00:00:00 - Courtney Tarrant
Wasn't an individual person's fault. It wasn't a team member's fault. It wasn't that they weren't working hard enough or that they didn't, like, know how to do the job. The job didn't exist. We made it up, and now it's not working. And now we've got to. We have the responsibility as a company to find a spot for that person. We also have the responsibility of a company to admit this isn't working, and we have to evolve quickly. If you evolve too slow, you will stay stuck in the medicine middle way way longer than you need to be there. And one of my favorite mentors always says, if you're in hell, like, don't sightsee.

00:00:38 - Dana Kadwell
Welcome to Hustle and Gather, a podcast about inspiring the everyday entrepreneur to take the leap. I'm Dana.

00:00:44 - Courtney Hopper
And I'm Courtney.

00:00:45 - Dana Kadwell
And we are two sisters who have started multiple businesses together. And yes, it is as messy as you think, because we know that starting a business isn't easy.

00:00:52 - Courtney Hopper
I mean, we've done it four times. And on this show, we talk about the ups and downs of the hustle and the reward at the end of the journey.

00:00:58 - Dana Kadwell
And this season, we're talking all about the messy middle.

00:01:01 - Courtney Hopper
You know, when you have to decide to either grow or scale your business or maybe even take a step back.

00:01:06 - Dana Kadwell
And today we're talking with Courtney Tarrant, COO and strategy genius at the Ad Girls. With experience managing multiple millions of dollars in ad spend, she has helped grow brands from six to seven and even eight figures. Courtney knows what it takes to crack the code in almost any business. But she genuinely believes that good marketing starts with empathy. She cares deeply about the people behind every brand the Ad Girls bring on board and is passionate about helping women create a life and business they love. Courtney, welcome to the show.

00:01:32 - Courtney Tarrant
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

00:01:35 - Dana Kadwell
I love your bio.

00:01:37 - Courtney Tarrant
Thank you.

00:01:37 - Dana Kadwell
That's great. I think that's so interesting, the empathy with marketing, because I think it's so key. But you don't ever hear that when people talk about marketing.

00:01:45 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah, I think one of the things that has changed so much. So we do Facebook and Instagram ads mainly, and that has changed over the last, like, six months, incredibly. But over the last, like, decade, how long I've been doing it even more. And the reason why we lead with empathy is because actually Target and any marketing is about the messaging. We think that there's, like, some trick or, like, some magic behind the curtain, you know, like the wizard of Oz that like some secret that we don't know. But actually it's about the messaging and being able to connect with your audience in a really authentic way. And if you're speaking properly, you're going to qualify the right people and disqualify the wrong people immediately by the way that you speak and by the way that you engage with your audience and the things that you have to say. And so really kind of creating that genuine connection with our clients allows our clients to create genuine connection through ads, which is really amazing.

00:02:39 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, I love that. Well, how did you like like come up with this idea or like even get started in this space?

00:02:47 - Courtney Tarrant
I got started in this space in 2015. So yeah, almost 10 years ago.

00:02:53 - Dana Kadwell
Almost a decade. Yeah.

00:02:55 - Courtney Tarrant
I was at the time living in a very small Texas town and couldn't find a job that I wanted to do. Like I didn't want to work at a feed store or like get a corporate like something where I had to commute. And it was right around the time that was like again 2015. So it was like social media was just starting to be a thing people were taking seriously. And I got the crazy idea to start a business from home. And over the years it evolved and in 2021, I guess 2020 technically is when it started, I met my now business part and she made a joke about hey, we should like be partners together. And I was like, hey, that actually could be really fun. And so we started the ad girls in 2021, have grown it to multiple seven figures and now run a coaching business as well, teaching other agency owners how to do the same.

00:03:49 - Courtney Hopper
Oh nice.

00:03:50 - Dana Kadwell
That's crazy.

00:03:51 - Courtney Hopper
That is crazy.

00:03:51 - Courtney Tarrant
That's crazy.

00:03:52 - Dana Kadwell
Success in like three years.

00:03:54 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah, well if you think about it, we have both owned agencies since 2014 and 2015. So when we started it was, we weren't really starting from ground zero. So it's like hard to of say that all of that was achieved in that time. But we, we worked hard. There was a lot of, there's a lot of messy middle in the time get us there for sure.

00:04:14 - Dana Kadwell
I bet, I bet that just seems like overwhelming in a lot of ways.

00:04:19 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah, yeah it was, it is I think all of the time. I mean I know you guys run like an event business. It's very people centric and people come in with a lot of emotions. You know there's a lot of humanness that happens inside of the service based business and so it, it is overwhelming often you definitely have to have a really big capacity but also the impact that you get to make, I think is like part of what makes it so worth it.

00:04:48 - Dana Kadwell
For sure.

00:04:48 - Courtney Hopper
I love that. I. How would you define success in a business? I know you've kind of talked about how you were like small and then you had a partnership and then kind of grew and now you're coaching, like. And how has that evolved? Like the definition evolved over time?

00:05:00 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that I would have loved to have had when I started my business is like all of the knowledge that I have now, which, like, I think anybody wants that. But I wish if I had known then what I know now, I think I might have designed my business actually a little bit differently because my definition of success has changed so much over the years. There definitely was a time where the only version of success that I saw was like, you have to hit a million dollars or else. Like, I don't know. That was just like what I was after. And I had a really small, really profitable business for a while where I was hitting about 200 to 300k, but with like 50% profit margins on a service based business. It was doing really great. And as we've grown, I've lost a little bit, but honestly still been able to retain 35 to 40% profit margins even up at multiple seven figures, which has been really amazing. But definitely the journey to get there, the in between is where I personally almost lost it. That was where I hit my burnout. And over the course of 12 months, I had a lot of crazy stuff happen in my life that was like really requiring a lot from me personally. And I think that it, it psychologically challenged me in so many ways. But also my body physically was like just. It just sort of like gave up at one point. And I think I sort of at that, at that moment I took a break. I took a step back and looked up and was like, oh, look at, look at what this is now. And it gets so lost, I think, in the journey that you miss the progress that you're making. And so today I would say that for me, success is more about really defining, understanding like what you want your day to look like and being able to be present. I think presence is a privilege. So being able to be present is like what I would define success as now. Whereas before I think it was very much defined by like revenue numbers and like, you know, being in Forbes or like whatever else I was like so dedicated to.

