When you've exhausted your time in the corporate world, you have to make a plan for what's next.
In this episode, I spoke to Beth Carter who is a solopreneur. She spent years in management, and one day had enough of her life in corporate and needed a change. She didn't have a plan when leaving, but her plan was to make a plan. She gives a lot of insight in the aspects of leaving a corporate job and transitioning into a solopreneur adventure. She also shares many of the things she wished she had known prior to making her decision. She now runs her company, Running Dialogue, which helps train managers on how to be better managers.
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast
Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com
You can find her site here: https://runningdialogue.com/
Contact Beth here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-carter-a01b652/
Tips and recommendations from Beth:
When you've exhausted your time in the corporate world, you have to make a plan for what's next.
In this episode, I spoke to Beth Carter who is a solopreneur. She spent years in management, and one day had enough of her life in corporate and needed a change. She didn't have a plan when leaving, but her plan was to make a plan. She gives a lot of insight in the aspects of leaving a corporate job and transitioning into a solopreneur adventure. She also shares many of the things she wished she had known prior to making her decision. She now runs her company, Running Dialogue, which helps train managers on how to be better managers.
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast
Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com
You can find her site here: https://runningdialogue.com/
Contact Beth here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-carter-a01b652/
Tips and recommendations from Beth:
00:04
Hi, welcome to the Reboot Loading Podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie. Hello everyone. On today's show, I have a very special guest I'm super excited to speak with. Her name is Beth Carter. She's currently residing in Portland, Oregon, loves the rain, running, great coffee, and connecting with others. And she left the corporate world and is currently on her own entrepreneurial adventure. Please help me welcome Beth to the Reboot Loading Podcast.
00:33
Hi Beth. Hi Stephanie. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm kind of your accidental entrepreneur, so I'm really excited to talk to you about this. Yeah, well, shall I start with like quitting my big corporate job? Absolutely. All right. So gosh, summer of 2022, I realized, oh, I'm done here at the organization I was working for.
00:57
for the first time in my entire life, I did a bit of a mic drop and walked out the door. I didn't quit on the spot because you don't do that, right? I did give them three weeks notice, but I just had this snap decision of I'm finished here and I'm a person who has a plan. I always have a plan. I have a plan for the plan, in fact, and I had no plan. And what's nuts is my husband was 100% behind me and he said, yeah, you got to quit. You're a miserable old time to go.
01:27
And he looked at me and said, are you going to be okay without a plan? And I said, the plan is to come up with a plan. And he went, all right, cool, we're good. Sounds brilliant. And in my nervousness, we then escaped for a few weeks in Colorado and I promised myself some time just to not think about it. And I had thought to myself, I'm always working for the man because you can do the Robin Hood thing, right? Like you work for big companies, Fortune 500s, and then you shop local and you buy all the
01:57
business dollars back into the local economy. And that felt pretty darn good. And I loved that for a long time. And I always figured like, they have to worry about who's going to keep the lights on. Like I don't have to do all that other stuff if I work for a big organization. And so I went on vacation, I thought about what I wanted to do next. And I had no idea. So I kept thinking about it and fishing through LinkedIn like you do. And I was having coffee with another friend of mine who'd also been a consultant one day. And I said, you know, I'm not finding anything.
02:25
because I really wanna keep managing people. That's really important to me. I love managing people. But there's this massive hole in the marketplace because we do a lot of leadership training. There's a lot of self-development, leadership, which is really about self-development, right? Which is awesome. It's incredibly important work. And I don't want to for a second diminish that. But what we're failing to do in the marketplace right now is take people who wanna be managers or who are brand new managers,
02:54
And then we give them systems training and we say, here's how you approve a time card. And here's how you approve someone's paycheck. And here's how you get them IT access. And then we walk away and we don't tell them, here's what you need to do as a manager when all five of your direct reports want the same week of Thanksgiving off. How do you handle that? And we don't tell people, ooh, what happens when you're in a meeting and you watch one of your employees get bullied and respond poorly to it? What do you do now?
