We were lucky to catch up with Cara Steinmann recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I started ravel because I was tired of all the transactional networking that happened on Facebook and LinkedIn during Covid. It’s not much better now, but I was having a totally different experience networking 1:1 with women online, and I wanted to see if I could create a space that would offer a more relationship-centered approach to networking. I’ve always resented having to abandon my flip flops and get dressed up and attend networking events that felt stiff and transactional. When Covid hit, suddenly everyone was willing to hop on a quick zoom call and get to know each other. I started meeting all these incredible women, and because I always want to connect everyone, I was making a lot of connections via email. It was a lot of work and I also felt like we were sort of isolated still, even though we might have been connected individually. We were all just too busy with our businesses, families, and the second shift to spend much time in person, and it was hindering our ability to build a supportive network, which is so critical for women in business because we’re already at a disadvantage for a number of reasons.

At the same time I was in the process of doing some deep personal development work and trying to reinvent my business to be more aligned with who I am authentically, underneath all the conditioning and “shoulds” I picked up along the way to middle age. I had a big turning point when my biz bestie pointed out to me that the way I connect with people online and build relationships is not easy for other people. It was effortless for me, and that shocked me. I got to thinking about how critical that relationship with my biz bestie had been over the course of the 25 years of friendship we had enjoyed. There were times when I was so frustrated in business that I would have quit if I hadn’t had her to talk to and brainstorm with. And when I had a win, she was right there to cheer with me. And as luck would have it, we were also very strategically aligned to refer one another business, so we didn’t have to hustle much to get business. At the time I was doing marketing consulting and only needed a few clients to stay busy.

It made me sad to think that other women might not have the support system I had, and when I looked around I saw proof that they were spending gobs of energy on content and social media marketing, and burning themselves out trying to get visible. There were conversations all over Facebook groups where women were throwing up their hands and saying, “I hate marketing my business…why is it so complicated.”

It hadn’t been complicated for me as a service entrepreneur, thanks to several strategic referral relationships I’d had, including the one with my biz bestie. In fact, I hadn’t even had a website for the first 10 years I worked in content marketing. I was totally referral based.

But in my mind there was this disconnect between what I was doing and what people traditionally think of as “networking”. I couldn’t even refer to myself as a networking strategist for a long time because the mental image that word conjurs is more used car salesman than biz bestie.

I got to wondering if I could scale the strategic referral relationship I had with my biz bestie and create a space online that allowed other women with service-based businesses to build a strategic network the way I had, without the “ick” factor.

So I created a community using Circle and invited a bunch of the women I enjoyed connecting with online. I knew by this point that a big part of the reason I network the way I do is because of my core values. Connection, Freedom, and Authenticity are my top 3 core values, and they drive my behavior. My biz bestie’s values are similar, so I wrote the website copy very intentionally to make it clear that we are a community who are driven by “x” values, and seeded the community with people who share similar core values. I figured that birds of a feather flock together, and any referrals from existing members would be a good fit as well.

One of the things I heard from Ravel members is how striking the level of self-awareness is inside the group. I think I tend to attract people who care about personal development, which is critical if you’re going to be an entrepreneur because you have to bring yourself to your business…it’s unavoidable.

I spent a lot of energy around that time trying to reverse engineer the relational networking strategies that came so easily to me. My degree in psychology and a lifetime of intense interest and study in human behavior meant I was probably subconsciously employing relationship building tactics without even realizing it. After a while I finally unearthed the formula and was able to present my RAD Referrals Roadmap framework to the community so they could understand how knowing yourself allows you to connect with others in a more meaningful way and more easily align with strategically with other entrepreneurs who would be most likely to no only send you business, but to become a friend.

We all need a network of values-aligned allies who will help us get visible and support us along the way. I don’t coach inside the community, other than to share the tactics I use so everyone else can use them too. But I do share my superpower with members when they come in, since it’s not really something I can teach. When new members come in I hop on a call with them and find out more about them so I can make some personal intros to my network right away and jumpstart their own personal network. It feels so good to know that I’m holding space for a transformation like that to take place.

The relationships being built in this network are unlike anything I’ve seen in traditional business networking environments. Ravel members share referrals, promote one another on LinkedIn, travel across the world to meet at conferences, take vacations together, and hold each other up during wins and losses. Some of them are even collaborating to create new offers and business ventures!

I think women are tired of being transactional and want to be able to be themselves in business. It feels good to be truly seen, and that’s what Ravel is providing. It’s a space where women entrepreneurs can come as they are and be seen and acknowledged without judgement. That kind of vulnerability breeds rapport, which is what leads to someone being invested enough in someone else’s success that they stop what they’re doing and lift that person up with a referral or recommendation

We live in a society that benefits from women being separate and disconnected from ourselves and each other. But I believe the key to dismantling those systems of oppression lies in the collective power of women. We really get things done when we team up and work together. It feels amazing to be part of a solution that breaks down the barriers between women and so they can more easily build wealth and influence.

Cara, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I worked in marketing and content strategy for 15 years before completely burning out. It was near the beginning of Covid times and I think I was just finally able to sit still long enough to realize I was completely miserable in my business. I knew it was bad enough I was going to have to have to reinvent myself somehow, yet, at the same time I couldn’t imagine what else I might do. And what’s worse, I couldn’t really even point to anything I was good at. I’m completely unemployable, so I knew going back to work wasn’t an option. I just felt like there was no way we would all be put on this earth with so many different natural tendencies and talents if we weren’t meant to use them for some greater purpose. So I started digging into personality tests and core values work trying to find some kind of objective evidence that might point to how I could build a business that felt purposeful and also didn’t burn me out.

