In today's episode with Rachael Cook, the head of CEO Collective, we dive deep into marrying personal values with our business decisions.
Rachael Shares with us her five definitions of success, emphasizing the crucial role of understanding what your business needs to do for you as the owner. We discuss the fundamental role of health, relationships, and creativity in fostering both personal and business growth.
As we navigate through economic uncertainty, Rachel offers valuable insights on creating and maintaining meaningful business relationships. Further, she shares strategies for clear communication, setting boundaries, and voicing our opinions in tricky conversations.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
The CEO Collective
If something you heard today brought a smile to your face or a spark to your heart, and you’d like to connect with me, here are a few ways you can do that.
One is my newsletter, it’s where I put most of my time and energy when I’m not working with clients or on this podcast. Sorry social media! It’s a mix of real life stories, tips and tricks and of course updates on what’s happening with the podcast. Whenever something is going on with me or in my business, it always comes out there first.
Another resource that I have for you is my Guide to Doing Work Differently. The guide takes you through four inquiries into how you can build a more sustainable and equitable work environment for yourself and your team. It's a great place to start.
Last, if you’ve got a burning question, a comment, or a situation you’d like my eyes on, you can email me at candice@fortressandflourish.com.
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to know when the next episodes come out, and if you’re feeling generous, leave a review. Reviews help other like-minded folks find their way to this resource.
Learn more about Candice and her work here.
In today's episode with Rachael Cook, the head of CEO Collective, we dive deep into marrying personal values with our business decisions.
Rachael Shares with us her five definitions of success, emphasizing the crucial role of understanding what your business needs to do for you as the owner. We discuss the fundamental role of health, relationships, and creativity in fostering both personal and business growth.
As we navigate through economic uncertainty, Rachel offers valuable insights on creating and maintaining meaningful business relationships. Further, she shares strategies for clear communication, setting boundaries, and voicing our opinions in tricky conversations.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
The CEO Collective
If something you heard today brought a smile to your face or a spark to your heart, and you’d like to connect with me, here are a few ways you can do that.
One is my newsletter, it’s where I put most of my time and energy when I’m not working with clients or on this podcast. Sorry social media! It’s a mix of real life stories, tips and tricks and of course updates on what’s happening with the podcast. Whenever something is going on with me or in my business, it always comes out there first.
Another resource that I have for you is my Guide to Doing Work Differently. The guide takes you through four inquiries into how you can build a more sustainable and equitable work environment for yourself and your team. It's a great place to start.
Last, if you’ve got a burning question, a comment, or a situation you’d like my eyes on, you can email me at candice@fortressandflourish.com.
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to know when the next episodes come out, and if you’re feeling generous, leave a review. Reviews help other like-minded folks find their way to this resource.
Learn more about Candice and her work here.
The hearth is for you if you're a business leader with a team. Here we have conversations about how to keep growing. When you feel you've reached your capacity, when what you're doing is working but you're starting to see the cracks, when there's a gap between where you're at now and where you want to be, here we find ways to transition through the struggle of survival toward creating a thriving business that supports you and your team as whole humans. Your host is me, candace Elliott. I'm a business strategist and mentor who specializes in working with business owners who are going through periods of growth. Especially when you're adding more people to your team, the practices and systems that worked when your team was smaller just don't seem to fit anymore, and when you're caught in stress and reaction, it's tough to reimagine the way that you created your world of work, both your own personal one and the one that you created for others. I help people align their values and business practices to build practical, sustainable, thriving work ecosystems and no, this isn't just some work utopia talk. To do this, I bring forward my decade-long professional background in human resources and organizational development, working with growing businesses across many sectors, and my decades-long search for meaning and wholeness, which includes researching the history of work and how it came to be what it is today, practicing a trauma-informed approach to business and integrating work, life and spirituality into a meaningful whole.
Speaker 1:Let's take this journey together. Welcome to the hearth-brave souls. I'm so happy that you are back. Today. I'm sharing with you a conversation that I had with Rachel Cook. Rachel heads up the CEO collective, where she helps entrepreneurs who are ready to sustainably scale their businesses. The conversation that we have today is really focusing on values and how we define our values and then make decisions around them as business owners and integrating them into the all different kinds of things that we do. So here's our conversation. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me on the hearth today. I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited we could make this happen and also have you on my show, so it's been so much fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love the swap, so would you mind just starting out by telling us your story. How did you get to where you are today?
