PODCAST – Aengle Consulting’s First Year of Business After WWH

About this Episode

In this episode, you’ll hear from Erika Austhof, founder and CEO of Aengle Consulting LLC, as she shares her key takeaways from year 1 of business, and how working with Wild Womn Haus prepared her to hit the ground running. If you want to learn about how we supported Erika in building Aengle from the ground up, you can read about the steps we took to launch her brand.

In this episode we discuss…

• Erika’s expertise as an epidemiologist and how she helps to make health accessible to everyone as a public health consultant 
• How global health injustices inspired her to open her own public health consulting business
• The important lessons of learning what your target audience actually needs, versus what you think they need
• The power of networking for connecting with potential clients and collaborators 
• How to balance “staying in your lane” with stretching beyond your comfort zone
• What Erika learned about branding while working with Wild Womn Haus and how her new perspective now impacts her work in public health 

Meet the Host and Guest Expert 

Links and Resources

Connect with Erika and Aengle Consulting:

• http://www.aengleconsulting.com 
• @epi_erika on Instagram
• @aenglellc on Twitter
• Aengle Consulting LLC on LinkedIn

Looking for more examples of brands we’ve worked with? Check out these client case studies!

• Branding with Purpose – How Erika Immediately Signed Her Ideal Clients
• Rebrand Your Business – Cara’s Evolution From “Food Blogger” to “High-End Healer”
• Brand Strategy Development – Rohini’s Journey of Building a Soulful 6-Figure Brand
• Repositioning Holistic Health Brand “Free Air Life CO” Into the Corporate Wellness Market
• Market Segmentation for Reaching New Customers featuring “Your Cosmic BFF”
• Resonating w/Customers Through Internal Brand Alignment featuring “Ignite Your Light, LLC” 

Audio Transcript

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: [00:00:00] All right, Erica, can you tell the Wild Womn fam all about the incredible work that you’re doing in the public health sphere? And for everybody listening, I kind of came from this world, like the PI or the, um, the. Individual and the faculty at ASU that I used to work under was a public health doctorate.

And so my degree is kind of in that, but mostly in nutrition. And I just have so much respect for the gigantic problems that you guys are out to solve. So can you tell us a little bit about what that industry does for anybody that’s unfamiliar, and then what specifically you do within that? 

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah. So I am a public health consultant and a public health consultant can take many roles.

I work in the epidemiology area, so my main role with that is, uh, helping people take their data and make informed decisions or [00:01:00] take action on the data that they currently have. And the whole goal of public health is really to make health accessible for everyone, to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to a good and healthy long life.

Um, and a lot of that is with health equity work or, um, Populations. And so a lot of our goal is really to help those populations achieve, you know, the same amount of health that you can, um, as anyone else. And, uh, yeah, I’ve been working in this area for about seven years and decided to go out on my own.

There’s not a lot of, uh, individuals in my area that work in epidemiology, so, uh, what I really loved about your. Story arc and how you build the wild woman house is, uh, you did come from that researcher background, so you understood what I was saying when I talked about research or writing manuscripts or grants.

And that was really helpful and great. 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: And I also felt the pain of it. I’m like, Oh God, , it is like a literal, [00:02:00] um, Like Phoenix moment when you are going through a dissertation and writing a thesis and everything is like, I just remember watching Kyle go through his, when he was at ASU for his. PhD and it’s like a part of his soul, left his body and then came back into his body after he finished like the writing.

I just, I give you guys so much credit because it is an undertaking that’s not even the beginning of it, but it’s fueled by passion and it’s fueled by this desire to contribute. Absolutely. So can you tell us a little bit about like how did you become so invested in public health and what do you love most about it? In. The contribution that you see it making? 

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, so I actually came from a bench science background, and for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it’s, you know, the people who work in laboratories with, uh, you know, cell cultures or pcr, they’re doing tests. That kind of thing. And what I liked about that is you were, you know, working through a [00:03:00] process is the same thing every single day.

So that there was at least consistency, but I wasn’t making the impact that I wanted to see. I was able to write a paper in my undergrad and, uh, I don’t think it’s ever been read, like read by anyone. It’s probably just lives on my CV as this one thing I did when I was like 20 years old. Um, and I don’t know if it made any change.

