Meet my sister, Ariel Voorhees, founder of Gather Round Chef

Ariel Voorhees 0:02

Leah, it makes it easier to keep going when I feel confident that my work actually matters and I do know that my work matters to my clients.

Leah Neaderthal 0:15

Welcome to the Smart Gets Paid Podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share.

Hey there. Leah here, thanks for joining me in this episode. I hope that wherever you are, wherever you're listening to this I hope you're having a good week, making some good progress in your business, and also taking some time for you. So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I typically work with women who are in the messy middle of their business. It's you know, after that startup phase, when now you're really in it and you realize that you need a strategy to continue to maintain or grow your business. And you might also know that I only work with women who sell B to B, like their clients are businesses or organizations, but not individuals. But a few years ago, I made an exception on both counts, but it was a really good exception, because when you have someone in your life who's so unhappy in her full time job, and you've watched her dream of doing her own thing for so long, and when that person is your younger sister, you make an exception. So a few years ago, my sister Ariel neaderthal Voorhees left her career as a teacher and started the business that she'd been dreaming of becoming a family chef, cooking for families so they can sit down to dinner together every night, because that's how we were raised. We sat down to dinner together every night. And so now my sister, despite having two kids in two different schools, a household with two parents with full time careers and an hour long commute to the school where she was working, she was able to make dinner together happen for her family, but of course, again, not without effort. And so she knew exactly how hard it is for families just like hers. So she took her love of cooking and what she had done in her family and she created her business, gather round chef, a family chef, service. But unlike a lot of the women I work with, she didn't come from the corporate world or business world or even the nonprofit world. She had been a high school English teacher for 14 years, and she was worried that she didn't have the skills that would allow her to really build the business. So the first thing I did when she said she was going to start this business was I made her take the program that I was running at the time called signed and I mean, I like, made her take it. Remember, I'm the older sister, right? But I put her in the next class assigned so she can learn how to market her business and how to get clients and how to charge for her work and how to get paid. So she quickly learned some of the skills and the strategies that helped her get clients quickly. And now, five years on, she's built a thriving business, so I've invited her onto the podcast to share a bit about her journey, and this is sort of becoming like a family affair. You might remember that I had my dad on the podcast in Episode 62 so now, of course, my sister's here, and I'm definitely gonna bring my mom on here too, so keep an eye out for that. So in this episode, you're going to hear Arielle share the skills that took her from zero clients to a wait list of clients in just a few months. You're going to learn why she's rebuilt her business three times. You're going to hear the things she had to learn and unlearn from being a teacher, and you're going to hear what she considers the secret to her success, and you're going to hear her share something that everybody in my family makes fun of me for. So take a listen to my conversation with my sister, Chef and business owner, Ariel Voorhees, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson that you can apply to your business, and then hopefully someday soon, you'll partner with us to help us build your consulting business, and you'll come back on the podcast and share your story. Enjoy. Arielle, I'm so excited that you're here. Hi.

Unknown Speaker 4:48

I'm excited to be here. We

Leah Neaderthal 4:50

were just saying earlier that we've never zoomed before. We only FaceTime, but really, I think we noticed that we only facetime when the kids are involved. But we just. Call each other on the phone. Yeah, if we just want to talk to each other, it's a phone. I don't know if that's like a elder millennial thing or what. So Ariel, let's dive in. Why don't you tell the good people who you are and what you do?

Speaker 1 5:10

Great. I'm Arielle Voorhees, and I am a personal chef in the Burlington Vermont area. My company is called gather around chef service, and it helps people busy families, mostly connect and relax together over a good meal. I go to people's homes, and I make custom menus full of meals, family meals, so I pack the fridge or freezer, depending on which plan they've chosen, with three to five family sized meals in a completely custom menu that they have chosen and that I have made in accordance with their dietary needs and preferences and allergies and picky eating and all kinds of things. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 5:59

and when I So, when I talk about you all the time, and like your business, and every time I mention you, everyone's like, Oh my God, I need that. Because the way, the way I describe what you do is, you know, my sister is a personal chef, but she's not just a any type. Just do all types of chefing. She does not really work, but she doesn't do all the types of things. She works specifically with families so that they can sit down to dinner together like this was already done, and that's when everyone's like, oh gosh,

Speaker 1 6:30

I want that. I get a lot of I wish you were in my town.

Leah Neaderthal 6:35

Yeah, totally. And how do we know each other? I'm your sister.

Speaker 1 6:42

You were three years older than me, and we grew up in the same household,

Leah Neaderthal 6:48

right? So I think I've known you since, like, the day after you were born, yes,

Speaker 1 6:54

when you disapproved of my name. I know.

Leah Neaderthal 6:57

Yeah, you guys, this is just actually really funny story. So obviously, your name is Arielle, and when you were born, so I was three years old, and my grandmother and I conspired. We just decided that we didn't like the name Arielle

Speaker 1 7:13

for a second. It was not your idea, of course, like it couldn't have been your idea as a three year old, right? It's our grandmother's idea that this name had to go, right?

