A conversation with Rachel Anzalone, Strategic Growth Consultant. Rachel's journey from growing up in the poorest county in New York State to managing 350 people in the restaurant industry to building a thriving entrepreneurial career is a masterclass in following your energy rather than a predetermined path.
What if success isn't measured by revenue milestones, but by satisfaction—the beautiful integration of impact, profit, and pleasure? In this conversation, Laura Rotter sits down with Rachel Anzalone, a sustainable growth advisor and satisfaction strategist who helps purpose-driven entrepreneurs build businesses that honor both their mission and their wellbeing.
Rachel's journey from growing up in the poorest county in New York State to managing 350 people in the restaurant industry to building a thriving entrepreneurial career is a masterclass in following your energy rather than a predetermined path. After reaching her breaking point working grueling hours in corporate hospitality, Rachel discovered that the "hustle harder" mentality doesn't have to define entrepreneurship—and in fact, it's often what burns entrepreneurs out fastest.
This episode is essential listening for any woman entrepreneur who's tired of choosing between success and sanity, impact and income, ambition and ease. Rachel shares her revolutionary framework for building sustainable businesses that integrate three critical elements: meaningful impact, healthy profit, and daily pleasure. Whether you're just starting your entrepreneurial journey or ready to redesign an existing business that's draining you, this conversation offers a blueprint for creating work you can love for the long haul.
Rachel Anzalone is a sustainable growth advisor, thought partner, and satisfaction strategist who guides purpose-driven entrepreneurs to expand their impact and profitability without compromising wellbeing. With 25 years of diverse business expertise spanning entrepreneurship, corporate leadership, and digital marketing, Rachel has developed a unique approach that blends strategic excellence with soul-aligned satisfaction. After spending years in the restaurant industry managing hundreds of employees and opening multiple locations, she pivoted to building her own wellness business and eventually evolved into supporting entrepreneurs behind the scenes with marketing strategy, operations, and coaching. Rachel has worked with leaders across the personal development, holistic wellness, and mindfulness industries, and once found herself directing a video shoot in the living room of Lisa Nichols from The Secret—a full-circle moment from when she first discovered the Law of Attraction. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs—especially women over 40—build businesses they can sustain and enjoy for decades, not just years.
💡Success in chaos doesn't mean chaos is sustainable: Rachel thrived in the high-pressure restaurant industry precisely because she loved being busy, challenged, and in constant change. But thriving doesn't mean it's sustainable—knowing when to walk away from what you're good at to preserve your wellbeing is crucial.
💡 The path isn't always linear—and that's okay: From art school to philosophy to international studies to restaurant management to holistic wellness to online business coaching—Rachel's winding path eventually came together to create her unique expertise. Trust that your experiences are building toward something, even when you can't see the full picture yet.
💡 Heart-centered businesses need heart-centered operations: There's often a disconnect between what conscious entrepreneurs teach (mindfulness, balance, holistic living) and how they run their businesses (hustle, grind, maximize productivity). True alignment means bringing your values into every aspect of your business—including operations and team management.
💡 Satisfaction beats revenue as a success metric: Rachel worked with multimillion-dollar businesses that were less profitable and less enjoyable than smaller boutique businesses. Real success isn't a specific dollar amount—it's the integration of meaningful impact, sustainable profit, and daily pleasure in how you're living and working.
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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment or financial advice. It’s for informational purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.
Laura Rotter
What if success isn't about hitting six figures or seven figures, but about waking up each day actually enjoying the business you've built? In this episode, I talk with Rachel Anzalone, a sustainable growth advisor with 25 years of business experience who went from managing 350 people in the restaurant industry to building a soul aligned entrepreneurial practice.
Rachel shares why the biggest trap for. Purpose-driven entrepreneurs is bringing the corporate hustle harder mentality into their own businesses and her revolutionary framework for integrating impact, profit, and pleasure. So you can build something that lasts. If you've ever felt like you're choosing between success and sanity, or if you are an entrepreneur who's tired of grinding, this conversation will change how you think about sustainable business.
Growth. Listen in.
Narrator
Welcome to Making Change With Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves. Now here's your host, certified financial planner, Laura Rodder.
Laura Rotter
Welcome Rachel to the Making Change With Your Money Podcast.
Rachel Anzalone
Thank you so much for having me, Laura. I'm excited to be here.
Laura Rotter
I'll start like I always do with the question, Rachel, what was money like in your family growing up?
Rachel Anzalone
Money in my family, I would say the underlying theme was that there was always just enough and there was never anything extra.
