054: Being a Rebel and Taking a Stand to Achieve New Heights with Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder

#00:00:39-8# Neil : Hello its Neil Ball here, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mind-set, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Kathleen Hale. But before I introduce you to her, I have a quote for you, James Hillman says, ‘I don’t have answers, I have questions.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Kathleen, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:22-9# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Yes I am.

#00:01:26-9# Neil : Thank you for coming on the show Kathleen.

#00:01:26-9# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Thank you for having me.

#00:01:29-2# Neil : Kathleen Hale is a serial entrepreneur, a public speaking coach, a former trial attorney, and law firm founder and a chair-free living advocate. Kathleen is the co-founder and CEO of Rebel Desk, a company that designs and sells standing and treadmill desks. Kathleen and her co-founder brought Rebel Desk from concept to launch in just 7 months. Rebel Treadmill Desks have been featured on the Vue, Good Morning America, The Tennis Channel and PBS. As a leader in the active working world, Kathleen’s articles and interviews have appeared in Livestrong.com, FastTrack, tech.co and forbes.com among others. She is also the founder of the chair free project an online educational resource, to help people use chairs less. Seeing a need to help fellow company founders improve their public speaking skills, Kathleen recently began working as a public speaker and pitch coach. She is using her expertise in public speaking and her extensive writing experience to help others realise their full potential. Kathleen, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life, to allow the listeners to get to know more about what you do and who you are?

#00:02:50-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Absolutely. I started the company, Rebel Desk with my husband, who is my co-founder, in 2013 and we started selling our products in the fall of that year. And Rebel Desk is a company that designs and sells treadmills desks and standing desks to help people be more active while they work. Before I started Rebel Desk, I had a lot of experience sitting, like so many of us do. I was an attorney and I spent a lot of time in my office chair. Those long hours started to take a toll on my own health and happiness and productivity. And when I started my own law practise with a few other attorneys, that was when I had the opportunity to think about ways that I could change my day, and improve the way I spend my day. My husband and I played around with different ideas for alternatives to sitting at your desk, and ultimately hacked a treadmill desk, where I could walk and work. And it was noisy and loud and took up a lot of space and awkward but despite all of those drawbacks, I loved being able to move while I worked. And that’s what sort of caused me to dive into the market and the movement for alternatives to chairs, and ultimately to take the leap and start Rebel Desk. So I run Rebel Desk now and I also have an educational resource that I started called chair-free project, to help people about using chairs less in all parts of their life, not just at the office. And that’s really what I am passionate about, is helping people to live more actively.

#00:04:47-2# Neil : Yeh so Rebel Desk is essentially a desk that you can work at whilst running on a treadmill or running machine, whatever you call them, is that right?

#00:04:57-3# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : That is correct, except that the treadmill is designed specifically for walking. So it goes no faster than two miles per hour. Which if you ever run on a treadmill, you know that’s a fairly slow pace, and the purpose for keeping it a walking treadmill, because it is designed just for the office. So it does not have the rails on the side of it, like a big running treadmill does, it keeps the product very lightweight, it only weighs 88 lbs, and mobile so you can move it around the office, and move it out of the way if you need to. And it lets it slip underneath a standing height desk, and just blend right into your office as opposed to a running treadmill which would be a lot bigger and heavier. And that way too, you don’t have to change into your gym clothes, or feel like you are working up a sweat in front of your colleagues. You can just walk at a leisurely pace, in your work clothes but still put in you know four or five miles a day.

#00:06:02-0# Neil : Wow, its a great concept, I love it. What do you enjoy most about what you do Kathleen?

#0 #00:06:10-8# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I enjoy most of the flexibility that comes from being my own boss, in all honesty. Yes its very stressful to run your own business, yes the life of an entrepreneur is full of uncertainty, yes its a lot of hard work but I would rather be the captain of my own ship, and fighting for it and to take it up stream than taking orders about how to sail someone else’s ship. So having that flexibility in my life is part of what has me addicted to the entrepreneur lifestyle.