03:24
Um, so we miss really the basic, I'm going to say fundamental tactical quote, boring things of management. And we bring all these people into the role and say, this is your path to success. And we're going to give you no guidance on how to do it. I just want to say, I absolutely love where this is going because you are speaking a love language to me. I've always said just because you can get into a management role, doesn't mean that that's where you should be. A hundred percent.
03:53
that is a huge gap, which you're talking about right now. And I'm just, I'm so excited. Right. And you know, what's nuts is the reason that I actually decided to do this is because to a person, everyone I spoke with went, Oh my God, are you in business now? Uh, not yet. Although today, yes, I am in business as a matter of fact, because it's critical work, right? It's so important to the people who work for you.
04:22
that when I thought about this and I started talking to enough people, I said, gosh, the market is there. And whether that means one-to-one coaching with potential managers, one-to-one coaching with new managers, making sure that the C-suite understands how important this is that your people are well managed. Let's talk about how you reduce turnover. How do you increase your profitability because you're not spending a ton of money on recruiting?
04:46
happens to employee engagement scores when they have a great manager? It's actually extremely well documented by Gallup is that managers are what keep a lot of people there. So there's a lot to be said for the skill, the art, and the science that is management. And a lot of people blow it off as this thing like, oh, it's boring. That's just boring. You're just checking budgets and you're doing these things. And I'm like, right, you're proving timecards and time off, and you're approving people's IT access and you're managing budgets. But you know who that matters to?
05:15
every employee who wants a day off and they want their pay right. And so as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing boring about your employees going home happy every day. If we can get to 80, 20, I like my job 20%, you got to pay me for, we are in the right realm. We are in a sweet spot, right? So that's how it came about is somewhat accidentally and somewhat intentionally. Yeah. So it was, it was really unexpected for me to go that route. I really thought that I would land myself in another corporate job somewhere.
05:45
But I didn't, here I am. I'm so glad you didn't. I'm so glad you took this leap of faith because in a management position, there's always going to be that admin type of work that you have to do, right? But the people skills, those actual management skills that many people don't have, it's a huge gap. Like I said before, I mean, it's just, it's huge. And it's something that I've always just sat there to myself going, why is no one seeing this?
06:12
you know, upper upper management, you know, the C levels, like, why do people not see this? But as long as we're hitting the proper budgets, we're hitting the numbers or whatnot, it doesn't matter how they're getting there. It doesn't matter really about the employee experience. It's more about what's our bottom line? Where are we trying to hit? And this is just amazing what you're doing. I mean, it's just, I love it.
06:39
I did tons and tons of research as I was thinking about this venture, right? And one of the things that Peter Drucker, the management guru, right, everybody quotes him because his stuff is amazing. And some of it's 50 years old and it's spot on. But one of the things that he said that I think really astonishes me is 50 years later, I was reading his book and it says, one of the tricks about employees is that here's the first the incongruity is that employees are an asset. No, they're not.
07:08
they are not an asset on the balance sheet, they're an expense. And Peter Drucker points out that because you can't own an employee, you can't put them on the balance sheet, which means that they're an expense. In his book, he says, well, that's something for someone to solve later. And when I read this, I was like, Peter, no one's solved it. You need to come back and solve this. But again, there's the root of some of this problem, right? As employees aren't,
07:37
employees are our greatest asset. No, technically, they're not. They are not the biggest line item on your balance sheet for an asset. They aren't even on your balance sheet. So this is what drives some of that. And when we think about if we could put things like managerial training and coaching, employee development, if we could put all those costs onto the balance sheet instead of as a line item of expenses, this is so technically disgusting, we would probably have better outcomes.
08:07
instead on frontline managers to be great managers to keep employees actually as an asset and to make the most of those teams and to drive results in ways that enhance the employee experience. And there's a huge disconnect there because we aren't teaching managers to manage. And there's that saying that people quit the job, they quit the manager. 100%. And I can say that's true for me in the past. Oh, yeah.
