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3 Keys for Your Journey
Business and Community Leaders sharing key principles.
3 Keys for Your Journey
Running Your Own Race: Strategies for Business Success and Balancing Family Life with Brittane Grant
Discover the inspiring journey of Brittane Grant, the driving force behind 5 East Consulting and Strategy. From her roots in Idabel, Oklahoma, Brittane has risen to become a leading business consultant in Oklahoma City. She joins us to share her passion for economic development and the vital role her company plays in helping businesses expand and access crucial resources. Through her story, Brittane reveals the significance of unwavering dedication, strategic thinking, and adaptability in achieving business success. We also explore the invaluable impact of mentorship and the necessity of maintaining focus amidst the noise of the entrepreneurial world. Learn how Brittane embodies the concept of running her own race and harnesses the power of a supportive community to stay on track.
Balancing the demands of business with motherhood is no small feat, and Brittane provides her personal insights into managing these dual roles effectively. With a focus on prioritizing family and being present at key family events, she shares the strategies she employs to ensure neither her professional ambitions nor family commitments are compromised. Brittane's experience highlights the importance of a supportive network, or "village," in juggling both worlds. Her story resonates with listeners striving for harmony between their personal lives and professional aspirations, offering practical advice on how to succeed in business while keeping family at the forefront.
Thank you for listening! YouTube - @3KeysforYourJourney -Tune in for a new episode every Sunday. Connect with us at www.ocfo.info
Are you ready to unlock your potential? Tune in to Three Keys for your Journey podcast, where business owners share invaluable insights and empowering strategies to guide you towards success. Based in Oklahoma City, our host, greg T Jones, will inspire and motivate you every week. Get ready to join our conversation as we build community together.
Speaker 2:All right, good afternoon, Brittany Grant.
Speaker 3:Good afternoon.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Hey, I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's awesome, you know, for our listening audience. Y'all don't know, but I know Brittany. I've been knowing Brittany for a while.
Speaker 3:I've been a long time.
Speaker 2:Ooh, going back, going back. I ain't that old, she sure ain't that old but we've been knowing each other for a long time. So so glad you're here with us on today. Three Keys for your Journey and just so that you know, for our listening audience, we have just launched our podcast and actually you are guest number two.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Come on now I feel so honored. Well, I'm glad to have you today and it's an honor to have you.
Speaker 3:So tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your business, so that we can learn a little bit about you. Okay, so I grew up in Idabel, oklahoma, so small town, country girl. The city's population is about 7,000 people. I graduated with about 96 people in my class, so I moved to Oklahoma City to go to college, went to UCO University of Central Oklahoma, got my degree in business administration Soon after got my MBA and then went back to OU for their program for economic development, and so ever since then I have just been trucking along with economic development. And here comes Five East Consulting and Strategy.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, Five East Consulting. Tell us a little bit about Five East.
Speaker 3:So, five East Consulting, we foster an economic development environment of trying to help businesses scale, to connect them to resources, to really understand what their business can do and how we can help them. Like, how are we connecting them to community? How are we connecting them to resources? What is economic development? A lot of small businesses don't know what they don't know For entrepreneurs. You have an idea of something that you want to start, but you don't know the know-how, and so 5 East is there to help you do that.
Speaker 2:Wow, well, we need more 5 East around this country. So the title of our podcast is Three Keys for your Journey, and what I've been asking business owners is to share with us, whether it be values or things that they deem important as they think about. You know really those keys to success. What are your three keys?
Speaker 3:so my three keys are going to be dedication, strategy and adaptability wow, what's the first one?
Speaker 2:dedication, dedication. Tell me about that. What do you mean when you say dedication?
Speaker 3:so so it's kind of how I mentioned before, like you have an idea of, you know kind of what you want to start. Some people are like, oh, I can cook really well, but they don't know the resources and the strategy behind business. And so when you start your own business, you have to be dedicated to all facets of what that business is. And so a lot of people feel like, oh, when I start my own business, I'm just going to work a certain amount of hours. I get to choose my hours, which is true, but in the beginning you're working probably more than that nine to five. I can guarantee that you're working more hours than that nine to five, that you have left corporate America. You're working from sunup to sundown. If you're dedicated to your business and it requires you to have that amount of dedication for your business to be successful, so dedication is absolutely necessary for your business to be able to succeed.
Speaker 2:And I'm just curious how does one build fortitude to become dedicated?
Speaker 3:build fortitude to become dedicated. You know I have a lot of um. I think it it's, it's within you. So if you know that you want your business to succeed, like your work ethic behind that. But you ought to have a community around you too. So you have to have mentors that are that are able to tell you, like, what you doing right, what you're doing wrong, to be able to bounce some ideas off of. I had a great mentor tell me to run my own race.
Speaker 2:I wonder who that was.
Speaker 3:I wonder, I wonder who that was Run your own race.
