351: Creating a life most only dream of (Part 1 of my conversation with Tricia Dempsey)

Full transcript:

Okay, everybody. I we were talking about this a little bit before I started recording, but these are my favorite podcast episodes to create because when I'm in coach mode, I'm all about like whatever the client needs, what are we solving, what's the mindset, but I work with so many really interesting, inspirational people that I have questions. I have I have I want to hear stories. We get to be friends for the next hour. That's what that is. Yes. And so I am just so excited to share you with um my listeners. I know you are very famous in your world. Um but I just want to welcome Tricia of ThriveHive, an incredible business owner. She's going to share her story with us today and some tips on how to create a business that makes your life amazing. I was thinking about what I'm going to name this episode and I really think that you've created a life that most people only dream of and and you're going to tell us how that happened because it didn't just you didn't just wake up one day. Yeah. So, welcome. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank No, it didn't happen one day. It all happened with a lot of coaching, a lot of support, a lot of mindset work, a lot of a lot of that. And I have so much of you to thank for that. So, it's been just so great that we got introduced and got a chance to work together the last two years. So, good. Okay. So, first of all, I I would love for you to start with telling us a little bit about Thrive Hive. We're going to talk about your story as well. Um, but I just think your business has such an incredible vision that people need to hear this. Um, I'm your biggest fan on LinkedIn because you post things and I know a lot of my listeners will be interested in this because maybe they haven't left their corporate job to pursue what they really want to do full-time. Yeah. So, so Thrive Hive originated back during COVID when I was really coaching two types of women. One group of women or were very much kind of the group of women that I had built my whole network around. Women who were still in corporate America but were figuring out like how do I go from director to VP or how do I deal with a difficult boss or how do I deal with like more visibility or how do I have a better executive presence? all the things that I've been coaching for years. And then COVID happened and I had a larger group of women that kind of came into that coaching container and then all of a sudden people were saying like what if we don't want to go back Trish like like I don't even think they ever considered the option but a lot of them had been laid off or furloughed and very very hurt by that because a lot of them were just like top top top women and so I started instead of having a coaching call every Tuesday I started to have one every Thursday for women who wanted to start businesses. and a majority of those women came over into that. And so I feel like it chose us in a lot of different ways um versus it being really super intentional about a niche when we first got started. And and if I roll the clock forward now, we have a coaching program that is a 12week coaching container that includes a really structured curriculum about how to launch your business, consulting business specifically, a um handful of coaching calls that take place every week that support them at different phases of the program, and then a thriving community. call the hive or hive community which really brings the tapestry and the richness of the experience to these women long after they've grown and left and graduated from Passport. They meet locally in their community. They support each other. They work on proposals together. So, it really does like build in the support that makes a woman not feel lonely with like really proven curriculum because our women in the last two years have literally signed over $5 million worth of consulting contracts before they ever graduated from our program. um and a curriculum that we have like well worked on for five solid years of polishing fine-tuning focus groups just making it both like really effective as well of just a really great experience. So um we are now I believe the largest community of women consultants on the web and and still just like getting started. We have about a women a day uh launch a consulting business. So, we have a a large community and they're incredible women, incredibly talented women. Okay. I'm so thankful that you shared some of those stats with us as well because I think that a lot of times the narrative um is that starting a consulting business is risky. It's so much riskier than my corporate job. And I think there's a lot of people who would love to become an entrepreneur, who would love to kind of share their gifts and experience, but they are really scared of the whole thing that feels like risk. And and you have a very strong position on that. I was going to say I have a lot to say about that. We be here almost an hour on that, but that's okay. We can talk about it. You know, any woman that's experienced this and every time I give a master class or any kind of training, it happened to some woman on that call that very day where I talked to a woman yesterday, as a matter of fact, she had a great year at a company. She was eligible for about a 20k bonus. She got ready to meet with the CEO. She thought he was going to come in and give her her bonus that morning and instead laid her off. No bonus, no anything. And and so what we're finding right now, I think a lot of women, especially over the age of 50, is that you're kind of in this zone where you're too old to get a lot of the younger jobs, you're too young to retire, and you still have a tremendous amount to offer