Leah Neaderthal 7:25

And so she, like, looped me in as a co conspirator. And so we decided, we said we didn't like the name Ariel. We wanted the name Emily, yes, but that didn't work. Obviously, my parents were, like, pretty, pretty clear that they wanted Arielle. But then fast forward to many years later, I met and fell in love with my wife, whose name is Emily, yes.

Speaker 1 7:52

So yeah, my way in the end, you found her. Anyway,

Leah Neaderthal 7:57

I found my Emily. So Ariel, how did you come to this type of service, like this type of business, and what were you doing before? I was

Speaker 1 8:06

a high school English teacher in private schools for 14 years, and I loved it, and I like to say that I loved it until I no longer loved it, but as I was a teacher, and just completely invested in it, completely identifying my whole character with being an English teacher. I was also concurrently obsessed with home cooking. And I grew up in the time when you would go to the gym and you would see Rachel Ray cooking on Food Network on the TVs above the treadmills. And so I just really absorbed all those cooking lessons from everywhere that I could get them, from TV, from roommates, from books, from magazines, internet, everything. And I had this Daydream that I sometimes talked about with you, that maybe during the summers I could build a little side gig in which I go to people's homes and cook for them so that they and just not interact with them very much, but just leave food in the fridge, you know, and make it possible for busy people to Have a good dinner. Because I had figured out, amidst household of two full time careers, how to get a good dinner on the table every night and with two small children, two small children, exactly so when I left teaching, I had a one year old and five year old, and I had built up all these strategies of how to get dinner on the table, and also I built up quite a lot of cooking skills that I felt were pretty good, and during the last year of teaching, which unfortunately, was full of turmoil and anxiety. And do I stay or do I go? This is not that. Fun anymore. What am I doing with my life? Who am I if I'm not a teacher? The way that I took refuge from those feelings is to go into the kitchen and to just cook as much food as possible, sometimes more food than I could feed to family and friends. So when I was talking with you, in fact, about what's next for me, I'm kind of not sure that teaching is what I want to do anymore, and I was actively seeking out other teaching gigs, because what you do as a teacher, especially in a private school, when you're not happy, is that you get a job in a different school, because a different school is going to be totally different. Every school is run independently. So I was going through this job search process wondering, is there any guarantee that this school, or that school is really going to be better? Maybe I'm just done with teaching, not necessarily just done with this school. And I was talking with you about maybe I should do that thing that I kept on talking about, and you had always been encouraging me to leave teaching. So you really encouraged me to pursue this idea, this daydream of cooking for people in their home. And not only did you encourage me, but you gave me the tools that I needed to have in order to build a business and sell and all the things that I had not learned how to do because I never learned I never needed to as a high school English teacher, yeah, and you guys, I

Leah Neaderthal 11:33

promise I didn't invite my sister on here just to talk about me and how great I was at that time. But it's true that I was encouraging you. I'd seen you go through some job changes, applying to other positions. I saw that you weren't happy and so and I knew this was really possible, like really possible, and when I heard you talk about why it was important for families to sit down together at the table that felt really meaningful, because that was how we grew up. Yes,

Speaker 1 12:06

we always had dinner together, and it was always a stable time of day when we knew that we could put the rest of the day to bed and chat about what we had gone through that day. We knew that we would have good food cooked with care. You know, it was the 90s, so it was a little bit of a different menu, different menu, but, but our mom was the primary Cook, and she cooked almost every day.

Leah Neaderthal 12:35

Yeah, even when she was she had gone back to school as a physical therapist and still managed to do it, yes,

Speaker 1 12:41

and so that was a source of stability and comfort in our upbringing. That is so important, and in so many families, even back then, but so many families today, it's rare to have that,

Leah Neaderthal 12:59

yeah, yeah. And especially like now, I mean, you your kids are older than my kids, but like now with young kids and seeing how difficult it can be just to get a healthy, balanced meal on the table, that's why I think when people hear about this, they're like, Oh, God, I wish you were in my town. Yes,

Speaker 1 13:17

everybody who works with me knows how important it is to have a sustainable practice of a family dinner, but the reason that they work with me is because there are so many obstacles getting in the way of making that happen on your own. Maybe it's sports practice, maybe it's your kids are very young, and they go to bed super early, or maybe the obstacle is that they're working just really demanding jobs, even after dinner, they know they're gonna have to log back on for several hours, and they just want to spend a little moment with their kids before they log back on after bedtime. Sometimes that obstacle is very present and urgent, like I have a brand new baby, and I just can't it doesn't matter that it's dinner time, the time of day is immaterial. It's just really hard to get food in my body right now, and so I help all those folks. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 14:16

oh, so important. I love it. And that was your that was like, the best gift you gave me when Noah was born, you came for a few days and just packed my freezer. It was like the best. It was the best. So here's a question for you. So you had been a teacher, you had little to no business experience or experience running a business. So many questions come to mind. First of all, let's talk about the substance of the business, right? Like a lot of women, just doubt that they have enough experience to do the thing right. Even if they've done the thing for 1520, years, they're looking for somebody to tell them like you are good enough. You are a self trained home chef, raison Rachael Ray, like we you know many of us were, and the skills you picked up and the skills that you probably learned. From like our mother. How did you know you could do it?

