Leading with Legacy: How Karla Trotman Transformed Electrosoft

TRANSCRIPT

Kelly Meerbott

Y’all, it’s Kelly Meerbott, host of Hidden Human. I am so excited for you to listen to this episode with Karla Trotman, CEO of Electrosoft. Her accolades are way too long for me to list, but take it. Take a look at her LinkedIn profile. She’s also a mom, a wife, third generation entrepreneur and business owner. We cover everything from the EOS system to breaking down silos within an organization to being a woman in a male dominated field to our taste in chocolate. So take a listen, and here you go.

Let’s begin our conversation with Karla Trotman, mom, wife, business owner, and you know, according to Cecily Kellogg, my good and mutual friend of ours, you are just a badass lady, and I am so grateful that you are spending your time currency with us. Welcome, Karla!

Karla Trotman

Yeah, of course. 

Kelly Meerbott

So you’re a mom, and if you are going to explain to me as a 6-year-old child, in a way, I can understand what it is that you do, how would you explain that?

Karla Trotman

Um, I run a company that makes electronics for other companies. 

Kelly Meerbott

Okay great. So, but if, if they’re, you know, all these kids are digital native natives. Now, do your products show up in anything that they would use today?

Karla Trotman

No, I don’t, and that’s what makes it really hard to explain what I do. So I usually say to adults, well, I guess 6-year-olds too, if you open up any electronics device, you will see boards like a green board with parts in it, cables and wires running through it, or connecting power to it. And that’s what I build for other companies. They give me their drawings. They say, Hey, can you build these for us? And we do that, but we do not do it for like, consumer products. It’s mostly industrial and military defense products.

Kelly Meerbott

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, that’s another connection. My husband’s a 20-year veteran of the Navy, so we appreciate you helping our men and women in uniform. 

Karla Trotman

My husband was in the Air Force, though.

Kelly Meerbott

Oh, really. Oh my gosh. Okay, well, thank you for your service, 

And thank your husband for his service, 

Yeah yeah. Well, I always like to acknowledge the families, because I think they get forgotten a lot, and let’s, let’s be real. You and I, being active in that community, know that the military families are the necks that turn the active duty service members. 

Karla Trotman

Yeah, yeah. 

Kelly Meerbott

So, okay, what was it in your soul that called you to the work you’re doing today, Karla?

Karla Trotman

It is actually my family business that I took over, so I had no desire to actually work in manufacturing. I think college really prepares you. And even before college, high school says, you’re going to go to college so you can get a great job, so you can be in the C-suite. And so that’s what we’re programmed to do. And we don’t pay attention to the fact that most of the companies in the world are small business and family businesses. And we’ve really created a pipeline from school to corporate America. So I just really, yeah, I didn’t want to work for the business. It’s just because, again, I think I wanted this beautiful job in the city where I wore nice clothes and rode the train every day and just this amazing lifestyle. And it wasn’t until, like, you know, your your parents are like, Oh, it’d be great if you take over the family business. You’re like, never, but my life changed. You know, you get older, you have children, and then legacy starts to mean something working for people who don’t love you takes a toll on you, and you begin to see the possibilities of taking something that your family has created and taking it to the next level. So my passion became really about legacy and the fact that we were in an industry where you don’t see people of color, and you definitely don’t see a lot of women running and owning businesses in electronics manufacturing. 

Kelly Meerbott

Yeah, I was, I was curious about that, because, especially with what is going on on our national stage, you know, there has been a lot of rhetoric, old-school rhetoric, right, around “sleeping your way to the top.” Um, “let’s use black jobs,” you know, things like that. 

Karla Trotman

Diversity hires…

Kelly Meerbott

So, yeah, diversity hires. And it’s 2024, you know? I mean, I’m not shocked by it. Let’s be real about that. But it’s, it’s exhausting. And for you to be in such a male-dominated field, especially with the military, especially in manufacturing, how do you navigate that? Or, here’s a better question, how would you tell young women who look like you how to navigate it, how to prepare them for what the manufacturing landscape is like so that more women of color, more people of color, more under-represented communities enter manufacturing?