Speaker 2:So, like many oldest daughters, who is also a type A overachiever and perfectionist, I did what I was supposed to do and got multiple degrees, got recruited into my quote unquote dream job in corporate doing consulting, and proceeded to very quickly burn out. Within a couple years I was having severe health problems, to the point where I had to take a short term leave of absence. I took disability for three months and tried to figure out what am I doing, because I realized I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. I couldn't keep up with the hustle and grind pace that is the consulting world, and anyone who has worked in consulting has worked in finance. Like there's some industries where they literally grind people down in the first couple years. You know any of my friends who have gone into consulting, finance or big law. They've all had the same experience and then they all leave at some point.
Speaker 2:I left and started this business as the yogipreneur, and it happened accidentally, because at that point I mean I was not well, I didn't know what I wanted to do, because I realized the dream I had been sold was not really a dream, it was kind of a nightmare, and so I was crying on a yoga mat, as you do when you take three months medical leave of absence. And my yoga teacher said to me because we had become good friends she was like I know you don't want to go back, but my studio is kind of struggling. Could you help me with that? Could you maybe, you know, give me some ideas or some pointers? And because I have two degrees in entrepreneurship and small business management and I've been working in the world of consulting, like it was like a light bulb moment for me when I realized she did not have someone to go to who understood business. She had an accountant, she had a lawyer, but no one who understood how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to put together projections for a studio like hers. Like there were so many things she didn't know and she didn't know. She didn't know them, and at the time this was 2008, there just wasn't any place to go.
Speaker 2:So it was a light bulb moment for me when I realized, oh, I had been working with small businesses. But there are these micro, owner operated businesses. We would maybe call them solo printers now is the trendy word, but back then it was like owner operated or non employee businesses and so that was a light bulb moment for me and that's how I started was literally because my yoga teacher is like can you help me? Because that community is so small. What tends to happen if you start in a small niche is people start to talk about it. So she told other teachers, she told other friends.
Speaker 2:I made a website for the Yogi printer and it started to really grow organically, first by word of mouth and referrals and then because I started actively marketing and growing. And so over the last 15 years it's pivoted a couple times from the Yogi printer to just Rachel Cook and now to the CEO collective, mainly because I just keep listening to my clients. This has been a very co creative process for me. I never started 15 years ago thinking it would be the CEO collective and the business would be the shape and form it is today. But it has gotten to this point because I'm always responding to the needs of the clients that I'm serving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's such an interesting and wonderful way to grow a business is really by looking at the clients. What are my clients saying to me? What do they need? What can I create that will help them the most? And then that tends to bring more people kind of into the orbit.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the thing that I always tell people. Like one, I had a lot of privileges starting my business first. I will absolutely say that, like we at the time did not have children, I did not have any responsibilities, I had no student loans to pay. In fact, my husband and I sold a car and we downsized from a town home to like a smaller apartment so that I could take the sleep without feeling any financial pressure. That's a huge privilege, and that was also when I was in my 20s. If I was doing it again today, in my 40s, it would look very different, because now I have three kids, I have a mortgage, I have a mom I'm caring for and have to support. There's a lot of other things that are happening in my life that would have completely changed that whole story and I think it's important to acknowledge that. Also. I think timing is a thing.
Speaker 2:When I started in this world, it was 2008. It was in a recession. I started my business in the last big recession and there was no like social media. There was no real online marketing. There were only a handful of people talking to a very small niche audience the yoga world and getting on the ground floor of some of these things that have grown exponentially. I just I wrote a wave and I will not act like it was all me. There were certain elements that were at play. The yoga industry was booming. I had spent some time working with Lou Lemon Athletica when they were coming to the United States, so I had a lot of connections to that particular big company and I was able to leverage that connection. I was able to start on social media.
Speaker 2:When social media was starting, you couldn't get that kind of reach and organic traffic anymore. That's just not how it is. So there's a lot of things that kind of helped me get going that are very different than how I would recommend anybody start right now. But the one thing I would encourage everyone to think about is who you know relationships. It is not a meritocracy. Business is not a meritocracy at all. It is not about how hard you work or else the hardest worker who's out there. You know doing hard labor would be getting paid the most. It is definitely about the connections that you have and it's also about seeing opportunities, untapped opportunities and, for me, unserved audiences. If there's an unserved audience, that niche that has a lot of growth potential that's so incredibly valuable to tap into something right as it's getting very popular and when you think about growing a business that is successful.
