We recently connected with Stacy Inthisane and have shared our conversation below.

Stacy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Achieving success is a multifaceted journey building and crafting your brand. For me, I think the biggest thing that can make anyone successful is a strong work ethic. An unrelenting work ethic, diligence, dedication, and consistency are crucial. It involves putting in the necessary effort, time, and focus to reach your goals. I have worked two or more jobs for many years through my career because I wanted to make sure I gained the skills necessary to reach my goals. Sometimes those jobs were menial, but I needed the experience and to understand the process behind the scenes to get there. So, I did “grunt” work to build that skillset.

I also think resilience and persistence are key. Never taking “no” for an answer is vital. Challenges and rejection are inevitable, but success often comes to those who persist despite setbacks. They learn from their mistakes or obstacles, correct them and move forward. Sometimes the universe is not ready to hand you what you think you want and that “no” can be a blessing. You have to take the “no’s” with a grain of salt and be able to overcome and move on.

One of the last things I would say is having high standards and expectations and not settling for less. I mentioned above about crafting your brand. Setting high standards for yourself can be a powerful motivator. It involves continually pushing your own boundaries, aiming for excellence, and not settling for mediocrity. It’s about constantly challenging yourself and those around you to do better.

Stacy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have an interesting background and path to how I got to where I am today. In 2011, I went back to graduate school to get my MBA and really focus on a career change into Finance. I graduated in 2013 and shortly went into consulting where I worked with large organizations on Finance Transformation. That became my specialty. I am a Finance person through and through.

However, in the process of working with each client, I had to gain skills around accounting, FPA and treasury so that I would be able to implement systems and streamline processes. This gave me the typical foundational Accounting and Finance experience I needed to go into Industry. Now, I am the EVP of Finance for HSO US. HSO US is a Microsoft implementation partner and next gen IT company that provides consulting and software services to our clients. What I love about HSO is our ability to truly partner and work with clients to address their systems concerns and issues. We do this because of the amazing work culture we have and our focus on caring for our team and our clients so that we can continue to foster a partnership rather than just a business relationship.

On top of my day job, last year, we started a family business, Utmost Province, that has three lines businesses. One is out own branded clothing, one is a custom products service and the last is selling items on our Amazon store. We started out as a custom products shop because we wanted to provide quality prints for those in the DFW area. We do DTG or DTF and we take a customer’s ideas and turn that into a design they can be proud of. My role is, obviously, around the Finance piece of the business and driving profitability for a startup. My brother, Kurt Rajavong, manages the day to day operations, sales and marketing. We love the artistic and creative aspects of turning a customer’s vision into something that makes them super excited to put on clothes or other promotional items but wanted to expand into something more with out own clothing line. One of the main drivers for continued expansion is that we want to be able to give back to communities that are important to us and we do that in donations of clothing or funding initiatives to provide clothing for those in impoverished areas.

Lastly, my husband, Som Inthisane, owns and runs Loving Home Health Care. LHHC came about because as we notice our parent’s generation getting older, we noticed there was a need for at home care. In our culture, being the oldest daughter and son of our families, we had this obligation to take care of our parents. Not just basic care, but true loving and meaningful support whether it be financially, physically, or mentally. Also, coming from a corporate perspective, I also realize that most families need two-incomes to just live our everyday lives. So, how can we expect everyone to provide that high standard of care that we wanted to do for our own parents? That is how LHHC came about and why it was important for us to embark on that initiative. My role, as you can imagine, centers around the Finances and Strategy.

As I said in the beginning, I am a Finance & Strategy person through and through. I am fortunate to be able to drive organizations to success through my passion. But one of the biggest things I would love for people to know about me is that I am a strong advocate for women in the workplace. I am a working mom myself with a 5 year old, 2 year old and one that will be here in January 2024. I am grateful for the mentors that have guided me along my career so that I was able to climb the corporate ladder and be a mom. It takes a lot and a village and I want other women (who want to) to know it’s possible.

I’m also extremely passionate about education and making sure that our children have the necessary means to be successful in life. For me, that starts with education. My son is ADHD which is so common these days but he is also very bright. I want to make sure he has the necessary resources to be successful so I do support initiatives that foster education, not just for low income families, but for everyone that needs it.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

When I was in my MBA program at TCU, I didn’t understand the power of your network until I was working in my field. We would have a lot of networking events and for an introvert like me, it was difficult to just talk to everyone and work the room and be that charismatic person that a lot of really great networkers are. Fortunately, I was able to attend so many events during my time at TCU that I was able to efficiently build my network.

So, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with that. Most of our clientele started within our network and then word of mouth. We have recurring clients that we continue to do business with but you can’t be afraid to tap into your network and attend these events and casually mention your business. Most of the time, it will go on deaf ears, but there’s at least one person that may need your services or they may know someone that needs your services and that’s how you build your clientele, brand and reputation.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think when we started Utmost Province last year, we had many challenges. We tried to push all of our different business lines at once and we were trying to ramp up so fast that we were running out of funds and spreading ourselves too thin. We weren’t truly successful in any of the initiatives we wanted to do. We had to adapt and really look at our short term and long term strategy to make sure we were successful.

We had to adapt, really look at what was the most profitable and where the cash was turning over more quickly and focus on that business. We had to look at everything from inventory, sales, customer service and all of the important KPIs that drove success in our industry. We made assumptions that didn’t always go as planned like which items to keep in inventory and which items we thought would move faster and we weren’t always right so we had to adapt, pivot, review data, and really manage our frustrations. I think one of the big things is learning to work together, what our triggers were and who was really good at what so that we can really focus on our strengths. Having the right people focus on the right activities really got us into a better position. Once we got that into a stable place, we could then launch our next initiative.

What we didn’t do was let all of the obstacles stop us from moving forward and continue to adapt to market demands and accept our wrong decisions without blame and moved on. Focusing on our mistakes would have crippled us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.utmostprovince.com and https://lovinghomehealthcare.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srajavong

Image Credits
My headshots were done by: Beau Bumpas Photography The rest of the photos were done for Utmost Province by Kurt Rajavong