Going First After Four Episodes of Taking Things Apart

Four episodes ago, I started taking everything apart in this series, The Matriarchy Would Never, and I've been pretty comfortable doing that, sharing where all of this standard best practices business advice came from, and the underlying assumption that your life was getting handled behind the scenes. What happens when that same business advice gets sold back to women by women using the language of female empowerment and feminism? And we dove into the archetypes, the personas, the persuasion playbook, everything that has literally been used to get people to part with their money.

And somewhere in the middle of that, you probably thought to yourself, "Okay, Rach, what do I actually do with this information?" Fair question. I absolutely get it. You wanna know how do you make sure you're not doing things in a way that feels out of alignment for you and your business.

So my answer is, I'm gonna share with you how I've integrated it into mine, and I'm gonna say that I didn't build the perfect business. I have run launches that I would not run that way now. I have used urgency and scarcity in ways that I would not do now.

I learned the same best practices, the same standard business operating procedures and principles from the same places that you did, and I learned this model really well before I decided to unlearn it and really deconstruct it and understand why it never felt right for me. So a fair amount of what I'll share with you today I only figured out because I got it wrong first. What I can tell you is that at five different points, I made clear decisions that went directly against what I was being taught, and every single one of these decisions cost me something.

To be honest, it cost me revenue and sales, sometimes credibility with people who measure success differently than I do. And these decisions are the reason that I'm still here almost 20 years into running this small business, and I'm doing it in a way that feels in integrity for me, that feels in alignment with my values and the type of person I want to be in this world. So I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Today I'm not gonna teach you a framework. I'm gonna go first and tell you about the specific decisions I made once I knew what I knew. And when you know better, you do better. So I'm gonna share what I've done.

Keep in mind, the specifics are mine. Your business is not my business. We're all different humans, so I'm not telling you this is how you need to run your business or the decisions you need to make. I'm just wanting to share really openly and transparently the thought process I went through, taking these things that felt off, that gave me the ick, that made me feel kinda gross about business, and making decisions to make it feel aligned with the way that I actually wanna show up in the world. Let's get into it.

Five Decisions and What Each One Cost

Hey CEO, Racheal Cook here, founder of The CEO Collective® and host of Promote Yourself to CEO®. I've really been enjoying this series, The Matriarchy Would Never. I've loved the emails and the DMs. The conversation that this has started within this community has been fantastic, and I hope you're feeling a little less alone, because what I'm hearing from a lot of women entrepreneurs is they've had this sense, this unease about a lot of these things, but it's really hard to put your finger on what's making you feel that way.

I want to walk you through five decisions I made inside of my business, The CEO Collective. And I'm gonna go through the lens of the framework that I specifically use in my business, which is the 90 Day CEO Operating System®, 'cause it gives really solid examples of how you take these ideas and actually fully integrate them and operationalize them in your business. So vision, values, leadership, team, and client experience.

I'm gonna walk you through some key decisions that I made, and I'm also gonna talk about the cost of making these decisions, because there is always a cost for doing something and going against the grain. And that's not meant to be modest. It is just being really honest with you about what you might have to give up in order to make decisions that are more in alignment. I think that's really important to be transparent about.

The Parking Lot Full of BMWs and Mercedes

So the first area I wanna talk about is vision. A decision I made early on around my business was I decided what my definition of success was going to be before I even started this business. It was 2008. I knew that I had already achieved success from a patriarchal lens.

I had the MBA, I had a brand-new car, I had the six-figure career. I had everything that I was told was what success meant checked off. I had all of those things. I had the suits.

I had the heels. I looked like every parent's dream of a successful child. And I was miserable. I was absolutely miserable.

I was slowly dying inside. And at the time, I remember when I was really, really starting to get to the point where I knew I was in the wrong place, I was going into a parking lot full of BMWs and full of Mercedes, and I was going into this office where I was one of very few women, and I started thinking about what my life would look like if I continued on that track. I had just gotten married to my husband, and we wanted to really start a life together, and so we had been talking about what that life would look like, what kind of family we wanted to have, what kind of experiences we wanted to have together.

And as I was sitting at my desk in that office, I was like, "This is incompatible with the life I actually want." And when I started looking at the people who had been in that building for 10 or 20 years, yes, they looked successful by every external metric. Especially being in an office full of men, they had watches that cost more than a midsize sedan.

