475 Shayna Norwood:

Today on our Mentoring Minisode of Wings of Inspired Business … we talk once more about coronavirus … and some of the things you can do right now. When entrepreneurs are confronted with crises, it spurs that part of our entrepreneurial DNA to look for solutions to problems. The task is to look for opportunities and inspiration – and massive action on the things we can control, rather than worry about what we cannot.

Here with us today to provide her insights and inspiration is …

Shayna Norwood.

Shayna founded her company, Steel Petal Press in 2011 to share beauty and humor with the world through her collection of handmade stationery. She is a professionally trained visual artist with a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and has been letterpress printing since 2004.

Shayna Norwood will be here with her advice in just a moment on our Mentoring Minisode and first …

With many of us now working from home for the foreseeable future as we practice social distancing to help slow the pace of the coronavirus, what a better time to use that extra time you have … to finally launch that podcast. I have a special group forming now – and the first 10 to sign up will get a 20% discount. Please email me at melinda@wingspodcast.com – that’s melinda@wingspodcast.com

And now to the inspiring Shayna Norwood.

Shayna is a professionally trained visual artist and soon found her true forte as an entrepreneur, founding her company, Steel Petal Press in 2011 to share beauty and humor with the world through her collection of handmade stationery.

Steel Petal Press has been featured in Proof to Product, Pop Sugar, BuzzFeed, Brit + Co, Refinery29, Southern Bride, Paper Crave, Oh So Beautiful Paper, Stationery Trends, Style Me Pretty, Brides, Inside Weddings, The Knot, Apartment Therapy, CBS News, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times and more.

Shayna shares today her fears about her team, half of which is out sick, and grappling with how she can best lead her team as they work from home. Plus how she and her company are coping with the Coronavirus crisis.

Melinda Wittstock:         Shayna, welcome to Wings.

Shayna Norwood:           Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m excited to talk to you as well and I like to always start our mentoring minisodes with what’s inspiring you right now.

Shayna Norwood:           Right now, I am inspired by the changing of the seasons. We’re going from winter to spring in Chicago, so there’s a lot more sunshine out. Then my pets, they’ve been going… I have a greeting card company and it’s all about kind of relationships and my cats have been sick, so kind of just really taking into account those things that you don’t necessarily appreciate and the little day to day stuff. Then just kind of growth and learning to be a better business owner and a manager. We have some changes going on in the business. Anytime I’m confronted with challenges, I really start to kind of… my wheels start turning and I start to get inspired by things.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. It is really nice though too, to take inspiration from outside and just enjoy ourselves through this ride because running a business isn’t easy. It’s not for the faint hearted. There’s all kinds of things beyond our control, like coronavirus or [crosstalk 00:01:25] things like that.

Shayna Norwood:           It’s been on my mind all morning. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         No, it really is because how do we operate, what do we do, what’s our responsibility? All these things, things that we can’t control. So there’s always something, not necessarily like this, but so look around you and to take inspiration from positive things is really, really important. I guess that’s a good segue into what’s challenging you right now in your business in life because we all have these, and I like to de-stigmatize that because failing or I like to call it failing forward or whatever and how we react to that as a really big predictor of our success. What are some of your challenges right now?

Shayna Norwood:           Well, as we’re talking about coronavirus, I just got a few text messages from my staff literally right before we started this call, that half of them are sick with the flu, which in any under normal circumstance would not as stressful, but with all the coronavirus stuff happening is definitely freaking me out right now. So I’m a teeny bit preoccupied with that. Yeah, that aside, we have some big changes going on with staffing in my shop right now and that is really just kind of onto people leaving, new people coming in, how to maintain company culture. Yeah, there’s a lot going on. Staffing has historically been a big issue for me, so that and in addition to everybody getting flu is just kind of the more immediate picture of the bigger picture too.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, it’s tricky. When you get to that point in your business where it’s really all about the team, it requires you to show up as a different person than you were when you were starting out and making that change and really understanding got to look after how to motivate, how to get the best team and all of that. That’s a challenge for everybody. What are some of the biggest things you’ve learned along the way in that?

Shayna Norwood:           Let’s see. Well, managing people takes up a lot of time. I would say I spend 50%. When I used to spend 50% of my time running the business, now I feel like it’s 50% managing people who help run the business. It definitely takes up a lot of time. Then with people specifically, everybody has a different way that they like to be managed and then everybody has a different component within the teams. Figuring out ways to kind of create it so people feel like they’re on a team and being supported has been really useful in that, but it is also complicated because it’s not as cut and dry as, “These are the numbers. This is this.” It’s very much individualized to different people.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. No, that’s really true. You can have all the great SOPs or standard operating procedures and systems and all that kind of stuff, but it’s still individual, everybody is motivated differently. So that’s really very important point. Along the way, if you had to distill down all your learnings into your top three pieces of advice for female founders and women in business, what would those three be?

Shayna Norwood:           The number one thing would be know your numbers. A lot of times, people go into it as a hobby or just trying to as a side hustle or whatever, but really if you want to be running a business and go from side hustle to business, you really have to look at your numbers. The next, I would say just find a group of peers that you can talk to. It can be kind of lonely being the boss and it’s just nice to have other people to bounce ideas off of or to get a different perspective. If anything is singular, it’s just good to get a lot of different input from different places. Then the third would be trust your gut. Once you have all the input and other opinions, really go with what you think is the best choice.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s super important. I know on the latter point, women, we tend to be quite coachable, right? But we can sometimes get over coached. So you want to listen to your mentors and coaches and whatnot, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to do what feels right in own body, your own gut or whatever. So that’s really, really good advice. Shayna, how can people find you and work with you?

Shayna Norwood:           We are at steelpedalpress.com and we also have a retail shop in Logan Square, Chicago. Then we sell greeting cards and other gift items online and then in over 300 stores around the country.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. Well, congratulations on all your progress with your company. It sounds amazing. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Shayna Norwood:           Yeah, thank you.