00:07:09 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, I love that because I think that I think sometimes we're forced into the middle when we don't maybe when our business isn't, our business isn't. But like personally we are. Because personally we're at that crossroads. Like maybe everything is going well and the business is like chugging along and like, oh my gosh, it's hitting these milestones, these markers, whatever. But then it's the personal side that says, hey, like, you know, you could continue to push forward and you could continue to grow in this way. Or maybe what you need right now is to scale it back, to step back and figure out how to coast as opposed to how to grow. And I think that's a really hard conversation to have with yourself, especially if you're like a high achiever. Because you're like, the idea of like coasting is like never an option, you know?

00:07:53 - Courtney Tarrant
Right.

00:07:54 - Dana Kadwell
But.

00:07:54 - Courtney Tarrant
Right. Easy. Like if I'm, if it's easy, maybe I'm not doing it right. At least that's what I thought for a long time. I would get really freaked out when things were too easy. But I think to your point, like it's, it's making, it's sitting down and really making an intentional decision with yourself. And so I know that so many of your listeners are in service based businesses, which is so different than like, if we're talking about like for example, online coaches or like businesses that have really high profit margins. Your business is powered by people. And so as you scale there's like, there's like almost like I would describe them as maybe like mountaintops that you get to. And in order to get to the next one, you're actually going to have to go down in profitability in order to get up again. Right. And so that decision is off is often leading, I think so many entrepreneurs to make the decision between should I continue to grow and scale or should I stay here? Because you may end up in a situation where you're making more or you're making less, but you're working more and you start to think like, is this really worth it? And so one of the things that we've done in our business is redefined our pay structure. Understanding how we can pay our team without necessarily cutting into our profits. Working with contractors and really scaling up only for the work that we need, which has been amazing and has led to our like, sustained profitability. We still have had to make investments in things like our leadership team and operations and you know, branding, other things that are sort of soft. But as far as executing on client work, we have a really beautiful formula that allows us to pay for work like only after we've received the money so that we're never worried about like scope creeper. Those kinds of things within the agency world can be really hard to overcome and definitely part of like the scaling decision or the scaling journey.

00:09:55 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, I think that's super interesting because like I a lot of times, like we've talked to other people, we've talked to businesses and I was actually on a phone call, I was on a mentor phone call with somebody yesterday and they were talking about scaling. So she is a product based business and so she's launched the product three times, like a batch of the product. It's sold out every single time. She's like, I know there's something here, but she doesn't know how to get to that next step. And she's like, I know that I need to hire. And so she's talking about hiring. You know, it's like where, you know, where do you feel like you need to hire? And she's like, this, this, this, this. And I was like, look, like it's, you don't have the ability to like just bring somebody on full time. So let's talk about like these major things that you can do. That contract work that's going to have a direct impact into your finances. And I think it's really hard. I don't know if it's an age thing. Like I don't know if it's, you know, the younger, the older. I don't want to say we're like when we were in our 40s, but like that where in our mind it's like you automatically go to full time. Like that's what you go to. Like, oh, you want to scale. You need a team that's full time. And I don't know, it's just such a different mindset to think through of. You don't have to like take off that big chunk to scale. Like you can. Exactly. You're saying like scale to the, to the work that you have.

00:11:07 - Courtney Hopper
It's, it's like it's getting out of the mindset that not only do people, does it not have to be that way? There's people who don't want that. Like literally like their life, they do not want to be tied to you full time. They want to just do it when they want to do it in the way that they want to do. They want to cobble things together because it like sparks joy or whatever. And it's like kind of like rationalizing like not only do they not want it, but like the way that you've always thought about it isn't necessarily what everyone's cup of tea is. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's kind of. I think it's.

00:11:38 - Dana Kadwell
So I guess my question is that did you have to get out of your own mindset of what it means to work, what it means to have a job in order to scale in this way?

00:11:50 - Courtney Tarrant
I was asked once about, like, how I created this vision, and I was like, I just did what made sense to me. So unfortunately, I don't have necessarily any advice on, like, how to get out of your own way, because this is what always made the most sense to me in terms of running a business. I didn't really ever have a real job except for one. I was an intern at a nonprofit, and they worked in this environment called ro, which stands for results only work environment.

00:12:20 - Courtney Tarrant
So in that it's like a very specific model where, like, meetings aren't mandatory, coming to work isn't mandatory. If you do your work better at home, that's amazing. If you want to structure your day in a different way, it's amazing. There's a whole book on it. And that was like my first, I guess, like, taste of a real job. And I was like, this is great.

00:12:40 - Courtney Tarrant
Like, this. I could do this forever. And then trying to actually adjust into, like, a traditional employee environment after that, just, like, it just didn't work for me. I couldn't get back into the idea that, like, me sitting in this chair and trading my time for money for you and you owning my time, time between those hours, like, if I'm smarter and I'm faster than everybody else, then, like, why do I still have to sit here? And I could.