They had incredible multimillion-dollar homes. They had second vacation homes. They wore suits that were thousands of dollars, custom-made suits. They wore Italian leather designer shoes.

They had all of the external status-indicating markers of success. And most of these guys worked 75, 80 hours a week. Most of them had no relationship with their kids, had no idea where their kids went to school, who their kids' doctor was, didn't participate in much with their kids' lives 'cause they were always working.

And honestly, a lot of them were divorced and maybe on their second or third wife. And as I got to know these guys, I realized one of the reasons that they worked so much was because they did not have a life. They did not know how to have a life.

They had no real relationships. And so I just decided pretty early on that this was not the way I wanted to measure success for myself, and so I left. I was like, "This is not it. This is not for me. I am not in the right place. This is the wrong measuring stick."

This is what I had been told growing up, was, "Do good in school. Get a good job. These are the things that will make you successful." And meanwhile, I'm looking at people who had done all of those things, and they were just unhappy people. They were really sad to me.

So you can be very financially successful and incredibly lonely. You can be very financially successful and have no one to go home to. You can be incredibly financially successful and have no other interests or hobbies beyond work, and that just was not what I wanted. So the first thing I did was decide when I was gonna start this business that the first value for me was always going to be life before business.

I didn't wanna be the person who said I was building this business to take care of my family and then not actually have a relationship with my family. I didn't wanna be the person who said I was building this business to be successful, but I'm in terrible health and have now created all of these additional health problems in my 50s or 60s, which is what I witnessed.

A Definition of Success for Every Area of Life

So my version, life before business, really dictated a lot. It gave me a lot of direction for how I wanted to start my business because it started to name the constraints I actually have. And I shared this in the previous episode, but once I actually looked at what does my definition of success look like, knowing that one of my core values was life before business, I went through all those areas I gave you on last episode.

I went through what did I want my life and lifestyle to look like? What did I want a regular day to look like? From the moment I wake up to the moment my head hits the pillow, what does a normal day look like? What would be an amazing, just really fulfilling day?

I went through every single part of that visioning exercise, and then I went through for my health and wellness. This was right at the beginning of getting diagnosed with chronic pain and fatigue, and some other health conditions that were directly tied to intense overworking and stress, as well as trauma and all sorts of other things. But that was when I realized I had to get a handle on my health because as I started having these health crises, I was literally being told, "Well, you can take a handful of medication and go back to the life that created this type of stress-induced breakdown and burnout, or you can change the environment," which I did.

I was like, yeah, if the environment's making me ill, if the stress is making me ill, if the overworking and anxiety is causing me to literally harm my body, this is not the environment I need to be in. So I decided what health was gonna mean to me and how I was gonna prioritize that. I went through and decided what I wanted my relationships to look like, and not just in the moment, because at the time we didn't have kids.

We were wanting to have kids and start a family, but I had just gotten married, and I didn't see my husband at all 'cause I was working six days a week, and by Sunday I barely had energy. So I had to redefine what I wanted our relationship to look like. Not just now, but as we're raising children, as we're growing older together.

We'll have been married 20 years in 2027. We just had our 19th anniversary this May. And I'm so glad I did that exercise because I had a lot of clarity on what I wanted our relationship to look like. And I'm not saying it was perfect, but it definitely set the foundation for the relationships we have now, that we have with our kids, the people around us.

I went through and decided what success looked like for fun and creativity. And I'll be honest, I had a hard time with this one because I was so conditioned to be a high achiever and to just work, work, work, that I really had to intentionally carve out space for creativity and fun and tap back into interests that I had been neglecting. And that one is something I am all in on now.

I feel like that was an area within my definition of success that was neglected in the early years of having kids, because let's be honest, when you have babies and toddlers, that is the most hands-on stage of parenting, so it's really hard to find time for yourself. But as I've gotten older and my kids have gotten older, I have really reprioritized things that I do just for the fun of it, things that I do just for the joy of it, just to have a creative outlet. And the last piece, my definition of success in terms of my spirituality, my personal growth, my connection to myself, all of that has been the mindfulness practices, the spiritual practices that I started pretty much right away that really gave me the foundation for who I am as a person.

