Erin Austin: Hello ladies. Welcome to this week's episode of hourly to exit. I'm very excited about today's guest, Rochelle Moulton, who we've had here before, and we have a wonderful new conversation about what's been happening lately with Rochelle. Welcome

Rochelle Moulton: Rochelle. Oh, thank you so much, Erin.

Rochelle Moulton: I'm really excited to be with you. Well, 

Erin Austin: I am very excited about this conversation. So many exciting things have been happening in your business. and I love to catch up the audience on the new stuff. But before we get to that, would you

Rochelle Moulton: introduce yourself? Oh, sure. So I'm Rochelle Moulton and I help soloists turn their expertise into wealth and impact.

Rochelle Moulton: And that's a new way for me to say what I do. So I love having it roll off the tongue a little easier than it sometimes has.

Erin Austin: It's fantastic. We are definitely going to have a conversation around wealth, but I think it's helpful to kind of back up and talk about, where you started in your career and how it's evolved to get

Rochelle Moulton: you to where you are now.

Rochelle Moulton: Sure. So basically grew up in big firm consulting, which is not unlike big law. there's a partner track and you either get on it or you don't. And so I was there about 10 years in one firm and I made partner at a really young age and I was like, wow, I've made it, this is awesome.

Rochelle Moulton: And then it was the first time it dawned on me that Oh, no, this is just the first step. Now I have to do all this other stuff that I wasn't necessarily interested in doing. I found it challenging in those days. And it's frankly still true. There weren't as many women. there were probably about 20 percent female partners when I made partner at that firm.

Rochelle Moulton: And so those numbers haven't changed a whole lot. and eventually I just decided that I wanted to indulge my entrepreneurial side. I was tired of hiding who I was of not saying what I meant or what I wanted to say. And so I left and with a partner, I started my first consulting firm. And, I had that for six years.

Rochelle Moulton: And our original strategy with that, which I know you'll appreciate was we never expected to sell it except to employees. So the idea was, it would look like the partnership that I came out of where we would sell to other employees and they would take over. We'd have partners and that was the model. and we didn't do that.

Rochelle Moulton: instead we sold it to Arthur Anderson. And the reason I'm mentioning this now is because there, it was really an interesting experience selling like I'd never sold a business. I never started a business. So there was a whole lot of learning and looking back now, a whole lot of touching this idea of what is wealth.

Rochelle Moulton: What does that mean? How do I negotiate wealth for myself? and so anyway, I sold that and I went to work with Arthur Anderson, working primarily with their tax partners, teaching them how to sell better. So I worked with a lot of like really narrowly focused experts. Enron happened. So I started my second business, which was an individual coaching business.

Rochelle Moulton: And it was interesting. It wasn't really what I wanted to do at the time because I was focused on corporate executives. And at that time, coaching was seen as something that you do just before you fire somebody. And the kind of coaching that I was doing was for high performers. And I wasn't interested in, you know, Taking somebody who is failing.

Rochelle Moulton: I wanted somebody who was already performing well and getting them to an even higher peak. So uh, yeah. So after that I took my last job job, which was in a fortune 500 company and they kept firing my bosses. So by the time I left, I was running a national consulting practice. And then in 2007 is when I started doing what I'm doing now, which is working primarily with people in the consulting and creative agency space, helping them to grow their business.

Rochelle Moulton: And originally I worked, I would say maybe 50 50 with partnerships and small boutiques and individuals. And now most of my practice is with soloists.

Erin Austin: Great. Well, that brings us up to where we intersected. I mean, we kind of circled each other for a while, but I was a happy participant of your inaugural soloist women's mastermind that you did last year.

Erin Austin: And so, you know, 1 of the things that has. Fascinated me and it still fascinates me because I haven't quite gotten it right is the listening to a process when you're thinking about, like, talking to a new group of people or introducing a new offer, like, how you kind of figure it out. Like, what direction you wanted to do when you started focusing a little bit more on soloists.

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So I knew it's one of those things where you have like an inkling that you need to change something or you not even need, you want to change something. Like it's just kind of speaking to you, but it's sort of below the surface. And I just had this sense based on what was going on in the world at the time.

