Episode 152 · October 11, 2026
How Kara van Stralen built a business sturdy enough for real life
With Kara van Stralen
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In this episode
Kara van Stralen spent more than a decade in politics, on Capitol Hill, in the White House and in a governor's office, before she started her own government affairs firm in 2024. She came to me busy and a little chaotic, with three good clients and no idea how she'd sign the next one. In this conversation you'll hear what she had to unlearn about deferring to everyone, what her years on the inside taught her about how decisions really get made, and how a proposal she rebuilt a few weeks into the Academy paid for her whole year. And you'll hear why her business could carry her family when her husband lost his job.
What you'll take away
- Come to your clients as a peer. Kara spent years serving a principal, so she came to every client like a staffer: here's my idea, please tell me you like it. Now she brings her analysis and her recommendation, and then she asks what they think. She says she's still practicing it, and a few weeks ago a client had to remind her, "You're our consultant."
- Most of the sales process happens when you're not in the room. Inside a company or an office, a yes has to get past competing priorities, other stakeholders and its own approval process. Kara watched that from the inside for over a decade. When a potential client is taking a long time, that's usually what's going on, and the most useful thing you can do is give each person the information they need to say yes.
- One no isn't the last word. Some of the bills Kara worked on took years, and a bill that got vetoed one session could pass the next. She brings that into her business: be persistent without pestering, and don't hear a no where there isn't one. Selling to businesses and nonprofits can take anywhere from three to 18 months.
- A sales process means you can let the wrong client go. Kara fired a client for the first time last year. It was scary, and a lot less scary because she knew how to replace that income and stay true to why she started the business.
- Build the business that can hold you up. When Kara's husband lost his corporate job, her business could flex. She took on more clients and launched a new offering. The unexpected can happen to any of us, so fix the roof when the sun is shining.
In this conversation
The full transcript, in sections. Open any one to read it.
Election night, and the people behind the outcome
0:23
Chaos to calm is like the way that I think about it. It's like I went from being insanely busy, but not really knowing if anything I was doing or putting out in the world was helping or generating business or helping my clients, and now I have a pathway and a plan, and I know what to do next.
Welcome to Smart Gets Paid with me, Leah Neaderthal. I help women run more profitable consulting businesses, getting more of the clients you want and getting paid way more for your work without sacrificing your time. But I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my own 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. I turned it into a methodology, and now I teach that proven methodology to my clients. So whether your consulting contracts are $10,000, $100,000, or more, if you want more clients you love, more work you love, and they get paid more than you ever thought possible, 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, and thanks for tuning in. I hope wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress in your business and taking some time for you.
So on election night 2008, I was in Grant Park in Chicago with 250,000 other people to celebrate an election night that made history. Eight years later, on election night 2016, I was at the DNC headquarters in D.C. certain that I was about to see history made again, and then, of course, we know what happened, right?
It didn't, and in elections like that, and in so many other elections, ballot initiatives, bills, and more, most of us really only ever see the outcome. What we don't see is all the people behind it: the staffers, the advisors, the people drafting the bill or briefing the senator, long before any of us are watching the returns come in.
My guest today is one of those people. Today, I'm talking to Kara van Stralen, who spent over a decade working in politics on Capitol Hill in the White House in a governor's office before she started her own government affairs firm in 2024. And if you've spent any real time in politics or if you've been around politics, you know how slow but also really unpredictable it really is.
You know bills you can work on for years that finally pass or don't decisions that depend on 100 small conversations happening behind closed doors. It's like so much work for so long before the no or the yes that could send things in a completely different direction. Kara saw that up close for over a decade, and when she left government to build something of her own, she wanted a business that wasn't just busy.
She wanted one with an actual pathway, something sturdy enough to hold up no matter what came next. So in this episode, you're going to hear how Kara built a business that saw her through not just some good days but some bad stretches too. You'll hear how she used what she knows about decision making behind closed doors to change the way she runs her own sales process, and you'll hear how she had to unlearn a decade of conditioning about how to work with people so that she could build better relationships with the clients she works with now.