I would say my mother was. Excellent at budgeting, at stretching a dollar at making sure that we had everything we needed. But there was never, you could never have something just 'cause you wanted it. And there was never any, there certainly wasn't a surplus at any point. And I grew up in upstate New York, Western New York state in, in this poorest county in New York state.
And so what I realized after living there was that. I didn't know that there were people out in the world who had money, that it just was not a part of our reality. It wasn't a part of the reality of the community that I lived in. I certainly never would've described myself as poor. Yeah. Because there were people who had less where I lived, but then when I left and realized.
That we were living, that we weren't, that there were people out there in the world in our country, but even two counties over that were having a very different reality around money. I realized I had a lot to learn.
Laura Rotter
Thanks for sharing that, and often hear that from people I interview and from clients this sense that.
Rachel Anzalone
Didn't know that there was all this wealth out there. And I think that's the benefit because we humans we're comparing machines. Yeah. And it's only when they started doing Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And then of course, just. The mega wealthy that are always in the news that we suddenly are, were aware that there's a different level of wealth than what we were exposed to.
And I, I sometimes look back on childhood where my wealthy friends were the ones that maybe had a row house and it's. Close to an apartment that just wasn't an expectation that people should have huge homes and vacation homes on.
No, not at all. I remember in the eighties, a family, you could tell a family was wealthy because they had a second refrigerator in the garage that had name brand soda in it, not the grocery store brand.
You think, wow, they really have money.
Laura Rotter
I love it. Yeah. You said we, when you were talking about your family of origin, how many siblings do you have?
Rachel Anzalone
I have an older sister and a younger brother and yeah, and I grew up in a rural area next door to my cousins, and so family was everything and, and our life and our entertainment was banging around in the woods.
Laura Rotter
I love that. Yeah. I, it's, it's so unique nowadays, frankly, to give up surrounded by family. Everyone lives all over the country, so it's wonderful to hear that you did. And so were there expectations of you when you were growing up? Always like to watch the continuum of growth, so expectations around education, around earning money.
What was…
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, I think the, in that era in my parents having knock gone to college, the expectation was that you would go to college and that was the way to a better life, and that was the end of it. Not when I went back on that. I think we didn't really know what we were going to do with a college degree.
There was no real like strategy around career path or anything like that. It was just this sort of, this. Maybe naive idea that you just get a college degree and then you can have a better job and you can have a better life. And the, I would say the expectations were like. Pretty limited as a community.
It was like, I remember being in high school and conversations with guidance counselors and things like that. It was like, are you gonna be a teacher? Are you gonna go work in business? And the business training was like learning how to type and do bookkeeping. It was pretty limited. I didn't have a lot of examples around living in a small town.
It's not like there were. People with a wide variety of careers. A lot of people's parents worked in factories or worked in sort of office working jobs that were very ground level. And yeah, I went to college thinking that I would get a degree and then I would get a job. And what I found out was that is not how things work.
I had a little, I had a lot of interest in a lot of things and I transferred colleges a couple times and by the time interesting. I started out in art school. I was really interested in philosophy. At one point I changed schools and I doubled ma double majored in art and philosophy. While I was in there, I was having this, I was working part-time I had was paying my own bills.
I knew I was getting a lot of state funding, but I knew at the end I had to pay back some loans. I really was paying for myself to go to college and the whole time I was like, what am I gonna do with this degree? How am I gonna. What job am I gonna get after this? And eventually changed to an international studies major.
I studied political science. I thought, uh, like I said, a wide variety of things I was super interested in and, and when I graduated, I think I was two months away from graduation, and I went into the guidance. Office, like career services at the university to find out what do I do next? And she said, you should have been doing internships for the last two years.
And I thought, how could I have been doing internships? I had to work, I had to pay my bills. I had to, I couldn't go do a free internship. That wasn't a part of my reality. And what I found when I graduated was that I could make way more money working in the restaurant business than in anything that I had a degree in.
I, if I wanted a job of my degree, I had to go back to ground level $8 an hour or whatever. And I ended up working in the hospitality industry for, gosh, probably 10 years after that, where I learned so much about leadership about. Finances, business, finances about marketing. And um, that work really was the foundation for everything that has come after that.
What an interesting winding road. Very winding. And it didn't, the winding didn't stop there. The winding has continued, but now you know, there's a point where you go, where you realize, oh, all those things have come together to do. The unique thing that I do now, which is. I have this very creative perspective and, uh, that, that philosophical approach to the big picture and the business experience and marketing experience and leadership development.
And I studied and worked in holistic health for a time period. So weaving all those things together is the work I do now.