It wasn’t a straight line…entrepreneurship rarely is. I learned a whole lot about myself, re-discovered and reclaimed strengths I had pushed down because they had been framed as a liability in my youth, and started building a supportive network around me. I also discovered I’m neurodivergent, which shed major light on why “business as usual” wasn’t in my wheelhouse.

Relationships have been key in the self-discovery arena because we’re just too close to see ourselves clearly, and the most valuable thing we can carry with us is a group of trusted people to act like a mirror and reflect ourselves back to us and encourage us. If you’ve never asked a close friend or partner to tell you what they think your superpower is, I highly suggest it. People who truly know us seem to be able to point to these things more easily than we can ourselves.

So aside from holding space in the Ravel community for women to connect and build relationships, I also offer individual networking strategies for women entrepreneurs who want more custom solutions, which sometimes includes consulting to help them build their own community based on the core values they want to infuse into that space.

I think what sets me apart from other people in this space is my deep understanding of psychology and human behavior, coupled with my top strength being connectedness. Clifton Strengths is a fantastic tool and it helped show me not only what my unique combination of strengths allows me to do, it showed me that I have zero execution strengths in my top 10…which basically means I don’t have to feel bad for being such an utter failure in project management roles. I’m just not built for that work. What I’m built for is bringing people together who will benefit from knowing each other. There is no better dopamine hit for me than connecting the dots to two people whose lives will be enriched by an introduction I’m able to make.

I’m more proud of the Ravel Collective community than anything else I’ve done in my career to date. Not just the referrals and business relationships that develop there, but the support it gives our mental and emotional health as women entrepreneurs. Business can be lonely and that goes double for women, given the way we’re pitted against each other and kept isolated by the unending tower of “shoulds” on our domestic list. We get to be seen as we are, flaws and all, and come to see that we’re not alone in our fears and feelings. Nothing will keep you small like feeling like everyone else is smooth sailing, except for you. We’re all more alike than we think.

And while we’re all more alike than we think, we’re also very different. One of the biggest reasons we don’t connect with other women in business is that we think they’re competition. That’s simply not true. There’s no way two people could bring the same strengths, personality, life experience, purpose, and operating preferences to the table in the same way to serve the same clients. If you’re willing to practice radical self-awareness you can get super granular about who you are and how you best operate. And beyond that, what you want to see change in the world and how you plan to deliver that work. When you realize there’s no competition you get a free pass to build relationships with people who do things similar to what you do. They “get” your work, but you can be valuable referral partners if you’re both confident enough in what you bring to the table to investigate and discover what differences might set you apart.

Have you ever had to pivot?

This whole journey is a result of me having to pivot my business. I wish I could say there was some straw that broke the camels back, but it was a slow build up to sitting at my desk one day and just having a sudden realization that I couldn’t keep working in this business. I just stared out the window for a long time hoping maybe some great idea would come to me, but when nothing did I had this fleeting thought that maybe it would be easier just to go get a job again and let someone else worry about all messiness of running a business. But of all the times in my adult life when I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety, it was never more acute and debilitating than when I was employed.

It might sound dramatic to say, but I just knew in my gut that if I had to be an employee again it might very well kill me. That left me with no other option than to figure out how to rebuild in a different direction.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

One of the things that makes it so hard to know yourself is the fact that something like 90% of our thoughts and behavior are dictated by our subconscious behind the scenes. And we pick up all these subconscious self-limiting beliefs in life that hold us back from creating the life we want, and it’s hard to pinpoint them to fix it because we’re not consciously aware of them.

When I first decided to pivot my business I knew there were some self-limiting beliefs in my way because I couldn’t see any options. It was like the only options was the one in front of me, which made no sense at all. Then one afternoon I was had been chatting on the phone with my biz bestie and she had referred to me as a leader. I instantly felt triggered and sick to my stomach and shot back, “I am NOT a leader.”

My vehement reaction shot back in my ears and I instantly knew this was an important clue to what was holding me back. One of the ways to get more information about our subconscious self-limiting beliefs is to intentionally trigger ourselves and follow the resulting thoughts.

So I decided to trigger myself by reading a book about leadership. Brené Brown had just come out with Dare to Lead and I love her, so I thought it would be a great place to start. I was walking my dog a few days later, deep into the audible version of her book at that point, and even deeper my own psychological discomfort, she started talking about core values.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard this:

“More often than not, our values are what lead us to the arena door—we’re willing to do something uncomfortable and daring because of our beliefs. And when we get in there and stumble or fall, we need our values to remind us why we went in, especially when we are facedown, covered in dust and sweat and blood.”

I felt similarly to how I feel when I wake up in the morning and can’t see a thing. Everything is fuzzy and I’m totally disoriented. Then I reach over and put my glasses on and everything makes sense again. I realized in that no amount of work on my self-limiting beliefs would matter if I wasn’t crystal clear on my core values. I was in the arena bloody and sweaty on my knees and was missing a giant piece of the puzzle. When I finally got clear on my core values and could point to the exact things that were offending my value system in the past, that’s things started to come together and move in the direction I’m now going. I think it’s what finally allowed me to shed my identity tied to my old business and start to build the new, more authentic one.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://carasteinmann.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/cara.steinmann
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carasteinmann
• Other: https://ravelcollective.com

Image Credits
Laura Stephens