And so when I. Graduated with my Bachelor’s of Science in, um, 2012. I went into the workforce and I started working with people outside of the lab and realized that I actually really wanted like a person to person, front facing kind of job. And my manager at the time was actually doing public health and that was the first time I had heard about it.

I didn’t even know public health was a field or what it did until I was well into my like early. And I discovered epidemiology from there. And what I really loved about that is that it’s, it’s feel felt like the field where I could make the most impact for the most amount of people. [00:04:00] Um, the goals of public health are far reaching.

Um, we tackle really big challenges and there’s always something new and exciting on the horizon. Um, you know, we had the Covid Pandemic and now we have Monkeypox. Um, it’s always changing. There’s always a new challenge. Um, and so there’s always something, you know, to do more that we can in the field. 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: And you are somebody that cares so deeply for just the wellbeing of people on the planet.

And that’s something that I think people need to be reminded of when we’re talking about public health and how we can feel the frustrations of some of the policies or things that are put into place. But ultimately, the people that are in the public health industry, care about health standards. They care about equity or equality in terms of access.

They term they care about just quality of life and making sure that everybody has the highest quality of life. And I have so much respect for what you guys do because it it you [00:05:00] are tackling. pandemic sized problems, like these are the things that are in the scope of your work, and when you care that much and you see things working, either inefficiently or seeing how things could be done better.

it literally like I see it just spark within you and this is what I really see in you is like that problem solving. This can be done better because it needs to be done better. So can you tell us a little bit about your experience with wanting to start your own brand for consulting and just some of the problems that you were seeing, not necessarily from like a technical standpoint, but like the implications of the problems that you were seeing and why you wanted to create a solution.

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, so I, uh, work as an infectious disease researcher, so that’s kind of my main job that I have had for the past five years. And in that role I’ve been able to work with lots of different organizations and government organizations primarily, and I just saw how difficult it was to get the data that we were [00:06:00] collecting into the hands of the people who needed it to make decisions.

You know, when you start collecting data, your end goal is to make change or to be able to take action upon that in the end. But I was seeing it would take sometimes like two to five years for it to actually make change in our community when the problems have already been going on for decades before then, and I just, it was just so slow and there was so much red tape and so many things that I, you had to overcome in order to get the data into the hands of the people who needed.

That I just wanted to create a better way to do things. Data doesn’t have to be, you know, siloed into this area where it’s difficult to get to or you have to write all of these protocols. I feel like it should be accessible for everyone in order to make informed decisions and help public help the public have better health.

Um, And I don’t think that, you know, I, I think in my field there’s always someone who’s gonna be a boss or someone who, you know, has [00:07:00] ownership of the data or someone that you have to ask for to get access to it. And I don’t think those things are gonna go away. I just wanna find a way for our field to work with data better, make it more accessible, and, you know, not have it to be so much like ivory tower where it.

You know, kept away and not being used, um, to its full potential. 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: Mm-hmm. , And just to kind of give a little bit of context, because I do come from this world and I understand the ropes, the, the, the, all of the things that you have to jump through, over get around and when it comes to funding for actually implementing these new policies or, you know, these changes that will ultimately impact and improve people’s lives.

There is a whole jump through hoops process that has to happen for funding to be made possible. And what you’re talking about is with data, if the data is not being U, like each data point, and this is something that you said, and I [00:08:00] love it because it just highlights. Your perspective and how much you care is like each single little data point is an individual with an experience that has complexities and dimensions and that cares about things and that wants certain things outta their life.

And when. You’re seeing these organ organizations using data, either ineffectively or they’re not trained in how to process it, it’s ultimately not respecting and honoring the complexity of humans that are, are part of that data set. And so it’s saying we are going to kind of lump and like surface level.

All of these different complex people where in reality, when you don’t know how to handle data well and you don’t know how to process it or make sense of it, or you know, calculate it the way that you need to in order to create the data that you need to say, this is a project worth funding. There’s people that are getting left behind.

There’s lives that are not being validated. There’s experiences that [00:09:00] are not being improved and ultimately lives that are being lost because. The data isn’t being processed in the right way. So it’s like, it sounds like such a techy problem, but it’s actually so much bigger than that. And the fact that, you know, something that I loved so much about working with you is that you took on an institutional challenge that literally every educational body.