Karla Trotman

So I think that, because I was made aware of all the barriers ahead of time, and I’d seen them growing up, I wasn’t really turned off by it, it was just a challenge, a workaround, something you  had to figure out. And it’s not always a universal approach to it, so, for example, I was paying bills the other day and my dad’s old American Express business card came up, and I was like, I teased him, Why are you still paying this bill? You don’t even work there anymore. I’m sorry, that bill, I mean, I’ve been using that card, I should use that card to start the company. Which is a business no-no. In business school they tell you, use other people’s money, OPP, and he’s like, no one would give me a business loan, so we used our own money and we used credit cards to start the business. And that’s the story for a lot of people of color. 

So I even had an e-commerce store, and when I started that business, even with the logistics degree, working in supply chain for however many years, business plan, people really don’t give money to start-ups like that, and then I wasn’t in that environment to know about, really pitching for capital, or who to pitch to, so it was self-funded. And quite frankly a lot of people of color know they’re going to be rejected for bank loans, even when they have businesses, so they tend to not go for loans, so knowing that those barriers exist, I told myself and I tell other people, you’re probably going to have to go to more banks than you’d anticipated, and it’ll probably take a lot longer, and the rates may be a little higher — but it’s definitely possible, so be aware of what you’re up against. It’s just a challenge, but you know, basically a challenge is just to really see how badly you want it.

Kelly Meerbott

I don’t know if you saw, or you were at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women, when Shonda Rhimes interviewed Michelle Obama. Shonda Rhimes opened up as the morning keynote and I’ll never forget this, because I agree with what she said. And it was, People would ask me what obstacles did you face in Hollywood? And she said, you and I all know what they were asking is, What is it like to be a Black woman in Hollywood? And she said, And I didn’t really face obstacles because I didn’t go, this is an obstacle, I didn’t label it that, and I find that once you know the landscape but you don’t label it a challenge, it’s not a challenge, it just is. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?

Karla Trotman

Absolutely. If you allow someone to dictate “no” to you, and you’re like okay, you’re probably really just going to fail in general in business, because it’s a lot of no’s. So I never take it personally, I think that even people who don’t look like us, who are majority in this country for now, face barriers of wealth, just not the same. They definitely have a little more access. So no is just, it’s part of the journey.

Kelly Meerbott

I remember when I started coaching in 2009, one of my initial coaches, Steve Chandler, used to say, collect your no’s. Like for every 8 no’s you’re going to get 1 yes, so collect you’re no’s. He’s like, See how many no’s you can get in one day because what it becomes, you become desensitized to it. Right and you’re like um. Another coach of mine used to say, some will, some won’t, so what’s next?

Karla Trotman

It’s not even the people that  are against you. Even the people that are for you will sometimes tell you, like, Really? Are you really gonna do that? Or you seem real, you [inaudible] too much. You know, self-care. I believe in self-care but also believe that sometimes God plants this idea, this fire inside of you, and you have to go after it, no matter what. There’s something in you that forces you to go harder than those around you. And even if the people who love you are telling you no, and to slow down, it’s all well-meaning but you have to identify what you’re going after and not take no, or not really listen to people, who might have your best interests at heart to go after what you want.

Kelly Meerbott

When I started my business, my family was like, You’re doing what? Why?  But I don’t understand what you’re doing. I’m like, dad’s a professional athlete. Y’all should know what coaches are. Yeah, this is not well, well, what qualifies you as a coach? And you’re going to do this in the worst recession ever. And when people tell me that Karla, and I’m wondering if you have this, I feel like you have the same fire, but I’m not going to make any assumptions. But when people say no to me, I’m like, oh, okay, just grab your popcorn and watch what I’m going to do.

Karla Trotman

I want to pull up your LinkedIn feed with all the amazing things I’m about to do that you told me.

Kelly Meerbott

So do you mind me asking how many kids you have? 

Karla Trotman

I have two boys. They’re 18 and 16. I’m at that spot where everyone’s about to leave in about 23 months, not that I’m counting, but I think I count for the sake of all of us to be on the same page. If you leave this house, I will have another life outside of just being a mom. Now it’s time to refocus back on myself.

Kelly Meerbott

Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that significantly shaped your leadership style?

Karla Trotman

I bought my family out of this company in January of 2020.

Kelly Meerbott

So you’re hitting a world shutdown, right?