somebody. But we we call this career concentration risk. We we really believe that one employer is the riskiest thing that you really could be in, the riskiest um employment model that you can really be in. your customers, your the people that you work for don't have one client. You shouldn't either. Um, you have to really think about ways to really mitigate that risk. And most women can replace their income with between two and three employee two and three clients. So, literally, even if you lose one of those clients, um, you're not going down to zero. And for a lot of women at this age, it's catastrophic financially. And so so we we really believe there's a lot more security and sustainability in having a handful of small really highv value clients because you can literally take those clients and retainer stack those clients. And now you've got clients that are worth 20 to 30k a month instead of one employer that that houses all of that. and literally could have a a you could have a political, you know, uh falling out with somebody in your company. You can do a reorg. I had some woman tell me not too long ago that her company was acquired just so the acquirer could put her company out of business. Like sometimes it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with the state of business right now. So, I I just really feel like the the most secure move is to have a diversified set of income and to get out of the individual career concentration risk we feel inside of a of corporate job or wherever we're healthcare or whatever we're working inside of. Yeah. And you don't just talk about this, but you actually have some experience with this in your own life. Would you mind sharing a little bit about your story? Yeah. So, so you know, I had a my very first business I started back in 2002. I was in the middle of a fight in breast cancer. I don't know if I've ever shared this even with you, but I was I had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My little girl was two. And and I remember just going to work exhausted. Number number one, you have a baby. Number two, you're in the middle of chemo treatments. Completely exhausted. And I just got to the point where I came home and told my husband like, I don't think this is going to be sustainable. I don't think I can do it. I think I'm going to have to work for myself and get going. And he was like, you know, so when your hair grows back and you're not so yellow and you you're not going to a chemo treatment every week. And I'm like, babe, I think I need to like go in and do it on Monday. Like I just did not have it in the tank to do it. That one little decision was such a big reveal about, you know, what I feel like just like God made possible for me during that time. and and it also restored my energy and strength in a way that I did not see coming because it was just so energizing to work on something that belonged to me. I grew that business to a little over $10 million, sold it to a public company back in 2015 and stayed for four years in a non-compete doing the same exact job that I had done for 12 years building that business and I just was two two real symptoms for me. I was completely bored and very burnt out because, you know, we've been doing the same thing forever and ever. I didn't nothing changed about my role even after I sold my company. And so I went back to my husband again and said like, "I think I think you know, Cat's getting ready to go to college. I think this is the year that I need to start another business." And he was like, "Tricia, like you just got to the point where he's like, we just built our dream house on this lake in South Carolina. We had done all the things, you know, and he was like, Tricia, like this like just take it easy. Like don't be like the why are you got to make something up to be working on? But but I I and I tried to do that for like three or four years. I really did try. And I and I think the biggest symptom for me, the biggest like aha moment for me is no matter what I tried, I could not get out of the cycle of either being angry at somebody every day or being completely burnt out and bored of of doing what I was doing every day. And and so I started my business behind the scenes, started Thrive behind the scenes, worked on it for about 6 months, actually created like a little coaching program because at that time that was just such the hot thing to do. And I actually took it back to my CEO and said, um, I think this is what I'm going to do in my retirement chapter and I think these three women in our organization would be great at doing this program. He was like, great. And wrote me a check for my first three customers and they joined my program. And once I knew I had something, I I finally resigned from that role. Uh my CEO literally uh ignored my resignation for 90 days, would not accept my resignation. And and by the time I mean, literally, this is a man I talk to every single day, you know. Uh by the time that I finally left, I was in that like, you know, I remember this is it's a big coaching moment. So, like I'm such a proponent of your coaching and coaching in general, but I'll never forget I was on a coaching call one day and I was sitting down on the dock and I was having one of those mad cries with my coach like you don't understand. He's not going to let me go and he hasn't acknowledged my and I just can't leave. I mean, what am I going to do with my team and nobody knows? And my coach, I remember like hit me like a ton of bricks. And she said, "You know, you're talking as though you need his permission to leave. Do you feel like you need his permission to leave?" And I did. I genuinely did. Yeah. You You could have blown me into the water. I I That was such a great coaching moment. I don't even remember