08:36
I know many people, I think I would venture to say probably most everyone I know that's quit a job has really quit manager, not the job itself. So it's a bold thing. I know, but I feel like it's, it's true. Oh, it is absolutely true. I can't think of anyone who hasn't done it actually. And people who've stayed a really long time in a job, even that wasn't a great fit because they loved their manager. Yeah. Tricky, right? You came up with this brilliant idea.
09:05
you will first let's backtrack you said okay screw this I'm leaving out of here. Peace out mic drop. Then you said I don't know what I'm doing where I'm going and then inside scream or outside scream both and and you came up with this idea and what was the first step for you to just put that into action? Did you go out and
09:32
research how to start a consulting business on my own? Or did you talk to friends? Did you, I don't know, pray to the universe? KS I did all of those things. Well, so I had worked for a consulting company for a little while. So I had a pretty good idea of, you know, what does consulting look like? I also being in big business and in earlier in my career, I worked for a wholly owned subsidiary of a fortune 500 company.
10:00
which gave me a ton of hands-on experience to all of the facets of a business, like business development, product development, all the way up through sales, follow-on, et cetera. So I felt like, okay, I can kind of see where you would need to start if there's even viability. So I really said, I'm gonna start with like, question mark, question mark, do people even want this? Is this even interesting to folks? So I started just interviewing old friends, calling up people I hadn't talked to in a while. How you been? What's going on? Hey, what do you think of this idea? Is this crazy? And everyone went.
10:29
no, no, no, no, do this now, do this now." Which was a resounding response. I mean, very literally no one said, don't do that. Not because I think they were like, oh, sure, you can do whatever. They were like, no, you need to do this now. And then I was sitting at coffee with a fellow consulting friend one morning and she and I had been talking about this and she said, you just need to do this. I was like, okay. And at the time we were thinking we might do it together, but...
10:58
But a couple of things got in the way, a big health scare for her, which she is through and healthy and things are wonderful. But she said, you know, this is really yours. You got to drive this. So thankfully, you know, somebody kind of, I'll say, pushed me off that cliff into entrepreneurship. But I think earlier I said, I'm the person who has a plan and a plan to the plan with a backup plan and contingency plan and mitigation plan that's also been pre-planned.
11:26
So I knew if I could do anything, it was one, to come up with a plan. And the first step was, look, is it even potential? Is it viable? What's out there? So I did a bunch of searching. Is there a lot of competition? There's a few competitors, right? And those are the folks who are with the Fortune 50. And that's wonderful. They should be, I don't wanna be. So I kind of knew my audience. I knew the size businesses that I would probably wanna deal with. I did a bunch of, can I make this work? Work?
11:54
And then I kind of planned it out and said, what would I have to do? What would the offerings look like? What would some of those things be that I would need to do to make the business viable? What would the revenue streams look like? What would I have to think about in terms of revenue streams versus expenses? What would taxes look like? You know, just kind of getting my head around doing some real basic, very strong man, financial models. And so I did all of those things before I was even ready to file for an LLC.
12:23
And then I filed in January of 2023 for an LLC and then just kind of hummed in the background and said, okay, now what's all the stuff that I have to do to be a real business? I want the LLC so I've got the name. I can begin to set my tax structure up appropriately. I can be thinking about expenses. And then I did all this stuff in the background to say, okay, I'm going to apply for women's business loan certification, which has actually been really helpful. It's through the state of Oregon. You can get one federally.
12:52
that made a big difference for being able to have more contacts. I got a website set up, contacted like connected into Google and Gmail and all of those tools. I was able to understand, okay, here's the 10 different insurance providers that I'm going to need. This is the type I would need. Call a bunch of friends and say, hey, who are you using? Get quotes, understand where the scammy scams were coming from.
