How do you own your role as CEO of your business?
What the heck does that actually look like? What if you don’t want to build a business?
Today we’re going to dive into that and so much more with my guest, Racheal Cook. We’re discussing how to own your space as a CEO, what it looks like, her opinion of being the breadwinner and CEO of her household, and how she’s used that to catapult her business.
Mallory Schlabach
I have been a fan of Racheal Cook for years. She was super instrumental in me figuring out what the heck to do online. How to take what you know and turn it into a business. So, I’m delighted to welcome Racheal to the podcast!
Racheal Cook
Thanks for having me, Mallory. I’m really thrilled to be here!
Mallory Schlabach
The way I first found you was through your Fired Up and Focused Challenge – which is amazing, and everyone should go do it. I love how you help women really grow businesses. Can you tell people who don’t know you more about yourself, what you do, and how you do it?
Racheal Cook
Yes! So, I am a business growth strategist by trade and training. I am the founder of the CEO Collective where we help women entrepreneurs start and scale service-based businesses. This is actually the third iteration of my business. As Mallory said, she found me with the Fired Up and Focused Challenge. I started the business under my first brand, the Yogipreneur. When I left more traditional corporate consulting, I was technically working with small businesses in that role, but they were small and under 200 employees. They were multi-million-dollar businesses with executive teams, but they weren’t big private massive companies. But I had completely burned out of that and found myself crying on a yoga mat, which is how it just happened to go.
My yoga teacher at the time, had this amazing studio. I absolutely loved going there. One day she said, “Racheal, I know you don’t want to go back to the consulting world. But do you think you could help me with my studio?” It was a lightbulb moment for me. I realized there are solo-owner operated businesses that do not have access to someone like me. Back around 2008, there just were not very many coaches working with owner-operated businesses, they were working with executive teams. That was the start of my business, and I started as the Yogipreneur specifically working with the yoga industry. That started to grow very organically into helping anyone in the health and wellness space. It grew beyond that to working with every type of coach under the sun. I have worked with everyone from relationship coaches to divorce coaches, to parenting coaches. Now we are working with women entrepreneurs who all run these fascinating, incredible businesses where they’re bringing their experience and expertise to the world to make it a better place in whichever way that is. Whether it’s making people happier, healthier, more connected, or able to pursue the things that they’re most interested in. That’s basically the journey in the nutshell. 12 years started with crying on a yoga mat, and ended up here where I get to work with so many incredible women entrepreneurs who are doing such incredible work in the world.
Mallory Schlabach
I love that. That’s exactly why I do what I do too. Don’t you find the people that come into your world are just jaw dropping, inspiring and have the coolest businesses? They just really making a difference in their community, their spaces and whoever they touch. I get to do this every day. It’s amazing.
Racheal Cook
Absolutely! There are women who are helping other women who are recovering from having a baby to heal diastasis recti. For all those moms who’ve been through that, I think it’s incredible. It’s a tiny little niche, but there are just are not a lot of resources out there. I have an amazing client who is a dog trainer for training enthusiasts who go after training, training competitions and obedience training competitions. Again, this is a small niche, but the clients absolutely love it. I have another client who’s a professional musician. She’s an oboist and teaches women who used to play the oboe and just let it drop off. I’ve always wanted to get back into music, and she now has a whole program about how to get back into music. These are such cool businesses that traditionally no one would ever think you can make these things into businesses, but you can. You can do the work you love with clients you love and still have time for life. That’s what’s really important to me as I feel like women entrepreneurs want to have it all, and it’s really hard. You have to be so intentional about it. You can build this incredible business that sustains you, that supports you, that pays you great income and be able to hang out with your family or do other things that you’re passionate about.
Mallory Schlabach
I love that because I know you say this a lot. You call it the lifestyle business. I think that’s something that’s not talked about often enough in this online space. When I heard you talk about this lifestyle business, I thought – Yes! There’s a place for me. I can still have a business, it can still be profitable, it can still meet everything, but it doesn’t have to look like what all these people are filling up my newsfeed with. How do you help women start to think about dreaming in this way?
Racheal Cook
I think we’re in a space right now where there’s just a lot of push to make seven or eight figures in your business. Literally, that’s a tagline on someone’s course. The problem I have with this is a lot of a lot of the messaging out there basically says “go big or go home.” If you’re not going after this massive thing, then your business is not legit, and you are obviously selling yourself short. It’s almost like you have mindset issues if you don’t want to just have a great business that supports your life. I just have this personal belief that we should not stay so focused on the future, because we forget to live right now.
