720 Betsy Cerulo:

One of the joys of entrepreneurship is the freedom to build a company that lets you work with the people you want to work with – and the company culture you want to build. So, what is the ideal for you? Do you know? Because the environments we create for our teams start within you as the founder, says my guest today – Betsy Cerulo, a recruitment expert and advocate for diverse, inclusive and empowering workplace cultures.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur and executive search expert on a mission to provide exemplary human capital management services and inspire workplace excellence and equality for her many government and corporate clients.

Betsy Cerulo is the CEO of AdNet/AccountNet, Inc., a company she founded in 1990 to provide professional staffing and executive search services. Along the way, she came out as a lesbian, and advocates for LGTBQ and women’s rights and diverse, inclusive cultures as the co-founder of Maryland’s LGBT Chamber of Commerce.

Betsy will be here in a moment to share her inspiring journey, plus practical advice on hiring, firing, and creating great cultures. First…

If you’ve worked in corporate America, chances are you’ve experienced a toxic work environment of one kind or another at one time or another.  And if you’re on a startup team, you’ve probably experienced the impact just one problematic team member can have on morale, your productivity, your growth, and your odds of success.

In a startup or small business, a poor hiring decision carries a huge cost; so too if a founder or executive team fails to motivate and empower team members around a clearly articulated mission and vision.

So how to hire the best people? How to make sure they are in the right positions and have the tools and support they need to drive the results you want? And when to let someone go? Because one of the most common mistakes founders can make is ignoring their intuition and waiting too long to say goodbye to anyone who isn’t what Steve Jobs called an A Player. Another mistake is to assume your employees know what you expect of them, without clear guidance, support and accountability to help them grow and succeed.

So today we get into the ins and outs of hiring and firing, and how to build a diverse and inclusive team culture.

Betsy Cerulo is the CEO and founder of AdNet/AccountNet, specializing in placing subject matter experts with Accounting/Finance, Human Resources and Legal. It also excels at identifying and managing teams of individuals who provide Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance Services, as well as Reasonable Accommodation assistants who handle administrative tasks for government and corporate employees who are blind or deaf.

Betsy’s company is 8a, LGBTE and WBE certified, and Betsy is the Co-Founder and Past President of the Maryland LGBT Chamber of Commerce, which was awarded Rising Star Chamber in 2018 by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Last year Betsy co-founded the Maryland LGBT Foundation, a nonprofit that works to activate, educate and mobilize the LGBTQ+ community to access opportunity and wealth generation. She also serves on the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce certification committee, which verifies that eligible businesses are majority owned by LGBT individuals to allow businesses to better compete for corporate contracts.

Betsy is a passionate activist pushing for equity and equal rights for women and all diverse groups. Betsy is the author of Shake It Off Leadership-Achieving Success Through the Eyes of our Labels and a children’s book, Miss Crabapple and Her Magical Violin, which tells a story of how the quietest child in a group can light up dreams when we ask questions. She is also a contributing author of two compilations Women Living Consciously and Keys to Conscious Business Growth.

Today we talk about Betsy’s entrepreneurial journey, what it took for her to come out and the impact her advocacy is having on hundreds of businesses, plus what it takes to build a great corporate culture —– and much more.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Betsy Cerulo (Cer-ooou-lo) and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Betsy, welcome to Wings.

Betsy Cerulo:

Hi, Melinda. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m excited to talk to you about how fast workplace cultures are changing. Post COVID, we have these remote hybrid models, we have a lot of generational change, we have all this talk of great resignations and whatnot. What is the biggest change that you see coming?

Betsy Cerulo:

Flexibility is something that small companies, large companies were forced to incorporate through COVID. So, we had a workplace model that was mostly on site, and we got to see in the staffing and executive search business that we could be remote. And we have a hybrid scenario, and that’s really because we have this fabulous office space, and I have a lease and we need to use it until such time that I either renew or not renew the lease. I think workplaces really need to be flexible and they really need to be aware of employees needs as well as the needs of the organization. So, you have to do it collaboratively

Melinda Wittstock:

So that flexibility really benefits women. I think one of the things that’s really kept women either out of the workforce or not able to fulfill their full potential as leaders and executives all of that is the lack of flexibility. So this is great news.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes. It is. And I’m happy to say that there are more men. I know my son is the stay-at-home dad and I see it more and more, especially through COVID where men have stepped into the role in different ways. And I see now that more comments from men that they can really appreciate what their wives or spouses or the moms have had to handle-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, gosh.

