Rewarding the Team with Agency Profit-Sharing Model - Sheila Burkett - S2 Episode #7

Sheila Burkett, an accomplished entrepreneur and technology expert, serves as the Founder and CEO of Spry Digital. With an impressive track record of over 35 years in the tech industry, she has emerged as a revered leader in the digital realm, empowering organizations to leverage technology for exponential growth. Sheila's guidance has propelled Spry Digital to become a trusted partner for clients spanning various sectors.

 

Discussion Points - 

Q1. What are your thoughts on Chat GPT? 2:35 Q2. What sort of myth or bogus strategy or misconception do you want to clear up? 7:16 Q3. How do you make the partnership work? How do you manage the friction? 8:14 Q4. What is your profit sharing model that you use internally with employees, can you talk us through a little bit? 13:43 Q5. What inspired you to have the profit-sharing model? 17:24 Q6. What does your agency specialize in? What is your superpower? 26:10 Q7. How do you manage when clients don't deliver? 29:07 Q8. Tell us a bit about your race car history. 32:37 Q9. What motivated your decision to shift from racing to agency? 36:26  Q10. Where do you get your learning about the industry and the agency space? 38:17 Q11. What's exciting you about the future? 40:43

Show notes - 

• As knowledge workers were going to have to solve the tougher problems. So what chat GPT will do is it will take the easier task away. So we're solving deeper, harder problems. 6:08
• We all run into the more diverse personalities and learning styles that you have, which is great. 12:40
• I wanted a mechanism where employees could not only be owners in the company and share in the profits of the company but have the ability to earn enough in that space to potentially buy me out and take over owning the company. 14:14
• We've been working for a couple of years to move to a very transparent base pay model. So every position will have a salary that everyone will know. So if you're a full-stack developer, this is your salary. And it's one number. It's not a range. So,I believe salary ranges continue to create inequitable positions. 19:56
• We always have taken a holistic view of that user experience, like since day one, we've always said, what is it that you're trying to achieve? And how do we help those people achieve it. 26:58
• We're not saying we're going to gain new leads, we're going to get quality leads that convert.
• If you're not aligned with their (clients) business goals, and you don't understand their drivers, sometimes teams can get off track with what the clients are achieving. 30:55
• I learned everything I could about building race cars. And we (Husband & her) both being technology geeks, decided to buy a Dyno, which is what measures horsepower in cars. And we started really working in that engine management system computer programming to change the way the system works. 34:55
• I became a part of Together Digital in 2017. And that is a community of women who let several agency owners mentor women, and now I mentor to women out of that group who are working to be agency owner. 39:10
• Chat GPT, I think that's pretty exciting to see what that will evolve into. And really, how do we leverage it for good? And control it from as the fear-mongering continues to happen of it's going to take the world over. 40:50

Myth Busted -  Starting a company with partners who are married to each other is a bad move. 

Links - 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaburkett/ 

Company website: https://sprydigital.com/