No one warns you about the loss of structure when you leave the corporate womb. Suddenly, it’s all up to you. You’re the boss. You make the decisions. And you need to pin down the principles that create structure in your work life…or face the consequences. Michelle Peters is the CEO of Supplino, a thriving supply chain marketplace. When she left corporate, she fell victim to hustle culture, overwork, and burnout. Facing each of these challenges in time, she eventually disassembled her embedded corporate mentality and found a winning structure that worked for her…not the other way around. You’re about to hear Michelle’s journey to make sense of structure as an entrepreneur, her best advice for businessowners who hold on to the corporate mentality, and learning to love the inherent uncertainty of her work.
No one warns you about the loss of structure when you leave the corporate womb. Suddenly, it’s all up to you.
You’re the boss. You make the decisions. And you need to pin down the principles that create structure in your work life…or face the consequences.
Michelle Peters is the CEO of Supplino, a thriving supply chain marketplace. When she left corporate, she fell victim to hustle culture, overwork, and burnout. Facing each of these challenges in time, she eventually disassembled her embedded corporate mentality and found a winning structure that worked for her…not the other way around.
You’re about to hear Michelle’s journey to make sense of structure as an entrepreneur, her best advice for businessowners who hold on to the corporate mentality, and learning to love the inherent uncertainty of her work.
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Hosted by Katherin Vasilopoulos. Made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee.
Music by © Chris Zabriskie, published by You've Been a Wonderful Laugh Track (ASCAP).
Songs used in this episode include: "Air Hockey Saloon," "It Will Make You Feel Better If You Put It In the Right Place," "Is This the Spirit Everybody Keeps Talking About?" "Heliograph," " Mario Bava Sleeps In a Little Later Than He Expected To."
Used under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:00:00]:
Getting called into your boss's office isn't fun. It's one of those things that spurs us into entrepreneurship. The experience of being critiqued, evaluated, or simply judged on our performance. But no one warns you about the loss of structure when you leave the corporate womb. Suddenly, it's all up to you. You're the boss. You make the decisions, and you need to pin down the principles that create structure in your work life or face the consequences. No one warned Michelle Peters about the loss of structure she would face when she walked through the entrepreneurial exit door.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:00:34]:
Starting out in electrical engineering, Michelle rose through the ranks to snag corporate leadership positions in the supply chain industry. She always felt like a square peg in a round hole. In 2019, she tossed away her next promotion to dive into the entrepreneurial life she I'd always admired. Her company is called Supplino. It's a supply chain marketplace that matches suppliers and manufacturers with entrepreneurs and businesses. Early on, her lack of structure as an entrepreneur caused her to stumble. She fell victim to hustle culture, overwork, and burnout.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:01:10]:
Facing each of these challenges in time, she eventually disassembled her embedded corporate mentality and found a winning structure that worked for her, not the other way around. You're about to hear Michelle's journey to make sense of structure as an entrepreneur, her best advice for business owners who hold on to the corporate mentality, and how she's learned to love the inherent uncertainty of her work. I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos, and this is and so she left, the podcast about incredible women founders, and the wisdom they uncovered beyond the corporate world. It's 2019, and Michelle's in the middle of making one of the biggest decisions of her life. Now a 30 year corporate leadership veteran. She's offered a new shiny position. But rather than taking the promotion like she had done so many times before she simply walks away.
Michelle Peters [00:02:24]:
The next step for me in corporate, I really just didn't want it, that next promotion and had a chance to leave with a good package and thought, alright. This is my chance. I'm gonna jump. I'm gonna use the money to start my own company. And so that's what I did.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:02:39]:
Naturally, her love of supply chains and manufacturing led her to found Supplino. But why did she leave? And what did she do next?
Michelle Peters [00:02:53]:
So corporate for me was very structured over the years. Right? I'm in manufacturing supply chain positions, leadership, strategy, positions, always very goal oriented, worked with great teams, and moved up from an individual contributor up into leadership. Right? Like many people in corporate, there were a lot of times where I was frustrated and and bored, and I just didn't feel like it was a great use of all of the skills that I had even though I had some great experiences. I traveled a lot with my job, which I loved. You know, leaving that womb of corporate, it's still the best thing I ever did leaving, but I it really was jumping into a lake of ice cold water that I I didn't anticipate the loss of all that support and structure that I had in corporate, and that was definitely a challenge that, I've had to work through over the last couple of years.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:03:56]:
That's such a good description. I can totally feel, you know, that moment of immersing yourself into a new environment that is not always pleasant and it's not always friendly and you have to try and do the best with what you have. And you said earlier that you were like a, you know, round peg in a square hole. And how did you survive that being in a in a corporate environment even though you knew that this is not who you were?
