Can Friendship Be a KPI? How Relationships Shape a Sustainable Business with Tara Robertson

It's gonna make my work and by extension in my life more interesting and more joyful. I'm not sure if there's gonna be a financial impact on my business, but this is my business and my life. And I have many, many years left to work, and I I want this to be interesting. I want to make an impact, and I want it to be sustainable. And doing stuff with friends, I think that's one way I can do this.

Everyone can use new friends, especially at this moment in time. A lot of us are looking for community and connections. But are new friends important enough for you to create a KPI around it? I'm Susan Bowles, and this is Beyond Margins, the show where we deconstruct how to engineer a calmer business. Today, we're talking about friendships, which might seem a little weird since this is a show where we mostly talk about business, and those things frequently seem like they're at odds.

It's not personal. It's just business. That's a pretty common refrain, but business is inherently personal because we're all people even though we might sometimes forget that. And people need connection. We all need a village.

That's where friends come in. Tara Robertson is a leadership coach and a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant and she set a KPI for herself this year. It's number of new friends made. It's one of her biggest goals for this year and she even created a new joint business venture around it with a friend. Alright, Tara.

So you set a KPI for this upcoming year around the number of friends you're making. Tell me a little bit about why that was important to you or what was going on that made that such an important focus for you this year.

I'm an executive leadership coach, and I'm a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategist. But most of the work I do, I'm working solo with a client. And I'm quite a an extroverted person, and it it's become lonely. So I made a decision at the end of last year to not go into organizations alone anymore, so I'm always co leading with someone. I just have more fun, which means the work is better, and I also get to keep learning.

I love that. So walk me through how you decided on the number of friends as being the best indicator that you're making progress or that you're having fun.

I haven't done a rigorous analysis on this yet. Like, I I'm in my diversity, equity, and inclusion work, it's very much data driven. So I'm, like, kinda positing how I'm gonna do this. But each quarter, I imagine I'm gonna look back at my spreadsheet of work and add a new column, like, new friend made, either with someone I'm partnering with or with a client. And then there's also working with existing friends.

I think I should be able to count those things. And if it's like, I'm not sure if I made a friend, it's like, then that's not a friendship. That's like, we partnered together on something. We worked on something for a brief time. So that's how I'm gonna start by counting.

The pre thing on that means I have to be working with other people who are values aligned to me. I was noticing, especially on the diversity, equity, and inclusion work, my interest is flagging a little bit. Like, the work was starting to feel a little samey. I've been doing this work for fifteen years, so I want to be continually excited by it. So I think my hypothesis is that by thinking about values of the organization and the people I'm working with, I'll be working with people who light me up more and that I'll also light them up.

That totally makes sense. I wanna dig in a little bit to the idea of a friend versus the idea of a collaborator or the idea of a partner. Or, you know, I think when we think about business kinds of things, friendship is one of those things that most people don't take into account. We take into account potential client or potential collaborator. But when we're thinking about friendship, like, what does that actually mean to you, or what does that look like to you?

So I think for me, the difference between a friend and, like, a business collaborator would be that I wanna spend time with them even after the engagement's over. I think there's also a a bit about transparency. Like, if stuff's getting a little messy or if I'm feeling like, am I doing a good job here or some insecurity on my part? I can be open with that with a friend. With a business collaborator, I generally don't share those things.

I keep them kind of behind the curtain. So there's a level, I get I think of intimacy, a level of transparency and authenticity with a friend.

Yeah. I would totally agree with that. I have business friends, and then I have colleagues or Colleagues. Collaborator. You know?

It's the, do I feel a compulsion to be professional, or can I be really vulnerable and share you know, when somebody asks, like, oh, how are things? How honest am I gonna be about how much I'm sharing there? So I can totally see the level of vulnerability and how comfortable you are with that being a good measurement for is this a friend, is this not a friend.

There's also, like, how I I come to the work. When I'm insecure, I tend to over deliver, which means I'm wasting time. I'm delivering a level of perfection that is not required. I'm up in my head about stories about what the client needs or how I'm showing up. And what I like about working with friends is I can be honest about that and get an honest response.

So it might be like, yeah. That that's about 80% done. It needs more polish. Or I might hear, no. No.

You're good. Like, stop. Stop.

Now that we kind of have a good idea of what a friend looks like, are you thinking about friends as a kind of de facto metric for something else? Are you using number of friends to measure overall happiness? Is it a metric for potential work? Or is it really just about I wanna work with friends and that brings me joy, so I'm setting a KPI around that?

