Alignment, Vision, Action with Laurel K. Rutledge - EP 024

 

Join us for an inspiring episode with Laurel K. Rutledge, a seasoned business and strategy consultant who shares her journey from the corporate world to launching her own successful business. Laurel emphasizes the importance of aligning vision with action to build thriving businesses and teams. She talks about leading with both heart and head, setting clear expectations, and managing people effectively. 

In this episode, she discusses the significance of recognizing your unique skills as an entrepreneur and how corporate experience can be a valuable asset in building a business, as well as the importance of choosing a business model that aligns with your personal strengths and preferences.

Laurel also shares her wisdom on the value of hiring the right team and making strategic decisions for growth. We conclude this episode by emphasizing how crucial it is to align with your values and goals for making informed decisions.

Don't miss this episode filled with practical advice and inspiring insights to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. Tune in now!

 

Takeaways

• Alignment, vision, and action are key to building successful businesses and cultures.
• Entrepreneurs should lead with their hearts but act with their heads, setting clear expectations and managing people effectively.
• Women-owned businesses have the power to make a significant impact on communities and should strive for financial success.
• Align your business model with your personal preferences and strengths, rather than following trends or societal expectations.
• Reframe sales as an opportunity to serve and provide value to potential clients.
• When building a team, invest in proper training and set clear expectations to ensure success and avoid misunderstandings.
• Invest in the right areas and think bigger to reach your financial goals.
• Have a clear business strategy and be discerning when seeking advice and support.
• Align your decisions with your values and goals to make informed choices.

 

Episode Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Laurel K. Rutledge

03:38 - Career Journey: From Accounting to HR

08:08 - Leaving Corporate and Starting a Business

11:39 - Identifying Entrepreneurs Who Want to Build the Right Business

15:08 - Balancing Heart and Head in Business

21:24 - Soft Skills and Hard Skills in Business

24:55 - Thinking Big and Embracing Your Own Experience

25:31 - Embracing Your Unique Path as an Entrepreneur

30:40 - Aligning Your Business Model with Your Strengths

34:10 - Reframing Sales as an Opportunity to Serve

41:40 - Building and Managing a Successful Team

46:55 - Choosing Between Full-Time Employment and Consulting

52:20 - Thinking Bigger and Investing for Financial Goals

56:18 - The Importance of a Clear Business Strategy

01:02:02 - Being Discerning and Aligned in Decision-Making

 

Connect with Laurel K. Rutledge:

Website: https://laurelrutledge.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/laurel.k.rutledge

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/laurel-k-rutledge/

If you’re ready to have a deeper conversation about how to maximize impact, profit and pleasure in your business and life, you can schedule a time to connect with me right here >>> 

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Episode Transcript

 

Rachel (00:12.453)

Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. I'm your host, Rachel Anzalone, Satisfaction Strategist. My guest today is someone that I've had the pleasure of knowing and watching grow in her entrepreneurial venture for I think about six years. She'll correct me, I'm sure, if I'm off there. She's wise and experienced and has such a depth and breadth of knowledge to share with us.

And she also is just really a joy to be around, which is how we just spent 20 minutes chit chatting before we hit record here. So meet Laurel K. Rutledge, your Chief Navigation Officer. Laurel is not your average coach. She's a business and organizational strategy consultant and advisor with some super deep coaching mixed in there. With a background in accounting, consulting, risk management and HR, a whole bunch of stuff that most of the entrepreneurs that I know don't have experience in and need some support in. Across multiple industries, Laurel brings the secret sauce for her successful business owners. Holding a myriad of professional certifications, she's a graduate from the Center for Houston's Future Business and Civic Leadership Forum and a member of the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center's milestone circles. 

Laurel is intent upon using her expertise to help women business owners step into their CEO energy and build the businesses and cultures they wish to work in. I love that. The key to success is Laurel's Alignment Vision Action models. We're going to talk about that based in her nearly 30 years of corporate experience. It's the framework for connecting strategies to intentional actions leading to expected outcomes. 

As both her entrepreneur and corporate clients will attest, whether you're building a business, a career or a life, alignment, vision and action is the key. Welcome to Pleasure and Profits. Laurel, I'm so excited that you're here.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (02:22.83)

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited, Rachel. When I got your note, I'm like, say less. I'm absolutely willing to be on the podcast. So thank you for the invitation.

 

Rachel (02:32.177)

It's just a joy to connect with you after periods of time. We've sort of done this over the years. I do think it's been about six years. I think I was looking, digging a little deeper into your LinkedIn profile and you started your business in 2017. And I think we met probably in 2018.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (02:49.358)

Yep, we did. And actually I started the business in 2017 legally, but I actually started working on the business in 2018. So we met in that first year. Yeah. 

 

Rachel (02:58.865)

Wow, that's incredible to think about. And so we've crossed paths every handful of years since then. And so I've really gotten to see the evolution of what you're creating and some of the different paths that you've gone down. And so we'll dig into that. But first, I would love to know, you have this incredible background in human resources, risk management. Most of us don't even know what that is. And accounting, sort of these areas that a lot of entrepreneurs don't have experience in. And so I'm really curious what spurred you down that career path and then what was it that made you decide to leave that career and start your own business?

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (03:38.382)

You know, that's a great question. And I look back at my career and I could not have planned it. Essentially, I just went where the opportunity was. So I wanted to be a psychologist when I was in undergrad and my dad was like, ‘Honey, I love you so much, but you got to get a job when you get out of school.’ 

 

Rachel (03:56.657)

Hahaha

That is a familiar story.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (04:07.79)

And so therefore accounting, right? I didn't hate it. I was pretty good at it. Exactly. And so I did, I did the accounting for a while and realized that doing the same thing every month was just killing me. And I had the opportunity to do some internal audit during that first, you know, a couple of jobs. I went to grad school, decided I'm going to do operations and international business because I wanted to be functionally fluent in Spanish by the time I left grad school and finished it in Spain. And then I wound up going into internal audit, which for anyone listening, if you're not an entrepreneur and you have kids who are thinking about what they want to do, internal audit is a great way to go. Cause you get to see all of the pieces of the business. So just sidebar. 

 

Rachel (04:37.009)

So what is that? Tell us what that is because I don't know that I really understand.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (04:39.086)

Sure, so internal audit, if you think about auditors, so like your big, like Anderson's, Deloitte's, all of that, that audit financial statements, internal audit are the people that are really more operational. So they do some of the same work, looking at the financials, making sure things are compliant, making sure things are running, but it's almost like an internal consulting business inside of a firm. And so you get to see all of the operations and you don't just look at financials, you actually look at processes and good internal audit departments actually become those internal consultants and are part of the decision making process, are part of process design. It's actually a pretty cool place to be when you first get in an organization. 