Rochelle Moulton: I wanted to do something for and with women. I didn't know if this would work. I, you know, When you look at consulting, it's still pretty much 75 percent male in the independent space, at least at about 25 percent female. I never really thought about, do I serve men? Do I serve women? I serve consultants who want to grow their businesses.

Rochelle Moulton: I was agnostic. , but I felt like there was an opportunity to help women that were not achieving what they wanted to in a different way. So, the idea behind the listening tour was I wanted to see like, are there Other women like me who hadn't joined any women, women's groups, like I literally hadn't.

Rochelle Moulton: I mean, over the years I have, but not when it came to this, like, I just didn't think of gender as a differentiator. And so, I pulled a group of people together and when I say group, I talked to them individually, but I found some women. Thank you, Erin, who would agree to give me some, you know, straight feedback.

Rochelle Moulton: And this idea I had was a mastermind. And the reason I was thinking it was a mastermind is because there's so much in the heads of women that doesn't get shared, right? It's in there. Or if it's in a group with men as well as women. We as women often tamp down what we have to say, or we get silenced a little bit too readily.

Rochelle Moulton: So what I wanted to test with the listening tour was, you know, first of all, what are the problems and challenges that these women had? What have they tried? To, uh, solve them, you know, what worked, what didn't work, what were their frustrations and if they could wave a magic one, I always love to ask the magic one question, if they could wave a magic wand, what would, what would that look like, what would change?

Rochelle Moulton: And so, and as I went through that process, I, you know, I had an idea of what this thing would look like. And then at the end of the conversation, I'd say, okay, so if it looked like this. , and I can't remember now if I, I had a, I had a number in mind, but I didn't, I didn't share the number and I said, so what would you pay for this and you know what would make, you know, that it was a good thing.

Rochelle Moulton: And one of the reasons I'm really glad I did it is one. They gave me. The sales copy for the landing page, because they told me stories. They told me experiences. They told me things that had happened to them. They told me what they did not want. Like they were so clear about what they didn't want. And I use that language on my website.

Rochelle Moulton: , and then the other thing they told me is, and I love this because this is part of what monetize their expertise. They said, you're too low by half. And that was kind of the consistent message. So I doubled the number and there were still, I think, two people who thought it, I should have doubled it again.

Rochelle Moulton: And, but it was like, I, yeah, I can see I'm going to double it. I'm not going to quadruple it. Let's start with the double. And we had a, you know, we had a good first cohort. So what I loved about the listening tour and what, why I like it for people in our kinds of businesses in our kinds of space is that it allows you.

Rochelle Moulton: To not sell. I mean, I was not there to sell. I was there to listen and they taught me so much. And then what was really interesting is they did allow me to use them as a sounding board when I put together the first sales copy to say, does this sound like what you said? And a couple of people are like, I don't like.

Rochelle Moulton: That number, like the, there was a, there was a revenue requirement for purchase. So like, no, that's too low. I think it should be higher. So yeah, I definitely recommend listening tours and it really gave me the confidence. I was still scared. I was nervous about it. I'll, I'll, you know, I'll be honest. , but it gave me the confidence that there are women out there sort of like me.

Rochelle Moulton: Right. Who wanted this certain kind of experience and hadn't found it yet.

Erin Austin: All right, yeah, yeah, I was very inspired by your listening to our both, you know, the way that you conducted yours and the way you explain it and it's been a struggle for me because I, you know, like you said, it's not a sales pitch, but there's somewhere in the back of my brain that kind of feels like, you know, I'm asking a lot when I ask for the feedback.

Erin Austin: And so that's something I'm still, I'm still working on my ability to kind of, you know, do more than a couple where I, then I kind of get like, okay, this is, this is, I'm asking for too much. And,

Rochelle Moulton: and, uh, you know, it helps with that. I used to do a lot of, like client interviews, client slash customer interviews.

Rochelle Moulton: And so in those cases, I'm I wasn't with the firm. I was independent. And so I would ask them everything and it was so comfortable because I, yeah, it wasn't me. And so I think sometimes if, if we can not make it so personal and think of it as, Oh, well, what if I were interviewing for my company, but it wasn't mine?