Betsy Cerulo:

… That you have to juggle so much more. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. And I think this is something that holds back a lot of female founders as well, because not only are we kind of acculturated to think we have to do it all, to have it all, just even in a work scenario. But when you add everything else, we’ve got to look good doing it, Right?

Betsy Cerulo:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you put a layer of perfectionism on that.

Betsy Cerulo:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s one.

Melinda Wittstock:

It holds women back and it stops them from playing a bigger game. How are you seeing the role of women and what women are going for? Are they going for things with more confidence now as a result of this new flexibility? Or are there still things holding women back from like a recruitment standpoint, from knowing their value and really going for the jobs that are available?

Betsy Cerulo:

Well, women are asking louder for what we need. And I have definitely seen the shift, especially with hiring, where women are being more vocal in the negotiation process. In my company, we are also being very vocal with negotiating compensation with our customers, especially if we sense that there might be something different offered if it were a woman or a man. So I think the MeToo movement and just so much more that has really highlighted the inequities for women, and especially women in diverse categories, that we’re just not taking it anymore.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah.

Betsy Cerulo:

And we are interrupting it. I know as a business owner, when I’m in the company, even if it’s virtually and there’s kind of an ‘off the cuff’ comment where normally I wouldn’t have said anything or I might gasp, now I say, that’s not appropriate. And that doesn’t feel good. I don’t like what you said but let me tell you why it impacted me. So now I don’t just say, look you dope, I didn’t like what you said, I’ll educate. And I’ll say, let me tell you why this impacted me. And also, I want to highlight is, if a guy was in the company of your daughter or your granddaughter and said that, how would you feel? And usually when I put it that way, the guy is like, wow, I get it. I wouldn’t want my daughter or my granddaughter to hear somebody say that. So, you know what, it’s got to start with you.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And it is education.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

It really is. It’s being willing to do that all the time. I’m curious, you mentioned MeToo. And what was really interesting about that, in the context of say a female entrepreneur, such as myself, who is in the technology space has to go out and get funding from venture capitalists and whatnot, where that number hasn’t moved. It’s still 2% of available venture capital for businesses that are inherently scalable. They have a big enough market and a scalable solution to become billion-dollar businesses, which is what VCs want. And there was a dip after MeToo, where a lot of investors wouldn’t even take meetings with female founders. And so it’s sort of rebound. How do you see that aspect playing out? We must advocate for ourselves and educate, but it can also rebound. So how does a woman, whether she’s a female founder in that context or a woman who’s really climbing a corporate ladder deal with that?

Betsy Cerulo:

You don’t back down. I believe for women… There’s going to be a point, the evolution of the generations. So the baby boomers, there’s obviously a shift. I mean, I’m older too. But a lot of the men that are at the helm, there’s going to be a shift where they exit the workplace or they retire. And there are so many outstanding programs in universities around the world that women are really expanding their presence in technology, engineering. I could go down the list. It is written nowhere, other than someone’s assumption that a man has better ideas than women.

You know what I mean? So it really comes down to, especially with technology and venture capital, that if a woman presents a product that is in need, people are going to pay attention to it. And I just don’t think we should give up, just because there might be a temporary blip or if men are a little bit afraid, and as they should be, because they need to behave, then maybe this is really the paradigm shift where there has to be a different conversation out there about how women are treated at the table, if you will, at the negotiation table.

Melinda Wittstock:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). You know what’s interesting? This is my fifth business now, and we’ve gone from a team of me to 22 right now. We’re just closing of our funding round. We’re about to go and hire a lot more people. And it’s so interesting in the context of a startup, which is a very different culture from a corporate, there’s a lot more risk, but there’s a lot more reward. And there’s just a lot of constant innovation, constant change, a level of unpredictability and a necessity for speed. That doesn’t fit for everybody. But I notice a difference between men and women, in that context, where the women tend to be roll up their sleeves and be the doers.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Whereas the men tend to gravitate towards, I’m just going to direct people. And I don’t know, is that just inherently in her DNA or something? Because as I build this I want women to be able to understand leverage better and be able to delegate and do all those things that come naturally to men and on the male side I’m like, oh, for goodness sake, can you just get it done?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah. Well, men are used to sitting in that role because they have been in that role forever. And I think too in the workplace, women have been afraid to call that out for fear of retaliation or being held back. When I’m in scenarios where I see that happening, I’ll kind of tongue in cheek, look at my colleague and say, what’s the matter? Your leg is broken?