13:19
You know, one of the things that nobody tells you when you're thinking about starting a business is you gotta have some cash on hand. It doesn't need to be a huge amount of money, but you have to be really thoughtful in what you're gonna pay for because Google wants 43 bucks a month, right? Because you need to have the G Suite so it connects to your email so that it has your work address so that you can connect your calendar and have access to Google Meet. So you're constantly doing these evaluations of
13:47
Do I go with Zoom or is GMEET good enough for right now? What kind of insurance do I actually have to have? Where does the certificate need to come from? Like is the state filing good enough? Okay, what do I need to do with my city? And then there's, you know, oh, you need to spend $5 a month on gosh, you know, whatever periodicals you're gonna read. Here's your $120 for Harvard Business Review, if you choose that's important. Oh, by the way, Office 365 is another 100.
14:15
year. Oh, do you need Adobe? That's night like everything's being nickel and dimed. And so I think a lot of us have recently said if I had known that, I wouldn't have done it because I would have said there's too many costs. But once you're in it and going, it's sort of like, okay, here we go. Once you have that momentum going, it's really hard to back away from it. And that was something that
14:41
My sister and I, we started a small side business back during COVID time. Just making jewelry online. It was, it was really fun because it got me to explore my more creative side outside of corpse. I was able to get my hands into clay and just make a lot of things. But the thing that a lot of people don't see in even just the small
15:11
the costs that come up. And when you're thinking about even a larger scale business, you have to look at what's your business plan? Is this sustainable? All the questions that you ask yourself, it's a lot of times we have this idea and we just wanna run with it, but you're right. There's so many things that you need to think about. Even starting this podcast, I had no clue what I was doing. I had no clue of what tools, what things I would need. But like you said,
15:41
There's some features that I would need in certain applications that I don't need the entire thing, but offer it for, you know, this a la carte, you kind of have to buy the whole thing. And it's like, I don't need something for $300 a year. I just need the, you know, can you charge me 10 cents per one? Something like that. But there are so many different things that you have to take into consideration when taking that jump. But it's worth it though.
16:11
Yeah, it really is. It really is. And I think too, it's important to point out there's probably people who started and they're feeling a little tentative. And you get a couple of good wins and it feels amazing and you're totally thrilled. And then you have some dark times. And there's this very special time, as you know, that we call the entrepreneur's dark night of the soul, which is when you're sort of pausing and saying to yourself, I should just get a conventional job.
16:39
because maybe you can't quite see things coming to fruition and you've been planting a lot of seeds and networking and pitching and there's nothing imminent and you're thinking, I okay I you know I made some guesses on my forecast my costs aren't going to change a whole ton I mean you can always find little places to trim costs but you know
17:00
$4 in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times a month is not really gonna swing your financials. It's really, you know, hey, where are my costs? What is my revenue coming from? And it's hard to have those moments when you don't see the success coming. You don't see the next contract or the next proposal to say, I'm still right. I'm still right. I'm still committed to this. I know there is a need. I just haven't found it all yet. And to remember, sometimes the sales cycle is really long. I feel like the other thing that
17:28
would I say this? The emotional impact of little things feels a lot bigger, probably because you don't have anybody to calm you down. You're really putting your heart and soul into something versus if you're in a corporate environment, yes, you have a good work ethic, you have good business practice. It's not that you're not putting your heart and soul in there, but it's different when you're doing something for yourself. Mm-hmm.
17:58
this is my baby. It really, so those things that you lose hurt more when you have those lulls of question whether or not you made the right decision. There's not a steady stream of income coming in. Those hit even harder. For me, I'm always talking about how I would love to be an entrepreneur. I want to have something that is my own. I know that there are pros and cons to it. Don't think that I haven't researched all of those things.
18:27
Right. I mean, it's definitely something that you have to have a certain mindset and a certain motivation factor to keep you going. Yeah. So for you, my question is, when you're having those moments, those dark days, what helps keeping you on the right path, saying this is the direction you need to keep going into, what helps you stay there?
