We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christa Spear a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Christa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

When people ask how Iris started, the honest answer is that in some ways, it started years before the business even began to take shape. I studied entrepreneurship in college, and although my career initially led me into sales, leadership, talent acquisition, and operations roles, I always thought I would build a business of my own one day. The entrepreneurial pathway I imagined just looked very different from what ultimately unfolded. If you asked me 10 years ago what entrepreneurship would look like for me, I would have described an idyllic picture of owning a small coffee shop or running a bed and breakfast. I always imagined building something community oriented where people felt connected to the environment and experience I created. Building a non-traditional agency — or a collective as I like to call it — was never part of that vision.

By 2023, I was working as a Talent Acquisition Partner for lululemon Studio, and professionally I felt like I had found something that genuinely aligned with both my strengths and where I wanted my career to continue moving forward. I loved building teams, partnering with leaders, solving problems, helping organizations grow, and using high level strategic thinking and planning. When lululemon dissolved the Studio side of the business in June that same year, I was laid off and it hit me in ways that were completely unexpected. I was in my stride and suddenly the rug was pulled out from under me. It felt especially overwhelming because I was not only navigating uncertainty professionally, but I was also adjusting to being a young mother with two children at home — my oldest had just turned two and my youngest was just five months old — and our family had also recently relocated across several states.

Like many working mothers, I was not trying to step away from my career as I started a family. I wanted to continue building it. Remote work represented an opportunity to stay ambitious professionally while also creating the life I wanted for my family. What became increasingly frustrating during the interviewing process was not hearing “no,” but feeling underestimated. While there was no direct comments that my desire for remote work opportunities that offered flexibility to be both a successful professional and mother of young children made me a weaker candidate, I started recognizing a pattern of responses after multiple interviews. The moment flexibility entered the discussion, assumptions seemed to closely follow. I applied for roles I was highly qualified for and with executive level references. And I got no offers. Eventually, I began to apply for roles below my skillset because I was trying to make the lifestyle piece fit while continuing to grow professionally. Over time, it became increasingly difficult not to feel like someone else was deciding my career path, skill level, and my worthiness.

About four weeks after being laid off, a family member who owned a business asked if I would help support them operationally. My initial reaction was hesitation because freelancing had never been part of the plan. Entrepreneurship eventually? Absolutely. I always thought I would build something one day. I simply thought it would happen later and look entirely different than this. At the time, I fully believed I was creating a temporary bridge while continuing to pursue another W2 opportunity.

The first work I took on centered around virtual assistance and social media management. While the work itself mattered, I quickly realized that my background allowed me to contribute beyond task execution. I began identifying more strategic business opportunities and larger business challenges, and these “bigger picture” vision casting and strategic planning excited me and I was feeling back in my wheelhouse. Ideas began to percolate for a business model that had real opportunity for immediate growth.

What surprised me most was how quickly I became attached to the partnership side of the work. For the first time in my career, I was not sitting inside one function of a company contributing one piece of a larger machine. I was partnering directly alongside someone building something deeply meaningful to them. Whether the work was tactical or strategic became secondary to the impact and outcome it created. Helping someone solve operational challenges, create structure, establish momentum, and move a business forward created a level of fulfillment I had not experienced before as a solo entrepreneur. There was something energizing about seeing my work immediately influence growth and revenue.

Within two weeks, I realized “freelancing” was not temporary at all. It was going to be the business I had always dreamed of building.

By August 2023, Iris was official and suddenly I found myself learning an entirely new side of entrepreneurship. Establishing an LLC, opening business banking accounts, implementing QuickBooks, building legal agreements, creating service offerings, defining sales goals, learning pricing structures, building systems, developing training, and eventually hiring a diverse and trusted team. I had worked for an agency before, but building one yourself is an entirely different experience.

One of my biggest early mistakes was saying yes to everything. When you’re building from the ground up, every opportunity feels important, every project feels like growth, every new challenge feels like one you cannot afford to turn away. But over time, I learned that smart growth is built with intention, making very deliberate decisions with very deliberate and precise timing.

As demand for our services grew, another layer of Iris started taking shape. I realized I did not only want to build flexibility for myself, I also wanted to create opportunities for talented women who still wanted meaningful careers but who no longer fit neatly into traditional corporate expectations. My first hire was my best friend in North Carolina who had experienced remarkably similar circumstances to my own. And somewhere in that process, the bigger vision behind Iris took shape into this unique offering we have today.

