We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katie Ervin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katie below.
Katie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Catalyst Development is a leadership skill building company. I have spend too many years sitting in meetings hearing people talk about the skills gap and I felt there were not people doing it in a way that really teaches career and power skills. I created curriculum 17 years ago to address this and while I was doing it on a small scale, I thought 2021 was a perfect time to expand the work to people at all career levels. It is important for us to also make our work assessable to all so we created programming to be able to grant fund seats in our programs to support individuals who are unemployed and underemployed to gain skills to find meaningful employment.
All the work we do focuses on helping people reach their full potential while giving them the skills to be happier and more motivated at work. We proudly tell people we are not a “why you should be a leader but how you be a leader” company. We help develop skills that can be applied immediately.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I spent 14 years in corporate human resources and an additional 12 years in higher education administration. My bachelors degree is in sociology, my masters is in human resources development and my doctorate is in adult education and leadership. Throughout my whole career, I have always strived to help get the right people, in the right seats, doing the right job.
Through my doctoral research, I studies workplace motivation and employee satisfaction. I found that there is such a gap in the workplace with the focus on employee happiness. I created the Catalyst Workplace model based on self-determination theory. This easily applied model can help organizations lower turnover while increasing profits.
I released my first book, You Might Be An Asshole but It Might Not Be Your Fault, April 2023 which quickly became the #1 best seller in Human Resources on Amazon. The book is about how we too often promote people without providing them training and support. When we do this, we set them up for failure.
I am proud that our curriculum is meaningful and impactful. We work with everyone from early career to senior level. The work is not challenging but is proven impactful for both the individual and the organizations.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
I believe that being authentically me and not trying to be someone I am not has helped me build my reputation in my community. The work I have done, the research I continue to conduct as well as my education gives me credibility to the work that I do.
I pride myself on being a strong leader and I believe that helps me build a strong business in this area.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Starting a new business is extremely challenging. It is a rollercoaster of success and failure. In our first year, it was tough to build the business while having people understand the work we do.
I had to build the Catalyst brand and not just have people understand who I am. I had a network of people who liked and believed in me but when you start a business, they have to see you as a business owner. That does not happen overnight.
I also found that understanding our company values allowed me to turn away business that did not align with who we are and the impact we wanted to make. It was not always easy to say no because we needed to pay bills but it was important because I did not want to water down our brand.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.katieervin.com
- Instagram: @catalystdevelopment
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieervin/
- Twitter: @katieervin