The Benefits of Co-Founding in Professional Services

Intro 0:06  

Welcome to the Growth + Exit Podcast, where owners of privately held middle market companies talk about founding, scaling, and exiting their businesses successfully. Learn how to maximize and monetize your business on your own terms. Let’s get started.

Heather Bennett  0:31  

Hello, I’m Heather Bennett, managing director for Newport LLC, and your host for the Growth + Exit podcast, featuring middle market owners and experts talking about founding, growing, selling, scaling, and sometimes exiting their businesses on their own terms. Past guests have included Kathleen Perley, John Fairclough, and Matt Vuckov. To learn more about these, listen to their episodes on Spotify, Apple, Audible, and all of the platforms that the Growth + Exit podcast can be found on. This episode is brought to you by Newport LLC, a team of seasoned executives helping CEOs of privately held companies grow, de-risk, and exit their businesses successfully. Newport LLC is a winner of the prestigious Inc. magazine Power Partner Award: A list of elite B2B companies from across the globe. To see the entire list, go to inc.com/power-partner-awards. To learn more about Newport, visit us at newportllc.com, or of course find us on LinkedIn. Before introducing today’s guest, I would like to thank the Professional Women’s Club of Chicago and their many members for introducing me to Kim, a former president of PWCC. She has made an outstanding accomplishment in helping that organization move forward, and so many of the members recommended that I talk to her on the podcast and hear her story. Today’s guest is Kimberly Wasney. Kim is the co-founder of Ripple’s Edge Advisors, a Chicago-based business advisory firm helping growth stage entrepreneurs scale with intention. Alongside co-founder Alex Seydel, Kim brings a holistic, hands-on approach to advising, spanning sales, operations, strategic planning, and mergers and acquisitions, with a deep commitment to both the professional and personal realities of running a business. So you can see why I’m very excited to talk to her on this podcast, as she gets exactly what we’re trying to accomplish here and who we’re trying to help. Kim, welcome to the show.

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  2:41  

Thanks so much for having me, Heather.

Heather Bennett  2:43  

So let’s let’s get started. How did you found your business? Let Let’s hear the origin story.

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  2:50  

Yeah. So when I I moved back to Chicago in 2017, and I had been gone for 10 years. I moved. I went to grad school in New Mexico. I worked in sales in El Paso, Texas, for for a decade or so, and when I came back to Chicago, I was trying to figure out how to rebuild my network. I had been gone for my 20s and early 30s, and you know, realized at some point like I don’t know anybody here anymore. So I joined an app at the time that was a networking app. It was like if LinkedIn and Tinder had a baby, you could literally swipe right or swipe left if you wanted to have coffee with somebody. And Alex and I swiped right on each other, and we had my my co-founder Alex Seydel. She and I sat down, had coffee back in 2017, and there was there were things that just started to click between us, right? Like both of us played college sports. That athletic background has been really important to us. Her mom and I have the same birthday and went to the same tiny little college in Iowa. So it was just something from the universe that was like, all right, you guys are are going to do something together at some point. And then six years later, when I was I was spent the inter in time. I was VP of business development for a startup here in Chicago and was hitting a point where I had a lot of ideas, and I knew how I wanted the company to grow and where I wanted to go. But it still wasn’t mine. I still wasn’t the founder, and you know that created a little bit of tension between me and the founder. Where you know, not in any challenging, not in any bad way, but we we just both really wanted the company to succeed, and just didn’t necessarily have the same vision about how to do that. So I was trying to figure out what what was next for me. Alex had some personal loss that she was transitioning out of corporate law, where that corporate law is not necessarily the most conducive space to grieving. And we had conversations about what was next for the two of us, and it quickly went from, you know, being friends supporting each other side by side to I think there’s a really beautiful overlap between our our skill sets and our businesses. And she, as the as I said, she was a corporate attorney in mergers and acquisitions, and she was seeing these business owners get to the deal table and. And be frustrated with the process and feeling like this isn’t what I thought it was going to be. I’m not feeling great about how this is going. But at that point, she’s there to sign the paperwork and get them through it. Right there wasn’t a whole lot as their lawyer that she could do to make that better. So she kept feeling like if I’d met them a couple years ago, I could have better prepared them for this. The they could have gotten them into a better position, and she has a great strategy brain, and you know, and knows what buyers are looking for because she’s been at those tables, but hasn’t done it from the business operations side of it. So we we usually say she’s the the what they need to do. She’s thinking like the buyer. She’s advising what they’re looking for, and then because I did operations and business development on the the how they need to do it. So that’s where that crossover came in, and it it became pretty clear that it was it was a great combination of skill sets for for business owners.