Rochelle Moulton: What, how would I approach it differently? Sometimes that helps to kind of get out of our own way. Well, maybe this goes

Erin Austin: to the issue of soloist women and, and having them be their own cohort is as opposed to with, with men. And did you find, and do you find that women have just different challenges about selling themselves and putting themselves out there than men

Rochelle Moulton: do?

Rochelle Moulton: I feel that's such a loaded question. I'm almost afraid to answer that. I mean, the general answer is yes, I think that's true. I mean, it's, it can be different for individual men and women, of course, but the, the challenges generally that I see with, with women are that they often. I shouldn't say they, we often have responsibility for a big chunk of the home stuff and it's so wrapped up in our identity that it becomes really difficult to make powerful decisions because we think we don't have any power.

Rochelle Moulton: Oh, we need to have this. Time off, we need to be flexible. We need to do this. So we can't ask for as much as someone who isn't. And I like to turn the tables on that and say, actually, we can ask for more when we're in that situation. So that's, that's the biggest difference. The other one. , but let me just tell you a quick story of something that literally happened is 2 things happened in the same day, which is probably why they, they struck me.

Rochelle Moulton: So, I had a, a male client who was getting ready to publish a book, and he was going to look for blurbs, you know, from, you know, famous quote unquote people in his circle and he's like, oh, who. Is going to be delighted to get this from me. Like he, he just looked at it. Like, of course, they're going to want to help me.

Rochelle Moulton: This is good for them. Their name is going to be in my book. And then there was another woman. Kind of same situation. And she said, I'm going to get anybody to book anything. That's the difference, right? There. Right. Got one just assuming everybody wants to join in and somebody else going, how can I do that?

Rochelle Moulton: So sometimes that's the difference, but again, you know, it doesn't always apply to individuals. There's plenty of very powerful and outspoken, strong women in this

Erin Austin: space. Absolutely. Well, you mentioned, uh, wealth. And so, as, as the listeners may know, and you know that when I started, think beyond IP and the early exit podcast, it was to help, you know, put more wealth in the hands of women, because I think wealth in the hands of women can change the world.

Erin Austin: And, but that there was this, Bias against kind of the term wealth and that we think of greed and wealth sometimes in the same sentence. And certainly we have these examples in popular, you know, in in media of. Greedy, wealthy people. And so maybe there's a little bit of negativity attached to it, but obviously, you know, wealth is, you know, is power is a voice is choice or options, like all those things that are benefits.

Erin Austin: So how have you found the wealth conversation in the context of women?

Rochelle Moulton: Well, it's interesting. This is, it's fairly new for me to use the word wealth and I pondered over it and what's. Let's be honest. I agonized over it for weeks using that term because I felt like it was so laden with, uh, judgment and it's, it could be wealth the way you described it.

Rochelle Moulton: It's a bunch of greedy billionaires who, you know, are not worried about the rest of the world. , there's other people who think about, well, wealth is not something that I want. Wealth is like money is bad. Money's the root of all evil, kind of like that, that sort of thing. , I think that the reason I started using the word wealth is revenue wasn't enough.

Rochelle Moulton: In, in this ethos that I'm trying to create, because we, yes, we need revenue, but it, in, in this community that I'm, that I'm building, it's not about working the maximum to get the maximum revenue. It's not about that, like bro hustle model. It's about, having enough free time to do whatever it is that.

Rochelle Moulton: Make it brings you joy, whether that's your kids or a hobby or you're donating your time, you know, in another part of the world, whatever that looks like. , and then the flexibility. So it's free time and then the flexibility and how you use it. So you don't have to be seated at a desk. You don't necessarily have to be, you know, at any one spot in any one, you know, city town, you can be wherever you want.

Rochelle Moulton: And so the way I look at wealth. In this context is that we each define our own version of wealth. So what I might describe as wealth to me might be a lot less money than you make. I might have a lot more free time, or it might be a lot more. And I keep it and invest it for my future, or I give a bunch of it away, support the causes that really matter to me.