This is one of my personal stories, but I think this informs the conversation. Both of my parents are entrepreneurs. My mom had started her business when I was a baby and was making a lot of money. She was in soil consulting, which is if you’re going out there and building like a development a new neighborhood, she would go out there and basically do all the environmental impact studies. If she was still working now, she would be making a six-figure salary a year. She was in a traumatic car accident that put her into a coma for three months and in the hospital for two years. She lost her business, and she was only 31. I was four years old; my sisters were two years old and eight months old. My dad also had a business. The biggest thing I have always had with me is, wow, I don’t have memories of my mom before the accident, I was too little. I think about all these people who have put so much into just growth for the sake of growth, and then they miss out on other things that matter in their life. At the end of the day, you can’t get back those years.
I thought about this when I had my kids I had I started my business, and I got pregnant with twins within the first year, all at the same time. For me I thought – okay, I’m on the mom track now. I don’t want to be so focused on growth that I’m not here. I don’t want to miss that stuff. Those are the years I can’t get back. For me, that’s where I think women think about this differently. I talked to so many women, especially moms, but even women who aren’t moms, and they say – I don’t want to just constantly be waiting until Sundays to do the things that I love to do. I don’t want to wait until Sunday to finally go travel. I don’t want to wait until Sunday to go after this hobby that I’m really passionate about. I don’t want to wait until Sunday to spend more time with my family. They have things that they want to do now. I think it means we’ve got to think differently about the way our businesses are designed and not extract all of our value as human beings from a number or revenue that we’re bringing in. We need to build beautifully full lives today, and not just keep waiting. I think it’s about deciding what feels right for this season of life. There are seasons of our lives. There’s seasons every year that are going to have busy seasons and there’s going to be some seasons where you need to prioritize rest and recovery. There’s going to be some seasons where family is a bigger priority. If we are always thinking about growth for the sake of growth, or if our whole identity or our whole worth as humans is contingent on how much money we make, then we miss out on so much. For a lot of us, we just end up setting ourselves up for frustration and burnout. Instead, we should learn to really be intentional about why we’re doing this. What are you really trying to accomplish with this business and in my life?
Mallory Schlabach
I love it. So, we talked about the lifestyle business. We’ve talked about setting that up and reframing your mind about how you think about growth. One thing I know you talk about a lot is this idea of taking on the role, title and ownership of CEO. So, what have you seen with the women you work with? What does it look like when they take on this role?
Racheal Cook
Yes. It’s interesting because I never really thought about outwardly talking about this. But when I hosted the very first CEO retreat, which is a quarterly event that we do where we help people create their 90-day plans, I named it the CEO retreat, and I was kind of like, are people that are resonate with this, because in the entrepreneur space, you know, you never know what title people are going to resonate. What I found was the type of women who showed up for that were a little different than the type of women who had showed up for other things before. They were ready to take it seriously. They were ready to take their business seriously. This was not a hobby; this was not a side hustle. They wanted this business to be sustainable and to be bigger than just them. When you claim that role of CEO, there is a mindset shift. You have to own it. The CEO retreat changed the trajectory of my business, just because a whole different type of person showed up. They were women who were really ready to step into that role.
Mallory Schlabach
What did those women look like? I think a lot of women are afraid to put that on themselves. I don’t know if it feels like a lot of pressure, I don’t know what that is. I think it’s when you do all that stuff, it really does change things.
Racheal Cook
It really does. Most of these women got into business because the traditional world just didn’t work for them, it’s not because they loved business so much. I think a lot of us have these old school thoughts of – well, if you’re the CEO, you’re all buttoned up. In a suit. In the corner office. We all have these mindset hang ups of terrible bosses that we’ve all had at some point or another. I think we just have to redefine what it means for us. As women, we don’t have a lot of great examples out there of women operating at a high level in their business who are doing things differently. So, I tend to look out into the world and look for those examples. Someone who I really love is Sara Blakely (the founder of Spanx). I think she’s a great example of a female CEO who does things her own way. She has her own personality and she has her own style. You are just as likely to see her on Instagram making pancakes for her kids, and being goofy with her girlfriends, as you are to see her on the cover of a major magazine. Where she looks absolutely like a boss. For me, that’s redefining what it looks like it. It’s someone who’s showing us you can be passionate about what you do, and you can go after it, but it doesn’t have to look a certain way.
A lot of us have these predisposed notions that being a boss has to look a certain way. I hear from a lot of women that they don’t want to run a big business or have a big team. We’re so fearful of all these things because we’ve been told that those are hard. But I’m like, what if it isn’t? What if it didn’t look that way? What if it was different? Those are the types of things we end up spending a lot of time with. I find that women tend to hire later than men in their businesses. We tend to wait to ask for support until we are drowning. We tend to try to do it all ourselves. In the long run, it holds us back and makes our businesses less sustainable. If something were to happen to us, everything would fall apart. And this is a big shift, because if we’re going to be successful long term, you got to get some help. And this is true in any other area of life, too, right? Like, if your family depends on you for absolutely everything, and then you need a break, everything falls apart. I really embrace this idea of stepping into the role of CEO promoting yourself to CEO. You change your role as your business evolves and you change your focus. Your goal is to get out of the weeds, to get out of the $10 an hour activities, and to start focusing on the highest value activities you can provide to your business. That is where we should be, we should be in our zone of genius. Not in this zone of busy work, which will just keep us stuck and ultimately will lead to a lot of burnout. I think this is one of the biggest reasons why women burnout overall. They’re so tired of being in their inbox and dealing with the same stuff again, and again. This is too much work.