Betsy Cerulo:

And they’re like, oh. And yeah, what makes you think that I have more arms than you? So you want that done? You do your part, I do mine. So it’s not… If this was 10, 20 years ago, I probably have a different response, but I’m an elder, I’m at a different point in my career, I’m established, I’m confident in who I am. I have no problems to go into some of my colleagues, whether it’s on the business side or my LGBT chamber side and really, so what makes you think your time is more important than mine? And they stop, and they’re like, oh, well, yeah. So there. And I just think that we have to interrupt it. But again, for women that are in the corporate space where there could be retaliation, it may be different for you and I who have established businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. See, this is the beauty of being an entrepreneur is you are really creating your culture from scratch. And especially if you have a very fast scaling company where you’ve got to hire a lot of people quickly and how do you maintain that culture, and it starts with you know, as the founder.

Betsy Cerulo:

[inaudible 00:11:58].

Melinda Wittstock:

Right?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so given that this podcast is very much about entrepreneurship and there’s a lot of new business owners that are women that came into entrepreneurship during the pandemic, what’s your best advice for them in terms of how to build that culture from the outset and be able to sustain it as you scale your business?

Betsy Cerulo:

Well, like you said, the culture begins with us as leadership and… For me as a 32 year old company, I’ve had a variety of cultures because I’ve grown up, if you will, from my 20s to now age 60. In the interim, in the mix there was also some dysfunctional business relationships that did not support the overall culture as time went on. I can tell you that over the past two years, when I exited a very toxic business relationship, the culture shifted because I said, okay, I’m back to being a 100% business owner. The culture is going to go in the way I’ve always envisioned it, which is, in my 20s, I said, I wanted, I wanted a company where people who interacted with us felt loved and cared for. And in the early 90s using the word, love just was not typical, but I always believed that.

Betsy Cerulo:

So once I rebranded the company 10 years ago, I was really clear that this was going to be the culture. So when people came on board, I was really vocal about here’s the culture I want, here’s the kind of communication. For the most part, that went over really well. And the culture today is absolutely beautiful as a result of the people in the culture who are a demand for it. But every so often you have people that are very attached to the toxic behaviors that they brought from other organizations or from their personal history. And that doesn’t last too long in my company, because people can hide their dysfunction. I’m not saying we don’t, your personal life is your personal life, yet when some of those dysfunctions start to leak into your work life, it impacts a lot of people.

So if you’re not doing your own inner work, whether that’s behavioral, spiritual, whatever it is, it’s going to seep out. And it doesn’t last long in my environment because you can’t have open honest communication. That’s grounded in integrity, trust and accountability if you’re toxic. They don’t go hand in hand. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of work and it’s a mind and cultural shift. But it starts with the leader, yet the women out there who are starting businesses now, this is your perfect opportunity to instill it at the very beginning, and not let up on it. So if you have someone that comes along, that’s toxic, you get to decide, okay, am I going to sweep it under the rug? Not a good thing to do. Or I’m going to call it out? And either we’re going to shift it or transition that person out. They’re not easy decisions to make, but they have to be on the forefront of your leadership vision.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I’ve noticed over the years is you can have an employee who’s not say full blown toxic, in performance terms, they’re not necessarily an A player or even a B player, but they’re middling. They’re not disastrous, they’re not causing any problems per se, but they’re just in the middle. If you have a team of A players who are really amazing and giving it their all and really great, but you have just one also ran like that, it can drag everyone else down.

Betsy Cerulo:

It can. Especially when you have a small business, you can feel it pretty quickly when there’s a weak link on the team.

Melinda Wittstock:

A 100%.

Betsy Cerulo:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:

I do you think a lot of people make the mistake, and especially women, because I think we’re all… acculturated to be nice.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so it’s hard to make those firing decisions, especially when someone is not egregious. Like, if someone’s really obviously a problem, that’s not hard, but when it’s just not quite right.

Betsy Cerulo:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s tough. Women have the most incredible intuition, it’s been proven over and over and over and over again. And there’s many times that we ignore it. I’ve certainly have, for whatever reason, that doesn’t make us bad people, but we’ll have this inclination and be like, oh, maybe I’m imagining it, or, no, maybe I’ll give it another chance. And then I’ll give it another chance, another chance, another chance. As people get older, the number of chances that you dole out are less and less because you just don’t have the stamina or the tolerance to put up with it anymore. And I think that a lot of times that comes with wisdom. If I knew 20 years ago what I know today, my company would probably be in a different place. And that’s okay, it’s where it is now, which I’m so grateful for.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. It’s true. I remember, years ago, I think it was like company number one or two, there have been that many for me, where I had an employee that was okay. Yeah. You know?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

I was speaking at Harvard and I was coming back, at Logan Airport. And you know when you’re standing around in the book store waiting for your flight or whatever, and I saw a Harvard Business Review about hiring, and I just happened to open a page and it said if someone is a B or a C immediately fire them basically. And I was just shocked by this.