Speaker 1:I think that when we look at a lot of the traditional business advice, there's profit first model and then there's grow at all costs kind of model, and I think that a lot of newer business owners kind of fall into having one of those as the way that they're defining whether or not they're successful. But I'm curious, from your experience in growing your own company and also in working with so many CEOs, what are some other more sustainable measures of success?
Speaker 2:I think capitalism has taught us that growth is the only way forward, and you'll hear a lot of people in the business space say, if you're not growing, you're dying, and I'm just like. That is not necessarily true, because if you are owning your own small business, you have 100% control over how big that business is and what that business is going to look like. That success for you might look very different from what I would define success or what someone else would define success as. So I think that's the first thing I always start with what is your definition of success? Can you give me a definition of success that is not tied to how much money you make, but instead you can tell me what is your definition of success for your life and lifestyle, including when you work, how often you work, who you're working with, including what time you get up in the morning or time you go to bed. What does a day in your life look like, a week in your life look like? What are you experiencing day in and day out? If you know what that is? You have solved so many issues and given us some great information for how to create the right size business for you.
Speaker 2:I think another definition of success, especially as someone with chronic health problems, is your health and well-being. And here I am not talking about making a diet plan or a workout plan. I am talking about making yourself well mentally and physically, making sure that you have the energy to do the things that you want to do, both in your work and in your life. So what is your definition of success and health and wellness look like? For me, it's really really simple stuff. It's like I'm drinking water, I'm eating really healthy foods that make me feel good, I'm moving my body by going on a walk and then tracking my steps through the day to make sure I'm moving enough. I'm seeing like I just saw my chiropractor and I see an acupuncturist, like that's what my health and well-being looks like. And those things are required because they help me show up the way I want to show up in my life and in my business. Then I want you to look at your relationships. I think this is also overlooked.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people who keep saying well, I'll make time for that when I fill in the blank with whatever reason. Often I'll make time for that when it gets less busy. So if you've found yourself saying I'll make time for that when it gets less busy. I'll have a date night with my spouse when things get less busy. I'll plan a vacation when things get less busy. I will take a day off when things get less busy, like they're never going to get less busy.
Speaker 2:So stop using that excuse and we need to actually decide what relationships are important and how are we prioritizing them. Get clear on that, because if you have relationships in your life that you want to put time and energy into, we need to know what that actually means. We don't want to just leave it super vague. We want it to be like oh, this is what we're doing. We're having a weekly date night, going away on a honeymoon on our anniversary every year. We're taking each kid out separately for a mom and me date. Those are the types of things that I do every single month and I know what my definition of success for those relationships look like. It's very specific things that I know are important and because I have that and I know who my top, most important people are, my most important relationships are, I can have so much clarity. Again, this is all about giving yourself clarity on what you will require this business to allow you to do so once you have your life, your lifestyle, your health, well-being, your relationships.
Speaker 2:The next thing I look at is creativity, and I think this is so crucially important because a lot of people, especially adults, especially mothers or caregivers and no surprise, a lot of women start businesses because they are mothers or caregivers. There's something like 35% of small business owners that are women are mothers of school-aged children and another 30-ish percent are caregivers to an elder adult. There's a lot of overlap there too. So maybe you're like me and you both have children at home and a parent who needs help. So we need an outlet to take care of ourselves and nurture our own creativity. You'll be amazed what will come out of finding an outlet for yourself, having a hobby again. It can be really simple things that you like to do for creativity.
Speaker 2:I have learned I love Legos. I have every one of the new Lego sets. They are making adult Legos, apparently. Adults buying Legos is one of the fastest growing segments for their growth right now. That's hilarious, yeah, and it makes sense Because I'm out there. I bought four sets of Legos in the last six months and it's one of those things where it might seem silly and old me, would have been like this is stupid, this is a kid thing. But now I'm like, no, this is a creative thing, this is working with your hands.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of research out there about the importance of creativity in your life the importance of creativity and discharging stress and avoiding burnout and creating connection If you're finding a hobby that involves other people or something you can connect around. I have a friend who goes and takes a pottery class once a week. How cool is that? How many things have you ever wanted to learn how to do and you just never did because you couldn't monetize it? So get a hobby, do something creative. What does that look like? What do you wish you could do that you never made time for?