 

Rachel (05:20.049)

Yeah, that's super, super interesting. And I didn't realize that that's what that encompassed. And now I look back and realize I worked for small companies and I did that in different capacities at different companies because I just had that perspective where I could like walk into an, you know, a piece of the organization and go, ‘But couldn't this be done differently? And why are we spending money on that? And how efficient it's what's happening over here.’ And so if you're a person who kind of has that ability to see the bigger picture and ask meaningful questions, that could be a really powerful position or powerful opportunity.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (05:54.606)

Yes, very powerful. And I tell people all the time, don't sleep on internal audit. It's not just your buttoned up accountants, right? It really is internal strategists when it's done well, right? So I did that for a while. And when my dad passed away, I was like, you know, I gotta go. Cause I was about to move to Puerto Rico and all these things like, I need to get back to Texas. And I wound up going to Deloitte and that's where the risk management comes from. 

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (06:19.726)

So right after the Enron debacle and all of that. There was this thing called Sarbanes-Oxley, which was making sure that financial statements were real and that processes were real and all those things. And so this, imagine that, right? That the money is real money. And this thing called enterprise risk management was formed and actually Deloitte was on the cutting edge of that. And it really is looking at risk management as what is anything and everything that can get in the way of achieving your objectives. So it's not just insurance. 

So you can avoid a risk. You can manage a risk. You can mitigate a risk, all of those. And so risk can be financial, but it can also be reputational, right? It can be all of the things operational. So I started doing that and was at Deloitte and I got to see Enron happen out of the window of my office in downtown Houston. And I thought, you know, partnership in one of these firms is not for me. And I ended up at a casket company and that's where I was recruited into human resources. 

So I, this time I'd done accounting I've done audit internal audit. I've done consulting and risk management. And so I ended up going into human resources and the boss that I had who saw me said have you ever thought about HR and I was like actually I kind of had he said well I look for good business people because I can teach him the HR stuff, but it has to start with the business and he's still a mentor and dear friend of mine.

And that's how I got into HR and I ended my career as the HR VP of global strategy and analytics for a big chemical company. So I couldn't have planned it. I just knew at each step. I'm like, ‘I can't do this, right? I can't do this audit anymore. Or my dad passed away. I got to get out of Michigan or, you know, I'm not going to be a partner in a firm because you're in business with everybody. So let me go find something else to do.’ And every time that happened, something else showed up. 

 

And then after five years, seven years, whatever it was, my last role seems like a million. I just woke up one day in December and was looking at my family and I'm like, ‘Why am I sitting here with these people who I love with all my heart, all the fiber of my being, and they would do anything for me. And I'm just irritated that they're breathing my air.’ Like that's not okay. I hadn't slept on a Sunday in five years. I was in constant conflict and I'm not conflict avoidant, but I don't want to live in conflict.

And there was just a complete disconnect of values of how I like to lead, how I like to do business and just telling the truth. And I thought, I'm just not doing this. So that December I went in, I said, I'm not doing this, walked in that February and said, I'm done. You've got until May, but I'm done. And, they ended up asking me to stay and I stayed until December of 2017.

But that staying funded the start of my business. So it all worked out, but yeah, I didn't plan it. It just kind of happened and it has made me great at what I do now. So God knew better than me.

 

Rachel (09:24.433)

Yeah, I think that those transitions sometimes, they're hard when you're in them, when you're leaving something that you know doesn't fit you anymore and you're trying to move into something that fits better. And you also, very few people can just cut and dry and go do something else, especially later in life. And this is one of the things, and by later in life, I mean, I don't know, over 35. 

I remember when I first was kind of diving into the entrepreneurial space. I was, I think I was in my early thirties. I think it was like 31, 32, you know, I was married. I didn't have a mortgage yet, but there was like, you know, child support for my ex's kids and there were, you know, there were student loans being, but, you know, there was sort of all this responsibility. And I remember being in these entrepreneurial circles with young people who are like, I slept on my mom's couch for six months and, you know, I ate ramen and just thinking, okay, well, that doesn't work. 

There's a point in your life where that's not the way to go. Where, yeah. And so one of the things that I love about the skill set that you bring is like you have all this experience in these aspects of business that very few entrepreneurs have especially when we're talking in this small business space in the solo entrepreneur space. And it's all such valuable information experience and you bring your own life experience, your passion for living, your love of people, your desire to help people and to make the world a better place, which, you know, often I think those two worlds feel very separate, right?

It's like, here's the rules, here's the finances, here's the human resources. You know, human resources in every job that I ever had prior to working for myself was not a friendly place. It's not a great experience. And so, you know, I know, I'm gonna, I'll feed this to you a little bit. I know that you're really passionate about helping small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to build the kind of business and the kind of environment that they want to work in and help to cultivate that for their teams as well.

And how do you, I guess the question is how do you choose or how do you identify who, what are the qualities of that entrepreneur that you look at them and you know this person really wants to do well. This person really wants to do right by their people, they can actually have really big impacts, to make you desire to help them.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (12:10.83)

That is, that is a key. And, and I think it gets back to, I do believe in service. I believe when you're in service, prosperity comes. And so I have a tendency to listen very deeply, connect dots that some people don't even know exist and be able to tell a picture and repeat to someone in a succinct manner, what they really said. 

And so, I generally find the people that I work with and that get the most out of working with me through a conversation, I am listening for who they are, not what they want, but who they are. And people don't even realize they're talking about that. 

And so that's why I talk about alignment, vision, action, whether you're building a business, a career or a life, it's those three things, because that alignment is really about who you are and where you are. And so I ask deep questions and I listen very much to what people say. And that tells me a great deal about who they are and how they're going to show up and how willing they are to reconnect if they're disconnected, reconnect their words and their actions so that people really understand what they're trying to build and they can build an organization and a team around them that believes in the same thing, right? 

And even if it's not that individual's value system, they are so aligned with the vision and the why of the vision that any disconnect is inconsequential. And unfortunately I find people start with the people first and you cannot. That's what makes me a different HR person. You cannot start with the people first. 

 

Rachel (13:55.409)

Okay, explain that. You can't start with the people first.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (14:04.43)

You cannot start with the people first. You start with the strategy first. As I say all the time, I'm like, A good people strategy is built on a great business strategy because if you don't know where you're going, how do you know who needs to be on your team? But we start with people stop. So if you're listening, stop with starting to people.