I had been giving this person another chance, but lots of coaching, throwing everything at it. And when I finally worked up the nerve to say, okay, this person is just not right. It’s just not working, and I let them go. I was convinced in my own mind that everybody would think I was a mean person or that horrible B word and like… All of that. And I was afraid of the retribution of my team. What happened was the exact opposite, everyone came like one by one and thanked me.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I was stunned by that. With all things, entrepreneurship is like you end up learning as you’re building the plane as you’re flying it and all the best lessons come from the tough things actually.

Betsy Cerulo:

Right. It’s interesting because when I have let people go, which is the worst part of a leader’s job, in my opinion.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It’s certainly not the most fun.

Betsy Cerulo:

No, it’s not. Especially when it’s someone who has been in your company for a while and again, you’ve given a lot of opportunities to improve, and it’s just not working, and you let them go. All of a sudden in the organization, you can feel the culture take a heavy sigh of relief.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah.

Betsy Cerulo:

And it’s the same thing with my team. Usually when it gets to that point, there will be side conversations that people will come to me and say, I liked that person, but I’m really glad they’re not here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Yeah. It’s really interesting because like… And it becomes very, very laser clear in a startup.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because every single person is not just there to do something, they’re there as an investment, they’re there to deliver a result. And so if you have a lots of people delivering results, and some people not, it’s immediately apparent. I think it can be hidden a little bit better in a big corporate culture.

Betsy Cerulo:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Than it can in a startup.

Betsy Cerulo:

In a small business, when you hire someone from a large company, there have been times over the years where that brings its own set of wonderful things. And periodically I’ve had some challenges where people are used to things get swept under the rug or there’s a different kind of accountability. And when you’re in a small business, everybody wears a lot of hats, and you have to be really nimble. And if someone on the team tries to take a shortcut, it’s the ripple effect across the entire team, and we feel it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. That culture, the entrepreneur culture is hard to teach. When you’re in the situation where you’ve got to hire people super quickly. Like I look at our financial model and will be a team of 80 by the end of the year. Sorry, just as an aside, it’s so interesting on this podcast where I always end up talking to the right woman for me in my business on this podcast at the right time, even though my calendar is automated and I have no control over it. So thank you, Betsy. You’re exactly the [inaudible 00:21:54].

Betsy Cerulo:

My pleasure because my company floats between 70 and a 100, depending on what kind of projects we’re working on. So I have been hiring and… Because we’re in staffing. So I have contractual folks working and consultants. So my internal staff, we’ve been growing and we’re going through an interview process right now. It takes us a long time to hire somebody because when you’re in person, come on site, kind of knock out interviews pretty quickly. Virtual, we take more time. And I have people have one on one, and then we have group conversations, and then they go through an assessment, and then we send out follow up questions because I want to make sure, because we’re a small company that, people are really… They get it about the culture. I want the red flags, if there are any, to show up at the beginning, because I don’t have a lot of time and a money tree outside to make mistakes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh gosh, yeah. A 100%. The, the old Google phrase, higher slowly and fire fast.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Betsy, you founded your company AdNet and AccountNet back in 1990. And when you went into that and founded that, what was it like for you at the time? Tell me about some of the challenges of that. I mean, presumably you had experience already in the recruitment and staffing and executive search space. What was it first of all, that made you become an entrepreneur and start your own business?

Betsy Cerulo:

I have it in my genes on both sides of my family, they were small business owners, so it’s embedded in my DNA. And I worked for a large staffing company for five years, and I absolutely loved the work. When they sold to a global organization, the culture shifted. And I thought to myself, I don’t want to go work for another staffing company because this one has been so great. I’m young enough, and didn’t have as much to lose in my late 20s, and I started my own business, because I figured if it wasn’t going to work, I’ll at least try this out young and I’ll go onto something else. I got a full blown office and small office and started it. I was motivated by what we did.