So take a listen to my conversation with Kara van Stralen, 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 you build your consulting business, and you'll come back on the podcast and share your story. Enjoy. All right, welcome, Kara. I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks. I'm excited to be here.
Kara, why don't you tell the good listeners who you are and what you do?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I founded Vista Strategies, which is a full-service government affairs firm. I do state, local, and federal lobbying, meaning I just advocate on behalf of clients before the government. And so, I'd say probably 80 or 90% of my work is focused at the state level in Colorado, and then I have another, you know, 10 to 20% that's focused federally right now.
Awesome, amazing. So, in your work, what types of companies are you working with?
Yeah, I mostly work with businesses. I have some government clients as well, and they're always clients who are job creators, who are improving their communities, and they're clients that really align with my values.
Awesome, awesome. And so, how long have you been running the business?
Since 2024.
Okay. And what were you doing before this?
A senator's whiteboard and the lesson Kara still carries
4:52
I had a really extensive career in public service. I was working in government. I worked in the House and the Senate in Washington. Washington D.C. and I just had this like really rich and diverse experience there that kind of shapes everything that I do now. There's like one thread that I try to carry with me in my work today, and that's kind of from the story.
If I can, if I can tell a little story about this time when I was working for Senator Cory Booker, it was like a really late night. I'll never forget it. It was not uncommon. Like if we had a hearing or something, I would work seven or eight in the morning until eight or nine at night, and it was definitely one of those days.
And I like popped into the senator's office to say goodbye and let him know that I was leaving. And I walk in, and there's like in huge letters on his whiteboard, read REID. So I go, "Oh, Senator, do you need me to like follow up with Senator Reid's office?
Do you want me to like flag something for folks on my way out?" And he said no. He kind of laughed and he's like, the woman who was just in here vacuuming our office, her last name is Reed, and he's like, this was just a really a nice reminder to myself that everyone among us, you know, from the highest person working in this building, which at the time was Senate Majority Leader Reid, to the maintenance folks cleaning our offices here with this like shared sense of purpose, regardless of political party, regardless of what position you hold.
It was like this idea that everybody in the building was working in service to others, and he said, you know, everybody deserves to be heard and treated with respect, and it just stuck with me. And I tried to bring that with me in every role that I've had since, including the work that I do now with clients.
Oh my gosh, I just got, I just got chills. I just got chills. So working in government and then going into the private sector, you know, in your own business, I mean, what prompted that shift?
Leaving government to start her own firm
6:49
Yeah, well, I so I like I said, I spent over a decade working in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill, you know, really in the thick of it and in the craziness of all the lawmaking that goes on there, and then my husband and I decided to move to Colorado, so we did this like big cross country move, and I served in Governor Polis's administration, so still government.
And then you know, like life happened to us, where I did a brief stint at a larger lobbying firm. Pretty quickly realized that wasn't for me, and then it was like we had this big turning point in our lives as a family, where it was like I'm pregnant with my first child, and we had a mortgage, and we had the baby on the way, and it was just like, what am I going to do?
And so I had been applying for jobs, I had a couple offers, and I met with a girlfriend of mine who's a business leader in the Denver community, and she's now a client. But she was the first one to kind of say, you know, you really like the work that you're doing, working with clients and doing this government affairs stuff, and you're so good at it.
She's like, why don't you just go out on your own? At the time, I didn't say this out loud, but I'm thinking, are you crazy? Like, there's no way I would do that, but I just couldn't shake the idea, and so finally, you know, after hemming and hawing and waking up in the middle of the night, maybe it was the pregnancy, maybe it was this big idea, but I decided to launch.
I was like 25 weeks pregnant and took the crazy step and like took the leap, and I had no idea what I was doing.
Well, yeah, life gets very lifey very fast. Well, and you say I took the leap. I mean, what was that first leap?
A logo, a website, three clients and no way to sign the next one
8:29
Well, it felt like you know in the movies where they like fast forward scene to scene. It's like I hired a guy from Thumbtack to create my logo. I had someone do the website. I ordered the business cards, and it's like, boom! You have this business. Go, right.