 

Rachel (14:04.849)

Yeah, yeah, I think that's really important. I, that's one of the things that I, you know, I had this experience of having worked in some more corporate types of environments prior to being an entrepreneur. And so many years, I couldn't even tell it was probably around the time we met probably 2017 or so I listened finally to the book, the E-Myth. And I don't know why I had resisted it. There really was no reason but you know that you you you receive the things when you're ready to receive them. So I'm like listening to the audio book for the E-Myth and realize what he's describing is how I operated at the franchise business, the franchise restaurant operations that I was working in. 

And one of those things was that you map out all the positions and then you find the people to fit the positions and connecting that to the world of entrepreneurship has been so incredibly powerful for so many of my clients too, where it's like, you're in their business and they've got people they've grown with that can't do the job anymore. The job's grown, changed, the expectations have shifted, but we're attached to the people or we're trying to take the three people that we have with the budget we think we can use and then get them to do all of the things. 

And I know that's been a really powerful exercise for a number of my clients as well is like mapping out the strategy, what we're focused on, where we want to invest, and then figuring out who the right people are to fit into those spots. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (15:51.634)

Exactly. Exactly. Cause it's not, it's not personal. You know, it's the same thing with HR. I, when people would come to me and say, I really want to be in HR. Cause I love people. I'm like, “Well, you can't work for me. Love you.” Doesn't work that way. You know, I need you to be business minded. And I think that's what has been such a hard thing about the HR function. 

 

Rachel (16:01.361)

That's, that doesn't work that way. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (16:19.246)

The fact that I didn't grow up in HR is what made me so exceptionally good at HR because I understand business strategy and while I have unlimited compassion, I don't get emotional about people because at the end of the day, if the business doesn't do well, no one has a job. And so how do you understand the business strategy, especially as HR people, we need to know more about the strategy than everybody else. Cause we're already seen as soft and not really understanding. You need to be able to speak about the business and then connect the people and the skills that are needed and where you need them and what you're going to pay. And you need to connect all of that stuff to a business case. That's why it gets lost because we get emotional and we have emotional conversations and it's a value conversation. And it's the same thing with small businesses. I want small business owners to be able to have value conversations, right? They get even more pressure about who they're hiring and how much they're paying and all of these things.

And especially like you said bootstrapping and that first person that came on with you. That's great. And you want to value the relationship and you're building a business. It's not a philanthropic society. It's a business.

 

Rachel (17:24.017)

Yeah. Okay. So there's so much I want to dig into on this. Okay, the first thing is that as you were saying this, I could feel all these triggers inside of me. And I'm thinking about the people listening, who are heart-centered, purpose driven, you want to make the world a better place, love people, you know, and what those triggers are for them. 

Now for me, it was I learned, you know, I grew up in the 90s, and that version of feminism, where there was like no crying in business, you had to be tough, you got like, it was like, you got to, you got to hang with the big guys, you know, and, and I did, and I did that to the extent that I could, but often I would find myself, like faking it in that capacity, and being stone cold, and then rebounding with just a total meltdown, right? Like complete, you know, because it was, I was not allowed in that environment to feel any emotion to care about anybody. It was like, this is the way things are. This is what we do. And that's, that's the way I learned it. 

And then on the alternative side of that, so many of the people who I've worked with over the years and who I know listen to this podcast are big hearted, you know, they haven't had that business experience. They love everybody. They want to take care of everybody.

And you said something really important, which is if the business isn't profitable, if you're not hitting those, if you're not operating in a way that is sustainable, that is functional, then there is no business. And so it's sort of this pendulum swing of, you know, if you go, if you're so far in the direction of being sweet and loving and caring and trying to take care of everybody at the expense of the business, then there is no business.

Or often, I'm sure you've seen this too, then people just get frustrated. They feel like the CEO, the owner feels like they're being taken advantage of. You know, nobody's pulling their weight and then they just start firing people and they have a meltdown in the other direction, right? Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (19:36.718)

Yes. Yes. That's why I say, you know, my mantra is I've got a lot of mantras, but one of my big, big mantras especially with women owned and women co-owned businesses is I want you to lead with your heart, but act with your head. You can do both. Don't, don't put your heart away. Let your heart lead, but I need your action to be head driven, not heart driven. That allows you to be out of emotion and into compassion.

There's a difference, right? Emotional is like, ‘my gosh, I just, I can't, if I, if I let them go, what about their family? What about, I got to make people happy, no.’

Compassion says, you know what? Got to make this business happen. I'm dealing with a person. I'm not talking about their character, but there really is, there really are some things that aren't working. And so it is not unkind to be clear and I'm doing them a disservice if I don't have this conversation. And so I can have the conversation from a place of compassion and concern and love for this person that's focused on business outcomes. 

So emotion makes us think about character and we're passing judgment. Compassion lets you still feel for people, but be able to have the tough conversations and make the tough decisions. And you have to be both, I believe you have to be heart led and mind action oriented.

 

Rachel (20:58.481)

Mm, I love that. And so often I think if we are so focused on caring for people, we're actually doing a disservice by not coaching and mentoring or holding them accountable for things. I mean, it really just creates a dysfunctional work environment in which that person feels things feel ambiguous. They don't actually know if they're doing well or not. They feel like they're sort of floating out there.

In the meantime, the CEO, the owner or the manager is harboring sort of all this resentment because they're not getting the results that they want, but they are avoiding that confrontation. And it just, it doesn't feel good for anybody and it's not productive. It's not the makings of a successful and sustainable business.

And so I think what I hear you saying, I think we agree on there's, there's like a sweet spot and an interweaving of the, I don't want to say soft skills, but it, but you know, actually, I was saying right before we start recording, I was listening to Adam Grant's book, Hidden Potential. And he talks about in that book, he talks about the origins of the term soft skills versus hard skills, and that those actually had to do with the, the materials that were being used. And then somehow they got morphed into this other thing.

So I'm going to say we all know what I mean by soft skills and hard skills. And they're both important, especially in a woman-led organization and an organization and with a group of people that are really focused on leading in the feminine and honoring who people are and not treating people like cogs in the wheel, right?

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (22:44.686)

Absolutely, absolutely. And what people I think don't realize as much is if you look at the studies, if women-owned businesses who have like 50 or more employees, one, we employ millions of people. I think it's 12.9 million people that women businesses employ. But if we took the women-owned businesses that have 50 or more employees, if they made as much revenue as those same businesses that were run by men, it's adding, I think, $3.2 trillion to the economy if we just made the same amount of money. And in order to do that, it is important to be business minded, right? Lead with your heart, but act with your head. Set clear expectations and manage those, right? Don't treat everybody like family or say you want to have it be a family, family feel. No, you don't think about your last family dinner. You do not. 

