And today, we are interviewing Amber Hurdle. Amber hurdle is the CEO of Amber Hurdle Consulting. It's a multi-award winning talent optimization firm. They pioneers using both science and marketing principles to strengthen customers' brands from the inside out. She really helps with costly business problems like ineffective recruiting turnover, under performance, declining morale, leadership gaps, and we are so excited to have her in the show today. 

Before we dive too deep, I want to ask you real quick, please subscribe to our podcast. You can find us on iTunes, Google podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much any pod catcher of your choice. And you can subscribe at peopleprocesses.com which will give you exclusive subscriber only content. Last week for example, we sent out sample furlough letters and updated policies around the Family's First Coronavirus Relief Act. This is recorded 3-23. Our subscribers had sample policies 24 hours after the law passed. 

Now let's dive in. Amber, thank you so much for being on the show. 

Thanks for having me, Rhamy. 

Well, I am just ecstatic to have you in. There's a lot going on in the country right now. Like I said, this is a March 23 recording. This probably won't come out until mid April. We have no idea what the situation is going to look like out there. So we'll try to keep our coronavirus info to the minimum and instead focusing on the things that you have accomplished. Now, Amber, not many little girls and boys dress up as leadership and HR consultants when they're eight years old to go trick or treating. How on earth did you wind up in this very strange field? That's pretty dang busy right now.

Well as someone who dressed up like Janis Joplin for I don't even know how many years in a row.

You know what, she inspires people, it's leadership. There we go.

That's right. Yeah. I think and I talked about this a lot when we talk about personal branding is, that there are breadcrumbs that you can follow if you look back on your history and see how you chose to show up in various situations, whether that's professionally or in your family or in your social settings or volunteerism, or whatever. And you can see that there are some very specific gifts that keep popping up as something that you feel led to share with other people. And so the gifts that I have from a vantage point of really being able to see somebody for who they are or a situation for what it is.

Being a very quick thinker, being able to really put chaos into a strategic streamlined process to work through. I can create common chaos very quickly and then buy people into that solution. And then connecting people. So engagement and communication have always been things that have served. I've used to serve other people. And it just made sense in the end, to do that in a professional setting because I can impact more people by going into an organization or into an audience than trying to do it otherwise.

That's very self aware, Amber, and that's awesome to hear. But what I want to hear is you have a pretty unusual way though, right? Because if I remember from your bio, you were a teen mom. I'm kind of on a very different path than consulting with international celebrities and fortune 100 companies.

Knocking on my door back then.

Give me that story. How did you get from, you know, I don't know. I can't imagine the place you were in there to kind of now grown kids and rocking out all over the world.

Well, good question. I credit a lot of what I've learned in life to that experience. And I wasn't like a bad girl. I was actually very involved. I mean, not to marginalize any teen mom, but I'm just saying like, I wasn't a troubled youth. I didn't have a troubled childhood. None of that, like I was very normal. I was on channel for news at Six and 10 for a week. Like, just weeks before I found out I was pregnant because they were featuring me and about a dozen other Middle Tennessee students because we were stable and good kids and they wanted to have conversations with us around hard things that were going on and that parents were having a hard time talking to their children about. So, it was quite the fall from grace, well, just say, I was president of this, vice president of that in school and I had to give up all those leadership. I chose to because my actions weren't very leadership like for high school anyways. I guess the quick version of the story is I had to get out from behind the eight ball very quickly. And I had to figure out what people saw in me so that I could just pick up an extra shift at the Applebee's or get a better job that maybe I didn't have the education for, because I dropped out of college. I was very tuned in to what people saw in me so I can do more of that so I can find more favor and I can have more opportunities come my way. I started collecting mentors because I didn't have the same structures in place that most people had. I mean, my parents were amazing. Don't get me wrong. We'll just put them aside. But most people have professors and you know, people that kind of help guide them as they start their career. And I was just kind of free falling.

Right.

So as I was figuring that out, I didn't know that I was creating a personal brand that wasn't a buzzword. I mean, you had a professional reputation but that wasn't a thing back then. And I surely didn't understand what I was doing at the time. But reflecting back on it now. That's it. I just had to figure out what I was amazing at and I had to go out and show people and prove that that is, that's what they should see in me, that they should see the value that I saw in me, but I had to use people as mirrors to even figure out what that was.

And and so you think that teen-mom experience really, I've thought about this too, my wife and I we met when we were 16, where we started dating when we were 16. We've been together our whole lives. Highschool sweethearts, started the company together 11 years ago and have certain experience. And having certain responsibilities in your life it's impossible to say like what you would have done otherwise. Right? And a lot of times when I've had similar interviews where it's like, "Well, what do you credit your success to?" It's like, "Well, when I was 18, I moved out so that I could start a family with my girlfriend," which is so weird as even at the time I was like, "There's no way this is gonna work." This is obviously silly stuff to do. And yet those choices put me in positions where my back was against the wall. We had to live on our $700 a month kind of budget, and it changed everything. So what do you think being a teen-mom taught you specifically about what you do now? The branding, the consulting side of what you do now?

The very first thing that it blessed me with is that humility. I don't judge people, there's just not room for that. So there's always what I refer to kind of a cocci term is, there's always judgment, free awareness and in my office or on my zoom calls, or in the opposite of my clients, so anything can be admitted, worked through. You mentioned the term self awareness. That's what served me then. And so that is what we build on. Once we have that judgment, free awareness, then we can work to self awareness. And then it also helped me see where I fit into a bigger picture, right? Because I was only able to benefit from the collective like I couldn't do it on my own. I had to do it in the context of other people being involved. And so when you're looking at the personal branding, that comes from self awareness and that sort of thing. But when you talk about employer branding, you have to understand the bigger picture and you have to understand where your personal brand fits into that employer brand and the employer has to be able to understand that as well. And then, of course, just that so much was quote fixed. I'm using air quotes alone in my office right now.

I have medically diagnosed a DD. Most people don't know that because team motherhood also forced me to really put those processes in place. I mean, that's what I love. I love your People Processes, because people forget that, to be successful in business, to scale in business, it's not just functional processes. You have to have people processes too. And so everything about my life was structured. It was organized. I did a budget like I literally had a ruled paper that I did each week on an effort at the bottom of the paper. It was like, "Okay, I'm negative this time." And dollars left, I mean, it taught me to negotiate, it taught me how to be honest and to fail forward. I mean, I called my car company all the time and I told the story from the stage and just let them know like, "Hey guys, I thought I was going to have my payment this week. But here's what's going on. I'm working at this job. I'll make this much money in cash. I'm anticipating getting my paycheck. it should be this much. And so by Friday, I can get you this dollar amount." But that's probably going to be it and to be able to just confront the brutal facts, but not just faith.

That's a valid dragon, right? 

Yeah. Slay the dragon.

Under the notice. Right? 

Yes. I could have faced it head on, call it what it is, and then come up with your solution. And they were so gracious with me. And they did not repossess my car. And as many times as they could take a payment in the end they did because I stayed in constant communication with them even though I was in the midst of failing. So I don't know, I mean, Rhamy, we could sit here all day about the things that I learned that have served me well now as a teen-mom but those are probably some big nuggets there.

Well. Now, you are a successful entrepreneur, you have multiple businesses. And along the way, how long when was your first business startup? How long ago was that?

Let's see here. My very first which is not in existence anymore was 2006-2007 and I rode the wave of 2008. And came out on the other side. So I ran a very successful celebrity event planning company through the worst economic downturn in US history. Because of what you said earlier, just sheer grit. Like when your back's up against the wall, you have to innovate and you have to make it work and my vendors and their families and their ability to feed their families were very dependent on me because I was oftentimes the number one client of theirs or their number one source of business.

That only-go system.

Yeah. And at that point I was divorced. I had two kids. I was a single mom trying to make everything work. But yeah, it was super stressful but we made it happen. And then through this whole COVID-19 situation we're in. That's just my stance. I was talking to my friend the other day, and he and I are just basically the same human, only he's male. And we both were just laughing because we said we refused to participate in 2008. And we're refusing to participate right now. I mean, I'm not ignorant and I'm not naive. I know that bad things are going on, but you can do what you can do. Instead of sitting and crying and waiting for somebody else to rescue you.

There's an opportunity everywhere.

Always. And usually really juicy ones in the midst of chaos.

Absolutely. Well, we'll go into that in a minute but our listeners there, they vary, their everyone from color. Students trying to figure out what they want to do up through, CEOs with a couple thousand employees to HR managers at a local plumbing shop. And I have found, in terms of our feedback, the number one thing that I get is that they learn the most when our guests tell us about their biggest mistakes. You're rocking out now. But what I'd love for you to do is take us to the time when you had your worst entrepreneurial moment, and we'll get to maybe what you learned about it. But really, I want you to take me to the series of events that led to that worst moment and tell me a little bit about that.

Well, I've had multiple business partners or strategic alliances throughout my career and probably dissolved a partnership that we got into without an exit strategy. And that was bumpy and disappointing and it broke the relationship. And I honestly don't regret how I managed my side of it because I think that I did it with as much integrity as I possibly could. But whether you are going into business with somebody, going into a project with somebody, or even when you take on new clients or customers is really important to have everything spelled out on the front end, and it's something that I do in my business. Now even when friends come to me and want to do business with me, I always just tell them like we're going to sign an agreement, not because I don't trust you or you don't trust me, but it just immediately builds trust and we always know what the expectations are and we always have something to go back to to make sure that you're staying the course.

Absolutely. You're talking about support structure. I have a great family. I love them to death. But my father was a Postal Inspector. So he was a federal law enforcement. I don't know an entrepreneur in my family. I'd never spoken to someone who owned a business. But some of the lessons that came from my dad just because he was who he was. I mean, since we were 12 years old, there was a sheet of paper on top of the fridge so I couldn't get to it. Where we laid out any agreements we made. You're going to take the trash out on Fridays and mow the lawn on Saturdays. Yeah, we wrote it there. And we signed it. How do we stop doing it? I loaned you 20 bucks to go to the mall because I'm a 90's kid. It's right there, on the sheet. And I don't know, because of that, I just never had the fear of being like, no, we're writing this down. It's going. We're both signing this napkin to a grab thing. We don't put it in writing. It didn't happen. I don't know. So for you, some of your worst experiences have been around strategic partnerships and those sorts of things and their disillusion, when maybe it didn't work out, or just the environment changed.

Yeah, I mean, I learned the hard way best, unfortunately. But when I do go through that, I do learn and I take my notes and I fail forward and turn those losses into lessons and do it better than next time. So you'll never see me get into any type of professional situation without having very clear expectations of outcomes and what happens if something goes sideways. Because it will, I mean, we're human, right? 

Absolutely. 

Even in a corporate environment, things go sideways, because people are involved. That's why we have people processes.

Exactly. Actually, we're gonna go into some more standard questions in a second, but this is just a random thought that occurs to me. I get this question from small business owners quite often or their HR people. When we're entering into something like this. And even if it's not a large issue like, bringing on a new vendor, or maybe you're entering into like, a reselling agreement or a partnership, where you're going to bring on somebody as an independent contractor, do you think that it's necessary to involve a lawyer every time? Where do you think that you can figure it out on your own?

My best friend is a lawyer.

Ah. Cheater.

Yeah, well, no, he's a dirt lawyer. So yeah, it's not business law, but I'm just saying he'd probably disagree with me. But I don't think that you need a lawyer every time and when you are onboarding even a new employee, you have your basic employee contract, if you will. And every state is different and how that shows up. But you're going through your onboarding process that is essentially kind of an ongoing agreement of, "Okay. Here's the job description. Here's why we hired you. Here are the expectations. Here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to train you, here's how we're going to integrate you. And here's how we are going to follow up on these items and measure our success." And putting those pieces in place is the unofficial agreement of, this is what we expect, this is what you expect. We're going to do regular check-ins to make sure that we're on the same page. And so it's just anytime that you want success, and you want to minimize the pain, you have to control the controllables because the uncontrollables sure are coming.

Absolutely, absolutely. That's actually in a lot of depending on your state, as you mentioned many times it is actually a contract. 

Yeah.

Very legally...