Friends from Wild Places

Aligning People, Process, and Performance for Sustainable Growth

• Shireen Botha/Tanya Scotece ft Irma Parone • Season 5 • Episode 28

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Irma Parone, president of the Florida Speakers Association and strategic leadership consultant, shares how her family circumstances led her to leave corporate life and build a business that empowers organizations through alignment of people, processes, and performance. She reveals her leadership philosophy centered around creating environments where everyone understands the big picture and moves cohesively toward common goals.

Irma Parone


• Irma worked as a Regional Senior Vice President in the security industry before starting her own business
• She left corporate life to care for her mother who had dementia while continuing to serve clients 
• "One team on the same train moving in the same direction is a powerful force" is her guiding leadership principle
• She distinguishes between "happy" employees and truly engaged employees who understand their impact
• Her consultancy focuses on helping businesses identify what's most important to drive growth
• She helps clients with accountability, engagement, customer retention, and time management
• Her approach involves aligning strategic vision with day-to-day operations for maximum impact

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Voiceover:

Tales from the wild, stories from the heart. A journey into the mind and soul of fired up business professionals, where they share their vision for the future and hear from a different non-profit organization every month as they create awareness of their goals and their needs. Dive into a world of untamed passion as we join our host, Shireen Botha, for this month's episode of Friends from Wild Places.

Shireen Botha:

Awesome, awesome, welcome back. I am Shireen, your virtual boutique bookkeeper and QuickBooks advisor. Imagine a seamless partnership where CPAs can focus on delivering expert tax strategies and financial advice while we handle the intricate details of bookkeeping. Our Bookkeeping approach means personalized service, meticulous attention to detail and tailored solutions that enhance accuracy and efficiency. We ensure every transaction is tracked, every report is precise and every client feels valued. By collaborating with us, you gain a trusted ally that enhances your service offering, boosts your client satisfaction and frees up your time to focus on what you do best, which is empowering clients financially. So let's elevate your financial practice as well. Cpas, you want to know more? Go check me out at www. shireensbookkeeping. com and allow me to keep your books clean so you don't have to. Please welcome back listeners. You are listening to Friends from Wild Places with myself, shireen, your host and my amazing co-host, tanya. How are you doing, tanya? How are things on your side?

Tanya Scotece:

Good morning, good morning everybody, our listeners out there so super excited this morning for our guest. Things are, well you know, just finding my spark in the world and trying to spread glitter everywhere I go, so you never know who might pick it up.

Shireen Botha:

Yes, you do an amazing job of that, Tanya, and I'm so blessed to have you as my co-host on the show. Likewise. Likewise, Trini. Always great to have you. So won't you mind telling the listeners a little bit more about the subscription and the bonus content that we create for them?

Tanya Scotece:

Sure. So here at Friends from Wild Places we have podcasts. We disseminate it in all different modalities YouTube, spotify, apple and we also have a paid subscription and what that looks like for little is $5 a month US dollars. You can have some kind of diving deeper into subjects that we don't air on the actual podcast, special topics a little bit more intense. It's not edited, so it's just raw from the heart. So for as little as $5 a month, $60 per year, you can become a preferred subscriber and get any content that you want in addition to what you would like us to talk about. So maybe there's a specific. We've talked about body dysmorphia. We've talked about anxiety, depression, imposter syndrome, many of these topics that affect everybody day-to-day, even some lighter things, even just procrastination, right, how to kind of get out of our own way. So if there's anything that you would like to know more about with the paid subscription, you can do that. Just drop us a line and I'll turn it back over to you, shireen and thank you so much, tanya.

Shireen Botha:

Yeah, listeners, it's just $5. It's just to support us to be able to keep doing what we're doing, and we're also looking for sponsors. So any businesses out there that are keen to get their names mentioned on the podcast, please reach out to us as well. We'd be keen to have a good conversation with you. We've had some crazy and amazing guests on the show. If you have been listening for a while, you'd know that last month was Suicide Awareness Month and we had a great guest on the show sharing his story and we were able to just put a good hotline and helpline for those people that need it, experienced loss via someone that they had loved, that had decided to end their life in that method or way. So, yes, if you want to go listen to some more, we've got so many options. Go and check us out. Listen to a few different ones, we'd really appreciate you. So today we'd love to introduce our guest that's going to be on the next few episodes with us.