And I knew that just had to become part of my daily life, like part of my normal routine. I knew that when I tapped into that, I was able to stay aligned, I was able to stay grounded. But the minute that got neglected, I would be going around going, "Who the hell am I? What am I doing here? What is going on?"

For me, that's all about being that grounding force. So making that decision about the vision I wanted to have for my life is one that I've made over and over and over again. Because things change, things evolve. And there's things that come up that you don't expect or you don't anticipate. But every few years, I will sit down and actually look through this vision for myself and my business.

Revisiting My Vision Every Season

I will ask myself, "What season of life and business am I in? What do I want this next season to look like?" And I'll get really intentional about how I want that to look. I have been in business now long enough to know that there are gonna be seasons in my business where I am gonna grow, it is gonna be really fun to grow that business, and I know there are seasons where I'm gonna coast a little bit, because I do need to prioritize something else, like the season I had to take care of my mom.

I know also that my season of growth will never be growth at all costs, because growth at all costs, growing as fast as you can, causes a lot of back-end consequences that are out of alignment with how I want to run this business. I always want my growth to be controlled, to be steady, to be sustainable, because I never wanna grow so fast that I'm unable to keep up with it and unable to deliver the level of service that I want to be known for my clients and my community.

What Aligning My Vision Has Cost Me

So it's always gonna be intentional, and that's the biggest part about your vision, is making it intentional. Now, what is the cost of this? What is the cost of aligning your vision in this way? I mean, the biggest cost is sometimes it means you'll be a little slower on this, growth trajectory than you would have if you would have sacrificed everything to go all in on growth.

There are definitely opportunities that came up that I declined because they were not aligned. There were a lot of things that I said no to, especially in the early days of my business when I had babies and toddlers. I didn't travel a lot. I didn't go to conferences.

I literally said no to so many things that could have grown my business because it would have taken me away from my family at a time that I really wanted to prioritize being there for them. And there are things that every single time I now have an opportunity in front of me, I really run through, again, my definition of success, and I ask myself, "Is this a fit?" Because something that's kind of a fit isn't enough for me. It has to be a hell yeah, this is exactly what I want type of fit.

Values Are the Rules of the Road

The next area that I had to make some hard decisions about my business is my values, and I kind of hinted at this already. One of the first values when I was documenting clear, explicit values for my business was life before business. And that became not just a nice phrase that we put on the website.

This is something that we use as our rules of the road for how we do things, the way that we do things. So this is how I think of values. You have your vision, which is where you're headed, the direction you're going, what you're trying to actually build.

The values then become the rules of the road. This is how we are going to show up, how we're going to behave, how we're gonna make decisions. These are the rules of our playbook for how we run this business. So for me, I think the cleanest contrast here that I've shared throughout this whole series is, one, patriarchy versus matriarchy.

As I really deconstructed my understanding and living through patriarchy and that kind of system and started to understand what matriarchy really meant, I realized that, wow, all of my values fall in the matriarchy system versus a patriarchal system. I didn't know that when I created my values. I just knew what I didn't like, and I decided that I was gonna have clearly defined, explicitly clear values that were gonna become the frame for how we guide decisions here inside of my business.

I want to credit Erica Courdae and India Jackson because they were so instrumental in helping me to understand how to create values that are, one, explicitly clear, but two, that become foundational in how you run your business. It's so easy to do values work where you're basically picking a bunch of words from a word bank that sound good together, and then you can't actually use those as decision-making criteria. You can't actually use those operationally in your business.

And going through this work with them to really uncover what my values are was game-changing. I went through this work following the election of 2016, and then we revisited again in 2020 and revisited again in 2024 because there is always gonna be a part of me that is going to stand up for any sort of injustice and call out harmful behavior, call out the systems that are oppressing people.

Our Five Core Values in Practice

Right now I have five core values that I am very explicitly public-facing on my website, on our About page, and as you work with us, you will start to see that we operationalize these. These have become decision-making criteria for us. So I already shared life before business. That was one of the first things that I prioritized in the business as far as an operational value.

The next one is we are the new economy. We are the new economy, to me, means, what it looks like in practice, is we aren't trying to win capitalism. We are using capitalism as the way to share our work with the world, because that is the system that we operate in right now.