Heather Bennett  5:51  

That’s amazing. So and and I love that it you know it takes time. You and you never know when you’re meeting somebody networking where they’ll cross your path again or where you’ll recognize. Wait a minute, that’s the right person to hire to do this venture to become a vendor for going forward. So, talk about those early days. Did you like? How did you set up the business, and and what was it like getting started?

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  6:20  

Yeah, we. I think one of the best decisions we made early on was we joined a cohort of women who were all starting consulting businesses at the same time, and it was a six month training program. And it was all things. Looking back on it now, it was all things that we knew we needed to do. Right, like we needed to put together the marketing plan. We needed to put together our brand. We needed to start packaging, you know, how we wanted our offers to look. But having the accountability really accelerated that process. You know, the weekly check-ins on did you do this yet? Did you start aligning out your core values, your mission statement, etc. So, and it’s a lot of you know what we do for our clients now too is holding them accountable to the goals that we’ve set and the roadmap that we created together, so that was it was a scary thing to say, you know, hey, I’m about to quit my job, but also let’s spend money on this this training course. But I think that that professional accountability was more than worth it, and it just kickstarted and got us sped up. So we, when we first started talking about opening up the business, to give you a sense of our different personalities, I was the one who’s like, “Okay, let’s take six months. Let’s write a business plan. You know, I’ll start transitioning out of my corporate role. This was in I think June or July, and Alex called me two days later, and she goes, “So I quit my job, and I was like, “You, you did what? We we decided this two days ago. You already quit your job. She’s like, “Yeah, I’m I’m ready. Like, let’s go. So we our timeline got pretty spread up, sped up from there. And I’m I’m grateful for it. Like I think there’s a little bit of that rip the band aid mentality of we knew we were gonna do it, and I was dragging my feet a little bit. It’s scary. It’s it’s you know a whole new endeavor, and I she pushed me off the cliff a little bit, and I’m I’m forever thankful that that she did. And I worked both for the first six months, and then in in January I officially quit my corporate job, and and we really hit the ground running then.

Heather Bennett  8:23  

That’s awesome. There’s a few things that you mentioned in there that I hear often when working with entrepreneurs. One is finding that group of peers to talk with. You don’t always have you know that, and you know that can be a BNI group or Vistage or you know a local chamber of commerce group or something. I think that is really key when you’re starting a business because there’s a good chance that other people in your life have never done that before, and and haven’t gone down that route. You know, even your wealth advisor, something like that, they’ve never done. They don’t exactly understand what you’re going through. So having somebody go through it at the same time, there’s something to a cohort while you’re doing that. And then the second thing would be the timing of when you both exited your full time gigs. It’s it’s really interesting. When I work with entrepreneurs, I often talk to them about the side hustle ramp up. Yeah, and the idea is don’t quit your day job like right away. For some people, I think you have they have to because of how much time and effort it takes. But if it’s possible, there’s a lot of you know in the Silicon Valley lore, there are a lot of major, well known household known companies in the Silicon Valley world that their owners and co-founders didn’t quit their day jobs until months, even years after the business had officially started, and and there’s a reason to that. I find it’s easier to make decisions when you’re you’re not. Necessarily worried about you know keeping food on the table in those early days.

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  10:05  

Totally.

