see that, that isn’t limited to the Portland area or the Raleigh Durham area. Any organization. That wants to have that kind of impact in their community is a great fit for us. And just looking to be able to sit, to do more good work and to continue to meet more good people.

Kim Allchurch Flick: And as a former employee along the way in my career, it really makes a difference. I’ve been with companies that did not treat us well. Did. Did not recognize potential that were very rote and had cultures that were focused on money more than people. And then I’ve been in the opposite, and the, the feeling is completely different, even though the work might be the same and the productivity needed is as much the same.

So what you bring to that I, I think, is so important and how people feel at work. Can make everybody feel better. And it goes up to the consumer level too. It’s, we notice things even if they’re unspoken. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Absolutely. If I go to the grocery store and the checkout person is complaining to me about what their supervisor did, that’s a problem.

That’s a problem. I, for every customer that comes through there, that’s affecting their experience and yet. You want that genuine dialogue, but what’s going on that your employee feels like that’s what they wanna share with your customers, right? It just goes, to me, it just continues to, there’s just always this opportunity to dig further beneath the surface.

And so in my former corporate HR days, that example would’ve just been met with, okay we’re going to give that person a warning. Tell them not to do that. You can do that, or we can systematically look at what’s causing that behavior. And a lot of. What our employees experience and our customers experience know.

There’s a lot of scientific research that goes into that and the companies that have invested in that have also done really well because they’ve created their operations to support the research in order to get the goal that they want, the experience that they want their employees or their customers to have.

So that’s also what I look to continue to look into and grow and learn more is also the, that industrial psychology part of it. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed and as you know, I’m in the B Corps and benefit corporations world quite a bit, and it becomes a discussion point is like, what does it mean to earn these certifications?

It means a lot. And on the employee side, it means it can attract people. And if it’s true and real and the values are being lived, it helps people stay. It helps people express things in their community. When you love where you work and you go, your parent going to the games, talking with other parents or when it’s.

It seeps out in a good way. It 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: does. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Where? Where if it’s miserable, it seeps out as well. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: And that’s what I was just going to say. The values seep out one way or the other. And that’s part of the challenge when I’m working with leadership is we really need to have a real conversation about your own purpose and your own values, because that is what is being communicated whether.

You know it or not. And so identifying what they are and then building your structure so that every layer of your structure represents that value. It, you don’t just create a customer processing or a customer onboarding process based on what the industry does. You look at that to inform what you do, but you also have to keep that end goal in mind.

How? What do you want the customer to walk away feeling? What do you want your. Your onboarding process with your employees, to create, in how your employee walk walks away feeling. It’s all very in. It has to all be very intentional. And again, that goes back to, it takes the investment not only, not only a financial investment, but takes the investment of time.

And a really deeper a deeper self-reflection. And I appreciate that. Not all leaders have that capacity. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. What happens when they don’t have the capacity? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: If I’m working with them, then. The focus becomes capacity building for the leader. If I’m, there, it’s just a, an a organization that you hear about on the news.

What happened? Something blew up, there was a mess, and now it’s all over the place. And so then that’s where we, again you find out, there’s, you see the reach out for the crisis management and often. It requires, again, going back to initial purpose and how that gets baked into every layer of the organization so that the big messes don’t occur.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh indeed. And I like what you’ve said when I’ve heard you speak, it’s what looks like a people problem may actually be a systems problem and absolutely those things can change. But also growth exposes your current systems. What your current systems can no longer carry. Absolutely. Yeah. People are so head down, they can’t see the forest for the trees, so how would they even know until it breaks?

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Absolutely true, and that’s where I have seen most systems break is in the growth. And I’m all for growth and I’m all for meeting business goals. And I fact that’s what I help people do. I want them to meet their business goals and grow, but in order to do that well and to stay there, the system has to be built to support it.

Because otherwise you end up with burnt out employees who complain to your customers or you have this horrible churn of people quitting coming on and quitting within 90 days or six months. And that it wreaks havoc on the bottom line because it costs so much, to hire people.

And growing is a true test of whether or not your system is strong enough to support it and it’s also valuable. It gives you valuable insight to where you need to do some additional scaffolding. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And the last thing was that the owner should not be the system. And sometimes people start things and they make it up as they go along and they create a system and then.

Sometimes it isn’t as good as it could be. Sometimes they can be great. It the how did, ’cause you work with a lot of entrepreneurs and 

And startups as well as established companies. But what do you do in those instances where the own, the owner has been the, the creator of all things? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: That one’s 

Kim Allchurch Flick: don’t quite know how to articulate the question, but it, it has to do with, when they get into a growth phase.

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Yeah. So the,

the temptation that a lot of leaders face is to make everything in the organization about them, and they become decision maker for everything they become. The one who makes all the, who takes all the moves and bears the responsibility for their organization alone. And that only goes so far.