Rochelle Moulton: And you said, that about putting more wealth in the hands of women, I mean, that's my underlying, you know, big idea slash revolution in this is I do want to see women have more money and more power. It's in my voice just cracked when I said power. I want to say that again. I do want women to have more money and more power because studies show when women have more money, we use it to the benefit of humanity.

Rochelle Moulton: We use it for our families. We use it for our communities. We use it for a big idea. We use it globally. And that's, yes, that's what I get goosebumps whenever I think about that. Yes,

Erin Austin: absolutely. That is, I mean, and it is the thing that. You know, personally keeps me going as I continue to, you know, kind of figure out the best way to help women achieve that.

Erin Austin: And, you know, the way I looked at it. I mean, you definitely have this balance of, you know, time and flexibility and kind of various elements of wealth. And I will say that mine was. More one dimensional and literally in terms of,  the traditional way we think we define wealth, but that for people to, to stop thinking just about income, because it's because it's because it's very limiting, right?

Erin Austin: Like that it's just about the, you know, the cash that flows in, but it's, what are you building? You know, that was the conversation about building assets and having something that can, you know, run without you, or that perhaps you can sell someday. And that so long as we're selling our time, we can never have more than income.

Erin Austin: We can't create, you know, true wealth with that. And so that was, you know, my point of view, talking about the creation of assets and using our expertise to create IP.

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny. I had a real taste of the physicality of that a few years ago, just before the pandemic, I started a property business with a friend of mine and we bought our first property and we just sold it this year.

Rochelle Moulton: I literally built some wealth with that, and it was really kind of cool because it's physical. You can go look at it. It's not like it's a bank account. It's in this case, you could argue it's my IP. It was really more like my vision and my like. Arms. Yeah. Some of the work that I, that I wound up doing myself and it, you know, took some time, but I could literally see it and see it change and see the value grow.

Rochelle Moulton: And there's something really powerful about seeing you build wealth for yourself and inside your business. It's, it's very. Empowering, I guess.

Erin Austin: I agree. And so, well, you know, real estate is real property as opposed to, you know, but, but I liked it, but I like to make the analogy to real property. Whenever I'm trying to explain, I'm always with the analogies, you know, to try to help make concrete intellectual property concepts.

Erin Austin: And I like to use the example of real property. You know, when, when you think about, you know, can I just. Use something just because it's available on the Internet, you know, kind of like somebody's pasture that, you know, seems like it's free. I can walk on it and use it and borrow it and and, uh, uh, hunt on it or do whatever I want to do on it.

Erin Austin: Like, no, that's somebody owns that and you need permission to use it. And the same thing applies to. Intangible assets as well. It's the exact same concept. You don't just get to use other people's property just because you can stumble upon it, you know, in the wild, so to speak. And so, yeah, make sure people understand that intellectual property is a real asset.

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. And I think, I don't know if you find this to be true, but I find with some of the, of the clients that I've worked with, they don't. Really realize what's there, right? They know. Oh, yeah, I know this stuff and it's almost like we discount, you know, our genius, right? The things that we're really good at and the things that we've developed, unless it's like, just staring you in the face, like, maybe it's an assessment tool or something like that.

Rochelle Moulton: But, yeah, we tend to undervalue that. And I think. It's it's across our industry. I, you know, I suspect it's just because it's not usually a physical product. So we think about it differently, but we need to, to change that.

Erin Austin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what, what, what plans do you have for your soloist community? Like what soloist women community

Rochelle Moulton: like?

Rochelle Moulton: So I just started the community in May we're in the last day of almost the last day of September as we're recording this. , so, so far what it's been is a place for women who are, soloists in the expertise space and B2B. Right to have some really interesting conversations and to have them as a group.

Rochelle Moulton: So there's people in there who are just starting and there are people who are earning, you know, a half a million dollars. Plus. So it's a mix. And then the other thing that I did based on feedback from the original listening to her. Is that I also divided the group by revenue. So there's the first hundred thousand.

Rochelle Moulton: These are the people who are working to make their first hundred thousand in their business. There's a hundred thousand to two 50, which is kind of another sort of demarcation line. And then there's 250, 000 plus, and those are semi private spaces. Cause everybody only gets invited to one cohort and you can graduate.