that coach's name. She was part of the Life Coach School. She was incredible. But I just remember like coming back up and she said, "All you need to do is go back and write your resignation letter, declare your declare a date." Okay, this man would not call me for 90 days. I go back in, I type my letter up, I send it to the VP of HR, I CC the CEO, and in two minutes he picks up the phone and calls me. Wow. Which which then it's like a bad boyfriend. You've been telling them that you need to be good for the longest time and they show up at your door on the day they break up with you. you know, kind of one of these. So, I I negotiated out um a final extra year on a non-compete in exchange for a really nice severance that I could get started in my business on. And and I tell women this all the time, there's so many ways once you start once you start taking steps and moving with the universe, there's so many ways the universe responds positively when it's your time to go. You don't even know where that's going to come from, but you cannot get it until you take some steps of faith. I really have seen that hundreds and hundreds of times. I I feel like that's probably why we clicked almost immediately because I feel the same way and I think that one something I have noticed um that a lot of people struggle with and I know that you can speak to this um is a lot of people will step out of they'll finally do it. they'll finally like step out of the corporate model, but then they go into their business and they sort of recreate a corporate model that kind of looks like just a a prison with different wallpaper. It's so true. It's so true. And and how can we not? Like we're in so many ways we're conditioned to do it. Yeah. Um I also find, you know, people come from large environments and so the immediate thing that they start to do is like, well, I'm going to get this friend to come work with me and this friend and I'm going to get this person. I get this person. like, let's make a dollar first before we get any people involved. Let's take the first year and figure out what we're actually going to build. Let's go back back to how do we build a business that's really like powered by purpose, not just by money, but really powered by something we're deeply connected to so that on the crappiest of days, we don't quit it. Um, but we do we tend to, you know, this this happened to me because I would I had been doing kind of this one kind of sales role in business development, very front-facing in my community for years and years and years. And then I really wanted to do coaching and and I knew I really wanted to do that. I remember calling my coach one day and I was like, "Okay, Jim, this is this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be a coach." And he was like, "Tricia, you've been a coach for the last 25 years." He was like, "Of course you're going to be a coach." And I was like, "This is this is what I think I really really want to do." And it was adjacent but not exact. Yes. And and so I think we have these clues all along our life. I can go back to like, you know, seventh grade basketball. I was always like the team captain and always wanted to coach people up and always like, "Hey, let's get everybody together and do more practices and and you have these little clues along the way that I think when you string up this beautiful gold thread through all those clues, they've been there all along, but we tend to want to recreate what we came out of, even if we were miserable doing it." Yeah. And I think that's something that I know your your program and your community really supports people to make sure that they're not just creating some microcosm of what they just left or some other version of what they they just left. Um, and you mentioned like it takes it takes a leap. It takes trusting, you know, some faith. It takes a lot of um things that maybe don't always seem like good business strategy. And what I always think is very fascinating about you is you have probably because I get to see behind the scenes. I'm not going to give away any of Tricia's secrets, but I see behind the scenes of her business and you are one of the most organized business people. That's so nice to hear. Really? Yes. That's so nice to hear. Thanks to my team. Shout out. Well, I was going to say and yeah, and you've done it with um with a lean team. Yeah. You know, you've you've had moments where your team has been different sized, but I think what you said about people wanting to start like start the org chart before they've made a dollar. Yes. How have you been able to nurture not only your clients in your program but create this incredible very purpose aligned business with a small team compared to a lot of other companies your size? It's funny it's been a little trial and error in a in a lot of cases because I think this business is so different than my other business. I knew exactly when you reach this revenue point you hire this two these two people when you reach this revenue. this business less is less obvious that way. And so I started out with a model with a large sales team and then and then finally realized after like a year and a half, two years of trying to train them, get systems in place, etc. I was like, "Wow, I still think I could close more people just doing it in a different format." So this was we could we could actually talk about that too. But then I'll I'll go back to the team. I remember going to the team, my core team, I call them like my like my little dream team is, you know, a person that Karine who handles all of the like uh funnel operations and make sure that all the little trains are landing and on time and all of the things and kind of kind of keeping the big picture of how everything runs every day like an integrator kind