Laura Rotter
I just wanna take a step back if I might. So first of all, you described going to multiple schools. Were they all in the New York area? Were they all state schools? So you, your
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah.
Tuition was reasonable and so, oh yeah, absolutely. I started at a two year art school in Utica, New York, the Munson Williams Proctor Institute, and then I went to, yeah, two SUNY schools after that.
Laura Rotter
Okay, so you stayed local and then?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah. It was as though the hospital hospitality industry happened to you, but how did that come up?
Laura Rotter
Did they recruit on campus? Did you have a relative that told you about it? What was the catalyst for landing in that field?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, so the town I grew up in, super small, very rural. The next town over was, had a ski resort in it and the 15 minutes, the next school, the next town was. Restaurants and a resort and a couple hotels.
And so when in high school to get a job, that's where you went and that's what you did. And so I had done that in high school. I did a little bit in college. I had, uh, during college I started. For a coffee company that was a startup. And very quickly like I, in those college years, I just started taking on more and more responsibility with that coffee company and the owner really took me under her wing and taught me marketing.
And so I was really hands on in building. Over the years that I was there, we opened more locations and I was writing training programs and. Learning the marketing side of things and operations, and I was involved in so much that really just, I happened to just get a job at a coffee shop and then I did pretty well and I kept getting promotions and opportunities to work in other aspects of the business.
So then when I left that I I there, I went to work for another restaurant company around, I would say, I think I was 20. 6 27 maybe. Somewhere around there. I went to work for a restaurant company. I got a job as a manager in one of their stores. It was a franchise, and very quickly got promoted to a general manager and then to a district manager.
And by the time I left there, it was about three and a half years. I had, I was running seven restaurants. I had a, my own district. Opened five restaurants in a very short period of time for them. I was overseeing seven restaurants. I had about 350 people on my team. Wow. And working there is where I really learned how businesses make money.
Hmm. Also how to develop leaders. When you're working in that industry, most of the people who are there aren't there because they're so excited about the work. So figuring out how to get people to be excited about the work and to be invested in the success. When it wasn't the thing that was like their heart's calling, I really learned a lot about how to motivate people and how to build a team and how to develop people into, yeah, the next position and the next position.
So it was an incredible experience and one I never would've set out to do, but now I get to take that experience and, and support entrepreneurs in other spaces with all of that experience.
Laura Rotter
Yeah, I, I would agree with you, Rachel, that we only, looking back, do we get to see Yeah. The story, if you will, we're meaning making machines.
So we've, you're looking back and creating meaning from your professional history. You are also clearly, as you talk about it, motivated and excited, I'm wondering if you could describe. What would it, what it was about you that, that had you had this be a very good fit for you?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, that too.
Laura Rotter
I think you see maybe looking back like, why did I do well at that? Because I, to be busy. Plenty of things could keep you busy, I'm sure.
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah. But I thrived in that environment where there was a lot going on. It was a little bit chaotic. I had to be really on my game when I was working in restaurants. It was like. When things would be so busy that you knew if one more thing happened, it could, but it would all fall apart.
That was my peak moment. I was just, I was on my A game and it was constantly changing. Every single day was different. Every moment and every hour was different, and I just, I thrived in that and I think. You know, just part of who I am, one of my gifts is the ability to look at stuff and go, oh, that could be a little bit better.
Oh, we could change that. We could do this. It would be easier if we did this. And so I would just show up with that. When I was 15 or 16 and I was working in the cafeteria at the ski resort, I'd be like, what if we move the cups over there? Or what if we just like, how could it be a little bit better? And so I think that's what really allowed me to be successful.
Is that it was constantly challenging and I felt really excited about it. I would often get to the point once I figured out how to do a thing and I was doing it for a while, I'd get bored real fast, and then I would need to get the next promotion in order to stay engaged.
Laura Rotter
It's really wonderful self insight, Rachel. Yeah. That, yeah, that you need change and challenge. You wouldn't be happy sitting in an office doing the same thing every day.
Rachel Anzalone
I did that one time for a few months and it was the worst few months of my full life.
Laura Rotter
So what's the progression? You said you were your late twenties, you were in that particular position for a couple of years, and so share with our listeners how you moved to where you are today.
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, I, so I was probably, I was in my mid twenties when I got introduced to the law of attraction. Which was in incredibly transformative. And also I was introduced to network marketing in my mid twenties, that multi-level marketing. And through that, I never did that as a business.