Karla Trotman

And you know, part of the transition was that, oh, this will be great. My dad will be here as my advisor, and it’ll be like training wheels. And he’s seen everything in the 30 plus years he’s run this business, and nobody had seen COVID. So I was like, you know, you want this company back, but I just made all this money for because, you know, I just bought my forever home, and all I saw was, like, in my mind, bankruptcy, living in a box with my kids and my dog, my husband, and what I realized was like, like, I always say to my friends, like, no one’s coming to save you, so you’re gonna have to figure it out. My husband has a corporate job, and all my friends do. 

I have a few entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial friends, and I’m in a CEO group, and at that point…and this is the group that when I wanted to join, my dad’s like, why do you need a group? This is the same man who joined a CEO group by a prestigious name and walked out because he’s like, I have better things to do than listen to other people’s problems, like he’s very much like a lone wolf. More of a group think. Let’s think this through. Am I thinking this correctly? 

Let’s use all of our resources. Let’s quicken that learning curve, like I’m not going to waste my time doing something someone else has already figured out. So that group, so leaning on that group. So that was my instinct, to still stay in the group, lean on that group, use my resources, identify, like, how do I want to communicate to the staff who has always been under the leadership of my father? Now I’m only like, I don’t know what to really say. So I’m telling them, This is what I know, this is what I don’t know, this is what we’re doing. And so that was consistent communication every week. And it was really like, I don’t want you to think you’re going to lose your job, because, you know, I don’t want anyone to lose their job. And thankfully, nobody did. 

We were able to keep everyone on, but being connected and really following my instincts in a way that I never did, like really digging deep. And it’s like when you’re on that cliff and you have nothing else to lose, your real self, like, shows up for you strong. And that’s and that’s what COVID really did for us. And there were times where our clients had pulled back and said, Oh, don’t ship yet because they didn’t want to pay for something that they weren’t going to use because their orders weren’t ready or being taken up by their clients. And I really had to think, like, okay, what can we do? We solve problems. 

So we shifted and started making face shields to help frontline workers, because we’re manufacturers, we fabricate. From there, we wound up somebody saying, Oh, you’re making face shields. Let us donate money. So we started getting money. And so when you start, like, leaning into those things, like, what can I do? Again, your real self shows up, and then miraculously, other people come and want to help, and that also helps keep the business running, and keeps cash flow coming in during that time period. 

So it was really, I think, once we got back on track, I really felt like there is nothing heck you can throw at me at this point that would make me feel like, like we were going to fail, like we did when COVID came.

Kelly Meerbott

Well too I think, two important points that I want to illuminate about what you just. Said was number, well three, actually, you know, I’m standing there in March or in February, like, oh, this has been a fun ride. I guess I’m going to be shuttering my doors. And then the military came along, and they were like, do you want to, do you want to coach and teach high-ranking officers about emotional intelligence and emotional well being? And I was like, Yup. So for me, it was the same thing. 

It was like, Okay, if COVID can’t kill us, nothing can. But one of the things I noticed was a lot of leaders calling on me to do webinars about how to stay calm when the world around you is falling. And one of the things I would say to them, which you did so beautifully, was, Don’t lie to your people and pretend you know what’s going on, because nobody does. And they were like, well, what do you want us to say to them? Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know. 

And you bond in the ambiguity, which you did so beautifully, right? And then the other story about pivoting to face shields is the other thing I kept talking about was, innovation doesn’t mean creating something brand new. It could be doing something new with something old. So bravo! I just think that’s amazing. 

So how, yeah, I mean, like, Cecily is right, she’s the, you’re the, like, the third intro of people that she’s had. She’s introduced to the podcast, and everybody’s been amazing, just amazing, so, you know, and that’s a reflection of who she is as an individual. So shout out to Cecily Kellogg for being a great human. And she’s probably cringing in the background because she doesn’t take, she doesn’t take compliments very well.

She doesn’t, she doesn’t, I don’t know why, because Cecily, for those of you who don’t know, is in charge of my brand. She does social media, she does marketing. She does high-level strategy. She’s just amazing.

Karla Trotman

She’s a legend, honestly, in that whole blogging space, like before, like we talk about social media, like that was social media before we knew what it was going to be called. No, she’s like a pioneer, but like, not in the old people sense.