Heather Bennett  10:06  

So yeah, it’s interesting. Even

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  10:08  

within that, though, our our third prospect that was introduced to us, right? So we we worked with a couple of baby CPG companies early on that had been you know connections of ours that we already knew, and one of them introduced us to a skincare company in in Austin, Texas, and we had a conversation with with the founder, and it was it was pretty clear that to us that more of what he needed was a fractional CFO than actually business advisory. So we offered to recommend him to somebody else decided not to move forward with that, and it was terrifying. Right, like it was the third prospect that had come to us at that early stage. I think it’s so easy to be in that mindset of we’re just going to take whatever comes our way, but it both of us felt it’s not aligned, and we agreed like we’re not going to make the decision today. We’re going to sleep on it tonight, see if we still feel the same way tomorrow. And both of us the next day were like, “No, we can’t. We can’t do it. It just wouldn’t be ethical for us to take on this project, knowing that we’re not what he needs. And we could probably make it work, but it just it didn’t feel right to who we wanted to be in the the work that we wanted to do. So, and it’s funny to say the best decision we ever made was turning away business, but I think it just solidified us being very confident in who we wanted to work with and how, and that inspired us to to continue down that path and to and to hold on to that. It’ll come, the right the right ones will come.

Heather Bennett  11:40  

That’s such a great example too of, especially when you’re co-founding, having that opportunity early on as the business was growing to really dedicate some hard thinking towards who’s going to be within your ideal target market or your ideal customer base and who is not, because getting that clarification early on can prevent. It’s really easy when you’re starting out as an entrepreneur to say I can be all things to all people and just take whatever work comes to you. But making those harder decisions to find a niche, find a focus, decide who fits and who doesn’t early on is is really important, especially with co-founders because you have to be on the same page. Okay, so so let’s talk a little more about co-founding. Who? What were some of the things that surprised you, or some of the ways that you were able to come to an agreement in like those first couple years while you were building the business?

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  12:37  

Yeah, and that’s in a lot of ways having an attorney as a business partner is really helpful for that because she was so proactive about us setting some of those foundational pieces. Right, like we we sat down and we really walked through an operating agreement questionnaire so that we could make those decisions early on. Of you know, it’s it’s like a prenup for a business. Right, if this doesn’t work, who gets to make that call? Or if one of us wants out at a certain point, what does that mean for the other person? And those are tough, uncomfortable conversations. But they’re also so. I would rather have them while we’re still while we still like each other and while we’re still friends than to do them 10 years from now when heaven forbid you know there’s a conflict or a disagreement or you know, a litigation that comes up where we’re doing it under under tension and and arguments. So to to sit down and really say this is this is our vision for it. This is you know what I would want to see happen to it next. And we do the we do that quarterly too. We we sit down, we block you know two hours on our calendar once a quarter, and we just talk about are we still working on the things that we want to be working on? Is this still going the way that we had you know planned? What what needs to change? What is what is feeling? What we’re what are we feeling coming up? And I think that us both being having gone through some therapy before we opened the business helped. It makes you a better communicator. We were both pretty well in touch with you know who we wanted to be and how we wanted this business to look. But then also we had been friends through a very heavy grief period of her life too. And I think that that is a space where it’s like you either have to learn to communicate or you just lose each other out of your lives. So we had a pretty solid foundation of let’s just talk it out. But yeah, it’s it’s an interesting dynamic. We are not besties, you know, and I would not want it to be that way. I we have very different personalities, very different skill sets, and we we complement each other incredibly well, but it’s always we met through networking. It’s always had a professional component to it, and and I think that that’s what makes it even more powerful and and less emotional.

Heather Bennett  14:54  

Yeah, and you touch on two of the things I see that works so well when you have a co-founder. Is one the communication, like setting the ground rules? How are we going to going to communicate with each other? What’s going to happen when we have you know disagreements? You know, beyond the contract of working together. Obviously, your partnership agreement incredibly important, but at the same time, just having those ground rules. This is how we communicate when we’re not happy. But also the and I see this. It’s so wonderful when you see that two different founders, co-founders, having very different skill sets and different abilities. That’s so like you said, complement each other. Because I’ve talked to founders who do it on their own, and that’s great, but but normally my next question is, tell me about your team. How you know? How do you fill those gaps? And and really, that’s the great thing about having a co-founder is that you can you look for that co-founder that’s going to fill those areas that, with your self awareness as a leader, as a business owner, what do you know, not know, and who do you need to to fill those gaps so that you can create a really successful business? So, so what were some of the turning points? When did you know that this was working? Obviously, your third, you had your third client didn’t wasn’t quite the fit, but at which point were you like, “Wow, this this is a business. This is working.