Rochelle Moulton: Right. That's the beauty of it. You can go to the next one up. And so what I wanted was I wanted a place for women at varying stages to help each other and be able to ask questions. But I also wanted there to be a private semi private space where, you know, you're talking to other people that are roughly at your stage of evolution.

Rochelle Moulton: So that's where we are now. My plan going into the fall is to have probably monthly get togethers where Either we've invited a guest to come in and talk about something really critical to our businesses, you know, like intellectual property as an example, and the 1st, 1 that we're going to do is going to be more of a get to know you.

Rochelle Moulton: I've got. I have a little, technique in mind for us to be able to do that. Cause it's harder, you know, as you know, virtually it can be harder to really get to know people, but, because there is a curated process for this, I've spoken to every single woman that's in the group. So I have a sense of kind of who they are and where they're coming from, where in the world they live.

Rochelle Moulton: , that's really interesting mix as well. And so I'm, I'm. Looking to kind of get them to help each other and then we'll go from there. Do you find it difficult to jump between the income tiers? Like, do they have significantly different challenges and how you work with them?

Rochelle Moulton: You know, it's interesting. I generally, yes.

Rochelle Moulton: Now, most of my like one to one clients, very few are under a hundred thousand because of the way I structure my offerings and their cost. , I've worked with some, but yeah, they are different and it's, but it's different in a cool way. Like the, the earlier ones, what they're trying to do is they're trying to figure out how do I make this business sustainable?

Rochelle Moulton: And I've just arbitrarily chosen a hundred thousand dollars. I mean, you could have a sustainable business at a much lower. Revenue point than that, depending on what you want to create and how much time you want to spend. A lot of these women have been doing this for, you know, a year to maybe two or three years and they're figuring it out.

Rochelle Moulton: And so their questions are actually, they tend to be pretty deep and structural. Like just as an example, one of the conversations that came up recently is, okay. They, actually this came from your guesting on soloist women. I just remembered that it came exactly out after that, that aired. And they said, okay, I know I need to create something else beyond just my time, but how do I do it?

Rochelle Moulton: Like I'm so busy, I don't have any extra time. And what I, what I encourage them to think about in this case, I would not have said the same thing if they were in a different revenue category, but I said, all right, what you need to do first is prove that you have a business. That it's sustainable, that you're going to have clients you need to, to, or buyers.

Rochelle Moulton: You need to test out these things before you worry about how you're going to leverage them. Let's figure it out first and let's, let's not borrow trouble yet. Let's do that next after you get here. So that's different. I think the other thing that's different is the, the 100 to the two 50, especially. You know, I'd say about maybe 175 and under, usually they're at the point where they're like, what I call the gilded hamster wheel.

Rochelle Moulton: They're working a lot. They're getting paid very well. You know, when, when we earn those, that kind of money in our businesses, we usually take home a lot of that, right. It's not like having a shop or a storefront. And so they, they, are kind of stuck on that. Wheel and they have to figure out, okay, now I know that I don't want to do this thing that I've been doing, and I want to do more of this thing.

Rochelle Moulton: So how do I leverage that? Am I going to create a thing for a lot of people to buy? Am I going to change how I price these? Am I going to productize some things? So those are their questions. And then the two fifties and up, I mean, you know, they're just, They got it figured out. They've got the basics, but what happens is, and it's really, it's fun.

Rochelle Moulton: And I know nobody's going to cry for these kinds of problems, but they, they really are interesting problems. It's you get to this point and you say, okay, I think I can help more people. How can I do that? And remember, this is a soloist community. So how can I do that without hiring employees? Do I hire contractors?

Rochelle Moulton: Do I hire it all? How do I do that? And so they're grappling usually with those kinds of questions. Or sometimes what they've done is they've said, all right, created a great business, really happy with it. Now I have this personal thing that I really want to do now. And so what I want to do is I want to get my business running so it can kind of run without me so that I can focus on this revolution, this big idea of something I want to change in the world.

Erin Austin: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. And all of those. , stages, you know, it reminds me of when I have someone come to me where they want to create some sort of, you know, licensing program out of what they do and they do it not because they're at capacity, but because maybe they're what I want isn't selling that well.