18:55
The first one is if you know me really well, you know I'm a wildly self-disciplined individual. And there's a little bit of analytical thinking that goes into, okay, what's telling you it isn't a good reason when everyone is still telling you, yes, keep going. You're sticking yourself for a reason that you're not seeing, so keep moving forward. And it's a little bit of self-discipline and practice that just keeps you like, I don't really want to reach out to another person, but I'm going to anyway.
19:23
And then the other thing is I found that the entrepreneurial space is extremely welcoming. So one of the coolest things for me that's happened is an old friend of mine connected me with someone and said, Oh my gosh, my friend Kristen is doing the same kind of a thing. You two should talk. And we started talking and realized, Oh my word, I feel so much less lonely when I can talk to somebody.
19:45
and somebody you can talk really, really candidly with. And the two of us actually knew a couple of other people when we formed our own little solopreneur group. So we're actually talking all the way down to things, you know, we have a text thread, of course, but we're talking about things from, guys, I'm having a tough day, I just can't see this, and folks going, keep going, try again, remember it's a long SAM cycle. Or people going, hey, okay, go read something and come back, go for your walk, come back, go do the thing you need to do to recenter and come back.
20:15
So there's the support network of people who are willing and able, and this is just self-guided, right? But we're also talking about really taboo things, particularly for women, right? Like we're not supposed to talk about money and bill rates and things like that. And it's amazing to see these text threads come through when somebody says, hey, friends, guess what? I just built $30,000 this month. And you're like, yes. But we can also have these candid conversations of, hey, I think I'm going to pitch something. Tell me if this is a reasonable rate.
20:44
here's what I'm gonna offer and have people say, yeah, here's this makes sense, do this, maybe add that, consider this, so that you're getting some really good critical feedback at the same time. And so again, there's two things, is self-discipline for one, and then second, knowing there's a group of people I can talk to who I'm not gonna say not judgmental because they're helping me judge a decision sometimes. I want them to judge. I want them to say, I don't know if that's gonna work.
21:10
I want them to help me see flawed thinking. And so it's a really awesome, I'm gonna say honest space that makes me feel both anchored and inspired all at the same time. Yeah, that's good that you have a space that you can get that sort of support from because it is important, especially, I mean, I can't sit here and support you and say, oh, do this and that because I don't know what you're going through, but having someone or even a group of people that know what you're going through.
21:37
a big deal. I really like that you guys are able to bounce off even with the numbers piece. I know people don't want to talk about those things. It's hush, hush all the time, but that's important because if you're undervaluing yourself, how will you ever know? And then you dilute the market space. So there's a very real danger of not only are you undervaluing yourself, you're undervaluing the service to the market space and holding your diluting market.
22:04
you don't want to be the low-cost provider. So there's just this trick of you want to be in a reasonable range that's appropriate for what you're offering, and you can't know that unless you talk about it. And it also helps you get a lot more comfortable in front of your clients when they look at you and say, what's your bill rate? And you say your number, you're not kind of like, well, it could be. No, this is my number. I know it. It's well-researched and it's market appropriate.
22:31
you can build some confidence in front of your clients that way too. And then you also know you got some accountability partners who if you don't say the right number, you're going to hear about it. That's really good. And the confidence thing, I'm glad you mentioned that because I feel like, especially women, we tend to not put our best confidence self forward at first, especially in negotiating anything talking about what your worth is.
22:59
let's not even get started on the whole pay gap thing. That's another podcast. Exactly. But to be able to have that confidence where you can say, yes, this is my price, this is what I can offer you, that speaks volumes, and that will help you go way further. I love the support piece there. And especially like you said about the solopreneurs, it's really a whole other space to go into something
23:29
that's going through the exact same thing and the exact same company, the exact same mindset, but you do have that can kind of understand that. And that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's huge. So I wanna ask you about the name of your company now. Yeah. It's Running Dialogue. It is, I think it's Brilliant. Do you wanna tell a little bit about how you came up with the name? Absolutely. So, I mean, again, yes, I'm a distance runner. So I love to run.