Kelly Meerbott

In the digital landscape, because Cecily and I are just as an aside, and we’re kind of on the Cecily like mutual admiration society right now. But I was living in Norfolk, Virginia before we moved here, because my husband was stationed there. And we moved here in 2013 and I started following Cecily on Twitter, I think in 2010 and we started communicating then and now. You know, fast forward, she’s, she’s been working with us, well, on and off for almost 10 years, and she’s just awesome, but, and we love you, Cec, if you can’t tell. 

So how would you describe your leadership philosophy, and how would you say it’s evolved over time?

Karla Trotman

People always ask me that, and I just, I’m really about just treating people with common decency and respect and being in alignment with our strategy, the direction we’re going in. And I think that when I came into my family business, I realized we didn’t have some major cornerstones, which were, like core values, mission. 

I think once we went through that whole exercise of creating, like, This is who we are. This is where we’re going. This is how we treat one another. This is how you’ll be promoted. And put in a whole structure of equity where there’s like, banded salary, so like, women weren’t making less than men. This is what it takes to get to the next level. 

So it wasn’t so arbitrary, and it wasn’t, and I don’t say all these things to fault the amazing structure my father had built. I say that because, a lot of times, when you have a business for so long that you don’t really realize you’re really running a business. You’re so entrepreneurial, you’re wearing so many hats that you’re just trying to, like, pay the bills. You’re not thinking about, okay, you know, what are our core values? Like you know, it’s nice to have the touchy feely stuff, because we were at a stable position, I was able to come in as a businessperson and say, Okay, how do we take it to the next level? 

Sometimes that involves going backwards and saying, These are the things that we need to do in order to strengthen the business so that we can go next level, so that everyone has a swim lane, so no one’s stepping on one another’s feet, or people who are in alignment with how we’re going to treat one another, they need to leave when we need to get other people on the team that want to believe the things that we believe and go in the direction we want to go in. And I think once you do that, and maybe that is my leadership style of really trying to get things in place so that we can all treat one another as kind human beings and enjoy coming to work and feeling valued for the work that you do. 

I used to hate when people would feel so frustrated, like, what’s he doing? I’m supposed to be doing this. She’s supposed to be doing that. And that adds to, like, the whole angst. And it’s even being a leader. You’re like, Good lord, what do I have to know, I deal with this every day. I think once you put these things in place, it makes your leadership, it’s a calmer style that you have. I’m not a big yeller. I’m not. I’m about KPIs. I’m like, Why didn’t we meet this mark? Well, how can we fix that? You know, just like, like, a lot of business principles, really, yeah, so I don’t really. 

I think my style is just calm like, this is the way we’re going. This is the map. Let’s go.

Kelly Meerbott

It sounds collaborative too, because when you’re talking about this CEO group, you work well in collaboration with others. Is that fair to say?

Karla Trotman

But I still have that thing inside of me that’s planted in my mind, my soul, of where we’re headed, and I do need that support. But in the end, you know, all it is is advice. I have to pick the direction, and so I would say that I’m more decisive. I do take in collaboration, but I make the decisions.

Kelly Meerbott

I’m smiling because you are like the living embodiment of the ideal leader that I try to help my clients get to. Like I yeah, I mean, really, you know you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re saying all the right things, um, but I’m, I’m wondering, um, about a LinkedIn post that you posted. It was about, um, an unreasonable employee that left and then wanted to come back. Can you? Can you speak to that a little bit?

Karla Trotman

So in the post, I’d mentioned that employee worked for a while and asked to be in a particular role. They were given that role, and was frustrated in that role. And the way that we’ve reconfigured our management team is that, like I need to be more outward-facing and deal in sales and business development and the structure of the business, I have a Vice President who will now oversee all things internally, and then underneath him, there’s an actual Supervisor of people, and there’s other supervisors, like your quality or in just other areas. So be so before me, there’s like two different layers before you get to me, and that’s really because I want my people to be able to, you know, like I said, have their swim lanes and be over with like they don’t need me to jump over them and usurp their authority. This particular person wanted to quit, slid a note under my door, sent an email to other folks, saying, Thank you. It’s been great. You know, it’s been seven years. I’ve really learned a lot. Thank you. This is a not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. And the letter was beautifully written. It was definitely like one of chat gpts best and

Kelly Meerbott

Well done, sister, yeah.

