Latest / Christian Business Growth Podcast / Cancer, Calling and Clarity with Rhonda Caudill

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Cancer, Calling and Clarity with Rhonda Caudill · Christian Business Growth Podcast

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the Christian Business Growth Podcast.
• 0:04
  I'm here with Rhonda Cottle and she's going to share her story today.
• 0:07
  Rhonda, how did God get you started in business?
• 0:11
  Well, like most things, I feel like God's got a sense of humor.
• 0:14
  And I went back to school full time at 47 to finish a degree in interior design at the Art Institutes, thinking that that was how I was going to support myself after my divorce,
• 0:28
  because how interior designers make money is commercial work generally.
• 0:32
  And what most people don't know is interior designers have to take a bunch of national exams and get some certifications and things in order to do that work.
• 0:40
  And that's my next step was I have to get the degree in order to qualify for the test, take the test, get the job.
• 0:47
  So that was the plan.
• 0:49
  uh three years into a four year plan, I also got remarried.
• 0:56
  And uh at one point, I remember asking Brian.
• 1:01
  What would you say or what would you do if I told you that I wanted to change majors right now?
• 1:06
  Because I really feel like I should be doing graphic design instead of interior design, because I'm learning all the same things.
• 1:11
  I'm being forced to learn them in order to do all of my presentation work.
• 1:15
  I feel like I'm in art school.
• 1:17
  No one is questioning that I'm a great designer.
• 1:19
  It's all about the presentation at this point, and I'm having to teach myself this stuff.
• 1:24
  But I'm also seeing a gap in the marketplace that all of these people that are being trained to be good employees
• 1:30
  aren't really getting anything entrepreneurial or how to market themselves or how to do any of that.
• 1:35
  So I saw a gap that I could maybe fill and work for other designers and do the presentation part of it.
• 1:41
  So that was kind of my thinking of switching.
• 1:44
  And I remember him saying, I would wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze and not let go.
• 1:48
  And I went, and he was kidding, obviously, but I said, I'm going to take that as a pretty firm no.
• 1:53
  And I know that was because he saw all of the time that I was spending.
• 1:58
  studying and trying to really do well at this because I tend to go all in and I'm a bit of a perfectionist recovering hopefully.
• 2:06
  ah So I was a straight-A student.
• 2:09
  I was spending eight hours a day every Saturday.
• 2:11
  Like I would literally go back to school Monday morning with my wrist hurting because I had spent so much time on the computer over the weekend.
• 2:18
  I was missing family things and so it was an obvious no for him because he was looking at it as like how much longer is this going to go on until you graduate?
• 2:27
  So I stuck with it and I graduated in December of 2018.
• 2:30
  I was the last graduating class from the Illinois Institute of Art up here before the AI family of schools closed that location and a bunch of others.
• 2:40
  So that was fun and exciting, except it was also very anticlimactic towards the end too, because we didn't get job placement, we didn't get to have the big portfolio show, our
• 2:49
  graduation actually got smushed in with someone else's and we ended up just having these combined events and
• 2:56
  It just kind of took the wind out of my sails.
• 2:58
  But I also had already realized I didn't want to commute downtown on the train two hours each way every day and then compete my way up the corporate ladder with a bunch of 20
• 3:08
  somethings that I was graduating alongside because they were fantastic and they were very, very talented.
• 3:13
  So I saw freelancing as a way for me to offer my unique set of skills and a little bit more maturity and a little different view of the marketplace to the people who
• 3:24
  maybe wanted to take the freelance route on that.
• 3:28
  um And then again, because God has a sense of humor, I got a breast cancer diagnosis two semesters before graduation.
• 3:36
  So I actually, lost my graduating cohort to treatment.
• 3:40
  Obviously I spent a year and a half in treatment.
• 3:43
  And when I went back, it just didn't, it didn't feel the same.
• 3:46
  Like my goals were not the same.
• 3:48
  I did not feel like I was mentally or physically able to really look at.
• 3:52
  hey, this is going to be a competitive thing and it's going to take me some years to build up this career.
• 3:57
  So it felt like the right choice for a lot of reasons.
• 4:01
  And I found that I loved it.
• 4:03
  And I felt as much fulfillment or more doing that and serving other people than I would have done if I was out there just competing and striving and hustling and doing all the
• 4:13
  things.