That one. The friends and joy piece. Again, I think it's helping me be clearer about not only the work that I'm doing, but who I'm doing it with and how we're doing it together. And I'm sure I'm gonna have projects this year where I work with people where it's a great collaboration and we don't become friends. That's fine too.

But I I wanna start to track this because it's important for me. Like, being connected to people and being in relationships that light me up is really important.

Yeah. I think a lot of people are feeling that, especially, you know, with all the chaos happening, at least in The US right now. I think a lot of people are feeling a real need for connection, for community, and leaning into the support that can come from having a genuine friend that you don't get from having a business colleague?

Yeah. It's also making me think. The thing I love about being a business owner is the freedom and the flexibility and the creativity. So I'm trying this. I think it's gonna work out, and it's gonna, like, highlight some good things that I want to keep core to my business, but maybe it doesn't work out at all.

Like, also the freedom to experiment and the freedom to say, I'm creating this as a KPI for myself is something that I really value.

Even if you don't hit your benchmark of number of friends, I really can't think of a downside of intentionally curating more friends in your life.

I'm aiming for 10 this first quarter. I'm just curious, like, how many of the engagements I have? Would I say the people I'm working with are genuine friends or I've created a new friend?

Tara is using her KPI around friendship to help her create deeper connections and bring more joy to her business. It's not necessarily tied to other areas of her business, which works really well for her, and that might be your vibe too. But if you're more like me, you might need a bit more structure or strategy behind what you're measuring. So let's

play out a little

thought experiment here. What a defacto measure for? Well, it could be a way to help develop new clients or referral partners. New friends made could be a way to access more resources around support. Maybe it's about finding a community that can be your business village.

New friends could also be a way to build more emotional or energetic margins for yourself. And while Tara is counting the number of friends as her measure of success, there are lots of other ways you might consider creating KPIs around the idea of friendship. In the episode with Karen Sargent, we talked about building a client report card. You could add a rating to that card about how established your friendship is with that client. You could also track how long it takes you to build a friendship with the goal of figuring out how to establish friendships faster or maybe you wanna set a KPI around actions that would help you build friendships.

So you set set a metric around how many times you reach out to people you have existing relationships with to see if they wanna hang out. That would be a great way to make progress on deepening the relationships you already have. Or if you're more concerned about making new friends, maybe you set a KPI around reaching out to new connections on LinkedIn. There are tons of different ways you can go about creating some calmer KPIs in your business. And even if you have the same goal as someone else, in this case we're talking about new friends made, the specific KPI you set around that can look really different.

We're gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsors but when we come back, Tara and I talk about the nuances of how to actually develop friendships especially with clients. So talk to me a little bit about how you are thinking about this integrating with the rest of your business. So are there other systems or data or areas of your business that you're focusing on that this ties into or you're thinking about tying it into?

Natalia Staniel, who was on a previous episode of yours, I was her client a couple of times, actually, but we also became friends. Like, she had a big win in her business, and I showed up at her house with cake to celebrate her. And that's, like, the moment where we kind of stepped into also being friends. We've been thinking up in since December, and we're actually launching soon a business network called The Long Table that's about both deepening relationships with folks and referrals, both opportunities and revenue opportunities. So we've stepped back and looked at our our relationship and, like, what is so good about this?

Like, we genuinely like each other. We share values. And through that deep connection that we forged over time, we've referred work to each other, and we came up with this idea for a workshop that was a fundraiser for something that we both care about. And those things that benefited both of our businesses came out of the solid relationship and friendship. And there's a bunch of kind of traditional business networking groups where it's more transactional, and we're like, how can it also be relational?

Clearly, the idea of friendship, the idea of relationships is something you've been thinking really deeply about. How are you thinking about incorporating that value into either the way you're structuring the long table or structuring your own services? Talk to me about how the value for friendship is ending up imbued in your work.

Well, for the long table, everything needs to be a relationship and referral or revenue. And I had this great idea. What if we had these, like, different kind of challenges and things to get people out of their comfort zone to try new things, sort of like business hypothesis testing. And Natalia was like, that sounds like a great idea. Which one does it map to?

And I was like, neither. So we're like, okay. Now that I take those out the window because it it doesn't align with this project. So that's kind of where we used it as a filter for, is this something that we're designing in or designing out?