There are not really other ways to make that work and get our needs met currently. I can only pay my mortgage and pay for my kids to go to college soon by having money flowing into this household. So we have to operate within capitalism, but we're doing it in a way where everybody wins, where clients, community, team, and business owner win.

We believe when you take care of people, your people take care of you, which is people over profits. And inside of The CEO Collective, our goal is to create our own economy where people hire each other, refer business back and forth, pay for each other's expertise. So we want to circulate resources, we want to circulate money, we want to circulate support.

This is the village mentality, where opportunity compounds for all of us because we are in it as a win-win, not in it as I'm here to win at the expense of everyone else.

Why We Work Exclusively With Women

The next value we have is in women we trust. This is really important to me. I only work with women. I do not want men in my program.

Every single time I have allowed that in the past, I could not create the psychological safety that women really were looking for. And our needs are different. Our challenges are different, and we don't want to let in men who could potentially jeopardize that psychological safety or decide that they're there to mansplain us.

So we decided to focus exclusively on women, but all women. And I have, again, on my website, that means cis, trans, non-binary, every ethnicity, background, religion, orientation. We work exclusively with women not to exclude, but to focus. And the reason we want to focus is because the research is clear.

When women build more profitable businesses, it recirculates. They reinvest profits back into their families, their teams, their communities. When women win economically, everyone around them wins, because in a matriarchal system, it's all about supporting everyone else around us.

Next, we are stronger together. What this means to us, what this looks like in practice, is that we come together inside of The CEO Collective, which is a group program, and any time I'm hosting an event or leading a coaching call, we know that when we show up, we are showing up real, raw, vulnerable. This is not a weakness. In the right room, vulnerability is the most powerful move you can make.

We work hard to be in that room and to hold the psychological safety of that room. It is the foundation we build first. When you feel genuinely safe and welcome and like you belong, you stop performing and you start growing. And I have seen over and over and over again, when I'm able to hold that container, that is where the real breakthroughs live for people.

So we are stronger together because we know we can show up on our worst day and be supported. We know that we can show up and ask for help, and that help will be offered. We can show up however we need to show up in that particular moment and know that we are going to be poured into and that we are going to pour into others.

It is a win-win. And the final value that I put in place recently is our AI value, and I felt like this was just so important to put out there. So that is human first, always. We are a relationship-driven business, and we always love a good tool, a good technology to help us reach our goals, but we will never do it in a way that is meant to replace people, to mimic people or anything along those lines. We have very, very clear guidelines and values around how we will and won't use AI.

Running Our Policies Through Our Values

These values don't just live on our website. This is how we operationalize it. One, we use these values as decision-making criteria. I literally have a decision-making framework, I've done trainings on this in the past, where I use these values as a filter.

And if I'm making a big decision for the business, I will literally ask, "Is this in alignment with this value?" As we are making decisions about the business, that includes policies about how we run the business, too. So often, policies are created as a reaction to something that has happened.

So somebody gets upset, somebody has reached out about this problem, there's criticism or feedback that needs to be considered, and so we have to create a policy around it. How are we gonna handle these specific situations? And we run all of those through our values to make sure that as we're designing these policies, they aren't just to protect us.

Which is honestly what a lot of policies in business are to protect the business or to protect the business owner, which is great. You do wanna protect yourself, but it shouldn't be at the expense of other people who are also involved in your business, especially if there's a transaction where there's money involved. It needs to be a win-win.

We run our terms and conditions through our values. We think about how we deliver our product, program, or service. Our entire client experience was designed through our values. The way we run our community is in alignment with our values.

So we really think about every single aspect of this business and is this aligned with these values? Is this aligned with what we have said are our rules for the road?

I Stopped Over-Functioning at Work and at Home

The next area that I made clear decisions about how I wanted to run my business was I stopped over-functioning, and this to me is in CEO leadership. This is self-leadership. I stopped over-functioning at work and at home. Why does this go under leadership?

I have found that a lot of people have never had real leadership training. They just get promoted in a career. Nobody teaches them how to lead, and so they're picking up what leadership means based on whoever managed them, whoever's they're watching. Same thing in small business.