Laura Roter
Like I always, and that, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Rachel Anzalone
Oh yeah, absolutely. You, I'll say names of companies and you'll be like, oh yeah, like our bond is one. Goodness. USANA was the one that's. So many people were in. It's a supplement company. It's a, the network marketing, direct sales. There's a lot of different names for it these days. Yes. Um, what was interesting for me, I never went that route in terms of like actually building a business there, but what it did was introduce me to the world of personal development, because that's such a heavy part of that world is like.
Is learning how to live and operate differently than most people are. It's like, how do I build my own wealth? How do I build my own? I like design of what life looks like. How do I create something on my own versus going and getting a job? And so it, and it's all about leveraged income and, and building your expertise.
As an individual, very different from going and getting a management job some place, and so I learned so much or I was introduced to Worlds of Personal Development, like I said, the law of attraction, all of that, and I was learning all of that. Through the time period that I was working for that restaurant company, and I had always been very interested in holistic health and wellness from, as a teenager, was dabbling with yoga in some things.
And I was just, I had this idea that maybe I would do that as a career at some point. And so I was studying and learning along the way. And I reached the breaking point with the business where I, where the restaurant business, where I was like, I can't keep doing this. This is not how I wanna spend my days and my life.
And I left to start my own holistic wellness business and I had no idea what I was doing.
Laura Rotter
So when you say you. You reached your breaking point. What comes up for me, so if you could clarify, is yes, you get, you thrive on chaos. Yeah. And change though there is a point at which it's no longer. Helpful.
Rachel Anzalone
Helpful.
Yeah. It's not sustainable. And what's interesting is that the parallels between that world and the way it worked there and what I see a lot in the entrepreneur space, it's not sustainable. And I'm sure, uh, if you've, anybody who's worked in a corporate environment knows that the more you do, the more they hand you to do.
There's that catch 22 that the people who maybe aren't that. Exceptional. They skate by and the people who are really good just keep getting handed more and more. And yeah, I was just working in this environment where the expectation was six days a week. You worked often from 6:00 AM until 6:00 PM A lot of days.
I used to call Saturdays my half day 'cause I would leave at. Two, but I started at six, so it was somehow was not, the half day was eight hours instead of 12. I don't know. And yeah, it was super demanding and I, and it just wasn't sustainable for me. There's lots of people who do it. For a long time I couldn't.
Keep going in that way. And that was my breaking point. And then like I said, I, what I've seen in the years since then as working behind the scenes and coaching and supporting entrepreneurs is like so many people take that ethic that comes from the corporate world and from the capitalism, the capitalistic society that we live in, of just like more and more hustle, produce, and they bring it into their own businesses.
And then they're doing it for themselves, but they're grinding away in a way that's not sustainable. And so learning how to do things differently is. Where I like to help people.
Yes. We had a pre-conversation and I'm listening to you now and just shaking my head because it so resonates that often say, when I started this practice, I was the worst boss I ever had.
Laura Rotter
Mm-hmm. I'm curious, you then say you, you found both the law of attraction and, what'd you call it, network marketing.
Rachel Anzalone
And yeah, it was, people call it, it's network marketing or multi-level marketing. Multi-level marketing.
Laura Rotter
Yeah. So when you say you found it, you were exhausted one day and Googled it, you were…
Rachel Anzalone
Oh, no, I had, as happens, people approach you and they're like, Hey, I have this business opportunity for you.
Like those kind of conversations. And so that was a little bit earlier on and I, it was like they shared information with me that just made me go, huh. Okay, that's different. And so it just, it was this idea of, they talk a lot about not trading hours for dollars. And I started reading books like Robert Kiyosaki and starting to understand things like.
The value of the information that you hold. And so I was really early on in the transition into what we now call like the information economy, but it was probably around 2009 or so where I started to learn. And I remember reading this stuff then and thinking, what do I know that anybody that I could ever write a book or what do I know that anybody would ever listen to me?
Talk about, I don't know. And of course I was like 25 at the time, right now, 20 years later, I'm like, oh, okay. I, there are five books immediately. But I remember I was starting to learn about that stuff and it was just such a different world than this world I'd grown up in where you became a teacher or you got a job doing bookkeeping for somebody or that kind of world.
It was completely different. It sounds like also just an introduction to entrepreneurship.
Laura Rotter
Yeah, to entrepreneurship, to coaching, to online business was like the whole online business world was just getting started at that point.
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah.
Laura Rotter
And where did the Law of Attraction fit in?
Rachel Anzalone
I think it was The Secret came out that year.