23:59
But one of the things to me that's so important about management is you're constantly in conversation and it's always a back and forth dialogue. Sometimes a decision is final, but it's so fluid in everything you're doing every day, week, month. I mean, it's like managing is not transactional. So I wanted the name to significantly say this is an ongoing journey.
24:26
It's open, it's two-way communication, it's meant to be evolving, you're gonna learn together and grow. So I wanted something that really spoke to the significance of no beginning and no end. But here's the other thing, you know, there's so much behind running. I mean, I love running long distances, but sometimes running hurts. Sometimes it's really hard. Some days I don't want to.
24:52
Some days I love it and I can't get enough and it's easy and simple and I feel incredible. So that's how management feels sometimes is sometimes there's a whole lot of emotions swirling around. Sometimes they change moment to moment. But if you look at the logo at all, we bolded the you because the idea again in running dialogue is that it's not about you as a manager. It's about you who you're facing. It's the you that you're serving.
25:19
It's the you that you're working on behalf of. That's who's important in the running dialogue. I love it. I took one look at the name and I know with naming companies, designing logos, all of that, there's so much that goes into that. And when you look at a name of something, you want it to be simple, you want it to be easy, and you want it to be memorable. And I looked at it and I go, I know exactly what she was going with with this. Like it just, it's one of those very few that I see that I go, oh, okay.
25:49
I get it automatically. Yeah. Very brilliant, kudos. Well, the name I can take credit for, but I have to shout out to my friend, Kaz Wang, who did the design work. And I'll tell you, you're exactly right. She gave me a lot of homework. There was a lot of evolution and a lot of that was, collaboration and her brainchild was that logo. So I absolutely love it. Awesome. And had a lot of help, a lot of expert help in there. And this is a funny segue,
26:18
I will say the other thing is as an entrepreneur, you're going to get a ton of advice from people, tons of it. And it's wonderful. It's something you need to sort through though. Like people, by and large, people are coming from a place of wanting you to be successful. So they're going to advise you on your logo, your website, your marketing, your structure, your marketplace. They're going to tell you all the things. And at first it's a little like everyone's a critic. But if you pause for just a second and you say, okay, I'm
26:48
I'm going to start from the place that I believe everyone wants me to do well at this, then they're telling me something that's really important for me to hear. And so you can file that and say, oh, that's an interesting point. And I appreciate you saying I should look in this market space, but maybe that's not quite it for me. I'll take a look. And that may get filed on the I'll take a look when things slow down or I'll take a look in the dark night of this whole phase. But it's interesting because I think
27:14
You also need to know when to engage your experts and say, you know, for me, it's logo design. I needed to hand it to somebody who does this for a living and say, I need you to advise me because I don't know how to do this. Kind of like taxes. That's a great place to say, advise me. Yeah, help. So, you know, know when to know when to seek advice, know when to take advice and know when to listen to advice and not take it too. So that's a funny little, little piece in there.
27:42
That's great advice though, because it can be quite overwhelming. And anytime you have a brilliant idea, it doesn't even have to be being an entrepreneur or anything really big. You know, that when you go to your friend group, they all have an opinion. And it really does put you in a place of being vulnerable. And there are a lot of opinions. So being able to sort through those, I do think it takes a special type of personality to be able to say, Hey, they do mean well, I have to take it with.
28:11
grain of salt of some of these comments, some of these suggestions, but at the same time, you have to make sure you're doing what's good for you. And also taking into account what they're saying, because sometimes they may be right, even if it's something that you maybe didn't want to hear, they could be right to keep in mind. And also knowing when to ask for help. That is one thing that I'm not very good at. I'm like, Miss Independent. I can do everything myself, leave me alone. Companies want to ask me, you know, what's your
28:39
biggest weakness, I would say it's probably that, that I just don't need anyone's help. I can do it myself or I'll figure it out. But it's good to have that reminder that sometimes you need to go to the doctor, ask someone else. It's nothing to be shameful about. It's actually going to help you be better. Yeah. I'll tell you, learning to ask for help is really, really hard. And we share that in common. That is one of the very hardest things for me to do is ask for help.
