How To Create a Sustainable Business with Ann Farrell

Your host, Kelly Fidel of The Powerhouse CEO speaks with Ann Farrell, Founder of Quantum Endeavors. Ann shares what she’s learned from her decades in the corporate world before leaving to start her own business. They discuss negotiation, challenges Ann has faced, advice for coaches, and more.

Episode Highlights:

• Ann was the first woman to climb from entry-level to the top of the house at her Fortune 200 company and has over 30 years’ experience in the business.
• She works with executives and coaches to grow and scale their businesses.
• Responsible for Purchasing and Logistics, Ann ran a budget of $8 billion.
• Once she became a mother, Ann experienced many moments of questioning how her business career has defined her.
• Ann approached the CEO of the organization before she retired and pitched her own coaching business to them as a win-win solution to her leaving.
• Negotiation always has to come from a place of asking “How do we win?”
• Ann left the corporate world to become an entrepreneur so she could have more flexibility and to spend more time with her son but found herself falling back into her working habits from the corporate world anyway.
• There were many different wake-up calls for Ann about needing to do something differently, from being diagnosed with breast cancer to feeling perpetually working.
• Ann began to license her process and approach to coach and train other coaches, she now has over 200 licensed coaches under her brand.
• Ann says that her greatest accomplishment is being known as someone who has done everything from the heart.
• Coaches pay a lot of money to learn how to coach individuals, but there’s little support or training for how to coach for organizations, and that is what Ann teaches.
• The coaches that make a good living are the coaches who work with organizations.
• If you know how to coach individuals, you have the foundation to coach organizations because organizations and Ann provides you what's needed to succeed.
• Three years from now, Ann hopes to be thinking about and reflecting on what a wonderful ride her career has been and how grateful she is for the people in her life.

3 Key Points:

1. When negotiating, look for ways to find a mutual win.
2. It is difficult to break the habits built up from decades in the corporate world.
3. Doing things with purpose and from the heart is the most important thing.

Sharable Quotes:

• “It’s just wrong for me to feel like I have to choose between the two. And so there is an ‘and’. So it was all about finding the ‘and’ for me and for the leaders that I support.” –Ann Farrell
• “I had to almost retrain me. There’s a different way to be an entrepreneur than there is to be a corporate employee.” –Ann Farrell
• “If we’re not having fun and it’s our own business, then we should just go get another corporate gig. That’s not why we’re here. That’s not why we chose to do it differently.” –Ann Farrell

Resources Mentioned:

• Ann Farrell:
  • Quantum Endeavors Website
  • Ann’s Linkedin
• Kelly Fidel:
  • No Glass Ceiling Website
  • Kelly’s Facebook
  • Kelly’s Instagram
  • Kelly’s Linkedin
  • Kelly’s YouTube