Michelle Peters [00:04:19]:
Oh, yeah. Well, I had a lot of tough years in corporate where I didn't really know what I wanted. I changed roles a lot. I was a person that never had a specific title and job for more than 2 years because I was such an impatient person, I like to learn. I learn quick. And then once I'm in there and the thing is working, right, the department is working, the processes are humming.
Michelle Peters [00:04:43]:
I very quickly get bored. So I moved jobs a lot. And earlier in my career, I moved to other companies. If the company was small and there wasn't an opportunity there after I had felt like I succeeded, I just went somewhere else. So I had a variety of different companies I worked for and within those companies at different roles. But at the same time, there were some painful feedback that I had to get when I was a new manager or when I was taking over, a department with a different culture, that was much more relaxed. I'm a high energy person, and not everybody is like that. But the nice thing about, you know, corporate is you you have bosses around you.
Michelle Peters [00:05:19]:
You have a support network. You have a team, and you can learn through those, challenges. So I did, but, again, I was still never I still never really felt like I was at home in corporate the way I do now, running my own business as, as an entrepreneur.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:05:39]:
Yes. Yes. And so let me ask you then. The norms that you followed in order to be successful in corporate. They they must be very different now in how you measure your your success and the fact that you don't have a team anymore, the fact that you are alone and you have to find subcontractors, or you have to find another way to measure your your says, how does that work for you now?
Michelle Peters [00:05:59]:
Yeah. You know, the measurement of success in corporate was often given from above. You you may make a recommendation on what you think our success metrics should be next year or what your goal should be. But, ultimately, it all had to be blessed, and often leadership would have some programs that you didn't know about that would come down your way, and so you'd be told, okay. Listen. You I need you guys to do deliver this this year. That absolutely does not exist in my world today.
Michelle Peters [00:06:29]:
And when I started, I was very goal oriented in that. My goals were all result metrics. Right? My goals were all around, I wanna have this much revenue. I wanna have this many employees. I wanna have this many customers. I wanna have this in the pipeline by a certain date because that's what I was used to, very structured, smart metrics. You know, 3 years later, I do not use those kinds of metrics for success. I have switched to more, plant the seed metrics on how How many new connections am I making? How many new customers have I engaged with? How big is our audience?
Michelle Peters [00:07:10]:
Who knows about us? And am I doing things that are active that get the audience attention and have customers find out about us. We are a marketplace. So on one hand, I, of course, I'm concerned about acquiring customers, But I'm a two sided marketplace, so the other part is, am I acquiring my experts, my supply chain and manufacturing consultants, and am I keeping them busy? Am I giving them work? And do I have the right kind of people of high caliber that are gonna work? So I'm reaching much deeper into the process metrics of my company and the inputs that I am. And I know if I do the work there and I take action, results will come versus just specifically focusing on results all the time.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:07:58]:
Exactly. Exactly. And I like how you described it. It's the plant the seed metrics that you don't have to do when you're in corporate. Right. So you do you do have to do it when you're an entrepreneur, and that's a skill that no one teaches you when you jump. And you have to figure that out. It's the, you know, the marketing and the networking and the touch points and circling back to see if somebody opened an email or if they remember you from a newsletter or from a a networking event, like little things like that where sometimes it's really hard to measure whether or not it's been successful or not unless you know that they, you know, they were contacted 3 years ago and then 3 years later they send you an email saying, oh, I remember you and like, oh, now it works.
Michelle Peters [00:08:36]:
Yeah. It's very invisible, isn't it? It is. It is. Right? Yeah.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:08:39]:
And to continue on that analogy of farming, you know, sometimes farmers scatter a bunch of seeds in the wind, but then they only get concerned with the ones that actually do start growing something. We don't know where the seeds went, the ones that are invisible. So I guess we continue to nurture the ones that do start to, you know, show some kind of yield. And I think that's the same thing in business.
