Episode 9- A Woman in Charge: Trading in Guns for High Heels and Doing Things Her Way

Lori Whetstone is the CEO of Holistic Wellness Design and the author of the Five Easy Ways series. She started her career in the military and later moved to Wall Street. She believes in trust, integrity, and accountability as the foundations of leadership. She emphasizes the importance of having your team's back and being decisive. She has experienced failures throughout her career but has always learned from them. Welcome to Coach Analyst Presents Podcast, a part of the ECS Network. I'm your host, Laura Perez Earhart. I'm a management consultant and executive coach, and I've been consulting and coaching executive leaders for a couple of decades. My guest is Lori Whetstone. Lori is an author, founder, and the CEO of her newest venture, Holistic Wellness Design. Her ability to help businesses and people transform as a personal coach and advisor have garnered the trust of clients coming to her through her health and wellness business. From do-it-yourself eBooks, such as the Five Easy Ways series, to her signature short-term intensive program, Be a Healthy Badass, including her in-depth personal coaching programs, where individuals are empowered to step into their full potential. You can find Lori's eBooks through her website, HolisticWellnessDesign.com, or through Amazon.com. Lori is a former United States Army vet, where she was awarded medals for service, including Soldier of the Year. She translated her leadership skills as the foundation of discipline, excellence, and grit into a successful career as a business advisor, entrepreneur, financial services executive, and personal coach. You can also contact Lori via her email, info at whetstonegroupholdings.com, or follow her on her social media channels, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Lori, it's great to have you here, it's a pleasure to talk to you and have you on my show. I just want to say thank you for your service, I know you were a former military. Before we do a deep dive into your brilliantly fascinating story, share a bit about your book, Five Easy Ways Series. What's it about and who's it for? Well, first off, I just want to say I'm so honored to take part in your awesome podcast program, so thanks a lot. The Five Easy Ways Series was born originally when I launched my blog, The Musings of L.W. As I learned about the whole digital marketing world, I kept reading about if you want folks to subscribe to your new blog, newsletter, or so forth, you need to give them something. And I thought, okay, well what is something that I could give folks? And so there was this whole thing about, oh, you've got to write an eBook, you've got to give people away information that's helpful, so I thought, okay, well what do I know about in my mind that I could just simply write about that would actually be helpful to other people? And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but when you think too hard about it, you're like, oh gosh, what do I really know that would be helpful to other people? And you think, I don't really know anything. You go to a friend and say, well, what do I know about that would be helpful to other people? And my friends are like, are you kidding? You know so much about health and wellness and all the things that you've been doing sort of as a hobby. And so my friend said, yeah, you have to write about that. I thought of, okay, five easy ways, you know, and then to be a healthy badass. That's because, you know, Lori has always been more of the rugged and adventurous. You know, you know I was in the military. You know I was female on Wall Street. And so the healthy badass part just really clicked. So what's in five easy ways to be a healthy badass? That was the first of the five easy ways series. And fast forward to last year, they actually became the foundation of my philosophy for my life coaching and wellness business, holistic wellness design. And so the five principles are mindset, nutrition, hydration, sleep, and movement. So I write about those five topics in the e-book. If you would like to expand on those topics, then you can come to holistic wellness design and you can take part in one of our coaching programs. The second piece of the series is five easy ways to energize your mornings. Because again, I was thinking about, okay, well, what else do I know about what would be helpful to people? And so five easy ways to energize your mornings is born. I literally just published this. So the principles in five easy ways to energize your mornings include breath work, connection, journaling, meditation, and movement. So those are the first two in the series and stay tuned for more. I think everybody could start their day out with how to be a healthy badass. So speaking of which, which you are a badass, you have an unbelievable story and career path, Lori, beyond your book. You started out your career by joining the United States Army, which traditionally has been made up of, you know, male-dominated forever. I'm certain our listeners are captivated as I am and want to hear why. Why would you choose to join the military and what did it do for you? I had a different childhood than most folks. It was rather traumatic. I lived in 20 places by the time I was 18 years old. So if you're that kid, I knew that I wanted something better for my life. I knew I wanted to make something of myself in my life. And I was literally watching TV when the commercial came on, Be All You Can Be. That wasn't the clincher because I had actually taken the military aptitude test to get out of class in high school when I was a senior one day. And the military was bombarding me with letters, all four services, because I scored really high on this aptitude test. And so this commercial I saw, it wasn't just Be All You Can Be, but they said they would pay for me to go to college. So if you come from my background, we were poor. No one in my family had gone to college and I thought, okay, this is my ticket out. I took my dad, who was drafted during Vietnam, I took him with me. I said, dad, will you come with me to shop the four services? I want to see who gives me the best deal. And because in my mind, I was literally going to go in for the shortest amount of time. I wanted to get a job that I could do after I got out of the military, so I made it super practical. And lo and behold, the U.S. Army gave me the shortest