I certainly didn’t think I’d still be here at 32 years later, but my dream was always that I wanted to do the recruiting executive search business differently than what I know it is. And I am proud to say that we are accomplishing that. We do our work in a very consultative manner, in a very compassionate and caring manner, which is not typically what you find in the executive search or the, I’ll just say the temporary staffing space. It’s always about how many butts on the seats are you going to put? And you throw enough at the wall and something will stick. I can’t stand those illustrations of our industry yet. There are many people that still follow that behavior and it’s horrible. It’s horrible.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so true. You focused on a particular vertical in executive and staffing placement around accounting, finance, human resources, legal and also really focusing with AdNet on employment opportunity compliance services and whatnot as well. What was your journey to focusing on those verticals in particular and who are your ideal clients?

Betsy Cerulo:

We started off with accounting and finance, because that was my background. That was the recruiting that I did. And once we got into the federal space which really was a result of the recession, I didn’t have a choice, commercial hiring had dried up, there was no more executive search. So it was, okay, what do we do to keep the doors open? We ran over to the federal government, I learned it as fast as possible. And that’s where we built. As a result of a couple of our contracts, customers tossed out some opportunities and say, okay, you’re in this group of vendors, who wants to try this? And it was sign language interpreters, and no one wanted to do it. So we did it, and we never did it before, we fell in love with it because the work was so meaningful.

The difference that we made was so impactful. And as a result of that, we started to do reasonable accommodations, which is, these are individuals who support employees who are blind, deaf or have mobility issues. And some of our biggest contracts are in that space, second to EEO work. Sadly EEO keeps growing because of the harassment that goes on in the workplace. So we provide people that do investigations and counseling. Again, it’s really meaningful work and we love that work. So that’s our niche offerings.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. And of course your company is LGBTQ and Women Business Owners certified.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you are the co-founder and past president of the Maryland LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Talk to me about your journey in that regard as well, because it’s so vital, the work that you’re doing there.

Betsy Cerulo:

Well, having been LGBT most of my life, that just wasn’t on the table when I was growing the business, you just didn’t have those conversations. And especially as a woman, I was not going to [inaudible 00:28:19].

Melinda Wittstock:

So you had to hide?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And when did that change for you? And that must have been hard.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah. About 10 years ago. People that knew me, customers that knew me for a long time, they knew, but I wasn’t going to go in the networking of the business and the selling of the business really revealing about my personal life. But 10 years ago, I was introduced to the national LGBT Chamber of Commerce, which is known as nglcc.org. They had an LGBT certification that was starting to get a lot of attention from corporate suppliers because they were adding to their supplier diversity goals. So I thought, okay, at that point I was… I had just turned 50, and I said, okay, it’s time. Let’s do it. I got the certification. I put it up on all of our marketing materials, our website. And some of my customers basically said, well, when were you going to tell? I knew. And they laugh. I’m like, well…

Because I always love to know about my customers, but I was quiet and evasive about my own life and/or used different pronouns. But once I got past that, it opened up, it really freed me up, which I’m not surprised that over the past 10 years is when our company has consistently grown, because I was freed up to be me. So imagine if the owner feels that way, imagine how employees feel, who get to be who they are in a workplace that’s safe.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Setting out, and again, another joy of entrepreneurship is, as you build your company, you can build it the way you want. So we’ve been completely diverse in all ways from day one and its core to our values.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

I just because I personally think a company is going to be so much stronger and so much more representative, just of our customers. If our team is diverse, in all ways, racially, balanced, men, male, female, sexual orientation, racially, experientially. In our case at Podopolo, we have a team that’s global. I mean we have people all over the world. And so I love the interplay that comes with different cultures coming to the table.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And creating that open mindedness where people are learning. It just makes us much stronger than we would [inaudible 00:31:00].

Betsy Cerulo:

It does. And that was really the impetus for gathering a group of people to start the Maryland LGBT Chamber of Commerce, because there are a lot of businesses out there in Maryland that are LGBT owned and we want to network with each other. We want to support each other. We want to get noticed. And we want to go to events and networking where we don’t have to have someone comment about our sexuality. Or the things that we’re listening to, the content that we’re listening to, is welcoming and applies, not only to business growth, but how we can get stronger as a community to eradicate the discrimination that’s out there. Five years ago we started the chamber where we took a couple hits through COVID with growth, but we’re really strong with our membership.

