Building Community and Connection in Business with Sally Facinelli

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
So my dog's bedhead this morning is pretty crazy. He pops up in the bed like this, like bed otter, you know, with the head just coming straight up and looking around after I get up, and his fur is like everywhere. And then he is able to do that shake though. And you know, everything's kind of fine after that. I wish we could kind of do that shake in the morning ourselves, or we just start our day.

**Sally Facinelli** (0:39)
I always save some time for sure.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:42)
Yeah. Welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach joined by my co-host Mike Liwski. Today's episode centers on a business strategy that's often overlooked, but always impactful and that's genuine human connection. So whether you're building a global franchise or running a neighborhood business, the heart of success is often built around that connection and community. Mike, introduce our guest for today's conversation.

**Mike Liwski** (1:10)
Steve, I'm super excited to do that and looking forward to the conversation we're going to have today. So we're excited to welcome Sally Facinelli. She's the CEO of Salty Dawg Pet Salon.
And as you look at Sally's career, it really is a master class in entrepreneurship and values led franchising, which we would love to discuss here on this show. We know our followers love to learn about. And so what began with a love for pets has evolved now into a fast scaling national brand that's rooted in care for animals, customers and franchisees. So, Sally, we're so interested in hearing more about you and Salty Dawg. So welcome to the show.

**Sally Facinelli** (1:56)
Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here.

**Mike Liwski** (1:59)
Yes. And maybe, Sally, we'll just dive right in if it's okay with you.
How businesses, Stephen was sort of talking in the introduction about how businesses grow with empathy and community and purpose. So question for you, why is community building not just a differentiator? Do you feel but really a necessity when it comes to successful business today?

**Sally Facinelli** (2:27)
Yeah, I think it's huge. So one thing, first and foremost, I'm from the franchise world and it's really a community of entrepreneurs. So franchising is everything from McDonald's to us, an emerging brand. And it's all about a community. It's about people building trust, building loyalty. And to me, in general, everything starts with relationships. Those are key. Building strong relationships. And the relationships actually create trust. And create trust creates the community, right? And that's all anyone ever really wants is to be part of something, to be part of a community. And for a business, like communities, actually create loyal customers. And that's why they keep coming back. They want to feel like they're part of something. And they really want to feel like they're connected. Like products, services, like we're grooming, that's great. That all can be copied. But that trust that we build, that can't be built, rebuilt, you know, created by somebody else.

**Mike Liwski** (3:25)
Yeah, there was a great quote I actually stole from a mentor of mine. He would always remind us, you know, without a customer, we don't have a company. And so, yeah, very true.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:35)
Sally, when we talk about community, I think sometimes people think building community, it may be a picture like maybe nonprofits or something, or social group, or some kind of cause about that.
You know, but they don't really think sometimes about business. What do you think helps businesses to kind of think more about that community context, that they can be a community? How do you get there with businesses?

**Sally Facinelli** (4:03)
Yeah. So I think you have to start with a holistic approach. For us at Salty Dawg, we're grooming, you know, and some products and stuff like that too, but it's not about the grooming. It's about our mentality. It's all about humanization of the pet. So at a Salty Dawg, you know, and this is in everything we do. It's in every way that we do our business and every interaction that we have, whether it's a pet parent or pet or whatever. It's how we treat them and how we create that. So in general, when a pet parent walks into a Salty Dawg, they walk in on the right hand side, it's all glass. They can see what's happening with their pet at all times. The pet's never taken in the back room, held down and groomed really fast and coming back nervous. So we start with that, and then we also have this like give back mentality. Our franchise locations, we encourage them to really get involved in their local communities, whether it's at adoption events or their local shelter, their school fundraisers. But not just that, it could be like beer events or just local, like Intenitas on, I guess the 26th and 27th of April. This happens twice a year. We have like the streets all shut down and we have this big community event where there's a lot of vendors and things like that. So getting involved in those types of things, but creating that sense of belonging authentically though, they really authentically caring about the local community that you're involved in, I think that's really key.