Mallory Schlabach
Yes! I think what you said about your role as CEO changing is really important to hear as well. I think that it’s really hard, although it’s getting better, but challenging to find women role models who are owning this. I’ve said I want to be the sugar mama to my husband, and he’s okay with that. A lot of people are afraid to have goals of outpacing their husbands or wanting to go chase success and have successful businesses. It feels taboo, or they’ve gotten a lot of pushback from people in their life. So, I feel like it’s really important to find representation of it, and to surround yourself with people who get it and want to go there too.
Racheal Cook
I totally understand this. I’m the same way. I am the breadwinner, and my husband is a stay at home dad. My husband left his job – he was a middle school teacher. He left when our son was born to be a stay at home dad. So, our roles are very reversed. I very much understand this challenge. I was listening to a bunch of documentaries about Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently because she recently passed. One of the things she said in an interview when her husband Marty was still alive, is the best decision she ever made, was marrying someone as supportive as her husband. If you haven’t watched the RBG documentary, it’s on Hulu, go watch it. It’s amazing. He knew that she had the potential trajectory and she had what it took to become who she became. He stayed home with their kids and became the person who was behind the scenes – the man behind the woman. That is the opposite of what most people are used to. That is very different in our patriarchal society. Not everyone’s going to get it, and you’ve got to be okay with it. You and your partner have just got to be on the same page and not care what other people think. This is why I surround myself with amazing women all the time. I’m not the only woman I know who is the sole breadwinner. Another great example is Rachael Rogers, and her husband is also stay at home dad. Her business has just exploded this year. I look to her to see what she’s doing, because we’re kind of trailblazers in this way. Being the women who are running these established businesses and having partners who are an opposite role from a lot of a lot of what we see out there. I don’t find that there’s too many of us out there.
I do have to say, I’ve stopped following a lot of the online celebrity people, because that tends to be a lot of Instagram perfection. I’ve built these amazing relationships with other women who are building great businesses. We’re all on the same page about where our values are, where we see our businesses going, where we want to show up for our families, where we want to show up for our communities and the things that matter to us. I get so much just by showing up in those communities. That’s where I find the women who are here with me, and it’s amazing. I also think this is where investing in higher-level groups can be really helpful. I’ve met most of the women in my inner circle, who are my go-to business BFFs, because we were in a group or a mastermind together, or we were at an event together. There is something about paying to get in the room with the right people. You’re surrounded on all sides by other people who invested in themselves to show up for this space, that they’re playing at the same level you are, and they’re as serious as you are. I went to an event last fall in New York, and it was three days, and I just met the most incredible people and had the best conversations. So many of them were on the same page with me. We were all the “odd duck” out in our typical families. But we were all doing the same thing – building these businesses in different ways. That’s where I go to when it’s finding those women. I’m not just looking on Instagram, I’m looking in real life. Locally, I’m getting into community with them. I’m actually taking the time to build the real relationships with them. That takes time, and it’s different than just following them on social media. It’s investing in the relationships, investing in coffee dates and checking in on each other. When you do that, then you find these people who are playing at the level you’re playing at and who also believe it’s possible. I just think that’s so important, because we’re told it’s not possible a lot.
Mallory Schlabach
I think we believe that because we’ve never seen it, it’s really hard to envision where we’re going and how far we can actually go. There’s so much value in seeing how other people are building successful businesses, even if they look nothing like yours. That makes sense. I actually love being with people who don’t do what I do.
Racheal Cook
Yes, I get so many insights and so much creativity out of it. I tend to look for my next way to go outside of my industry. When everybody else is zigging, I want to zag. When everybody else is doing something and chasing the next trend, I’m going to focus on the things that I think really connect the most with my people. I get so much of that from people who are not in my industry, or even people who aren’t online. I have a lot of amazing business BFF who are not in online businesses. They might use online marketing, but their core business is not being an influencer or being an online marketer. I just get so much out of out of connecting with them and learning from them. I think that’s something that we lose a lot especially if you start going out there looking for information online. You get in these online circles, and suddenly there’s a lot of groupthink and everybody doing the same things. It’s like a cesspool, and it gets even harder to be creative or to try something different. You start to feel like, well, this is the only way to do it.
Mallory Schlabach
Right. So, when that comparison sneaks in, it feels like you suck at everything. I think it’s so great to get out of your lane and watch what other people are doing. Then it allows you the space to go blaze that trail, because you’re not worried about what everyone else is doing.
