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

Denitresse, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

My first client came through a mix of transparency, vulnerability, and strategic outreach.

I started sharing honestly on LinkedIn about the leap from corporate, the uncertainty, the fear, and the possibilities. But visibility alone wasn’t enough. I reached out to my network. I shared what I was building, asked for support, and tapped people to trust me with early opportunities.

That first “yes” came from a former colleague who’d been quietly following along and said, “I think I need a coach.” That early trust fueled everything that came next. And it’s still how we grow today: through meaningful relationships, honest conversations, and word-of-mouth from people who see and feel the impact of our work.

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?

To be honest, my path into this work didn’t follow a straight line, but it was deeply intentional.

For nearly 20 years, I moved through corporate America holding roles in finance, operations, strategy, marketing, and supply chain, always navigating new challenges and learning along the way. But throughout that journey, I struggled with the idea of “picking a lane.” I’d spent most of my life trying to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and never quite landing on one answer that felt whole.

What I knew for sure was that I needed my work to feel meaningful, dynamic, and aligned with who I was becoming. In my last corporate role, despite a powerful mission and global impact, I realized I couldn’t reach my full potential there. I was growing in ways the system didn’t fully value. I wanted work that inspired me. And while I respected the work of building equipment that helps feed and house the world, I couldn’t pretend I was personally lit up by tractors and bulldozers.

When a mentor told me, “The job you retire from probably doesn’t even exist yet,” it unlocked something in me. I started listening more closely to what really lit me up: leading people, coaching leaders, and building teams. I realized I was really good at navigating messy change and finding clarity inside it. Becoming a parent added even more depth to how I showed up and challenged me to lead with both strength and empathy. I stopped stressing about fitting into a box and started chasing interesting, meaningful, challenging work.

Eventually, I realized that the common thread across all my experiences from strategy to people development was my ability to bring structure to ambiguity, to create clarity in chaos, and to build solutions without needing to be the subject matter expert. That throughline gave me the courage to build something of my own.

Launching Culture Refinery was less about walking away from something and more about walking toward a future where leaders, teams, and cultures could thrive together. Looking back, every seemingly random step helped prepare me for this one.

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At Culture Refinery, we help organizations unlock the brilliance of their people.

We offer bold, strategic, and human-centered development programs that drive leadership effectiveness, team alignment, and cultural transformation. Our solutions are built from the inside out because real change starts with people, not just processes.

Here’s how we help:

Cultivate Leaders – Ready to Lead: Our flagship leadership program for new and emerging managers. It equips them with the confidence, skills, and mindset shifts needed to go from “doer” to “leader” with clarity and purpose.

Cultivate Teams: High-impact team development engagements designed to build trust, boost collaboration, and create shared agreements for how teams work and win together.

Cultivate Talent: A transformational experience for high-potential talent. Unleash Genius, our signature program, helps rising stars align their careers with their values, build a leadership brand, and develop the habits and confidence to lead.

Cultivate Culture: Our consulting arm focuses on diagnosing culture challenges, aligning executive leadership, and designing strategies that create psychologically safe, high-performance environments.

The Refinery Online: A scalable, on-demand platform that supports talent development anytime, anywhere.

Workshops and Keynotes: High-energy, high-impact sessions that spark mindset shifts and real change.

We don’t do one-size-fits-all. Every engagement is a partnership, often tailored for and co-created with our clients through our Culture A.D.D. Framework (Assess, Design, Deliver, Refine) and grounded in neuroscience, strengths-based leadership, and behaviorally sound strategies.

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We help fix what’s really holding organizations back: ineffective leadership, disconnected teams, and cultures that stifle more than they support.

Too many companies try to train their way out of systemic issues. We go deeper. We bridge the gap between leadership and culture because you can’t change one without impacting the other. Leaders shape culture, and culture either fuels or frustrates leadership effectiveness.

What makes us different?

We work from the inside out. We focus on root causes and build practical, sustainable habits that take root. Culture is your innovation engine, and when you get culture right, performance follows.

Our work isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about transformation that drives retention, engagement, and measurable business outcomes.

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What I’m most proud of is that we’re still here and thriving.

Culture Refinery launched in early 2020, right before the world turned upside down. We are bootstrapped, Black-woman-led, and grounded in values-driven work. Statistically, the odds weren’t in our favor. And yet, not only did we survive, we helped our clients do more than weather the storm; we helped them lead through it.

What I’m proudest of, though, is the ripple effect. When a leader finds their voice, when a team builds real trust, when a culture becomes a place where people actually want to stay and grow, that’s the kind of impact that scales.

That’s the kind of legacy we’re building.

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What I want our audience to know about our work is that we don’t believe in Band-Aid leadership development.
We build programs that are evidence-based, human-first, and designed to make your people better leaders and your organization a better place to work.

We help new managers beat the 60 percent failure rate (Gartner).

We increase psychological safety, which boosts retention by 50 percent (Gallup).

We help organizations increase business impact and profitability by maximizing the potential of their talent and teams. Companies that invest in leadership and culture development can see up to 7x returns in engagement and performance (Harvard Business Review).

When you invest in your people, you fuel alignment, accountability, and the kind of culture where progress is inevitable.

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

I already had a strong reputation from my previous corporate experiences and professional associations, and I’ve continued building it through deep relationships and strategic collaborations.

In the beginning, I partnered with coaching collectives, joined the coaching teams of aligned organizations, and connected with communities of small business owners like myself. I aligned with a large local networking group, tapped into existing relationships, and let people know I was open for business.

I launched when physically being in the room wasn’t even possible. Now that it is, I prioritize it. Every time I speak or facilitate, I give people a chance to experience our work in action. And every time I do, our reputation, referrals, and revenue grow.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

It’s NOT about me! This was never meant to be mine alone.

I used to believe I had to be the expert in all things and that knowing more, doing more, and carrying it all was what made me valuable. The truth is, I don’t have to do it all; and more importantly, I shouldn’t. When I try to be everything, I become the bottleneck, stifle the vision, limit growth, and even rob myself of operating in my own zone of genius.

In the early days, I thought my value was tied to doing everything myself. I believed I had to be the expert in all things. But that mindset was a barrier. Not just to scaling, but to my own peace.

Letting go of that belief freed me from perfectionism, self-doubt, and the need for constant validation. I’m building something bigger than myself, and that shift in perspective expanded what I believed was possible.

Now, I lead my team with clarity and capacity because I’m no longer trying to carry what was never mine alone. Sharing this goal with others allows me to show up with more clarity, creativity, and capacity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.culturerefinery.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CultureRefinery
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denitresseferrell/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CultureRefinery
• Other: Culture Refinery’s LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/culturerefinery