We were lucky to catch up with Shannon Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Shannon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Our mission is simple…empowering women to stay relevant in the workforce while caring and educating their children full time. When I read it back, it sounds a little cliche, but it’s definitely VERY personal for us. After living in Colorado for over 20 years, and my husband all his life, we made the HUGE transition to move to Fort Worth, Texas – someplace neither of us had lived or visited. We did this as a leap of faith on a new job for my husband…but what I came to realize is, I’m pretty sure the reason we were led to move out here was for me. Let me explain…
In 2022, my kiddos were nearing the end of their homeschool journey – at the time we moved it was my son’s senior year and my daughter’s freshman year – and I personally was ready for a change. I never intended to homeschool and had worked in the public school system for over a decade before deciding it would be the right thing for them, so I took over their educational direction when my son started middle school and my daughter was in 3rd, and we never looked back. All of a sudden it just made sense, our family really bonded, we could travel, spend more time with family than before, and learn at their pace. All of this was excellent, but I was DESPERATE to work – I missed it so much. And, I was scared to death that I would lose all my technical know-how and hire-ability by being out of the workforce while I homeschooled.
I decided to start providing part time admin and marketing assistance to my friend/Realtor who was trying to do everything herself and quickly started increasing my know how and skill base. I felt good about this personally and started to bring on a couple additional clients.
Fast forward ~7 years and we have moved to Texas and my kids and I have started hosting weekly meetups for local teenagers who enjoy hanging out, drinking coffee, and playing card games and I meet a host of other women who have been homeschooling and are lamenting the fact that when their kids graduate, they’re not sure what they’re going to do because they have no “marketable” skills. I’m absolutely blown away by this sentiment – these women are amazing and they definitely have transferable skills!
The idea to start our company percolated for about 7 months before I got a call from a local Realtor/neighbor who asked if I was interested in applying to be her brokerage’s marketing director because she knew that was what I did for other realtors. I immediately turned her down! But, I did tell her I had another idea that might be a win win for both of us if her broker was interested. Thankfully she was, and The Relevant Resource (fka Relevant Realtor) was born!
We’ve been in business in this capacity since September of 2023 and have been steadily growing each quarter. I don’t have any employees – it was important to me that all of the women who work with me have their own business so they can choose when they work, how many hours they can give, and what sort of direction they want to take. In my “previous life” I have coached a lot of women and men in and out of different positions by observing and isolating their skills, identifying where growth can occur, and where interest lies, and have created triangles of optimal work, and I implement this when working with the women in my business.
I currently have a woman working for me whose previous experience includes being a floater at USPS as well as a liquor store clerk – she is in charge of business operations and onboarding clients – who knew those two previous jobs would give her transferable skills that allow her to be a leader in our business. Another woman was a shy and young mother who had taken on the role of educating her niece who was preparing for graduation. She was working towards a business degree she did not have the passion for because she thought that’s what she should do. I started sharing some hacks I had found in Canva and she turned into a social media designing superstar and her self confidence and knowledge just skyrocketed – enough so that she’s turned her knowledge into a second stream of income by creating and selling educational materials on TPT as well as being our head content creator for client content.
Showing women that their past 3, 5, 12, or more years of staying home and raising their children has not made them irrelevant to the workforce is so important to me. Most of our staff is blessed to not HAVE to be the sole breadwinner in the family, but working with The Relevant Resource has provided another avenue for each of them to know that they COULD be if that requirement ever happened, and knowing that you CAN do something is so empowering.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I entered the social media business completely by accident. I was a late social media adopter personally, and you’ll find, if you check our socials, I’m currently a “do as I say, not as I do” example. We spend SO MUCH time supporting our client’s social media needs and work that we don’t take the time away from our families to work on our own social media and we just haven’t made it a priority yet – but that is changing!
I call myself a relationship strategist because when I work with a client individually, my goal is to identify HOW my client relates to THEIR clients, and then we strategize how we can increase that relationship bond. It might sound weird, but few things get my goat as much as a realtor who completes a transaction with a client and then the client never hears from them again after closing day. That happened with our very first home purchase in 2004 and absolutely made me mad that I had spent so much money on the biggest transaction of my life and our realtor never reached out even by phone, text or email to check in and see how things were going, how were we settling in, NOTHING except wanting a review. I vowed that the next time we moved I would interview multiple realtors and pick someone I felt was invested in us as a family and wanted a relationship with us.
We ended up completing 3 transactions with this friend/Realtor before moving out of state, which was a bit of heartbreak for both of us as we had become close friends.
To be more concise we offer several services but most notably:
– content creation
– database management
– client relations management
– administrative support
– technical education
Our niche is currently real estate, however we have also worked with clients in television and counseling. We have found that client relationship management is a service that is transferable to any industry, and that’s where we really excel.
Our clients hire us to directly interact with their clients, as well as be their backbone to client communication and each client we have has very specific needs, desires, and requests, which we do our best to fulfill so that there is seamless communication between them and their clients.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
I have been managing teams for over 20 years both as an independent business owner with a team of freelancers, and in the public school setting. There are a couple of thoughts that are transferable to any business I have been in thus far and I lead by keeping these in mind:
1. I am never the smartest person in the room. I 100% believe this is true. Each person on my team brings something I CAN’T bring to the team, and if I act like I know it all they may not have the fortitude or self-confidence to share what they know. I recently made a pivotal change to the way I run business meetings…I don’t run them anymore. My business manager has taken over and she not only has kept us to the agenda, she’s shortened our meetings by over an hour. This gives us time back to our families since our meetings are held biweekly at 8pm.
2. Repetition encourages learning. I know everyone hated those math times table drills in school, but they were purposeful and I do occasionally need to know what 9×6 is off the top of my head. When you’re constantly doing something new you lose the skill you’re trying to build. I would love to launch 100 new products between now and the end of the year, but…we need to be really confident in what we’re doing now to ensure it’s the highest quality product for our client, so we’re going to refine it for several months before we move on to the next best thing.
3. Listen listen listen to your team. If they’re saying something you don’t agree with, that’s okay – but it doesn’t make what they’re saying less valid. If you trust your team and you value what they bring to the table, then believe them when they say something nice, and 100% believe them when they say something negative because it takes a lot of guts to provide criticism.
4. Be honest. It seems like such a silly thing to spout, but I have met a LOT of managers who aren’t honest with their staff and everyone suffers. The staff member may think everything is hunky dory only to find out that their manager has been dissatisfied for a long time when they get laid off. No one is benefitting from not having their feelings hurt and not improving their skills. I have coached men and women out of jobs on more than one occasion when I could see that they were struggling to stay engaged, struggling with the time commitment, and struggling with how to quit. You are doing no one any good by stringing them along when they aren’t making the cut.
5. Don’t keep people on your ship who aren’t rowing the same direction – even if they’re your friends. I truly believe business is business and work is work and if you can’t separate the two then you have some personal growth of your own to make.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
Always provide a little bit more. Provide it a little bit better. Provide better customer service. Long term we plan to provide an email drip to clients that includes some tips, tricks, and ways to do more DIY social content, and that’s what we’re building towards.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.therelevantresource.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/relevantrealtorllc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/relevantrealtor
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/therelevantresource/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RelevantRealtor/
Image Credits
Shannon Smith