There are so many small business owners who have never actually led anything in the past until suddenly they're growing a small business, and now they have got to learn how to lead their clients, they've got to learn how to lead their team, they've got to learn how to lead a community. And unfortunately, if they only are modeling what they are watching, then they could be getting a lot of bad leadership practices. This is where patriarchy comes in.

Patriarchy is power over everyone else. I'm in charge, you do what I say. Everyone else is a cog, and if a task can reduce to an SOP, then the person doing it needs no judgment. They don't need autonomy.

They need a lot of monitoring to make sure that they are doing exactly what you want, and that's why most people don't like where they work. So there's an alternative, and that means shared power. It's a win-win with everyone. So in a team of collaborators, the goal isn't to just get my needs met, it's to make sure everyone's getting their needs met.

Okay, what does this have to do with over-functioning? A lot of women over-function because we have been trained to over-function. We have been trained to do more than we actually need to, and then we end up running into challenges over and over again, like scope creep with a client.

We don't protect our calendar, so our calendar is maxed out. We don't protect our energy, so we're depleted and exhausted. We've said yes to too many things, and we end up feeling overwhelmed all the time. And the same thing happens at home.

We take on all of the emotional labor, we take on all of the invisible labor, we take on all of the mental load, and that means we're always running on empty, okay? You have to protect the asset, and the asset is you. And to me, the first place to protect the asset is to stop over-functioning.

It means in my work, in my business, better boundaries. It means better habits for how I actually sit down and do the work that I'm doing. It means fiercely protecting my time and my energy and my attention. It means saying no a lot more than it means saying yes.

And the important thing here is, none of that is taking away from other people, okay? It's me saying, "I'm not going to exploit myself and put everybody else above me, and everyone else's needs above me. I'm going to make sure that my needs are met so that I can meet their needs, too." On the personal side, people ask all the time how I have time for my hobbies, how I prioritize all the things that I have to do to maintain my health as someone with chronic conditions, how I have time to go on girls' trips with my friends, how I have the relationship I have with my husband and my kids.

And it's because I say no to a lot of stuff. I say no to everything that is not aligned with the definition of success. And it means I protect those things, like I said, protect my calendar.

Taking Care of the People on My Team

The next big decision I made in my business was around how I want to treat my team. And I truly believe when you take care of people, your people will take care of you. This is something I learned from my dad. He says it all the time, and as someone who has run a business for over 45 years, I feel like he's pretty good at this.

He has people who have worked with him for decades, and they are incredibly loyal to him. They show up and have showed up for him again and again and again through the ups and downs of him owning this business, and those people continue to show up for him, and he shows up for them, too. So I had this model of someone who believed in taking great care of your people.

And so going into the corporate world, it was very much a culture shock for me to see how many environments were just so toxic because they were all about how do I underpay people, give them the least amount of benefits, and get the most out of them, get the most labor out of them, extract, extract, extract at the least cost. And we've seen this when I'm talking to small business owners all the time because I will hear small business owners go, "Oh, you need to pay just, like, minimum wage for this."

They will talk about how to find the cheapest person for this. They will talk about how to outsource it overseas for the least amount possible. And now, of course, we're talking about AI being where we outsource things, which is even less costly. And I'm not saying that you don't have to consider what it costs to have people on your team.

It's gonna cost something. But the problem is when you come at it from the approach of how little can I give someone in order to get my needs met, that is an extractive mindset. And the problem you're going to run into with that is people will not wanna stick around.

People will not be loyal to you. People will not show up as their best version of themselves because they know they're undervalued. So I always want to create a business where people are well taken care of. I want it to be a win-win for everyone, and that turns into people who stay with you for a long time, and I've experienced that in my business.

I have had people on my team who have been with me for years and years and years. I will always want to pay as generously as I can. And here's what happens when you pay really generously. One, you're gonna get more qualified people who wanna work with you.

You're gonna get really talented people who wanna work with you because they know that you actually value them and you're willing to put your money where your mouth is, not just say, "Oh, we value you here," but you're paying under market. People who are well-paid feel more valued in the organization they're a part of. So I think that's a pro to me personally.

Does it cost me more to have my team? Sure. But they stay with me. They're incredible.

