EP418: Racheal Cook - Level Up! Freedom From Entrepreneurial Poverty

Racheal Cook with Sage ad (May 21): The lack of time, energy, and money is what's putting so many women business owners out of business. But if they had a little bit of strategy and clarity about how they can overcome those things, then they could achieve the type of results that I was able to so early in my career, where I was working 25 hours a week, raising small children, and making a great take-home salary. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com. The proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to the Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be fantastic. Our guest is the owner of the CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast. Rachel Cook, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Michael. I'm excited to be here. Well, it's great to have you. And for those of our listeners who have not met you or know of you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself leading up to what you're doing today?

Oh my goodness. Well, I have been a small business owner for 15 years, but I've been consulting and working with small business owners my entire career. And my journey started as I think a lot of others does. I went directly from getting my MBA into the world of consulting, and then quickly proceeded to burnout of the traditional consulting path. If anybody knows people who work in the world of consulting, you know, it's like 80 hours a week, you're living out of a suitcase, spending a lot of time putting together spreadsheets and slide decks. But I got to the point where I actually had a medical crisis, and I had to leave that work because I physically could not do it anymore. And it was kind of by accident that I decided to go ahead and start a business. I always thought I would start a business, but I was recovering from my medical crisis. And basically what happened was my yoga teacher at the time, who I was spending a lot of time with, looked at me and said, I know you don't want to go back to your consulting career, but I need help. Do you think you could look at my business and see if you could help me turn this around? And for me, it was a lightbulb moment because because while I had been