Shireen Botha:

Irma Perrone from Irma Group empowers organizations through strategic leadership, process optimization and performance excellence. They specialize in helping businesses elevate decision-making at all levels, enabling both leadership and employees to thrive. As a speaker, author and consultant and president of the Florida Speakers Association, oma Peron leads with a focus on sustainable growth, aligning people, processes and performance for measurable results. With over three decades of experience, irma drives organizations to achieve their full potential. Welcome on the show, irma. It's so good to have you here with us.

Irma Parone:

Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here and so excited to meet with both of you.

Shireen Botha:

Right, we thoroughly enjoy having powerful women on the show. I think it's really inspiring. As Tanya says, often, her adjective is inspire and I think it's a great way to inspire by getting other business owners, women business owners and entrepreneurs to come and share their stories. So, welcome again, listeners, you know that Tanya and I absolutely love true crime, right? We always start our podcast with just chatting about one of the latest cases that we've noticed that have been circulating. This has gone quiet, which is, I mean there's nothing really much else to say about the case because, um, the culprit ended up shooting himself and unaliving himself, so after he committed the crime. So, listeners, if you don't know what I'm talking about, the case of the sniper ambushing the Idaho firefighters Now, I love our firefighters. So this kind of was a very strange case for me If you don't know anything about it. Basic details. Strange case for me If you don't know anything about it. Basic details.

Shireen Botha:

A northwest Idaho community is still reading after a 20-year-old man was suspected of fatally shooting two firefighters and injuring another after intentionally starting a fire to ambush them. Battalion chiefs john morrison and frank j harwood were killed in the june 29 attack on canfield mountain. Firefighter engineer david tisdale, was seriously wounded and remains hospitalized. Authorities identified the suspect as Wes Rowley. The county sheriff, bob Norris, said it appeared he had been living out of his car and authorities did not know why he was even in the area to begin with. Rowley, who dreamed of becoming a firefighter himself, was found dead on the mountain from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound. So the big question, like everyone's asking, is who is this? Where's roly? You know what on earth? Um, and norris said roly grew up in an arborist family, telling reporters that the family climbed trees and arborist is a trained professional in the care and management of trees and woody plants. Interesting, we have reports that he was shooting at first responders via a tree.

Shireen Botha:

Court documents say that Rowley may have had a tumultuous childhood. In 2015, his mother, heather, sought in order of protection against her then husband and Roley's father, jason Roley. The documents allege that Jason Roley pushed her to the ground and made threatening remarks about waiting outside with a sniper rifle. So, long story short, it it sounds like he had quite a toxic environment, but authorities said the 20-year-old had ties to California, arizona and Idaho. It's really unclear to this day why he was even in that area to begin with. So again, ladies, my question to you and we won't spend much on the topic, but my question is what do you think was the motive behind this 20-year-old? Do you want to start Tanya? What do you think? What?

Tanya Scotece:

honestly, yeah, of course, you know, just a shame. You know, when it's like these senseless murders, senseless crimes, and from my perspective I think we have to go back to you know, I think there's just a lot of instability, mental illness. You know, you just don't know if people are just acting out a fantasy or something from whatever a dream. You know something that they saw, something that some person that they idolize that did something similar. So I, from me, hearing this and watching this, I, that's my takeaway. It's just, again, I think the real crux is the mental instability and, you know, unfortunately it happens.

Tanya Scotece:

It happens, you know, every time we're meeting, even for the podcast Shereen, it's like there's always some. You know senseless crime. It's like, you know, back in the day it was like an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, but now it's like these senseless crimes. People don't even know each other and they're taking one's life and it's not even a vendetta against a specific person. I'm not saying that that's the appropriate way to go about it either, but I'm just sharing. Sharing back in the day, even from biblical times, it was that where now it's just kind of it's random and you know everything from. You know school shooters or mass shootings. It's just, you know, at the end of the day I'm going to, I'm going to default to the mental illness aspect.

Shireen Botha:

Good one. That's interesting, irma, what do you?