of personality. So, she was my very first hire and then she brought along Zeta who's our client success manager and Zeta. Zeta has done almost every single thing in our business that we can do. Everything from running Facebook ads to client success to initial qualification calls with people to anything Facebook group management like anything we've needed her to do. Um and then Jan who's our IT person was one of our passport graduates and just came along and she kind of helps us as we need to. So those are like like my core team and what I realized was you know like uh we set really good systems in place. So I'll I'll talk specifically about one. We have a level 10 meeting every Monday which is kind of an EOS concept. We meet every single Monday. Karine in her zone of genius prepares the agenda and everything about that. Our team each brings this has been an evolution. I used to bring a lot of the analysis. I used to bring a lot of the solutions. I used to bring a lot of the ideas. And then last year we got really good at like we went evolution number two which was they would identify problems and really know exactly how to solve the problems but not a lot of analysis not a lot of solutions. This year we're in kind of really evolving and this has all been like visioning messaging come coming back to the same message again. Okay, like our next evolution now is you've data to really know your numbers and and drive a lot of analysis around your individual area. And we're now in the game of 1%. We're not in the game of We're not in the game of like when you first get started, you're in the game of like, I'm going to improve this by 25%. I'm going to improve this by 30%. Now, we're just in the game of 1% could make a difference between $100,000 month and a $400,000 month, you know? So it it really is down to that. And so between like visibility on dashboards, really coming back to the vision around it. And then Karina and I like every the first year or two that I moved here to Utah, we we had something every Friday called Love Sack Central where she would come up to my house, we sat in these two giant love sacks in front of a big giant TV and we worked every problem together. And and I don't know any greater like form of developing somebody than spending a whole day with them, working on something with them. But it's interesting like Karine lives in Guatemala. It's very hard to have that kind of quality time for her with her. But but with Zeta, I can give a verbal challenge and Zeta will run with that in like 17 different areas and then bring back a lot of ideas. So I I think Z, you know, with her it's more of like figuring out which one of these ideas is actually the best idea because she can generate a lot of ideas and so I have a lot of fun with her because she just has a whole different like mindset of how she thinks about problems. But but this has evolved over time, you know. So we went from like somebody owns a skill to now we're developing leadership around that skill to to now we're problem solving around that skill to now we're doing analysis and actually generating ideas around that skill. And that's taken our team probably four to five years to get there. So for anybody that's starting out, this does not happen in like a quarter. This does not happen in like a one-on-one once a month. This happens with a lot of deliberate time. And I think some of our best times, Erin, are like when everybody comes to Utah and we get three days together and we get in a room and we put up a whiteboard and we just like don't do anything but eat and talk about business for three days. So, I think different different rhythms and different formats really drive that culture, I think. And I'm so glad you said that it takes time and really figuring things out and figuring out how people work and how what your leadership style is um so that you can help develop theirs because I think a problem I see a lot of folks facing right now is they just expect that they're going to hire someone with a skill set and it's going to be a culture fit for their business that they are going to care about the vision just as much as the founder does. um that they're gonna there's not going to be any issues because it says on their resume they understand how to do this program. Um and we know that that's not ever how it I don't know if it's ever worked that way. I was going to say like my I think my estimation on it would be like maybe one to two people out of 10 that you hire are geared like that. Yeah, it's a very small number of people and I wish I had the magic formula for like how to identify them because it's not it's like it's like sometimes I get the person right and the skill set is off and sometimes I get the skill like nailed and the culture is off. Um so I wish I had like the magic I've been hiring people hundreds maybe even thousands of people for 25 years and I still don't feel like I have like the magic thing around that. So, I I do think it ends up being even in my other business where I hired a lot more people, it's probably 10 to 15% of the people that you ever hire lock in like that. Um, so I don't know if you have any magic secrets around that. I know. No, I wish I did too. I think I would have a very different business if I had that magic secret. I would have Yes. I too would have a $10 million business. Yeah. But I think that um something I've noticed, you know, I mean I can speak to to you and how you work is like your mindset as a leader is always evolving. Yeah. Always. So how do you think about your own leadership journey? Like do you have any insights for for folks going from working for someone else to then selling your company and all of it and then starting this lean team where now it's less people which is in some ways easier to