Deals with, to some extent in terms of messy data, people not knowing how to work with it, people not knowing the best approaches to working with it. And what have you been able to do in terms of that brand awareness? That brand visibility for sharing your story and sharing your vision for what could be made possible because of the services that you provide with cleaning data and really organizing things so that it is usable.

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, I, I wanna go back to, you know, the reason for why I started Angle [00:10:00] is, you know, you did, you hit the nail on the head that every data point that you get comes from a person or a human. And I also think that a lot of times with research studies are done kind of in a vacuum, where you have this one study and this one small group of people.

And when you get to, you know, the research article when you get to the write up, they talk about a group of participants or you know, the group of people that were participating in the study. But those people have a wide variety of experiences and they don’t exist in a vacuum. So there’s all of this other data that’s collected on, you know, the environment that they live in or the culture that they live in.

And even that data, just even getting it all. Point where you can, um, say this person had this exposure and they were also part of this study and they live in this kind of culture. All of that stuff together is really, really hard for people to do. And so I think with Angle, what I, what I hope to do is to reduce the time it takes for people to collect their data and take action.

And so [00:11:00] a lot of what I focus on is coding that can help reduce the time it takes for someone to analyze their data. Um, I help with, you know, students so that they understand how to collect data in a meaningful way that actually will help them create change in. Communities that they serve. Um, I help organizations take all of these different pieces of data that they just have already existing and haven’t done anything with, and, and bring it into a story that they can actually tell and then make decisions on.

Um, and I, I think, you know, it’s, it’s been. It’s been an interesting eight months. I’ve been, uh, working with lots of different types of people all over the world, and so seeing what people actually need versus what I thought they needed has been a whole, whole game and story in itself. So, 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: oh my gosh. Let’s talk about that for a minute, because this is such, No, this is such a like, Example of what it is to be a business owner is you can do all the research in the world.

You [00:12:00] can think you understand, but until you really get your hands dirty and get out into the world and experiment. You’re not gonna have the depth of understanding that you need to really be able to market yourself effectively. And so that’s something that I love hearing people talk about is that experimentation and that willingness to get curious and to essentially set aside everything you thought you knew.

And take a completely different approach. So what has that process been like for you? And if you want specific examples, go for it. But what have been like the biggest lessons that you’ve learned from. Coming. You know, we built this brand together and came in with an understanding of a problem. From your perspective of working in the industry and then you get out and start working with all these different people, what shifted and what do you now believe to be true about just brand or business in regard to understanding your, your customer?

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, I, [00:13:00] So when I first started out, I mean, I, I will say that I had a very minimal interaction with public health consultants. So I had a few people that we’ve worked with on projects before. I kind of knew what they did. I’ve seen their websites. Uh, I did all of the brand research and strategy and what’s interesting I think, is that there are public health consultants out there, but the level to which they, uh, market themselves or share about their story or talk about, you know, the big vision for their company and what they do.

Is all over the board. There’s some where they’re basically, you know, silent on the internet and they are just, you know, moving from one company or organization to the next and supporting them in whatever they need. Um, two people who are public health influencers, I would call them, and they actually, you know, have a very small niche and they’re doing a great job at what they do.

Um, so it’s been really interesting to see the full spectrum of that. What I thought I would be doing in the beginning is not what I’m doing now, . [00:14:00] Um, what I learned is that, A lot of public health consultants. Um, and I, I was hoping it would be different, but it’s not. Public health consultants write grants, which are then funded and they get to do the work.

And, um, coming from academia, that’s kind of what I was hoping to get away from, but that’s actually where most of the money is in my field is. Writing grants and writing, you know, RFPs or you have to do a cover letter and a resume. You have to write a, you know, that you’re interested in doing this kind of work.

And a lot of it is, um, reaching out to organizations and then getting a contract and going through that whole process. Um, and I’m not surprised that it’s not that it’s that way now that I know, um, what I thought I would be doing more of is direct to public health individual. And I do, I do some of that work, but I think the majority of it is actually writing grants and getting them funded, so mm-hmm.

I think with that in mind, my strategy of how I’ve, you know, been targeting, my messaging has changed quite a bit, even from [00:15:00] January when I started, so, mm-hmm. . 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: Mm-hmm . And that’s something also what you’re highlighting is like the importance of understanding your in. Not just from like a service provider perspective, but knowing the spectrum of people in your industry.