Karla Trotman

Okay. And I didn’t go to talk to him. I just said, Hey, gonna be [inaudible] lane, make sure you do an exit interview. I’d love to know what’s going on. And he left the next scene, he emails us back, and he’s like, meet, particularly me, not anyone else. He didn’t want to talk to anybody about why he’s sleeping. He’s just, like, left. I was like, okay, that happens. Sends an email like, Hey, I want to be, can I talk to you? And this is like, two weeks after he quit. I’m busy. 

Like, I don’t, I don’t want to talk to anybody about anything, really, because we came here, the option, actually, before he left, I pulled him in, I forgot that part, and talked to him like, Hey, where are you going? Is there any way you can support you? Other people talked to him. He didn’t want to talk about where he was going and what he was doing. He said, I’m comfortable. I said, fine. 

So now listen, he wants to come back and talk. So when you’re no longer an employee in Electrosoft, you don’t get unfettered access to me in my work time because it’s not related to work. It’s like, in about three or four emails, and one of the supervisors, I guess, he called her, and she’s like, he really wants his job back. I said, Okay, well, you guys deal that would that’s your issue. If you want him back, then fine, but I’m not dealing with this, and I think part of it for me is that he’s a lovely person, so I’m not trying to be disparaging, though I was about ChatGPT. He really is just not a writer. But the point is that you have to sometimes divorce yourself from the emotional side. 

As a mother, I’m always trying to coddle people, even though I have young employees that like to take trains and ride bikes to get here on dangerous roads. And I’m like, No, this is the way that they’re going to do it. I’m not a mother, I’m a boss, I’m a manager, I’m an owner. And you sometimes I have to remind myself of these things and like, what is my role? What are my, what’s my job, what’s my duty? And I think what is different from me than my father? 

My father probably would have entertained the conversation and just said, Oh, give him his job back. But that wasn’t really my decision to make. It’s the production’s decision to make if they want to bring someone back in. And actually, the update is that they did bring him back in a different role. I don’t know what his salary is. I don’t know how it went. All I know is I walked in one day and he was back. I think what it has done for my staff is really let them know. Like, I don’t dictate how you decide to run for as long as you’re meeting the KPIs or operating the way that we should. 

I just want to make sure that the message that we send is consistent, like I’d said before, like, this is not a revolving door. It’s like one of those stores where you hit the bar, that’s a release bar, and then you can’t get back in because there’s no handle. But under certain circumstances, I guess you can allow people to come back in, but that’s for them to determine. 

Kelly Meerbott

First of all, I love that story. And you know what? I’m really there, there’s so many key points and nuggets. And if you’re at home listening to this, I hope you have your notebook out, because Karla is dropping some diamonds here. But first of all, the unfettered access you’re not, you’re not getting that once you leave, the fact that you trust your people, I don’t want to say below you, but levels bands below you to do their jobs. And when I say collaborative, I’m describing exactly what you’re talking about, where, yes, you will take in the information from other people, but at the end of the day, it’s your decision. You’re the tiebreaker of this stalemate, which is beautiful, but the other thing I’m hearing is, is how you broke down silos? So what I’m wondering, because I have a couple of clients that are struggling with this, what are some specific action steps that they could take at home to break down some silos in their organization?

Karla Trotman

I think it also is really about their leadership style. I think sometimes people who think that they’re a king, instead of just like a manager, I really look at myself as a manager of or a conductor of an orchestra, let’s say, and I just had to make sure that we can pay our bills and we can meet the needs of our customers and and really take the ego out of it. The ego is like, if, if we don’t pay our bills and we fail, that’s worse than any, that’s like the worst thing that you want to happen. For silos. I think that. I believe that everyone should. So I believe in meeting cadence. Okay, so when you have a meeting cadence with your team, they’re able to talk across the work that they’re doing. And it’s not that they’re just operating within their own business sector. 

So within electronics manufacturing, you have someone who manages the people. You have people who are managing the product. You have someone who’s managing quality, and the way that they report is that people who are manufacturing the product cannot have anything that they can’t be over quality. Quality has to sit by itself. And so it, while it is its own silo, we all work together to meet the needs of the customer. 

So our KPIs are, and the way that they are given bonuses at the end of the year, are relying upon one another. So you can’t be in a silo if you are in quality and you’re not working with the supervisor to make sure the material comes to quality, so that it can go out the door. So it’s a consistent conversation that they have. 