• 4:14
  So.
• 4:15
  So from interior design to graphic design, and then a diagnosis kind of gave you a different perspective.
• 4:21
  What would you say is the one thing God communicated to you during that process?
• 4:27
  Um, it pretty much became the basis of everything that I do now.
• 4:33
  I, um, I'm not special.
• 4:35
  I say this all the time.
• 4:35
  I'm not special.
• 4:36
  I don't get to know the day and time of how many hours I have numbered on the earth.
• 4:42
  Um, I could go under a bus tomorrow.
• 4:43
  I could live to be 103.
• 4:45
  I'm not prepared for either of those things to happen.
• 4:47
  So I take one day at a time and I realize because my life is so precious to me now, I need to be doing the things that
• 4:54
  maximize my gifts and serve other people.
• 4:57
  And in order to do that full time as a job is just the most amazing dream come true.
• 5:03
  And I just love to give and I love to give back.
• 5:07
  I'm just naturally, I'm gonna over deliver, use every bit of creativity that I have and I go all in on supporting other people because if I can make you successful, then I still
• 5:16
  have a job.
• 5:17
  So I've expanded my services.
• 5:20
  far, far beyond graphic design.
• 5:22
  It's really web design that is my true love.
• 5:25
  If I had to, if everything else fell away and I had to pick one thing that I could do eight hours a day without even looking up for my computer, it would be Squarespace
• 5:31
  websites.
• 5:32
  I love it with every fiber of my being, but it also doesn't exist in a vacuum.
• 5:37
  And what I really do is help other people rediscover their gifts, really tie into their core values and find their voice.
• 5:45
  And I express that through all of the things that I have some technical skill in that I can help people with.
• 5:52
  So that's my real niche.
• 5:53
  Yeah, that's awesome.
• 5:54
  And what's God currently doing right now in your business?
• 5:58
  gosh, teaching me to rest and put myself first once in a while and build behind the scenes so that I have a strong foundation.
• 6:06
  Because if I'm going to pray for him to increase my capacity, uh, in terms of income and who I can serve and the kind of projects that I, that I get in front of, I better darn
• 6:15
  well have a good client experience built so that it's a seamless experience and I can continue to be offering, uh, a good experience to everybody that I work with.
• 6:26
  So let's kind of dig into this a little bit because you and both have the same problem.
• 6:28
  We over serve people.
• 6:30
  Sometimes to our own detriment, we set our projects aside and we really dig in.
• 6:33
  So what would you tell someone who's kind of in that process in their business, they're so busy working in the business that they're not working on the business.
• 6:41
  What wisdom would you give them?
• 6:43
  I would say what's made the biggest difference and a lot of people talk about this, I have a CEO meeting with God.
• 6:48
  I literally have an hour blocked in my calendar every week.
• 6:52
  And that's Friday.
• 6:54
  like Friday about lunch, basically, I kind of sometimes drive somewhere else.
• 6:58
  Like I have a lot of meetings with God in the parking lot at the park uh during the summer.
• 7:03
  I'm not doing it in Chicago.
• 7:05
  We just talked about the weather here.
• 7:06
  I'm not even going to go start my car tomorrow if it's going to be negative 30.
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  I uh don't have enough layers for that.
• 7:12
  but I often kind of do a post-mortem on my week and kind of set my goals for the next week.
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  And then Mondays, for the most part, I don't, I kind of block that out of my calendar so that I'm not taking meetings and that's kind of admin time for me.
• 7:28
  And so just slowing down and putting first things first, really, just making sure that I'm keeping up with my bookkeeping and I've cleared, you know, looked at my calendar.
• 7:38
  have.
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  On any given day, I've got like eight alarms set on my phone.
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  So if I have different things that I need to be switching my attention to different tasks.
• 7:46
  uh I'm also undiagnosed ADHD.
• 7:50
  So I know my attention needs to be managed with some structure.
• 7:55
  And that makes me actually gives me more time to be creative because it keeps me in the zone and it blocks time so that I can really get into deep work.
• 8:03
  So just.
• 8:04
  slowing down and taking a look at what the basics really need to be for your business and making that at least as important as your client work, because that's been hard and that's
• 8:15
  been my biggest change.