We have incredible programs. And I actually just spun off again with another group of people, the Maryland LGBT Foundation, which is our 501(c)(3) arm of the chamber. That allows individuals and companies to get the full tax benefit of a donation. So we can put more money back into our community to grow emerging leaders, to take ideas with kids that are say in disadvantage, underserved communities, how to create their wealth, how to start dreaming about having a business, and how to take the steps into, okay, where are the resources and how can I make my dreams come true? That’s like my legacy work. I’ve had to be quiet about my life for a long time, it’s no more, I want the up and coming to feel safe. When you get to be an elder in the community, that’s our role is to give back and make sure that the up and coming communities have what they need to be strong and successful.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that. I just love the idea too, of the elder in the community and the respect and the wisdom where you get to a certain age and you can look back and connect the dots-

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

… In a way that’s not possible like when you’re younger. This is the other reason for having a team that’s diverse in age as well is so, so important. You wrote a great book, Shake It Off Leadership: Achieving Success Through the Eyes of our Labels. Tell me a little bit about that. What was the impetus for that?

Betsy Cerulo:

It was time-

Melinda Wittstock:

And what your own labels taught you?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

I guessed right?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah. I certainly learned a lot and have enough lumps because of my labels. I wanted to tell the story. I went to the bookstore so many years and how many leadership books are written by women, not men.

Melinda Wittstock:

[inaudible 00:34:12].

Betsy Cerulo:

Well, there’s certainly more and I just thought, you know what, it’s my turn. I’m going to tell my story. And I’m going to tell it from the eyes of an LGBT woman, and really put it all out there of what the journey was, because those of us that are older, people will look at us on, what our success is or what they may perceive that we have and say, I want that, or, how did she get there? There were many times over my career where I lost, where I didn’t have, where I had a sacrifice, where I cried, where I stayed awake. The company almost nearing bankruptcy and pulling it back from the ashes.

One’s career and one’s success, whatever your version of success is, is really a manifestation of what your journey is. And it’s not about just about the things that you have, it’s really about who you are inside. So I wanted to be able to impress that upon those of us, in whatever diverse group we are, we all have so many labels, we can be successful and we can get ahead to the front of the line as a result of those labels, and not to have those labels hold us back. Melinda, you know there’s always people in your sphere that play the victim number. After a while, I don’t even let those people near me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh gosh. Victimhood, it’s so self-defeating.

Betsy Cerulo:

[inaudible 00:35:45].

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, you’re saying in effect, by being a victim and choosing, this is going to sound harsh, I guess, to some ears, but in choosing to be a victim and we all have things that happen to us, but I like to think they happen for us because they’re learning opportunities. And by being the victim you’re, I don’t know, you have no power you’re powerless in that role.

Betsy Cerulo:

Correct.

Melinda Wittstock:

How did you get out of that? In your own context, I guess, where it’s so easy to fall into victimhood as a woman or as an LGBTQ woman, because there is a lot of discrimination. There is a lot of stuff to overcome. There are all those things, they exist. But as long as we stay in that mental or the mindset of victimhood, it’s pretty hard to change them. There’s a conundrum.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes. It is. And a lot happened for me when I turned 50. So I also had lost two of my older brothers unexpectedly to heart attacks. And that was devastating in a short amount of time. And that really was so impactful to wake me up if you will. That had me make some different decisions for my company, realizing people around me that were taking versus giving. And I just said, I am not going to end up six feet under like my brothers, you get out. For me, it was really a matter of my own wellbeing.

That made a huge difference for me. I also got sober during that period of time. I was a really functional alcoholic and probably to a lot of people, I knew it wasn’t… It didn’t appear to be any, any issue because I hid it well, but I realized that it was not allowing me to be the best that I could. I don’t have any interesting stories to tell about my alcoholism, all I knew is when I finally made that decision to get sober. It opened my life so beautifully that I could see things so clearly, where I’d be like, why in the hell did I put up with that for so long?

Melinda Wittstock:

Gosh, there’s so much in what you just said. I want to go back to turning 50. There is a pattern on this podcast with almost 725 interviews so far on the show where the women who’ve passed that milestone, it’s like this new sense of freedom of just not being encumbered by anything. And that, I guess, it’s partly to do with, there’s nothing left to lose in a way, right?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, why not be a 100% yourself?

Betsy Cerulo:

I’m honest will be.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

There was a really funny TikTok, not so long ago that got a lot of viral publicity where this woman who after 50 was like, she had no Fs left to give. It was hilarious.

Betsy Cerulo:

I love it.

Melinda Wittstock:

But I think women really come into their own as entrepreneurs. There are a lot of women starting companies at that time in their lives, because it’s kind of like, I’m not going to be defined by anyone else, I’m going to define myself. So it’s tremendous power in that.

Betsy Cerulo:

Absolutely. I think women just get so much better with age. We really, really do. We just really come into this beautiful time in our lives, and of course when people make fun of the term menopause, whenever I hear that comment from a man it’s like, would you really like me to level you now or later? Pick a time.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. True.

