Make Your Own Rules with Heather Whelpley

We tend to live by a set of unconscious rules that we’ve inherited—from our families, our culture, the media and more. But when they keep you tethered to a way of life that isn’t serving your highest good? Award-winning author, speaker and podcast host Heather Whelpley says it’s time to make your own rules.

Together, we unpack:

The four types of rules we have “inherited” from outside forces and how they play out in our lives.

How to become conscious of the rules you’ve internalized and adopted—and start testing whether they are actually true.

The relationship between culturally expected perfection and imposter syndrome.

The role of “breaks”—big and small—in creating opportunities to understand, challenge and change the rules you’ve been living by.

How to start—and stick with—making your own rules to expand your business and your life.

LINKS

Heather Whelpley Website | Email List | Grounded Wildness | LinkedIn

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

 BIO

Heather Whelpley is a speaker, award-winning author of Grounded Wildness: Break Free From Performing Your Life and Start Living It and An Overachiever's Guide To Breaking The Rules, and host of the Grounded Wildness podcast. She works with women to break free from perfect and create their own rules for life.

Heather has spoken to thousands of people across the US and internationally on topics like discovering your authentic voice, creating your own rules for success, and imposter syndrome. Prior to starting her business, she spent over a decade in human resources and managing leadership development programs for high-achieving women at Fortune 500 companies in the US, Australia, and Latin America.

Her first book, An Overachiever's Guide To Breaking The Rules, has won multiple awards, including gold medals from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and Living Now Book Awards as well as being named a finalist for the First Horizon Book Award for first-time authors. Her second book, Grounded Wildness, was published in October 2023 and was an instant Amazon bestseller. Heather lives in Colorado where she spends as much time hiking and exploring as possible.

BOOK A STRATEGY CALL WITH ROCHELLE

RESOURCES FOR SOLOISTS

The Soloist Women Mastermind (Apply January 2024) A structured eight-month mastermind with an intentionally small group of hand-picked women soloists grappling with—and solving—the same kinds of challenges. 

10 Ways To Grow Revenue As A Soloist (Without Working More Hours): most of us have been conditioned to work more when we want to grow revenue—but what if we just worked differently?

The Soloist Women community: a place to connect with like-minded women (and join a channel dedicated to your revenue level).

The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise: equal parts bible, blueprint and bushido. How to think like, become—and remain—an authority.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:20

Heather Whelpley: I needed to overdo and achieve with everything, even in non-traditional career ways. And I finally stopped and asked myself why. And that was my first break was like, oh, wait, look at all these rules were handed in our culture as a whole that we always need to be doing more. We're not allowed to slow down. We're not allowed to take a break and really connecting our worth to success and to achievement.

00:25 - 00:49

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to Soloist Women, where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rochelle Moulton and today I'm here with Heather Welpley who works with women to break free from perfect and create their own rules for life. She's a speaker, award-winning author of 2 books and the host of the grounded wildness podcast, Heather. Welcome.

00:49 - 00:52

Heather Whelpley: Thank you, Rochelle. I'm so thrilled to be here chatting with you today.

00:53 - 01:09

Rochelle Moulton: Well, I'm delighted to have you on the show. And I want to give a shout out to Chris Jennings for suggesting that we connect Because this idea that women have to follow certain rules to be a good, successful, likeable female makes me insane.

01:10 - 01:12

Heather Whelpley: Yep, me too.

01:12 - 01:28

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So I'm excited to dig into this and talk about those rules, how they create imposter syndrome, and how we can make our own rules. But first, I do love to begin with a bit of background about how you got started in your business. I mean, you were in corporate HR, right?

01:28 - 01:31

Heather Whelpley: I was, yeah, for 10 years before I started my business.

01:31 - 01:33

Rochelle Moulton: So what made you decide to hang your shingle?

01:34 - 02:04

Heather Whelpley: Well, so I'd never thought about being a business owner. You know, I wasn't 1 of those people who was like, you know, 1 day I'll be my own boss. I know this is my destiny. I never thought about that. I was enjoying most of my work in corporate. I worked in HR and leadership development and change management. I had great colleagues, great managers, like things were good. And then 1 day my job changed. I had been doing mostly women's leadership development and my job changed to something outside of my control that I immediately knew I was

02:04 - 02:33

Heather Whelpley: going to hate. And it was my birthday, which is just, I think, a message from the universe. You know, we talk about like full body yeses. This was a full body no. Everything in my body, heart, mind and soul was like, absolutely not. Something's gonna have to change quickly because this job is not going to work. And I really took a step back for the first time in a long time and thought really deeply about, what do I want? What do I want my career to look like? What's the impact I wanna have? And for the