Racheal Cook
Absolutely. You never know what’s really happening behind the scenes of someone else’s business just based on what you’re seeing on social media. I know people who have teeny tiny social media followings and multimillion-dollar businesses, because they focus on what really works for them. The social media and the online stuff is only one tiny part of their overall strategy. I was having a conversation this week, with a bunch of amazing women who just joined me in my collective. A lot of them mentioned they were in this other program, and they were frustrated because the person leading the program was saying all you need to do is show up on Instagram stories, and you will get client.” I was just like, seriously, that is not all you need to do. Does that even align with your business? Does that align with your strengths? Does that make sense? Are your potential clients even on Instagram? How are they finding you to watch your Instagram stories? I had so many questions about that.
These are the types of things that I get frustrated by in the whole space. The answers are so simplified, but there’s no real underpinning strategy around it. I think there’s too much focus on a specific tactic and not enough focus on what the big picture strategy is that makes the most sense for you. Because what works for me, might not work for you. What works for you might not work for me. I know some people who have amazing strengths at just showing up and going live and doing all the social media stuff. Personally, that’s not going to be me. I’m going to show up on my podcast and do what I do. We’ve got to be really confident with that, we’ve got to know that what works for someone else doesn’t mean it’s going to work for us. You’ve got to know where your highest values are, or your highest value to your businesses. For me, I’m very clear about what I provide and where I provide the highest value in my business. I’m the strategist, I focus on creating content. I know long form content is what works best for me, and I don’t do surface level. I love to go deeper, I love to do more in depth, because I’m a strategic thinker. If you look at my Strengths Finder, my top five are all in the strategy column. They’re all related to strategy. Once you know that, you can let go of the comparison and be in your zone.
Mallory Schlabach
So, how do you find your zone? How do you know as a CEO, when you’re doing it or how you even get there?
Racheal Cook
I think it’s it is a work in progress. It’s a lifetime work in progress. The reason it’s so hard is because we diminish the things that come easy to us. We assume it comes easily to everyone else. But that is so far from the truth. That is where I realized where my value is when I see that other aren’t doing those things. That’s a sign for me. Because this is my strength. So, I always look out for that. What are the things that come easy to you? You will probably find no, not everybody does that. My favorite tools are the Strengths Finder. I think a Strengths Finder is great and I have almost all my clients go through it. It helps me tell really quickly where we need to focus. I know that for me, all of my strengths are in strategy. The area that I have the least level of strengths are in the relationship section, actually, which means I have to surround myself on my team with people who have high empathy and high connection. We made a whole quiz called the Sweet Spot Quiz based on Strengths Finder.
Mallory Schlabach
This is so good. We’ll include a link to the Sweet Spot Quiz in the show notes. You’re going to take that quiz and your mind is going to be blown. I’m going to take the quiz as well. This has been so fantastic. I love it. Thank you. Is there anything coming up new for you on the horizon in the last quarter? Where can we stalk you?
Racheal Cook
Honestly, my favorite thing that we’re about to kick off in November is the Plan Your Best Year Ever Challenge. It’s a five-day challenge where you walk out with your 12-month profit plan, you know exactly what you’re selling each month and how you’re marketing it. You can go into 2021 feeling like you know what you’re doing and what you’re working on that year. That’s one of my favorite things to run, we run it every year, and it’ll be available on demand in November. So that is coming up. And other than that, you can find me on my podcast, Promote Yourself to CEO where we talk a lot about strategy to help you start and scale your business.
Mallory Schlabach
Racheal, thank you so much for coming on. It was a dream for you to come on and talk. I loved this conversation! Ladies, if you have questions, please go follow her and join her community as well. What she teaches is solid and super beneficial!
Racheal Cook
Thank you so much!
Mallory Schlabach
I hope you are inspired by today’s conversation and I hope you feel empowered. I hope it makes you dream, and not just dream with your head in the clouds but dream of what can you actually see possible for your business. How far can you take it? Where are the gaps? Who do you need in your life? What do you need to know? What are your strengths? Make sure you take Racheal’s quiz to find your strengths. If you haven’t done it, check out her resources!
Connect with Racheal:
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn
Links:
https://www.rachealcook.com/
https://www.rachealcook.com/blog/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUhJX4fhzHIAMyilM5Vitlw
https://www.pinterest.com/rachealcook/
About Marketing Magic:
The Marketing Magic podcast is where women entrepreneurs trying to do all the things come to get inspiration, business strategy, and on-air coaching on how to get their business noticed and growing. If you have a business that people need to know about in order for it to grow, you’re in the right place. This is the place to uncomplicate your marketing. Be sure to listen, subscribe, and leave a review! Join the conversation of other unapologetically successful women in her Facebook community, The #girlboss Club.