So I'm just sitting there at my desk, like, what? What do I do now? And fortunately, I started the business with a couple clients, my girlfriend who I mentioned, and then a couple of others who were fantastic. And so I had some work to do, but I was really lost when it came to like, okay, how do I sign new clients?
And I was sort of, you know, trying to put the plane together while I was flying it, which I know is not uncommon with the folks that you work with. But that's how I found you. Is I was like, "What do I do? There has to be some resources out there."
So I'm literally googling like, "Help for a new female-owned small business." Like, what do I do? And I came across the podcast and listened to like 30 episodes in a week or something. I was just like couldn't get enough, and you know that's when I reached out to you.
And another funny story that I don't think I've shared with you was for our first discovery call. I was like 10 minutes late. I was like had groceries all around me. I'm sitting on the floor, the baby's crying in the background, and I'm just like, I need help.
And I was like, "There's no way Leah's ever gonna work with me because I'm such a crazy, disorganized person." But like, thankfully, you know, we had other calls, and like, it all worked out. But it was just so funny. I'm like, she's never gonna work with me. I'm way too crazy.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe you even had that thought. I mean. Oh my God! If there's anybody who understands craziness with like the groceries and the baby and the everything, oh my gosh! If anything, I'm like, I see you.
Yeah, no, as I know now. But in the moment, I was just like, oh, I'm screwing this up.
Well, and so you know, at the moment that you came to me, or like what sort of brought you to me when you say like I didn't know what to do, break it down for us.
Yeah, I mean certain things like I said worked well. Like I know, and you say this, you know, either on the podcast or in the program, and it really spoke to me when you said if you're a consultant, you know how to do what you're consulting in. Like I can't tell you how to be better at that, but the pieces you don't know probably are marketing and sales, and that's exactly where I was.
Like I had spent a career in government service. I know who to talk to. I know how to get you know bills done or bring diverse coalitions together. You know that type of thing. But I didn't know how to turn my cute little business with you know my three clients into something that's actually you know a career and something that is I can have long term and that will actually pay the bills and pay the mortgage.
So that's where the Academy was really helpful for me, just learning the process of the pipeline and all of the great stuff that comes with it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to get into that in a second. It's really interesting because your experience and where you're coming from is a little different than most of the women I work with. Most of the women I work with are coming from like a corporate experience or an agency experience or nonprofit experience, and government is sort of its own beast.
I guess what I'm curious about is like, what do you feel like are some of the things that you had to like maybe unlearn from that career.
Unlearning the staffer mindset
11:45
Well, one big thing is just whenever you're working in not government broadly, but the government that I was working in, which was you had a principal, you had a senator that you're serving or a member of Congress. I also did a brief stint in the White House in the first Obama administration, but it's like you're working for someone, and you're trying to make that someone succeed.
Whether it's policy or comms or constituent services, we're all kind of rowing in the same direction with that same goal in mind. And when you have your own business, it's like your schedule's your own. The way you spend your time is your own. You're not going to get a call at six in the morning because the boss is about to go on Meet the Press and had a question about, you know, some transportation railroad bill that you were working on, which actually did happen to me.
But yeah, so just kind of taking ownership of your time and working with clients in a way where you're not their staffer. It's much more of that, like the one up, one down work that you do in the Academy was huge for me because I always come at everything from a one down because I I've always been used to serving in that role where you're serving a principal, and it's much more peer to peer now.
Yeah, I want to just stay on that for a moment. If you could just explain in your own words, like for the listeners who might be hearing this for the first time, like in your own words, this principle of like one up, one down. How do you internalize that, or how do you understand that?
Yeah, and I mean, I'm still learning it honestly. Just a couple weeks ago, I had a client meeting where you know somebody dropped out of an event that we were doing, and she's like, "Well, why don't you lead the discussion?" And I'm like, "Well, I think it would be better from someone elevated," and she's like, "Well, you're elevated."
She's like, "You're our consultant. You're advising us on this stuff." So it's something that I'm still actively trying to practice. But it's this idea of like, rather than coming to the table with a, "Here's my ideas. What do you think? Like, please tell me that you like this path."