They're values aligned, and they enjoy their work. They enjoy the culture we're building together. If the whole point of business is to make money, I should also make sure that the people who are in business with me, who are doing this work with me, should feel valued and should be paid for the value they bring to the team.

Period. I think everything that we build into what our team members experience is always gonna come from that lens.

Hosting Clients Like a Kitchen Party

All right, the final big decision I wanna talk through is about client experience. This is something I'm really passionate about. To me, the matriarchy would never spend all of my time and energy marketing and selling to get people through the door, and then not actually be a welcoming, good host once they are inside my house.

At this point, if you are in the Collective with me, The CEO Collective, if you are showing up at the CEO Retreat, welcome to my house. This is how we're gonna take care of you. I think of the way I want people to feel in my community and at our retreats, any time we're together, I wanted it to have the feel of a kitchen party.

Do you know what I mean? If you have a bunch of friends over at your house, and somehow everybody ends up congregating in the kitchen, that's where the real conversations happen, is sitting on the stool by the kitchen island while you're snacking and refilling each other's drinks. That's how I want it to feel.

That kind of relaxed, open, this is where you can share what you need to share. This is where you can get off your chest what you need to get off your chest. This is where we can really hash things out. And that's how I always wanted things to feel.

So I take that mindset through everything in how I design my experience, and I actually have a framework for this, y'all, that I teach inside of The CEO Collective for building that kind of culture, that kind of feeling that you want people to experience, and it's very much coming from a hospitality mindset and thinking about, well, how am I gonna host people in a way that makes them go, "This was the best experience"?

Orienting People Before the Real Work Begins

The first part is psychological safety. So you go to work with a business, and if you aren't clearly welcoming people in, just like if you were hosting an event, hosting people in your home, you wanna make people feel taken care of. "Can I take your coat? Can I get you a drink? Here's where the restroom is. Here's where the trash can is."

Whatever it is that they need to feel taken care of, and usually that means orienting. What is it that you need, how can I get you everything you need as you're coming in. Once you're orienting people, you want to build the container for them, which is clear communications, setting expectations, setting boundaries, making sure there are clear processes in place.

"Here's what we do first, and then here's what we do next." So actually having a real onboarding experience is really important as they get started. Then, as they experience working with you, you want to create that sense of belonging. How do you create that kitchen party vibe?

You make sure everyone's part of the conversation. You bring people into the conversation. And it's a lot easier, guess what, when everybody's values aligned, when you know something about all the people, you can actually personalize your interaction, when you are intentionally helping people build connections. So, "Hey, you're new here. Let me introduce you to so and so, and here's who they are, and here's what they're up to."

Including people in the conversation. All of that is how you create a sense of belonging. When you come into my kitchen party, "Hey, everybody, this is who this is, and this is what they're up to and what I love about them. Here, let me introduce you to everybody."

That's how you build that sense of community and belonging. You actually have to know the people in the room. And then we actually get to the parts that are building the transformation that people are looking for, 'cause that's ultimately what my work is about. There's a journey you're going through.

And I'm doing that through the 90 Day CEO Operating System. I'm teaching them how to build infrastructure for their business, teaching them how to build systems, and how to build strategy, and how to build teams. But I can only get to that actual work once the foundation is laid, once I've oriented people, I've created a psychologically safe container, I've laid out expectations, I've laid out boundaries, I've laid out guidelines, I've welcomed everybody, I've connected people, I've personalized the experience at little touch points that are appropriate.

Then they are ready to actually learn. Then they are actually ready to try things out. Then they are ready to implement what I'm trying to share. But if they don't have that foundation, they're not gonna really be ready to fully absorb everything that we're talking about.

And as they go through this process, what's amazing to me is because we've laid this foundation for this culture that we've created here, the level of the transformations I see is incredible, you guys.

The Non-Revenue Wins I Love Most

There are so many things that we don't even share on the website, because to me, yes, I want you to grow your business, yes, I want you to earn more money. Of course, I'm here to help you grow a business. But it's the non-revenue wins that get me so excited.

Hearing somebody come to one of our calls and be like, "Okay, I was looking at where I was last year, and I'm looking at where I am this year, and God, I'm having so much more fun with my team. We just went on this team-building activity, and here's what we did, and everybody shared with me how much they love working in my company."