Erin Austin: So they want to take what they're doing and create this other revenue stream. But similar to your. Advice to your 1st year, like, we'll 1st figure out, you know, make sure that your services are working and that they are they provide the desired result and that there is a demand for them. And then when you bump up against the impact or capacity issue.

Erin Austin: That you're, you know, you're hired your clients have that's when you, you know, you've proven, you know, your methodology or your service, whatever it is, you know, you have happy clients, you're at capacity 1 way or the other, that's the time to, you know, build these other things. Not when you're still trying to figure out the business.

Erin Austin: Yeah.

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Cause I mean, we put so much pressure on ourselves, you know, and it's, there's only so many things we can tackle at once. And so let's tackle the things where we're going to get the best result, the biggest bang for the effort.

Erin Austin: Right. Yeah, I love that. So for 2024, what do you see? What do we need to worry about?

Erin Austin: What should we be happy about?

Rochelle Moulton: Ooh, that's a big question. , you know, it's interesting because I mean, who knows what the economy is going to do? That's kind of the big question. And I just had a long conversation with someone yesterday who is in the startup space and the startup space people have just had a heck of a year with the real tightening of venture capital money.

Rochelle Moulton: And so people who serve that space have really been impacted. So, and I was asking her, so what's your. What's your Projection like, what do you, is it going to be better, worse, the same? And she said, I think it's going to be close to the same, but there will be some lightning of money available for the right ideas.

Rochelle Moulton: So I guess the question becomes, and you know, I'm not an economist who knows what the answer is, but I, I, I look optimistically at 2024 for soloists in particular. And here's why one is that I think jobs are getting tighter. And we had a lot of people, especially in the tech sector that were let go this last year, who started businesses, even if they didn't want to, if they hadn't planned to,  you can start a soloist business without a lot of capital.

Rochelle Moulton: You just need enough to cover your own expenses, you know, and if you don't have a laptop already, okay, so you buy 1. , but there's not a lot of expenses around this. So I think what will happen is more and more, especially women will continue to do this. The other thing that's happening, which, uh, you know, it's been a long time since I've been an employee, but I'm kind of appalled by it is the corporate CEOs who are saying, come back to the office because we need to count noses, we need to know that you're here.

Rochelle Moulton: So I think that, those of us who have toyed with the idea of having a business. At some point are going to get fed up with this sort of, you know, paternal system of having to show up in ways that, you know, don't serve us. , and especially women that, you know, are dealing with the brunt of the the responsibility for childcare.

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. And childbearing. Yeah. Yeah. So I do believe that's happening. , but I also think that, yeah, I'm, I am an optimist by nature. , the world is, is doing some funny things right now and I don't feel optimistic about that. It's not like funny. Haha. Or. No, no, I don't want to get into political conversations, but yeah, there's, there's, I mean, we have wars, we have, you know, we have a lot of things happening right now that, you know, are not, are not great, but we have women who have always been strong, resilient.

Rochelle Moulton: And I believe that we're going to have more of us that start businesses. And I will even go out on a limb and say, we're going to make a lot more money. One of the things that I was just blown away by in the first mastermind is how accomplished these women were and how they figured out how to piece their business so they could make it work.

Rochelle Moulton: We have in the, the, there was a minimum. revenue requirement. And so we had women who were working, I think the, the one who worked the least number of hours on average worked 15 hours a week. So ladies, I'm telling you, if you're not already doing this, this is possible. And by looking at how we monetize our expertise, how we charge for it, how we, uh, we build it, we can make a lot more money.

Rochelle Moulton: Then we are making now,

Erin Austin: maybe one of the challenges will be if there is a kind of a fresh wave of new consultants and the market is how do you stand out from the crowd? Well,

Rochelle Moulton: that's, you know, at the end of the day, that that's it. I mean, that's and that's why the whole this idea of expertise and the word I use is authority is building think of it as market authority versus command and control authority, this idea of building market authority in a niche.

Rochelle Moulton: And what happens is that as when we first start a business, a lot of times we've been in a corporation or an agency and we go, all right, I'm hanging out my shingle and we take everything that comes to us that first year. And it comes fairly easily often because, you know, especially in the U S everybody loves an entrepreneur and we want to support you and we send you work.