Speaker 1 15:02

I didn't know whether anyone would buy what I was selling, but I did know that I could do it. You know, maybe I just have a outsized sense of confidence. But I knew that my cooking was good and that it was better than what the clients who needed my services were doing on their own, and the food industry is a little bit more open. So if you went to cooking school, awesome. If you didn't go to cooking school, that's fine, too. That's not what you can say about a lot of other industries. So I think there was a possibility that might not have been there if I had another great hobby that I wanted to monetize. So I just felt confident that if I could get people to sign up and try it, they would be convinced,

Leah Neaderthal 15:55

yeah, and I love the I love just the acknowledgement that, like it doesn't have to be the best, but it's probably better. And your food is your cooking is amazing, but it doesn't it just has to be better than the people who are struggling to get it on the table already. And I think what's been interesting is this isn't fancy food. This is like family food, because the value also isn't the food, which you can absolutely deliver. It's the togetherness

Speaker 1 16:20

and the ease of the whole dinner process. So, you know, in the beginning, when I was talking over this idea with my spouse, he was pretty skeptical that at this price point that I was getting ready to charge people, people would prefer home food cooked by some lady off the street without a culinary degree over going to a restaurant every night. And what he was not understanding yet was that busy families hate going to restaurants, and they certainly don't want to have to do it every night, you know. But his perspective was from a price perspective, if I'm paying $30 per meal, why not get restaurant quality? But that's not what is important to these families. What's important is having dinner in the fridge when you get home and knowing that your family is going to sit down together and share this moment. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 17:23

well, I think that's so you know, this idea that you're what you offer isn't the food, right? You're not just like, What do you want me to make? It's the value. And if you go to Ariel's website, which is gather around chef.com you can see, even in the messaging, it's like, the value isn't just food. The value is something beyond and I think because you know your clients, and you know what's important to them? You know, yeah, and so you're able to speak to what's important beyond just what you did with your hands in the kitchen, right?

Speaker 1 17:49

Yeah, what I'm providing is a way to have a sane family life amidst a terrifically busy modern existence. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 18:01

absolutely so when you were thinking about the business, what were some of the questions that came up, like the doubts that you had coming from Not, not a corporate career?

Speaker 1 18:13

Yes, I had absolutely no idea how to do anything. I didn't know how to build a website. I mean, I still don't really know how to build a website, but I didn't know how to market. I didn't know how to articulate what I was selling. I didn't know how to find the clients that I was looking for. And then there was all the logistical stuff about bookkeeping and taxes and all that stuff. So I basically was starting from the ground up, and when you enrolled me in this course that you offered

Leah Neaderthal 18:51

forcibly, I think I forcibly enrolled you inside, it

Speaker 1 18:55

was the best gift ever, even though signed was designed for people who had already been consultants for a few years, and I was neither going to be a consultant, nor did I have the experience of that. I really just tried to absorb all the lessons that I could. I was flabbergasted and impressed by the other women who were in the course and how they were rocking deals that I could only gasp at, but you taught me and the rest of these participants how to articulate the value of what you were selling so that you could command higher prices, and also really so that you could walk into any kind of sales situation with confidence and poise, which I desperately needed. Like in the beginning, I wasn't even comfortable calling these conversations sales, because there's such a stigma about sales, right? And so, you know, it took several years for me to. Realized that what I was doing was selling,

Leah Neaderthal 20:01

yeah, that's it. There's no way around it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 20:06

Ultimately, my questions were, how do I make this business work in any way, any always, yeah.

Leah Neaderthal 20:13

And what were some of the results you saw like pretty quickly, and then what are some of the results you've seen long term? Yeah, which let me just skip to the punchline here, your business is amazing, and it's like killing it if you don't, I know you won't say that about yourself, but I will.

Speaker 1 20:32

Thank you. I started the business at the beginning of a summer because, of course, I was leaving the school year calendar, and by the beginning of the next school year, so by the end of the summer, I had a couple of regular clients, and I had also done some parties, which is another part of my business. I do cooking lesson dinner parties, where I teach a group of people how to cook something, and everybody gets to feast on the food that we cook together. Okay? So by the end of that summer, I had a couple of ongoing clients, and by the following March, I had a waiting list. So that was March of 2020, which you might recognize.