Betsy Cerulo:

But we have just such majestic things go on for our souls and our bodies that just put us into an incredible area of wisdom. And in so many other cultures, elders are held with such reverence.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes.

Betsy Cerulo:

So I just took a stand, I am going to be held with reverence because I hold myself with that reverence. So it’s not like-

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that word.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah. It starts with, I have to hold myself that way for others to get the energy and begin to hold themselves that way. And then we all are on that same journey together. It’s really about that self-reflection time as we get older.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It starts from like everything. And where you’re going with this, I hear it’s been true to my journey too. It’s a conscious journey, because everything starts from within. Earlier in the conversation, we were talking about the culture and the culture emanating from the founder, the founding team, but just… Leadership is about who we’re being, not just what we’re saying. All of that. So it sounds like you’ve been on a conscious journey as well.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes. Yeah. And it feels right. [inaudible 00:41:00].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I love reverence. Self-reverence. I mean, when we love ourselves and are able to open our hearts and receive, we start to get the things that we actually want. But I see so many women, I see this in myself in my earlier years as well, not actually even being able to receive, like not being able to receive compliments for instance, or like, what this whole thing I’m wearing, whatever it was, whether it manifested that way or just in terms of being able to ask for what we actually want. Like, just dare to think about building a big business, not just a small business.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Being able to receive that, being able to receive the type of people we want to work with, in that sense as well. Talk to me a little bit about how the hiring process or the placement process works for you, and the kind of systems you use in that matchmaking role, if you will, of making sure that the company is getting the right hire, that it’s good fit for both. Talk to me a little bit about your process.

Betsy Cerulo:

Well, some of it is our secret sauce and that has a lot to do with the people on our team. I’m a certified executive coach and I instill those foundations of the inquiry and discovery of people that we place at the very beginning. So it’s not just, you’re just asking a bunch of questions to see if the person has the technical fit, and then you send the resume to the customer. You are really doing a very holistic inquiry with the individual on what they want.

I could put it in writing and I could tell you that someone who’s not grounded that way could still couldn’t do what we do, because you have to… It comes from a different place of an opening for possibility and opening… Or to create the trusting space for the individual that we’re interviewing to be open about their lives. You can get into the technical things, but we really have to get into the chemistry, the way the person operates on the team, their background, because you’ve been in the workforce a long time too. How many times have you just fallen in love with a potential employee? And you get to that point in the altar to make that offer and boom, you find out something in their background that’s just totally caught you off guard.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh man, that happens a lot, I think. Or you actually start working with that person because they were a good salesperson. And they kind of knew what to say or whatever, and then you start working with them and the reality is different.

Betsy Cerulo:

Right. That’s where we take a lot of time front to do the background, to get to know the person. And sometimes we catch them, if it’s a certain type of conversation, you catch them off guard, they let their hair down. And all of a sudden some truths come out that might not have come out with just a regular recruiter asking a question. We’re just really wanting to get the whole picture of the individual to make sure that not only technically, but also from a chemistry perspective that they’re enhancing our customers and our own team, because again, a bad hire costs a lot of money.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, it does. I mean, not only to the morale of the team and the overall results, but just the cycle time of how long it takes to hire great team members. I always like to think about Zappos and what they did with their hiring. It was interesting. They’d have all these people show up in Las Vegas at their location and put them on a bus and if anyone was just sort of mean to the bus driver they’d never be allowed off the bus into the next phase of the interview. They did all kinds of cool things with their hiring. And because customer service and customer success was their highest value, the biggest valuation growth part of that company, every single person, no matter who they were C-suite on down, had to work in customer success for six weeks before making it into their position.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Now, when we were at the point when we were in person, and it was more the antiquated testing that wasn’t online, it would be interesting to see the way people would behave. And that was the admin who was at the front desk would then come back if the person gave them a hard time and say, you got a hot one that you’re going to interview, and it wasn’t from a sexual perspective, if it was like, you got a hot head out there.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. There are people who believe their own publicity a little bit more than… And sometimes it’s just compensation because of the root of that is someone who doesn’t really believe in themselves.

Betsy Cerulo:

No. It was always really interesting how those things would occur. But again, from the very beginning, when we start to interact with somebody, it tells the story of what they’re about. It’s always revealing.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Betsy, a as you’re hiring and going through these first phases, not only for your own company, but also in the placement role, and you’re doing your head hunting and all of that, are there any just great questions that people should always ask that elicit some of these underlying issues?