00:13:09 - Courtney Tarrant
That was sort of what sparked my whole entrepreneur journey. And then the way that I structured my company because I wanted my employees and my team to experience that same level of freedom. And with that level of freedom, obviously, comes a high level of accountability. Is the other part of this that I think sometimes is a really important part of the equation? But in my industry, because it is young, we're a social media marketing agency. It's a young. You know, I'm like the oldest of experts in the industry, and I'm 33. You know, there's not a lot of people that have been doing this for much longer than I have been doing it. And what I have found is that the top talent in my industry are also around my age. They are very familiar with and have been brought up inside of the gig economy. The most talented people that I've ever had on my team have been part time. They don't want a full time job either because they have families or because they have this other thing that they're doing or because they have their own business on the side.

00:14:05 - Courtney Tarrant
And I never view my people having their own business as like anything other than inspirational. I. If I am a launchpad for you to go out and like achieve your dreams, then I am honored to be here. Like, thank you for like allowing me to be a part of your journey. And so I think even with that there's a lot of mentality that other that an older, I would say, like traditional business values, like would look at that and say, but if you're spending your time there, then I don't know how you're spending your time here.

00:14:35 - Courtney Tarrant
All of our accountability however, is built around the results that you're creating. And so we're able to number one, attract really high end top talent, retain them because we give them the lifestyle that they want. We're able to pay them well because we pay them by the results that they're creating. And so we reward efficiency. People that aren't very efficient typically don't lack last long, which is okay for us and I think also okay for them. And we're able to like create a culture that ultimately because what we do is results marketing, we're able to create a culture that actually rewards the objective that we're after at the end of it. And so sort of piecing together our model and our structure is both like a piece of art. And also just for me, what made the most like logical mathematical sense of if I'm going to get paid X number of dollars, I'm only going to pay out number of dollars.

00:15:29 - Courtney Tarrant
So my clients pay me before work is done, I pay my team after work is done. So there's never really a moment that I'm like digging into. Until I started hiring a leadership team and really started like trying to get my business to function on its own. There wasn't a time I was digging into my reserves or quote unquote making an investment to have a team. I was just paying people for work that I had already been paid for. So I was more, it was more like an outsourcing mindset and outsourcing mentality.

00:15:54 - Dana Kadwell
So I think this is super interesting and I feel like we're going to like, I think this is a really great conversation to have because it sounds like you do like a hybrid, right? Like so you have a certain amount of people on your team that are definitely in that Gig category. And we did that for a little bit. We talked about planners, like we, you know, only paid them. We got paid essentially like in terms of like our sort of trying to think of contract workers. Right. But there are, as you said, there are people, there's your leadership team that is not going to function that way because they need, I don't know if it's because they need to be invested more or what the. Or they just need to have more like skin in the game and they, you know, are there to lead the team. How do you marry those two things? So like we'll, for us a lot of where we're at, we have a very similar concept where we have, you know, our managers that have to be there. Right. I mean it's a venue so they have to be there. They can't not be there.

00:16:47 - Courtney Tarrant
Right.

00:16:47 - Dana Kadwell
But there's also a flexibility of when they're not there, when they're not doing a tour, there's not a client on site, you know, like balancing those things. And then we have like a whole part time staff. Right. That helps execute the things. How do you create that culture within the office when you have people that are there and people that are, you know, deciding whether they want to come in or working from home or whatever. Like how do you bring that together?

00:17:10 - Courtney Tarrant
Our entire team is remote. Yeah. So they're all online. We have people from that are in countries across the globe. So I think that's a really important distinction in the way that we function is that we are all online. I've really only ever built my business from online. And so the idea of like, like I have somebody that's been on my team for three and a half years. I've never seen her in person and she would be what I would say is like one of my most like devoted, like hardest working.

00:17:42 - Courtney Tarrant
Just like she's there, she's in it because she wants to be in it. And I think the way that we've created that culture is again, very different than traditional because it's not necessarily about the interpersonal relationships in the office or about like what are you, you're going out to drinks or like whatever. We don't actually get that opportunity. And so we find ourselves more bonded by the mission of what we're doing. So our company mission is about putting more money in the hands of more women. We believe that when women have money that they actually change the globe.

00:18:13 - Courtney Tarrant
And there are studies out there that say that as women we invest more deeply. When we have money, we invest more deeply. Into our families, into our communities. And you see a higher ripple effect when women have money than when men have money, which is so insane to me and so crazy. But also, my business partner and I have really specific survivor stories of because we had access to money, we were able to get out of dangerous situations in our lives. My business partner is a survivor of domestic violence. I had a father who was a drug addict, and my mom, because she had access to money, like, actually got us out of, like, sort of like Thief in the Night, like, got us out of a very dangerous situation.

00:18:52 - Courtney Tarrant
And had we not had access to money, like, our lives would have turned out so differently. And so we unite our team under that mission. Everything that we do, every decision that we make, kind of like, you know, Southwest has the we're the most affordable airline thing that, like, guides them in every decision. Is this going to further that mission? And we do the same thing with more money in the hands of more women.

00:19:12 - Courtney Tarrant
So our team is very, very purpose driven. And then additionally, like, we work really hard to reward. The longer that they're at the position, the better they get at it, so the more efficient that they get. We also give them bonuses in sort of like a profit sharing model. If they retain their clients past a certain timeline, they get additional money every single month for the lifetime of that client. And so we've been creative with the ways that our team feels invested in and feels a part of the agency. It feels a part of the business that we've created. And it's not to say that we don't have turnover, because, like, we absolutely do.

00:19:48 - Courtney Tarrant
But we prioritize our people's passions. We prioritize, like, what their purpose is. We help, we try to, like, create a culture that, like, really embraces the humanness that they have. Like, what. What do you want to make see happen? Like, we are a big company of transparency and requests. And so if somebody's like, hey, I want to take Friday off, I'll, like, my work will be done. But, like, I just. I don't want to be responsible for calls because I want to go hang out with my daughter at the amusement park. Like, cool. As long as your work's done, I actually don't care what you do. And that creates, like, a. The same freedom of entrepreneurship. However, it's, like, a lot more dependable. We have a beautiful sales machine on the front end.