enlistment time. I could go overseas, so I served in Germany, which I chose, having never been out of the country before as a kid, and then I chose a job that I could, you know, actually get a job after I got out of the service. And lo and behold, Laura, the Army paid for me to go to a private university. It sounds like you got out of it probably more than you thought you would. And you know, the education alone is huge. And I know the military being a military spouse myself, the military is really good when it comes to investing in higher education, leadership, which is a big part of your story today and how, you know, your career path into leadership from military into Wall Street and now to taking the reins and doing things your way and starting your own business. Talk about some of the challenges that you faced as a female, you know, in the Army, and also the triumphs. Basic training was not co-ed. That experience, being broken down as an individual and built into a team as a woman with other women, I didn't see, I mean, aside from being really, really challenging, because it's just not something that most people do at all in their lifetimes, I found the camaraderie of being with all women really refreshing, because it's not something I ever had before. And growing up, remember, I, you know, I grew up in a lot of different places with, you know, very little, if any, consistency or people that I could depend upon. The pieces that you just talked about, Laura, of the education being far greater than what it would seem, for me, it was really having, learning that I could depend on other people. It's one of the greatest things that people getting out of the military talk about is this, the camaraderie, but the fact that they train you literally to be a unit, you know, versus just being an individual. And that's one of the most beautiful things that I learned. In addition to the leadership, in addition to developing the resiliency, to developing grit, you know, to honing my perseverance, but it was really, really those things that you can count on other people to have your back. And that's something I hold dear to this day. One of my sort of foundational principles of life is loyalty. So when I look to establish new relationships, whether they're personal relationships, business relationships, or relationships with taking on new clients as a consultant, you know, loyalty is a big, a big part of my life. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, something that we can all learn, even, you know, in our early days in school, is being a part of that group, that team, that, that troop, if you will, and learning how to lean into and have those trusting relationships, but also being the one to know how to develop those trusting relationships, right? Whether it be personal or professional. You were honored as a soldier, you were honored Soldier of the Year. How did that come about? Talk about that. That's awesome. Yeah. No, thank you, Laura. I, you know, this is one of those things, I received a medal for becoming Soldier of the Year. It was that big of a deal. And to this day, it's one of the things that, you know, again, it's not, it's not a very common thing, first of all, for a woman to have military experience, but then to have this accolade. Being in the military, it was, it was my precursor to, to how organizations and businesses work, because I learned very early on at age 18, the better job you did, the more recognition you got, and the more perks you got, which is, you know, very similar to my experience in the corporate world. So I learned that in the military. And so every time they needed someone to show up and represent the unit, I started out doing a good job. And so naturally, every time they would ask me first, because they could trust that I'm not going to go somewhere and blow it, you know, and make the organization look bad. So that's how the Soldier of the Year stuff came up. I started doing, I did four quarters of Soldier of the Quarter boards. So you do first quarter, I won, second quarter, I won, third quarter, I won, fourth quarter, I won, much to my surprise, okay. And so once you win all four quarters of the year, you have to go to Soldier of the Year. And so I actually won a couple Soldier of the Year boards. And I think the last one was on my 21st birthday. So talk about, you know, things that are memorable in your life. You know, there I was in Germany. It remains a great experience for me to this day. How brilliant is that? The military really did teach you quite a bit. Not only did it provide you a platform for, you know, higher educational learning, developing your leadership skills, but also how to show up, how to be reliable, you know, how to put yourself out there in a male-dominated environment where you literally stepped up and you leaned into the tasks at large. You didn't say no, you said yes. Once you leave the military, you march right into Wall Street, which has also been for years a male-dominated industry. Talk about what that transition was like for you going from military into civilian life. A lot of people's careers can sound very romantic and like you always took the right steps and made the right decisions and everything was just sort of, you know, one foot after the other. But I think in reality, Laura, what we find out is that it's often not like that and it's a series of ups and downs and, you know, steps to the side and then two steps backwards and then a step forward. And I want to just be really clear that that's what my experience was, too. So sure, I, you know, left my traumatic upbringing, went into the military when I got out. And so I was able to go to private university. That was great. But it started there. So I had to convince this private university when I took more units than most freshmen, they called me into the office and said, we're concerned. And I said, why? They said, well, you're taking so many units and we want you to be successful. And I said, with all due respect, I just got out of the United States military. I'll let you know if I have any issues. So move through that. I had a full-time or part-time job the entire time I went to university because this was just normal for me after getting out of the military, right? This was totally fine. So I had a very different college experience. I didn't live in the dorms. I didn't do any of that stuff. I was working, had my own place, moved