One of the challenges that I find when I am personally designing services is that it is really difficult to keep a focus, particularly if you're someone who iterates and comes up with all kinds of cool ideas. Being able to understand, is this part of the core value or is this something that is tangential and maybe fun? How do I map this back so that the value for really relationship building, which is what we're talking about, through friendship, I think it's really difficult to filter so that only the things that impact that value stay in. And I think that's a really difficult skill to build. It's much easier to do when somebody else is like, I like that idea.

Answer my question.

And that's where having two brains there was helpful. I get carried away when I'm ideating like, this is a great idea. It's like, it is a great idea, but not for this thing.

When you're thinking about developing relationships, either with clients or with other new friends, do you think about in person relationships and online only relationships differently?

There's a few people that we have standing, like, social Zoom calls, either monthly or quarterly. I really value those relationships. And it's been I've been playing around in the last four years since I've been in business. Like, what's the right amount of social time? I spend a lot of time on a screen like a lot of us do, and could be a Zoom call or it could be us both putting on our headphones and going for a walk in our neighborhood where we're connecting, but we're also not in front of a screen.

I can over rotate and want to connect more than I have time sometimes. So it's also being realistic with what my business needs from me and how much social time I have.

So I am an introvert. I am not extroverted at all. And definitely something I need to take into consideration is I will have spurts where I'm like, I wanna connect, and I'll book calls with everybody. And then when it comes time to actually do that, I don't have the energy because I've over committed. So I think that being able to intentionally pay attention to where your energy is so that you can commit enough time to develop a friendship because friendships, they're hard to develop.

Especially if you're trying to do lots at different points in time. It can be very time intensive.

I, again, I like doing stuff with people. So I started the coach's barbecue, which is a global free coaching on conference. We're on the fourth or the fifth one now. There's four of us on the organizing team. We've got a pretty good system dialed in now, so we meet probably four times every half year to put on an event.

And our check ins for the hour meeting, we spend about half an hour just talking about life, and then we move into the stuff we need to do. So it's actually quite a good balance for me to connect and get to know these folks deeper and do a thing together.

That makes sense. Is there a way that you translate that to client relationships? So I'm thinking about if you wanted to develop a client relationship into an eventual friendship, are there pieces of the client engagement that you would talk about personal stuff? How do you start to share vulnerably within the context of a client relationship? Because I think that is a challenge for a lot of folks as, you know, when we think clients, there's this wall of professionalism.

We have to be professional. We can't cross the personal to business barrier. I think it's really difficult to figure out what to share, what not to share, particularly as the provider, or do you think it's on the client to initiate whether they're willing to be vulnerable?

So I'm gonna give two answers because I kinda have two different streams of work. On the consulting side, I wanna spend a bit more time on the being with my my clients, like, around their lives, how they're doing, the bigger context of what the work is that we're doing together before diving into the agenda. In my earlier days consulting, I felt like to be professional, I really needed to deliver a lot and fast and whatever for my client. And the client engagements that have been the most impactful are where there has been a connection. So spending time a little bit of time each time we meet.

Making sure we're connected as human beings, I think, is important. On the coaching side, it's really about my client. So sometimes I'll share a little bit about my life if it's relevant and then bring it back to the client about what what new things are coming up for them. It would be a negotiation after, like, okay. Like, that was great.

I actually wanna know you outside of this, and I want you to know me. Are you interested in that, and what could that look like? Like, when you're working with your clients, how much of yourself can you bring, or how much connection or authenticity do you bring?

I think it has changed over time. I think when I first started out consulting, I was very focused on being professional and being credible. And part of that is, you know, my positioning, I guess. You know, a lot of the time, people are encountering me as a CFO or as a COO. And for a very long time, I really thought that I needed to embody what they were going to picture as their CFO.

It felt very claustrophobic for me to always be, quote, unquote, professional. When I started to, from a content perspective, let myself be more human and less corporate, you know, when I started telling people that, like, if you want somebody to show up in a blue suit and use a whole bunch of jargon, I'm just not the right fit for you. If you want somebody who's probably gonna show up in a gray hoodie and use, you know, normal people words and be empathetic about your situation, then we're probably a good fit. So I think once I started leaning into that more in my content and my marketing, that made me much more comfortable bringing who I am as a person to my engagements because I had kind of set up the expectation that that's what people were gonna get. And I started using that, honestly, as a filter for who was gonna be a good fit as a client.

So if you're very concerned with, like, quote, unquote professionalism, if you really want, like, the buttoned up finance geek kind of thing, you're very turned off by most of my content. You're not gonna be attracted to me. And I think that allowed me then to be more comfortable showing up, I wouldn't say as my whole self, but I do bring a lot of my personal experience, my personal perspectives into my work with clients. There was a a line I had on my website probably five or six years ago. It was a very small line on I think it was on my about my about page, and it was just something like zero rules and QuickBooks drools.