00:20:30 - Courtney Tarrant
So, like, we will always have work for you. It will be very dependable, but it has the same freedom in the feel of entrepreneurship, which I think creates Also something really unique that a lot of people in, I guess, like, the millennial Gen Z age bracket are really looking for.

00:20:45 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, I have a lot of questions.

00:20:47 - Courtney Tarrant
Great, great.

00:20:49 - Courtney Hopper
Are we moving from the purpose of this podcast? It feels like we are.

00:20:53 - Dana Kadwell
We are. No, it's not the purpose. It's the same purpose, but I think it's just a different direction because I think it's such a. An interesting take on entrepreneurship. So I feel like this. Questions are going to ping pong around, but the first one I have is so when you're. So when you were kind of thinking about growing, obviously you had to think about this model and say, okay, this model is going to be. Is going to work for us, and this is how we're going to be able to scale and create the business we want. Was the biggest driver your mission or was the biggest driver your personal, Like, I don't want to say freedom, but your personal goals?

00:21:30 - Courtney Tarrant
My. So my business partner has always had this mission. This was, like, her mission to start with. I think that she has been very driven by purpose and by, like, passion. She's also a killer, like, sales and marketing genius. And so she's got a lot invested there. I would say, for me, personally, I was always really driven by living my life with intentionality. I knew that in order to live the life that I wanted, that I would need access to resources. I had seen my mom, like, growing up being an incredibly independent, like, driven woman. And I was like, I want to do that. Like, I want to be able to have a beautiful marriage and a beautiful life and a beautiful family, but know that it. Whatever needs to happen, like, I can. I can personally make it happen without a dependence on really anybody else. And so I think for me, it was really driven by that. When I joined forces with my business partner and she was like, I want to keep my mission. I was like, you know, now that you say it, like, that is, I think, a big underlying theme or a big foundational piece of what I was doing the whole time. And I think as women, I think it can be all of our mission, really, if we think about it right, is like, how do we. We were only allowed to have bank accounts since 1976. Like, like, like, yeah, we are like, we're all actually like, trailblazers. We're all paving the way for everybody else. And so it was a very easy thing to sort of transition into. And I would say having that lighthouse when building the business after we got together became really hard because I jumped from a $300,000 a year business to a $1.6 million a year business in a year. Like, like, doing that transition was a lot easier with a lot a lighthouse of purpose attached to it, versus, like, I just want to design my life with intentionality. And I think that for me, that was something that I needed to get over. I would say, like, the hump of that first million and then into, like, the multiple millions was like, this isn't about me or my life or my intentionality anymore. This is about my team and my clients and something that's much, much bigger.

00:23:41 - Courtney Hopper
I love that.

00:23:42 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. And I asked that question because I think it is such an important conversation to have with entrepreneurs who are talking about making the decision in this messy middle that having. I love the way you like the visual of having the lighthouse, because I think that we. And I know I've been there. Get super stuck on, like, okay, well, I could go this way, I could go that way, and it could result in this, and it could result in that. But you don't. I feel like you were just kind of making a really best guess sometimes. And what I have found is when we have made decisions because we've been in the messy middle often. Right. Being in business, this for how long? As long as we have. Like, we're constantly in that valley. Like, every. I think it's every three years is my personal opinion. But. But the times when I felt like we have made the best decisions and the right ones is when it is rooted and going back to, okay, like, what is. Why are we here? Like, what's our purpose? Like, what are we actually. And it's not even what are we trying to accomplish personally, but, like, what is it that wants. That I want to feel when I go to bed at night, you know, Like, I, like, I feel like I'm making an impact, you know, in the world, in my community and whatnot. And I feel like those moments, it's like, oh, wow, like, the success. It may not even have been the same number, but, like, it just was so much sweeter, I guess.

00:24:53 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah.

00:24:54 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah.

00:24:54 - Courtney Hopper
And I think. And I think it shifts, though, like, as. Like, as an entrepreneur and, like, owning your business year over year over year, like, your purpose doesn't necessarily have to be. It's not always going to be the same based on the season of your life. Right?

00:25:05 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. But I think that's the beauty of a mission because, like, we, like, I think it was like, 2019, 2018, 2019. I think we had our very first, like, really good conversation of what is our mission. And we, and we spent an entire day with our team creating an actual mission statement. That mission has never changed. Right? Like, the path we take and maybe the outcomes we want has changed slightly. But the actual mission, like, of who we are, what we are, who we serve, we want to serve, how we want to impact the world has never changed, you know, and so, like, using that as kind of like your guiding light, I think is just a wonderful piece of advice and a way to recenter you as a business owner. I think.

00:25:45 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah, I think that the messy middle when you're first starting out, you're like, I'm ready. Like, you, like, you, like, you have this idea that, like, you are ready for what it is that is in store. And I think that the greatest path to spiritual or personal development is entrepreneurship. If you want to, like, just really go on a rocket ship to change yourself and your life, become an entrepreneur. Because it will happen. It has to happen. And when I started not have, like, without having done it both ways, not having that lighthouse was. It just didn't light as much of a fire in me because at 300,050% profit margins, like, I was comfy, I was cozy, I was doing a good job. And that for me actually, like, was really great. And being given the opportunity to join forces with my business partner and have a bigger mission and have a bigger impact was like, oh, wait, maybe, maybe I want to try that. Maybe that actually sounds like something that I want to be a part of that I could take and translate all of these skills into and make more money and be able to like, actually have more freedom eventually. But for that middle time, I didn't actually have more freedom. I didn't necessarily have more money. And it was, it led to a lot of late nights of like, why.

00:27:03 - Dana Kadwell
Am I, why am I doing this?

