The Mother-Daughter “Business” Bond – Urban Enterprises’ Jill Brown & Shayne Walsey

SW:  Urban Enterprises is a promotional staffing agency.  We help companies implement and manage different promotions around metro Atlanta.  We’ve actually been in business for thirty years.  My mom, Jill Brown and my father owned a restaurant thirty years ago and they needed a way to drum up lunch traffic so my mom went door- to-door to the offices surrounding the restaurant with coupons trying to stimulate people to come over for lunch.

In the end the promotion worked so when they got out of the restaurant business my mom needed something to do with two small children so she went and sold that same service to other restaurants in the area.  So that same going door-to-door with coupons to some clients thirty years ago continued.   Some are still our clients today.  That includes Chick-fil-A and My Friend’s Place.  Before we branched into shopping malls one of our Chick-fil-A’s opened up in the new Perimeter Mall Food Court; I think that was twenty-four years ago and we started working with malls.

We were doing coupons with malls but we then started doing in-mall staffing and helping the malls run their in-mall promotions.  When I got involved in the company ten years ago I really enjoyed the staffing aspects of it.  That’s the area that I focused on and grew.  Today we have a very diversified business where half of it is still coupons for restaurants and shopping malls and the other half are in-mall promotions and staffing along with external promotions and staffing.

FM:  When you joined the business was it your idea or your mom’s idea?

SW:  The idea was to always come into the business.  I was supposed to do five years of other business experience first.  When I graduated from college with a marketing degree I got a job with a technology company and six months later the company went under.  This was at the end of the technology boom.  It was Christmas at the mall and my mom needed some help.  She offered me a job while I was working for another job.  In the end it  just was such a good fit  for me  that we both decided I could get that five years of experience with her rather than with another company.  It was always a goal but circumstances kind of set it up versus the original plan.

FM:  So you went to college with the idea of joining into the family business?

SW:  In the end, yes.  I mean I had always worked for my mom.  I started handling her payroll when I was in the fifth or sixth grade.  I worked for her during summer breaks and holidays.  So I’ve always been a part of the business.  The idea was to go and get other experience before coming into the business but that didn’t end up happening.

FM:  Do you have similar working styles?

SW:  I definitely am turning more and more into my mother everyday.  As far as our styles go I like formal business school education.  That definitely gave me tools to use in my ways of doing business.  I write very formally.  I learned how to do accounting and basic finance whereas my mom learned everything on her own and never got that formal business education.

While our styles are similar in that we have a good life-work balance and we have a lot of fun and we don’t get too stressed out, I have a different way of approaching things probably more formally than she does.

FM:  Would you consider your mom the more creative person or are you the more creative person and who is more nuts and bolts of the two?

SW:  I think creatively we’re pretty evenly matched.  Probably strongest for both of us is our problem solving abilities and out of the box ways of approaching projects or problems.  As far as nuts and bolts I’m definitely the IT expert or the more calculated one whereas she is more probably HR.  I guess she handles a lot of the HR aspects of what we do.  That’s because she has so much more experience with that than I do.   She also still does all of our bookkeeping.

FM:  What is the most important part to you working as a team?

SW:  I think with any working with a team is communication.  Up until three weeks ago we both worked remotely so email and text message and talking on the phone.  We had to be very in sync and very in touch to make things happen.  Sometimes things would fall through the cracks because we were working remotely.  But, now we have an office so we kind of tackled that.

I think for us and one of the challenges of a mother/daughter team is no matter what, even though she is my partner, she is also still my mom.  So, I might have a tendency to speak to her in a tone that I would never speak to a normal co-worker in because she’s my mom.  Because she’s my mom she might have a tendency to call me about something twelve times whereas you wouldn’t do that with a normal co-worker.

But, then the flip side of that is because she’s my mom I can count on her for anything and she can count on me for anything.  We have each other’s backs and we’re working for the same goal.  There’s no hidden agendas.  It’s all for the betterment of each other.  I couldn’t imagine working with somebody else because working with your mom, you know she’s got your back 110%.

FM:  If you have a difference of opinion regarding a project how do you come to a resolution?