Betsy Cerulo:

You want to get to know the individual, and many times we ask, what are you most proud of personally? And then you ask it, what are you most proud of professionally? When I notice when I ask the question personally, and someone starts talking about, it could be, I was the first one in my family that got a college degree, my kids or… All of a sudden, the face just lights up and all of the armor melts away. And then you start to get into, who you have over there. It’s really important. And you could go through all the technical questions, but when you get to some of the personal things and… Even sometimes now, what are some of the things that are you looking for in a workplace? And what won’t you tolerate? And there’s so much good material with what’s going on out in the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. What don’t you tolerate? I think that’s really interesting, because people are, hopefully, going to say. Right?

Betsy Cerulo:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:

How you get at someone’s character? I mean, in the context of a startup or an emerging growth company, where you’re always kind of like a startup, even you can still have a startup culture into the hundreds of millions of dollars if you’re an innovation based company. It’s the character that matters.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

How are you going to react when, when the proverbial hits the fan? Or how are you with failure? Because failure is part of the process in any company that’s actually innovating something. It’s like you’re a scientist testing out hypotheses in a lab until you hit it. How do you elicit that? How they deal with failure, how they deal with adversity.

Betsy Cerulo:

We just ask a lot of those questions-

Melinda Wittstock:

Just like that? Just pretty straightforward?

Betsy Cerulo:

Yeah. We always want to talk about success, but how do you handle failure? And again, sometimes those questions, there’s certain types of questions that are asked for certain types of roles based on what the person is going to be doing, or, what failure means to you? But I can tell you on the executive search side, it is so comprehensive what we do. The relationships take a long time. Sometimes the actual searches can take months. So you’re really knowing so much about the individual and their family through the process because there are times that those job offers come with a relocation and that impacts a family.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And so speaking of failure, what was one of yours? What was one of yours that you learned from? Or an area where you had regret, and what did you do with that?

Betsy Cerulo:

I’d say my biggest failure professionally was that I led a business relationship go on too long. And at the moment, I started to see the toxicity, I… I didn’t trust my gut, I allowed myself to be minimized, if you will. And I didn’t act on the change soon enough and [inaudible 00:51:31].

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh God, a 100% of my failures are about the same thing, actually at the root. There’s all kinds of stuff around it, but at the root of it’s like I knew, but I didn’t trust myself to be a 100% in alignment with my intuition and what I knew.

Betsy Cerulo:

Right. That was my biggest failure, but I can tell you, it was my biggest lesson. And so much growth came as a result of that. There’s a reason, God put you on a journey for a reason and what you’re supposed to learn, if you’re ready to hear it, and accept it, you learn.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, yeah. The teacher appears when the student is ready.

Betsy Cerulo:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. And I was ready. I was ready.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. That’s just the life, it’s constant growth experience. And like we say on this podcast, almost every interview, it comes up if you want therapy or you want personal growth, just be an entrepreneur, because things are just going to happen in your external world that’s going to force you to work on the internal to get to where you need to be, to get you your life, your business, all the things that you dream of to be able to receive those things. It’s just true. It’s hard for people to see earlier in their lives, I wish younger people could see that earlier than they do. Maybe it’s just comes with lived experience, and we go back to this reverence for the elder wisdom.

Betsy Cerulo:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

It just comes with lived experience. So Betsy, what’s next for you? Where do you see your company going and you going and all the different things? There’s so many things that you have accomplished, what’s next for you?

Betsy Cerulo:

Well, as far as the company, we are continuing to expand within the federal government and getting involved in meaningful corporate projects that are aligned with who we are. So that feels good for our continual growth. I am also developing content for my book, Shake It Off Leadership, to be able to bring that to our customers as a way of empowerment to their workforces. And I also have another book that I’ve got the outline done and I love to write. So I’m wanting to get another book out within the next one to two years. So just kind of like a next step for leadership.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s fantastic. Anyone listening to this, presumably you work really with corporates and federal government, but… What’s the best way for people to kind of find you work with you, follow you, get your books, all the things?

Betsy Cerulo:

Well, my company website, if you want to learn more about the staffing and executive search site of what I do is adnetp3.com. If you want to know more about the book, go to betsycerulo.com, and there’s a free downloadable worksheet that gives the… Touches on a couple things that we talked about today, as well as talks more about the book. You can order the book on Amazon or audible. If you want to reach me direct, you can reach me via either one of those websites. I’m always happy to have a conversation.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting your wings on and flying with us today.

Betsy Cerulo:

My pleasure, I really loved our conversation.