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  16:21  

Yeah, we probably about. I mean, there there been a few of those moments, right? And I think one of the first ones was we had a client that was they were a trucking company out in the the west suburbs of Chicago, and they were they were three. It was a a three ownership, a three person ownership team, and we’re talking about how to sell. And but the three, there were three owners were, and I’m rounding up, but they were 50, 6070, years old, right? So there was a there was a bit of a gap in where they were in their lives, and the the oldest one was out, right? Like he wanted, he could have been out tomorrow and been fine and had no no issues. The 50 and 60 year olds were not quite so ready to just walk away yet. They still had ideas for it and you know new thoughts and planning for the future. And they were they were having some pretty serious there were some pretty serious gaps in what they were wanting to to accomplish with it, and it was we had conversations with them, and thus they were closer to a sale than most of our clients. Most of the clients that we work with now are closer to five to eight years away from a sale, and we’re we’re helping them really early on start to be proactive about preparing it for that process, they this this trucking company that we worked with was you know less than a year away from. As I said, the the oldest one could have been gone already if if it hadn’t been too challenging. But we walked them through what that process looked like, and we ended up where the younger two ended up buying the older one out, and instead of you know instead of selling the whole company like he wants out let’s let’s facilitate that for him you two still have a vision for this company let’s facilitate that for you and that we the the older one called us after we made this decision and we we set up the structure and we kind of talked them through what it would look like and you know we still needed to bring in the accountants and make sure that it was going to work that way. But once we had made the decision that this was going to be the right structure, he left us a voicemail the next morning and said, “This is that best day I’ve had in six years. Like I woke up this morning and I just feel calm and I feel like I have clarity and I feel like I’m ready for retirement and I know what’s happening tomorrow. And that moment so early on in business, where we’re like still trying to figure out, you know, how we’re keeping the lights on, and what accounting software should we use, and do we have a CRM, and like all those little internal business questions that you’re fighting with on a daily basis. But then to get that voicemail and be like, oh man, that feels good. Where somebody just got the outcome from their business. He worked on this thing for 35 years, and is like, I feel really good about what’s happening next and where I’m going. That was it. I was like, all right, we’re on the right. We’re on the right track.

Heather Bennett  19:12  

That is amazing. So, turning points. Any any surprises during the first couple years,

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  19:22  

quite a few. We, I think, one of the biggest turning points for us are early on. I had I had come from startup world. I had always been, you know, in you know the 1871s and the and the tech startup spaces. And when when we started this business, I had kind of assumed that I would pull Alex over more towards the the emerging stage, the the early stage companies, and pretty quickly it became clear that not only was that not the best crossover for our our two skill sets, but it also is is some. A challenging time for those business owners, and in terms of capital, in terms of all the advice that they’re getting from 18 other different channels, like it just it didn’t feel like it was quite the right seat for us. And a lot of what you know, our personal ethos and and our our background and experience is really more in the what’s next for you as a person, and I think when you’re when you’re still building, there is no what’s next. It’s what’s now, right? It’s this this whole this the this business idea is taking over your whole brain, your whole identity, and that’s great, and it’s fun, and it’s exciting and exhilarating. But I think when you’re working with business owners that are already thinking about the after, it’s just it’s a different mindset shift, and there’s a there’s a calming to it. And we’re our first tagline was anxieties end growth friend because we just we both felt like that was a skill set of ours where we could just walk into a room and have owners really open up to us and tell us this is a this is a non judgmental space. Tell us what’s going on, and so she pulled me over to the the exit readiness side of things more quickly than I pulled her over to the startup side of things, and it was not a hard shift in terms of as I said, it’s the same skill sets just applied at different at a different stage, but it it was the right it was the right pivot to make, and you you know this you know because of of what you and Newport do like there’s also in terms of market timing too there’s so much more conversation about exit and business transition and so it made sense from that perspective as well but I mean that felt secondary too it was the best use of our of our skill sets

Heather Bennett  21:39  

that’s amazing and again that that self awareness to say where where do my skills end, where do yours begin, you know where do we need to fill the gaps? So as as a co founder, when the two of you recognize there’s there’s some need by one of your clients beyond what you two can do, how do you guys fill that gap?