SW:  Well, I became president of the company about three years ago so I have the ultimate say-so now.  We definitely debate things back and forth.  My father is extremely smart in business and we use him a lot as a sounding board when we have problems that we can’t figure out.

FM:  Is  your Dad a part of the business or just a sounding board?

SW:  He’s a sounding board and unofficial advisor.  He’s not on the payroll.  We joke around; we take him out to lunch.  I would think he would be the tie-breaker even though he has no actual connection to the company.

FM:  What is the best part of working as a mother/daughter team?

SW:  Like I said, you know that when working with your mom, at least with my mom, her only agenda is to make me happy and my life better so it’s all done unselfishly.  She only wants what’s best for our company because it will be the best for me in the end.  That’s the best part and it’s nice to work with your mom because when you’re having a bad day or when you know you just need that extra something my mom can give me a hug or tell me I’m beautiful or do the things a mom can do even though it’s in a work environment.

FM:  What do you think you have gained from working directly with your mom?

SW:  I think I have a keener understanding of the generational gap in the workplace because that’s something I deal with on a day-to-day basis.  In my promotions I staff those of my generation and my mom’s generation so I have a good understanding of how to work with people who are a little bit older.   Not to say I don’t get frustrated a little bit dealing with the generational gap and technology issues.  But, Ithink I have a keener understanding of working with people of all different ages.

FM:  Where do you see your business in ten years?

SW:  I’d like us to be in more cities than just Atlanta.  I’d like us to be able to tackle other southeastern cities.  We recently did a project in Athens, GA and we figured out how we could do it in a city where we didn’t live.  I’d like to grow geographically and have branches in other cities.   I’d like to still be small but be bigger at the same time.

FM:  What do you do to relax?

SW:  I hang out with my family.  My brother and his kids live here as well so we’re a family that has Sunday night dinners which is ironic considering I spend almost everyday with my mom.   We still get together on the weekends.  For example, yesterday my mom and I met for lunch and shopping even though we spend a lot of time at malls.  I spend time with my boyfriend and my friends; I like to go out to eat.  I like to watch movies, read books and travel as often as I can.

FM:  Can you offer advice to other mothers and daughters who may be considering a venture together?

SW:  Be patient.  Try to separate family issues from work issues.  Remember the whole point is to have fun.

Jill Brown, Mother

FM: Tell us about your business and how it got started?

JB:  Well, I guess it was about twenty-five years ago and my husband had a restaurant/bar.  He needed some marketing and we tried to think of something we could do to encourage office and business people to come to his restaurant and I put together a little coupon program.  There were a lot of offices around his restaurant so I went myself and hand-distributed coupons for our restaurant/bar to these office people which was a great way to get people to come in at lunch time.

Fast forward a few years later and I needed to get into business.  My husband ended up having to close his restaurant and even though the restaurant didn’t do well the idea of the coupon program worked really well so I went into business doing that.  I put a little packet together with different coupons for different restaurants in an area and hand-distributed these to office and business people and have continued over the years.

Shayne was helping every now and then.    We started working with different malls and food courts and we did coupon promotions for them, always going the real personalized hand distribution kind of Guerrilla Marketing into the offices.  When Shayne finished college she went to work for a different company and was working in the technology business.  It was when the technology business did well and then there was a big boom and she lost her job.  She said, “Mom, I may need a job,”  so she went in business with me and I made her commit to working with me for a year and she did.

That was like ten years ago and now she’s in charge and she’s gotten into customer service and staffing and we still do coupon promotions.  So that’s kind of very briefly how we got started.

FM:  Earlier in her interview she was telling me that even before college she used to work with you guys as a kid.  At what age did you involve her and were your other children involved as well?

JB:  It was pretty much just Shayne.  When she was in high school the Olympics came to Atlanta and one of our clients was Perimeter Mall and they wanted to do greeters throughout the Mall.  I was desperate finding people and I got Shayne to work and she was just great because she was young and pretty enthusiastic.  I know she liked doing it; I don’t think that she thought this was going to be her career but she would always pitch in when I needed the help.  I think maybe in the back of her mind she thought someday she’d work with me but she went to University of Michigan and she has a degree in business.  Honestly, I don’t think that was paramount on her mind when she finished school but I think she thought eventually she would help.