• 8:17
  And it's definitely helping.
• 8:19
  I'm so much more able to handle things and complete bigger projects from start to finish because I'm focusing my attention more.
• 8:28
  It feels great.
• 8:29
  Yeah, that's awesome.
• 8:30
  Yeah, I've had to set aside and it was really hard for me to do because I'm always want to be going.
• 8:34
  I set aside my Fridays for that same thing that that morning time is to finish up on my project so that I can go into the weekend refreshed and seeking what God wants for me, not
• 8:43
  just trying to get to the next level or next next.
• 8:48
  That's great.
• 8:48
  I also have a new planner that I got from somebody else that we both know that has been phenomenal because it's not just about planning the time slots in your day, it's about
• 8:59
  being thoughtful about who you're serving and what attitude you want to come with.
• 9:05
  It's basically a morning routine in a book.
• 9:07
  It's really nice.
• 9:09
  So that's been super helpful too.
• 9:11
  That's good.
• 9:12
  Yeah, it's hard with people that have ADHD in their brains is to figure out that system that works for them.
• 9:18
  And we all have to have different systems.
• 9:19
  That's important.
• 9:21
  And you and I talk a lot about that, that we could, we could have a whole episode about that only, couldn't we?
• 9:27
  So let's take a shift real quick.
• 9:28
  What is a business growth tip you could help someone with today?
• 9:34
  Again, it's about focusing, but...
• 9:36
  um
• 9:37
  The thing that I feel like I do differently when I'm working through somebody's branding is a lot of people start with that ideal client avatar.
• 9:44
  And again, I'm taking it a step backwards.
• 9:47
  Let's get back to what are your gifts and what are your core values?
• 9:51
  And that's where your messaging and your voice and your offers need to come from.
• 9:55
  Yeah, you've got an idea of who you want to serve and that's fine and we'll get to that.
• 10:00
  But the core of your messaging and how you are going to come across and differentiate yourself.
• 10:06
  is really what you value and how you talk about what you do and how you serve.
• 10:11
  And that just clarifies everything else that you do because it just gives you a filter.
• 10:16
  You figure out what your content pillars are going to be when you sit down to create things and how you're going to express yourself, how you introduce yourself in networking
• 10:25
  meetings, all of that.
• 10:27
  And you don't have to worry about anything else.
• 10:29
  Figure out what those three to five things are and that's all you talk about.
• 10:32
  ah
• 10:33
  I have traveled a lot.
• 10:35
  used to have a travel theme to my old website.
• 10:39
  And so it was kind of fun and cute and all of that.
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  And my blog was partly about marketing and partly about travel.
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  And that didn't make any sense because I wasn't gonna get SEO traction from having like completely divergent topics on there.
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  Can I do it?
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  Absolutely.
• 10:56
  Was that for two completely separate audiences?
• 10:58
  Yeah, probably.
• 10:59
  So.
• 11:00
  I let that go because I realized that was just me indulging myself.
• 11:03
  And so it was cute and funny at the time, but it has nothing to do with what I actually offer.
• 11:08
  So if you want to talk about all the countries that I've visited, that's also another episode.
• 11:12
  Right.
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  Sounds like it.
• 11:14
  So you do you go back to the core values and what you call the giftings.
• 11:17
  Are you aligning the spiritual giftings and their physical abilities?
• 11:22
  Are you doing both of those?
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  it kind of communicate that about it.
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  Somebody who's dealing with that, they're like, I don't know what my spiritual gift is, and I'm not exactly sure what gift I'm bringing to the market.
• 11:31
  How would you communicate to that person?
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  So the spiritual gifts is a very specific set of things and there's lots of online tools that you can go much deeper.
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  Some that are even like paid assessments that are very, very good.
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  So if you haven't actually done your spiritual gifts, I would say go look into those and find somebody that you trust and take that so that you know what those are.
• 11:53
  But those definitely translate into, know, what were you good at as a kid?
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  What would you...
• 12:00
  describe as your bliss state.
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  Like what were you doing when you were at your best, losing track of time.
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  It's not that you were scatterbrained and you were just losing track of time.
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  It's like no, you were in a flow state at some point and that was something that you're inherently good at.
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  And those things don't change over time.
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  um I went through a book.