Michelle Peters [00:08:58]:
I think it's a really good analogy too because sometimes, you know, you scatter wildflower seeds and it something else pops up. And you're really where the heck did that come from? Right? And that's that's very true of entrepreneurship where what you Think you're going to you know, what we what we started with, the concept for Supplino, is not what we do today.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:09:18]:
When you first started, what was the vision, and now how has it, progressed?
Michelle Peters [00:09:22]:
When we started, we, we actually went through an accelerator program, called FI, Founders Institute, which was great for us because, again, it gave me some structure. Right? I I was going jumping into new business. I had no idea how to manage a start up. How do you run it? How...what do I do? So this accelerator program was really helpful, and, what I went through the accelerator with as an idea was a supply chain platform. If you had a new product idea or you were launching a new product as a business, you could create and manage your supply chain on the platform. And what I learned when I talked to customers was they didn't really want a platform. They didn't wanna be told how to do it. They didn't want To be forced into a certain process that someone else thought was the best practice, but what they really did want is help.
Michelle Peters [00:10:14]:
So if we could find an expert that could help them do what they needed to do and get over whatever hurdle they were dealing with in their supply chain and in their manufacturing, That they were really interested in, and that's when we ended up pivoting into the marketplace that we are today.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:10:29]:
And pivoting is a huge word because, you know, in the pandemic, you had to pivot. And those who did well were the ones who knew how to pivot. And they had conversations with their clients and the and look to see what's going on in the market and what do we need to do to change and survive.
Michelle Peters [00:10:44]:
Yeah. I I got some excellent advice. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Oh. Yeah. Isn't that good?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:10:52]:
Yeah.
Michelle Peters [00:10:52]:
And and It's a really important mantra that I use and and I've seen through you know, I now mentor at FI, and I buys a lot of young startups, and you can very quickly see the ones that fall in love with their own solution. As soon as that solution doesn't have a client or a customer or runway, they fall apart.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:11:12]:
I love it. I never heard that one and it just reminds me of, you know, the scientific process, you have to continuously be curious and to see where the data takes you, not what your hypothesis was to begin with.
Michelle Peters [00:11:24]:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same same, perspective on that. Right?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:11:29]:
Right. Right. So tell me about some, challenges that you think you've surmounted, as you're going into your 3rd year in in business now.
Michelle Peters [00:11:43]:
I would say 1 challenge, and it's a typical one, that the expectation of hustle culture
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:11:52]:
Mhmm.
Michelle Peters [00:11:53]:
For me was very strong. So when I, you know, when I came out of corporate, you know, in my fifties, I think I was 52, when you do that, there's a lot of expectations that you think you know about entrepreneurship and and what you need to do. And coming in and saying, you know, I'm gonna spend every waking moment on this business. I'm, you know, I'm finally gonna do something I'm super passionate about. And it was very quick to then experience burnout when that didn't immediately show results. That was hard. Right. Because I had all this enthusiasm, and I had a lifetime of waiting to jump and do this business.
Michelle Peters [00:12:31]:
And all of a sudden, I'm not getting the results that I wanted. I'm spending all this time and all this mental energy on it, and I had to really take a step back. I'm not wasn't taking any breaks. I wasn't taking vacation. You know, weekends, I would just sit and think about the business because I thought I should. That's what entrepreneurs do. You spend your whole life, obsessed with your business.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:12:54]:
So how do you prevent that burnout from happening? What did you do differently?
Michelle Peters [00:12:58]:
Burnout. So I don't know how to prevent it. It's a good question. I can I can only tell you what I did to respond to it? Right?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:13:06]:
Okay. Yep.
Michelle Peters [00:13:07]:
And it's happened a couple times. I burnt out. The nice thing is the 2nd time it happened, I recognized it for what it was. Right. And I could use some of the lessons I learned the first time. The first time, what really helped me was I got a business coach, and she really helped me reframe my expectations and think about, for example, this myth of, you know, working all the time or you can't do anything else or where that comes from, and why do I think that, and is it real? What if you took 3 days and did nothing?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:13:38]:
Yes. God forbid you didn't answer your emails for 3 days or didn't get back to a client within 10 minutes of receiving the email.