And people were talking in the, in that community, people were talking about the secret and it coming out, and Abraham Hicks was something a lot of people were studying and talking about. And I remember buying the Abraham Hicks CD package, like however many CDs were in there. I think it costs $40. I put it on a credit card 'cause I didn't have $40, and I would listen to it over and over and over again.
And it was like I was listening to foreign language tapes. It was like some point, maybe I'll start to understand this, but it was just so completely different from anything that I'd heard before. And what's really fascinating is that, so that time period when The Secret came out and I started listening to Abraham Hicks.
Was so foundational and I carried the practices and learning, continuing to learn that for years, and I think it was in 20 14, 20 15, I was working for myself. There were some different iterations of that. I started doing some behind the scenes work, helping other entrepreneurs in their businesses. So I was coaching and I was doing some marketing implementation and strategy and stuff like that, and one day I found myself standing in Lisa Nichols living room.
Lisa Nichols was in the movie, the Secret. Oh. I didn't know there was a movie. Okay. Oh yeah, there was a movie. It came out I think in 2009. So I found myself, I'm standing in her living room directing a video shoot, which I have. There is absolutely no logical reason in the world for me to be in this place doing this thing.
And I had learned about this secret about the law of attraction from that movie that she was in, and then suddenly I'm standing in her living room. Helping her create marketing materials. And I just had this moment of, whoa, how did this happen again? You can't. I could never have planned it. And like I said, there was no logical reason that I would end up there, and yet I've ended up in some pretty crazy places over this last 10, 15 years.
Laura Rotter
Wow. That's a great story. Thanks for sharing that. Rachel, you've been, you've been on your own with your own business it sounds like, for quite a while. About 15 years. Wow. And so how did you make that decision? You were exposed to these things, but then they're taking the leap, especially when you grew up culturally with a certain expectation.
Could
not have been easy.
Rachel Anzalone
No, it was probably easy only in that I was very naive. Like I said, I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know what I didn't know. So I had, I had a couple of friends who had started businesses years before. One of them had. Started a holistic wellness business where she started by just, she had the little counter in a gym and she was selling supplements at the gym and then she was doing consultations and then she moved into a little space and then a bigger space.
And a bigger space. And so my, I was very interested in holistic health and wellness, and I was studying that stuff. And when I reached this point where I thought, I can't. Keep working for other people in doing this work I've been doing, I wanna go do my own thing. That's what I wanted to go do. That was the, probably because it was really the example that I had that was very clear.
I can start a business where I have a store and I'm selling supplements and I'm doing consultations, and I set out to do that. Having no idea what that costs to create. Yeah, no idea. And so I fully bootstrapped it and I hear people talk about bootstrapping and, and people have different definitions of that.
My version of bootstrapping was like, I can get through one month and then. I will figure out how to get through the next month and then I will figure out how to get through the next month and, and I opened a small wellness center. I had it for, gosh. Two years, maybe three. So that was my first venture into having my own business, was being a holistic wellness practitioner.
I had a small space, I was renting out to other practitioners. I was selling some supplements to my clients. I was doing consultations, I was doing reiki sessions. And yeah, that's, that was my first venture into it. I made very little money. You have savings? Was there? I had a little bit. I was, yeah, I had a little bit of savings and I was just, just making enough to get by during that time period.
Laura Rotter
So you were covering your expenses?
Rachel Anzalone
I was covering my expenses, yeah.
Laura Rotter
Okay. And you were in Western New York still?
Rachel Anzalone
‘Cause at that point I was in near Cleveland, Ohio.
Laura Rotter
Interesting.
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah. I'm not even gonna, how did, that was my ex-husband took a job in Cleveland. We moved there and Yeah, and I ended up opening this little wellness center.
So I did it for a couple years and, and my set, I, I learned in the restaurant industry, if I ended up, if I was doing the same thing too frequently and it felt repetitive, I would get bored pretty fast. And what I realized was that. I actually loved building the business more than I loved being in the business every day.
And surprising. Yeah. And I was doing the holistic work, but because I had this business and marketing background, a lot of my peers were asking like, how did you do that? And how did you have a website and how are you getting articles published in the newspaper and how so I pretty quickly was started coaching other people.
Their holistic wellness businesses. And, and so when I, my ex-husband and I got divorced, I had to make the decision, am I gonna stay here and keep doing this business? That didn't feel like it was the right thing for me. I made the decision to leave, leave Cleveland. And what I, it took a little while 'cause that.
Post-divorce fog is a little rough, but probably about six months or so I transitioned into just doing the online business stuff and helping other people in their businesses and just found that I loved that. I loved having multiple clients, having things be project based more. I was working with people all over the country, sometimes all over the world.
