TLDR: Progress Amplified just turned three! What actually built it wasn't a perfect plan; it was building the leader who was building the business and finding the right team to jump in when needed. The support structure, the accountability, the people around me. LOUDER exists to talk about that every week. Honestly.

LOUDER | Issue 01

Three years ago, I had a front-row seat to the PE-backed company I'd worked for being bought/sold for the third time in three years. After 25 years in HR, and 15 at a PE-backed organization, I had already seen this movie. I knew so much of what works and what breaks, and exactly what I would do differently if I were the one calling the shots.

So I got brave, and I built it. Before I printed business cards or designed a website or even had the words for exactly what it was doing. My entire career I held the idea and a deep belief that if you can help one manager become a better manager and give them the tools, the resources, and a real partner in HR, teams and eventually organizations can change. For me that was worth building around.

May 31, 2023, I officially opened the LLC that is Progress Amplified! I won't pretend it's all been pretty. It hasn't, but it has been real, and it's mine. 3 years in we're just getting started, and that's worth celebrating!

April 2024 was when I finally left my full-time corporate job. Just months before I left, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and by the 4th of July he was gone. I was lucky enough to spend the months between April and July with him, so much quality time with him and with my parents, and then the weeks and months following, staying close and supporting my mom after he passed. That year looks nothing like what I had planned for this new business and undertaking.

Sometimes that's how building goes. Sometimes you pivot, sometimes you super-focus or lock in, sometimes you let go, and sometimes you have to do all those things at once. Here's what I learned along the way (as cliché as it sounds): you can't pour from an empty cup. I'm saying it because it took me way too long to actually live it. I tried to do this alone. I thought I could figure it all out: the sales, the positioning, the financial strategy. I know and understand the business concepts of it all, but I never had to be the one who built it, who designed it, who owned every piece of it every day until I started this business. I didn't know how to build the tools, so I did what I know how to do, and I built the support structure. I hired a business coach to challenge me and help me with the operational tools I wasn’t an expert in. I also gathered a small community of women at what we call the Founders' Table. Those two things have given me so much support: a coach who's helping me with the structure and the business and the sales and marketing and operational sides of things, giving me all of the tools and resources I need for that. A community of other female business owners where we have real, hard, honest conversations about revenue, what our business looks like, what we're being challenged by, how we're moving forward, and we hold each other accountable and cheer each other on.

Once the business side was running more smoothly, it was time to work on me! I hired a personal trainer, not as a reward but as a requirement, as an investment in myself for showing up the same way for me that I do for everyone else, because just as you can’t pour from an empty cup, you also can't run on an empty tank, mental capacity, physical capacity; they both matter, and they both take work. I hired a housekeeper and a mobile groomer, so now all I have to do is open the door and hand over the leash, and my dog comes back bathed and groomed. (If you have a doodle in your family, you understand the struggle is real). As far as a housekeeper, it just means that every other week, I now have a completely clean house that took me zero hours to accomplish. It takes one task off my plate, freeing me up to do what my business needs.

The biggest truth I've learned and I'm still learning is that building the business isn't the hardest part. Building the version of yourself that's ready to build it is the real work.

You know your craft. That part you can do. But you're going to have bad days and bad weeks, and you have to keep showing up anyway.

If you golf, you know this exactly. You can have the worst round of your life and hit one shot that makes you book a tee time for next week. Because you know what's possible. The muscle memory is there. You just need enough reps for it to happen more often.

That's what year three feels like. A lot of hard shots. Enough great ones to know this thing is real, that I love doing it, and that I'm going to keep showing up for myself and for every client I work with.

The people I work with don't need more HR. They need someone who knows their business and also knows HR really well. Someone who can ideate and talk through the hard stuff (M&A, the fast growth, employee issues), the things nobody planned for, and help build the people infrastructure that keeps it from falling apart. That's what I do. And I love it.

This newsletter exists not because I needed another place to post. It exists because the conversations that actually matter, the what it takes to build something real, what breaks, how we fix it, how we keep going, deserve to be said out loud. I'm going to write about it here every week. With honesty, with directness, and occasionally a well-placed expletive when the moment calls for it. (Sorry, Mom).

So come along with me, and let’s get LOUDER!

LOUDER is published weekly by Progress Amplified. Reply anytime. We read every single one. [email protected] | progressamplified.com