00:27:06 - Courtney Tarrant
What was the thought again? Like, and ultimately having that, that lighthouse and that thing to come back to has been so invaluable in getting us to where I think we are today.

00:27:18 - Courtney Hopper
It's.

00:27:19 - Courtney Tarrant
I think everyone should have it. Even if your purpose and your passion of, like, why you're doing this does come down to a personal reason, like, you want to inspire, you know, your daughter to. Because you want to be independent or like, whatever, or you want to be able to host a vacation for your entire family one year, like, those can still be purposes. I think that making sure that that purpose is going to drive you through when you're like crying in the shower in the middle of the night because you don't know how you're gonna make payroll. Like, those are the moments when you need to be able to like, go back to something and be like, what am I actually doing this for? Because they will come.

00:27:56 - Dana Kadwell
As you scale.

00:27:57 - Courtney Tarrant
They will come.

00:27:58 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, Yeah, I think that.

00:28:00 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah, yeah.

00:28:01 - Dana Kadwell
It's just. It's so funny. I feel like we've had like a year of that of just like, of really like reminding ourselves, okay, this is why we're doing what we're doing. Because, you know, we've made decisions and choices that were more mission based and business based. Honestly, it was hard on the team. And so I think that was like, my next big question was like, so when you are making decisions, maybe in business that are more impactful to the mission and maybe less impactful to the business, and you've had this team that's super invested in all the ways and all the pieces, how do you as leadership communicate those decisions to get them bought into it?

00:28:36 - Courtney Tarrant
Right. That's a great question. And honestly, I think something that we're still working on getting great at, I think we're good at it, but I don't think we're quite yet great. I think, I think us all being aligned to what our mission is like from day it's on our application. Hello, we are the ad girls. We exist to put more money in the hands of more women. If you want to be a part of that, keep reading. If not, like, thank you so much for your time. Right, so it's really starting from the very beginning, getting them bought into the mission. And I think the other piece of it is we practice really radical transparency with our team. We tell them exactly how much money we make, exactly what we charge our clients, exactly what our profit margins are. We tell them what are the great things that happened, what are the not so great things that happen. We discuss with every member of our team things like retention rate and client satisfaction surveys and all of the other pieces that make up our business. And there are some people that have joined the team and they're like, I don't like hearing about that. And I was like, well, this is, this is the business. So, like, if you don't like hearing about it, then you are welcome to go be part of a larger team where you won't hear about these decisions. But every quarter we sit down and we talk about the results that we've created. Are we on track for our goals this year or not? What are we doing? What progress are we making? And then every year we actually have like an open forum of like, okay, guys, like, what did you love and what did you hate? And what could we do better? And how. How can we actually, like, do this differently? I say all of the time around the agency, like, we are here to build. Like, it is our responsibility to build the agency that we want to work for. So if there's something you don't like, you have to tell me, because I just. I just made all this stuff up in my brain. I don't know.

00:30:26 - Dana Kadwell
It might not be good.

00:30:27 - Courtney Tarrant
So, like, if you don't like it, let's change it. We. We made all of this up, you guys. Like, this isn't a big thing. This isn't a big corporation. Like, we made it up that we start work at 10am like, do you want to start at 11? Let's talk about it. You know what I mean? It's like, some of the things that we get caught up in can be so arbitrary. And so practicing that radical transparency is really important. And it's actually our first core value for us as a company. And our second one, though, is also radical responsibility. You can't have one without the other. So if you're going to be really radically transparent, you need to be ready to, like, face the music when your team's like, that was dumb. And be like, all right, my bad. You're right. Next time, we'll do it a little differently. But your team also has to be willing to face the music if they're bringing something to you and saying, hey, this needs to be better.

00:31:14 - Courtney Hopper
Great.

00:31:15 - Courtney Tarrant
How, like, how are we going to make it better? How are we going to do this together?

00:31:20 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah, I love that.

00:31:21 - Dana Kadwell
I have so many thoughts.

00:31:23 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah.

00:31:25 - Dana Kadwell
I just feel like we're in this, like, really odd spot. Like, and I think for us was really hard. And really going back to your point of it has to start at the very beginning. And, you know, we've been through many iterations of our team because it is, by definition, a really, a higher turnover. I mean, high turnover. I wouldn't say it's high, but like a two to three year. You're really talking about changing it up because it is long days. It doesn't really work well for people who have families because you're working events on the weekends, right? Like, and we did it. Like, we. We had this whole conversation with one of our employees, and we're like, you know, we don't want you to have the experience that we had where we're basically with me, with our husbands, just ships in the night transferring kids. Like, we want you to be present and intentional and an amazing mom. And that means that your job is going to have to look like this next year. Right. And, you know, and if that. That's, you know, what you want, then we're going to help you do that. But for some things, you just. You can't. They have to work the events, they have to work weekends. So, like, for some of. We always say it's like a 2, 3, 2, 3 year, you know, turnover. So we've had a lot of iterations, like hiring all that. To say the very long question here, but that it's hard to go back, it's hard to hire and not have these very strong communicated core values. And how we're going to have that radical transparency. Transparency, and we're going to have that radical responsibility. And then in the middle, be like, hey, you know what? Like, this, like, really isn't working, and we want to be more transparent. We want to do these things. And everyone's like, this is strange and this is weird. And I'm not sure how to, like, think about it, you know?

00:32:57 - Courtney Hopper
Right.

00:32:57 - Dana Kadwell
So it's like one of those things sometimes when you feel like it, you're like, oh, it can it actually in the middle, like, is it possible to change?

00:33:03 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah. Is it possible to bring those core values to your business when you didn't start that way? Way?

00:33:08 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah.

00:33:10 - Courtney Tarrant
What do you guys think?