It's more like, "Hey, here's my analysis of where you're at. Here's what I think you should do. What do you think?" And it's more of a an even playing field where we're on the same level trying to achieve the same goals versus sort of this idea of kind of top down leadership.
Totally, that's exactly it. You know, I think that we often come out of careers where we were, you know, junior or mid level, or even you know, very senior, and when we start running our business, it's it's almost like we adopt this sort of deferential position. We don't feel like we can push back.
We feel like we're sort of asking or like hoping that the client does something. And in our methodology, that's called being in a one down position, which is something that sociologist Deborah Tannen identified, and it's a big principle of our methodology is to sort of shift from being in one down position to being at a peer level, and I think it's really important in this conversation because when you come out of corporate or nonprofit or just early in your career, I mean, I think you have some degree of like the one downness, but what you shared with me early on in our conversations is like it's that times 1000 in government.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's not even that you know you mentioned like not being able to push back, and that's a big part of the work that I did do in government. You know, you have to be able to push back, or you know, these guys and gals will have all kinds of crazy ideas that you you don't want getting out there.
So you you are pushing back, but it's just in a very different way than I would today with a client today. Very direct, very I don't think that's a good idea, and here's why. You know where there's many other steps to doing so in government sometimes.
Yeah, yeah. Well, and so that is something that you had to sort of rewrite or sort of relearn, right? Yeah. Is there anything else about like this? Just this specific quirks of government that you felt like played out, or you saw you sort of experienced playing out that you had to find a different way to approach?
What years on the inside taught her about how decisions get made
15:40
I don't know. I mean, I think it's just very different coming from the decision maker's office to being on the outside, where you're trying to influence the decision, right? So it's just a different lens, and I think having that experience of being on the inside, and I can I can go through my thought process of how I would evaluate a decision or how I would train folks under me to evaluate decisions.
Having that knowledge has been totally invaluable to my business now. And not to say that everyone thinks in the same way, but it's just knowing sort of what insider conversations are going on behind the scenes when we're making a recommendation to someone, or what data would be most useful to this office in making the decision. It's very different, for example, for a Republican office than a Democratic office.
I'm so glad you went there because my next question was going to be. So we talked about some things that you might have had to unlearn, but then there's like things that you bring with you from your career that are serving you in a really important way. And I think what you're describing in our language is called navigating the jungle, right?
Yeah, it's in part of the sales process where you know we say 90% of the sales process happens when you're not in the room, and it's because of these conversations that are happening inside the client or among stakeholders or processes that need to take place inside in order to get the work actually sold in, and that's a part that's really just totally opaque to us as consultants.
I mean, we have, and there are in the Academy like principles of navigating the jungle and things that we can sort of intuit might be happening based on what we know about how clients make decisions. But what I hear you saying is you have more insight into those navigating the jungle conversations than you know your average bear, right?
Like just sort of your average person who started a consulting business, right? Because you've been in those, right? In the offices?
Yeah, exactly. I've been in those shoes. There's a lot of decisions where you're trying to appease like so many different competing principles for an office. Like you want to do what's right by your constituents, or you have a big employer in the district that cares about an issue.
And then there's obviously the member's own principles and what's guiding them in their work. And so there's a lot of things where it's not just as cut and dry as a yes or no, which is maybe what the client thinks. Like this is an easy yes or no, and it's like, well, there's all these other considerations that an office is taking in, so it's definitely helpful to have that experience.
Yeah, I think when you understand number one that there are all these conversations happening, you know, the 90% of the sales process is going on. I think it can, first of all just like reduce some anxiety because for every consultant that's like, why are they taking so long to like make a decision?
Well, that's what's happening, right? Yeah. And I think understanding that there are all these like competing voices, competing priorities is so important because you know in any sales process, there's actually two buying journeys that have to happen. There's the emotional buying journey and the process buying journey. The emotional buying journey is like what the client says: "Yes, I want to solve this problem and I want to do it with you."
Right. The process buying journey is like, can we buy it? Can we say yes to this? And that's where a lot of other competing priorities happen. You know, initiatives and different legacy beliefs, and you know all these things in the client, and so it's very much like what you're describing.