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  22:02  

Yeah, we keep we call it our Ripple’s Edge Rolodex, and we keep a pretty detailed database of other partners that that we bring in. Actually, just this morning, I was working with one of our clients out in Vermont to help him. He needs a different accountant. You know, his he’s been mostly had a somebody filing his taxes, which is great. But as they’re thinking about you know the going into an acquisition process, they need some some tax strategies and and some different they have some different accounting needs now. So introducing him to a couple of new accounting options, introducing into a couple of new wealth advisor options, and we part of the reason for the Rolodex too is understanding not just we have clients all over the country, so there’s sometimes there’s a geographic fit, sometimes there’s a personality fit, sometimes there’s a you know size and stage of business fit. So making sure that we have good options, people that we trust for for all of the the potential cases that come up, right? I’m I’m part of a Trusted Advisors Council group here in Chicago, and it’s like a a provisors, right? But it has that no like trust refer model, and that’s a lot of what we try to do for our clients too. Is like we’re only going to refer you to people that we’re very confident will have the same quality of communication and service and care that we will with you.

Heather Bennett  23:23  

Excellent, excellent. Okay, since you are in the M and A space, and that’s I know a very hot topic right now. What have you seen? We’ll say in the last six months, even the last three months, that’s changing in that space that maybe business owners need to be aware of.

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  23:41  

Yeah, I I don’t know if it’s a well. I said it’s a change. I I feel like there is a little bit of a drawing out of some of the processes that we’re seeing of you know due diligence cycles are a little bit longer. People are taking their time, and I think there’s. It just comes from a little bit of anxiety, and you know all this economic tension, whatever you want to call it. No one knows what’s going to happen next year, right? But there is this setting expectations for us with our clients of this is not the market where people are gonna, you know, send you an LOI and we’re gonna close in in 30 days. Like this is definitely going to be a space where there’s gonna be a lot of back and forth. It’s gonna be definitely more marathon than sprint, and that’s not. There’s nothing wrong with that. Like that’s that’s not a bad thing. But I think it’s just it requires a lot of expectation setting, holding hands, managing that because you know it’s not it’s not a selling a house process. It’s a much more involved. There’s a whole team here that we got to bring in, and I don’t know that that’s so much a shift. Maybe it’s a resetting because I think that the the previous couple years had a had a different tone, but. It is it is an interesting like a conversation to have with clients of okay take a breath this is this is going to take some time

Heather Bennett  25:09  

yeah I would agree we’ve I’ve I’ve seen two two shifts in the last like year and a half one is the lengthening of the process as you said and I think that just means there’s a more thoroughness there’s areas that they’re looking at in due diligence, including you know they’re paying a little more attention to the leadership team, a little more attention to the branding, more attention to the intellectual property, things that maybe would have been overlooked a couple years before are starting to become very important during those due diligence time periods. The other thing that you know, I’m seeing is that there is still interest in M and A, and it’s starting to pick up. It just may take longer, but it’s starting to increase. And and I think with that, and I’d love to hear your perspective on this, is the fact that there are so many different ways to raise capital to help run a business, and M and A is just one of them. So the concept of having your consultants and advisors, boards of directors, people that you really trust, talking to them about what all of those options are-you know, there’s not just one way. And and I I I think what’s what I’m constantly working to learn more ways to raise capital, more ways to you know bring that infusion of of of funds into building a business and helping it grow or helping it to reach you know a new market or major you know growth and and sometimes that’s acquiring businesses of their own but I think being aware of what those different, you know, what that different type of capital can be, it’s incredibly important. So, are you seeing this the same thing?