Rochelle Moulton: And then the second year. That's not happening so much. And in the 2nd year, you've had a year's worth of experience under your belt and you say, oh, I loved working with this kind of person or this kind of organization. I did not like doing this. You figure that out and you gradually think of it like a funnel where you keep getting narrower and narrower.

Rochelle Moulton: And eventually, you know, you find that niche and that niche is where you really can start to build not only your expertise, but you can build public authority where other people are reading your stuff like you've done, uh, with hourly to exit and your whole concept. It's people come to you and you become a recognized authority.

Erin Austin: Which is daunting to some people, but you just need to start. I mean, it was for sure for me to, you know, having worked. In, in corporate, uh, for a very long time, working with, with the B2B experts and, uh, and needing to do, you know, content marketing and things like that and getting out there. It's, it takes some time to, it takes a little bit, but that first step, you know, it gets, it gets easier.

Rochelle Moulton: That's for sure. Well, I think that we all look at whoever the recognized authorities are in their, in our spaces and we go, Oh, well, I could never do that. Well, you don't have to, right. And you just. Start to your point, just start and you'll figure it out. It will take you places that you didn't even know you would go.

Rochelle Moulton: Absolutely.

Erin Austin: Absolutely. I love that. So have we talked about your new podcast? I don't

Rochelle Moulton: think we have it. Oh, I guess we, I guess we didn't. Okay. It's, it's, it is pretty new. So it's called surprise, surprise, soulless women. , I think today we released our fifth episode, so it is fairly new. , what I wanted to do was I wanted to find a.

Rochelle Moulton: I shouldn't say find, I wanted to create a space where we could hear some stories of soloist women. Yes. I wanted to hear the advice and the expertise, but even from the experts, I still wanted to hear their story. Mm-hmm. and uh, like the one that just posted today is the story of someone who created a seven employee agency, a creative agency, and downsized it back to being a solo.

Rochelle Moulton: And I, I heard the story inside the, the solo swimming community. And I said, Ooh, would you be willing to talk about that? I think this is so interesting. So I want, I want women to know what's possible. And that's the idea behind this. And I, I co host another podcast, in the space. , and we do a lot of, you know, do this, do that.

Rochelle Moulton: This is how you do it. And And I was less interested in that for this one. I really, I think we women, especially, we love the stories that we can learn from and talk about and,and some of the connections that have been made, between some of the listeners and the guests that have happened so far on five episodes have been terrific.

Rochelle Moulton: So I, yeah, I hope, I hope people will listen to it and, and give me feedback too. Yeah. Yeah. Something that's not

Erin Austin: there you want. Absolutely. Absolutely. A hundred percent recommend both of your podcasts. So very. Great information on both of them. So as you know, this is the hourly to exit podcast, where we talk about building a scalable and saleable expertise based business.

Erin Austin: And I have a particular soft spot for building intellectual property assets. And so you've alluded to it somewhat as you talked about, uh, the clients, particularly in the soloist women community, but what types of issues do you see your clients having around intellectual property? Like, how are they thinking about it?

Rochelle Moulton: Okay, that's a good question. , I think the 1st thing is a, is a, is a small thing, but it's, it's important. And that is, I alluded to it earlier is that we don't think about our intellectual property as an asset. We just, we think about, oh, well, we know this because it comes naturally to us. We've studied this for years.

Rochelle Moulton: We geek out about it and that's not an asset. So that's, I think the 1st thing is that awareness of what it looks like. , I think that the other thing is. It's often in, in with clients, it's often that they're looking at, they're doing consulting, speaking and writing. And so there's books. And I think a lot of people, when they first think in the consulting space, especially about IP, they think either I have a methodology that is uniquely mine and, or I have these topics that I want to put.

Rochelle Moulton: In books that I want to write about in books. So that's tends to be where their mind goes. , and the methodologies are interesting because they're often, they're often not that really special, right? I to say it another way. It's like, it's, we all think our methodologies are special. And if you're a consultant, and maybe this is true with attorneys as well, if you're a consultant, we love to tell you about our process.