Irma Parone:

think. So you know, I did a little research on this and what I remember I wish I could refresh my memory and just turn it on a little higher but I remember that he was fascinated with firefighters but there was no background that he was spoken to poorly by them or turned down or anything that would have made him hate the profession, would have made him hate the profession. So you know, I agree with Tanya. I think something just wasn't clicking. You know, mental illness is just insidious. I mean, it's just who could figure it out? Certainly not me. But how sad that there wasn't. I usually say, you know, there's a danger of a single story. You hear one piece of it and you make a decision. But with this one there just there has to be something else. Unless he just wasn't thinking but why was he going toward that profession so strange? I wish I could answer that. Yeah.

Shireen Botha:

Yeah, so strange, and you know the fact that he's always wanted to be a firefighter. But you know, the only two things I was thinking about is, honestly, it can either be he has originally a really a big problem with law enforcement and maybe that's initiated it, or the other thing is he actually has a personal issue with that specific fire department. Maybe there was someone in that group that he might have crossed paths with or something like that, some kind of a personal vendetta towards one of the members, maybe. But I mean, this is all speculation, right, ladies? I mean this is there's nothing. We there won't be any answers because he he unaligned himself, so no one's gonna know. But what's left is the family of these two firemen. Um, that's left behind and they won't ever have any answers as they continue living on their life, you know. So, as Tanya says, it's so senseless, and I mean the man himself. He's only 20 years old, so he had his entire life to live.

Irma Parone:

So I'm so sorry for the family and I yeah it's so, so senseless my grandson has joined a volunteer fire department, which scares the heck out of me. I'm proud of him, um, but yet I mean, you don't even think about this happening, right? You think about them going into this fire, right? You know, anything can happen, no matter what profession you're in.

Tanya Scotece:

So I'll just yeah at any time. Everyone yeah but, congratulations that's amazing on your grandson, that's amazing.

Irma Parone:

He's a wonderful kid.

Shireen Botha:

Love him to death yeah, I've always admired firefighters and the training that they've gone, gone, well, go through um, so that as a young girl I was like, oh, I wouldn't mind being a firefighter, I don't think I'd be able be able to be one um, as I grew up you know they're quite a um, I don't know you'd have to go through the training that I actually watched on YouTube. The firefighting training is quite hectic. You, you have to be very, very fit to be able to do and qualify to be.

Irma Parone:

Yeah, I dated a fireman and I said boy, you have, because they'd have, you know, like 24 hours on and then, or 48 hours long, I forget it was years ago and he said OK, come here. And I went there and he said pick up this fire hose. Well, it didn't even have water in it and I couldn't pick it up. I said, all right, backing off, not the job for me. Yeah, wow.

Shireen Botha:

Wow, insane, right. So, listeners, it's that time again. It's the quote of the day. We love this part of the show where we pick an inspiring quote to chat about, and Irma's actually shared one of hers that she said herself. So the quote today is one team on the same train moving in the same direction is a powerful force. So, irma, won't you share with the listeners and with us what that quote means to you and why?

Irma Parone:

Well, other people caught me saying that often so somebody turned it into a quote. But you know, when I work with organizations on their employees and helping them get everybody on the same team right, it's all about that If people aren't focused on the same thing and understand the big picture, then you have people running off in different directions and, from a big picture standpoint, how do you get them back in and pull them back in and make sure everybody understands and is committed and excited about going in the same direction? So I don't know it just kind of formed.

Shireen Botha:

I love that.

Shireen Botha:

I love that yeah, I mean it really. It's how do you? Okay, I've got to be growing up. I went and did quite a lot of these leadership, team building kinds of obstacle courses and I remember when I was heading into Matric, which is the last year of school, we went on a team building course, obstacle course like that, and they, the one day they made me team leader and I was.

Shireen Botha:

We had this mission to complete and before we began, I had to give everyone the basic idea of what we were going to do in the direction that we were going to head towards. What we were going to do first, who was going to do what, and I can't imagine not having that powwow first chatting to the team, letting everyone know what the intention was, and then, when it was go time, everyone knew what was going on. Everyone knew what they were going to do, what the game plan was, and we headed down the beach to put you know, the little log life raft together and if no one knew what they were doing and it was a go time, everyone would have run in all sorts of different directions. Um, some people were probably going for the same things and, you know, it would have been maybe a squabble or an argument about who was trying to do what. So, yeah, I actually. It's so important to everyone be on the same train, everyone understand what direction they're going into and have the same motivation and vision um to where you know we're gonna to end off and what we're reaching for. So that's such a good quote, irma, and I really appreciate you sharing that with us.