Michelle Peters [00:13:44]:
Yeah. Exactly. Or what if you just didn't pay attention to it and didn't even think about it over the weekend and went and did your hobby or you know? And I realized then that I myself was feeding myself a bunch of false expectations that I couldn't live up to and then beating myself up because I couldn't live up to them. Yeah. It was just a vicious cycle, and it was just a huge weight lifted when I worked with her on that. And that was probably, I I wanna say maybe a year and a half in when I hit that wall.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:14:14]:
Would you say that that exercise released you kind of that of that, expectation, and you were able to maybe redefine what it meant to be an entrepreneur?
Michelle Peters [00:14:25]:
Yeah. You know, I I think it brought the joy back Into the work. Right? I have I had really lost all the joy. I was just, like, grinding, working hard, focused on the business, but not doing it with any pleasure. And, you know, to talk to someone about that, like a coach, and realize, wait a minute. I waited my whole career to do this. It's the best decision I've ever made, and I'm not enjoying it. This is just silly.
Michelle Peters [00:14:50]:
What am I doing?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:14:51]:
One element of it has to be important and meaningful, and and joy is a big part of it to to wake up and to always continuously be there and showing up for yourself. If that's not there anymore, then you're like, why am I doing this?
Michelle Peters [00:15:02]:
Right. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I'm part of a group of female founders. There's, 4 of us, and we meet every week for an hour on Wednesdays, we have a Zoom call together, and it's really amazing how much we all struggle with this. And I think it's true not just of, you know, entrepreneurs and start ups, but business owners in general. It's a tough road to choose to do this, and it's not always fun. And I think you also have to kinda be kind to yourself and let yourself realize this isn't it isn't like playing a game or doing a hobby.
Michelle Peters [00:15:34]:
It really is hard work, and sometimes it isn't gonna be fun. And that's okay as long as you can get through that period and still have joy in the overall of what you're doing. Right?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:15:46]:
Right. Right. And I love that you're surrounding yourself by other founders. Being surrounded by a community or a a group is such an important part, and I've heard this over and over and over from other people that we've interviewed.
Michelle Peters [00:15:58]:
Katherin, I was so surprised when I came out of corporate at the helpfulness and the positivity of the ecosystem, let's say, that that is entrepreneurialism. I really had a picture in my head about, I was gonna start this company, and it was gonna be a bunch of, you know, 25 year old guys in hoodies, and then our entrepreneur all kind of sneering at me like, what are you doing, lady? Instead, what I found was it's a much more diverse group of founders out there, and it's actually much nicer as an environment than corporate. Corporate is much more competitive. You're personally competing with other people to go up that ladder or to look good or to get a time with an exec or get sponsorship. Of course, in entrepreneurialism, you know, of course, you're competing. You want your business to do well. Right? But this amount of support from entrepreneurs for each other where people will just give you time and brainstorm with you and come up with ideas and have you tried this and I tried that and let me connect you with this other person that you might wanna talk to. It's amazing, and it's true of, you know, those same guys that I thought would be awful are really wonderful, the young guys.
Michelle Peters [00:17:16]:
It it really doesn't matter who you're talking to in in this group. There's a lot of helpfulness, and everybody wants everybody else to win, which is really nice.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:17:27]:
Oh, that's lovely. Yes. And it's not what you were expecting, was it?
Michelle Peters [00:17:30]:
No. No. That was that was part of the, unexpected benefits that I got. Yeah.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:17:38]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. And now we're we're talking about, you know, corporate, how we have structures, and we have all sorts of processes in place and departments, and it is rigid as you were saying. How does that now differ in your own business? What kind of structures do you have in place?
Michelle Peters [00:17:53]:
That's a really good question. There's an app that I love, called Chaos Control, and it's the best task manager. Yeah. There's a lot of task managers out there, but this one fits the way my brain works the best, I found. Yeah. And it's one where you can take in a large goal, kinda break it down into interim steps and then assign yourself those tasks and projects and keep track of them, and it integrates into your calendar.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:18:21]:
Oh, that's so funny.
Michelle Peters [00:18:21]:
I come in, I have a to do list from that as well as my appointments, and then I can manage by category. And it's a very, intuitive, for me, structure that I'm using. I also my cofounder and I, we have periodic checkpoints. We just had one for 2024 to say, you know, what do we really on the next year, what's the most important thing? And we had a conversation about not just what is the goal because you're always gonna put in an aggressive goal. I want sales to, You know, whatever, 10 x, 8 x, 5 x, whatever it is. But we also put in what we felt was a minimum floor, which is okay. We're gonna go for, let's say, 10 x sales.