What started as temporary freelancing evolved into operational partnership, strategic support, marketing, project management, and helping businesses create stronger essential foundations for growth. The irony is that the placeholder gig I thought would simply be a bridge until my next corporate opportunity taking me up the ladder to the C-suite ultimately forced me to build a business based on my natural talents and fill an overlooked market demand that I was the perfect woman to lead the way forward.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Before owning my own business, my career path felt a little undefined. For a long time, I struggled to connect how my professional experiences fit together into one story. I got bored easily. Not because I disliked what I was doing, but because I was constantly hungry for more. I wanted the next challenge. I wanted exposure to different parts of a business. I wanted to understand how organizations actually functioned behind the scenes and why some businesses scaled naturally while others struggled to move forward despite incredible effort.

I was always the person volunteering outside my role, asking questions outside my department, and trying to understand the bigger picture. I was also always the person putting SOPs in place so the business could operate more smoothly and efficiently. At the time, though, I felt somewhat scattered. But in retrospect, I realize I was unintentionally building the exact foundation I would later need to build my business.

Today, I am the Founder of Iris Partnering, where we help founder-led businesses and growing organizations strengthen two core areas that often determine whether businesses scale successfully: operations and marketing. Those two things are far more connected than most businesses realize.

Many companies think they have a marketing problem when what they actually have is an operational problem. They increase content, campaigns, visibility, or spend, but underneath that growth effort, communication breaks down, ownership is unclear, execution becomes reactive, or success and decision-making still depends on the founder holding every moving piece together. We help businesses solve both sides of that equation.

Within Iris, we intentionally built our services to grow alongside businesses. Some clients need foundational support. Others need project management, systems implementation, operational structure, marketing execution, or process development. Others need strategic partnership through operational leadership and marketing leadership support. We built Iris so businesses could access the level of support they need while continuing to grow without immediately needing to build large internal teams.

One key element that makes us different is that we intentionally created Iris around partnership rather than task completion. We are not interested in being another vendor checking deliverables off a list. We learn businesses deeply. We care about communication flow, ownership, process bottlenecks, accountability, visibility, and the infrastructure underneath growth because strong execution only happens when businesses have structure supporting it.

Internally, I work incredibly hard to pair the right consultant with the right client because great work happens when skill strengths align naturally with business needs. No two businesses are exactly alike, and no two team members bring identical strengths. Finding that alignment matters deeply to how we operate.

We also prioritize building balance within our team. Iris was built after experiencing firsthand how difficult it can be to build a meaningful career while also desiring flexibility and ownership over your life outside work. Many members of our team are incredibly talented professionals and mothers who wanted opportunities to continue building careers without sacrificing the family priorities that matter most to them.

I am proud that Iris has grown into a business where partnership matters, where clients feel supported rather than outsourced, and where talented professionals can continue building meaningful careers in a way that compliments their personal lives.

Most importantly, I hope people understand that we genuinely love solving problems. We love helping businesses create clarity where day-to-day business tasks and strategies feel chaotic. We love helping founders step out of carrying every business-building chore alone. We love helping businesses build stronger foundations so growth feels sustainable instead of exhausting. We love seeing business owners fall in love with building their business and watching their dreams come to life.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think people often assume building a reputation requires inventing something novel or uncovering a hidden strategy that elevates you from everyone else. My experience has been very different. You don’t have to invent the next Post-It or Facebook to build a successful business. But you do have to give people a reason to remember you. In our case, what separates us from the pack is doing what we say we are going to do consistently and for the long-term, constantly elevating our client services as the client grows and evolves, full scope accountability, and genuinely caring about the the quality of our deliverables, outcomes related to sales and growth revenue, and meeting client business goals.

I realized very early in my quarterly Iris audits that clients remember how you helped make them successful, for sure. But what they really remember is how you made them feel about the business they may have been dreaming about for decades, a business they birthed like a child, and how you supported them in cultivating that into a fully blooming field of dreams that now is running like a fine oiled machine. They remember how you communicated clearly, your commitment to follow-through, your full understanding of what they were building and partnering with them versus just checking a task list box. We intentionally built Iris around partnership because I never wanted clients to feel like they hired another vendor. We wanted businesses to feel like they gained team members invested in moving their business forward and failure was not an option.