from there. And I thought in my mind, again, if you're me and you came from the background I came from, I thought how, what kind of career and what industry will get me as far away from my upbringing as humanly possible? And for me, it was the financial industry. That coupled with the fact that I had the Econ 101 professor that helped me fall in love with the economy and economics and how the world works and how the world of money works, that's how I ended up on Wall Street. I absolutely fell in love with the fact that learning about how money worked and then ended up majoring in economics with a bachelor of science. My first job on Wall Street was a Series 3. And for those of you that don't know, that is a commodities futures broker. I will tell you that that test was much harder than a Series 7, which is considered the stock brokerage exam, could have ever been because you're learning about futures and options and all kinds of really, really crazy trading strategies. That was my first job out of college. After that is when I moved into getting a Series 7 and moved into that side of the business and then so on and so forth. That's brilliant. So it literally did make dollars and cents to you to make this transition from military into Wall Street. But it's also often said that a woman needs to work twice as hard as a man to prove herself high performer and an exceptional at her job. How true is that for you? Did you have to work harder at proving yourself? I know that working hard is something that I've always enjoyed. I do know that even early on in my career, you know, both military, then you have, you know, the male dominated financial world. I did learn very early on that there are, you know, if you look at seats at a table and if you took, let's say there were 100 seats at this so-called figurative table, that there was always sort of 99 seats for the guys and there was the one seat for the woman. But you don't notice it as much as a very, very junior person. You only notice it as you start getting promotions, right? And so I did. You perform well, you get promoted. You perform well, you get promoted. Same thing I learned in the military. And so as I moved up the corporate ladders, the only thing that kept me getting those promotions was excelling. To answer your question, you know, to be top producer, you know, on a sales team, you know, that's no mean fee, especially in financial, in the highly competitive financial world. It's my natural sales ability and my personality, what have you. I don't know. You know, that coupled with probably a lot of luck, you be, you know, being in the right place at the right time and then the passion for, you know, doing what I was doing and working hard. And at the end of the day, I know that, you know, and probably a lot of your listeners know or if they don't know, I'm going to tell you, but you don't sell anything. You don't sell yourself, you don't sell your business, you don't, you know, get people to buy things from you unless they like you, but unless they trust you. And this is another piece of, I went back to the loyalty thing, this is another part of one of the foundations of Lori's life is trust, right? You've got to have trust. And that's why, you know, most of the business that I did in my entire career, it was trust based. And when you look back and people, I asked people, well, why did you buy from me and not from those guys or this guy or that guy? And this came up over and over and over again. My boss is going, how did you pull a piece of business out of that new territory in the first year? Like nobody could believe it. And I'm like, these people, they told me they trust me, you know, they knew I wasn't going to sell them the latest, you know, Bernie Madoff scam or whatever else. And I didn't come off like some slick, you know, our salesperson or whatever people, you know, think is the not trustworthy position. That's how I, you know, got to where I am now. So there's a lot to be said for trust, and you're right, when people get to know you, they get to like you, they do start to trust you. And that's just another way that whether we're male or female, we prove ourselves and we work hard at. All that being said, this also has to do with your level of leadership, your ability to lead, your ability to be decisive, to make decisions and to know who you are and what you want. How do you define leadership excellence? Being an excellent leader, it begins with with trust, it begins with integrity, discipline, loyalty, obviously, grit and resilience. But to lead those, you do have to have the trust of those that you're leading. You have to have your own self-confidence and know yourself well enough to know your own strengths and weaknesses and to ensure that to be accountable. And I think that's another part of trust, right, Laura? You see leaders that, well, maybe they're considered more managers and not really leaders. If they say one thing and they do another thing, your team very quickly is just going to not have the trust that they need for you to lead them where you want them to go. And again, you go all the way back to my military experience. You know, these individuals got us to do things that we never thought possible because we knew that they had our back. Right. And so being an excellent leader is obviously you've got to have the confidence to lead. You've got to do what you say you're going to do. But at the same time, when things go wrong and they always go wrong in life, in careers, in businesses, you know, that's part of our growth. But you've got to have your people's back. If you just throw people in front of the bus every time, you know, the opportunity arises either save your own face to, you know, save your face to the higher ups or so forth, you're not going to have your team's trust. And, you know, they're going to be, you know, every man for themselves. And we've, you know, unfortunately, we all maybe work in organizations like this or on teams like this or get put into situations like this, maybe even client situations. But you've got to, you know, you've got to have your own sort of moral code within yourself as to what you're going to stand for and what you're not going to stand for. Talking about when things don't go really well, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Share a time that you failed and what was that experience like for you? So you want me to just focus on one