 

Rachel (23:35.121)

Yeah, I mean, even if you don't want to do family, I was just going to say even in a family, there's all this like dysfunction and miscommunication. Like you don't want a business that operates like a family.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (23:43.022)

Yep. Yes. Nope. You do not. You know, you want the, the, the power is in having an organization where people feel valued, they feel safe. There is, there are clear expectations that they can meet and or exceed, which is what you would love, right? They understand the mission. They understand the direction. That's all about really managing people, being clear, knowing your direction, getting the right folks in the right jobs, being honest when they're not in the right job and understanding whether it's a can't or a won't. 

That's why I say continue to lead with your heart because it's not unkind to be clear, but act with your head. If it's not working, you're not doing anybody a service to do it. And so there's so much power in women. When we make money, we impact communities. That's what happens. We give back into communities, we build things up and I just want more of us making more money.

And not to just say we're in the seven figure club or the eight figure club or any of that, but because we're really building up communities and supporting families and giving people ways out and just really creating environments that are bigger than us, bigger than us.

 

Rachel (24:55.025)

Yeah, and I think that thinking big is something that many of us, I'm hesitating on how I want to say this. It's not that we don't think big, it's that we often look around at what other women entrepreneurs are doing and we're comparing ourselves to that and thinking that we need to create something like that.

And in doing so, we're discounting our own experience, our own wisdom. You and I've, I know I love that look on your face. You and I've talked about this many times, many times that, you know, we look around and we see what other entrepreneurs are doing. And so we think that's the way to go do business. But in the meantime, you have 25? 30 years of experience in an industry and working with big companies and like the capability that you bring to the table is not the same as somebody who, you know, took a weekend coaching certification course or whatever it is and not to discount that, right? 

Like if that's your path and, you know, and you're just learning and you're getting started and you're building your business that way, that's great. But we're not that person. There's a point where you're you know, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60. I have a client who hired me when I think he was 70 or 75 when he hired me starting a new business venture. 

You're coming from a completely different place, right? And so you don't start where everybody else is starting when they're 20 or 25 or 30. You're bringing all this wisdom and I think we do have the ability to create bigger and to think bigger and to do more than we actually perceive we're able to because, you know, we're seeing ourselves in the context of, you know, you fortune 500 companies, right? And so as an entrepreneur, you're bringing a whole skillset to the table that a lot of small business owners don't have and need, you know? Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (27:13.294)

Right, right. And it took a while, you know, you and I worked together several times and it took just me personally, and I've been very vocal about this, right? I've had a therapist for years. And at first it was just really like, you know, didn't realize I hadn't processed, my dad passed away. I mean, all kinds of just junk. And it's turned into much more kind of business mindset therapy, is really what it is because there's nothing like entrepreneurship to bring up all that crap that you didn't realize was even there.

All the things, all the things. And you and I have talked about before how, you know, one of the challenges being someone who loves to serve and lead with service. One, it's hard for me to ask. It's hard for me to sell because it's asking and I'm of an age where, you know, you don't brag, you don't talk about yourself. That's just the way I was reared. Right? So all of that starts to converge. So it's important that you give yourself some grace and understand that there are factors at play.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (28:12.782)

some of which were not in your control that were just environmental, but they will manifest in a way that may be detrimental to the goal that you want to have. And sometimes you can push through those and sometimes you have to just get aware of what they are and figure out how to maneuver through them. And I'll give your listeners a prime example. I hate to sell, Rachel and I were talking about this. I hate to sell. Hate it with a passion, right? I just hate it.

 

Rachel (28:35.84)

We've talked about it many times.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (28:40.366)

But as I started really digging into it, I said, but if I want a business, I've got to learn how to sell. Now I've gotten to the place where I'm really good at saying I'm exceptional at what I do. I am. That's just, those are just facts. And I'm okay with saying that. Selling is a different issue. And I took a course, finally found someone that I took a course at because there were things about her that I said, this seems to make sense for me. And she said, ‘Laurel, every conversation is an opportunity to sell.’ My whole body clenched up because I'm like, I don't want that LinkedIn message. It says, ‘connect. I want to connect with you and add you to my network here buy my thing.’ You don't know anything about me. I hate that. And what I realized is I hate that so much that I did nothing. I didn't want to be that so much that I didn't know how to be anything other than that. Cause that's all you see. So I sat with. Yes, exactly. Just, you know, please find me kind of thing. And so I sat with it. I prayed about it. 

 

Rachel (29:26.321)

You're being a business wallflower.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (29:40.686)

I'm like, okay, Laurel, who are you? And I'm a servant leader. And so what came to me was for me to be able to “sell” is ‘Laurel, every conversation is an opportunity to serve.’ It just so happens that your services are an investment unless you choose to give them away. And that is a different way that brings the right energy for me, which is no, I really want to understand who you are and what you're dealing with. And if I can help, I absolutely want to do that. 

But being in service also means, if I hear something that I'm like, yeah, that's not me. If I'm in service, then I'm connecting you to somebody in my network that I know is the right person. Cause it's still in service. It's not about me. It's about serving you. So it's really important to give ourselves some grace and figure out how we do what we do in our way. And, and that comparison thing is hard. You know, I, the same coach said, ‘I had an aha moment y 'all. I am not an online business. I am an in-person business that has an online presence’. Yes. And that works for me.

 

Rachel (30:40.209)

That’s where I was hoping we were going to go next. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So here's what's really interesting. Well, first of all, I want to just put a pin in the conversation around how we take care of our employees and our team and how we nurture them and train them, all that stuff. So we're going to just put a thumbtack that to we're going to come back to it.

But since we're here, this was one of the things we were talking about right before we started recording, which is, you know, I think one of the reasons that so many of us were tempted with this idea of building an online business and having these sort of automated funnels you post on social media, people opt in, and then it's just this sort of magic thing that takes care of stuff. 

And one of the things that I think can be so appealing about that to some people is that there's a distance between you and the sale, between you and the customer, it's less vulnerable, right? And so first I just wanna say, I'm not opposed to that type of business. I have clients that I have helped make millions and millions of dollars doing that. And it's a brilliant business model for people for whom it's a good fit with the right product who are willing to do the work. 