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  um When people ask me what's the most influential book in your life, because I'm a big book person, I read like crazy.
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  Obviously the Bible and
• 12:27
  this book that I read when I was 19 called Wishcraft by Barbara Sheer and it was W-I-S-H, craft.
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  She's written a whole bunch of other things, but she wrote this before What Colors Your Parachute ever came out.
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  And that kind of became the thing about how to figure out your best career path.
• 12:44
  um I think she wrote it before Dan Miller came out with the 48 Hours thing.
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  And it was all about who are you really at your core and how do you express
• 12:56
  those things and how do you stay in, how do you spend most of your time doing the things that you're the best at?
• 13:02
  And I feel like I'm not gonna get on a soapbox about education, but I feel like the school system tries so hard to make everybody equally adequate that the people that are gifted
• 13:12
  don't really get the support they need.
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  There's a lot of things in place for special needs.
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  That's absolutely fine.
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  There are some programs for gifted.
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  Some of those are really lacking.
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  um
• 13:23
  And so I just really want to encourage people, you know, at your core, what you care about, what you're good at, what your gifts are, you really do.
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  So when I talk about doing this work with people, I call it rediscovering your gifts.
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  You know what they are.
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  If you really sit and go through any kind of exercise that's self-reflective about ask yourself why seven times, you know, just getting deeper, you inherently know and they
• 13:48
  don't change.
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  And that was kind of Barbara Scher's thing.
• 13:51
  So I worked through all those exercises, set some goals for myself, for my life, for different decades of my life.
• 13:58
  And because I've put those on paper and gone back to that and done that entire book three or four more times during my lifetime, it's all the same things.
• 14:06
  Like I'm in a different season each time, but because I put them down on paper and I was really keyed into those, I've achieved every single goal for my entire life that I put
• 14:15
  down on paper when I was 19 years old.
• 14:17
  And some of those I set aside for when I was 50 or older.
• 14:20
  because I knew I needed to live some life first and have some opinions about things and learn some lessons.
• 14:25
  And then I knew I would be equipped to do some of those other things.
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  So it's been amazing.
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  And God keeps ah honoring that because I keep turning back to him and saying, like, who can I serve?
• 14:37
  How can I use the gifts that I have to serve other people?
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  And then sitting in quiet and listening to the answers to those questions.
• 14:45
  He's just opened more and more doors.
• 14:47
  The more I am outspoken about wanting to serve other Christian entrepreneurs, ah expanding well beyond website design into what's your whole marketing ecosystem look like?
• 14:58
  Because ah it's more important to me that you show up in your authentic voice and really connect with the right people.
• 15:06
  And if you're expressing those things correctly, the right people are gonna find you and the people that aren't the right fit are gonna self-select out of your circle.
• 15:14
  It's that easy.
• 15:15
  but it's just a matter of staying focused and that's part.
• 15:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:19
  It is and so let me ask real quick because you're I love that your website is vision and momentum Those are two words that I'm that's where I'm at right now So somebody's they get
• 15:28
  that core value and that core gifting How they translate that into their vision if they're kind of at that spot where they're making a transition
• 15:36
  Again, it's knowing what your gifts are and then who do you want to serve?
• 15:39
  So that next step is who do you want to serve?
• 15:42
  And then how do you talk about solutions for what keeps them up at night based on what you're uniquely gifted to do for them?
• 15:52
  And sometimes it's you expressing your gifts in a way that just really hits differently.
• 15:58
  ah I choose to serve Christian coaches because I've had coaching and it's made such a difference in my life.
• 16:05
  And I feel like it's a little bit of an underserved group because it's kind of an esoteric thing.
• 16:11
  There's ways that you can measure transformation and results, but for the most part, a lot of it's intangible and a lot of the work is mental and self-reflection.
• 16:21
  And so it's really hard to quantify those things.
• 16:24
  And so me being able to help somebody work through, how do I express my values in terms of my brand voice so that it's connecting to exactly the right people?
• 16:35
  um That's the question I get the most from people when we're doing branding.
• 16:39
  It's not about the colors.
• 16:40
  I could talk about color psychology for three hours.
• 16:43
  I do presentations on that because a lot of people don't realize there's a lot of science and psychology behind that.