It's not a matter of like, should we do this? Is this a good idea? You know, and you could be on the outside being like, why haven't they done this yet, right? But you have a really good sense of what's probably going on and what things are being considered.
Right, right, and how the client can help get the data or get whatever facts or get the employment numbers or whatever whatever might help influence those pieces.
Right? Well, and on our side, like what a consultant might be able to do to help those conversations. You know, it's not just a matter of being like, remember that you wanted this, right? It's like, what information does this stakeholder need, or that stakeholder need, or you know, what data, et cetera, right? So I think that having that knowledge is just invaluable.
Yeah, it's been really helpful.
Is there anything else that you bring from your government career that you find has been especially helpful here?
Persistent without pestering
20:02
I guess sort of this ethos of just being like a happy warrior, as you probably know. Laws do not get passed quickly or easily. There are bills that I, I mean, some of them are behind me right now, but some bills that I worked on for years before they got done, and so I guess I sort of bring this attitude of like, you know, being persistent without pestering, or you know, not giving up, or just because it's a no, this session doesn't mean it's a no next legislative session, and how can we do better next time?
And so, I guess just this attitude of like, you know, not giving up, not getting down about a no. One no is just a no on the way to the next yes. So, and things change. Like in Colorado, the terms are limited, so you're not always working with the same people, or the governor will change over, and so something that got vetoed last year maybe won't get vetoed next year. So there's just a lot of factors. I kind of let it roll off me.
I think that's so important because you know, one surprise that people discover when they start selling in, you know, work to businesses or nonprofits is how long it takes. You know, and everybody I work with has heard me say a million times that the sales process can take anywhere from three to 18 months, but we kind of hope it's like three, yeah, and we hope it's even less.
And it's easy to get frustrated, like why is it taking so long? And what you said about a no might be a no right now, or a no might not even be a no at all. You know what I'm saying? Like there are other factors, and I think when the sales process takes a long time with clients, you know, I think a lot of women tend to hear a no where there isn't a no, right?
They tend to hear pushback as like, "Oh, it's not happening," or "I've priced myself too high," or whatever. Whereas, like, if you adopt a like, it's not a no until you hear a no, then it can really change your attitude and your mindset, and just your understanding that like this is a long game.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Everything in government is a long game. So, yeah.
More from my conversation with Kara van Stralen after this. So, fast forward to today. Talk to me about you know what you've seen from the work that we've done. You know how it's changed for the better, and then we're going to talk about a few things that have helped you along the way.
The proposal that paid for her whole year
22:24
Yeah, I mean, I could do a two-hour podcast just on that alone. No, but I don't know. I mean, there's so many things that have changed and that have improved my business and also my life. I mean, one thing that comes to mind is I had just joined the Academy, and it was maybe I don't know.
I want to say it was like four weeks in or three weeks in, super early on. And I had this opportunity come up, and it's like you know we have these little modules, and you try to do them in order. But I had this opportunity, and I like freaked out, reached out to the community, reached out to you, and I'm like, guys, help me!
I have this opportunity to give this proposal to a really amazing client, and I really want to land them. And everybody kind of like rallied around and supported me and helped me. And I skipped ahead like nine modules to get the proposal templates and get that going. And so I, I like totally changed overnight, basically how I did my proposals and how I approached them and the options that I was giving, and got feedback from the community.
I'm like, am I doing this right? I tried to use this template, and people gave feedback. And you know, long story, way too long. I ended up signing the client. I'm now working with them. I just signed another contract with them for another year, and it just, it's all been wonderful.
And that was all thanks to the the proposal template and also the value based pricing, and it kind of all came together. And I basically I was worried when I first started the Academy about the cost. As you know, I'm like I don't know this is this is really tough.
I'm I want to invest in myself, but I don't know if this is the right time. And from that one client alone that I landed, you know, four to eight weeks into the program, I paid for the entire year's class. So yeah, it all worked out.
Amazing, amazing. I do remember that, and we were like, "Okay, team, like we're going to help this, you know, get over the finish line."
Yeah.
What else? How are you different? How's the business different?