So we do Level 10 meetings, and that’s part of the EOS system.

Karla Trotman

We’re actually doing the scaling up, the scaling up and part of it why like scaling up We’re actually doing the scaling up, scaling up. And part of it, why like scaling up a little bit more than EOS, is that their strategy and scaling up the one page strategic plan is just like killer but there’s so many great tools in EOS, like the level 10 meeting, like the 15 five,and then you bring in a little bit of the I have the book on my shelf right now, and I’m like what it’s called Top grading, that allows you to do scorecards. 

On the scorecard, it tells you like, this is what winning at this job looks like. And in my company, you can’t win at your job just sitting in quality because you rely so much, so much, on the people that are doing the work. And when you have all of those things like, this is what our KPIs, this is what we need to hit as an organization, and this is how we win together. And you have everyone talking and figuring out the strategy on how we’re going to do it together, it really easily breaks down the silos, because they have no other choice but to work with one another, because everyone wants to do a good job. 

I honestly believe that. I believe that everyone wants to hit the goal. I believe that everyone, at least they should. I mean the ones that in my organization should. That’s why they were selected. So I think that another reason why silos happen is that sometimes you’re the wrong people there, and somebody wants to act like this is my domain, and no one else can tell me what to do, and this is how we’ve always done it, and we’re not trying to get better that maybe that person needs to leave because they are not really buying into the organization. They’ve really only bought into themselves just to give our audience some contacts that don’t.

Kelly Meerbott

In fact, I’ve got scaling up. I think it’s probably back there, actually on my bookshelf, I know. And of course, my little OCD mind is like, that’s not color coordinated. But can you give us a little context around what a level 10 meeting is. Just define it.

Karla Trotman

It means when we meet, we’re going to meet those or KPIs, old business, new business. It’s the same agenda, and everyone knows what they are in charge of bringing to this meeting. So it’s your dashboard, ours. This on time delivery. How units are, dollar value shipped. It’s like people you’re dealing with, what’s your rock? Your rock is like, you’re the thing you’re focusing on. And you know, it’s one thing you go through the whole year, and it’s like, How much money do we get? 

As opposed to being on top of every single week, knowing exactly where you are as it pertains to every KPI, according to how you’ve outlined it. And it’s so helpful, because if you don’t have that meeting cadence, and that’s the other thing, we never had meetings, my dad was a big meeting person. 

Meetings, if they’re meaningful, can really help the organization, and that’s what it created, that level tennis created for us. It allows people to talk where they normally wouldn’t talk. It starts out with good news, and it’s really a personal yet innocuous question, like, what’s going on in your life? I’ve asked people questions instead of good news, like, what was your first job? And it causes you to kind of laugh and then get to know one another better. So it’s a way to kind of break the ice for teams that really don’t work together. 

So I love the level 10 meeting for that 15 five is really like, it’s just kind of like an update of what’s going on, like a one on one, if you don’t have time to really meet. We kind of digitized it so that you can do it on a form, if I’m traveling, and at least let me know, like what’s going on. And it’s also almost like a stand up meeting. 

We believe in long meetings, and we’re even wasting time. We sell time as electronics manufacturers, because we don’t make products like they have a product. We sell our time of expertise to other companies. So if you’re sitting there in a meeting, you’re not getting anything out the door. So we try to make it meaningful. So that’s like, Okay, what happened? What’s the problem? How do we fix it? 

So there’s really great tools out there, and then the top grading that I mentioned has a scorecard, again, it tells you, gives you a KPI for a key process indicator, if I didn’t mention what that was before, for anyone who doesn’t know of how you’re doing as a company, so ours would be on time delivery, unit ship, units of the pipeline, things that are due, past due. And everyone that’s on my management team owns parts of those KPIs. Now. We own all of them, but some people drive them, and some people, um, hold them, and they’re in charge of that. So with a top greeting and a scorecard. You’re able to use that scorecard to not only rate how somebody’s doing in a job, because it’s like a red, yellow, green. So this is, you know, you don’t want me in the red, obviously yellow, as far as hitting your goals in your particular role, if it’s developing people, if it’s decreasing some type of quality issue that’s, you know, you set together those goals.

But there’s also personnel traits, professional traits that are red, yellow and green, red being it’s so hard to find them unless they’re an eight yellow with something that you kind of train green is like, definitely something to can help someone get to but what you want to do is use that same scorecard for when you’re trying to hire people, and you can definitely rate them against one another. 

