Megan Rouse

I did a lot of reflection on this yesterday on our two-year anniversary. I think several things have contributed to my success. First, I've been very blessed to have very supportive people around me in my life. When I talked to some of my coaches, mentors, friends, and family yesterday, a lot of them were not surprised or saw my achievements way before I did. I don't think we all saw it as me owning an agency, but I've always been told my whole life that I was destined to do big things, and I truly believed that. I think one of my strengths is building relationships and making connections, and that has helped me along the way. At the end of the day, people want to work with people that they enjoy working with or being around. There have been times where I've probably won business, or my agency's won business, because we have incredible people that other people want to work with. Even as a consultant, I remember pitching some jobs where I had no business winning them because there were much more experienced people or agencies pitching them, but because folks wanted to do hard work with me, I won the gig. In the last few years, my husband has been truly unbelievable. He's like, what's your dream? What's your idea? Cool, let's make it happen. He left his job and now works full-time for my agency. He's so smart and so strategic, and we complement each other really well. I think that's really rare and special. That's a huge reason why I'm able to be a mom, and to be a business owner, and be physically active, and have goals and dreams, and go to bed at a reasonable hour, because I have a very hands-on partner.

I've thought a lot about this, because I've been thinking about young Megan a lot recently, who was making $30,000 an hour at her first job and working 90 hours a week. I would say two things. The first one would be, say yes. Say yes to taking on projects, opportunities, things that might be considered grunt work. Get the experience when you're young. That's what that time is for - to learn as much as possible, to meet as many people as possible. Be a yes man. Be the one that, when there's a task that comes in, your supervisors or whoever wants to bring it to you because they know that not only will you do it, but you'll do it well and you'll have pride in that. I think that is something that is getting harder and more rare to find. The second thing, which I learned in my 30s, is really, really understanding your value or your worth. I learned this in my consulting business when I had to come up with my billable rates. It was terrifying, saying, I think you should pay me this much, and people were like, okay. And I was like, wait a minute, what? Yes, yes, I am an expert. I don't think you get to do that in your 20s. I think you really want to, but you don't really know what your value or your worth is because you're still learning. I'm not saying you're not valuable or worthy, but you've got to kind of get that foundation, and then really understand and learn your worth, and then don't settle for less than that.

I would say a couple things. First, I would say that the nonprofit sector is expected to do a lot of amazing things with very little budget, very little staff, very little bandwidth. People don't realize that you have to spend money to make money, and so I feel like there's this unfair pressure put on nonprofits to make tons of money and not spend any money. I think that's hard working for the nonprofit, and that's hard servicing nonprofits as well. I would also say we live in a world right now where it's very political and very divided as a country, and so depending on the charity's mission, it's very hard to just raise money for them or do that in a way that is impactful, depending on what is going on in the world. Nonprofits are also - it's very hard for them to adapt to new technologies and stuff. They're always a few steps behind the for-profit space because they're just not as nimble, so tackling this world of AI is challenging. We have fully embraced it as an agency, but it's like bringing along our nonprofit clients as well. A big part of our business is that we're experts on Meta, but Meta changes things constantly. They've probably changed 12 things since we've been on this call. So keeping up with all of the different changes, which is sometimes political, sometimes technology related, but just trying to stay on the forefront of technology that's changing very quickly.

I would say honesty and integrity, and communication - open communication. I think that's something we talk about a lot in our marriage, but also with our teams. You have to be able to communicate. We have a value at work too - not necessarily a value, but healthy conflict. We're not yes men, so we can have debate in a healthy and productive way. I'm a big fan of that. A huge value for us is that I'm constantly looking for joy. I think life is very busy and very stressful, and we only get to do it once, so finding joy in the everyday, finding joy in the big moments, the small moments. Personally, my husband and I, we have a rule - not a rule, but we laugh as much as possible. I joke with him all the time. I told him he can lose his hair, he can gain 500 pounds, whatever, he can do all these things, but if he stops being funny, I'm not interested. I think life is too short and too hard to not laugh, to not enjoy it. A lot of that stems from losing my dad at a young age too. I feel very passionate about the deep relationships in my life, and not wanting to take things for granted, or go to bed angry, or things like that. Trying to remind ourselves that we only get to do this once.