Yes, I mean chaos to calm is like the way that I think about it. It's like I went from being insanely busy, but not really knowing if anything I was doing or putting out in the world was helping or generating business or helping my clients, and now I have like a pathway and a plan, and I know what to do next.
I know how to get new clients. I also know how to kind of offload clients that aren't working for me or that aren't aligned with my values, which I did have to do last year. I fired a client for the first time, and that was scary. But it's not as scary when you know how to, you know, plug that hole financially.
And also, how to stay true to your values and and the things that you started the business for in the first place. So everything is better now.
So I love that like business is in such a good place. What about you know other stuff like you mentioned you know life?
When her husband lost his job, the business could flex
25:17
Yeah, I mean life happening, right? So you know our baby, I still call him a baby because all kids are babies. But he's almost two now. Everything like business wise is going great, which is helpful because my husband actually lost his big corporate job, which his big corporate job was really one of the main reasons that I felt comfortable launching my big adventure because he had the healthcare and the stable income, and it was like we could take this risk because he had that.
And you know, unfortunately, his company was like, "You guys can either move to Atlanta or take the severance." And I love Colorado. I have my business here. I my work is here. We bought a house here. We're not moving to Atlanta, so, so yeah. I don't know. It's been really great to be able to take on additional clients, take on additional projects because of that.
And I actually just launched a new offering with the business to do some more D.C.-based work. So I'm just being able to be so creative and nimble to make up for Chris's job loss, basically.
Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I'm so sorry that that happened, and you guys were given that terrible choice to make. But it's amazing that you could sustain you guys and your family while this was happening. And it's interesting. I I've heard this from a few folks, like a few women in the Academy who, during their time, like their, I mean, hashtag economy, right?
Like during their time, their spouse was laid off, and they were able to make it work because now they had the tools.
Yeah, and that's another reason I love and became addicted to the podcast. It's like I love hearing these stories of women who faced, you know, similar situation where their partner was laid off, or even worse, or different, you know. But it's like we can all overcome divorce, you know, layoffs, death in the family, whatever it is.
It's just nice to hear that people were able to overcome based on, you know, obviously personal resilience, but also with the help of the Academy on the business side to be able to help give them more options financially.
Yeah, it's all this stuff that like you can't really foresee, you know. Yeah, but you know, it's like I say, fix the roof when the sun is shining, right? Or as my parents would say, if if you ever speak to my parents, they will find a way to weave this in.
But luck comes to the prepared, is my parents' like favorite saying, and I think sadly it is true.
Yeah, it is.
What else has been a game changer for you that you did in our work that has made a big difference? You mentioned you know value based pricing. You mentioned the proposal. What else has been a game changer?
I mean, having the community has been really really helpful. Just to be able to throw out an idea or a draft of something and get immediate feedback. Like I love my colleagues at the Capitol, and I have so many friends and mentors, but they're also at the competition, right?
So I don't really want to give them a draft proposal when they could be going for the same exact client, or you know, run an idea by them that they you know think is brilliant and take, or they think is silly and go tell the client. But you know it can be a little competitive and sharp elbows sometimes. So I was really grateful to have the community.
Yeah, I think of it as like the best place on the internet, and yeah, and everyone's just really supportive. Like everyone wants to see you succeed. Is there anything else? Is there any like strategy or you know Painkiller or whatever was like helpful in the game changers?
LinkedIn, thought leadership and her newsletter
28:47
I mean, I'm, I feel like I'm still working on my Painkiller a little bit, but
that's fair. That's fair.
Like the LinkedIn, all the LinkedIn updates have been really helpful in terms of strategy and like just how we present the information. Like this is not an online version of your resume. This is basically your business page. And doing more thought leadership on LinkedIn has been really helpful too.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's sort of an extension of the one down, one up conversation because when your whole career is in service of somebody else, right? It's hard to be like, yes, I have thought leadership, right? Like, no, they have thought leadership, and I'm here to support them. So, I'm curious how you sort of reconciled that as you were learning it.
Yeah, I mean, it was really new to me. I had never, I'd post like events, like, oh, come to this event, or oh, Senator So-and-So authored this bill, but I had never really, you know, like shared many opinions or like here's my analysis on the recent election type of thing.