I have a son and he didn’t work with me.  She has really taken the business to a whole new level and you know she’s my boss!  I’ve passed on the torch.

FM:  You said you started this business twenty-five years ago.  So how did it feel to be a mother of young children and start a new business endeavor?

JB:  You know you just do what you have to do sometimes.   I was fortunate that I had an office at home and I was able to balance working with my family and it worked out really well.  I felt very fortunate over the years that I had something like this.  I mean it was a lot of hard work and I pretty much would do anything it took.  Over the years I hired more people to help do the distribution.  We worked with the printer and designer and stuff but it was a great business; it was fun for the most part.   We’ve had great clients and we’ve been really fortunate to have lasted all these years.

FM:  Did you sit down and structure your business or did it mostly evolve?

JB:  I think it evolved because once we had certain clients and mainly the malls, they knew we had really good people working for us so they’d call and say, “Hey, Jill we have this project; we need some people, can you staff this?”  And, I’d go, “Well, we’re not really in the staffing business but I’ll try.”  We would do market research and we would do secret shopping for them and we would have people as greeters.  When they had an event they’d call us to do things so it just kind of evolved with the changes but everything revolved around having a really good core group of people, really nice people and very customer service oriented.

FM:  Do you have similar working styles?

JB:  I think Shayne’s is probably a more professional style.  I think because she is more educated in business.  I probably learned as I went along but I think the main theme that runs through the two of us is we really care about people and we care about our employees.  We’re really picky about who we hire.  Generally, your gut feeling is the right feeling.  I think we look for the same thing; I just think that Shayne brings a stronger business acumen to the program than I do.

FM:  Who is more creative and who is more “nuts and bolts?”

JB:  She’s definitely more creative and she will try pretty much anything.  I’m more procedural oriented.

FM:  What is the most important part of working as a team?

JB:  I think it’s really important to respect the ideas of the other person and entertain different ideas.  The two of us work really well together.  I know it’s hard to believe that a mother and daughter can work well together.  We don’t get our feelings hurt.  I am very proud of her and very pleased that she is doing this.  There is no competition or anything like that.

FM:  If you have a difference of opinion regarding a project how do you come to a resolution?

JB:  She’s usually right, unless I feel really really strongly about it.  She’s so much more energetic now than I am after all this time.  I respect her.  She runs everything by me.  She keeps a lot of the small stuff but she runs things by me and she has done a great job.

FM:  What is the most challenging part of working as a mother/daughter team?

JB:  The most challenging is sometimes it’s  kind of embarassing. “Oh, this is my mother.”  When we go into a meeting oftentimes we say we are mother and daughter because people kind of think they see a familiarity between the two of us.  Sometimes it’s better just to clarify it at the beginning.  I think some people like that.  They are surprised that we are working together and I think they appreciate that.  They kind of think it’s a little funny.

FM:  What is the best part of working together as a mother/daughter team?

JB:  I get to spend time with my daughter and I’ve just really grown to respect her.  She’s a wonderful young woman and there’s a lot of pride there because I feel like maybe I had a small part in creating who she is.  It’s good.

FM:  What do you think you have gained from working directly with her?

JB:  I’ve just gained a wonderful relationship and the business has continued because there were times over the last maybe five to eight years I just didn’t really want to work that hard anymore.  I don’t really have to and the business is still going.  Because we had the basis for a good business and she’s just taken it up a notch.

FM:  Can you offer advice to other moms and daughters who may be considering a venture together?

JB:  Yes.  I think they need to sit down and kind of put it in outline.  They need to put their feelings on the table and say if something happens how are you going to react or you need to be sure that your feelings don’t get hurt or that we don’t offend each other.   I think if you get the ground rules done at the beginning that would really help.  As a parent you have to be able to let go, not say that you’re going to do it but really mean that you are going to do it.  I think it could also ruin a relationship.  This has really helped our relationship.