Leah Neaderthal 21:22

It will a month. It will live in infamy.

Speaker 1 21:24

That's right. So I signed my first waiting list client in the beginning of March of 2020, and then my whole business completely dried up. There were clients who wanted to stick with me, but obviously going into people's homes is not a good business model when it's covid, and even if I were willing to cook in my home and deliver for them, they also did not feel comfortable being responsible for me having to go to the grocery store on their behalf. Because, remember, we all were terrified of grocery stores, so my business dried up for several months, but by the summer of 2020, different people started coming back, and they were the people who could not cook another goddamn meal. They were at their wit's end trying to get dinner on the table, much less lunch and breakfast anyway. So I'd like to say that that's the second time that I built the business. So the first time was summer of 2019 when I was starting from scratch. The second time was amidst the pandemic bust. And then the third time that I built this business happened is happening now. So in summer of 2023 my family and I moved to Vermont, which is where my spouse grew up, and I knew that I had a viable business model, but it was hyper local, so I needed to regain a whole roster of clients, and so I started marketing in the middle of the summer, once we moved up to Vermont and by the beginning of the school year. So the end of the summer, I had a nearly full schedule of clients, and I'm at the precipice of building a wait list once again. So when I had a wait list for three out of the four years that I was in business in Washington, DC, it was very comfortable to have a waiting list of like one to two people that felt good, but once the waiting list hit like five or six people, that started to make me anxious that I would never be able to work with these people, or never be able to tell them a reliable date of when I would be able to work with them. And I always resisted hiring somebody else to accommodate those waitlist folks, because of two reasons. One, I knew we were moving eventually, and the second one was I had no idea what I was doing in business, so I didn't want to be responsible for somebody else's job. And now that we are in Vermont, question number one has been resolved, and then question two has been resolved by my being in business for almost five years now, I feel a little bit more comfortable with the idea of hiring somebody for additional clients, broadening our reach and making it so that It's not just about me and how delightful I am to work with, but rather the company, the brand as a whole.

Leah Neaderthal 24:26

Yeah, I think that's amazing. And I do remember some of those early conversations where I was like, You should do this, and you should hire people, and, you know, all this stuff, and you're like, I just don't want to. And which, by the way, you guys, you should also know that I've always been like the business sister, and Ariel's been like the noble teacher sister. You know, I like went into corporate America, and Ariel's shaping the the minds of our youth. So I've always been like, You should do it. And so I wasn't also at all surprised that you were at the time, especially at the beginning with that. You were like, No, I just don't want to. But it's awesome to hear now you feel so much more comfortable, and it's you're seeing how this can live beyond you. So I want to ask going from starting this business to and not really knowing how to sell, or if you were even selling, or getting the clients, and all those things right, the whole process would have been a few of the biggest game changers for you, in not knowing how to do this to being able to do this really well,

Speaker 1 25:23

I think the biggest thing that made a difference is my creation of systems that can help me do a consistent thing with each client and not have to carry so much detail in my head. So I gained a great template from you about how to lead a sales call that I then adjusted for my conversations. I still use that template every time I create a new Google,

Leah Neaderthal 25:53

Google, copy file, duplicate file, right

Speaker 1 25:55

copy exactly for each discovery call that I conduct, I use that template, and it's changed throughout the years, but it's pretty much saved me. Similarly, I have great templates for proposals, because I've heard so much about people agonizing about proposals. You have a great sales call with someone, and they're ready to sign up, but then how do you articulate what you're offering? Well, I don't have to articulate what I'm offering, because I did that and saved it in Google Drive. So that really helps me streamline the process. And I also have created similar systems for keeping all the details of the culinary profile among different clients, because my whole business model is that I will keep track of you and your family's dietary particularities, so I need to be organized enough to actually keep track of that. So I created a pretty low tech again, on Google Drive, kind of template that is keeping track of not just logistics, like what's your family's door code and how do I get payment from you? But also family information, like, What's your dog's name and what do you have any recurring scheduling, things like, there's a nanny who comes at 1230 every Tuesday while I'm there. But also all the kitchen related stuff. I keep an inventory of what is already in each family's food, the pantry, fridge and freezer, which helps me with grocery shopping. And so when I am grocery shopping for your family, I already know whether I have to get more of that or not. And so it's it's really indispensable. The systems that I've created to keep track of all that information are so indispensable to me, and they help me be as much of a help to my clients as possible, in as unobtrusive a way as possible. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 27:58

you hearing you talk about remembering or writing down, like, if you're a disorder family that, like, keeps butter on hand, just gave me so much anxiety about somebody knowing, like, what, whether I let something run out, I just, this is a me thing. It's not a you thing. But no, I can see how that would be helpful, because we talk about a lot in our work, like taking as much out of your head as possible and systematizing as much so that you can stay in your zone of genius. And your zone of genius is making dinner and doing the cooking, and so anything else that you can take off or capture will allow you to do that. And