And I just, I wanna highlight something really important, but also funny in that part of my process when I’m working with a client and we’re building a brand or we’re improving an existing brand, is I have them do a very thorough. , basically competitor analysis, but I call it similar expert analysis where you identify the main players in your industry and you also identify who is at the same stage of growth as you’re at.

And let’s just get a sense of what’s out there. Cuz my goal is always to help you position yourself as a. Brand that’s doing something that re thoroughly represents who you are and what you do, but that stands out and can easily be differentiated from what [00:16:00] already exists in the industry. So can you talk about what that process was like diving in, because it’s always confronting, it’s always challenging, but then also maybe some things that surprised you from getting to know your industry and really doing that analysis.

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, so I, you know, I was kind of at. I don’t know, the people post different types of things about their different companies on the internet. And so I was, uh, when I was searching for people, I found some, but I didn’t find a lot. And so I thought, this is great. I’m filling a gap. There’s not a lot of people who work in this area, and I still think that’s true.

I don’t think there’s a lot of people out there who are epidemiology, public health consultants. Um, What I learned is, you know, going through this process of, uh, meeting people on LinkedIn or connecting with them, learning more about their consulting businesses. There is actually a lot of different people out there who are doing this work, but the degree to which they’re sharing about it in different [00:17:00] spaces or the spaces where I thought they would be, um, is not, you know, they’re not as prevalent.

What I’ve learned is that networking is really big with public health consultants. So I would connect to someone on LinkedIn and they say, they would say, Oh, this uh, area that you’re working in is like this person, You should talk to this person. So they would connect me with them and then I would get to meet with them and talk more about that.

And that in itself, I didn’t, at the time when we were doing the analysis and looking at all of my competitors, I hadn’t even thought about. Through a network process of talking or connecting with people on LinkedIn or other, you know, networking platforms and finding competitors through there. Um, and I’ll say that lightly because, uh, one of them in the consulting world, I’m now on a contract with.

So making those networking goals is actually really helpful for my business too, because there are so few of us in my field that we can then help each other out too. Um, and that’s been an amazing experience to be able to learn from her [00:18:00] and what she’s already done. She’s been in the field for eight years, so I’m, uh, I’m just really happy and grateful to be able to have those connections.

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: I love that so much cuz it’s like such a value of collaboration and I, I hold the same value. Like it’s literally the way that I’ve built the agency is through collaboration and people that typically would be, quote unquote my competitors. Because we’re in the same industry. We don’t do the exact same thing, but we’re in the same industry.

But the relationships I’ve built with these people, the friendships that I’ve gain, Circumstantially through them, the people that I’ve met, the opportunities that I’ve had, like that is so valuable to me. Mm-hmm. , and I love that you highlighted that because I think a lot of the time there’s this. Fear of if I reach out to somebody that does what I do or that’s in my industry, just to connect and like build a relationship, even if it’s just a, you know, [00:19:00] professional relationship or, Hey, I think you’re an awesome person, let’s be friends.

There’s this fear of, But if I do that, is she going to steal my approach or my system, or is she going to copy me? Or like, Am I really. to build this relationship with somebody who makes money in a similar way that I do. And that’s such the like scarcity paradigm that we are built to exist in as entrepreneurs.

And it’s. So it’s so refreshing and so affirming when people say, I actually grew because of this person. I actually learned so much because of this person. We actually help each other and as a result, we’ve gotten farther rather than I’m afraid that she’s going to steal my proprietary system. I’m not going to reach out and build this connection.

The polar opposite is true. So is there anything else that this relationship building, networking, I mean, Even [00:20:00] in some situations like sisterhood, like what has this taught you about the old professional paradigm versus what you have seen to be true about networking and relationship building? 

Mm-hmm.

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah. Um, so Abby Womack actually just came out with a book called Wolf Pack, and this is one of the rules. I think it’s like old paradigm work. Um, you know, go at it alone. New paradigm work together, you can go farther together basically. Um, and I think that, um, it’s just so true. I think in the beginning when I was thinking about a competitor analysis, I was thinking about how I could diff differentiate myself and how I could be different than other people.

And that’s important. But I think that through the networking I’ve realized that. People have already been doing this for decades in my field, and there’s a lot that I, um, can learn from them as a new entrepreneur, as a new consultant in the area. Um, and so I am grateful for kind of like the old guard, you know, passing all this stuff down onto the new people coming into the field.