Michelle Peters [00:19:04]:
But if sales aren't over 4 x or 3 x, we need to really take a step back and say, do we need to pivot?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:19:12]:
That's interesting. And it it goes back to the whole thing of how do we define success now that we are, an entrepreneur, and what are the metrics. And you need to have a structure. You need to have goals. So do you find that now you have something?
Michelle Peters [00:19:25]:
I think that my metric for SAS, it's really all about looking at my actions. Are we generating the actions that we need to move the boat forward? Right? And if we are, then I'm not gonna worry about the success metric. That will get delivered, and we'll see that coming. And we, of course, we look at typical metrics you're gonna look at in a business on your funnel and your customers and your results. But I'm much more relaxed about those if we're missing them. Yeah. If I can see that the activity metrics and those action oriented goals are underway. Right? And and I'm much more maybe it isn't the goals themselves, but my attitude towards them, I am much more flexible and relaxed about them and patient about, you know, planting the seed than I ever was in corporate.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:20:16]:
And then how do you deal with this need to continuously be nimble? The your structure has to be there, but then it also has to be flexible. How do you achieve that balance?
Michelle Peters [00:20:25]:
This is a constant challenge to know when am I making too many changes too fast for the business? Alright. When should I stay the course and introduce some steadiness? And that for me is the challenge of being the CEO. And I I don't have a good answer for that because I think it's something that you navigate every day Right?
Michelle Peters [00:20:45]:
Right? I mean, I'm a very creative person. My my hobbies. You know, I I paint, I draw, I I make things. As a creative person, I have new ideas all the time, which is quite dangerous for a CEO.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:20:58]:
Why is it dangerous?
Michelle Peters [00:20:59]:
Be because you always have a shiny new thing that you wanna go after.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:21:04]:
Yes.
Michelle Peters [00:21:04]:
And this is the last thing your team wants to hear. Your team is still trying to move forward with the assignment you gave them a month ago or 2 months ago, or last week. What they don't want is you coming in and saying, oh, look. I found something completely different. Let's go I'll run and look at this thing over here.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:21:20]:
Yes. And the time the team is saying, but wait. We haven't finished this stuff now that you've assigned this before. Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle Peters [00:21:26]:
You know? And and I did all this good work, and you're not gonna let me see the benefit of that good work. Yes. Now I have to change it to something else, and it's extremely frustrating for them. So that's something I have to keep in check. I keep a notebook with ideas, and I write them down to try to get them out of my system, so that I can look at them later in a more organized way than try to drop them in, you know, like, little fireflies into into what everybody's trying to do.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:21:53]:
Well, I like it because what I'm seeing now is like a, you know, teeter totter and a fulcrum, And then it's the whole balancing act between, you know, creativity and stability. So you're the creative person coming up with all these new ideas, which will feed a pipeline of things coming up, but then you also want the stability for your employees or your subcontractors because you wanna keep them happy and you wanna keep them around and motivated.
Michelle Peters [00:22:12]:
And it's not just the team too. I mean, you're not gonna get results you're changing your focus every 5 minutes. Right? Mhmm.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:22:18]:
Right.
Michelle Peters [00:22:19]:
When your team objects to something, typically, they they have a reason to object to something if you've got good people. Yes. But it can, it can be very tempting. This is the difference that now you are the person making those decisions versus being part of a structure and being an element, right, in the decisions by business. Yeah.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:22:40]:
Tell me about what you thought entrepreneurship would look like and tell me now the reality of what it is.
Michelle Peters [00:22:52]:
Oh, Yeah. I was I was an avid entrepreneurship fan for many years and love and still do really love to read success stories on people that are running really dynamic and and great companies. But when you consume all that media, of course, it focuses on all the good and the positive and the fun things. And when it talks about challenges, it always talks about them in hindsight. How they fix their challenge and how they overcame it and how, you know, the company has grown as a result. The reality is that you are often in the middle of those challenges with no clear direction how to get out of them. And this is the entrepreneurial journey doing that. It's not the result afterwards and the growth that comes from the result.