So it was really kind of scary at first. I know we talked about that, and I also had like very closed off connections, and my profile wasn't public, and, I was like, you know, watching too much Dateline. But once we got past all that, and I was able to actually put virtual pen to paper and put thoughts and analysis out there, I've gotten really good response, and it's really boosted my newsletter list too.
Yeah.
And I'm doing the newsletter was huge too. I've been doing the newsletter since like day one of the Academy, and that's really been growing. And it's like a meaningful list of people who actually work in the space or have interests in the space, versus just like me putting all my friends onto a list.
Yeah, I mean, listen, that's what it's about. It's nurturing that list of potential referrers, clients, advocates, etc. Oh, I love it! I love it. Okay, so you sort of touched on this, but fill in the blank for me. I almost didn't work with you, or I almost didn't join the program because...
Because of the cost. I was afraid of making an investment in myself that early on. I was doing similar work at a larger firm, but it was like, should I try on my own first, or you know, do this now. And like I said, I once I took the plunge, I paid myself back literally almost immediately.
Like I want to say, four to eight weeks into the program, and it covered the entire year. I just signed up for the Growth+ program. Like I am not done. I am. I'm not done with the Academy. I'm still learning and like learning from the Academy materials and from everyone else in the community, which is so nice.
Yeah, yeah. All right. No, I totally understand. I mean, it's hard to make an investment in yourself. Yeah, you know. So, Kara, what would you say to someone who's in the position that you were back then? You know, when you were like doing okay, but it felt a little chaotic, and you didn't really have like a plan. What advice would you give her?
Her advice if you're where she was
31:47
Yeah, like you can tread water for a long time, but the question that I would ask myself is like, but how long do you want to do that? You know, like I could have probably designed my own logo on Canva, but that's not my area of expertise. I hired the Thumbtack guy, so it's like I don't know.
If you want to be excellent at something, then hire the experts to teach you how to do it, and don't be afraid. I haven't heard from anyone in the program. Like I've never seen anyone post like, "Oh, I did this and it didn't work." Right? Like everybody in there is successful.
They're building their business. It may be at a different pace or a different rate, or they're figuring certain things out. But like we're all successful, and like the program works. Simple as that, it works.
And I just want everybody to know that I told Kara she did not have to say that. You did not have to say that, but I appreciate that, especially the note about everyone's doing it at a different pace, you know. Yeah, like people are coming in, and some people are focusing on this part or that part, or some people are seeing this type of success versus like this other type of success.
But it's interesting because I do work with like all Type A overachievers, and everybody. And I say this, I will say this to everyone in the in the program too, and I have everybody thinks they're behind, but everybody's working at their own pace, and I think that's just a little quirk of us, you know, type A overachievers. It's like, how can I do better? How can I be better? You know?
Always, always. How can I do better and be better? And I think the other thing that was really freeing from the Academy, like a little gift that I feel like I got this year was my family and I were able to take a three week trip to Italy, and I have never taken a vacation that long.
I've never taken that much time off, and I'm already plotting. You know, how do I get to do that again next summer? Because you know, summer we all get time off. Like the baby is only going to be a baby for so long, so yeah, I don't know.
That was really special too, and it just kind of gets back to your point of like success looks different. It could be your time, it could be your expertise, it could be how many clients you have or what your revenue is. There's so many different measures of it, and I just feel like I'm getting so much value in so many different ways from this program.
Oh, I love hearing that. I mean, could you imagine taking three weeks off while you were working on the hill? I mean, that would never happen.
Never, never.
Kara, where can people find you?
I'm on LinkedIn, and then my website is vistastrategiesllc.com. So those are probably the two best places.
Awesome, Kara. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
The lesson: notice the moments you make yourself smaller
34:27
All right, I loved that conversation with Kara. And if anything Kara said spoke to you, be sure to post about it on LinkedIn and tag Kara and me. We'd love to see what resonated with you. So I always like to leave you with one thing that you can take from this episode and apply in your business, and I want to come back to something Kara said about learning to go from one down to a peer relationship with clients, because the whole concept one down versus peer relationship it actually extends well beyond client relationships.