00:33:12 - Courtney Hopper
That's.

00:33:13 - Dana Kadwell
I think it's really hard.

00:33:14 - Courtney Hopper
It's hard.

00:33:15 - Dana Kadwell
I think. I think it's a. It's a situation very similar. What you were saying about the application, where you're like, hey, this is how we're now going to operate. And if you're in, let's do it. You know, if you're not, totally understand, this is not what you signed up for. Like, let's give you an amazing, you know, severance. Let's help you find your next step, you know, because I don't want you miserable in this position. And what's been really hard for us is we've had a lot of those conversations, but they're so damn loyal to us.

00:33:40 - Courtney Hopper
Yes. Like, no one wants to leave. You're like, but you're not in it. Right. You're phoning it in. You're not in it, and we care about you. But it's like, but you're done. Clearly, you're done, and it's fine to be done. I always go back to our story of entrepreneurship. I'm like, hey, we've had, I think through all the iterations of Courtney and Dana between being planners and then opening up a venue. We're adjunct professors at Meredith. We've done podcasting. I'm like, these, this is like the, like all the life that we've had, right. We public speak and like all of these things, and entrepreneurship has afforded us that. But you can do the same thing. Even if you're not an entrepreneur. You don't have to be stuck and stagnant in the same role that you're not really believing in, because it's not helping you, it's not helping the company, like it's helping nobody. Right. And so it's like, I think that, I think that's what's hard is you kind of. You have to hire a specific person. Like, like the way your company is. You. You know who you're looking for. Right. You know, the person that's going to fit. You're asking questions on an interview that's going to fit in, into this hole that you have. Right. But it's like we were like, well, if the whole system's not working and you're trying to course correct in a messy middle situation and make changes on how you want to lead because it's just not jiving with you anymore, then it's like you may not have the right people in the right seat, you know?

00:34:55 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah.

00:34:55 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. And I really feel like that is what keeps you stuck in the middle.

00:35:00 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah, I would agree. And I think the reason I asked, like, what do you guys think? Is because I. I think that everyone's experience is going to be different.

00:35:09 - Courtney Tarrant
Right. My experience is I change things in the middle all the time. All the time. I'm constantly in a state of evolution and I actually want a team that's constantly in a state of evolution as well, which means that there gets to be fall off, There gets to be people that are here for a while and that, you know, what got us here won't get us there. This is no longer a fit for you. And I think that as business owners, we have the responsibility, but also the privilege of leading the charge on that, of admitting when you're wrong, admitting when there's things that you are not well suited for anymore.

00:35:45 - Courtney Tarrant
Like there are skills that two years ago I was. Was so good and then I got out of practice because I don't do that anymore. And now that actually isn't one of my skills or my talents. And I can no longer advise the team on that. They, like, they have to create within themselves their own advisory board. They have to create within themselves their own ability to Course correct.

00:36:07 - Courtney Tarrant
And to evolve. And so in the messy middle, I actually think that the most important thing is finding a team that is willing to be flexible, that is willing to evolve with you, and that's willing to take on feedback. And in order to find that, you actually have to become that. And that can be really hard, especially as an entrepreneur, because we are by nature, we are number one high performers. So, like, there's not a lot of stuff we don't do well. Right? Our capacity is like 1.5%, 1.5 times. Everybody else is like normal capacity. So you have to understand the places in which maybe you hired wrong. Right. Like, I have had so many people that I have brought on and have had to let go and be like, this actually isn't even your fault. I'm so sorry. Like, I didn't hire. I didn't know what I was looking for and I didn't hire properly for this. And you were honest and I just, I messed up. This is my. That's my bad. Right? And there are. I think it's that demand to continuously evolve that makes this the like, rocket ship to transformation I was talking about earlier. But it is also like the messy middle will stay messy. If you are not willing to admit that you were wrong, if you are not willing to admit that you did something before that isn't working anymore.

00:37:20 - Courtney Tarrant
We've got to like pause and say, hey, this was a really great idea and we really tried and it's not working the way that we thought. We actually created a whole new position that we were convinced this year was going to transform everything. It was going to like, change our whole lives and the lives of everybody at our company. It was a brand new position. We brought in a brand new person and it, it bombed. It made our processes that were once really smooth and beautiful really messy. And it slowed a lot of stuff down. And it didn't. In some ways it helped. In other ways, it didn't help. And it wasn't an individual person's fault. It wasn't a team member's fault. It wasn't that they weren't working hard enough or that they didn't know how to do the job. The job didn't exist. We made it up and now it's not working. And now we have the responsibility as a company to find a spot for that person. We also have the responsibility of a company to admit this isn't working. And we have to evolve quickly.

00:38:16 - Courtney Tarrant
If you evolve too slow, you will stay stuck in the medicine middle way way longer than you need to be there. And one of my favorite mentors always says, if you're in hell, like, don't sightsee. You are not. You were. This is not the time to slow down and look around. Like, if you're in hell, not sightsee, keep on going. Like, you have got to evolve quickly in order to evolve out of it and evolve into the next. Next phase.

00:38:38 - Courtney Hopper
I love that.

00:38:39 - Dana Kadwell
I feel like you are, like, my person, because that is how I move in my life. Like, I am just such. I have that exact same philosophy. I'm like, I don't. I don't like the hot water. I want to get out of it. Like, let's figure it out. Let's do it now, now, now. And, like, the world does not move that fast around me, you know?