I I'm not a fan of Intuit products. In general, QuickBooks particularly annoys me. But I just had this little line on my about page, and I had a few times where I'd be on a call with someone and they would mention it. It was act so the people that worked well with me never said anything.

Got it.

The people who I'd be talking to them on, like, a sales call and they'd be like, hey. So this line is on your website. You might wanna think about taking that down. It's pretty unprofessional. And I'd be like, noted.

Also, I don't think we should work together. Like, you clearly either don't have a sense of humor or you're just like, we are not going to vibe together. And it ended up being like, I thought it was a throwaway line, and it ended up essentially being a vibe check for who was gonna be a good fit. And so I think the more I've leaned into that, the more comfortable I am in client engagements just being me and showing up in I will almost always be wearing a black T shirt, gray hoodie, and jeans. Like

So what do you mean?

Have a problem with your CFO showing up like that, then we're not a good fit

necessarily. You're clear about who you are and more unapologetic about being like, listen. I am an expert, and I wear a gray hoodie.

It was really hard though because I think, you know, a lot of us come out of the corporate world, and it's so drilled into us that it's all about business and we're supposed to be professional and we are not human beings. We're a cog in the machine. It's really hard to unlearn that even from something like writing. You know? How many of us come out and write an email sounding like we're in a corporate environment instead of sounding like we're a human being talking one human to another human?

And I think being able to get past that, like, I need to be buttoned up and just showing up as you are, whether that is somebody who makes jokes about accounting systems or whether you're just someone who, you know, happens to do yoga and you want to mention that. I think the more we can show up as humans, the easier it is to build a real genuine relationship with with the people that we're working with.

And for me, I would feel much more comfortable being honest about what my actual business challenges are and the tough questions and perhaps the gaps that I've got with someone in a gray hoodie versus someone who writes in a corporate way and has the blue suit and was all buttoned up. Like

You know what's funny is I've seen it in client reactions. Like, early on, I would get on calls and potential clients would be like, you're gonna hate me because x y z or, really not feeling comfortable asking questions because they felt like it was a stupid question. The more human I was, the more comfortable people are showing up and saying, I don't know this. I don't understand this. Can you explain it to me?

I definitely experienced that on the consulting side of my business, especially right now, diversity, equity, and inclusion stuff. There's an extra layer of not only do I not know something here, but, like, I should know. And I feel like I'm judging myself, and I'm worrying that other people are judging me. That's why you hired an expert. I I know a lot of stuff, but I don't know your organization.

You know your organization. So together, we're a great team to figure out what's gonna work for your organization right now.

How are you thinking about the impact of having more friends with who you are interacting in your business? How do you feel it's gonna make your business or your work calmer or more joyful?

It's gonna make my work and by extension than my life more interesting and more joyful. I'm I'm not sure if there's gonna be a financial impact on my business, but this is my business and my life. And I have many, many years left to work, and I I want this to be interesting. I want to make an impact, and I want it to be sustainable. And doing stuff with friends, I think that's one way I can do this.

I agree. As somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about both metrics and measuring businesses in an unconventional way, I'm really interested to see because my gut says it probably will have a positive impact on both revenue and quality of client engagements. And the more we think about building deeper relationships, I really don't think there's a downside to that. I I just don't.

Especially now, there's been a lot of disconnection. What's going on politically right now, there's tremendous polarization. So if we can work in a way that connects us to like minded and not like minded people and connect human to human, like, that's how we're gonna move forward both as individuals, as business owners, as corporation owners, and as a society. Like, it's about one to one relationships. That's where everything starts.

A lot of us are craving connection and community right now, and creating a KPI around something that's so important is a great way of making sure you are making progress towards it. Something like finding community might feel intangible, but you can create very real measurements that help you get there. Whether that's a KPI around the actions you wanna take or, like Tara, the actual number of friends you're making. Even something as simple as a daily rating around how connected you feel might be a great place to start. Those are all tangible measures that help you tell whether or not you're actually making progress, and they help keep you on track.

That's what great KPIs do. Big thanks to everyone who supports Beyond Margins. If you're a listener, a sponsor, or a partner of any kind, I absolutely couldn't do this show without you. You can support this show by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help new listeners hit play with more confidence.

Thanks for listening, and until next time, stay calm.