I had clients sometimes over the years in England and Australia and really helping them to strategize how to grow their business and, and to do it in a way that feels aligned for them. And it was all in this personal development and holistic wellness industry. So I was supporting people who were doing work that I really believed in and helping them to grow their businesses.
Laura Rotter
That's great. I can really hear the energy in your voice of how, again, so something different every day meeting. Yeah. People frankly, similar in a way. Obviously I'm doing a different kind of work, but, and I had four client meetings yesterday and everyone's in a different place in their lives and things are changing for them and it's, yeah, it's interesting work.
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah.
Laura Rotter
So was there a continued evolution to where you are today? Or that is where you are today?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, absolutely. Over that time period, so let's say it was like 10, 12 years that I was doing this, as it's been 10 or 12 years since I started doing that, there has been an evolution of me. The more and more people I worked with, the more I saw what was happening and saw patterns and experimented with how to help them in better ways, in different ways.
And so one of the things that I saw a lot that I feel like is really at the heart of how I serve and support people is that. Especially in this heart-centered world, so I know you're a mindfulness teacher in the mindfulness world, meditation world, in the world of yoga, holistic wellness and personal development, all of that.
If we lump all of that together, the work that we are teaching or the work that the leaders in those spaces are teaching very often does not align with what. Is taught in the business world. And so if you're operating a business where you're teaching about a way of being, a philosophy, a way of life, but you've, the only examples you ever seen of how to operate a business are in contrast to that, then what happens is there's this disconnect.
It's like. People are on stage and they're talking, or they're teaching and they're sharing in these really beautiful, meaningful, soulful, heart-centered ways. And then they go in to the business side of what they're doing and it's like they're running. A tire shop or something. Yeah, it's they've, because there hasn't been examples of how do you lead in a business and make it profitable and financially sustainable in a way that's not based on.
Maximizing productivity to all the sort of traditional things that we see in business. And so often what I would see is those either like super strict, intense, the employees or the staff are not having an experience that resembles anything like what the person's teaching out in the world. Or the person's so committed to what they're teaching out in the world that they think they're gonna run a business on like Woo and good vibes.
And then it's just this chaos. And so that doesn't work either. So there has to be a place for those things integrate where you have some structure. But simultaneously we have the soul and the spirit and the energy, and so I feel like what we're evolving into now in this time period is away from some of those more masculine, traditional structures into.
A more feminine community focused, sustainable way of operating. And so I, it's, for me, it's really, we don't know exactly what that looks like yet. It's an experiment of trying things and testing things, and I believe it's unique to each individual because it has to be, for you as a business owner, it has to be what's so aligned for you, and that's gonna be different for every person.
Laura Rotter
So Rachel, that statement seems to beg the question of how are you doing it for yourself and your business?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, my business, I, my one of, or at least in its current iteration, who knows what'll come down the road. It's very, in terms of team. Staff, the what it requires to do. My work is very small and I like it that way.
I think that's one of the things that the world of entrepreneurship. Has done a disservice to a lot of people by saying or instilling this idea that you have to go bigger and bigger and somehow that's better when a lot of people just want a business that they can en, they wanna enjoy it. They wanna enjoy the work they wanna do every day.
They want to be making good money. They just, they want it to be enjoyable and going bigger does not necessarily increase the money you take home. And it definitely doesn't increase necessarily your enjoyment of it every day. So having a really good understanding of what it is that you wanna be creating, I think is the most important thing.
And for me. It's a boutique business. It's a business where I have a small number of clients that I work directly with that I'm hands on with them. I'm in like, this is my favorite thing to do. Let's get on Zoom. Let's talk about what's meaningful. Let's talk about what's important. Let's figure out where, what are the best ways for you to get where you wanna go and what that could look and feel like.
And so it's me and I have a virtual assistant who helps me in so many ways. And, and the way we work together is. I listen to myself. I don't push my, it took me a long time to get here, but my philosophy is I am not gonna force myself to the point of exhaustion to get something done. And so sometimes that means a podcast comes out on Wednesday instead of Tuesday.
Like, who cares? I'm the only one who would care. Sometimes that means emailing somebody who's waiting some, waiting for something from me and saying, Hey, I need another 24 hours. And I think that when we, if we just communicate then, then all those things are fine and great. It means that I focus on what's the highest priority instead of trying to do all the things and be in all the places.
It means I have a, like a very clear focus of what it is that I'm gonna get done on at any given day. And I'm not trying to squeeze in more than that. It means my workouts are scheduled and everything else. Goes around that like Monday, Wednesday, Friday at nine 30, I am at the gym with my trainer. End of story.