If you want to stay, if you want to increase your impact, you have to expand past yourself and not. Just duplicating yourself, but looking at different perspectives and different skill sets. Understanding what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, and bringing in people who fill in the gaps that you’re missing.

I find that leaders who do that have a greater field of vision in a way and can create their organization, build their organization in a way that covers more ground in a way that doesn’t have, these great pitfalls. And so it’s interesting, it’s like the way to hang onto your organization and the impact you’re making is actually to let go of some of the reigns.

And that’s hard and I appreciate how hard that is for people. And so again, it goes back to the trust and the willingness to take risks. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Sounds almost like a metaphor for parenting as well, but 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Absolutely. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: But at the same time, 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: absolutely. My son is about to be 16 and of course the conversation of driving is coming up and I’m thinking no.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah. And yet at the same time, isn’t it wonderful when there’s a sense of delegating independence and decision making? So it’s yes. If the building blocks to that have been strong, then. Everybody’s happier and sometimes I don’t think some founders and people who are really just working and stressing about it, everything realize how you can do a good job with less stress too.

So part of this may be the key to unlocking some of that and recognizing that in the end you’re actually gonna be happier for letting go of some of it. Yeah. In training systems, 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: you are absolutely. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s a hard part though. It’s very psychological 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: again. Yep. I hope to, I, I plan to continue to dive into that and learn more about that so that it can better inform my work.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, and you are well informed and informative to people like me and I so appreciate it. So is there anything more you’d like to add before the final question? 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: I don’t think so. I think we’ve covered it really well, Kim, thank you so much. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Well, you’re amazing. That’s part of the reason why. So the final question is, if you could have dinner with up to three other people living or deceased, who would they be and why?

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: So it actually wouldn’t be anybody famous. I really would like to be able to have dinner with my grandparents. They passed early on. I say early on, meaning like before I started this company and my grandfather was an entrepreneur himself. And so looking back, there’s just so much I would like to ask and to learn more about not only who he was as a businessman, but who both my grandparents were as people.

My grandmother passed when I was in my young twenties, and I’m sure like many people in my young twenties already thought I had it all figured out. And so now 25 years later, I, there’s some things I would love to know, and so my grandparents would be two. And then the third person would be my father who passed away as well, when I was just a very young toddler.

I didn’t even, really know, I didn’t know him. But I, here he was amazing and I would love to talk to him. At this stage in my life, I would just really appreciate those conversations in a completely different way. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, what a beautiful and very personal table. Thank you for sharing that.

And thank you for being here, LaToya. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Thank you. Thank you for having me and such great questions that you’re asking and really it was a really a deep dive to really think those things through and I appreciate the opportunity and the platform to speak about the great work that my clients are doing.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Thank you. And I think what is revealing too, without even intending it in the beginning, but I have the best seat in the house, so I get to hear so many wonderful stories. Yeah. Stories are important. How people have built on their passion. How very few of us had a straight line weren’t 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: Oh yeah.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Weren’t born to say, I’m gonna do this hardly anybody. And the other thing is the question about optimism gets answered with every single person, and it’s. It’s showing me, and it’s like you said before with your clients, there are a lot of people that are doing really good things. Some are below the radar, some a little bit above the radar, but that knowledge that people are forging ahead regardless 

Is so encouraging. 

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: It is. And especially we know in the world when we hear a lot of negative, crazy things. It is knowing, the, the good work being done, I guess in the trenches or on the ground, that is the motivator and it’s what inspires that goodness in you to go ahead and join in and to continue to do and to look at whatever you’ve been given.

Or worked hard for, however you wanna look at it, but to use that to generate and multiply more goodness I ha I’m truly inspired by the work of others and the stories of others as well as yourself. And it yeah, I, if I don’t even listen to the negative news anymore, I can’t I listen mainly.

To the motivational positive real stories that are happening with real people. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And I think we don’t always see it, but we’re not doing this in isolation. There’s somewhere, there’s someone else doing something that forms a concentric circle, like a Venn diagram. And so we are touching each other, even though we may not be aware of it.

LaToya “Patrice” Seawood: We absolutely are. And that’s the whole idea of the E of ecosystems, right? And then building ecosystems. I love looking at nature for inspiration and looking at how different parts of the system feed and support each other, and that when that is done authentically. I think that’s when you see the great even greater impact.

There’s no way I can have the impact that I do by myself. I’m just one person. And so it’s been, the people who have poured to me who have encouraged me, helped me see things that I didn’t even see in myself. It’s been the business partners who I’ve connected with and I’ve learned so much from.

It’s been a whole bunch of people, right? Like nobody can say that they did it on their own. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. And you bring it forward so beautifully. So thank you. I appreciate your time. Thank you and have a great day.