Shireen Botha:

So, before we begin, I just want to pop in with a little bit of a Buzzsprout ad here. So, as you know, friends From Wild Places is a place to share stories with other business owners and entrepreneurs and a safe space for them From all over the world. We feature non-profits every month to try and make a difference or give a helpline to someone in need. I wonder if any of you have a message you would like to share with the world. Or maybe you think it'll be fun to even just have a talk show and want to share your story online. So podcasting is an easy, inexpensive and fun way to expand this reach online for you. So to start your own podcast. Why don't you follow the link in the show notes this? This does let Buzzsprout know that we sent you and it helps support the show, so the team at Buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed. Irma, please tell us and the listeners a little bit about who you are and your background.

Irma Parone:

So I am a mother, a wife, a grandmother, an author, a speaker and a consultant and I have amazing friends and family and I am blessed beyond. I can't even tell you how blessed I am. My background for work I was in the security industry for many, many years and you're going to ask me later, I think, about why I started my business. But I was in industrial relations with one company and had no idea of what that even meant and they wanted me in it so bad that they sent me to Cornell. So I got a Cornell education to do it and my last job was as a regional vice president, a senior vice president, for a security company, before I started my business.

Shireen Botha:

Wow, many hats as well. That's amazing. So I ran the state of Florida for the company. Oh, okay, all right. So, ir, when that you said it, we're going to ask you. So when did you officially decide to become a business owner then? Well until that would be a better question. What triggered that?

Irma Parone:

what? Oh, that's an easy answer. So my mother mother, I'm in Florida, south Florida, and my mother was in Pittsburgh. My dad had died a few years before and she had dementia. So my brother I have one brother he was a little lost in how to handle it and called me one day because I kept flying up there to try to help and he said look, you've just got to take her. I said I'm honored to take her Fabulous mother. So I brought her down, I put her in a place three miles from me, but in my role I traveled all the time so she was so confused and one day I just thought I can't do this anymore.

Irma Parone:

So now I'm a person who only took three weeks off when I had a baby. So not working is not in my DNA. But I called my boss and said I'll give you whatever notice you need, but I got to go. So two months later I was officially unemployed and I spent time with my mother and I just couldn't not work, couldn't not work. It's a double or triple negative, I don't know. Um. And so I just I and I kept getting calls from my customers saying where are you? What are you doing? So I decided to start a business doing the piece of the work. I decided to start a business doing the piece of the. I was blessed to be able to spend time with my mother and work as I could on my schedule, and that's, that was the start of my business.

Shireen Botha:

That is so, yeah. Well, oma, since we're talking about your business, do you want to share a work with employers?

Irma Parone:

but I also work with individual singlepreneurs really focus on what's more important, what's most important to drive your business, and how you're focusing like a laser on those important things. Because, as a business owner, we have so many distractions, there are so many things we need to do and we need to know how to get resources. And I do have different resources that have the skills that I don't have, which is many that I could pull in. And then also I work on the people side of the business. So, strategically, how are you aligning those people? How are you making sure that you bring in the right people and then what you do with them and you know problem solving it's really helping people make the best decisions for the situation at hand.

Irma Parone:

So how do I handle an employee that's not engaged? You know people say I want happy employees. Well, a happy employee can be someone who's happy because you don't hold them accountable and they get paid right. They don't do what you want them to do, they do what they want to do and you still pay them. How do you get them to really see that by taking care of the customer, the employees and your bottom line is going to help elevate them. So really seeing the big picture and that's really, you know, accountability, engagement, customer retention, employee retention, time management really spending your time on what you need to do.

Tanya Scotece:

Tune in next week for part two from Friends from Wild Places.

Voiceover:

You've been listening to Friends from Wild Places with Shireen Botha. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast from the links to catch every episode and unleash your passion.

People on this episode

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Shireen Botha

Host
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Tanya Scotece

Co-host
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Irma Parone

Guest

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