We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kristen M. Olson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Kristen M. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?
Building the right team is EVERYTHING! If there is one piece of advice that I would give new entrepreneurs or myself starting out- build the right and invest as much as you can in them. That being said, it does take some reps to find out who the right teammates are and then, continue to learn who you need (and what qualifications) to hire, at the right time. Starting out it was all me- like most first time entrepreneurs. It’s not the worst thing to do everything starting out and learn all the inner and outer workings of your business. I believe that you can’t fully lead a position until you have held that position, so knowing your own ropes will help you find the right person to fill your open positions when you are ready to hire. You also learn the company from that perspective, so you know what questions or challenges will come up and you can better train and prepare future team members for that specific role. I have hired great humans, but they were not always an ideal fit and usually if it’s going to work, it works right away. There are several examples where I didn’t listen to my gut that this person was an ideal fit, hired them, invested time, and then it didn’t work out… above resumes, qualifications, or the potential you want to fall in love with:), listen to your gut. Sometimes you just know it’s wrong OR right fit. My consulting company has hired lots of people over the years and we have gotten really good at not only finding the right fellow mission driven humans, but they are usually athletes or competitors in some capacity and those personalities tend to work the best with our group. You really need to find like-minded humans to work with on the daily, it’s a lot of hours out of your life, so qualifications aside (yes, they need to be qualified), make sure it’s someone you want in your boat when the ship is sailing and sinking. A lot of traditional old school hiring approaches are, “can you do this job, yes or no?” and that’s enough- where we really hire the human and not just the skill set. I have the same approach for the KO Alliance, LLC resident podcast, Turmeric & Tequila™, and I am thrilled to announce that we recently brought Katie Gerhard (KG) on as the new T&T Chief Operating Officer. KG is extraordinarily qualified, but most importantly she is an incredible person living and working intentionally to be a productive contributor in the world. I have personally known KG for 20+ years and she was one of my first hires for my first business, Colorado Rising Stars Lacrosse, LLC, we both attended George Mason University, playing D1 lacrosse, and we competed together on CRSLAX’s competitive adult team for several years. The roots run deep, so I am excited to have lax family on the podcast team- major plans for 2024/25!!
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?
My journey has been a unique one and each step has truly led to the next. I was dead set on playing D1 top 20 lacrosse, so I turned down scholarship offers to walk on to George Mason University, in Fairfax, VA. in 1999. I was a Colorado kid heading to a top program in the nation (i believe they were 10th when I joined), so I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I truly believed that if I had the coaching and the training, I could hang and would not only earn a spot on the team, but be a true contributor. I earned an athletic scholarship by my sophomore year and was a 3X captain (medical redshirt 2001, torn ACL). As soon as I graduated, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I was ready to be boss free and have a chance at this world doing things my way. I moved back home to Colorado and established my first business, Colorado Rising Stars Lacrosse, LLC. We did all things lacrosse from camps and tournaments, to team sales, to competitive teams. Lacrosse is expensive and hard to get into, the access points are limited to this day. At this point lacrosse had taken to college, all over the world, established some of my closets friendships and a ton of other opportunity that wouldn’t have been there if I didn’t play lacrosse. I love the game, the community, and everything else around it. I knew that I wanted to help any kid that wanted to play lacrosse have the opportunity to do so. Camp prices were on the rise, so I started to reach out to companies to help sponsor us, so we would get paid by them, promote their products, and could teach lacrosse at elementary school field days and other free opportunity to learn the game. We worked with big names, Reebok, Clif Bar, Warrior Lacrosse, C9 by Champion- and many more. It worked- it’s really similar to influencers and what you see on Instagram to this day- we were ahead of the game:) We really just ran with what worked and innovated solutions to get the end line that we wanted to get to. That whole marketing process became what is today, KO Alliance, LLC. We are a full scale marketing and branding consulting company, specializing in strategic partnerships- from influencers, to sponsors, and beyond. You can find out more here www.KOAlliance.com .
The deeper I got in the marketing game, I really realized the power of the phone and the impact it had on our youth. I didn’t grow up with a phone (thank goodness!), but I know the marketing industry well and there are a lot of smoke in mirrors. I was always highly selective on the companies I worked with or represented, but the was a need (and still is) for the inner workings of marketing- especially influencer marketing. SO, Turmeric & Tequila™ The Graceful Disruption Podcast was born. I welcome good humans, do good thing to come share their journey of them doing things their way- challenging status quo. They are the example of chasing the dream and living the authentic life. We focus on mental health and community- a community of #varsity humans proudly personally accountable to seek the best versions of themselves for themselves AND the greater good. www.TurmericAndTequila.com .
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
We work a lot with the health, wellness, lifestyle, and athletic audiences and I think our credibility was built on the fact that I live in them each day. I come from a family of athletes, played D1 lacrosse, competed at the CrossFit Games several times, have 3 energized rescue pups, and do my best to keep moving each day, in all directions:) Existing in the health, wellness, lifestyle markets and still being an athlete- I am living this out here with you every single day seeing what works and what doesn’t. I know companies that I like, products that make a difference, and we talk about it all on the Turmeric & Tequila™ Podcast, so there is street cred in living it and transparency in talking about it. This is my authentic space, so it makes it easy to authentically walk in it.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Giving more than 100%. As a competitive athlete, you learn early that you need to train and then train more if you want to get ahead. There is certainly a balance with rest and recovery (also a lesson I had to learn), but you need to find every angle to get just a little bit sharper than the competition and you really need to commit if you want to compete with the best. I took my competitive athletic mentality to work and that wasn’t always the best approach. One of the bigger mistakes I made early was straight up giving away the farm or giving more than 100%- when I soon learned, you are only paid for 100%. Nothing more, nothing less (well hopefully not, and it’s less- you need to ask for more… another lesson learned ha). There were several opportunities where I went above and beyond and it was not only not recognized, it didn’t help come negotiation time for more pay or a raise when I was already doing the extra work. When it’s your business it’s a different convo, but when you’re building someone else’s dream (be clear, that’s what it is, if you have no ownership) you need to compete job, do it well, and if you want to do more, have the conversation with management or leadership before you do- make sure that it will be seen and recognized before you do anything. Anytime this happened for me, it wasn’t really about doing less, it was affirmation that I should be working for myself and be an entrepreneur. I am ok with the work and doing less really isn’t in my nature…(if you know me, you know this ha). So be aware of the messages coming through your experience. Do a job very well, and if you want to do more, I’d suggest entrepreneurship:)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.turmericandtequila.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turmerictequila/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turmericandtequila
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kolson23/
- Twitter: https://x.com/TurmericTequila/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@turmerictequila
- Other: https://www.koalliance.com