Speaker 1 28:38

I might also say part of my zone of genius is the organization of all this information so that I can provide a custom experience for many different clients without screwing

Leah Neaderthal 28:54

it totally, totally so this is I'm curious about how You know, seeing how business was, like thought of in our family, and how, because I don't know how that sort of plays out with you right now, running your own business because, you know, our dad was a doctor in private practice. Our mom went back to school to be a physical therapist when you went to kindergarten to working parents. And so I'm curious, what did you pick up about running a business from our family? I don't know. How do you think about that? Now, yeah, I

Speaker 1 29:27

might get into trouble for this, but I picked up the notion that business was okay, but it had to serve people. It had to help people. So business for business sake was not acceptable.

Leah Neaderthal 29:44

Interesting, I didn't pick that up at all. But tell me more about that. And when I say it's not that I picked that up, it's not like, oh, you should do, you know, business and harm everybody. It's more just like, that's not the lesson that I internalized as a child. But right say more about that.

Speaker 1 29:58

I it seemed. To me that primarily our dad was a doctor, and then way, way, way down on the list of things that he was, was a business person, right? So the business was serving the ultimate purpose of providing medical care. Interesting,

Leah Neaderthal 30:18

interesting. So business had to serve some higher some, like greater good, right? It had to be good for people. That's so interesting, because what I picked up, I mean, there are a lot of things, but the first thing that comes to mind, if someone was to ask me, was like, you know, Dad was running the business. And maybe I had a different viewpoints. I was three years older, but Dad was running the business, but I also felt like he was often thinking about work. I don't know if you saw this too, like, and obviously we have a great relationship with our dad. He's probably listening to this, you know, we love you, but running a private practice is a lot of work, and it was like him and his receptionist and his nurse, and so there's a lot, there's like insurance and all that stuff. So I often felt like he was thinking about business. And, you know, Dad's quiet anyway. And so when I think about, like, how does that play it with me? I want to make sure that when I'm not at, like, at work, I'm not, like, just thinking about work all the time. You know, it's like a conscious thing to try to turn it off, and I wasn't always good at it. You know, Emily used to say, like, what are you thinking about right now? And I would be thinking about work, but now, like, with a little bit more distance, I really try to, like, be present. You know, that's

Speaker 1 31:26

interesting. I need to learn that lesson too. But,

Leah Neaderthal 31:31

oh, that's so interesting. That is crazy. What like, three years difference? Do you know what I'm saying? What you internalized and what I internalized? Yes, um, so I know we're just coming up on time here, but Okay, so just for everybody, I will give you this little softball. What is one thing that would embarrass me that you think people should know?

Speaker 1 31:55

Oh my gosh, I haven't prepared for this. I know

Leah Neaderthal 32:01

not even embarrassing. Embarrass me, maybe. But like, what's one thing that you think people like, don't know about me? Leah is

Speaker 1 32:08

particular about her hair. And wait, I'm particular about my hair. You're very particular about the process that you go through to to do your hair. And there's a joke in our family that, like Leah can't be can't be bothered during a delicate stage in the hair process, usually when it's like a certain level of dampness. And so you can't expect Leah to put up her hair or something, if it's not like already, you know, just so that's

Leah Neaderthal 32:44

okay. That's true.

Unknown Speaker 32:47

Thing, as I can think of, it's okay. We'll go

Leah Neaderthal 32:50

with it. No, it's true. I'm very particular about the process, because it air dries. And anybody who has curly hair knows it's a science. Yes. Arielle, real quick. So what advice would you give to somebody who's in the position that you were back way back then starting your business? What advice would you give,

Speaker 1 33:07

especially if you're in the position of a career change? I would encourage you to just go for it and try it out, try out the dream that you are dreaming and see what you're capable of, because this advice comes from the years of being told that as a teacher, you've got one skill, and this is all that you can do, really, and it's very limiting to be in a career that tells you that, and I was feeling trapped, and I have gained so much from building this business. I've gained so much peace of mind, and also so much joy and happiness, but also a really tangible benefit that's like, completely unrelated to the cooking or anything, is that I have gained the understanding of myself that I can do other things with my life and with my time and with my skills. So it's really empowering to make a big change. And I will also acknowledge that I had a lot of advantages, like a spouse who was fully employed and who gave us health insurance and all that, you know, and also gave me a long runway to, like, test out this theory, but provided that you have dotted all your I's and crossed all of your T's, I would encourage a career changer to take the leap and to try to go for it and see whether it really does bring more fulfillment and more joy and maybe even more money. Who knows. And if you don't like it, you could go back

Leah Neaderthal 34:54

exactly, I love it. Ariel, where can people find you?