29:07
I'm not gonna say I got cured of it, but I sure got a big slice of how to do it better back in 2015 when I broke my foot. And I'll tell you what, when you're on crutches, you need help. Oh yeah. But it was worth it, right? Like I would not trade that experience for a half a second for all of the other learnings that I got out of it in terms of being able to finally ask for help. It's pretty awesome. I wanted to ask you about your clientele right now. Do you have a particular...
29:33
niche that you're working into that you really enjoy working with. CB It's more the person, right? It's more the new manager. So for me, the target audience is new and aspiring managers. So in particular, either folks who are maybe in their first or second leadership role and people who are interested in becoming leaders, because I think it's really in service to them and to their potential teams in the long term for them to know what is this job going into it. So companies range. Any company
30:02
who values their employees enough to train them is the company demographic I'm looking for. And then it's the folks with the beginner mindset, right? Because the beginning mindset is such a fun place to be when you're learning something the first time. And to be able to have people ask questions, say, there are so few dumb questions truly, right? But to let people come and say, well, I don't know what to do about this. Great, let's talk it through. Okay. You're never going to see every experience as a manager in your first year.
30:32
You don't see it in your first 10 years and probably not in your first 20 years because 20 years in, I was still seeing new things. And so I think for me, the demographic really is new and aspiring managers at any company that wants to invest in them. I love that. Everyone hear that? There's the plug. You need to contact Beth because I can just tell just in this conversation with you, your love and passion behind what you do and...
30:58
what you want out of this for yourself is very evident. I love speaking with people who are just so passionate about what they do. Well, thank you. And to be fair, I've had a couple of really incredible managers myself. So I have the unfair advantage of having some amazing mentors too. And that's lucky, right? Yes. And don't ask me too much about that because I'll cry. In a good way. In that good happy cry, right? I can't say that I've had
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a lot of managers in my career that I could say that about in that, you know, they were my truly a mentor for me. I really feel like a lot of times people are just promoted into places and they're not given in and it's not to any fault of their own. It's just that they're not given those proper tools. And if they were, if they were to hire Beth to come in there and actually teach them, their potential is probably a sky's the limit. They don't know what they don't know.
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sure. And we have to value management again. We have to say that managing isn't just a rung. Managing is a profession and it's an important one. Even if you're a vice president someday or a president someday, you still manage. And you need to know that people are managing well in your organization even if you're not the one doing the managing. You philosophically have to be ready to help people excel at that so that your teams are happy. CB.
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I just like being the one who's actually with the people doing it. There's got to be some great self-fulfillment there. Just fills up your cup when you're working and you can see the progress as well. Oh yeah. I love it. Honestly, there's almost nothing as cool as looking through some of my LinkedIn contacts and people who've worked for me and seeing where they are now and they've just done like amazing things. They grew into amazing directors and they've just like, I love it.
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when I see people who I was lucky enough to be able to either push out of the nest or push out of their comfort zone just well enough for them to really find their place in their own talents. I just get so excited. I always say it's getting your eagles out of the nest is one of your most important jobs as a manager. You've taught them how to hunt and how to fish and now get them out of the nest. Let them go fly.
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Thinking about them and when they first learned how to walk or when they first made certain milestones, it's such a big deal. And it's the same thing when you're actually seeing the work that you put into helping. I feel like that is something that if you're an entrepreneur and you're working on something that you truly value, that is something that is going to show up in the same manner, in the same manner of, you know, this is like my baby and I'm watching them walk for the first time.