Or having them share, "I was able to take my family on this amazing adventure, and I never would have been able to do that before because I would have been so worried about keeping the business going at the same time, and I actually was able to unplug and be present with my family for the first time in forever."

That's where I want people to get. How I get them there is always gonna be through talking about systems and talking about infrastructure and helping you build the things in your business that will create the environment for that kind of success, and that's success on your terms, which is what I'm always about.

Every Question Gets Answered

Did I know how to do this out the gate? Some of this is just intuitive to me 'cause this is who I am as a human. But I will say there were a lot of mistakes made along the way. Because as I was learning how to deliver a group coaching program, there are so many programs out there that will tell you, "Just get as many people as you can get in the room, and when it's time for the Q&A, we'll just cherry-pick questions."

So even though that person has spent thousands of dollars with you, their question might not get answered. I lived through that best practice, and I decided this is not how I wanna run my business. I wanna make sure that if people are paying me and I'm delivering on my promise, then their questions get answered.

I've been on the opposite side of programs where somebody sold me into the program, but that person is nowhere to be found in the delivery of it. And so I decided I'm always gonna be involved in the delivery of it. Not in every single aspect, but I'm involved.

That also means that the parts I'm not involved in, people know before they even agree to join. They know who runs the other calls on the calendar. They know if there's other people involved. They're never gonna join the program and then be surprised that someone else is running our call on Monday.

It's very clearly outlined. It's not hidden, and they also know that the person who's running that is super qualified, has incredible experience, and true expertise at this work.

What It Costs to Deliver This Way

So there is definitely a cost to delivering an experience in the way that we deliver it. There are a lot less expensive ways that I could deliver my programs, but I feel like these are the things that make us stand out. These are the things that make people feel valued, and these are the things that build the culture we wanna build here inside of The CEO Collective.

And I've had a CPA say to me, "You spend way more per client than most other people running these types of businesses." And I'm like, "Yep, I'm fine with that." I'm always gonna be thoughtful and do it within the budget that I've set, but I'm going to be willing to spend more for the level of experience I want to deliver.

And the return for me is the fact that my clients get incredible results because of all this work that we've put into our experience. They stay with us for a long time. We have a renewal rate that is unheard of in this space. We have people who stay with us inside of The CEO Collective for years, and I truly believe it's because of the level of intention and thoughtfulness in each part of how we deliver this program, build this culture, and create that feeling, like I shared, that kitchen party feeling.

That's always our goal. So I will never back down from that. That's gotta be there for me. That's what makes it fun, honestly, to run this business.

Who Absorbs the Cost When Things Go Wrong

Okay, this episode got a little longer than I thought it was going to, so let me wrap it all up so that you can actually take this and implement, integrate into your business. The big thing here when you're making these decisions about your business is thinking about who is the one that's truly taking on the risk, who absorbs the cost when you're doing things in the more patriarchal way versus in the more matriarchal way. So patriarchal is the by default, 'cause this is the way it's done everywhere.

Matriarchal, we're intentionally designing that now. So the decision around your vision, who takes on the risk of just going by default according to the definition of success that patriarchy and hypercapitalism has given us? You do. In the years you can't get back, and you don't find out if it was worth it until the end.

On the other hand, you still take on the risk when you're designing. What if you try it and it is not what you thought you wanted? You find out earlier, because in this new lens where you're clearly articulating what your definition of success is in all these different aspects of your life, not just in your business, you define that success for yourself before you started moving towards it.

When we're looking around the decision of your values, who takes on the risk of the values that a business is operating by? In the patriarchal default setting, whoever has the least amount of power is the one who's taking on the risk, because those values weren't designed to protect them, especially if those values were never built with them in mind for a win-win, and instead were about how to just go after growth at all costs, profits at all costs, et cetera. That is always going to put the risk and the cost back on whoever has the least amount of power in the relationship.

But on the other hand, when you intentionally design it, as we just walked through, that risk is more shared. Because within a matriarchy, it's always about win-win. It's always about protecting the people at the center who are the most vulnerable, who have the least amount of power, and the rules were written before you were put through a pressure cooker of a situation.