It extends into almost every interaction you have, like in your life, so this concept of one down and you know its opposite one up, it refers to basically your status relative to someone else. Being in a one down position means you're kind of in a lower status position, and being in the one up position means that you're in this higher status position.
And the concept comes from Deborah Tannen, who's a sociolinguist who spent years studying how the words we choose, even small ones, can signal who has more status in a conversation or in a relationship. And one of the things she found is something I think about a lot, which is that status, whether it's in one conversation or a whole relationship, it isn't fixed.
Like nobody assigns you a one up or one down position, and then you're stuck there. It sort of gets negotiated constantly in tiny, you know, mostly unconscious moments, like all day long. How you greet somebody, or how you say goodbye, or you know whether you apologize for something that wasn't your fault.
I mean, most of us are doing this on autopilot, and we don't even notice it. Like, okay, for example, have you ever gotten to a doorway at the same time as someone else, right? And you both do like that little side step, and you say, "Oh, sorry." You know, it's like, why are we saying sorry?
Neither of you did anything wrong, but we say sorry because it's this sort of conditioning to just in that little moment, just to shrink a little bit to make the other person feel comfortable. And another example of you know one up, one down that I talk about all the time is that at the end of a phone call or like a Zoom call, when people say thanks for your time, like please, if you're hearing this, please stop saying that, because what you're actually saying is, you know, thank you for the favor of you know extending me a few minutes of your very important life, right?
And when you say thanks for your time, it automatically puts you in a one down position. Instead, say something like, you know, thanks for a great call. Thanks for a great chat. Right? It's such a small swap, but it puts you in a peer position, not a one down position.
And like Kara mentioned, you know, this can show up in how you present your ideas and how you work with your clients. Right. So instead of approaching it like you know, here's this idea. What do you think? I hope you like it. The approach is more like here's my analysis.
Here's what I think you should do. You know now what do you think, right? And so with this construct in mind, the one down, one up peer level. Here's what I want you to do this week. Just start noticing, right? Just start noticing the moments where you might one down yourself, right?
You get to the doorway at the same time as somebody else, or the way you end a call, or how you sign off an email. You know, wherever it might show up for you, because even just starting to notice it can start to shift things for you, and then there are two easy places to adopt a more peer approach.
Like when you get to the doorway at the same time as somebody else. I mean, instead of saying sorry, I usually say like, "Oh," you know, or some little like I don't know exclamation, I suppose. But actually, what's even better is say nothing at all. You actually don't have to.
And at the end of a call or a Zoom or whatever, instead of saying thanks for your time, try thanks for a great call.
I promise, if you try those two things, you will leave those little interactions feeling more on a peer level and feeling more confident. Just try it. And one more thing before I let you go, I mean, Kara mentioned that her husband got laid off right as her business was sort of hitting its stride, right?
And what got them through it wasn't luck; it's that her business could flex and support them through it. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, this might sound familiar. In episode 130, Carrie Bornstein talked about how the same thing happened to her. In episode 78, Jill James talked about how she went through a divorce while she was building her business.
And I think the point I just want to make here is that the unexpected doesn't just happen to other people; it can actually happen to any of us, right? And so I think it's worth building a business that's sturdy enough to hold you up when it does. All right, so okay, back to the one down thing.
I know that. Listen, there's a lot to learn in you know getting clients and building a business and having great client relationships, and you know I talk about so many different strategies here in these episodes, but no matter what you do to get clients coming to you, or lead a great sales process, or price your work, or what have you, it all starts with how you treat yourself and how you teach other people to... you, right, because we're always teaching our clients how to treat us, and so it starts with how we treat ourselves.
If you put yourself in a one-down position, even by accident, right, everything gets harder and more uncomfortable than it needs to be. Instead, put yourself in a peer position with your clients. Stop accidentally one downing yourself. It makes everything else easier: marketing your business, leading a sales process, pricing your work, and it leads to a better client relationship.
So just remember, you run this business. It starts and ends with you. You're always teaching people how to treat you, so teach them to treat you as a peer. All right. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.
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