Nothing else gets scheduled in that time. It means that when I'm hungry, I stop to eat. It means that I take my dog on a walk when I feel like it. If some of the things that I've just learned to do for myself is we tend to try to push ourselves through things and if I feel that tension building that it.
Let's just get up and take a walk for 10 minutes and come back to this. Whatever it is, it can wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And one of the things that's super important to me is my va, who is in the Philippines, is brilliant and amazing and caring and thoughtful and capable, and. Supporting her in the same way that I support myself is really important to me.
And so she knows if she emails me and says, I cannot get to this today. Okay, we'll figure it out. We'll get to it tomorrow. There's that pressure of there's a deadline and we have to hit it no matter what. Just doesn't exist and. That I feel like is something super important to me. Having supported so many people behind the scenes in their businesses, and also having been an employee in so many places, how many times have you seen the owner?
Taking their vacations and spending time with their family, and they're having these amazing, incredible experiences, but their team's not having that, their staff isn't having that. And in the world of freelancers, this sort of fractional world that we live in, where you can hire people for gigs, for individual jobs there, I have seen a lot of people treating those.
Employees as disposable. If you can't get it done, I'll just find somebody else who can get it done maybe for less money, and so that. To me is super important, is the nurturing of the whole team. I have people that I've worked with over the last 15 years that I have referred clients to repeatedly that I, when I get a new client or a new contract, I bring people with me that have been great graphic designers and developers that are like, these are my people that I rely on and, and I wanna make sure that they're taken care of as well.
Laura Rotter
That's beautiful. Beautifully said. And I wanna reflect back to you, Rachel, what you said about how. You give yourself grace. It sounds deceptively simple. Yeah, and part of my work, I read a book a number of years ago, I think during the pandemic called Overwhelmed and Over It written by this woman, Christina Relo, who then has a community I've been part of.
That was the first time that I realized how many of my time pressures are totally self-created from getting this podcast out to getting my newsletter out to, oh, I've got to respond to the client, and really building boundaries and recognizing if the newsletter doesn't get out on Thursday, nobody cares but me.
And really, I, I guess she, she refers to it as flowing time, like, yeah. And now I schedule on my calendar, like you said, I have an hour. This is the task I'm getting done because we could get overwhelmed by our to-do list. I have an hour, I'm gonna try to get five things done and I've come to learn. To give myself enough time, perhaps too much time, rather than the other way around.
And it's a continual practice when you're actually running a business, as I'm sure.
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think that what is, there's so much nuance in the learning of. We, I think culturally like for, we like extremes, and so it's either we hit every D deadline or we hit no deadlines. Right. And I love your example of the newsletter.
It's, if you can't get it out on Thursday, nobody cares but you, and if you got it out on Friday, that would be fine. And. You also have to be careful to not go. And so suddenly it's been two months and I haven't put one out. Right? And it really is about mindfulness. It really is about under knowing what your priorities are and being committed to your own values, that if you let two or three months go by, you wouldn't feel good about that either.
And so. Giving yourself grace and also knowing what's a priority, which means if it didn't get out one week, that's okay, but if it didn't get out two weeks or three weeks, now I need to do something differently in order to make sure that I'm actually hitting, I'm actually taking care of my priorities, or I need to assess this and go.
You know what? Clearly I'm not that committed to getting this out, so either I need to scrap it or I need to change, or I need to figure out how to be committed to it in a way that actually works within my schedule. Yes.
Laura Rotter
Yeah. So Rachel, can you please share with our listeners exactly how you work? What's the process if they're listening and say, I wanna reach out to this woman?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, absolutely. My work really is growth strategy. It's thought partnership, and it's what I call satisfaction strategy. So I believe that to build a sustainable business, it needs to have three. Factors that are, I don't think anything's ever in balance. So they're dancing together all the time, but it's a combination of impact, profit, and pleasure.
And what I do with my clients is help them to assess where they're at in those three areas, usually one. It's getting a lot of attention and two are getting neglected. And so we assess where you're at with those and then figure out a plan to allow you to build a business that's gonna be sustainable, that is really satisfying to you, that you can do for a long time.
So we don't work with people who are like, I wanna build this and sell it and get out. I work with people who have a purpose-driven business where they wanna be able to do the work and impact people's lives over a long period of time. What's the impact mission? How are we moving towards that? What is the profitability, which is a lot of the operations, the infrastructure, the strategy of the business that's gonna allow you to both pay yourself and grow the business through.