Speaker 2:And then the final thing I think about is your own personal growth and spirituality, so your connection to self and something bigger than you.
Speaker 2:However you define that, I don't care how you define that, but I do think every human has this pull to feel connected to something bigger than them and also needs to have a connection to themself. So what does that look like for you? Is that a mindfulness practice? Is that participating in a church or another organized religion or practice? There's a million different things that could be, but if you don't have clarity in what that looks like for you and what's going to keep filling your cup and really helping you feel like you're not alone in this world, if you don't have something, then again you'll get depleted really fast. So those are the top five definitions of success I put out there, because now we have so much more information about you, the owner of this business, and what you need this business to do for you. Not what you need to do for the business, not what you need to do for anybody else, but what you need it to do for you, and that, to me, is the foundation of making your business work for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just love this list because it isn't what we think about when we think about business, but it is what we think about when we consider the CEO as a person and what a person needs in order to be fulfilled in life.
Speaker 2:We're human, we have human needs and the best part is and you'll love this because you're the HR expert but when you, as the owner, have this perspective, you humanize everything for the rest of your team, for your clients. Like that does trickle down a lot when you prioritize, let's say, your health and well-being and you're open about it and you're sharing with people what you're doing. You'll be amazed how suddenly that'll change the culture for people around you, because they're watching you walk in with your water bottle or suddenly everybody has an aura ring, those things rub off, or people are taking time to go to therapy and yeah, exactly those things rub off in a big way, because that's to me, that's what real leadership is, that's you showing up as an actual human being and giving everybody permission to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:And one of the foundational things that you do with CEOs is work on values, and I'm curious how you define a value or how you get to the naming of the values.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm going to give a huge shout out to Erica Corday and India Jackson of Pause on the Play. I had done a lot of different types of values exercises and it wasn't until they came up with this process they called the from implicit to explicit process. That was so transformational for me Because I think in the past a lot of exercises I had seen around values were kind of like here's a word bank of a lot of values, circle five and ta-da, now you have your corporate values. But it didn't mean anything. And because it didn't mean anything, it didn't work. It didn't give us anything we could dig into.
Speaker 2:So going through this process was really about taking the values you have as a person, but also the values you're creating in your company, and taking them from being implicit to everybody kind of knows this already to actually formalizing them. And for me that process was so transformational. I keep sending everybody back to that experience Because it wasn't about a list of keywords, it was about actually Defining those for yourself and and coming up with your own language. And it's so funny because a lot of the language Ended up being things that I just kept saying over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:So our first one is life before business, and that is first for a reason, because that was the Primary value I had when I started my business was so that I could have a life, but it's also the primary value for a lot of our clients. When they come to us, they want and need to have time for their life Before business, like they're again, it's about prioritizing their needs as a human Over the business. So the business doesn't work for them if it's business before life, which unfortunately has been the way for a lot of businesses in the past.
Speaker 1:What are the other values that you have in your business?
Speaker 2:About page of our website and it's interesting because I've actually changed some of the language around them. Erica is also my diversity, equity and inclusion coach and really helping me thinking through a lot of language choices. So just know that y'all, like you, can change the language as you go. So another one is people first, all about prioritizing people over profits, about building relationships Clear as kind. I stole that one from Bernay Brown. I just loved it so much because I think women Historically women have been programmed to be nice and and being nice is killing us like literally. It is causing so much pain in the world and it is actively causing harm to a lot of people, a lot of Different groups of people. So clear as kind like how can we have clear, kind Communication? That includes being able to give and receive feedback. That includes strong boundaries. That includes making sure I have found the boundaries thing is the most important thing and to me, clear as kind is a huge part of that. Keep it simple and strategic is Just kind of one of my personal mottos for how I think about business. I always want it. I want to do the least amount possible with the biggest result. I don't want to do the most amount possible with the littlest result. So if you can't keep it simple and strategic, you're gonna spend a lot of time working, but you might not get the results you would if you focused on the essential few versus the trivial.
Speaker 2:Many Aim for excellence. Excellence is an important word for me because Another thing I know about women is a lot of us have this perfectionism issue when if something's not perfect, we won't do it, we won't share it, we won't put it out there. But perfectionism is really again actively causing harm to a lot of us. It makes women play small and hold themselves back. In so many ways, excellence is different from perfection.