# #00:06:47-3# Neil : And what is it that drives you?

#00:06:51-7# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I am really driven by the opportunity to build products and create experiences that will truly improve people’s lives. I have had a lot of ideas for products and businesses over the years, but most of the time they come down to either not being the right timing for them or I can’t imagine myself just feeling that good about pursuing that business, and that’s how Rebel Desk is different, and what drove us to start the company, we regularly hear from our customers about how using our products has helped them to lose weight, reduce back pain, go off medication for chronic diseases. Just make them be happier, those are the stories that really keep me going when the days get challenging.

#00:07:42-2# Neil : And how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

#00:07:46-2# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I have two kids and I love spending time playing with them. They are 7 and 8 years old and they are at a great age where we like to play a lot of games, read books. I also coach soccer for both of them, and I love being out on the field and working with their friends and team mates to build their soccer skills. As a family we do a lot of travelling and like we are always planning our next getaway even if its just one night out of town to go camping nearby. I think especially when you run your own business, and when you run your own business with a family member, you need to just break away, even if its just for 24 hours to reset.

#00:08:30-4# Neil : And do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

#00:08:37-7# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I do, my dad is a role model for me, actually he, I grew up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and my dad was born and raised there in a very modest family, and he was fortunate enough to be able to go to college and get an engineering degree, and then he got a job at a huge multi-national corporation which in the 70’s was the gold saying ‘now you are going to be set for life.’ You know, you are going to work for the man and he is going to take care of you. But my dad hated his job and he wanted to quit and he knew he could start his own business. But when he had a mortgage and at that time three kids, ultimately four kids, that seemed like a crazy thing to do. But he did it anyway, and I saw the ups and downs of the life that he built as an entrepreneur, you know starting in our basement with my mom as his secretary, but ultimately he was able to follow his dream and build the life that he wanted and send four of his kids to college. And now be able to enjoy a comfortable retirement because he was willing to take a risk, and do what ultimately made him the most happy. And entrepreneurship now is I think it is a little bit more accepted than maybe it was back then particularly at a blue collar city like Pittsburgh. So my dad is an important role model for me as I made choices about how to spend my life.

#00:10:21-3# Neil : Mmmm Kathleen, can we just talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur because I think you have probably got some interesting tips from developing this product and things. So what difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business?

#00:10:34-7# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Well as I mentioned I was an attorney before I started Rebel Desk, and I had wanted to be an attorney since I was 13 years old probably and I loved being an attorney, I was not an unsatisfied attorney like unfortunately there are very many, but I was fortunate to have great clients, and work on cases that I really believed in, I worked on a really interesting intellectual property case, where we covered the largest judgement in the state of Virginia for a man who had has his entrepreneurial vision essentially stolen from the Chinese. A Chinese company and a company based in Dubai. So things like that, that were really fulfilling as an attorney to help people. So for me, one of the things that was really difficult with starting Rebel Desk was to think about leaving behind my identity as a lawyer, and what I had worked to achieve to that point was I just throwing it away? Could I ever go back to being a lawyer? and now I almost never identify myself as a lawyer, sometime people hear I was a lawyer, technically I still am a licensed attorney and think wow that’s crazy, so to separate your profession from your personal identity was a little bit of a difficult process for me.

#00:11:59-5# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Ultimately, one that I am glad that I went through.

#00:12:02-8# Neil : Mmm hmmm and what difficulties did you have in terms of setting up your business, and obviously developing the product?

#00:12:14-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : We have a lot of difficulties initially in just deciding whether we could command and manufacture a product at the right price point, and compete with those who were already out there in the treadmill desk space even though there were not very many companies, they were very large. So could we as a small business, come in and say, ‘ok big guys, we are going to take you on, we are going to come in to your customer base.’ So there is a lot of research planning and data. Crunching of numbers that went in, to deciding to take that leap but once we felt confident of our analysis of the market and the product that we could bring to market, then we jumped and we went in full speed, and we were fortunate not to have a terribly difficult time finding good manufacturing partners which when you produce a physical product, is a huge factor in your success. We started looking for manufacturing partners in China. And ultimately we ended up in Taiwan, and we were really lucky through our networks to get some great introductions and helped us find people who would, other businesses that were interested in collaborating with the new company that we were.

#00:13:39-0# Neil : Mmm and did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:13:47-4# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I think one of our biggest doubts was whether we could compete with the larger companies, that were already out there. Did they have too much of a head start on the treadmill desk space in particular? but we felt that there was an audience that those companies were not targeting, they wanted a product that was smaller, lighter weight, looked better, looked a little more aesthetically pleasing than the current products that were out there and we could target those. So we believe in taking small steps, so we took a small step and test and see and then another small step and test and see and then another small step and test and see and then each time the step can get a little bit bigger so that was kind of our plan as we got started.

#00:14:33-9# Neil : Mmmm. And what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:14:39-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : We did not take an active enough role in designing and testing the packaging for our treadmills. This is something that I talk about with anyone who comes to me who wants to build physical product and I say, ‘you have to think about the packaging and the delivery of your product.’ We took for granted that that just happens, you know? The manufacturer has packaging and FedEx and UPS delivers it, and it will all work out fine.

#00:15:12-4# Neil : The break things as well though don’t they ha ha ha

#00:15:14-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Yeh those videos where the FedEx driver throws the televisions over the fence, those are real ha ha ha. So we very quickly learn, we had to take a more active role in that, find a better way to deliver and package our products, which we have done.

#00:15:35-4# Neil : Yeh its very difficult dealing with couriers and delivering products so it gets there in one piece, I have had quite a bit of experience with that, so how do you deliver them now?

#00:15:42-7# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : We deliver our treadmills, by a freight carrier, so they, you have to be home to sign for the package. And the freight carriers are handling heavier products, so they are used often having two people on the truck, to handle the product. If someone buys multiple treadmills and desks that’s going to be on a pallet, so things that will make it less likely that they will be damaged to them, if people will just buy a desk by itself without a treadmill, which we do offer, we do send those products via FedEx, and that has been working out well for us. Its less expensive, to do that, to ship it via FedEx and also a lot of customers like it because they do not have to be home to sign for the product. So there is an element of consumer convenience there and you know in the world of Amazon where everyone is used to being able to click and then the next day, click buy and the next day it shows up at your doorstep. A freight carrier takes a little bit longer, but for the most part we found that with a higher priced product and a large product, consumers are understanding of that.

#00:17:07-9# Neil : So I am guessing that you have improved the packaging on the product then?

#00:17:09-7# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Yes.

#00:17:14-2# Neil : What are some of the things that you did before you started your business? that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:17:24-7# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I suggest that you tell everybody that you can in your network about what you want to, what you are doing, what your plan is, what the business is you are trying to start. What your goals are and you will be surprised at the hidden expertise in your network. I found that people generally want to help, they are excited for you, they are interested in what you are doing, and you never know who has a connection to someone else, you know some expertise that you can say ‘hey can I jump on the phone with you for ten minutes?’ We got a connection to manufacturing in Taiwan that way, but we did not ultimately use them and they led us to another company. So and we had no idea that this person in our network was used to be involved in selling I think it was patio furniture, you know we did not know that that was their background, but because we were out there saying, ‘this is what we are doing, we are so excited we are sharing it.’ Our network was willing to give back and help us.

#00:18:33-7# Neil : Mmm Kathleen, can we just talk about the entrepreneurial journey a little bit here and move forward a bit to the time when you actually created the business? Do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:18:47-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Yes I do think culture is important, no matter how small the business to start with, and for us we were just really interested in creating a culture that was learning oriented you know driven by data and research to make the best decisions. Constantly wanting to improve and get better and stay on top of the newest trends. So everyone feels comfortable as well saying ‘I have a new idea, I want to take a new direction and here’s the reasons why I want to do that.’ So that learning oriented culture is really important for our business. And of course a culture that involves health and moving and standing and walking a lot.

#00:19:40-0# Neil : So all the people that work in your company, do they all stand up and work at your desks?

#00:19:45-8# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Yes we have, but we have converts. Ha ha ha.

#00:19:51-5# Neil : So they go home exhausted. Ha ha ha.

#00:19:54-5# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Its ok to sit, everyone needs a break every now and then.

#00:20:00-5# Neil : You allow them to have chairs then, that’s good, excellent.

#00:20:02-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Ha ha ha ha.

#00:20:04-1# Neil : Knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

#00:20:13-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : You know what is interesting is that I would say learning more about everything that you are doing can help to shortcut the learning curve which maybe sounds like those are not compatible but one mistake that I feel like I made and I think this is partly comes from being an attorney is relying too much on experts. You know I did not know anything about running an e-commerce business, or building products overseas or you know all of this was new to me, so of course we needed to get advice from people on the outside, but then there are also a lot of people when you start a business who want you to pay them for their services. And you feel like they know so much more than you do, but what I found is, what you do not understand what the person who you are hiring to do SEO or your google ads, or your user interface on your website, when you do not understand what they are doing, you cannot evaluate the quality of their work so you have got to put the time in to understand what the best practise are, and then one. maybe you can just do it yourself or your team, or two. then you can figure out who the best person is to hire or to have a contract with to do that for you.

#00:21:33-3# Neil : Mmmm I would agree with you on that, I found that in the past, its always good to have that thorough understanding of what somebody is doing for you.

#00:21:44-3# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Yes.

#00:21:45-7# Neil : And how much does gut feelings influence your decisions in your business?

#00:21:54-6# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I try to fight that instinct, try to be more data driven, try to be more evidence driven. There is a book that I really like in this area, its called Decisive, its by two brothers named Chip and Dan Heath, and they have an action plan for how to make difficult decisions essentially, and they call it, they use the acronym RAP to talk about how you should go about making decisions and avoiding making distance from the problem, being prepared to be wrong. Trying to figure out small ways to test your assumptions, so we tried to you know that book has been influential, for me and just try to check myself and say ‘ok am I just going, oh I really think this will be great.’ or do I have reasons to think it will be great? and just asking that simple question can cause you to step back.

#00:23:03-9# Neil : Yeh I talked to someone the other day and they were telling me that they use, they actually use a coin and they flick the coin and it helps them decide because if it lands on heads or whatever you call it, then that might be that you do something and if it lands on tails, it is that you do not do it, and that helps you decide because at that point, you are either disappointed or pleased with the results. So I thought it was quite an interesting way of actually trying to decide things so obviously you don’t ultimately leave it to the flip of the coin, but it helps you determine whether or not you would actually be disappointed if that was the result.

#00:23:38-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : True, that’s an interesting strategy.

#00:23:42-3# Neil : Mmm life is made of constant change, whether we like it or not, and some people say the only constant in life is change. Kathleen, how do you try to keep up with change?

#00:23:50-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I try to be out in the community, out networking, out talking with people, at the local tech events. Seeing what’s happening, I mean people are always innovating in ways that you do not see, especially beyond your own industry that you are in. So that is an important part for me of staying on top of things and I think as an entrepreneur, like you cannot be asleep at the wheel, you always have to be on top of the latest trends. Whether its the way Google’s search algorithms work or what’s the newest wearable that’s out there, that people are interested in using when they are on our desk. Reading articles, you know I have some favourite hash tag that I follow on twitter, and find other thought leaders who have valuable contributions to marketing or health trends, or other topics that are relevant for our business and staying on top of what content they are putting out there.

#00:25:06-9# Neil : And what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:25:16-8# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : That’s hard to pick one, but one that has been very influential for me is Give and Take by Adam Grant, and this book is about how being a giver in life, as opposed to a taker is a recipe for success. Not only in business, but also in your personal satisfaction and your happiness, and I think that is why that book has really resonated with me, because our business and personal lives just they are not separated, no matter what your job is. And again, I think also not being in the lawyer world which is not necessarily a great example of a lot of givers in that world. Speaking very broadly, there is a lot of competition and wanting to get ahead and be the best, and elbowing people out and as opposed to going, ‘how can I help you today? What introduction could I make for you?’ you know, ‘do you need someone to grab coffee with? could I edit your brief for you?’ and how being the giver not too much, but enough in life, can really bring your business and your personal satisfaction full circle.

#00:26:39-8# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Adam Grant has a new book out right now that I am excited to read called The Originals, and its all about, he dug deeply to like looking at innovative people, and what makes an original? which is kind of turning into a new noun. So that will be an interesting one to keep an eye on.

#00:26:58-1# Neil : Yeh sounds interesting. Everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things. Such as driving or when you are at the gym, we have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify. Kathleen, can we speculate about the future a little bit? What one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:27:30-3# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I would build a sensor integrated treadmill desk, that would help people to sit less and move more throughout the day. So you would be able to tell or track, ‘are you sitting? are you standing? are you walking? how much?’ you would be able to get feedback on that, you would be able to get reminders. It would all be seamless and motivational, and something that would just become a regular part of people’s office lives.

#00:28:06-3# Neil : Mmm hmm, so is that your next product?

#00:28:09-5# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Ha ha ha possibly, there is, we have looked into doing something like that. But there are a lot of steps in that process, and then the world of using data to improve your health, is changing really quickly. So seeing where that is going to go, or wearables going to take off? Are people going to want to not have a wearable? They are going to want something even more integrated with their body. Or are we going to get burned out on this data? About our health? Like we have all this data now, a lot of people are saying, they do not know what to do with it. So I think we are on the early days of this trend, even though it sort of feels that wearables have been around for a while, that word is really fairly new in our vocabulary.

#00:29:00-6# Neil : Mmm it will be interesting to see where it goes, it is one of those things, it will appeal to some people and not to others, won’t it? I think that’s ultimately always going to be the case for this kind of stuff. In fact I was talking to somebody the other day who has got a nutritional bottle that monitors what you do and what you eat every day and it actually gives you the right balance of nutrients in a drink that you drink through the day, because it ..

#00:29:20-1# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Ohhh life fuels.

#00:29:22-6# Neil : I forgot the name of him. #00:29:24-9#

#00:29:24-9# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Is that the Jonathan Pirelli?

#00:29:26-5# Neil : Yes it is, you are right. Do you know Jonathan?

#00:29:29-6# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I do and in fact, their office has Rebel Desks in it.

#00:29:34-4# Neil : Does it really? I did not know that. There is another connection then, isn’t there?

#0 #00:29:38-1# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Small world. That’s why they have a great product because they are on their treadmill desks.

#00:29:45-7# Neil : Oh I did not realise that, ha ha ha. And what skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

#00:29:56-2# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : If I was excellent at just getting tons of high quality back links that fall into my website. Which I am not even sure if that is a very specific skill, but SEO is really important for us with a consumer facing product especially. And high quality back-links are really ruling the day, and its interesting how much Google’s algorithms have changed in just a short time since we have started our business, but I think it makes sense that they want high quality back links and that is such an important part of search algorithms because their Google’s approaching it with the consumer in mind. But boy they are hard to come by and I think also different from when I started Rebel Desk is its harder to get journalists and news outlets to provide those back links. We have had a number of coverages recently where its not their policy to do it anymore, they do not want to look like they are selling a product or so its interesting, there is this little back and forth there.

#00:31:05-4# Neil : Yeh I think its changed an awful lot. I mean I got involved in back linking with a website, I had probably about back in 2008 or something like that. And back then it was very easy because you could post to it, article sites and things like that but whereas now its a lot more difficult, and you have obviously got to use social media and all sorts of stuff and yeh, they have made it more difficult haven’t they because I think there are quite a lot of people who are gaming the system I think, including me.

#00:31:31-9# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Right. And I think it makes sense that google cracked down on that, but then it makes it although the internet is a great equaliser, a lot of ways when it comes to allowing a company like us to compete with a large multi-national office furniture company say, those back links can be both expensive and need the right connections, and its a lot easier for the bigger companies to get them so its as far where the playing field I think has shifted a little bit.

#00:32:05-2# Neil : Mmmm. I think the one thing I learned from the experience, because I did it very successfully at one point is that ultimately if you try to gain the system, eventually you will get caught out with it, I think that’s the one thing you have got to be very careful of. And so doing it sort of progressively and doing it sort of genuinely is probably the best way of doing it, not that I am suggesting you don’t but I am just thinking from my experience in that.

#00:32:31-9# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Yeh it takes longer but that’s what you have to do.

#00:32:34-9# Neil : Yeh I think it lasts longer because if you just find a loophole or something, and you find a way of gaming the system then eventually that loophole disappears, and you find all of a sudden your websites loses all of its traffic and you are sat their scratching your head wondering ‘where do I get my business from now?’ so its just not worth it that way I don’t think. In five years from now, if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:33:02-0# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I would like our customers to say that they can never imagine how they lived before Rebel Desk. Before they had it and they had a choice to stand or walk while they worked, because they are so much happier, feel so much healthier, so much more productive. And we do get people who say that and I hope that as people have the product even longer, it becomes even a bigger part of, a more central part of their work life, and hopefully they will also say that Rebel Desk is a fun company that gave them great customer service and they would recommend it to all their friends too.

#00:33:51-1# Neil : Thank you. We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so Kathleen what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:33:59-9# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : My favourite quote is a Mark Twain quote where he says, ’20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do, than by the ones you did do.’ and I have thought about that quote a lot in terms of, should you just stick to the path that seems safer, that seems like the one everyone had planned for you? you know, or should you take a risk? should you do you know, follow your passion, and I don’t really like the advice of ‘follow your passion’ because that does not actually always make sense in the real world because people have to feed themselves and you know, clothe them and their children, and pay rent and things like that. But if you can do that in a way that also allows you to make a living, follow your passion and make a living, then why not and I think for myself, if I had said no to not only Rebel Desk but other opportunities that I have had, I would look back and go ‘I wish I had done that.

#00:35:17-6# Neil : Do you have any favourite online resources that you can share with us?

#00:35:25-1# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Our favourite one right now which this may be an answer you get from other people, because I know its just changed the game in a lot of ways, is CANVA for doing graphic design, social media posts, I mean graphic design was a big challenge for us, we did not have someone on our team who was dedicated to it full time and they just did not make sense to. But you want to create great imagery, its so important, especially on social, so CANVA is amazing for that. And I also really like UNSPLASH, that’s a fairly recent site that we have been using where you can get all kinds of great stock imagery that’s all licence free. Everything free, uses however you like, and imagery is beautiful on it.

#00:36:16-3# Neil : And what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:36:24-7# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I would advise people to set benchmarks, for your company to reach along the way. Put them on your calendar if you have to. Force yourself to remember where you wanted to be, and figure out why you are there. You exceeded it, or you have not met those marks because you can get so lost in the day-to-day, you will look back and forget where you had thought you were going, what the goal was of the campaign you are running, or what your sales projections were, because oh this happened or that happened, or .. really great time, so you have to set those bench marks and let it be a check on yourself so you are not just constantly fuelled by the day-to-day happenings of your business.

#00:37:20-8# Neil : Everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Kathleen’s favourite resource or her favourite book, you can find the links on Kathleen’s show notes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Kathleen or Kathleen Hale in the search box. Kathleen, is there anything else you would like to add about your business?

#00:37:36-6# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : I would just like to add that anyone who is out there is thinking about making a change, from pushing their chair aside and sitting all day. You don’t have to invest in a new desk, if that’s not an option for you. I am truly an advocate for just people you know getting up and walking around more. If you need to pile up printer boxes because you don’t have the budget yet for a standing desk, do that instead of just being in your chair all day, because I promise you, you are going to feel better, you are going to be more productive and feel happier, and in 20 years, your body is definitely going to thank you.

#00:38:24-6# Neil : Kathleen, its been an honour having you on the show, its been great hearing about your product and you sharing your knowledge and your perspective about business, so thank you very much for coming on here.

#00:38:34-9# Kathleen Hale, Rebel Desk Cofounder : Thank you so much, its been a pleasure.

#00:38:36-4# Neil : You are welcome, thank you.