Speaker 1 34:58

They can find me on. My website, which is gather roundchef.com and also, I'm new to Instagram, so you can follow me on Instagram. Gather round chef service is my instagram name, and if you are in the Burlington, Vermont area, or if you know anyone who is you can pass along my information and help me spread the word, because I still am very new to the area, so I would appreciate spreading the word to anyone in Vermont who you know

Leah Neaderthal 35:30

absolutely and as somebody who's also moved to a new place as an adult, like not directly after college, and how hard it is just knowing what it's like to really get your footing. If you know people and cool people in in Burlington, in that area, or if you are in that area, just reach out. Say hello to Ariel.

Unknown Speaker 35:47

I'm very friendly.

Leah Neaderthal 35:50

Ariel, thanks for being here.

Unknown Speaker 35:51

Thank you. Leah,

Leah Neaderthal 35:52

I love you. I love you too. All right, I'll let you go. All right. Love you, love you. Bye, bye. So we ended our conversation there, and as I was coming home from the office, I just had this feeling like this sort of nagging feeling like the conversation wasn't complete, because there were some parts of her experience that I didn't feel like I really honored. So a little while later, we jumped back on Zoom, and here's the rest of our conversation. It's funny because I hung up our zoom and I just kept feeling like it felt a little, you know, like you didn't have all this, like, business experience, but the truth is that you did have, like, all this other experience that was really valuable. And I just didn't want to, like, discount that, or, you know, overlook that. And so I just wanted to, like, talk about that, is that okay? Yeah,

Speaker 1 36:48

I definitely used to talk about my business experience in that way, right? Like I had no experience. I didn't know what I was doing. I had to start from scratch. I was, like, a nonprofit, w2 employee like never operated in this way before, but it was during a conversation with a new business network person that I was talking to recently in which I realized and spoke for The first time that in my teaching career, I still had a lot of, like, businessy type entrepreneurial qualities, but part of what frustrated me about teaching is that some of them didn't have any outlet,

Leah Neaderthal 37:36

like, what So, like,

Speaker 1 37:38

I am, I'm, like, pretty ambitious, right? I was so frustrated in my previous career that there were so, like, few ways to advance private high schools are quite traditional and self congratulatory, and so if you were not the department chair, or there was no clear path for you to become the department chair like that's you're just a normal teacher, and then you gotta find other ways to distinguish yourself. But there really aren't that many ways, unless you are killing yourself with extra effort. Yeah, and then I did not want to seek out, like administration, other than being the department chair, so I didn't want to go to extra school to be like a principal, or anything that sounded like the worst job. So there really wasn't a whole lot of space for me to grow.

Leah Neaderthal 38:37

But you did start something at your school. You started the Writing Center.

Speaker 1 38:41

I did. So I started the Writing Center. It was like a student employed kind of writing center in which I recruited students to take this on as a leadership opportunity, and then I trained every one of them with the same sort of training that you would get if you were working in a College Writing Center, and it was like the Babysitter's Club, but for writing help, and that was really great and fulfilling. But like so many other projects like that, in a private high school setting, it's 100% reliant on me as the person who cares about this the most. So when I left, obviously, it fizzled out, but I did start that, and what, what that helped me learn, was more like organizing skills and organizing people, mobilizing people to do things, teaching, obviously, teaching people to care about something that I cared about, but they didn't know about yet. Those were pretty familiar skills to me, though, as a high school teacher,

Leah Neaderthal 39:47

yeah, yeah. And one of the questions I was thinking about, and I wanted to make sure we talk about, is, what are the skills? Because, again, it's not like you just had this lack of skills. You had all these, like, incredible other skills. And so what skills? As a that you have as a teacher, or experience as a teacher, do you feel like are really helping you in your business?

Speaker 1 40:06

Yes, I am a very organized person, which I think I learned to be as a teacher. There are so many different concerns and so many different tasks on the to do list, so many different students who have different needs, and I was teaching three different classes every day with different curricula. And so to keep track of all of that information required a lot of organization. So the that is like the number one skill that has benefited my business and kept me in business, really. And a lot of clients do comment on how thorough I am, how organized I am, how professional I am, how and also how easy I am to work with, which is not entirely a function of organization, but I think that's kind of what they mean. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 41:02

it's like, if you're put together and buttoned up, then they feel at ease. Yes. Okay, so this is all making sense now, because when you were saying, like, the sheets with the different clients, like preferences and dog's name and all that stuff, I bet a lot of people listening are like, damn, she is really organized. She just must have some sort of magical quality of organization, and maybe you have a little bit of that. I mean, our parents are quite organized, but no, you have you have experience, yeah,

Speaker 1 41:32

I've developed systems that help me stay organized, right? I always admired the hairstylist who could remember what was going on with me from appointment to appointment and ask about it. And I came to understand a few years ago that is not by accident that really good hairstylists like have files, and they write stuff down from appointment to appointment, and then they review it. And so what a lot of people would just interpret as like this preternatural like attention to everybody's everything is actually a function of organization.