Speaker 2:Excellence is the idea that, yes, you want to Do the highest level you can, but also Excellence is about knowing there's improvement all the time, so you can be excellent and still have room for improvement, and that's more realistic to me than you have to be perfect all the time. There's three more. I'll just run them real quick embrace ownership, taking responsibility for our actions and our roles, taking initiative, taking imperfect action, and then the final is in women we trust, and this is the one that I changed the language on, because Originally I wrote the future is female, and then I decided to change that, mainly because there has been, you know, obviously a huge conversation, cultural conversation on gender identity and I wanted to try to be a little bit more clear about we're here to support all women. If you are someone who identifies as a woman, we we are here to support you. If you are a black woman, indigenous woman, a Asian American woman, we are here to support all women in business.
Speaker 1:This is such a clearly defined, robust list of values and I'm curious how, in your own company, they have played a part in your decision-making.
Speaker 2:Some of the decisions that we made. Like I do better giving concrete examples. So, on the the people.
Speaker 2:First, one helps us a lot. We have found that, especially the last few years I mean, the being in business since 2020 has been a wild ride, and I will just say like sometimes, being on this end, I work with so many business owners, I'm talking to them and I'm also often the only space they have to Discharge a lot of emotion, which means now I am on the receiving end of a lot of emotion and which can be challenging. But you know, we decided to change some policies internally because and I think this happens for a lot of people like you start putting together policies or terms and services and agreements based on kind of the status quo, like this is the standard that most people have, but the the Pandemic is one of the first times where I go. This is not fair for some people. There are some people and everybody's needs are different, but there were some people who they desperately needed our support and we had the container of support they needed, but at the same time, they were being impacted financially so much that they needed support there too, and so we decided to make a policy where they could take a three month pause, and this allowed us to still have the container to give them support, but then we were giving them a way to take care of themselves first and that has become kind of an ongoing thing.
Speaker 2:Like now, we have different terms for different things. Like, if you are having a baby we've had lots of babies Cool, we have a maternity leave. You will pause you for three months. You had a death in the family. We'll give you the bereavement leave, like we have listed out now. Like now, we'll give people pauses in their program so they don't feel like they're paying for something that they're not using because they have a life event Going on, because it's a long program right.
Speaker 1:It's a year long and Unfortunately, I've been through with my clients.
Speaker 2:I mean a lot of fun things, like I've been to weddings, I've been to celebrations, I've been to exciting things, but I've also been to funerals and I've also had people get cancer and I've also had a lot of other real things happen. And I don't think in that case that the people first Version of me would say too bad, you signed a contract, I don't care that you're going through chemo, you know what I mean. Like that just does not fit Right to me. And there are some people out there who would say a contract as a contract, we don't care. And I'm like well, I think the contract is there to protect both of us. So how do we? How do we do that? And that's one that I think I go back to all the time, like we're constantly, especially in the world I'm in, especially with terms and conditions. There's a lot of terms and conditions that are really there because People are trying to keep their clients, basically.
Speaker 2:But we don't have a problem keeping our clients. Most of our clients want to stay with us. They just need flexibility. Sometimes Maybe they need an alternative payment arrangement one month, or maybe, you know, there's something we can do.
Speaker 2:But when people are in active crisis or there's something happening, that's when they need me the most. Like could you imagine and I'm sure I mean think about it You're in an active crisis and you can't go to see your therapist, a person who would actually help you the most. Like Not saying that I'm a business therapist, because I am not, but I can help them problem-solve and get through a lot of things because I'm not the one actively in it. So I want to make sure that we're always kind of Navigating that, because those, those situations come up. We handle them on a case-by-case basis, but we always try to reassure our clients that if you're going through something, really hard to do Is try to reassure our clients that if you're going through something, we're here. This is why you hired us is so that you can have this support system. And if it means we need to make some changes or we need to press pause or, you know, do something a little differently, let's, let's work together on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it sounds like really Re-evaluating your systems on an ongoing basis to make sure that they're in alignment with the values that you have. I I actually recently just looked through my contracts that I send out and I was like, wow, there's a lot in here. That is just not true. I need to pull all of this. You know, there's like penalties for non-payment and different kinds of really protective legal language. That isn't. It's not creating the kind of relationship that I want to have with my clients, you know.
Speaker 2:And that's what I realized too, is a lot of the language that we had in some things, and there's probably things that I could even do better at changing, because a lawyer's job is there to protect me right At the end of the day.