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  26:51  

Definitely. And it’s we have we have a client that we worked with last year, and when she first came to us, she had assumed that exit was the best option, and some of that was a little bit of burnout, and some of that was you know sort of not having the the capital to take it to the level that she wanted to, and the the growth was steady but slow, and I just didn’t have the energy to necessarily do that on the timeline that was reasonable given the capital that she had. So, as I said, she came to us assuming that that selling was the right choice, and then we started working with her, putting some different processes in place, adding to her leadership team, and then that gave her a little bit of energy and space to open up her her own mind about like okay maybe maybe I don’t necessarily want to sell right now maybe an exit’s not what I’m looking for I love this maybe I need to go raise capital and I’ll actually give credit to Alex on this one because she and when we started talking about who you could go to for capital and you know start with your board board of advisors she had a volunteer board at the Time and Alex said, “Why don’t you not only talk to them about raising capital? Why don’t you also see if anyone there feels right to you as a partner, as a chief operating officer, like that might have a little bit more strategic interest in joining you in this? And then it not only brings capital in, but it also brings some additional energy, skills, you know, resources in too, and so now she’s in the process of merging with, or not merging, but bringing in a partner who is investing in the company and taking her to the United Kingdom. So that not only is she getting a partner in a capital infusion, but now she’s going global. So it’s been a really it’s been a really beautiful process to see because it is a creative thing of just start having conversations, be very open to what structures are out there and what what might be a possibility, and and follow that a little bit. And it’s also why we were very intentional about not structuring as a broker because I don’t want to feel like I’m incentivized to push people towards a sale. I want to have that opening to pursue the right options for for their growth.

Heather Bennett  29:11  

Absolutely, no, and that’s such a good example of of looking for an option and and really finding something that that helps the company grow and scale beyond what what she had probably thought. So, talking about growing and scaling, what are you passionate? What are you working on now? What’s what’s next?

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  29:32  

Yeah, we so we actually we just had a summer intern from from Northwestern, and it’s it’s always fun to get a little bit of new energy in, and part of internally, I will say something that he was really helpful with was helping us kind of do our own internal AI processes because we hadn’t touched any of that yet, and to be able to automate some of that has really been helpful. Externally, we are working on we do an exit exploration workshop, and typically we. Sit down in a room with an owner, and it’s a full day. And we really get into the day one after a sale. What do you want your life to look like? What needs to be in your bank account? What you know? What do you want to get up and do every morning so that we can start working that backwards into an exit plan? And it’s a really intensive conversation. You know, we we try to start big. Of you know, 1010 years from now, are you gonna be sitting on a beach? Are you gonna be sitting in a boardroom? Like, what what do you want to do after this? And then we can work that back into okay, what’s your business worth right now? Right, and what does that mean for what’s gonna you know actually hit your account? What what’s gonna what we can add your retirement, and then what are some initial steps and some gaps in your business to help you get there? And it’s it’s my favorite thing that we do, and I love those workshops. And nothing nothing brings me more more delight in our work. So what we’re working on right now, partly because we’ve heard from several of our owners that I wish there was somebody else in my space in this room right now. Like I would love to. Like we got a we got a client right now who’s an architect, right? And he keeps being like, “Oh, I wish I could ask another architect firm what he’s doing or what this looks like for him. So we got some of that, and then also just because you know it’s it’s a significant investment, so some of them were like, you know, how can I do this in maybe a way that’s slightly more cost effective? So in 2027, we’re bringing out a group version of that where we can get three to five owners in the room in the same, not necessarily the same exact industry, but in similar similar industry, so that we can do that together. They get the benefit of a little bit of of peer brainstorm and to hear you know from others what what they’re going through and I think there is you know we talked about this earlier of you know being in a room with people who are going through it too. There’s such there’s such value in that and I’m really excited about having the added you know group energy of of that workshop.

Heather Bennett  31:59  

That’s amazing, absolutely. Okay, so where do you get your inspiration? Who are your mentors? What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  32:08  

Yeah, I I will actually credit one of my fellow PWCC presidents for this. So I don’t know if you know Janelle Siljeski, but she yeah she told me very early on. She was one of the first person I one of the first people I met when I came back to Chicago, and she told me she was like, “Don’t go to 800 different groups and try to like stay shallow across all the ones where you’re just tossing up business cards. She was like, “Find a couple of communities where you can really dive in deep, make deeper, stronger connections, and get to know people. And I took that to heart, and it has been, I think, the best thing for not just my career, but also for me as a person. Right? Like, there’s there’s women from PWCC that their kids call me Auntie Kim. Like that we’ve traveled together. We’ve and it brings not just not just you know fun experiences, but it’s also like I’m constantly inspired by by these by these incredible impressive women in my life. So I’m I’m grateful to Janila that she was like find a couple, dive in deep, build deep relationships. So that was some of the best advice I got, and other than that, everything else I learned comes from volleyball. So