00:38:56 - Courtney Tarrant
I know it's crazy. Sometimes I'm like, I don't think I. Especially my business partner is the same way. And I'm sure you guys probably experience this where you're like. When you're together, you're like. Like, everything is, like, moving so fast, and we can do so many things. And then, like, sometimes we'll bring a be in a brainstorming session, and somebody will, like, zoom in, and they'll be like, what is happening here? And it's like, oh, not everybody moves this fast. But it's. We have a saying also in our company, you know, slow down to speed up. We say speed up to speed up because, like, if you're moving fast, like, more things are going to go wrong. You were saying earlier, you have, like, every three years, you're in a messy middle. I'm in a messy middle. Every three months, I think every solid 90 days, I'm in a whole new iteration of growth and a whole new different set of problems. And I welcome new problems. I want to have new problems all of the time. I don't want to have the same problems, because if I have the same problems, I'm not growing, but if I have new problems, amazing. That means I solve the old ones, and now I get new ones.

00:39:50 - Courtney Hopper
Okay?

00:39:50 - Dana Kadwell
Because you can't avoid the problems. You just can't. That's. And I think that is a lie that we so want to believe in that, like, okay, if you figure it out, if you create this great team, if you create this great process, you have the best product. It's just going to be smooth, and there is going to be no problems, you know, And. And so. And I think I believe that for so long because that's just what you kind of the Advice you get when you hear people talking and they talk about this, like, elusive, perfect life that they figured. Like, I was at this conference one time and this person was like, I had this team, and I went on vacation for three months, months, and didn't check my email once. And I'm like, oh, I must be doing something wrong if, like, that's the option as a CEO. And I. And I realized that's just not reality. It's just not the truth. Like, either you didn't have clients or you didn't have a team, because there's no way that you cannot answer an email for three months. Like, unless you're taking a leave of absence. Right. Unless you're like, straight up taking leave of absence. Right. But I think that there's this. And I love the idea of celebrating the problems, because if you have problems, it does mean you're growing. It means. Means that you're doing something hard and you're doing something that is a change. And I think that really shows, like, great growth in a company.

00:41:03 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah, I would agree. I think that also when we are. When we are constantly in a state of, like, solving and making those solutions, like, we actually don't realize how much we are being refined, like, as individuals and, like, how much we're growing, like, our own capacity. And I think that is also the most beautiful byproduct of entrepreneurship in general is, like, how much more capacity I have in my personal life for things that are, like, that could be, like, really stressful. But I'm like, I actually, I just believe that everything is going to work out for me. That's my mantra. Everything always works out for me, even if it feels like it's not. There's something about it that is working out for me. Earlier this year, my dad passed away really unexpectedly. Horrible, horrible experience. And also over the last eight months, I've been able to travel the world because I have this new, like, renewed lease on life. Like, renewed gratitude for the most basic of things, like the oxygen in my lungs, like how, like, how good it feels to belly laugh with a friend. Like, those are the things. And that's when I come back to, like, that presence is a privilege is because, like, our lives are happening all of the time. And so if we can stop interpreting even the problems or the things that are hard in our business as actually beautiful opportunities, that translates into our lives as well. We get then to, like, look at how amazing this vacation is as, oh, my gosh, can you believe that we're here? Can you? Do you Know how many people would love to be here? Do you like that? That is a cultivated skill that you get to have through, like, solving a bunch of problems, actually. And that is amazing, and that is incredible. And I would never say that I'm grateful that my dad passed, but I am incredibly grateful for the life that I've cultivated on the other side of such a challenging experience. And I think entrepreneurship can be really similar if we let it be right. So if we let the messy middle be messy and, like, stop blaming yourself and stop, like, pretending like nobody else is. Like, I think that's the other thing in entrepreneurship. Everybody is like, wants to hide how messy it is. Like, no one knows what they're doing. Everybody, we all made this up. This is all made up stuff. It's all messy all of the time. And if we were just more honest about that, I think that we would get a lot further because there isn't some magic behind the curtain that everybody knows that you don't. If they're not answering an email for three months, it's because they didn't want to. And like you said, they either don't have a team or they don't have clients and that maybe they did a bunch of VIP days and they had 100k in three months and then they didn't have to work the rest of the year. That that could be real. But you don't actually know. And so, like, don't make yourself wrong for being in the messy middle. Like, embrace it and look at how much you're learning. You're going to be learning so much more than people that maybe aren't or that, that have decided not to be on this journey alongside you.

00:44:02 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, totally agree. I love that.

00:44:04 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah.

00:44:05 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. I think that's amazing. I think it's. I just think it's. I love that the conversation skewed this way because I think we've talked a lot about practical things. We haven't talked a lot about mind, mindset and how to really think through, like, what is. What is keeping us here? What is the value of that messy middle? And not even, like, the decision of how to scale or not scale, but decision of, like, where to kind of reset to where you can make a decision. Because I think that is super. I think it can be crippling. A lot of times when you're in that position of like, I don't know what to do. And I, and I have definitely felt that, like, like, you know, even, you know, these past few months, like, it feels crippling. It Feels overwhelming. And it's like. And you can feel it all over your body, like, in your health and, like, sleep. And you're just like, oh, my gosh. Like, the weight of this is so heavy, and I don't know where to go or how to fix it or what to do. And I think focusing on what's the purpose, what's the mission, like, you know, and just kind of resetting your mind of, like, okay, well, this is. We get to be here in this messy middle because we get to make the decision of growing and, you know.

00:45:12 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah. I think sometimes, like, as entrepreneurs, we just go, go, go, do, do, do. What's the next thing? What's the next thing? What's the next thing? Kind of moving the needle forward. But I love, like, bringing it back to, like, a mindfulness, like, being mindful about what you're doing. And what's that. What's that teaching? And how's that growing me? And how does that translate into other areas of my life? I think that that's. I think that's key.

00:45:34 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. So many thoughts.

00:45:36 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah.

00:45:37 - Dana Kadwell
I'm gonna be digesting this conversation for, like, days.