Leah Neaderthal 42:16

Yeah, dad actually talked about that also in his episode, because he would make notes in the chart on people's, this is like before electronic records or whatever, but like people's spouses names and children's names and things going on in their life. And then he would just take a second to review it, and he said that what he could glean was that it meant a lot to people. It

Speaker 1 42:34

does mean a lot. Yeah, it really does. And it helps people feel I say this a lot. It helps people feel cared for and cared

Leah Neaderthal 42:46

about. Yes, absolutely. What else do you feel like? Did you learn or adapt to in teaching that's helping you in your business?

Speaker 1 42:56

I think I have well in teaching, I developed and then honed this sort of intrinsic motivation to get stuff done that you really need as a business owner. Otherwise, nobody's going to tell you that it's time to update your payment system, or no one's going to remind you all these things that you should do unless you are super smart and you hire someone to keep you accountable. But I am so frugal about hiring too cheap to hire someone like that. So I need this intrinsic motivation of I need to do work on the business today, and I need to stay on top of my invoicing or just like, do all the stuff that's not the fun stuff about the job, that is the important stuff nonetheless. And people have a lot of different relationships to work, but I have a relationship with work in which I gain a lot of meaning and pride from work, and I think that also stems from my teaching career in which I did feel like my work was important, and I did feel like my work was changing lives. So when I sought out a different career, I needed, I needed to find something that would fulfill that that same feeling. So it makes it easier to keep going when I feel confident that my work actually matters, and I I do know that my work matters to my clients, and I don't talk about it in these terms often, but my cooking dinner for them sometimes, like, really changes their lives and really makes a tough time in their lives a lot easier, or just like, brings more joy and relaxation to their lives. All of that makes it easier to. So stay motivated to, like, do all the kind of Drudge work that goes along with keeping the business afloat.

Leah Neaderthal 45:06

Yeah, and there's a lot of it. I'm also curious, because I we talk a lot about, and you've heard me say, you know, in working with me in the business, right as a client, in doing this work and learning how to get clients into the business and price your work and lead a sales process and all these things. There's a lot to learn, but there's a lot to unlearn also. And you know, a lot of my clients are learning, unlearning some habits that they formed, or, you know, they picked up in corporate world, or, you know, we always are sort of unlearning things from our past that don't serve us. And I'm curious, because you left teaching for a reason, right? And I'm wondering, what things from teaching did you have to unlearn as a business owner?

Speaker 1 45:51

Gosh, that's such a big question. I had to unlearn a lot about my attitude toward money, say more. I don't know if that. I don't know if that ties into teaching directly, but the experience of being like a salaried worker is so different from being a consultant or a freelancer or business owner that I had to learn all of these new things or unlearn all these old things about my attitude toward money. So instead of doing the work just because it needed to be done, I now have to and also get to assess which work is most profitable for me or which work is most beneficial for my business, and one way to help me unlearn that is a phrase that you taught me actually how to, how to basically say no to something that you don't want to do. And I, I actually just taught someone this phrase a couple weeks ago, which is, what is it? It doesn't make sense for my business. Oh, yeah, so no, I will not cook for this client that's two hours away because it doesn't make sense for my business to be commuting two hours. Or I will not take on this client, or I will not offer a discount, because it does not make sense for my business to be doing discounted work like that and that. In my old career as a teacher, it didn't matter what made sense for the money that I was getting, the money that I was getting was the same each month, right? And my contract, a lot of people don't know this, but a private school teacher's contract is basically one line, and it basically says you will be a teacher at this school and and all the duties are outlined, like, implied, yeah. And so, you know, when they talk about a teacher's contract, they're mostly talking about people who have the protection of a union, and we didn't have that anyway, so there were no details about what our duties were or weren't. And so you just sort of do whatever you need to do, and there was basically no limit. So now I get to decide what the limits are, which is really nice, but it also means that I had to learn a new relationship with time off. It was a very tough process for me to learn a new relationship with vacation time, that I had to specifically make a decision about each vacation day or vacation week, and and then let go, let go of the guilt or the feelings of regret, and that was something that I never had to deal with as a salaried worker.

Leah Neaderthal 48:52

Yeah, yeah. So obviously, with teaching, you'd have the summer off, but I remember you being really clear that when you started the business you wanted to have Fridays off. You didn't want to work on Fridays.