Not one of those people that I've helped make all that money, for none of them was it easy. I mean, years and years of blood, sweat, tears, you know, maxing out credit cards, doing, running ads, having things that don't work, things that do work, picking up crazy, I mean, I have been in the trenches with people in those. I have yet to see a person who just like magically put together a funnel and it just happened in some really easy way. And that's hundreds of people that I've seen through this. 

So, there's nothing wrong with that business model if that's what you're really drawn to. And the majority of the people who I've seen succeed in that way are people who want to be serving thousands, millions. They get charged up when they're on and on a webinar and there is, you know, they're seeing the faces, the hundreds of people, the thousands of people, they're excited. Like there's an energy there that feeds them and makes them want to do more. 

And that's not the case for everybody. And I realized for myself after helping so many people do that and having this story in my head repeatedly, like, I should do that. I know how to do this. I just helped that person make a half a million dollars in like a month. I should do this for myself. Why am I not doing this for myself? It’s because it's not aligned with who I am. I would rather you and I in an Airbnb living room, you know, in our sweatpants with coffee, like hashing it out.

That to me is way more satisfying and enjoyable. Yes, and I think the same for you. And there's a couple of places I want to go with this. One is that creating that distance from the sale is a distraction. Because at the end of the day, you still have to sell the thing. There is no way around it, right? And so, and you and I have talked about this, there's all sorts of things that you can do to make the sales process easier. But at the end of the day, you have to be comfortable saying to people, here's what I do. Here's how I can support you. And here's what it costs. That's a critical part of having a business. 

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (34:10.19)

Yeah, that part, Rachel. I mean, you know, it's interesting because as I'm sitting here listening to you and talking through, I mean, literally my body in some cases just, like you said, triggers, right? no, I don't wanna talk to anybody, right? But here's the thing. I think what I loved about this person that I did this course with is, again, like you and I, coming out of corporate.

 

Rachel (34:28.017)

You're like, you want to run screaming. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (34:40.398)

What is missing in some of these online businesses, even the ones that have been really successful and people that are watching them trying to do the right thing is there has been a failure to distinguish between sales and marketing and all that stuff you see exactly that's marketing, right? That is that outbound come find me. That is a long runway, especially in a crowded marketplace.

 

Rachel (34:56.305)

So that's true across the board in every business.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (35:09.326)

The sales, that's the stuff that's quicker, but it's also the stuff that is reaching out to somebody, go connect with them on LinkedIn in a way that's not sleazy, nasty, creepy, right? It's, it's go to the networking thing, have whatever your thing is that actually connects directly to people to get an opportunity to understand what they might need. And then to be able to provide a solution that outbound piece is the piece that is the quickest, but also for some of us, the hardest, because it means you gotta talk to people.

 

Rachel (35:41.681)

Yeah. And so just back to this business model and choosing the business model that's right fit for you. The idea of selling a lot of something, hundreds of something or thousands of something at a really low cost to generate the revenue. It's a great business model, as I said. If you're teaching the type of content, if you have the kind of message and the skill set to distill it down into something that people can consume themselves from video, you know, workshops or online workshops, et cetera. 

And that's a tiny, that's a itty bitty little piece of what the entrepreneurial world is. And I think that when we look at somebody like the skill set that you have, you can create sort of general information for people about human resources, about risk management, sort of all those things. 

And also you have the ability to go into a multi-million, multi-seven figure, multi-eight figure business and create massive impact in a really short period of time. And they have the budget and they know that they have issues that need to be solved. They understand risk management. They understand human resources. And so you can go sell that contract and do work that's really meaningful and profitable. And if that satisfies you, then why spend 20 hours a week trying to grow a following on Instagram? It's just like a different world.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (37:24.606)

When you're a person who is only on social media under duress in the first place.

 

Rachel (37:29.553)

Only under duress. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that that question of finding the right model for you and thinking bigger, you know, I've had this conversation with you, I've had it with some other clients over the years of I like you're not playing the game wrong, you're playing the wrong game. 

And, you know, and the game for you might be locking down, you know, half million dollar contracts, it might not be selling digital products for $200 a piece or whatever it is, you know? Yeah. 

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (37:59.758)

Right. Yes, slit my wrist. I just can't.

Rachel (38:27.729)

Can't take it anymore. Yeah. And so, and again, it's not like a right or wrong. It's not someone thinks better than there is like, here's who I am as a person. I like to be in the room with people. I like to get into the nitty gritty of all of their ins and outs and all that. Like that's really satisfying to me. That's what I love. And so that's how I want to spend my time with my clients. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (38:29.326)

Exactly. Exactly. And as introverted and as I am and as much of an empath as I am, so I have to really manage my energy. I realized the kind of business I wanted to have and who I wanted to work with when I sat back. You and I have this conversation, right? Really sitting back and what are all of the things that I've done and which ones really energized me knowing that too much people time drains me.

After I do these big strategy sessions, even when I do a 90-minute session with someone, I'm so jazzed up about what they got for their business. I'm like ready to go do 400 miles of something, but you give me, you know, do that online HR portal or no, thank you.

 

Rachel (39:19.633)

I remember that. I remember the HR, HR for that. Well, you know what the thing is? The thing is as things have evolved, so many of these things that even five years ago would have been really valuable, AI could now do. And so, no. Yeah. 

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (39:33.582)

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't, I don't need to write your manual chat. GPT can do that for you.

 

Rachel (39:45.585)

And so, what's really valuable is you and your presence and your wisdom and your insight and your perspective. That's what's really valuable. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (39:54.382)

Absolutely. It's, it's, it's the conversation I've had with people that I have to remind myself all the time. It's like, it's not an hourly rate, right? You're not buying that. What you're, what my expertise is, you're investing in 30 years of corporate expertise across accounting, auditing, consulting, multiple industries. I've seen a lot of stuff. I've worked globally, right? So all of that is what you're getting when you work with me. So it's, the value conversation is you don't have to go get that MBA and finish it up in Barcelona. I've done that. So I get to use all of that to get you where you want to be. Yeah.

 

Rachel (40:33.265)

To help you. Yeah. Yeah. Looks like you're working on that sales conversation.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (40:40.078)

I am, as we speak. Hahaha.

 

Rachel (40:45.905)

Yeah. Okay. I want to go back to the conversation around how we take care of our teams and cultivate our teams and train our teams. So in the small business space, one of the things that was really shocking to me having come from, and actually now that I think about it, I don't know why it was so shocking because one of my, you know, some of those early jobs that I had were for companies that were sort of start-ups. And, and we were building things as we went.

And also, I worked for a coffee company. One of my peers had worked for Disney in training. And so he wrote the training manuals and I helped him and I learned how to write training manuals from a Disney employee. One of the owners had worked for Microsoft and Lotus in marketing. And so she taught me marketing. So I was learning sort of from these people and we were building not with nothing, not from no experience. And yet when I got into the entrepreneurial space, and it still continues to startle me sometimes, that there are people who are growing multi-six figure and seven figure and multi-seven figure businesses who don't understand the basics of business operations, coaching, training. 

And so there really, I think there really is a need for consultants like yourself to come in and advise and help people to understand how to do that stuff. But one of those things, one of the things I bump into all the time, especially when hiring, I guess probably both employees and contractors, is this idea that you just hire a person and put them in a job. 

And I have to explain to people that in, you know, going back to that franchise environment that I worked in, it was a three month training program for various roles, various aspects. It takes people months to get in the groove to understand the expectations. And that's with very explicit training manual, step-by-step instructions, benchmarks, checkpoints, all those things. You bring somebody into your small business and you have no operations manual and it's all just, it's a little disorganized, there's kind of stuff everywhere, and you think that in a week or two, they're gonna just hit the ground running and be your star employee, it's probably not very realist.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (43:12.654)

No, it's really not. And I, it's funny as you're talking, I'm like, one of the five things I tell people is you got to be ready to let folks go. Right. And, and when you have a situation like you just described that first business owner, they just hire somebody. They think they're going to be able to jump in. What happens is that first person you hire that's bootstrapping with you, is really invested in your business to the point that in some cases they take a lot of ownership. 

So when you do get to the point where you're like, you know what, we need to hire two or three more people and we need to start dividing the jobs up. There is such an ownership for that person that they almost feel like they earned the right or you owe them the right to be involved in every decision you make. How are you gonna run your business? Where are you gonna take your business? Are you gonna hire, who you're gonna hire? Because they have been there from the very beginning and you've probably shared so much with them because now you got somebody that's in the trenches with you.

I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm saying you've got to understand what precedent you're setting and the expectations that you need to manage as you build your business. And that's why it's important to think through what is my business? What am I trying to accomplish? And then what do I need? What skills do I need to hire? Not who do I need to hire? What skills do I need to hire? And then I can talk about where I can go get those skills.

And most of the times that's not going to be in your niece, nephew, aunt, daughter, sister, stop. What are the skills? Let me go find the skills. Right. And, and not that hiring family is bad, but just understand, I want people to lead with their heart, but act with their head. Understand that hiring family brings additional expectations, potential conflict, all of these things, all the extra drama that you won't necessarily have if you hire somebody who's external to your family unit. The expectations are different.

 

Rachel (45:13.265)

And that's not to say, don't do that. Just if you're going to do it, do it. Know what you're getting into. Know that there is a level of communication that is going to be required and boundaries and sort of all of that stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (45:17.07)

Right. Just realize it. Yes.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (45:23.246)

Yes, exactly.

Yes, yes. I mean, I had a client who I love. She's just amazing. And she had her own company and had one employee and the employee happened to be her niece. And her daughter actually said, Hey, I need you to work with my mom. She's trying to figure out how to retire and all these things. And so it was a different kind of just one-off business coaching program that I did with her. And one of the underlying pieces that she would say is, what am I going to, what am I going to do with her? She says she wants to buy it, but does she really understand what that means? 

She's not good at business development, but if she buys it, this is what it's going to cost. And she's got to have this system and she's got to. And so we talked a lot through how do you manage that? Now, long story, she was able to sell her business and the place she sold it to actually hired her niece and her niece is like skyrocketing in terms of success. But I had, yeah, I had to get her head wrapped around. It's okay to have a very candid conversation around what it means to buy your business. Cause what you've got is a disconnect of expectations, right? And a lack of knowledge. 

So I just give that example to say, hire who you want to hire, run your business the way you want to run your business. Just have your eyes open and be really clear about that. Because you can hire, as you said, you can hire contractors, you can hire service providers, you can hire W2 employees. I always talk about scaling with Team with a capital T because most people talk about scaling and they're only thinking about W2.

I don't ever want a W2 after coming out of corporate. That's not, that is not what I want, but I am willing to hire and pay for and utilize service providers where we have a, here's what I need. Here's what you're going to provide. Here's what that's going to cost. And then if it doesn't happen, then we have a contractual agreement that we end. That works for me. May not work for everybody, right? But that team is a capital T.

 

Rachel (47:16.401)

Yeah. Well, I think that it's something interesting to consider, especially in the online space and sort of more of these solo entrepreneurs. There is a personality type, a character of a person who wants to be a full-time employee, who wants to be hands-on in it and in the day-to-day and in the execution and the operations stuff. And there's a very different personality of somebody who is a consultant and wants to have six different clients and have their hands in lots of things and wants to manage their own time and their own schedule. 

And you really have to choose, for which roles are which things more important? You know, do you find the right person and you want to bring them in and put them in that full time position? Great. But trying to take a contractor and turn them into a full time position. Terrible idea. Terrible idea. I know when I was contracting, I would get people would ask me that periodically, like, well, can't why don't you just work with us and we could and every cell in my body would just start screaming, right? Like, no, no, no.

I am not interested because for me, the fun is the project and the beginning and the end. And that level of freedom is really, really important to me. And when you're hiring contractors versus employees, to a certain extent, you hire a contractor, a freelancer, you're expecting that they're coming in with a skill set of a thing that they can execute without you needing to teach them how to do that particular job. 

Maybe they need to learn your voice, maybe they need to learn your style, you know, they need to learn how it works inside your business, but they should be coming in with a level of expertise to do that thing. Versus an employee, where you might be bringing them in and training them up into, you know, taking on a level of work that needs to be performed in your business on an ongoing basis. And I think those fields have gotten gray over the years. There's a lot of crossover.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (49:35.022)

They have it. And you know, the thing that I really want, you know, solopreneurs in particular who are, who want to have a team, that's the way they want to build their business. Please be sure that you're getting some expert support and advice because even in that independent contractor, service provider, et cetera, especially if you're operating in California, there are specific rules around compliance, how you structure the work, what the employment agreement looks like, all of that. And you could find yourself having hired an employee when you think you've hired an independent contractor and that ends up being a tax and fine nightmare. So get the right support that can give you the right guidance around who you're hiring and how you hire them. So you can keep those lines very, very bright in terms of what you're getting and how you're having to pay them.