So if there's a mistake, if it was the wrong choice, you have still protected the most vulnerable person in the relationship. What about the decision around leadership? Okay, we talked about a lot here, but when you are leading by default, and you aren't thoughtfully building a culture for yourself where everyone's needs are met, then who takes on the risk?

When You Go Down, Everyone Goes Down With You

Well, everyone around you, all at once and unplanned when you go down. We talked about over-functioning, and if you are over-functioning to the point of burning yourself out, you're at max capacity, you will not only go down, you will take everyone down with you. Everyone who depends on you is gonna be impacted when you go down.

That's the default setting. You go down, everyone else does too, 'cause you are the safety net. You are the person who is supposed to be holding it all up on your own. When we shift it to designing a different version, okay, when our leadership is all about not functioning for everyone else, and instead making sure that you're part of the plan, making sure that your needs are met, then the business has the buffer in it, because we built it in proactively.

We made sure there were guardrails to protect you instead of waiting for you to go down. We made sure that if there's anything that does happen, we've got enough buffer in there to give everyone time to adapt and adjust without taking everything down.

Who Absorbs the Cost for Your Team and Clients

What about the decision around the team? The default setting when there is not an intentionally designed approach to building your team, and instead it's just about how do I extract as much value out of each person on the team, how do I extract their labor for the least cost so I can increase my profits, who absorbs mistakes? The team member.

The team member is the one who takes on the cost of that. The team member is the one who loses in that scenario, and guess what? It means every single team member who churns through, they're all hit. When you are more intentional, when you decide to take the time to step back and invest in a culture, you're paying people well, you're valuing them, and putting your money where your mouth is so that everybody's needs are met, you're creating a culture where everyone feels appreciated and valued, and as a result, they bring their best work to the table, who absorbs the cost of a mistake?

You do. You're absorbing the cost of a mistake in whatever you're paying them. But if you've built a great culture, then you will have the opportunity to course correct with that person, to repair any harm that might have been caused, to have the difficult conversations, and still be able to get through to the other side.

And long term, you will see that it is definitely more in your interest to have team that operates in that way. When you take care of people, they take care of you. And the final piece, delight. Who loses in this situation if there's a mistake?

Who carries that risk? The client. And I see this over and over again, where when the experience has not been thoughtfully designed, when there's no psychological safety, when the container hasn't really been built in a way to create the best conditions for success, usually the client is the one who loses.

The client is the one who takes on the risk. The client is the one who is invested and then told it's a mindset problem or otherwise gaslit, and whoever's program or service it is isn't taking responsibility. But when you intentionally design it, and you have the right people in the room, and you are creating an incredible experience and creating a container that creates the foundations that they need for the success they're looking for, then it is much more of a win-win.

You will absorb whatever it costs to course correct. You will be the one who maybe has to pay a little bit more to take care of that client, but you build it in. You build in the support before she needed it. You built in the cost of the experience when you decided to set up the room.

You're the one that takes that on. So it's not just about who owns the company, it's about who's holding the risk when things go wrong. And the reality is, in patriarchy, the person with the least power is always gonna be the one who takes on the most risk.

In a matriarchy, it's shared power. And at the same time, we're running a business, so a lot of the risk is gonna go back to you. But you have to be willing to take on that risk in order to make sure that everyone is in a win-win when they are interacting with you and your business.

So that was my deep dive into five big decisions I made, what they cost to implement to do business differently, and honestly, I hope better than usual.

Changing Things a Little Bit at a Time

And it would be easy to make it sound like I've worked it all out, and you should just go do exactly what I just did and run your business the way I run mine, but that's what everybody tells you to do. "Here's my solution. Just go implement it this way." That is not what I want you to do.

I didn't get here by being better than everybody else at this. I didn't have some divine download that told me how to do this. I got here by changing things a little bit at a time. Each time I realized there was something that felt wrong, that felt out of alignment, that wasn't the way I wanted to show up in the world, I got curious, I questioned it, and I figured out, "How can I make this a win-win?"

Okay. We are almost wrapped up with this series. The next episode is an interview with one of my favorite people, someone who's a client, who's a friend. Cris Caruso is coming back on the podcast to share about how she has thought about this in her business and some of the things that she has done differently that have actually allowed her to create a business that truly is success on her terms. So we'll see you in that next episode.