So instead of, like, I really liked him, and it’s so arbitrary, like, know how to do the job, but he’s a nice person. We should bring him in. This really allows you to identify questions and do a behavior based interview on, like, give me an example of the time that you developed people. 

Kelly Meerbott

That’s a perfect explanation. And for anybody who wants to know further, just look up the EOS system. It’s really a great system, especially for entrepreneurs, like there’s, it’s structured, it’s guided. It doesn’t just focus on the tactical. There is the and we’ll use your words, because my dad would say the same thing, warm and fuzzy. And there’s a way. To kind of put metrics behind things that are intangible, the behaviors. So I highly recommend them. They’re amazing. But what I’m curious about Carla is, who are the leaders that have inspired and influenced you, and what lessons have you taken from them?

Karla Trotman

Most recently, a few years ago, I attended the Strategic Growth Forum. It’s eWise national Entrepreneur of the Year event. And on stage was Phyllis Newhouse. She’s the first black woman to take a company public via SPAC Special Purpose Acquisition Corp. It’s a different way and a faster way to instead of having an IPO, she decided, like, I’m going to take my company public via SPAC and do it in eight in 90 days. So she, like, raised $200 million over COVID, and in 89 days, rang the bell for her company going public. And she is absolutely fantastic. 

If you don’t know she has looked her up. She’s absolutely amazing. She worked for Colin Powell. She was in the army. She has a cyber security company. She does all these things. She’s all the things. And I had the opportunity to sit down with her while we were at the conference, and she gave me, like the gift of time. And what she did was she said, you need an advisory board. These are the five roles that you need. Boom, boom, boom. And she’s like, when are you gonna have this done? 

I said, Oh, okay, um, I’ll cue one. She’s like, I’ll give you 90 days. And so she gave me the gift of that, but she also gave me the gift of realizing, like, Don’t put it off, get it done. And my advisory board still meets to this day every quarter, and I’m so glad that she pushed that for me. 

Another person is Sam Johnson. He’s the number I can’t say. I feel like if I say three, it might be wrong, but of the Americas. He’s a vice chair of Americas for EY, and he said something when we recently had a talk. He said he was coaching someone, and the guy says, looks at his calendar, and he’s like, oh, yeah, we can do this day. He’s like, you’re looking at your calendar and I’m looking at my watch. And it’s always just like, you know, sometimes you keep seeing things like hearing things about time and time being of the essence, and don’t, don’t wait. And it’s like, you know, Alexander Hamilton, there’s a million things I haven’t done. And everyone was like, why are you writing like you’re running out of time? I was thinking about it this morning, and I said, you know, I just always feel like I’m running out of time. And people, how do you do so much? And it’s like I’ve got these people who do these amazing things, and I’m not even going fast enough for it. I also, as far as leadership, I’m in a group called the bow collective, and it’s black women business owners have over a million dollars in top line revenue. And it sounds like, oh, you know, whatever. But it’s like, the top zero, something percent of entrepreneurs, we were talking one day, and they were like, Yeah, well, my book is like, Oh well, when my book came out, oh yeah, my book. And I’m like, Oh, my God. I’m the only person in this group that has not written a book. I read a book. I did. How about that last year. I have a book coming out September 24. It’s supposed to have already been on Amazon this week, but it’s going to come. It’s called Dark, Dirty, and Dangerous. 

It tells the story of how my family got into manufacturing, the barriers we’ve had. And it’s also very like, focused on manufacturing of the future. Fact that the employees of the future are going to look like me, they’re going to be people of color, they’re going to be women, there’s going to be immigrants, and that we really need to focus on that. But again, I went down that journey because these women, all of them, collectively, are giants. To me. I aspire to be like I aspire to fit in with them and feel worthy of being around them. And it’s such a loving group where, you know, pick any one of them, and they are leaders in my heart and mind. 

I think of Madam CJ Walker. She’s the first female manufacturer, as far as my mind can go back, and she was a black woman millionaire back in the day. And I think, like she could do it during that time, where she can even open a bank account without a man’s signature, pick a person and and I can pick a situation. 