manage but less people means that if something isn't working well that can be really hard on the whole team. It's a glaring when it's not it's glaring. So, so I think when I first started in my career, I just knew I wanted to be the best at whatever. You could have like put me in charge of like organizing paper clips and I was like, we are going to have the most amazing paperclip collection. So, I was very like personally driven and then I started leading people and I just naturally kind of had that skill set. I I really do think that that was like just always geared to like work with a team. I'd always been on a basketball team or like working with a team. So, I really loved all that. But then as it as I got into like my own company, I feel like it was the hardest in my own company because because I really really wanted everybody to be in that top 10 or 20% and if they weren't, I had such low tolerance for it. Like I just have and now I'm even probably worse. I have worse tolerance for it now I probably than I ever have. I don't I don't think it's bad. I don't know if we're we've talked about this like I will just I just have very like if you're not going to be a pro and you show me that on day one and day two and day three, we're not going to have a day four. Yeah. So, you know, I I don't I don't make haste on making those decisions anymore. But I would I would say that the biggest thing that has evolved for me is before I was trying to grow a business to sell it. That's a very different Sometimes you have to be tolerant of a B player. sometimes you're tolerant of a C player because it really is about the volume. And and I think that when I think about this business now, I'd much rather like get up and look at the people on Zoom and think, "Oh, I just really love these people. I really do." Whether and and they are and and invest in them and want to invest in them and and I think also I think to myself, I don't really want to train a bunch of people or develop a lot of people at this at this stage of my life. I really want people who can develop and train other people, but I don't really want to do that as much. And and I think through our coaching especially last two years, I mean, massive transformations in how I protect my energy and time and how you've really helped me to be more um in charge of that versus kind of be a victim of that because I would just complain and just not understand how to how to fix it or change it. And what I realized was a lot of times I wasn't even communicating it. And when I would finally communicate it to my team, they were like, "Oh my god, I didn't know you felt this way." Like, "Yes, let's do it. Let me help you." And I and it's like, you know, being married, I'm married 30 years, I still don't understand why Jeff walks through the kitchen, he doesn't do dishes when I see the dishes on the counter. But when I if I say to him like, "Honey, would you mind hitting those dishes? I'm going to go take a shower." Of course. You know. Um, but I think now I'm in this phase of life where I really, really want to have a great impact on women. I really only want people in this business that are really closely tied to our vision and our mission and really really love serving the people that we're serving. And and our women feel that when they come in in reviews, it's not just the Tricia, it's like Tricia's amazing. It's like Lindsay is incredible. Oh my god, Zita never lets me down. And Karine always makes sure I have what I needed. Um, and I love that. I love for our customers to feel that, but I'm I feel like my evolution has been I would love a great lifestyle business where um I just had people for the last 17 days in my house. I didn't miss a beat. I I literally took like two days off and and hung with them and skied and did did a bunch of stuff, but I I didn't miss a beat because my team doesn't miss a beat a whole lot. And um I think I'm less about how do we grow this to eight or nine figures and sell it one day and more about wow, you know, could we make a million dollars this year and I work four days a week which we as a team went down to four days a week last year which really changed the discipline of everything that we do. it. Taking that one day away from from having it available changed everything about the focus and what we're able to work on and how we get everybody in their zone of genius and that we go heads down and we don't interrupt and we have the systems in place where we don't interrupt each other during the day been a gamecher. So, it really has been an evolution of and I think mostly my preferences um you know my preference on trying to sell a business and grow it, my preference on a lifestyle type of business and trying to have more time off. Um and it really has been like it's kind of putting it in the R line of like you know where what result am I really looking for and then thinking about what needs to happen to get that happening. Um, and we've worked a lot of those like models indirectly in our coaching, but I feel like you've really helped me be more like aware of what I really really want and not apologize for what I really really want, but really step into it in a way that um, you know, doesn't doesn't feel like I'm being selfish like it, you know, and so it's that's been a that's been a massive massive journey. For me, I think it's interesting because I think what a lot of people don't realize, especially when your business is a service to other people, when part of what people are buying is your energy and your insight. It's not just like here's ABC of how you do a system in your business. It's here's how I'm going to help you get the courage to leave your corporate job and step into this consulting dream lifestyle business where you can take Fridays off like Tricia.