Speaker 2:I feel like relationships are so crucially important and I value the relationship more. Right like that to me. I'm like if I treat you really well and show you that I'm here to be on your, on your team and in your corner and I'm willing to work with you through a challenging time. Now do I still expect like yes, you did sign up for this program and I do expect you to actually complete the program and Pay the full fee if we offered an extended payment plan or something? But am I gonna make it a nightmare if you're actually going through something and you need real support?
Speaker 2:No, I think that is very scarcity mindset. I think it's also based out of, unfortunately, the industry that I'm in and the world of business coaching. There's a lot of people who make big promises they can't follow through on and they have to write these types of terms in because there's no other way for them to protect their own interest. Like their clients aren't very happy, and so they need the legal language to protect them, because they don't know how to deliver on what they promised.
Speaker 1:I so, when you're working with CEOs that are building out a business like a full business, creating business models, what are some of the components of a business model that are regenerative and sustainable for someone to create, like I'm thinking you know systems as part of it, and then there's products, offers, and then there's themselves. But how, when you're thinking about growth, like big growth, that happens at certain times how do you go into that in a way that you're not going to fall flat on your face?
Speaker 2:Well, I think one thing is to understand what you, as the owner, want, because there's a million ways we can scale a business. So if we just start focusing on what we think is the only scalable way, then often we end up in business models we don't like and unfortunately, I've seen this trap and I'm seeing it actively like right now. You know the economy is shifting and so people are making big decisions and changing up their business because they're realizing that was not working for them. So it comes back to what do you do best in the world? And if you can't be brutally honest with yourself about that, what do you do better than everyone else than choosing a scalable model because so and so said, this is the only scalable model?
Speaker 2:I'm hearing that a lot with, like online courses. I'm hearing a lot of people say services aren't scalable. Bs, bs. There are tons of services that are incredibly scalable. Otherwise, there wouldn't be the biggest marketing agencies in the world, there wouldn't be huge consulting firms, there wouldn't be huge accounting firms Like those are all services that are being offered. It is hugely scalable.
Speaker 2:It's just not what a course creator who's selling you a course on creating courses is going to tell you is scalable. So you have to know what you really want to sign up for, because what they often don't tell you in that type of model which is usually these are the two that are being compared in my world a lot Do I continue with services and grow more of an agency style model, or do I go with all in on the courses and try to scale that? What often they don't tell you is the sheer volume of marketing that goes into a course model. It is you're going to be a full-time marketer, meaning all the time you are working in your business is on marketing. It is very, very, very hard to scale a course business if you are not constantly marketing it.
Speaker 2:Even if you're trying to just do ads to it, which we've seen multiple times. There will be one little change in the way the ads work, or there will be an election, or there will be a bunch of things happening in the world that are out of your control. You'll have your ads account shut down. Even people are trying to avoid doing the marketing because they're trying to just run ads will run into problems at some point. So that's kind of the biggest thing I always start with is what do you actually want to be doing each day? What lights you up, what gets you excited? Because if you don't want to be spending all your time marketing, then you probably want to continue having a services-based business. You just don't want to be the only one driving that forward. You want to have more people supporting you. Cool, now we can have a conversation about what that looks like.
Speaker 1:And, as there are uncertain economic times that come up, what are some of the things that people can do to weather those? I mean staying true to what you're really good at doing, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's so many things you can do whenever, and I'll just say change is always going to happen, and what's been happening in the 15 years I've been in business? The timelines for change collapse even more. It used to be big changes only happen maybe every three to five years. Now they're happening on a more regular basis, and it's just the speed of information that is coming at us. So if you're trying to weather any sort of storm in your business it could be the economy, it could be a personal thing Look for the lowest hanging fruit first.
Speaker 2:Chances are there's something there that you have overlooked. That would be the easiest way to sustain your business. So if you need to make more sales, don't try to go out there and generate, do a ton of marketing before you've tapped into your existing client base, before you have asked is there anything else I could do to support you? I think really smart business owners right now, instead of trying to bring on a bunch of new clients or create a bunch of new offers, instead they're looking to their existing clients who are already paying them and saying is there something else I can help you with? Can we support you more here? I know you're busy right now. Can I take this off your plate? Is there a complimentary thing you could offer to an existence, an existing client? Like that will often be the easiest sale of your life. You won't even have to make a sales page or post about it anywhere, send any email. It'll literally just be hey, now we're offering this and this because we can see y'all need this help. That's usually my first place to go is look to your existing clients. And the second thing there is to think about when you are talking to people right now. I've been talking about this inside of the CEO collective a lot.