• 16:49
  So that's a whole different topic for another day.
• 16:52
  But it's so much more than that.
• 16:53
  It's really about how you speak about how you can impact somebody else's life and help them turn into the aspirational version of themselves.
• 17:03
  That's what we're.
• 17:04
  That's what we're trying to do.
• 17:05
  So that first headline on your website needs to immediately grab somebody with, here's what you offer, but here's who they can become if they work with you and you're offering a
• 17:16
  unique solution that you are uniquely able to do because of your talents, your gifts, your aspirational view of yourself.
• 17:27
  You have a vision.
• 17:28
  I want to help you get momentum.
• 17:29
  And what's missing in the middle is the strategy and all the work and all the obedience.
• 17:34
  uh And it's something I named it vision momentum because I believe it's something every entrepreneur needs.
• 17:39
  You got to have both.
• 17:41
  You can have all the vision in the world and not take action and not get anywhere.
• 17:44
  And you can have plenty of momentum.
• 17:46
  But if you're going 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction, you're still not happy and you're still not creating the results that you have the potential to create.
• 17:53
  Yeah, I'm glad that you said that because every person we just on our previous podcast, we just talked about this.
• 17:59
  People are so busy trying to do what everybody else is doing that they miss the authenticity of who they are.
• 18:03
  And when you.
• 18:05
  marketing tactic will work, not all at the same time and not for every single person.
• 18:10
  It absolutely depends on what's your goal.
• 18:13
  Who do you want to serve?
• 18:14
  I tell people all the time when I'm setting up their Google Analytics account, it's only scary because you allow yourself to be intimidated by the fact that you're collecting all
• 18:22
  this data that you don't know how to interpret.
• 18:24
  You only have to care about the three or four things that are moving the needle forward for what your goal is.
• 18:30
  Your goal from one season to the next can be a different goal.
• 18:33
  Sometimes it's awareness, sometimes it's leads, you know?
• 18:36
  But when you're looking at it, you only need to look at the ones that you know matter to you, and that can change.
• 18:44
  But it's based on what results you wanna get for people and what you're focusing on in that moment, so.
• 18:52
  Great.
• 18:52
  So how can people get in touch with you and what would be one little tidbit of wisdom you'd leave us with today?
• 18:59
  I am only on LinkedIn.
• 19:02
  I'm on Facebook because I have to be because I'm handling some social media for a few clients and interacting in a couple of groups that are really important to me.
• 19:10
  But I'm mostly on LinkedIn.
• 19:12
  I'm at visionandmomentum.com.
• 19:15
  And what would be my tidbit?
• 19:19
  Basically, again, just finding your core values.
• 19:22
  If you don't know what those are, the book, The One Thing.
• 19:26
  is really good and he actually sells a card deck that's got like values that you can literally dump out on a table and kind of sort through them and use that as a way to kind
• 19:35
  of funnel down.
• 19:36
  And uh when I do presentations on that topic, I tell people, if you start with 100 words and you get it down to 10, and you really need to get it down to fewer than five,
• 19:47
  basically, hold each one up against each other and say, does this matter to me more than this?
• 19:51
  And you know, you know in your soul, which things are the most important.
• 19:55
  So
• 19:56
  Yeah, and God will remind you of those things.
• 19:57
  You keep it in front of him, keep it in prayer, keep that prayer aspect.
• 20:01
  And God always aligns us when we seek him.
• 20:03
  But I think too often we're busy seeking our business and not seeking him in our business.
• 20:08
  Exactly.
• 20:09
  And if you're not sure if you're on the right track, you can tell by how that feels in your body and your mind.
• 20:16
  Like you know when it's not aligned.
• 20:19
  When things are aligned, everything gets easier.
• 20:22
  Not like everything in life is going to be easy street, but you feel it in your body, you know.
• 20:27
  So it's a matter of slowing down, putting him first, and then how do you want me to serve and which gift?
• 20:34
  Which gifts am I supposed to be highlighting in this season of my life?
• 20:38
  I don't get to do every single thing every day, but when I am working in my gifts, it definitely fills me up and I have more energy and more creativity than ever.
• 20:49
  Thank you so much for sharing your story today, Irunda.
• 20:51
  Thanks for having me.
• 20:52
  It was so great to talk to you again.