I have Marsha O’Connor. She runs the O’Connor group in the Philadelphia area, and she gave me my first, you know, glamorous job in the city, which is an intern. And she left her company and started an HR company that is in multiple cities. And she’s incredible, and she always takes time for me. She hired me when I was 18, and we’re connected today, as you know, contemporaries, but she’s just again really fast, like, come on, let’s do it. 

Let’s get it done. You got to hire this person. You got to do this. You have to have a bunch of workers. And I love how they push me. But my first mentor, my first leadership icon, with my grandmother, who ‘s 97 years old. She had a store slash restaurant in her community, in the suburbs of Philly. You have these like Bluebell has like a black section that’s Penland. Abington has crestmont, Glenside has North Hills, and she had this restaurant store in North Hills, and all the community would come and get food or get things that they need for their home, and I would see how she would deal with her customers, and everyone knew her name and and how she really was treated as a leader in the community. And really was my first example of customer service. 

And then my father, who’s not my grandmother’s child, but my my dad, having this company was an example of leadership in the sense of how you treat people. It’s like I’ve had kitchen table MBA my whole life, that I just see how other people treat them by example and that success model has just followed me, and I’ve been successful in it because I’ve had successful people teaching me and modeling that behavior.

Kelly Meerbott

What’s grandma’s name? Or I don’t know what you call her? What do you call her?

Karla Trotman

Well, I couldn’t say grandma, so it came out “Goggy”. Oh, I love Goggy, but her name is Shirley Scott.

Kelly Meerbott

Hi, Shirley Scott, thank you so much for helping your granddaughter. And what’s dad’s name?

Karla Trotman

Jim Wallace. 

Kelly Meerbott

Jim Wallace, okay, well, tell you what, both of you have formulated an incredible leader. 

So are you okay with some rapid fire questions, they’re easy. Okay, all right. 

So what’s your favorite comfort food? 

Karla Trotman

Like a really good chocolate chip cookie with ice cream on it. I don’t eat it often, but oh my gosh, like a hot chocolate chip cookie. 

Kelly Meerbott

I love that. I love that. Okay, what songs are on your playlist?

Karla Trotman

I think the last thing I downloaded was some Janet Jackson because I went to her concert, and then next week I’m going to Missy Elliot. So I was kind of like, re-listening to those songs right now and then Usher because, of course, just amazing. I went to his show in Vegas, and I didn’t even want to go. My girlfriends are like, we’re going, and I can’t like he’s been a constant on my playlist.

Kelly Meerbott

So if you could pick a theme song out of those three artists, what would you pick?

Karla Trotman

I think my theme song is probably something more like Jill Scott “Living Like Golden”. I love her, like I feel like I’ve been given this gift of entrepreneurship that is supposed to give you a little bit more flexibility. I have to remind myself that this life allows you to do more than just work.

Kelly Meerbott

I think humanity has been given a gift of you, and I won’t say that lightly, but you are an iconic leader, and I just can’t wait to witness what you’re going to do next. So last Rapid Fire question, what are you most grateful for at this moment right now?

Karla Trotman

Yes, now, I am grateful for the humidity protectant. I was just walking out with my dog, my hair. I felt like it was getting bigger and bigger, just like, Thank God for anti-humectant. 

Kelly Meerbott

Yes, and if you can, like, share that with me, because my hair is naturally curly, so this is not a great hair day. And like, when it’s really humid, and I grew up in South Florida, my hair looks literally like Tina Turner’s. It’s yeah, and I’m just like, why I just spent so much time blow drying. You. And straightening. But I love that. 

Okay, so if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, either to work with you and your organization, or to work with you within the organization, how would they do that? 

Karla Trotman

So you can go, if you want to get in contact with me, to the Electrosoft site. Go to Electrosoft inc.com, hopefully my website is up. Karla — with a K — Trotman: TROTMAN.com. You can also hit me on LinkedIn. Great.

Kelly Meerbott

Well, Karla, thank you. Thank you. You talked about time as currency, and I believe that that’s the most precious gift one human can give to another, and I’m so grateful. And thank you for your wisdom and your knowledge for our audience, because, you know, I mean, you’re literally a model of what it takes to get there. 

So thank you so much for that, and thank you to our audience for listening. It’s our intention here on Hidden Human to inspire you to go out and have authentic conversations to deepen the connections in your life. Thank you so much, and make it a great day.