This episode of The Rebekah Panepinto Project features a conversation with New Orchard CEO Rusty Goodsell and Director of Innovation Samantha Burgess. They share how they partnered up to start New Orchard with a solid foundational base and how they navigate conflict for both personal and professional growth.

They also discuss how they help their clients by providing tailored business advice, something previously beyond the capabilities of SMEs. Samantha shares how intangible KPIs also point to the health of an organization and how their tools help get "strategy fatigue" unstuck from leaders. 

Rusty talks about intentionality in building New Orchard, his core principle of working with people you love and the money will come, and how to work together and forgive one another. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• How to navigate friction and resolve conflict
• Providing SMEs affordable and uniquely tailored business advice
• Serving business leaders, consultants, and high growth, high acquisition
• Clarify "strategy fatigue" to get leaders unstuck in making decisions
• Core principles: Work together, fight fair, and forgive one another

QUOTES

Samantha: "I think the pandemic really allowed us to get our foundation in place in a way that let us do that patiently where other nonprofits or sorry, other startups, are trying to kind of throw things together. (Yeah, let's make it clear, we are not a nonprofit) (Revenue!) Other startups are kind of trying to throw their foundation together so they can get out into the market quickly with this competitive idea that they have." 

Rusty: "You hear iron sharpens iron. Well, that doesn't come without friction. The whole science behind that, things have to be heated up and they have to hit against one another and there's conflict and there's friction there. And so, being able to navigate through that I think is one of the most foundational pieces of business is how to deal with conflict."

Samantha: "The reason why strategy fatigue is such a major component of a business leader's life is that most of the decisions that we are making do not necessarily have clear rights and wrongs. There's not black and white in business as much as we would like it to be."

Rusty: "The best way to learn is to teach. So find out the different things and then go and repeat it to other folks and then it becomes ingrained. So New Orchard is headed in that direction and we're excited about it."

Rusty: "Humans interacting and working together will have conflict. And so learning how to fight, fight fair, forgive one another, and reconcile is probably the most important thing to me in this business."

Find out more about Rusty and Samantha in the links below:

• LinkedIn (Rusty): https://www.linkedin.com/in/rustygoodsell/
• LinkedIn (Samantha): https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-burgess-b20805a3/
• LinkedIn (New Orchard): https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-orchard/

Learn more and follow Rebekah by checking out the following links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebekahpanepinto/
• Website: https://rebekahpanepinto.com/