Ep. 118 - A Recipe for Success: Curiosity, Community, & Grit - with Kathryn Rose

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Kathyrn Rose is the Founder of getWise and the wiseHER Foundation.

getWise is an expert advice platform that curates a range of business specialists, and small businesses and people who are seeking help can schedule time with the person whose expertise best matches their needs. It’s not free, but it’s very affordable, and Kathryn shares how this value exchange that getWise delivers benefits everyone. In full disclosure, it’s a platform that I am proud to be a part of. And in my experience, this structure is really rewarding because you are able to pay it forward to others who are seeking it out and committed to learning.

The wiseHer Foundation, then, is a non-profit organization designed to support women and small businesses around the globe with advisory services, education, and resources on-demand. This is a similar platform specifically for women, and proceeds go towards funding grants for women-owned businesses.

What Kathryn has done with her career (her forced second career, as you’ll learn about in a few moments) is incredible. But I think what I appreciate most about this episode is that Kathryn shares with us the grit, curiosity, community, and years of hard work that are really necessary to become successful — stories that I don’t think we can ever hear too much of in the era of curated lives on social media.

Life Happens. What’s Next?

15 years ago, Kathryn Rose was excelling at her profession on Wall Street in mortgage-backed securities... then 2007 and the Great Recession happened. And then life happened. Kathryn was at a low point with her back against the wall — so she gave herself one day to grieve and then set out to reinvent her career.

But how do you build a new network in a new industry when you don’t know anyone?

She started by reaching out to old clients about their needs, and what she found is that they all wanted to rank higher on Google. So she found an SEO expert, paid for a crash course in SEO optimization, and had her first client two weeks later. Then Kathryn decided to create a tech platform, so she started teaching herself to code and built the MVP herself.

As she was connecting with people to tap into their expertise, ‘picking their brain’ for free didn't seem authentic. She wanted to ensure there was a mutual value exchange because that’s how you truly build relationships.

These rapid transformations required plans, they necessitated developing relevant connections, they required stacking a breadth of skills, and they set Kathryn on the path to creating getWise and wiseHer.

Kathyrn recognized that people needed access to a network of experts, but not all small businesses owners have the funds to pay the rates of top consultants or experts.So getWise was born to help a broader network of people by providing greater promotional and thought leadership exposure to the experts on the platform, who then share their expertise with small businesses and people who need it for a nominal fee. For Kathryn, this is about ‘how we can help each other as part of this global community.’

Transforming Yourself into a Lifelong Learner & Creating Grit

When Kathryn lost her job, she had been in financial services a long time and she was doing very well. She had just gotten married and was having her first child. The horizon was beautiful — and then everything crashed.

So she gave herself 24 hours to feel bad and to grieve “I don’t want my son to think I gave up,” Kathryn says. “I want him to know that I fought hard to give him the best life that I want him to have.”

It’s important to note that there wasn’t a part of this journey that just came naturally to Kathryn, there was no easy step. She had to become a lifelong learner along the way. She had to create grit.

And Kathryn would be the first person to tell you that she’s not special for doing it. We will all go through these moments of fear, self doubt, and mourning — and we all have the ability to only try controlling what we can control, taking things in small chunks as we move forward, and celebrating our wins along the way. This is the power of progress.

Planning for Success

Everyone goes through a period in their career or life when they feel stuck. It just happens, it’s usually not anyone’s fault, and it often happens multiple times.

Struggling through this is a ubiquitous experience. But you know what isn’t? Getting support to help you push through the barriers so we can come out on the other side with more clarity and conviction on what our next steps are.

In the State of Work and Career Success, we saw that this dimension of planning had a huge impact on how successful people felt in their careers, but we also saw that most people weren’t engaging with these activities. And I think that explains a lot of the dissatisfaction in the workforce right now. Unfortunately, too many people are just putting their head down and staying in a job they feel stuck in because they just don’t have the support or knowledge to start on a new path. And it’s scary!

But I hope that stories like Kathryn’s help you see what goes into these transformations. It isn’t just luck, skill, or talent. You have to commit to transforming yourself into a lifelong learner, you have to actually develop grit, you have to build a village around you.

And platforms like getWise can be so valuable because they help make it easier to get started so you can put yourself down the right path — all you have to bring is your curiosity and tenacity.

Definition of Success

“To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived — that is to have succeeded” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Career Advice

Success is not something that happens overnight. Slow and steady will win the race. Take every challenge as it is and figure out how you can get to the next milestone.

Key Takeaways:

You aren’t born a lifelong learner, you transform yourself into a lifelong learner; you aren’t born with grit, you create grit.
Your career journey, your journey towards your personal definition of success, is a journey of experimentation, iteration, and optimization. It will have its ups and downs, wins and losses. And that’s why you need to celebrate the small wins — they give you the fuel to keep going, to create grit.
Make a plan, take things in small chunks, and celebrate the small wins. Remember, success is a long game.
We will all go through moments of fear, self doubt, and mourning. And we all have the ability to only try controlling what we can control, taking things in small chunks as we move forward.
People commit to learning and growing when they are invested and intentional. That’s why people don’t always listen to free advice and that’s why paying for an expert’s time creates a mutually beneficial value exchange.
You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
When building a business, you need to think about connecting with people who could guide you along the way in your own journey, not just whether you land business from them.
As you're building your network, always think of it from a giver's mentality. People have a finite amount of time. So if you're going to take any time from that person, make sure that it's valuable.
In business and in your career, you need to be intentional when it comes to networking and finding the right people. Understand that not everyone's your person, not everyone's your customer.
Four things that women should know:
- Entrepreneurship isn’t a charmed life that will magically solve your problems; a lot of people on social media are selling people on a lifestyle that doesn’t actually exist.
- Owning a business is a business in and of itself. You have to set it up properly, and you’ll probably need some experts to help with that.
- You shouldn’t give your time away for free. Women often expect that other women will do things for free, or we feel like we should help out, but charging for your time is what lets you support your family and invest in other woman-owned businesses.
- There’s this mindset that the pie is only so big, that if you get a slice of the pie I can’t get a slice of the pie, but there is enough to go around. If you succeed, I succeed. “If you succeed, I succeed. If I succeed, the person behind me succeeds.”