because there's numerous failures, you know, on paper, things look very, very even and measured and like every step I took was the right step to the next higher, better opportunity and team. But but in reality, it's not really like that. Right. Each level that I was at, you know, I maybe could have made a different decision and maybe that would have impacted in a different way. I did fall in love with, as I mentioned, the economy and learning how money worked. And so that that propelled me on a, you know, over 25 year career in financial services. At one point, I thought, gosh, you know, I want to try something different. You know, I had gone from the sort of retail retail high net worth side of financial services into the institutional world, which means I started working with organizations and businesses instead of just, you know, one on one with people. I absolutely fell in love with the institutional side of the business. But for a moment, I took a sidestep into a world I had never participated in before, which was called the wealth management world, where I stayed for one year because I found out very quickly that this was not for me. This was, you know, so if you look at, you know, my career trajectory, even though the firm was a very noteworthy, very important firm. Laura, I am telling you the way that the it was the people for me, it was the way that my teammates. Everything that I had done so far, I was very interested in having this sort of loyalty and this very tight team where our leader is going to protect us from the stuff rolling down or uphill and we could just go out and do what we needed to do and execute and be successful. While in that moving to the side and moving into that that wealth management world, I did not find that at all. And so this was big deer in the headlights for Laurie going, OK, this was the wrong choice. However, the thing that has always held me throughout life and I know people talk about several silver linings and maybe it's corny and cliche. But for me, even in your most challenging situation, there is always something good that comes out of it. And Laura, I want to tell you right now, the silver lining that came out of me moving into that field for a very short time was that you and I met. That's when I met you. I could not have met you and I met some other extraordinary women and people that are still close contacts of mine to this day. So again, you know what I mean? Everything happens for a reason. We don't know why. Sure, I learned some other skill sets. Sure, I learned that that wasn't the field that I wanted to work in. But yeah, you know, the friendships, the relationships for me that, you know, those are some of the most important things. Those things last for a lifetime. Yeah, that's brilliant. But what was the lesson learned for you in that path and that in that experience? The lesson is probably the same lesson that maybe comes up over and over is that, hey, this bright, shiny thing over here, you know, right? Everyone has the shiny, shiny, shiny. Well, or the grass is always greener. The grass isn't always greener. You know, I've learned in life that that your path, again, it doesn't just, you know, maybe some people's path is this perfect step, stepping stone up to this pinnacle of like whatever that is. Personally, I find it's step to the side, two steps forward, one step backward, the other to the side. But they're really just opportunities for growth, because if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have grown as a person. I wouldn't have been presented with the challenges that I face there that I hadn't come across before. So if you don't come across them, you don't grow as a human. Right. And then that wouldn't have led me to where I am now, you know, learning all of the skills and using all of my life experience to help coach other people. After the show, Laurie and I continued our conversation around supporting other females and the importance. I briefly quoted Madeline Albright, who stated, there's a special place in hell for women who don't support or help other women. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. This lack of support can lead to a sense of isolation and discouragement for the female being ignored or even dismissed. It creates an environment where gender inequality persists, making it even more challenging for women to break through barriers and achieve success. Additionally, the absence of female solidarity weakens the collective voice and influence of women, making it even harder to address and challenge systematic biases and discrimination. Ultimately, when a female fails to support another female, it perpetuates a cycle of inequality that hampers the advancement of women in leadership roles and society as a whole. Conversely, when a female leader actively supports and uplifts another female employee, it fosters an environment of empowerment and growth, benefits not just the individual involved but the entire organization. Such support creates a sense of camaraderie and solidarity, allowing women to feel heard, valued, and motivated to excel in their roles. A female leader's support can provide mentorship, guidance, and opportunities for professional development, helping the employee gain confidence and expand her skill set. By advocating for her, the leader also helps to dismantle gender biases and stereotypes, challenging the notion that women cannot succeed in leadership roles. This support sends a powerful message that women can and should support one another, fostering a culture of inclusivity, equality, and collaboration. Ultimately, when a female leader supports another female employee, it paves the way for greater gender representation, diversity, and success within the organization. A shout out and special thanks to Lori Weston for being my guest today on my show. Well, that's it for this episode of Coachonomics Presents. If you're interested in being a guest or your subject matter expert, please go to my website, www.assistantconsultingsolutions.com and submit your request on the Let's Chat link. You can also find me on my LinkedIn page under Laura Perez Earhart or my website at TiffanyConsultingSolutions.com. We hope the content and conversation will give sparks of inspiration. And if you love and learn from the show, pay it forward and share my podcast with your colleagues and friends. I'm Laura Perez Earhart. Until next time, stay safe and live well.