Speaker 2:Whenever we go into periods of economic certainty, consumer mindset shifts. So if you think about the Maslow hierarchy of needs, when we're in periods of abundance, when people's base needs are met they have shelter, they have food, they have safety when those base needs are met now they have time to self-actualize, which means work on themselves, invest in other things. They have their base needs covered. In times of any sort of economic uncertainty or crisis, they go down the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They want to. Instead of spend money, they want to save money, and this could also mean this could mean not buying anything period, or it could mean changing up what they buy or how they're buying a thing. So maybe in the past I just had a conversation with a friend. She just bought a new car. They just had a baby, realized they need a bigger car. But she said we could have paid cash but we decided because of the economy to take out a small loan so that I could keep some of that cash on hand. So those are the types of things that people are thinking about. So that could mean do you need to figure out a different way for people to spread payments around? Do you need to partner with a buy now, pay later, like an affirm or something like that?
Speaker 2:There's lots of these programs becoming more and more easily accessible to small business owners. It used to be just bigger businesses could access them. Now a lot more are becoming available and it could also be is there a part of your bigger package you can pull out, or your bigger offer you can pull out and offer as a standalone? So for us in the CEO collective, one of the things that all of our members get is our quarterly retreat. We have a quarterly CEO retreat where we do their 90-day planning.
Speaker 2:So right now, if somebody's kind of waiting a little bit to join us in the collective because it's a bigger time commitment for 12 months, it's a higher ticket program, they could join us just for one CEO retreat for a 10th of the price and get some of that experience and start getting some of that results going without as big of a time commitment or without as big of a financial commitment. So that's something I'm seeing a lot with my clients right now is if you've had people who want to work with you but they can't do the whole thing yet, could you pull out the strategy session? Could you pull out some shortened, condensed version that you can make accessible? It doesn't just have to be an online course. It could be an online course, but online course buyers are generally a very different audience than what a lot of service providers are serving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and at the time of recording this, I'm about to do the quarterly planning session with you all, and so in my life right now, I'm about to have a baby, and so I think people go through in their lives economically more uncertain and difficult times too. It's not necessarily reflective of what's happening with the whole, you know, country. So being able to pull out little pieces like that that'll get people actionable results and help to kind of give them the experience of what it's like to work with you in a fuller, fuller process, is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the most important thing when you're doing that is to make sure it's very congruent. Where I see people make the mistake is they're trying to come up with a whole new offer that doesn't actually lead to the next thing. So if you and again, keep it simple and strategic, if I'm going to do something inside of the CEO collective and I can pull that out and make that available, it really doesn't take me much more effort to open up seats for people to join the CEO collective retreat. Right, if and I even did this this year we pulled out two of our biggest trainings inside of the CEO collective, I was like these are some important ones that we have. Let's make them available as standalone products Doesn't take me any effort. It's super congruent because these are frameworks. We are actively teaching people inside of the collective, but it gives people a more accessible way to work with us. So that's kind of when I'm looking at business models for people. I really just am trying to get people to think outside of like all or nothing and making the shift from you know, the big shift between services versus the more scalable scalable, quote, unquote passive income is you have to run the numbers Like if you have a services based business, you could have five clients a year, 10 clients a year, 20 clients a year, and make a lot of revenue, depending on the type of business you have.
Speaker 2:I mean, I have some clients who only have you know. Each client is paying them 100 grand a year. Well, how many clients do they need to have a million dollar business? They only need 10. Do they really have the audience, though, to make a million dollars for a course? They don't, because they haven't needed an audience in order to make a million dollars as a service provider. And some people are like what are you talking about a $100,000 a year? I'm like there, I have plenty of people who, like you, have fractional HR. I mean, if you had a client paying you five or 10 grand a month as a fractional HR, I mean you don't need many of them in order to have a really great, you know revenue stream from each client, and that's where I'm like if you only need a couple dozen clients, let's keep in the services world. If you need hundreds of clients, get ready to do a lot of marketing.
Speaker 1:I've heard you say in the in the past that your business grows at the speed of your relationships, and I'm curious, as you've grown your business, how? How do you nurture the relationships that you have and and create new ones?