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It's so great to see and it's so great to see that you have come this far in just the short amount of time that you've been doing this. And a couple of things I wanted to ask you about. A very important question I have for you is what is your favorite kind of coffee? Oh, this is important. Nosa Familia is a coffee company here in Portland, Oregon. It means our family in Portuguese. They are a fabulous roaster. I grind it and drink
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My coffee hot at home, black. I'm not gonna lie, a good old cold brew on nitro at what I call our lady of perpetual hope, which is Starbucks because you can find them anywhere. If you're in a real pinch, like you're gonna get a consistent cup of coffee. Peds makes a great Americano, not bagging anybody. But yeah, top of the list is Nocefamilia. I'll have to see if we can get that somewhere around here. They ship. Okay, I need to check. I'm writing it down right now. And...
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I also want to ask you about your running. Tell me about, have you done any races? I'm sure you have. You said you were a discipliner. So tell me about that. How did you get into it? Has it been a lifelong thing? Yeah, I started running when I was running distances when I was about 13. And I ran track, I think the first time at about 13 years old. And it turns out, you know, they threw me in a sprint lap and that was fun. And then they realized like, oh, she can keep sprinting for a little longer. So put her in a little bit longer sprint.
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then I signed up for Cross Country and it's all kind of history. I just fell in love with running and it was one of those things where I run when I'm happy, I run when I'm sad, I run when I'm mad, I run when I'm tired. It's a very meditative practice for me. So yeah, it's just a space where I solve problems kind of tangentially. I think about things maybe indirectly. It brings me a lot of joy.
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That's great. I mean, you probably come up with a lot of good ideas when you're running because it's that meditative experience for you. I've always admired runners. I see them running all the time. And I'm like, I wish I could do that. I want to be one of those people that runs for fun. And you're one of those people that runs for fun. I want to be you. I'll live vicariously through you.
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But have you done any long distance races like a marathon or half? Oh yeah, I've done quite a number of marathons. There's a little wall over here. Oh my goodness. And because I don't have video on here, you guys, there are a ton of medals I'm looking at right now. And that is the absolute coolest. So the big one is the half marathon rack, I guess, and the little one is the full marathon and ultra.
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goodness. When she says little one, it's not little by any means. There are a lot on there. What would be your guesstimate as to how many halves and whole marathons? Gosh, I absolutely have. You know, after you don't run for 34 years and not have a whole time to talk about. I've done 37 full marathons, six longer than that, something like that, five longer than that. And then probably around over 50 halves. Wow. I'm a junkie.
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I wish I could calculate just how many miles that is right now off the top of my head. We'll have to do that eventually, or some of us can do that and send me the numbers. That is impressive. I think that says a lot too, though, also your mindset of when you decided to just leave out of corporate world and do your own thing. Like you said, you have a plan to the plan to the plan, but the mindset I feel like behind
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this consistency and persistence about you. So Beth, I wanna say thank you so much for joining me today. I was super excited to talk to you about your adventure so far. It's very evident to me that, you know, you're going to do great things. And I just wanna let everyone know I will have all of Beth's contact information in the show notes. Please contact her if you're looking for someone that...
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can do an amazing job training some managers that will be a great asset to help your companies grow and get your employee engagement, employee happiness up. Please reach out to her. As well as I do have a list of some information that Beth provided to me about if you're wanting to get started into an entrepreneur adventure, some of the things that have helped her. I will include that in the show notes as well. And if you would like a...
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a copy of that, you can feel free to email me, email Beth, contact us. We'll be happy to send that out to you. And I do want to ask you, Beth, if you would be interested in the future coming back on talking to me about more of your adventures, just any advice, talk about all the things, just have a good chat. I would love that. Thank you. I'm so excited. Absolutely, Stephanie. It's really been a joy to be a guest on your show. I so appreciate you taking the time to chat with me.
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If you're interested in becoming a guest on my show, all the information on how to contact me is available in the show notes. Also, if you're enjoying the content and would like a shout out in an upcoming episode, a link in how you can support this podcast is available in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening and until next time.