Over time, one phrase started showing up repeatedly from clients. They would tell us, “Your team is a unicorn.” It is a beautiful compliment and one I never take lightly. But if I am being completely honest, it also highlights something that concerns me deeply about our industry. There are too many businesses being disappointed by providers who overpromise, underdeliver, communicate poorly, or charge premium pricing without creating meaningful value in return. It seems to be far too common to say, “Yes, we can do that” just to win the business. Iris is different. We pursue business that we excel at so that we can ensure our clients are getting the best of what we promise, and what we can promise is diverse because we have a team of professionals with diversified skill sets. It’s always a win-win for both sides and we are very proud of what we’ve built and our client satisfaction.

As someone who spent years working inside businesses before owning one, I understand how much trust business owners place into outside support teams. When someone hires operational support or marketing support, they’re not simply outsourcing tasks; they’re trusting people with becoming an insider to learn the business to gain momentum, support growth, enhance customer experience, strengthen team communication, and in many cases, improve the health of the business. That responsibility matters and can sometimes be a team member more crucial than a FTE.

I believe our reputation was built by taking that responsibility seriously and with the highest level of professional pride. We work incredibly hard to align our consultants and clients so that compatibility is seamless. We communicate constantly both internally and externally. We care deeply about strategic, well thought-out execution. We focus heavily on understanding the client business and not just on our contractual scope of work. We stay honest when strategies and tactics are not working and solve problems proactively and timely. Most importantly, we authentically care about our client’s business because it is a direct reflection of our business..

People remember how businesses make them feel. They remember who showed up consistently. They remember who made difficult seasons easier. I think our reputation has ultimately been built by simply trying to do those things exceptionally well over time.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

One of the biggest lessons I have learned building a team is that morale is rarely created by perks. It is created by trust, communication, alignment, and making people feel genuinely valued for what they uniquely bring to the table.

At Iris, I prioritize pairing the right consultant with the right client. I strongly believe that people perform and deliver their best work when they are operating inside environments that align naturally with their strengths. Talented people with unique skill sets can struggle when placed in the wrong environment and with the wrong clients, and leaders sometimes mistake misalignment for capability issues when the reality is simply that the fit was never right to begin with.

I also think balance matters more than many leaders want to admit. Iris was built after experiencing firsthand how difficult it was to build a meaningful career while also building a meaningful life outside work. As a mom myself, flexibility matters deeply to me. But flexibility without accountability does not create strong teams. I believe high expectations and balance can absolutely coexist, and some of the strongest performers I have worked alongside have also been people balancing full lives outside of work.

Clear, open, and dare I say even vulnerable communication is an enormously underrated element of business success, especially when it comes to an all-female professional team. Teams want visibility. They want clarity around expectations. They want ownership. They want to understand how their work contributes to larger outcomes. Uncertainty creates stress much faster than leaders often realize. Strong, open communication removes an enormous amount of unnecessary friction, and with women professionals I find it is even more important to be keenly aware of keeping lines of communication open while steadfastly maintaining necessary boundaries.

Leaders sometimes underestimate how much culture gets built in the small moments. Culture is not created through mission statements or values listed on a website. Culture gets built through consistency and a balance of personal empathy with meeting business expectations, in how problems are handled, how feedback is delivered, whether mistakes become learning opportunities or blame opportunities, and whether people feel respected enough to speak honestly.

A personal business development aspect I care deeply about is ensuring our team members feel challenged, supported, and trusted. I want our team members to build careers here and to grow professionally while also committing to their personal lives in ways that fulfill them outside work. These two areas of life should not have to compete with one another — they should complement one another.

At the end of the day, I believe team members are working toward similar end goals and this is important for business leaders to acknowledge. They want meaningful work. They want to be trusted and seen for their work. They want clarity in expectations. They want to feel like their contributions matter and see that they have indeed contributed to a successful end result. When leaders unselfishly build environments around those shared principles, morale tends to be high, teamwork collegial, productivity energized, outcomes above expectations, and you begin to see the company become a disruptive business model in the industry. When I think back to the initial “why” of starting Iris, being a disruptive business model by offering an opportunity for women professionals who are among the best at what they do but who also want to be the best wife or mom as they expertly balance work and family life, I know I’m well on my way to achieving my entrepreneurial dream.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.irispartnering.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/irispartnering/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/irispartnering
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christaspear/