Speaker 2:I am always building relationships. One I'm just curious about people, so like okay. So, for example, I'll go to things. I just went to a huge event here. There was a screening of an amazing film documentary called Deconstructing Karen, with these two women who do anti racist work, and they had like 700 people in the audience. I knew a lot of people there. I did not know most of them, though, and so I'm like walking in, like my friend Michelle's next to me, and I'm like literally like okay, michelle, you are my energetic buffer, because this is a lot of people, and I like I could see people I wanted to connect with, but it was so packed and it was so loud and overwhelming, and I'm very highly sensitive. So what I did after that, knowing that I saw some people I want to connect with is I quickly shot the people I saw while I was sitting in the seat. A quick message on Instagram hey, I see you're here, it's so busy, can we connect and have coffee afterwards? And so the next day or so, I just set up like little coffee dates with those people, and so I find a way to make things work for me.
Speaker 2:I think that's the key when you're building relationships. I know that I'm better one on one when I'm trying to build deeper relationships. So I have to initiate a lot of that right. Like hey, can we have a call? Can we have coffee? Can we meet up for lunch? If I'm in town and I know somebody, like if I'm traveling for something and I know people are near there, I'll be like, hey, I'm in town for XYZ, can we meet up and do this? I'll do that when I'm at conferences. If I know people are going to be at conferences. I'll make sure I never eat alone. I always have somebody I'm eating lunch or dinner with or something.
Speaker 2:But there's two parts when it comes to building relationships. One is frequency how frequently are you seeing people or are you connecting with them? So it's really hard to build relationships with people you don't touch base with. You have to have some amount of like frequency. So the people I'm trying to nurture relationships with, I actively try to make sure I'm touching base with them, like once a month, and it could be as simple as commenting on their social media post or I will often subscribe to all their newsletters and I'll, once a week, sit down and I'll hit reply. People love that. They know, hey, she actually reads our newsletters. Yes, I do, and I'll hit reply if I think it's really good or if I have something to share.
Speaker 2:But it's the frequency and it's the consistency thing too. You've got to consistently make time for it, so it's just become such a habit. Now I don't really have to think about it. But, for example, I regularly attend two or three things a month here in Richmond, virginia. I love having a local community in addition to the online community. I have clients all around the world, so I do have a international community of people that I'm connecting with and talking to, and when I have the chance to actually see them in person, I try to. But there's something about face to face in person that deepens relationships, and so I try to prioritize that as much as I can in the settings that I prefer, which is smaller, preferably with food and wine.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is there anything that you would share with your yourself in your 20s, when you were first starting your business, that you something that you've learned now that you would love for her to know?
Speaker 2:What I would tell my 20 something self would probably be that it's okay to put boundaries in place, because it took me a long time to figure that out, and especially boundaries in my personal life that were taking away from the life I wanted to build. I was putting a lot of weight into other people's opinions of me and what they think I should do, and that held me back for a really, really long time. But I am so grateful that 20 something me got into therapy and went on this healing journey and learned some things about myself, including that I can handle a lot of stuff. So I don't know, I think that would probably be the biggest one boundaries.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I hear that I had a similar experience when I was started my first company in my 20s too, and got into a lot of different kinds of business relationships and personal relationships that just weren't the kinds that I really wanted to be having as I grew and learned more about myself in the world.
Speaker 2:It's one of the most important things we can do for ourselves is learn how to put boundaries in place and, I also think, learn how to again clear as kind, learn how to speak up for yourself, learn how to navigate difficult situations. I think a lot of the challenges especially women in business have is the fear of having a difficult conversation or, if anything feels uncomfortable, just freaking out about that. But often the thing you want is just one hard conversation away.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate it, and if people would like to get in contact with you or learn about working with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm over on Instagram quite a lot, so I'd encourage you to come find me there at Rachel Cook and let me know what you take away from this conversation, and also come check out the CEO collective If you're a small business owner who is ready to learn how to sustainably scale your business. That is what we do, and we absolutely love working with women entrepreneurs who have service based businesses and are ready to grow them, so would love to support you over there.
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Speaker 1:Another resource that I have for you is my guide to doing work differently. This guide takes you through four inquiries into how you can build a more sustainable and equitable work environment for yourself and your team. It's a great place if you're looking for somewhere to get started. Last, if you've got a burning question, a comment or a situation you'd like my eyes on, you can email me. All those links are in the show notes. Take care, brave soul, catch you next time.