 

Rachel (50:28.913)

Yeah, it's funny because I feel like we're circling back, at least in my mind, we're circling back to this conversation of thinking bigger. And what I have observed in, you know, amongst my circles, amongst people that I've coached over, you know, the last 10 years or so, that so often, especially we go online coaching, wellness, there's a little bit, there's kind of a culture of like, I'm gonna do this all myself and then I'll bring in this little person to help me with this and I'll bring in a little person here to help me with this and I'll bring it, you know, and more and more what I'm thinking about. 

And I found myself explaining, you know, sometimes to people who've been in business for a few years and they're not making the money that they wanna be making or whatever, is if you were to go start a brick and mortar business, you would need, to plan for three months or three years of how you're going to pay your bills because you're probably not going to make a profit for three years. And upfront, you're going to have to hire the entire team. 

You know, I think about a restaurant, the rent, the build out, the management team, the cooks, the supplies, the servers, the you're guaranteed, you know, like that what goes into that and maybe in our small businesses, we do need to think a little bit bigger. We need to think if my goal is to generate X amount of money in the next 12 months, what am I going to have to do to get there? And what's the team going to look like? And so I may need to consider how much do I need to invest every month before I'm profitable? How much skin am I going to put in the game in order to reach that goal? And think a little bigger beyond what's the bare minimum that I can hire, what's the bare minimum I can invest to try to skate through this.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (52:31.758)

Absolutely. And you know, it's interesting. I have this conversation with myself all the time, right? Knowing that I don't want W2 employees, what does scaling look like for me, right? What does the overall business structure look like for me? And knowing that I love working with my clients and yet I am going to be the bottleneck. There's only so much time, right, in the day. And so how do I think through, again, the strategy?

Is it pricing? I could make everything an exorbitant price. Then that has client implications, right? Is it, I've got group stuff and individual stuff. How big is the speaking piece of my business? You know, all of these things. And, and that's why I always tell folks you've got to start with the business strategy first, at least in this moment, you can always change it. There's nothing that's set in stone.

But before you go hiring a bunch of people, at least know what your overall goal is first so that you don't just say, I just hate the invoicing stuff like that. So what I'm going to hire is an admin. What you may need is somebody who does sales because you hate it like me. Right. Maybe you need somebody who's who writes curriculum because your business is course creation and you just don't have enough time to create all the courses.

What is the strategy and then what skills are going to get you to revenue generation the quickest while staying on brands, staying true to who you are, staying aligned with you and your business. It is a conversation around what you're trying to accomplish in it. Then how do you make that happen? You start with the what, then you look at the how, and we do that backwards sometimes, or we just automatically think, I'm just going to hire for the stuff I don't like to do or don't want to do.

 

Rachel (54:23.953)

And then it's piecemeal. It's sort of, yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (54:26.805)

Yeah. And it's not, again, it's not that you can't do that. I'm all about, even when I was in corporate, I'm like, I do not have a big investment in what the ultimate decision is. You do you. But what I am invested in is we are going to have this conversation about what we want, what the pros and cons are of stuff. And so that I can then be prepared when we do that thing that doesn't make sense and it goes wrong, I'm ready. Because we had that conversation, right? And I don't have to say I told you so because we had the conversation. I'm just ready to move. So that's what I want all of my clients to do and all of your listeners to do is go slow to go fast. Just stop. If you're not making money now, you're not going to make money tomorrow. Take tomorrow and figure out what you want to do, where you want to go, and then figure out how you're going to make it happen. But you got to know the what first. The what first.

 

Rachel (55:22.321)

Yes. I love that. And it circles us back to this… menopause brain.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (55:35.038)

I'm right there with you, my friend. Just went away.

 

Rachel (55:36.401)

It just stopped for a moment. It'll turn back on in a second. Yeah, no, gone.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (55:47.054)

Hahaha. We were talking about people, business, structure, all the things.

 

Rachel (55:48.817)

I know. I mean, I think where I was going, it brings us back to this idea of slowing down, being present, making educated decisions, not looking at what everybody else is doing, investing and learning for yourself with experienced people and treating your business with the same respect that even though it's a solo venture, even though it's an online business, even though you don't have maybe brick and mortar, even though, right, still treating it with the respect that you are a badass woman, you have something of value to give, and just thinking bigger about how to get there. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (56:44.302)

Right. Yes. And what's, you know, you had asked me very early on before we started recording of, you know, what were those things that, that I had learned in this whole idea of online business versus, you know, whatever. and I mentioned that this one woman had this aha, right? I mean, I'm in, I'm not an online business. I have an online presence when I look back and I look back sometimes out of derision for myself, right? Like, why did you spend that money? Why did you do that thing? Why did you, you know, and have to really stop this.

So y 'all you're talking, Rachel's interviewing somebody who's doing this every day too, right? I have that same head trash that everybody else has. And that's why coaches need coaches, right? Everybody needs a village. But one of the things that, to that question that you had asked me earlier is the reason that I know it's so important, one, that my framework is so important, that alignment, vision, action, knowing who you are, where you are, what you want and what it's gonna take to get there, is if you can be really solid in that, even if you're a person like me who is a lifelong learner, you love to learn and you have a tendency to give credibility to people at a level that may not be warranted. If you are super solid in what you want, then you're able to be so much more discerning in how you get there, including who supports you in getting there because, and for those of you who are coming out of corporate to do this, a piece of advice is recognize that in this proliferation of online businesses, as it were, there is a lot of corporate language that is used, but the meaning is not the same. So why people who have not had corporate experience will talk about strategy, they'll talk about selling, they'll talk about all of these things that are the same words. Selling an online business means marketing, not selling, right?

 

Rachel (58:23.569)

Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (58:38.382)

Being a setting, a strategy, there may be talking about a social media strategy, which may or may not mean just post 42 times a day. That's not a strategy, right? So if you're going to start something, be really clear on your what so that you filter everything else you get through your what - is this going to get me to my what or am I allowing this other person's expertise in the online space or the virtual space that I don't have to shift me in a way that yes, is in my level of excellence. I can absolutely do that work, but that's not the reason I started my business. It's not work I want to do. All on my online HR portal, right? I was convinced I had the room and had the mental capacity and emotional capacity to allow myself to be shifted. I can't blame anyone else but me, right? 

To be shifted into this work that yes, there was absolutely a need for and still is the self -service kind of portal thing. I have the expertise to do that, but it took me forever to create it, which should have been the first red flag because it took me forever because I didn't want to do it. I don't want to be in the bowels of HR. I don't want to be talking about compliance. I don't want to be talking about what the new rate of, you know, entry level pay is. I don't want to talk about any of that. I don't want to do any of that. 