Michelle Peters [00:23:40]:
It's the dealing and knowing how to navigate through these huge periods of uncertainty and gray and confusion and advice from many people that's contradictory, but all seems to make sense. Mhmm. And I think that's more the reality of entrepreneurship and and leadership as an entrepreneur, at least at this stage of my business. This may be when the business has grown in into a different stage and a more mature than something else. But my reality is just constant struggle and navigation. Now not not to say you know, I don't wanna imply that it's a horrible experience. I love it, and I think it uses all the skills that I've developed.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:24:24]:
Yes.
Michelle Peters [00:24:24]:
In the many years I worked. Right? So I I love this challenge, but the reality is that it's a challenge. Right.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:24:31]:
I wanted to ask you about advice because we've been talking about the advice that you have been getting. But what about advice that you could give to people who are considering starting their own business or the learnings that you've had from the 3 years since you jumped from a corporate job to now running your own business.
Michelle Peters [00:24:49]:
If you haven't jumped yet and you're thinking about it, plan the jump. Don't just get frustrated and quit. Plan your job thoughtfully and make sure that you have enough financial support and emotional support at home or or wherever you are that you can do it. It's more difficult to create revenue from nothing if you haven't done it before. So I would say that's definitely 1 piece I would give. If someone's already jumped and you're already in it, my advice would be don't underestimate the difficulty. And if it's hard and you're struggling, that's normal. You are not doing anything wrong.
Michelle Peters [00:25:27]:
It's easy to compare yourself, and you look at, you know, Sara Blakely from Spanx, and it she makes it look so easy. It's not really that easy. Mm-mm. And you just don't see. No one interviews you around the really hard stuff. So, it's totally normal that you're struggling and that it's hard and that maybe cost you're not finding customers. It's okay. Keep going.
Michelle Peters [00:25:48]:
And talk to people and consider that advice of have you fallen in love with the solution maybe more than the problem, and is that your problem? And then reconsider and really focus on what's the problem you're trying to solve. And the more you really listen to customers around that problem And pay attention to the problem. Other solutions will raise their head that you can explore.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:26:09]:
The people like me who did start off with barely anything, you know, you don't just want jobs. You want clients. You want people to keep returning with more stuff in the pipeline so that you're not always doing a one off job and then trying again to fill in the pipeline. Yeah. Yeah. And so this whole plant the seed metrics and to see who's coming back and all that is super important, and the way you phrased it made a lot of sense to me, and also, you know, falling in love with a problem is such an incredible mind shift, in in looking at how you run a business and what you do with it, as opposed to always being stuck with that one solution.
Michelle Peters [00:26:46]:
And stop trying to make it work and make it work. Right?
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:26:48]:
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's like watching a child try to put, you know, put those puzzles into little holes, but they just can't put the star in the square, and it's just, not working. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle Peters [00:26:57]:
And no wonder. Right? And I think as women also, we are very hesitant to bother other people to ask for help. Right? And not just ask for, you know, help. Like, I I'm I'm burnt out or I need help, but to ask for, like, advice. I am continuously amazed, as I mentioned before about how helpful other women business owners really are. If you're in that situation where it feels like you are sticking that, you know, star shaped game piece into this square hole and it's not working. Who else runs a company that maybe is similar to yours or in that same industry that has done what you're trying to do that you could ask help from. I am shocked at how little women will reach out.
Michelle Peters [00:27:42]:
I'll do a presentation, and someone will say to me, oh my god. That was so helpful. I'd love to talk to you about my business. I say, great. You don't send me a note. I never hear from them. I think we don't talk to each other enough about the struggles versus kind of saying I'm fine and my business is doing great all the time.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:28:04]:
Thank you so much to Michelle Peters. You can learn more about Michelle and Supplino through the links in the episode description. If you like the show, please rate, review, and subscribe up to And So, She Left wherever you listen. Your feedback helps us to better serve current listeners and reach new ones. You can also fill out our quick feedback form. It's just 5 questions long, and your response helps us to make the show that you want to hear. And so she left is made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee. We'll be back next Wednesday with a new episode.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:28:35]:
Our music is by Chris Zabriskie, edited for your enjoyment. You can find a list of all the songs you heard here in the episode notes. I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos, and thanks for listening.