Rochelle Moulton: Well, first we do this, and then we do this. Because we're fascinated by it, but clients aren't clients are interested in outcomes now where, the methodology can really become valuable is when it's around something like, I always think of it an assessment is the first thing. Like, I have a number of clients who charge on the high end to big organization. So maybe, you, you don't work with them for less than 150 but they have a 50, 000 assessment thing, you know, and that's the black box and their IP is most definitely. in that. And so getting them to really think about that, I think is a challenge, which is really why I love the work that you're doing and why I send people over to you and to listen and read your stuff because yeah, I think it just takes, it takes a minute to think about it.

Rochelle Moulton: And it is a different way. To grow, right? Because I can grow by selling my own time. I can grow by like I did in my 1st company by leveraging employees can hire employees and I can bill out their time. , I can grow by developing IP, whether that's a book or whether that's a methodology or it's a black box and I maybe I can figure out how to license that.

Rochelle Moulton: in order to make it grow. Maybe I can figure out it. Maybe there's like a train the trainer piece of what I do. , the thing that I find so interesting is we don't feel like sometimes we like glom onto this, an idea, but we don't really know how it applies to our particular business. Like, Oh, I want to do train the trainers.

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. But the thing you want to train them on is something they only use once. Right. So that's probably not. Yeah, that's probably not a good 1 to do that. And so I, I, I see those as the, as the primary

Erin Austin: challenges. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And, yeah, the, the, you know, constantly beating the drum, you know, that is everywhere, you know, when you're an expert, every time you use your intellect.

Rochelle Moulton: Yes, yes,

Erin Austin: exactly. So you agree. Thank you. A couple more questions before we wrap up, you know, as we mentioned, you know, creating a more equitable economy is 1 of the goals of the hourly exit podcast. And so I love to introduce the audience to other organizations that are helping to do that.

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Oh yeah, there is.

Rochelle Moulton: We were talking about this before the show. So the organization is called Hero Women Rising. It's based in both the U S and, uh, the Congo. And the founder of this is a woman named, uh, Nima Namadamu. And I actually heard her speak in Los Angeles, I think maybe five or six years ago when she was here. And. I had goosebumps.

Rochelle Moulton: I had tears. She was one of the most amazing women I've ever had the pleasure to listen to and certainly to meet. , she has a number of mobility issues and she's she is supporting women in the Congo. Now, I, you know, the Congo is a place that is rife with rape, not just of women, but also of the earth for the valuable metals that go into a lot of technology products.

Rochelle Moulton: And she created a number of different ways for women to band together and learn how to use a computer. And how to create businesses and create income for themselves so they could get away from some of the problems that are endemic in a very difficult part of the world and she, would travel between Congo and the U S to raise money.

Rochelle Moulton: And, you know, she's, it's not easy for her. It's, you know, many of us can get on the plane and not really think about it. She had a lot of accommodation issues and she was so powerful and strong and giving. And yeah, I just get goosebumps just thinking about it. So I heard her speak. And my husband's, one of my husband's clients was one of the sponsors and he said, Oh, would you like to meet her?

Rochelle Moulton: And my first reaction, no, no, I couldn't, I couldn't. And he's like, come on, come on. And so I, I went up and met her and we had a brief chat and she was even more powerful one to one. So Oh,

Erin Austin: that's wonderful. Well, we will have the, uh, the link to the website, uh, in the show notes. So I hope everyone will check that out.

Erin Austin: And so, uh, where can

Rochelle Moulton: people find you? Well, the easiest place is my website, which is Rochelle Moulton, M O U L T O N dot com. And there are links. There to, uh, the solace women community, which you, uh, can apply to join, uh, to the two podcasts and to the mastermind, which will have been, uh, completed when this comes out, but we'll have another one in the spring.

Rochelle Moulton: So feel free to take a look

Erin Austin: at that too. So is there a waiting list that people can get on or application process? Okay. There's an

Rochelle Moulton: application process.

Erin Austin: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, this has been wonderful as always, Rochelle. Thank you again for coming on to the hourly active podcast and sharing your wisdom.

Rochelle Moulton: Thank you so much, Erin. This was fun. Yay.

Erin Austin: All right. Thanks guys. See you next time.