Heather Bennett  33:26  

that’s that’s excellent. Yeah, sports are certainly something, and Janella is amazing. I know she’s incredibly generous with her advice and her networking and connection. So that’s absolutely. I know. I’m texting on a weekly basis with somebody I met seven years ago at at PWCC, and we’ve. It’s it’s amazing how our friendship and our professional relationship has grown over the years. So, and that’s just one person. So yes, I agree. Having finding where you can spend that time and and really great advice for networking. I love that, especially for busy busy business owners who need to focus their time. So speaking of volleyball, and you know, also an athlete. So, what are some of your daily rituals that help keep you energized and ready to help your clients?

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  34:21  

Yeah, I so I am not kidding about the volleyball. I I play on four different teams right now, so it is. I don’t know if you call it a passion or an obsession at this point, but it is definitely. It’s just I don’t know. I think there’s something about moving your body that clears your brain, and then also the the team component of it too. There is, I love the the energy that you get, you know, from your teammates when something’s going well, and so that’s absolutely a part of my identity. And and it’s it’s a I don’t know if I call it a ritual, but it is a space that is is healthy for me to to be me and not be. Business owner for an hour or so when I get to run around and hit things, and then I I am a big I’m a big reader so and I try I keep a pretty firm boundary between like personal reading and professional reading like business reading I will do during business hours, right? Like if I’m on the train, or you know, if I have a little bit of a gap or something like that in the mornings, that’s when I do business reading. And then in the evenings, I will only read things that are not business related at all. And I I’m currently reading a new fantasy series, but I think it’s it’s a again I need I need the space. I if I’m going to be creative, if I’m going to be inspired, I I need a space that is that is not a not business all the time. So yeah,

Heather Bennett  35:53  

oh that’s so true. And I found that for so many of the leaders that I’ve talked to on the podcast is that they intentionally block out space that is not work, which they find opens up their mind to solutions when they they do focus on work. Yes, intentional space is so very important and wise. I have one last question, but before and I know we we could probably keep talking for much longer. I have one last question, but before I ask it, of course, I want to point people to your website at ripplesedgeadvisors.com, or of course to reach out to you on LinkedIn. So the last question would be: What is a hard lesson that you learned while starting and co founding your business that you’d like to help other founders Avoid.

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  36:45  

I think one of, and I saw this with us, and I’ve seen this with several of our clients too. But I definitely know was true for us. I think it’s really easy to feel like everything has to be perfect before you put yourself out there, and we were, you know, stressing over the logo colors and the the website and you know our various flyers that we were trying to make and a pitch deck, right? And and I think that there was all all of those things are important for sure. And and the the you know some of my branding friends would would never forgive me if I didn’t point that out. But I think too in early stages, especially, there is a power in just get out there and start talking to people. Just start putting it out there. Start networking it. Start talking to potential clients or referral partners or whoever is in your space that you know you can potentially partner with, and they’re part of what we learned in that training course that we took early on too. They they kept saying you know B minus work, and and I think that that is such a challenging thing, especially for women who have been you know very accomplished and you know very high achieving. It’s difficult to say this is good enough for now because I I want it to be perfect and I have a very high standard for it. But there is a point where it is good enough for now and it’s not making me any money sitting here playing with my logo. I need to go out and start talking to people. So that is it’s a tough lesson to learn. It’s very scary to be like, oh, I hate this website. I don’t want to share it with anybody. But they don’t care. Like nobody that we’ve ever talked to has looked at, you know, looked. I mean, it’s better now. But some of the early versions of the website were pretty rough. But they weren’t looking at that. They were. They were looking at, do you know what you’re talking about? Are you asking questions in the in the calls that we’re having that make me think? You know, do I trust you to to do what I need you to do? So, yeah, stop stop stressing over the over the design and just just get out there, start talking to people.

Heather Bennett  38:50  

Excellent, excellent. I’ve been talking with Kim Wasney of Ripple’s Edge Advisors. Kim, thank you so much for sharing your story and your experience, and I look forward to seeing what comes next for you,

Kimberly (Kim) Wasney  39:03  

this was a delight. Thank you so much.

Outro 39:11  

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