Revenue through reinvestment in the business, and sometimes also then to put some of that towards the impact that you wanna have. And then also this pleasure piece, which gets neglected a lot when someone's really focused on a goal. What's your day-to-day life like? And how does it integrate with your business and what are the decisions we make for the short term in terms of what time we're investing in the business versus our personal life, and what does the long term look like and how can we make our day to.
A life be enjoyable so that we're not hustling be for that someday when we'll get to enjoy it. And so it's, there's this, a mix of the business, the marketing and, and the personal development and wellness piece. And so I do that. With private strategy intensives and one-on-one mentoring with people. Those are my primary areas, and I have a, I call it the impact profit and pleasure accelerator.
It's a two day. Luxury experience where like we, we spend two full days together fully immersed in these areas of articulating and getting really clear on what your impact is, what the life experience, the legacy you wanna leave, the pleasure of your day-to-day, and then how to design your business around that and how to move forward in a way that's gonna work for you.
Laura Rotter
So that's a one-on-one?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah.
Laura Rotter
Day experience?
Rachel Anzalone
Yes.
Laura Rotter
And do you otherwise sell packages or it's an hour at a time? How do you work with people?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, so the private intensives I do half day or full day. The mentoring, we, there's some variations of that, of the frequency of calls and all of that stuff, but we do quarterly stra strategy calls and an ongoing, like weekly or biweekly mentoring support.
And then the, the two day accelerator that, that I talked about, not currently doing any group offerings, but that is to come. So maybe by fall 2025 group opportunities as well.
Laura Rotter
Thank you.
And Rachel, would you say there's people you gravitate towards working with again, obviously in the past, holistic health people?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah, I think my, I started really in the world of the holistic wellness and personal development and all of that. What I think I'm really drawn to and the people who tend to be drawn to me typically are women. Generally, I would say over 40 because there's a foundation of life experience that has happened that I think makes them a good match for.
For my work. There are people who've had a business for a little while, like they've been doing it. They have some foundational things in place, and now it's okay. Now how do I grow this and not lose myself? Or how do I optimize this and not lose myself in the process? Or they've built a business that really maybe is substantial and significant and they know there's something more for them.
And they wanna explore what that looks like. What's the next thing or what's the, the legacy project that they wanna work on? And I would say I'm industry agnostic, although I really am all about working with people who are very passionate and purpose-driven and wanna make the world a better place. So not typically people who are like selling widgets or tires, but people who really have a desire to improve people's lives.
Through the work that they do in the world.
Laura Rotter
Love hearing that. So now we're coming to the end of our conversation. My final question that I like to ask is, Rachel, how has your definition of success shifted Hmm. Over this time, and perhaps even your definition of financial success?
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah. I think when I started in the world of entrepreneurship, my definition of success was.
Attached to dollar amounts, it was get build the six figure business and then it was like build the multi six figure business. And then what I found is that I was supporting people who were had multimillion dollar businesses. Who were often less profitable than the people who had much smaller businesses.
Wow. And often were enjoying it less, or were living a way that I didn't wanna be living. And so over time, my definition of success and what I help hope to help my clients see is that it's really, for me, it's about satisfaction. It's about am I doing work that feels impactful and meaningful? And am I getting to enjoy my day-to-day life, the way that I wanna be enjoying it and be spending time with the people I wanna be spending it with and having the experiences I wanna be having, and am I making enough money to do all that in a way that's sustainable for the long haul?
And so there's no longer a specific dollar amount attached to it. Now it's really about the experience that I'm having.
Laura Rotter
Love that.
Rachel Anzalone
Yeah.
Laura Rotter
So is there anything you wanna make sure that you say to our listeners before we end our conversation?
Rachel Anzalone
I just, I, first of all, I love your podcast. I've listened to a handful of episodes and I really enjoy them.
I hope your listeners are getting so much out of these conversations and I would love to connect anybody who wants to connect, find me on Instagram at Rachel Anzalone or LinkedIn. Also, just my name Rachel Anzalone and you can check out my podcast Pleasure and Profits at at my on my website, rachel anzalone.com, and I look forward to.
Connecting more in the future.
Laura Rotter
Me too, and I'm gonna put all your information in the show notes. Thank you so much for making time for our conversation, Rachel.
Rachel Anzalone
Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.
Narrator
Thanks for listening to Making Change with Your Money Certified Financial Planner. Laura Rodder specializes in helping people just like you organized, clarify, and invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning.
Go to www.trueabundanceadvisors.com/workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey. Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.