02:33 - 03:04

Heather Whelpley: first time, I decided to include entrepreneurship as a possibility in that it wasn't a sure thing. It wasn't, oh yes, immediately, this is what I'm going to do. But as I started talking to people, as I started reflecting, I did the Design Your Life book, which was a great activity reflection book, and gave myself some space to really consider. Then some excitement started building up, some excitement for these possibilities of what I could do if I was on my own. I could write, I could train, I could coach, I could speak, I could do what I

03:04 - 03:34

Heather Whelpley: wanted to do. And although there was a ton of fear there as well, particularly this fear of failure and having to go back to corporate, you know, with my tail tucked between my legs because I couldn't hack it on my own, Like that was all very real also, but this excitement was something that even though I enjoyed my corporate work, I hadn't felt that in a really long time. And it felt like this knowing of I need to try this out. What's really funny though, so that was 6 years ago, 7 years ago. And I found

03:34 - 04:05

Heather Whelpley: a business plan a few months ago for what I thought this business was going to look like. And really only 1 line of the 5 pages is accurate today, which was, I wanna work mostly with women. And that's still true, but everything else has changed in that time period. And so, yeah, but it really was a job change that initially initiated that reflection and that decision, but then it was the excitement and the possibilities and deciding it was worth the risk to try and figure it out and to try and run a business on my own.

04:06 - 04:25

Rochelle Moulton: I love that you actually had a business plan. I mean, I did the same thing, but a lot of people when they're, you know, first hanging out a shingle, there is no business plan. It's like, okay, how can I just make enough to pay my rent or my mortgage and put food on the table and I'll figure it all out later? So I love it. And it's not surprising that it changed over the course

04:25 - 04:25

Heather Whelpley: of, right,

04:25 - 04:26

Rochelle Moulton: you know, 6 or 7 years.

04:27 - 04:54

Heather Whelpley: Yes, I think almost everyone's would change. And it's funny when you said, you know, people just figure it out along the way. I think that's really what I did anyway. I just happened to write some things down first that ended up changing. It was everything I did not know at all how to run a business. You know, I had the leadership development background, which is, you know, still in the realm of what I do, roughly speaking, in my business. But it's, yeah, I had no clue how to actually run a business that was all learning on

04:54 - 04:55

Heather Whelpley: the job.

04:55 - 05:02

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, it's a whole new skill set. You know, like consulting is a skill set. So do you consider yourself a soloist?

05:02 - 05:34

Heather Whelpley: Absolutely. Yes. I currently have no interest in growing a team. I reserve the right to change my mind about that at any time. But yeah, I'm a solopreneur. My overall theme in my business and really for my life as a whole is big impact, simple joy. So I want to create the biggest impact I can with the greatest simplicity out there. So I absolutely work with an accountant and a bookkeeper. And then I have an amazing marketing specialist that I work with like 1 to 2 hours a week who does some of the stuff on my

05:34 - 06:04

Heather Whelpley: podcast, the background things on my podcast and anything that I've ever designed that looks pretty. She probably had a role in, she's amazing. And then I work with someone else. I'm a speaker. So a few years ago I invested in having someone design my slides for me so that they look significantly more professional than when I was doing them on my own. But I don't have any employees and I don't have any interest in having any employees. Well, you're talking to the right crowd. Yes. That's why I was so excited when you when when Chris decided

06:04 - 06:05

Heather Whelpley: to introduce us.

06:06 - 06:10

Rochelle Moulton: Well, so how long did it take you to earn your first 100, 000? Do you remember?

06:11 - 06:21

Heather Whelpley: Oh, that's a great question. I think about year 3. I'm almost positive it was year 3, if we're talking about revenue that it would have been a hundred thousand. Yeah, yeah.

06:21 - 06:35

Rochelle Moulton: We talked top line because the bottom line in these kinds of businesses is all over the lot. But the beauty is that we do tend to keep a lot of what we earn versus businesses that have lots of employees or lots of overhead like rent?

06:35 - 07:09

Heather Whelpley: Very much so. Yes. I'm a completely service-based business. The only quote-unquote products that I have are my 2 books and an accompanying journal. That is it. And so I don't have any other tangible products. It's just me and the speaking services, coaching services that I provide, which does make it easy and flexible and yeah, low cost, low overhead, which makes it easier, I think, to also not having employees to take risks and try new things. Because in actuality, the risk is pretty low. It doesn't always feel low like the emotional component is still there but when

07:09 - 07:20

Heather Whelpley: I stop and take a step back and say like okay if this actually failed what am I gonna lose? Honestly the answer frequently is not that much. So it makes it easier to be more flexible, I think.