00:45:40 - Courtney Tarrant
I know. I feel. I feel, like, same. And this is part of what I feel really steeped in, in the coaching that I get to do and in the business that I get to run. And I think there's, like, two things that I would love to share. The first is the. What you're talking about with the pressure and the feeling, all of it. But the most helpful thing that I ever had a mentor of mine tell me, first of all, have lots of mentors, because, like, having different perspectives and somebody that can look outside of the jar that you're sitting in and, like, read the label to you and be like, this is what's happening is so helpful.

00:46:14 - Courtney Tarrant
But also, one of my mentors once told me to give them their power back. I remember I was, like, so crippled by. But my clients are counting on me and my team and then this and the ho. And they're like, okay, first of all, your clients made the decision to be here, and so did your team. Everybody gets to have their power back. And as an entrepreneur, if you feel you are responsible for so many people's lives, but so are they. And so, like, being able to give them their power back and say, you know, there are other jobs that you could have taken.

00:46:45 - Courtney Tarrant
There are other companies that you could have worked with, and you chose us because you believed in what it is that we stood for. And I do stand for that, and I Am working really hard to, like, deliver on that as best as I can. But there have been times where I've had to lay people off because we hit some hard months and that. That sucked. But they. And I remember that was, like, one of those times that I was just like, I couldn't sleep and I couldn't eat, and I was just so stressed. And my mentor was like, you need to give everybody their power back. You are taking it all away from them, which is actually, in a way, a little bit manipulative. Because, like, they're here because they want to be. Like, let them be. And, like, also remember that you are doing the best that you can. There's no part of you that's, like, trying to let people go. There's no part of you that's trying to not get a client a result. You're working really hard to be. To be there with them. You are making a choice to show up fully, but allow them to show up fully, too.

00:47:37 - Courtney Tarrant
And so with that is another reason why we always practice radical transparency. And we let people know and we try to, like you said, if. If we. When we did have to lay people off, we tried to give them as much notice as possible. We, like, really tried to give them as much severance, but we were.

00:47:51 - Courtney Tarrant
We were like, we were struggling. Right. And so being able to remember as an entrepreneur that you have your power and you are giving everybody else in your space permission to occupy that same power that they are choosing to be in this relationship with you can be really helpful to just, like, lightening that load. And then I think the other thing that I wanted to mention is that I remember why I started my business was because I wanted to go to a restaurant and be able to order not the house wine.

00:48:22 - Courtney Tarrant
I didn't want to order any expensive wine, but I just didn't want to have to order the house wine. And I don't remember when that happened. I don't know if, like, you guys remember why you started or, like, what the moment was where it happened, but there was a moment where I went to a restaurant and I stopped ordering the house wine, and I started ordering the wine because I wanted it and ordering the wine because it was just the one that I wanted.

00:48:45 - Courtney Tarrant
And I was at a dinner, like, a year and a half ago now with some friends, and I was like, I really want a bottle of Spanish wine. Do you. And I asked the waiter, like, do you guys have any? I used to. I lived in Spain. I love Spanish wine. And they were like, yeah, we have One from this female sommelier in this part of Spain. And I was like, we'll take it.

00:49:04 - Courtney Tarrant
And I didn't ask what price it was, and I didn't care because I knew that I could afford it. And I just like, that was the moment that it hit me that there was a moment that I stopped asking for the house wine and that I started that really powerful practice of presence. And so even as you're going through these, these messy, like, chaotic, stressful times, like, don't forget to remember, like, how lucky you are to even be there in the first place and be able to slow down, to realize as it's happening, you're going to keep moving the goalpost.

00:49:36 - Courtney Tarrant
You will never actually hit it because you're going to keep moving it. It'll change and it'll evolve and your priorities will change. And so this will move and you're never actually going to hit it. And so, like, just enjoy the journey on the way to get there, because that is going to allow you to also have the strength to keep going through the messy middle is when you're like, you know, this is really hard, but my bills were always paid. I always had food to eat. And that is more than what a lot of people can say. And like, you did that.

00:50:07 - Courtney Tarrant
You did that. Nobody, like, paid you a salary to sit in a chair for eight hours a day to do that. You did that. You made that happen. And for. Even if you have to let people go for the time that they were with you, you also made that happen for them. You made that happen for them for as long as you could. And that is a beautiful privilege and an amazing thing, you know, and to be able to, like, operate inside of that deep integrity, I think is also part of.

00:50:31 - Courtney Tarrant
It's part of why, like, we do what we do. It is about us, but it's also about so much more than that. And to remain present and have perspective on making that, like, part of your daily practice of like, what did I, like, participate in? What did I contribute to today? And when that starts to become not just about you, but about other people, that. That is. That's beautiful and that's exciting. And so just like, that slowing down process of, of really understanding the value of, like, each day and the value of the journey that you're on, because it's going to evolve so much over time.

00:51:04 - Dana Kadwell
That's amazing.

00:51:05 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah.

00:51:06 - Dana Kadwell
Thank you so much. Yeah.

00:51:07 - Courtney Hopper
So good.

00:51:08 - Dana Kadwell
I feel like I had a little therapy session, even though I just went yesterday. But, yeah, that's what I was actually here for surprise. Yeah, probably it.

00:51:18 - Courtney Hopper
We'll send you over our insurance card later.

00:51:20 - Dana Kadwell
We would love for our listeners to figure out to tell them how they can find you and connect with you because I'm sure there's people that are going to want to follow along in your journey.

00:51:31 - Courtney Tarrant
Yeah. So you can find me on instagram @courtney.tarrant T A R R A N T. Or you can visit our website, the girls.com awesome.

00:51:41 - Dana Kadwell
Well, thank you so much. Today has been such an amazing conversation.

00:51:45 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah.

00:51:45 - Courtney Tarrant
I really appreciate it. It's so much fun. Thank you for having me.

00:51:48 - Dana Kadwell
Absolutely.