Our social media manager Annika asked Sandra 5 interesting questions. If you want to find out how S.HE Business came about and what motivates Sandra, then keep reading!
Annika: What inspired you to found S.HE Business?
Sandra: I founded S.HE Business in 2004. What inspired me to do so? On one hand, the curiosity for more knowledge, and on the other hand, the connectivity “people, digitization & processes”. I was lucky enough to be able to help develop the first PLM system for the fashion industry in 2000. This was the starting point for many companies to focus on optimized design/development processes. In addition, the trend at the time was to introduce new ERP systems - the reorganization of IT structures was picking up speed.
When I founded S.HE Business, I lived in Oberfranken/Hof, right at the Czech border, and I was fascinated by the West bohemian “Bäderdreieck”. In my employment, after my first degree, I founded a company in Czech Republic. I opened my own stores there, maybe I even paved the way for the sale of today's outlet goods. I bought the women's clothing from the warehouse of my employer at the time and then sold them in Franzensbad, Marienbad and Karlsbad. Prague was added later, where I concentrated on marketing the first retail space and brought the first German companies to Wenceslas Square. A great time!
At this point, I had the idea that processes should be supported more digitally - that's how S.HE Business came into play. I founded S.HE Business with the aim of digitally supporting the design/development processes through to after-sales. It was clear to me from the start that the human factor would also play an immense role in establishing the change “benevolently”. In addition, my goal was to manage this balancing act in a constructive and value-related manner, which meant proceeding methodically. The success showed me that I was on the right track. Within the first two weeks after founding S.HE Business, I already had five well-known customers. At that time I had no marketing, nothing (!) - the word of mouth was gigantic!
To this day, these factors represent the essential basis of S.HE Business, and thus we have become the leading competence center in the areas of merging the factors Human & Processes & Digitization. To this day I am a fan of what we do and I look forward to continuously developing S.HE Business to meet the needs and challenges of my customers.
Annika: What values do you work by, what ist he motivation behind what you do on a daily basis?
Sandra: Authenticity. Openness. Success.
I want to inspire people not to stand still, to try out, to conquer the world inside and outside. I appreciate the constant exchange with my customers and the absolute trust they place in me. My motivation is to make progress, to achieve defined goals and to support my customers in their growth. I love to take responsibility, to lead people and to impart or pass on knowledge.
Annika: What is the best advice you have ever received?
Sandra: Honestly, my own experiences and intuition have brought me the furthest. To believe in yourself, not stopping to develop yourself. To stay curious! To be brave!
At that time there, personality development did not exist in the style as today through social media. You could do communications training and develop methodically, but it was different than it is today. At that time, I did a trainer training, Six Sigma, NLP, Scrum, and a lot more. I also completed a second degree. I used all the tools for myself, or rather, 'singled out' the ones that seemed useful to me in the moments. Over the years of experience and personal growth, I have learned to stay with myself and create structures. As a result, I can understand a lot in milliseconds (on an emotional and factual level), analyze, restructure, convey. Honest, open communication is very important to me. To take people with you on all those (project) trips, to 'pick up' employees, customers, to show new perspectives, to be creative and courageous. I have a feel for people and organizations. I am reorganizing organizations, hiring new employees, taking on processes rapidly and creating process changes - I can also scale everything with IT systems.
Annika: What skills were most valuable for you in your life and job, and why?
Sandra: Curiosity, moving on, reflection, learning, joy, positive vibes, goal setting, authenticity.
Curiosity: it is said that curiosity is one of the noblest motivations - a driver that keeps us going to discover the world.
Carry on: go on, straighten the crown when things don't go well. Don't give up, stick with it, improve!
Reflection: analyzing yourself: what went well, what didn't – act and celebrate successes too.
Learning: always staying on track out of intrinsic motivation (correlates, among other things, with curiosity)
Joy: what you do with all your heart, not (only) for financial reasons, success then comes (almost) by itself.
Positive vibes: smile a lot, have fun, show your customers what is possible with full conviction!
Objectives: they will help you stay focused.
Authenticity: be real, be yourself - either they like you or they don't - don't pretend and stand by yourself! - you radiate self-confidence with it!
Annika: Where do you see S.HE Business in 10 years?
Sandra: My goal is to further develop S.HE Business as a competence center - that means to support people in their further development, in areas of corporate development and change. What must or should be done to establish new processes and new organizational units in companies? What is the way to success? We are currently working on preparing our knowledge as coaching concepts (workbooks) and offering workshops and training. I look forward to this next step! Apart from that, I will also continue to work on making my knowledge scalable, share my knowledge with the companies and the people behind it. It stays exciting!