Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leslie Kohlmeyer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Leslie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?

I have been very lucky to have had great leaders. I still keep in touch with at least four of my former bosses. I have had great role models in this aspect of life. Learning how to lead by example, to dig in and do the work alongside those I employ, and give constant and constructive feedback are a few examples of things I have learned. Never ask anyone to do a job, you wouldn’t do. Never give only criticism, always offer just as many compliments. Lead by example, be the type of employee that you want to have and to hire. Be clear with expectations and with feedback. Delegate work instead of micromanaging. You can’t do it all and you have hired great people, so let them do what they are good at. Being a good boss is something I constantly work at and never stop trying to grow in.

Leslie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Show Me KC Schools is a non-profit whose mission is to help families make well informed decisions about their child’s education by providing them with all the information they need. We are working with students and families to help them understand their options and get the things out of their educational institutions that they need and want. We should all have access to high quality education that serves our students. We are just trying to make things more accessible. We have three guiding principles: #1 Is it transparent? #2 Is it equitable? #3 Does it work for families. If we can’t answer YES to all three of those things we either do not do it or we change the way we do it.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As a non-profit organization we are grant funded. That means that I spend about 85% of my day trying to get in touch with funders, reporting on grants we have already received, and trying to build relationships with new potential donors. While this is rewarding work. I’d much rather be in service to a mom who needs help, or a high schooler who is afraid of not graduating. So I set out over a year ago on a journey to create funding streams for our organization that allow us to bring in our own dollars to support the work we do. This has taken many iterations, but today we are about to launch a new website that will, by the third year of operations, fund over half of our operating budget. I am super excited to embark on this new social venture and honest also scared to my wits end! Wish me luck!

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We are using a Shopify site to host this new venture. It will be called Show Me Spirit and will provide made to order and direct ship spirit wear for many of the schools that we work with in Kansas City. Ordering spirit wear, as a parent was always frustrating because you have to order at the beginning of the school year or miss out. You have to write a check (who has those anymore?) You have to send it to school in your kids back pack and hope for the best. Then you have to wait for its arrival for weeks on end. The school has to make bulk purchases, sometimes having overstock on hand that they lose money on. This whole process was not modern and not user friendly. We saw a better way and an opportunity to support the charitable work we do. We also we keenly aware that we did not want to cut off fundraising sources for schools. So we have build in a 25% kick back for every order. We wanted to make it easy while still profitable for all parties. We think we have a great plan in place and we hope to launch in late November. Keep your eyes on us!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://showmekcschools.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/showmekcschools/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/showmekcschools
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/15288335/admin/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShowMeKCSchools