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What does it actually take to leave a secure job and build a company from scratch?

In this episode of the Badass Women in Business Podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Kirsten Liston, Founder and CEO of Rethink Compliance, to talk about the reality of becoming an entrepreneur and the mindset required to build something new.

Kirsten shares how she went from a career in journalism to spending more than two decades in the compliance industry. After 15 years working inside the field, she saw a clear gap in the market. Companies were frustrated with outdated compliance training, but the large vendors dominating the industry were not evolving.

Instead of accepting the status quo, Kirsten decided to build the solution herself.

She left her role in 2015 and launched Rethink Compliance. In the early years, she balanced multiple consulting projects while trying to get the company off the ground. At one point, she went nearly a full year without revenue, yet she never lost confidence that the market needed what she was building.

Today, Rethink Compliance works with global companies and has become known for modern, engaging compliance training that actually connects with employees.

In this conversation, Kirsten shares the lessons she learned while building the business, the leadership decisions that shaped the company’s culture, and the moments that forced her to rethink how to grow and scale.

She also talks about why everything in business is learnable, why hiring strong leaders early accelerated growth, and why entrepreneurs need to believe that more is possible than they initially think.

This episode is for anyone building a business, considering entrepreneurship, or navigating the challenges of leadership and growth.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Kirsten Liston moved from journalism into the compliance industry
• Why she left a stable leadership role to start Rethink Compliance
• The early challenges of launching a company in a competitive market
• How listening to customers revealed a major business opportunity
• Why hiring experienced leaders early helped accelerate growth
• How COVID changed the direction of the business
• The importance of culture, transparency, and honest communication in leadership
• Why Kirsten believes that everything in business is learnable

Key Quote

“If you think of something you can do, you can probably do it.”

Contact and Resources

Kirsten Liston
Founder and CEO, Rethink Compliance

Website
https://www.rethinkcomplianceco.com
Webinars and Educational Resources
https://www.rethinkcomplianceco.com/reso

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In this episode of the Badass Women in Business podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Meredith Farley, founder of Medbury, an agency that helps executives and founders turn their real world experience into credible thought leadership on LinkedIn.

Meredith shares her journey from being a writing major during the 2009 financial crash to spending 13 years inside a fast growing content agency, eventually stepping into senior leadership. After being laid off just days after closing on her home, she made the decision to bet on herself and build Medbury.

The conversation dives into the mindset shift from corporate stability to entrepreneurship, the loneliness and self doubt that show up in year one, and why so many capable women remain invisible despite their expertise. Meredith also breaks down her practical LinkedIn framework and explains how visibility, when done right, does not require constant posting but clarity, consistency, and courage.

Key Topics Discussed

 • Transitioning from corporate leadership to entrepreneurship
 • Navigating a layoff and using it as a catalyst for growth
 • The mindset challenges of the first year in business
 • Perfectionism and why women are often harder on themselves
 • Gender bias and visibility in business
 • Building authority on LinkedIn without posting every day
 • Creating content that aligns with your profile and positioning
 • Identifying and refining your ideal client over time
 • Balancing enterprise clients with solopreneurs
 • Letting go of the myth of the “perfect business person

About the Guest

Meredith Farley is the CEO and Founder of Medbury, an agency specializing in LinkedIn strategy and content for executives, founders, and enterprise teams. With more than a decade in senior leadership roles at a global content marketing agency, Meredith combines operational experience with strategic visibility. She works with clients across the U.S. and leads a growing team focused on building credible, sustainable thought leadership.

Connect with Meredith

• Website: https://www.medburyagency.com
•  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
•  Email: [email protected]

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In this episode of the Badass Women in Business podcast, Aggie sits down with Denver-based photographer and TruBlu Images founder Rebecca Todd. Rebecca shares her journey from studying photography at LSU to rebuilding her business after relocating from New Orleans to Denver.

They talk about carving out a niche working with mission-driven brands and nonprofits, why relationships matter more than marketing tactics, and how Rebecca has built a sustainable creative business while navigating imposter syndrome, seasonality, and growth. Rebecca also shares powerful behind-the-scenes stories from nonprofit work and offers practical advice for creatives who want to build a business that lasts.

Key Topics Discussed
• Building a photography business rooted in purpose
• Rebranding and niching without limiting growth
• Moving a business to a new city and rebuilding relationships
• Why relationships drive repeat business and referrals
• Imposter syndrome and seasonality in creative work
• Hiring contractors and outsourcing as a working parent
• Growing a creative business beyond one-off projects
• Long-term vision for scaling TruBlu Images nationally

About the Guest
Rebecca Todd is a Denver-based photographer and the founder of TruBlu Images. A New Orleans native, Rebecca works with mission-driven brands and nonprofits to tell meaningful, value-led stories through photography. She is known for building long-term client relationships, finding a clear niche, and creating a creative business rooted in impact and sustainability.

Connect with Rebecca
Website: https://www.trubluimages.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trubluimages/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-todd-27216269/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trubluimages
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/trubluimages/
Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TruBluImages

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Anna Perks is the founder of Perks Deconstruction, a Denver based company proving that sustainability and profitability can coexist. What started with walking her dog past a bulldozed historic home turned into a seven year journey building a 20 plus person company that diverts massive amounts of construction material from landfills. In this episode, Anna shares how she built a business in an industry she did not come from, why entrepreneurship is often romanticized, and what it really takes to lead, delegate, and grow without burning out. This is a grounded, honest conversation about circular economy, leadership stress, learning by doing, and why keeping things out of the trash is everyone’s responsibility.

Episode Notes / Key Takeaways
• How a single moment sparked the idea for Perks Deconstruction
• What deconstruction is and why demolition is one of the biggest waste problems we ignore
• Why Anna chose to start a business instead of going to business school
• How research, informational interviews, and mentorship shaped her first year
• The reality of slow starts, early mistakes, and painful learning curves
• Why culture, policy, and infrastructure keep us from becoming a zero waste society
• What consumers and homeowners can do today to support reuse and recycling
• When Anna knew the business was actually going to work
• Leadership challenges, stress, and the loneliness of being at the top
• Learning what to delegate and trusting others to run parts of the business
• Growing from a solo founder to a 20 plus person team
• Long term vision for expansion, technology, and policy driven change
• The importance of resilience, relationships, and just keeping going

Contact Anna Perks
Website: www.perksdeconstruction.com
Reclaimed Materials Store: www.perksreclaimed.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perksdeconstruction/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/perks-deconstruction-ltd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/perksdeconstruction/

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• Website: Badasswomeninbusinesspodcast.com
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Maria Onesto Moran, founder and CEO of Green Home Experts, joins the Badass Women in Business podcast to share the real story of building a sustainable, values-driven company through recession, pivots, leadership challenges, and motherhood.

Maria started Green Home Experts in 2007 as a green building supply showroom just before the housing market crashed. What followed was not failure, but evolution. Today, Green Home Experts is a WBE-certified energy efficiency logistics and fulfillment company serving utilities and program implementers across the Midwest.

In this episode, Maria talks about mindfulness as a leadership practice, trusting your gut without a business degree, learning through mistakes, and building a strong company culture rooted in integrity, flexibility, and excellence. This is an honest conversation about entrepreneurship without the highlight reel.

Key Topics Discussed
• Mindfulness and the mantra of being where your feet are
• Starting a business right before the Great Recession
• Pivoting from retail to warehousing and logistics
• Building Green Home Experts into an energy efficiency partner for utilities
• Pick and pack, product distribution, and kitting services explained
• Workforce development and inclusive hiring practices
• Leadership lessons learned by doing every job first
• Balancing business ownership and motherhood
• Trusting your gut and learning through failure
• Creating a values-driven company culture
• Setting expectations without micromanaging
• Redefining success beyond revenue and growth

About the Guest
Maria Onesto Moran is the founder and CEO of Green Home Experts, a WBE-certified energy efficiency logistics company based in the Chicagoland area. Green Home Experts supports high-performing energy efficiency programs for utilities and implementers throughout the Midwest through pick and pack, product distribution, and kitting services.

Maria holds a degree in Sociology from DePaul University and has nearly two decades of experience in sustainability, green building, and energy efficiency. She is known for building a people-first workplace rooted in integrity, versatility, and excellence. Maria is married to her high school sweetheart and is raising three eco-fabulous sons.

Connect with Maria
- Website: https://ghexperts.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-onesto-moran-b68a756/

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Molly McCartan, Founder and CEO of The Mom Pact, joins Aggie and Cristy for a direct conversation about why nearly half of working moms are leaving the workforce and why this is not a motivation or confidence issue.

This episode looks at leadership, incentives, and systems that were never built to support real life transitions. Maternity leave, flexibility, childcare, career gaps, and return to work are not fringe topics. They are core business and leadership decisions with long term consequences.

If companies care about talent, retention, and performance, this conversation makes one thing clear. The problem is not working moms. The problem is how work is designed.

In this episode, we unpack:

• Why high performing women exit the workforce after becoming mothers
• What the 44 percent statistic actually reveals about leadership failure
• Why flexibility outperforms salary increases in retention
• The cost of rigid work structures on productivity and trust
• Why career gaps should be viewed as capability, not risk
• What most companies misunderstand about maternity leave and reintegration
• Why the system pushes women out instead of pulling them back in
• How community and strategy rebuild confidence after time away
• What leadership looks like when policy has not caught up to reality

Core idea:

Working moms are not opting out. They are being pushed out by inflexible systems.

About the Guest

Molly McCartan is the Founder and CEO of The Mom Pact, a career driven network supporting working moms through major professional transitions. With more than a decade of experience in strategy, operations, and business development, Molly brings a business and policy lens to a problem often framed as personal.

Connect with Molly

• Website: https://www.themompact.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollymccartan52/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themompact/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/molly.owens/

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This episode is about health in the real world, not textbook medicine.

Aggie and Cristy sit down with Dr. Laura James ND, a naturopathic oncologist with more than twenty years of experience working with women inside an overwhelmed healthcare system. Together, they explore why modern healthcare leaves so many women confused, exhausted, and unsupported, especially while they are managing work, family, caregiving, and their own health.

Dr. Laura explains how rushed appointments, fragmented care, and authority driven medicine limit understanding and undermine trust. She shares why education, inquiry, and listening are essential to better health outcomes, and how integrative approaches can support conventional care without replacing it.

They also discuss supplements, misinformation in the wellness industry, menopause, energy depletion, and why fewer, well designed tools often work better than endless advice. This is a grounded conversation about resilience, boundaries, and how women can protect their health and capacity in systems that were never designed to support them.

Notes:

• Overwhelm is often more damaging than the diagnosis itself
• Seven minute doctor visits do not leave room for real understanding
• Women need guides in healthcare, not just authority figures
• Asking better questions leads to better decisions
• Midlife women are often caring for everyone while neglecting themselves
• Support only helps when it matches what someone actually needs
• Learning to ask for specific help reduces stress
• Boundaries are a health strategy, not a personal failure
• The supplement industry is confusing and poorly regulated
• Fewer, targeted supplements work better than long lists
• Menopause during illness adds another invisible layer of strain
• Education is one of the most powerful forms of care
• The healthcare system is breaking under capacity pressure
• Resilience is built through clarity, support, and agency

Guest Contact
Dr. Laura James ND

• Website: https://www.laurajamesnd.com
• Supplement line: https://bestforbreast.com

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The Honourable Leela Sharon Aheer shares the story that shaped her life and leadership.

Growing up in Alberta as the daughter of an Indian immigrant father and a Canadian mother, Leela learned early what it meant to stand out, speak up, and build community. At just 15 years old, she was directly confronted by white supremacist hate. Instead of shrinking, that moment became the catalyst for using her voice and stepping into leadership.

In this episode, Leela walks through her unconventional path from music and teaching into politics, winning her first election by just 260 votes and later serving as Alberta’s Minister of Culture, Multiculturalism, and Status of Women. She shares grounded lessons on women’s leadership, servant leadership, and why real change is built through small, consistent actions rather than power or position.

This conversation is a reminder that you do not need permission to lead. You just need to activate yourself.

Episode Notes
In this episode, we cover:

• Leela’s early life and how identity and community shaped her leadership
 • Being targeted by hate at 15 and choosing to speak up instead of stay silent
 • Why she left political science for music and later returned to politics
 • Winning her first election by 260 votes and navigating imposter syndrome
 • Why women’s rights must be protected in legislation
 • How to build bridges with people you strongly disagree with
 • Why momentum matters more than burnout
 • Her vision for global collaboration, trade, and women’s leadership
 • The simple lesson she believes every woman needs to hear

Guest Information
The Honourable Leela Sharon Aheer, ECA

Email: [email protected]
 Twitter: @LeelaAheer
 Instagram: leelasharonaheer
 LinkedIn: Hon. Leela (Sharon) Aheer

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Most people donate because they want to help. Few ever find out what actually happens to their money. Philanthropy has a trust problem. Nonprofits have a transparency problem. Donors want clarity but rarely get it. And donor-advised funds have become a quiet holding place for billions of untapped charitable capital.

After fifteen years working inside philanthropy, Sarah Angello could not ignore the friction anymore. She saw the outdated systems. She saw the lost potential. She saw how giving had become complicated when it should feel meaningful.

So she left a stable career, stepped into tech, and cofounded Daffodil, a fintech platform designed to rebuild trust in the nonprofit sector by making charitable giving transparent, simple, and accessible.

In this conversation, Sarah explains the gap no one was addressing, how donor-advised funds actually work, why impact reporting is broken, and how she is solving a systemic problem with zero-burden, real-time data. She opens up about raising capital as a woman, choosing cofounders, navigating risk, and the lesson that shaped her leadership: almost everything is fixable.

If you have ever given to a nonprofit, wondered where your money went, or thought about starting something meaningful, this episode will change the way you see philanthropy and the business behind it.

Chapters this episode explores:

• The moment Sarah realized philanthropy needed a complete reset
• Why donor-advised funds hold more than 250 billion dollars that rarely reaches nonprofits
• What the GoFundMe controversy revealed about trust in the sector
• How Daffodil built a system to deliver real-time impact reporting with zero burden on nonprofits
• Why transparency is the next frontier in charitable giving
• What she learned moving from nonprofit bureaucracy to tech speed
• How she chose her cofounders and why their history matters
• The reality of raising money as a woman in a male-dominated funding environment
• Why she believes fear of being copied is fear of weak execution
• The early mistake that taught her that almost everything is fixable

Key lessons:

• Transparency is not optional; it is the foundation of impact
• Good ideas are everywhere; execution is the differentiator
• Donors do not stop giving because they lack generosity but because they lack visibility
• Founders should build in public, not hide in fear
• Careers are long, and mistakes rarely ruin them

Contact

Website: www.getdaffodil.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getdaffodil/
Email: [email protected]

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Rachael Wonderlin built a national dementia consulting firm from a Tumblr blog, three Johns Hopkins books, and a decade of hands-on work inside senior living communities. But the real story is what she learned along the way about boundaries, burnout, and trusting her intuition long before the data caught up.

In this conversation, Rachael shares the full arc of building Dementia By Day from a one-woman hustle into a recurring revenue business that now operates like fractional operations for senior living companies. She talks about the early years when she said yes to everything, the moment she realized she needed a different model, and the systems she created to stop chasing one-off gigs.

She also opens up about being pigeonholed as “just” a dementia expert, the tone deaf advice she received while pitching her fourth book, and the unregulated coaching industry that inspired her business memoir, I Can’t Hustle Any Harder Than This.

If you’re building a business, struggling with boundaries, or fighting your way out of a niche that people keep trying to trap you in, this episode gives you the clarity you need to move forward with confidence.

In this episode, Rachael shares:

 • How she turned a blog into a national consulting firm
 • The moment she learned to stop saying yes to everything
 • How she built recurring revenue and stopped chasing the next gig
 • The difference between coaching and consulting, and why clarity matters
 • Why the coaching industry can harm entrepreneurs who are just getting started
 • The story of the agent who told her to write a “funny dementia book”
 • How she is repositioning herself as a business leader, not only a dementia expert
 • The evolution of dementia care and why public awareness has changed
 • Why she refuses to use AI to create content
 • How her viral web comics reached hundreds of thousands of people
 • What hiring mistakes taught her about leadership and trust
 • The one lesson she wants every business owner to learn: if your gut says no, believe it

Key quote:

 “If your gut reaction is ‘oh hell no,’ that is the answer. Stop arguing with yourself. Say no and move on.”

CONTACT INFORMATION

Rachael Wonderlin
Founder and CEO, Dementia By Day
Website: dementiabyday.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rachaelwonderlin
Instagram: @dementiabyday and @cant_hustleanyharder
Substack: Can’t Hustle Any Harder

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Keep up with more content from Aggie and Cristy here:

• Facebook: Empowered Women Leaders
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• Website: Badasswomeninbusinesspodcast.com
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