07:21 - 07:42

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I love that point. When we had Emily O'Meara on the show, she was talking about how a lot of times what we think is risky isn't really risky at all. It's like what you said about, because I felt it too, is going back to corporate with my tail between my legs. I mean, so what? Like, nobody's going to remember that for more than a nanosecond other than us. If we feel shame around it, which like, why bother?

07:42 - 07:43

Heather Whelpley: Exactly.

07:43 - 08:01

Rochelle Moulton: There's no shame in any of this. At least we tried, right? That's kind of how I look at it. Yes. Well, thank you for that. But so I really want to dive into this idea that we we and I say women, but I'm sure

08:01 - 08:02

Speaker 3: it's true for all genders is that We all have

08:02 - 08:18

Rochelle Moulton: inherited some form of rules. And I like how you define them in your new book, Grounded Wildness. You had family rules, school rules, media rules, work rules. What kinds of messages do we internalize and make our own?

08:18 - 08:47

Heather Whelpley: Oh my gosh, so many. And what you just said is the exact right way to say it of these messages that we internalize and then make our own. And that's absolving any guilt or shame around that because we all do this. And those rules that we follow don't come from inside of us. They come from our, like you said, our families, media, general cultural expectations, our work experiences, our school experiences, what you've been praised for, what you've been punished for, what's been talked about, what's not been talked about. All of these different things is how we

08:47 - 09:17

Heather Whelpley: get our rules. And absolutely, totally right. Every person gets a set of rules regardless of gender. Both my books do tend to, particularly Grounded Wildness, do tend to focus on the rules that are handed to women that cause us to prove, please perfect, and sometimes rebel and push against them. But when it comes to women, a lot of the rules that were handed, if we think about kind of how we're showing up in work and relationships, it's like, I can't disappoint anyone. I have to be responsible for everyone and everything. I have to keep everyone happy.

09:17 - 09:47

Heather Whelpley: I'm not allowed to say no. I have to say yes to everything. Things have to be perfect. I'm not allowed to make a mistake. And then that can translate into, or I should always be doing more and working harder. And that can translate into our businesses as well. So those rules apply regardless of your type of position or career or job. But as a business, I think we also get additional entrepreneurship rules of around hustling and like rise and grind and you know you always have to be doing more. It's all on you so you can

09:47 - 09:50

Heather Whelpley: never take a break. If you don't post on social media, you're gonna

09:50 - 09:51

Speaker 3: lose your followers. You always have to be doing more. It's all on you. So you can never take a break. If you don't post

09:51 - 10:23

Heather Whelpley: on social media, you're gonna lose your followers. You always have to be doing more like just in this and growing more and constantly getting bigger and not taking time off and just this hustle grind hamster wheel. And that part I will say applies to all genders. That is not women specific, the hustle culture at all, but I've seen that women can often take on, because of these rules handed to us, greater responsibility and guilt around some of these rules as well. So even though they might be handed down to all genders, they don't always impact all

10:23 - 10:24

Heather Whelpley: genders in the same

10:25 - 10:57

Rochelle Moulton: way. You know, 1 of the things that struck me as you were talking about this is that what we're praised for, the way you said that. And it's kind of like, I'm developing this theory that what we're praised for tends to be what gets us stuck in our zone of excellence versus our genius zone right and we just we get praised for things especially in an organization and it's great to be praised, you know, we can get promotions, we can win things and encourages us to work harder at the things we're good at or even excellent

10:57 - 11:02

Rochelle Moulton: at, but somehow it leaves us short of our genius zone.

11:02 - 11:28

Heather Whelpley: I completely agree. And I just listened to your podcast episode on that and I've read the big leap as well. And I really liked that concept of zone of genius versus zone of excellence. And I will also say in addition to everything you just said, I think sometimes those rules can also cause us to hold our voices back because part of the rules that women are handed about being a quote-unquote good girl or good woman is to like not make people angry and to be polite. And of course not everyone gets handed all of these rules

11:28 - 11:58

Heather Whelpley: in the exact same way, But I've definitely felt them and I've talked to a lot of other women who felt them that makes it can make it harder to disagree to put yourself out there to raise your prices to take a stand to share something that might be controversial where you might get Criticism, you know all of these things that can make it harder, which I think also makes it harder to leap into your zone of genius because I think in my experience personally, not always, that zone of genius might be a little bit more, might

11:58 - 12:27

Heather Whelpley: be a little more controversial. Like not everyone is going to love what you're doing and saying in your zone of genius. And women are so programmed to be liked. Like this is part of our value is in being likable. And oftentimes working in your zone of genius, not everyone is going to like what you do. Fewer people are going to like it more and benefit from it more, but it's not going to be likely not going to be across the board, which is a challenge if you've been told directly and indirectly throughout your life that...