What I want to talk about is your strategy connected to people. Cause I know that that's where the money is. That's where the flow is. Right. And so if you're coming out and you're starting to do something new, just be mindful and careful and discerning about who you gather information from, which experts you let into your business and don't give up your own discernment and your own power around creating that business because it's easy to get sucked in. It is so easy to get sucked in because everybody's a coach. Everybody's a business coach. Everybody's a life coach. Everybody's everything. Ask a few more questions. Ask a few more questions.

 

Rachel (01:00:44.145)

Yeah, I think that's so important and a great note for us to wrap up on. It's this coming back to the discernment and that discernment that comes with wisdom and experience and having made the investments that sometimes paid off and sometimes didn't. You know, having made investments and then realized, I got in that because of FOMO and it was completely not the right path. 

And some of those things, you know, myself, I could look back and go, that was something valuable that I learned, or I got little nuggets of important information from that, or experience that I can apply to things. But when I hired that person, when I joined that program, whatever it was, I thought it was gonna be the thing that would you know, solve all my problems to make some huge dramatic shift. And, and that's really just not the way it works, you know, and if you parallel with relationships, you know, you're not, there's never going to be, if you're looking for the person or the coach or the course, or, you know, what, whatever it is, whatever the problem you're trying to solve, if you're looking for the one thing that is going to be the magic bullet, you're probably going to be looking for a long, long time.

And it really is about investing in learning, investing in getting to know yourself, which is where that personal development aspect of entrepreneurship comes in. It really is getting to know what is an alignment for me and how do I discern between all these things that are out there, what's actually the thing I should be focusing my attention on at this time in order to grow my business. And that comes back to the strategy. And I 100 % agree, a strategy is not post six times a day on Instagram. It's not a marketing strategy. There is, and really starting to, I think one of the things you and I share in common is that looking at the big picture and how all these pieces fit into the bigger picture of what you're doing.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (01:02:54.03)

Mm hmm. Yes. And I will tell you, Rachel, I mean, that, that time that we spent together was so valuable to me in a couple of main points. One, it was sitting with you who I knew and who I trusted and knew your expertise. I mean, you are an expert, expert marketer, expert marketer, but more so you are an expert at understanding what people are trying to accomplish and how to help them figure out what that really means in that big picture. And so spending that time really getting solid on, “No, it's not all these other things. It's the one thing.” It's my founders intensive. 

 

Rachel (01:03:34.193)

One thing. Yeah, it's the one thing. Yeah.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (01:03:43.022)

It's not a VIP day, you know, the one thing and, and being okay with the fact that, you know, I can do both corporate and this, because that was a big thing for me. I can do both corporate and the small business thing. It's just that the corporate stuff is very selective. It's referral only and it's very narrow in what I do with them. Right. And that narrowness is absolutely aligned with what I do with small businesses. So I'm not trying to create two separate businesses that take me all over the place. The second thing that was really powerful in working with you was that real ability, which I think you have, you know, having been in corporate, I have having been in corporate and some people will, but not everybody, which is let's unemotionally do the math. Let's do the math because I have spent a crap ton of money.

 

Rachel (01:04:30.033)

Hahaha. You can swear on here.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (01:04:32.654)

I've spent a shit ton of money y 'all. And when I look back in hindsight, it's easy for me to say that was so stupid to do that. Why did you stop? It's easy in hindsight to criticize, but when I give myself grace and think through the things that we talked about doing the math and looking at the money helps me make decisions going forward and also helps me understand what value did I get and did I not get from those exorbitant things that I spent money on. And if I give myself grace and I look with empathy, with compassion, and with a broader view, what I did get out of those things where I spent way too much money was not what I expected to get out. They didn't do what I wanted them to do for a number of reasons, but what they did do is give me connections that I would never have had. They added people to my village and that is priceless.

 

Rachel (01:05:28.721)

Yes.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (01:05:32.078)

And so find yourself someone who is willing to hear you and see you and understand you so deeply that they are able to challenge you and redirect you in a way that stays aligned. Right? No, in no time to Rachel say, don't do that. You can't do that. You should do this. You ought to do that. Never did I hear those words. 

I heard questions that made me say, yeah, that doesn't make sense. Or, you know what? Yeah, I feel so much better about that. So it's so important that as solopreneurs in particular, and as women business owners in, in especially, we tend to spend money and be willing to spend money on personal development and professional development. Still be discerning, still make sure it's a fit and make sure you find people who are willing to say, you know what? Absolutely. This is a business. I would love to do business with you but I'm not the right person, but I know somebody. Because if they're willing to do that, you know that you've got someone who is just as, if not more so, invested in your success as you are.

 

Rachel (01:06:41.489)

Brilliant, brilliant words. And what I just to put a bow on that, what I heard you saying earlier, and I was reflecting on as you were talking is that the people, the opportunities to invest, the coaches that I've hired, the masterminds that I've been part of, the people that I have learned the most from have been the people who did not prescribe a specific way of doing things. 

And now the one caveat to that is like, you know, I, for example, invested in learning how to do PR. It was tactical and I got the tactical stuff out of that, right? Great. But when you're talking about growth strategy, it's really, there's a point where it becomes about being environments where people are asking questions and not prescribing a certain way of being because it really is all about coming back into alignment. And that we share across the board. We just want everyone to be aligned. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. I could talk to you all day. We've already we're like half hour past our planned recording time. Thank you so much for being here, Laurel.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (01:07:42.67)

Right. Thank you, Rachel. I had a blast. So we'll have to do part two at some point. Yeah.

 

Rachel (01:08:08.945)

Yeah, we will do part two at some point for sure. And thank you all for joining us. We'll put Laurel's links in the show notes so that you can find her. Actually, before we go, tell us how to find you on Instagram, LinkedIn, your website, and then we'll be sure to include those links as well.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (01:08:23.822)

Sure.

Awesome. So the website is https://laurelrutledge.com/ all run together. And then my LinkedIn is Laurel-K-Rutledge. And then Instagram, you can find me at the Rutledge Perspective or no, I'm sorry, @laurel.k.rutledge. So it's @laurel.k.rutledge on IG, Laurel-K-Rutledge in LinkedIn. So that's where you can find me. Yeah.

 

Rachel (01:08:49.105)

Awesome. We will be sure to put those in the show notes so that they can be found. Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here. Until next time, I'm wishing you even more pleasure and profits. Have a great day.

 

Laurel K. Rutledge (01:08:52.654)

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.