Speaker 1 49:02

I started doing that through the pandemic. So initially I was working Fridays, and then after my oldest child went to went back to school, air quotes back to school, but was virtual learning for the entire school year. That was the year that I began not working on Fridays. I really do still enjoy having Fridays off, but now that the world is back to normal, mostly, and my kids are reliably in school, I am a little bit more willing to work on Fridays. I do. I have this new membership in a networking group that somebody invited me to that meets every week on Friday mornings. It does help me get my Friday started off in a mode of like working on the business rather than working in the business. So usually I don't cook on Fridays, but it's no longer. A hard and fast rule,

Leah Neaderthal 50:01

yeah, yeah. I am just, I'm positive that everybody listening this is wondering, don't like, don't you sick of cooking? By the time you get home,

Speaker 1 50:12

I get this question a lot. No, I'm not sick of cooking, but there are limits. So by the end of the week, I get a little worn down, and Thursdays are usually the days where I cook the most intensive meal plans for my clients, which are the five meals at a time freezer packing. So, you know, I have just come off of a pretty intense cooking session on Thursdays, and it's really tough for me to muster up the the energy to cook anything elaborate on Thursdays. Or sometimes I'll cook something on Thursdays, but then we're like, doing takeout on Fridays. And I think that rhythm is pretty familiar to a lot of families. Like, we just get tired throughout the week, and that's fine, totally

Leah Neaderthal 50:56

on Fridays. Like, yeah, I'm done. I'm done doing the cooking

Speaker 1 51:00

exactly, but throughout the week, the way that I maintain order and sanity and motivation to cook for my own family in addition or after cooking for all these other families is the meal plan. So we have this famous chalkboard in our house. I call it the magic chalkboard, because now that my kids are old enough, everybody gets to contribute to what's on the meal plan, and we are sure that every all the ingredients are already in the house when the week begins. And I just know that after cooking for this other family that day, I've got something that's already planned, and that doesn't have to require a tremendous amount of thought. The worst possible anxiety that I could get in family life on an ordinary day to day basis is not knowing what's for dinner. So our meal plan, our menu plan, which is housed in that magic chalkboard, is the way that I can alleviate that anxiety and make everybody continue to be happy and nourished and

Leah Neaderthal 52:12

strong. Yeah, yeah. I And again, it goes back to being super organized. I also, just as you were talking, I can imagine that some people are wondering, doesn't Sam Cook? Sometimes

Speaker 1 52:24

Sam cooks? Yeah, in fact, this week, he's cooking most of our meals because it's my birthday, and he also cooks a lot of the meals that he feels particularly strong about. But, yeah, in a typical week, he's usually cooking two to three of our family meals. This week he's cooking more like three to four.

Leah Neaderthal 52:51

Awesome. All right, I feel like that's that feels this feels more complete. Is there anything else you would like to say that you

Speaker 1 52:59

didn't get a chance to say, I would like to say thank you to Leah, you are on No, you're such a superstar, and also you have enabled my entire business life. It's true, and I'm really glad to have you as a sister, and I'm lucky, and I love you. Oh, I

Leah Neaderthal 53:23

love you too. That is really sweet. You did not have to say that. Oh, it's true. All right,

Unknown Speaker 53:31

I'm gonna go make dinner for my What are you having?

Leah Neaderthal 53:34

We are having black bean tacos.

Unknown Speaker 53:36

Nice.

Leah Neaderthal 53:37

All right, I'll talk to you later. Love you have you love

Unknown Speaker 53:39

you too. Bye, bye.

Leah Neaderthal 53:44

All right. So, so, so many good nuggets here in my conversation with my sister. And if anything that Arielle said spoke to you, please reach out and thank her and let her know. So there's so much here that we can draw from, but I want to just pull out something you can start to use right away. And it's this one phrase. It doesn't make sense for my business. I think so many of us have this like magical combination. And I'm using magical sort of sarcastically, but this magical combination of how we're socialized or conditioned as girls and then women, and the unique sort of nuances and habits and customs of our communities of origin, and then how we learn to be early in our careers. And because of that combination of all the ways we're taught to be as women, we're conditioned to be accommodating and to put other people first and not to create, you know, disharmony or cause anyone to be angry or disappointed in us, and because of that, over those years, we rarely develop a strong sense of ourselves and an ability to say, like, I don't want to do that, or I'm not doing that. And when we're working for somebody else, we don't often get to say that, like it's our job to just sort of do what's asked of us. So when we get to running our own. Business, we're allowed to decide what we do and don't want to do for others, we're allowed to decide what we take on or don't take on, but we have no muscle for actually saying no. And so when we want to say no or we should say no, it feels really uncomfortable. It feels like a new experience, because oftentimes it is. And so that can cause us to say yes to things out of obligation or habit or not wanting someone to think badly of us when we really should be saying no. And so that phrase, it doesn't make sense for my business, is a really nice way to shift that decision. It's not about you saying no or disappointing someone. It's about the business making a business decision. So remember that phrase. It doesn't make sense for my business. Try it on, see how it feels, and if it sparks an idea for you or helps you in any way, post about it and tag me. I'd love to hear how this hits and what ideas it sparks for you. Because remember, no matter how much experience you have or don't have, when you run a business, you're a business owner and you're building your business. So make the decisions that are right for you and that are right for the business you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai