Listen to this interview here:http://www.solosmarts.com/solo-smarts-14/

Kelly McCausey: You’re back with Kelly and I’m joined now by my featured guest Carrie Wilkerson The Barefoot Executive. Welcome Carrie.

Carrie Wilkerson: Thanks Kelly. Thanks for having me.

Kelly McCausey: Carrie I am so happy to have you here on Solo Smarts. I feel like I know you from watching your videos and listening to your podcast and now I’ve been listening to your book on my iPhone. This is exciting.

Carrie Wilkerson: This is fun. That’s a great thing that you point out – that’s the reason that people doing business online should do podcasts and videos because then your audience already feels like they know you even before they meet you.

Kelly McCausey: Yes. Definitely. So, I feel like I already know you but for my listeners who may not what do you really want people to know about Carrie?

Carrie Wilkerson: I think the most important thing to know about the personality of Carrie Wilkerson The Barefoot Executive is that the truth is I’m just Carrie like you’re just Kelly. While I spend a large portion of my work and my life telling people how phenomenal and extraordinary and exceptional they are, the truth is we all are in our ordinariness. I’m just a normal girl. I’m just a girl next door. I’m just a little sister, the big sister, the mom, the lady you pass at the grocery store. That’s what I most want people to know because I think sometimes when you’re in the public eye or the publishing eye or on video that people tend to put you up on a pedestal. The fact is one of two things – I’m going to lower that pedestal down to the same height that

everybody else or I’m going to raise you up on a pedestal right next to me so that we can see eye to eye.

Kelly McCausey: I think that’s great that that’s what you want people to realize because sometimes people do put you up on a pedestal and they think well that’s Carrie, that works for Carrie because she’s so famous she’s so awesome, that wouldn’t work for me.

Carrie Wilkerson: Exactly. The other thing they need to know too is I’m a wife, I’m a mom of four ranging in age from 4-15, and one of those beautiful kids also has extreme special needs which takes up a lot of time, energy and resources. Some are in school some are not in school. I started my businesses when I was just had two and they were little bity and a husband that traveled full-time with his career. So, the fact is I run up against the same obstacles that everybody else does when they’re trying to build their business and work at home. I don’t have a staff. I don’t have a nanny. I don’t have a housekeeper. I don’t have legions of people at my bidding.

I’m building my business the same way that you’re building yours and other people are building theirs and that’s one choice at a time, one day at a time and honestly as I can, as I can fit it in or as I can do without the slates to handle it.

We’re all the same in that regards so be really careful about discounting people and their perceived success or thinking that well if my life were like hers that my business could grow like hers does. The truth is a lot of the things that I’ve dealt with and that Kelly has dealt with, you don’t want to do deal with. You really do want to be dealing with your own stuff and not what everybody else has been blessed with.

Kelly McCausey: You don’t have a housekeeper?

Carrie Wilkerson: Nope.

Kelly McCausey: Oh my goodness!

Carrie Wilkerson: I don’t. I was using somebody every other week and she was helping a little bit with the laundry and the fact is I’ve got the four kids here and we do chores on Saturday mornings so the kids do help some. It was almost like with the delegation of it, it was creating even more work like on the laundry and all that. So the truth is it’s just us, we don’t have a housekeeper, we don’t send it out to be done, we’re just a normal family.

Kelly McCausey: Well I’m impressed.

Carrie Wilkerson: It’s not like Martha Stewart lives here or anything. You can tell there are four kids here. It’s comfortable, it’s lived in, it’s fun and I just put my tennis shoes on one foot at a time like everybody else.

Kelly McCausey: Carrie you talk a lot about finding your why for being in business and I’m curious how has your own why changed over the years.

Carrie Wilkerson: A lot of people get really wrapped up in oh I don’t know if I’m going to be motivated by this or forever or oh but my why is different than yours. The truth is mine evolves on a constant basis. I started my business not because I wanted to make a lot of money, not because I was really passionate and certainly not because I ever aspired to have my own business, I really didn’t. I was a high school teacher and happy with what I was doing and loving it. I’ve been there and done that with a lot of that but we adopted siblings and so literally overnight my priorities changed. I had an 8 month old and I had a 26 month old instantly.

No matter how good I was at my job or how great it was they came from a situation where they needed a full-time mom, they needed full-time care and I was not willing to delegate that out. I have no issue if women want to be working full-time outside the home – that’s their choice but for these specific kids at this specific point in my life I knew I needed to be with them. But the fact was Kelly we were very reliant on my paycheck. My husband was a young growing executive at the time so we were very reliant on those checks. So I started my business just so I could afford to stay home, just so I could offset the loss of that income. The rest as they say is history.

That was my initial why, was to be with them and be available for all their therapy appointment and their care appointments and all those kind of things, for their growth and development. Then as they got older and more self-sufficient it became that my husband’s industry was changing and he was gone a lot and he was missing so much of their lives that then my goal became let’s bring him home, let’s give him some options. That became my why – affording us options as a family, we live out in the middle of nowhere it’s not exactly commuter distance from anything physically and that wouldn’t be an option if he were still working in the big city.

Then my why evolved to ok we built up some medical debt and some business debt and some other things so my why became financial solvency. We really wanted to be financially independent.

It evolves at every new step of business. We added two more kids along the way (the old fashioned way) and so then my why was very passionately that I could be totally available for them like I had the older two. Now that my son’s special needs are more extensive part of my why is being able to afford the best care and options for him and not having to rely on insurance and not having to rely on status quo for him. We’re talking about $3,500.00 a month there so that’s a huge portion of my why is the best care and opportunity possible.

So, it evolves. It doesn’t always have to be the same thing. You’ll notice that while some of those things that money affords, the fact is my why is not about money. My why is not about popularity or status or fame or fortune – any of those things – it really is very much based on my values and the things that are core important to my family.

Kelly McCausey: Carrie, hearing the progression if we backed all the way back up to that first why was being home with your two young adopted kids. What if your husband had a fabulous career that was at no risk and he loved it, do you think you would have just built a little business and kind of stayed in that place?

Carrie Wilkerson: What’s interesting is I am kind of; I guess the word is driven…

Kelly McCausey: Yeah.

Carrie Wilkerson: You’re agreeing with me so I think you see that. I’ve never been one that has been happy with mediocre or status quo. Not to say that nothing is ever good enough, it’s not that, it’s that if I’m going to do something I feel like I need to play full out. If I’m going to sing, I’m going to sing full out. If I’m going to raise money or I shared that committee that did our community Christmas one year; it was a huge event on the square and it wasn’t enough to do it the way they had done it the year before I wanted it to earn more money and I wanted it to be bigger and reach more communities.

I think just intrinsically I’m a little driven to excellence that way. But what happened as I grew my little publishing company I had, it seemed to be about I just want to grow this bigger for more money but I really saw that that I was influencing other business owners and freeing them up in what they were doing so it became more about scale of impact. As a matter of fact at one point Kelly my husband did administration for me part-time for the company, some of the admin stuff, and he got a map out on the wall and he would put push pins in where I had clients. He would say look, look how you are affecting Colorado. Look how this is spreading over there and so that became a motivator for me, of building a platform so that other people could see it was possible for them too – to work at home, to influence their family.

It stopped being about the money a long time ago. Once I got out of debt, the money really didn’t cross my mind very much. It was really more about influencing people to their greatness. It’s like what I talked about the pedestal earlier – I spend a large portion of my day being a cheerleader. Somebody earlier said you’re nothing more than a glorified cheerleader and they were trying to be catty and insult me and I said thank you, thank you, yeah I never could pull off the outfit in high school. I wasn’t popular enough for that in high school but if you’re just saying that what I’m paid to do is encourage people and empower people then I’m ok with that.

If his job had been great and fabulous and all that would I have still grown it? I think so. I think so because what I thought is that it was making a difference to people and I was always growing too, learning new things and growing in different ways. Yeah, I think some of us are just driven in different ways than others and for me it was really about the ripples we were creating.

Kelly McCausey: I think you’re right. You are motivated by something inside not just by need or situations.

Carrie Wilkerson: Right. The truth is, I could make a lot less than what I make and be good and be fine economically. And we do, we live on very little – we give away a lot, we help support our parents in certain ways and siblings and we sock a lot away for the kids, not to mention the therapy bills that I mentioned earlier. We don’t live an extravagant lifestyle. We really don’t. And you know I’m not blowing it on shoes so it’s not about that. It really is more of the ripples in the pond and more of just the message. It’s like if you think about somebody if they had the cure for cancer would they really be motivated to get the world out because of how much

they could make or would they just be excited about eradicating this scary aggressive disease that we know as cancer?

So I think when you’re really passionate about the problem you are solving for your market that it doesn’t have to be about the money. Yes you want to be smart and you want to be profitable. Yes you want to be wise with your time and you want to benefit your shareholders that live in your house with you. But I think when you really know your why, when you really know what motivates you you’re more driven than people understand. I am one of the most driven people I know and I do think it’s because I’m so connected to what drives me and why I’m doing what I’m doing which is funding orphanages and funding adoptions and creating therapy opportunities and getting the word out about fetal alcohol syndrome and just empowering people to have choices in their career lives, their business lives.

Kelly McCausey: Carrie when you first began to build a business at home I know you’ve done lots of things prior to that but with what you started doing at first have you always loved what you’re doing with your online business?

Carrie Wilkerson: This is something that I know that a lot of people teach is that if you find your passion you never work a day in your life. If you follow your passion the money will follow. Do what you love and the money will follow. And I think it’s absolutely not true. I think it’s absolutely not true. I think in some cases the two can meet and definitely now training and being author and speaker, yes I love it now but have I ever not loved what I did? Absolutely! When I was in sales I did not love that but I loved the financial difference I was making.

When I created my publishing company I was sitting literally 12-15 hours a day in between snack time, Barney time, puzzle time and kid pick up time I was literally putting in those kinds of hours and overnights and I know you’ve done that too to build a business and do newsletters and stare at a computer screen and serve clients that aren’t always the nicest people. I was never passionate about newsletters. I was never passionate about that but I was passionate about freeing those people up in their business with a smart system and I was passionate about the extra money we could put against our debt and I was passionate about the opportunities and the freedom that created.

So, yeah I did that for nine years – didn’t love it but I loved the results from it. I don’t know that you have to be passionate about selling real estate. I don’t know that you have to be passionate about fitness even if you’re teaching that but if you’re passionate about the results and passionate about the problem you’re solving for people and passionate about the results from it then I think that can be a really powerful thing. I was really really loving the fact that I knew I was building a platform and building financial stores so that at some point I could fund the things I was really passionate about. Fund the orphanages and the adoptions and those things. So, that’s what I was passionate about and I was willing to do something I didn’t love to create a lifestyle I loved. I think that initial sacrifice is maybe what a lot of people aren’t willing to do. But I absolutely was willing to do it for the sake of my kids and willing to do it for the sake of the big picture.

Kelly McCausey: I want to turn that into another question. The things that you did that you didn’t really love did you come up with a strategy for getting out of that work as soon as possible? Did you actively look for ways to get out of that?

Carrie Wilkerson: Well yeah. I mean after a few years and especially when you’re as driven as me you tend to trend towards burnout so one of my first strategies was how can I delegate some of this? Who can I hire to help me with some of this? I was as motivated to get as profitable as quickly as possible so that I could have some help in a few areas. So training new people was not my favorite thing, on my team, training new contractors was not my favorite. This was before video was so easy, this was before screen cast was so easy but basically I incentivized, a contractor that was working with me I paid her a bonus when she had to train somebody new, I paid her a bonus when their retention was good and they stayed with us for awhile because the training really was a drain for me. I really was impatient with it which is funny because I’m a teacher but I was impatient with that. So that’s one thing I could immediately take off my plate. Some of the administrative stuff that was repetitive, again this was before a lot of the automated tools we have now I could delegate on a contractor basis once I was into good profitability.

So, yeah I motivated myself enough to grow big enough that I could pay some outsourcers to help me with those things. But there was still the everyday client work with a certain level of clients I had. I worked with the top tier clients in our company. My strategy was to sell the company, that’s what I thought. When I started working with a new coach they said you know this is such a great monthly income for you how much would it cost you to promote your manager to take over the company and just to move you out of the decision making so it would still keep running? So sure enough that’s what I did. I promoted somebody. I had an exit strategy, I moved then into developing The Barefoot Executive brand and we kept that company going about three more years and we just recently sold that company after enjoying three more years of monthly residual income of me not even touching the company.

Kelly McCausey: Wow. Tell me about The Barefoot Executive, the book. I am listening to it right now on my iPhone and I’m loving it. I got in about two hours so far.

Carrie Wilkerson: You’re about 35% finished because it’s about a six hour recording if memory serves. Let me point backwards a minute to what I just said, people that just heard all that about selling businesses, delegating, promoting blah blah blah – you guys need to know I have zero business education. I was not business trained, not business educated. It doesn’t necessarily come just intuitively but once you’re in the business you can figure out exit strategies and those kinds of things. I don’t want anybody to think oh I can’t do what she does because I don’t know anything about selling a business or exit strategies. That’s all stuff you kind of learn as you go. I don’t want anybody to be intimidated by that.

The Barefoot Executive is the book I wish I had 12 years ago. It’s the book I looked and looked for at the library and at the bookstores and it wasn’t around. What I mean is I wanted a book that said here’s some options of what you can do. I didn’t want a book that said here is my perfect system or here is the opportunity you can subscribe to or here’s what we do and how you can do it too. I wanted a book that said who are you, what do you know and how can you translate that into business? What’s the best business model for you and how you get started? Where do you

find customers? Where are they? And better yet how do you do this on a shoestring? Instead of go buy a franchise for a hundred thousand dollars and then your problems will be solved.

I wanted a really basic business book that was for non-business people. I needed it in language to understand with interactive exercises from somebody who had been there and done that and didn’t have anything to gain by any choice that I went to. Like, everything I read by direct sales people was recruiting me into their opportunity and they stood to directly benefit from that. Anybody selling franchises, it was benefiting them somehow. I really just wanted an unbiased opinion with some facts to back it up on what can I do, what’s out there, what are my opportunities, how do I get started without spending a fortune.

One of the most powerful parts of the book I think are all the case studies from clients and friends of mine who really run the gamet of gender and age and experience and their lives are also different, their business models are also different.

So the book is not really about me. It’s about a lot of different barefoot executives, a lot of different people that have created their own business on their own terms to suit their life. So, that’s an overview of the book. It really does come down to some really basic questions like what have you done in the past? What are some hard things you have gone through in the past? What are some things you know? What do people ask you about a lot? What are some things people seek your advice about? How can you translate that into business? Here are five different business models, which one suits you the best? Which one seems the best fit and how do you plug in what you know for that model and then where do you find the clients that want what you have?

I mean it really is almost that simple Kelly. You’re a third through it and I sum that up as how you’re understanding it right now?

Kelly McCausey: Yes. The case studies are definitely my favorite part. I love stories. I love real examples.

Carrie Wilkerson: I didn’t write the caste studies. The case studies really wrote themselves and submitted them. I don’t have an ego so big that I can say oh wow the caste studies your favorite I didn’t write that. I’m so glad those are your favorite. I’m so glad those are resonating with you. This is not one of those success books that you’re going to read and say oh wow Carrie is so amazing and so awesome and I want to be like her. The book really isn’t about me. Some of my story is woven in but the book really is about the reader. It really is a different book for every reader in my opinion.

Kelly McCausey: Lots of people write a book and get published but you have really had great success with this. Just reading the little plugs and reviews, the famous people who know about you. I really enjoyed this whole process of getting this interview with you and getting the book because I got stars in my eyes and that doesn’t happen very often anymore. That’s just how impressed I am with you. I’m not trying to blow flowers up anybody’s butt but you really have set yourself apart from lots of other people doing business books. How did becoming a successful author change your business?

Carrie Wilkerson: Well you know that’s interesting that that’s your perception Kelly. First of all let me back up a little and tell everybody listening – Kelly was one of the first people I followed on Twitter when I got on Twitter. To me Kelly was one of those people already super established in the work at home space so I watched Kelly and what Kelly did. As a matter of fact I will never forget; my main domain has a hyphen in it and I will never forget that one day you Tweeted about people please do not put a hyphen; it just hurts me when people have a hyphen in their domain. I remember going oh dang it but I can’t get the original one, the people won’t sell it. Anyway, I have been watching you and I have been modeling some things after you and really admiring how you balance things.

So the perception that you have stars in your eyes and famous author, that’s funny to me because to me I really am still just that girl. I really am just still mom. The fact is, having a book hasn’t necessarily changed my business yet. Because of the way I developed business enabled me to publish the book. My presence in social media, my presence on my blog, my presence with video and podcast, my very visual presence there is what led to the book. The publishers came to me and said we want you to write a book, do you have a book? Because a lot of people already have their book, they’re pitching it, they want people to publish their book. They came to me and I said well I don’t have one what do you have in mind? They said well we want the starter business book.

The truth is, client wise I prefer to work with clients that already have other businesses that are looking at increasing their profitability or increasing their streams of income or maybe switching models. Start up is not necessarily where I feel like my strength is. However, I’ve been through that and met a lot of people through that so that’s where they wanted the book to start.

So the truth is the success of my business is what led to the book not vice versa. Now what will the book probably lead to? It will lead to me meeting and being more established with people that are not as visible online, people that are more offline. It has established me more with associate as a credible voice – people that maybe dismissed me as an online marketer before, people more in the mainstream. It will establish me more as a speaker. I’m already a speaker but when you have a book supposedly they think you have even more to say.

What people should know though is that writing a book is not a money maker! Writing a book can actually be very expensive because of the time it takes to write it, the time it takes away from your business to market it, etc. So, I don’t ever want anybody to see a book as like an instant solution. It can be a really really great credibility builder. It can be a really really great influencer with people that are on the fence about you but the fact is I don’t know that the book in and of itself is the key to growing your business unless you have a solid business foundation with a good backend. The book itself is not a business is what I’m trying to say.

Kelly McCausey: I love how you are using the book to draw people back to the web. Now I was listening on my iPhone out and about so I couldn’t go watch the videos but I’m going to.

Carrie Wilkerson: Somebody told me the videos aren’t on a mobile player yet. Is this true?

Kelly McCausey: I didn’t try to look at them yet.

Carrie Wilkerson: Would you do me a favor – would you try and then email me and let me know because somebody told me that. I’m not an iPhone user so if that’s the case we’ll have those reworked. I have about 12 videos that supplement the book content to get them to know, like and trust me. I lead them back to my TV station online a lot. I lead them to other pages because I really want them interacting with me in social media. I want them to know me. I don’t want to be an arm’s length diva. That doesn’t appeal to anybody. If you’re here on my porch with me, we’re taking off our shoes, we’re just having a conversation, we’re just people. We’re all just people. I’ve never really been impressed with a ton of people – if that makes sense. I’ve never really thought oh that’s somebody I can’t talk to. I mean everybody is just a somebody and everybody started the same as somebody’s baby boy or somebody’s baby girl. It’s only when we start believing our own press that we get full of ourself and think we need to hold people arms length. That’s just not how I do business. I don’t think that’s terribly effective.

So, some of the videos I have makeup on, some I don’t. Some I have a ponytail, some I have my hair done, some I have a ball cap. I mean they really are just base level me talking about business and how we’ve built it and some motivational stuff too.

Kelly McCausey: With all the success that you do have and the fact that your husband gets to stay home, you got debt free, you can cover your needs and support the charities that you want to support but you still have that inner drive chugging along. Do you have a plan for like the next five years? Or do you ever get up and just think what’s next?

Carrie Wilkerson: That’s a great question. I did mention that I scaled back to just the one business this year which is helping me a little bit. I do trend towards burnout so I’m trying to be really careful with this brand. Barefoot Executive I’m transitioning more from it being Carrie Wilkerson The Barefoot Executive to Carrie Wilkerson the author of The Barefoot Executive. What you’ll see even more over the next year to 18 months is transitioning to teaching people how to be a barefoot executive so my audience will be the barefoot executive not me.

So, what I will start doing is not necessarily pulling me out of the brand but making the brand more representative so that if at some points, let’s say 10-15 years down the road I decide to sell the brand or take on VC or something along those lines. I’m way too independent for that it would either be sell it I would never take anybody’s money and then let them tell me how to do things let’s just be honest. But you’ll see a little bit of that.

What I am doing this year is and when you say my husband stays home with me he’s my CFO. Just so everybody knows he’s my accountant. He does the books, he does the taxes, he really is full-time employed by me which is good. Our youngest goes to school next year so if he wants to get back into the workforce which he’s looking at maybe doing, exploring some other things for himself, then that changes the chemistry around here too.

So, what’s next what I really see in the immediate future is I’ll be doing less coaching. I’m mentoring fewer people this year as far as individually than I have in the past. We’re

transitioning to more of a focus on BEU which is Barefoot Executive University which is the mass coaching program, the group coaching program.

What I’m really doing is pulling myself out of the day to day and limiting the number of times that I have to show up so that I can just build in more time with my teenagers and my little ones. I’m kind of coming full circle. It’s like we said earlier I can afford to make less but I’m also looking at some ways to build in some systems – the memberships, some subscription billing, those kind of things so that my business still keeps turning even though I’m working less time. I’ve also changed my speaking model. I’m probably only going to speak about six different places per year now just because it takes an awful lot to get me on a plane away from the gang. I’m not doing live workshops anymore, only virtual.

So, yeah I’m just kind of phasing things in a different way and making them even more immediate to where I am here. As far as what’s next I’m going to self-publish; I say I’m going to self-publish, I probably will self-publish a trilogy. I’m working on a Barefoot Executive trilogy. I don’t know if you remember The Rich Dad Poor Dad series.

Kelly McCausey: Yes.

Carrie Wilkerson: It came out as the one book and then he came out with a whole series of branded books. The Barefoot Executive will be a series of branded books. So, perhaps The Barefoot Executive on Lead Generation, The Barefoot Executive on Budgeting and Profitability. We will have a series of Barefoot Executive books and that’s in the works too. They will be very media interactive as well as books.

If we’re looking at affecting people on a mass basis we have to go out with multimedia and print in a big way. So, that’s kind of what’s next. Again like I said the books really aren’t about money it really is about growing your audience and spreading a message. I think that’s probably where we are headed next.

Kelly McCausey: You’re boggling my mind.

Carrie Wilkerson: Oh I got an invitation to start a twice a week radio show on a business network so we’re looking at that. The fact is I think all roads will lead to, this is kind of on the vision board I never would have said it even before a few months ago but we’ve talked to a couple of producers that really would love the idea of a talk show. A business makeover talk show or some kind of TV feature. But you know TV has never really been my goal. But you can’t discount the medium as far as mass influence. So maybe maybe that’s in the 3-5 year plan. We’ll see.

Kelly McCausey: Well in the beginning of your book you pointed out that even if you have a great job that you’ve got a lot of confidence in it’s foolish to rely on one single income stream. I think that more and more people are realizing that. I do see television being a great; there is nothing on television that is perfect for us.

Carrie Wilkerson: I think the combination of online plus TV plus radio; as many people as we think are online, they’re online for limited reasons. They’re still not utilizing it to the full. So they don’t even realize there are online video channels, they don’t even realize what a wealth of information blogs are or a podcast. If it helps the message to do some segments on some shows, we might consider that. But like I said I’m not one of those people that’s like oh I really want a TV show. I’m not narcissistic enough to really be into that but if it’s something that I feel like really spreads the message, grows the business and helps a lot of people then maybe you could talk me into that. But I would like to get my oldest two out of school and my younger two settled into school. It really does go back to my primary motives of if it’s not great for the shareholders, if it’s not great for the family then I don’t care about fame and fortune and all those things. It doesn’t matter, at what cost. It’s not my thing really.

Kelly McCausey: Yep. Well gosh I really enjoyed getting to spend this time with you. I could have asked so many more questions but I curbed myself. Carrie thank you so much for being here on Solo Smarts.

Carrie Wilkerson: Thanks for having me and for people that do have more questions or for you Kelly or anybody else in your audience this is really why I’m so engaged in social media - if you do have more you want to ask me I do manage my own social media. I am the one that answers you at Twitter Barefoot.com or Facebook Barefoot.com so friend me up there and ask away. If I can help I absolutely will.

Kelly McCausey: That’s awesome. The show notes will contain links to everything we’ve talked about, all of the different URLs that Carrie has mentioned and the book so don’t worry go to SoloSmarts.com and you can find all of that. I promise to hook you up.

Carrie Wilkerson: Awesome.

Kelly McCausey: Carrie thanks again.

Carrie Wilkerson: Thanks Kelly. Ya’ll have a great day.

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