Speaker 3:And it was such a defining moment for me because I could apply that to almost everything in my life. It was don't worry about who's on your left or who's on your right, because what's for you will be and you'll get to your destination, your finish line, when you're supposed to. So, a lot of the times, I got a new vehicle this is kind of off topic, but I got a new car and in my car, if I just go over that little median line or go over the next lane without turning my signal on, my seat vibrates and it's like you know what. I got to stay in my own lane because I'm not supposed to be over here, I'm not supposed to be to the left or to the right, but if I don't put on my signal to say, hey, I'm switching over this is the adaptability piece that we'll talk about If I'm not telling myself and intentionally saying I'm switching over to this other lane because now, this is where I'm supposed to be. Stay in your lane, because that's what's meant for you.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot to be said about that because, also, I heard what you just talked about guardrails and I think, as business owners, we need people in our lives that can be sometimes those guardrails. So sometimes you know, when situations veer us to the right or to the left, you need people in your life that really care about you to say that, hey, what, straighten up, get back, get focused. Sometimes it's just getting unfocused and you start to drift. Um, we call that scope creep. You know you work on a project and this is what I agree to do, but I'm also doing all these other things and we call it scope creeping and sometimes you need somebody just to kind of get you back real lines that's awesome, like okay, so all right.
Speaker 3:So I'm anticipating tell us about the second one, our strategy, so kind of aligning with staying in your own lane. You have to know where you want to go, so you have to set milestones. You've got to set deliverables that are specifically aligned with your vision for your company and your business. So if you don't know where that's going, if you don't have forecasted like numbers that you want to reach, milestones that you want to set for your business, like you're just kind of out here blindly. You know creating your business and not really knowing, Like sometimes you're really good at a craft but again you don't know the business piece. You don't know to forecast for the next five years for how much money you want to bring in. And that sets goals for you to say, okay, for this year we said I'm going to make $100,000. And how do you get to that $100,000? Like, what milestones are you setting to get to that that place?
Speaker 3:And so you really have to understand what your strategy is. If you have marketing strategy, if you're a service based, you know business or you have products like, how are you marketing yourself? Who is your target market? Who do you want to serve? Like, who does your business serve? And so understanding and finding out what that looks like where, where you're located also matters, and so that's the economic development piece, Like where is your business located and what services, Like you know. So, are people seeing? Are they driving? Do you have a brick and mortar? Are people seeing your business? So understanding what your strategy is in your industry makes a big difference.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That just makes it so clear that, in other words, I bet you're talking about your business.
Speaker 3:You really got to be able to receive that constructive criticism and to understand that, yes, you have this business idea, but for it to be able to be successful, you've got to be able to adapt. The economy changes, prices go up. Your customer also has to be able to understand that you have to be able to adapt and so that may either trickle down to them. You have to understand how to communicate that, like there's things that you just have to be able to move and to, to shake a little bit with, just adapting to the changes that are inevitable, that are going to hit your business.
Speaker 2:So, and when you say that being adaptable, you know it makes me think about what is that? Is a little lizard, is chameleon, what do they call a little lizard or that changes colors?
Speaker 3:I can't think of what they call it. It's like a lizard, a chameleon that changes colors.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like you have to understand the environment that you're in, whether you're in a boardroom, whether you're talking to your team, whether you're talking to people in the community, whether you're talking to people in the community, whether you're talking to a CEO, whether you're talking to a neighbor, and you have to adapt your approach and the way that you communicate to them, so that, number one, you stay professional, but you are talking their language.
Speaker 3:Is that what?
Speaker 2:you, would you agree with that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. You've got to know your audience again. So being able to adapt whether it's adapting your product, whether it's, you know, depending on what type of what industry you're in you you've got to adapt because there's going to be things that change all the time and so if you're just complacent and very, you know, like unwilling to change, that's that's going to pose a problem in your business, and so being able to adapt is going to be a key. Wow.
Speaker 2:Wow, I'm taking a deep breath because this has been this has been a great conversation so far. So I do this with all my guests. You know, I throw out a word, you know, and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind Okay, your word is waterfall.
Speaker 3:You know, let's see Waterfall. How do I consistently have blessings? I think blessings kind of come to mind when I'm thinking about waterfalls, because you want it to rain down on me Is that a song or something it is.
Speaker 2:It is rain down on me.
Speaker 1:You want to keep the water flowing, flowing is that what you're trying to say keep the water, keep the river flowing, keep it flowing. You don't want to get dried up overflowing.
Speaker 3:Let it overflow, that's what I want.
Speaker 2:Oh, this has been awesome. I appreciate you entertaining me to answer that particular question. I I always try to get. I get just with something you know. One word Okay, people need to know how to get in contact with you. I mean, what? What's the best way? Five East, uh consulting is doing great things, but how can people locate you? Find you all that good stuff?
Speaker 3:So I would love for you to go to my website. It is five East consultingnet and there is a contact us page. You can also reach me at my cell phone. You can text or call. Four zero five, five, three, two, two, five zero eight.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well again, brittany grant, thank you for being with us today. This has been an absolute pleasure. Again, five east consulting is ready to service your needs and I really appreciate you bringing Three Keys. Tell us a little bit about and you've got three, and I know this okay. You've got three wonderful kids that are doing very well. We say kids, but one of them is almost an adult now. But tell me, as you think about being a business owner and a mom, how do you do?
Speaker 3:it all. I mean, it's really time management. It's combining a passion and something that I. My passion being my business and then being a mom. There's nothing like being a mother, and so you just got to make time for it. My kids and my family come before work and I make that a very. That's something that I live by with my work. I work hard, I work long hours, but when my kids have a game, when my kids need me, when there's an event that happens, I am there, and if I am cannot just cannot physically make it my village shows up. I feel like that's so important.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for sharing that. I thought it was important because not only are you a prominent business owner and community leader, but also you're a mother that loves her family and shows up for them as well. So we appreciate you having you on the show today and thank you again. So much, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining Three Keys for your Journey. Tune in next time for another episode.