Um, so I would [00:21:00] be encouraging, you know, if there’s someone who is interested in being a consultant or doing something in their field on their own to network before. Start building the brand and doing all of these business things, because I think there’s a lot of really interesting things you can learn from people who have already done it.

And you don’t have to, you know, create something new and novel. You can learn from what they’ve done, make it better, make it yours, and then, you know, bring that into your brand messaging and strategy. Um, I will say the other thing that, um, I wasn’t expecting, I think you talked about, you know, like, uh, sisterhood or maybe, you know, sharing it among other women.

I think I was really scared to work with other women in my field and them, you know, public health is majority female and I definitely thought that, you know, reaching out to someone, someone would think that I was stealing their idea or I was trying to. You know, outbid them for a contract or that I was gonna be a main competitor for them.

Um, and it’s [00:22:00] just been so amazing to have other people in the field just be welcoming and excited to have new people who are interested in doing the work because there’s a lot of work and not enough of us to do it all. So, yeah, 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: I love that so much. And that’s something that I’ve had to. Uh, train was my word I was gonna use, and then I’m like, What’s a softer word?

I can, but train is like, the best word is I’ve had to train myself to be happy when a potential client goes with somebody else because it’s more aligned. And knowing that I’m always going to be okay, I’m always gonna be provided for, and I get to thrive. And when somebody says yes to working with me and working with the Wild Womn Haus Agency, it’s because they fullheartedly want to.

And if somebody says no to you or somebody goes to a quote unquote competitor, that’s because that aligns most with them. It has nothing to do with competition. It has nothing to do with the fact that they’re better than you. It’s like. In this day and age, we [00:23:00] want people to work with individuals that they’re the most aligned with, cuz A, they’re gonna get the best results, and B, when somebody says yes to you, it’s because they know, because you’ll know.

That they align with your approach and your brand and all of these things. So I just wanted to highlight that. Cause that is an incredibly important, important thing that you said without saying it . 

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, I think, um, that’s so true. I mean, there are, um, I think it would go against my whole ethos of the business, right?

By going after a grant that didn’t align with what I know and what I do. So I talked about in the beginning that my whole goal was to make it a faster, quicker, more. Effective process for someone to go from data collection to taking action. And so if I decided to go for a grant that I had no, like, you know, expertise in or had any technical assistance or experience, that would just drag the process along and make it much harder for that agency to actually take action.

So I think another thing that I’ve learned is to only go for things that are, you know, within my lane. [00:24:00] I. You know, create, you know, a boundary and try and extend those boundaries a little bit with each grant or new project that I take on. Um, but I try to kind of focus on the things that I know that I’m good at and that, um, will align with agency, just like you said.

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: Mm-hmm. staying in your zone of genius. Yeah. And not letting yourself get into fear brain about, well, if I did this, if I say I could do this, like technically I can , but it’s not my zone of genius. , that’s when you get into the weeds and that’s when you get yourself in those situations where the hard work becomes drudgery rather than the hard work becoming satisfying.

So I’m so glad that you highlighted that and you said something else that was like a golden nugget, that it goes against the entire ethos of the brand that I built. And being that this was the first business that you’ve created, and this was the first brand that you’ve create. Uh, established business brand that you’ve [00:25:00] created to have that level of awareness and intention I think is really special and really unique.

And I’d love to hear your perspective on what being a business owner and what launching your first business has taught you about what brand is. And I also want to hear your perspective on where you feel brand is lacking in your industry and how it. Move the change that you guys are trying to create, move that forward.

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Mm-hmm. ? Yeah. I think, um, you know, when I first started working with you and the team, I had no idea that brand messaging or branding was a thing. I mean, I knew it, I knew it was there, but you know, when brands do it really well, you don’t really focus on it. It’s just part of it, and it makes it for a better user experience.

So, um, I, I knew that that. Something that people did, but I didn’t know how important it was. Um, and I think working with you, I, I learned the importance of branding [00:26:00] and of having a clear message and a clear vision and, you know, goals and pillars for my business that I could go back to on a daily basis.

And I think that’s, um, you know, whenever I’ve thought about doing something new in the business, I go back to some of our first planning documents. I say, Is this in line with what I said I was gonna do? Wow. But I wanna do in five years , you know? Mm-hmm. , um, , and I think that it’s in academia, which is kind of, you know, I, I wear multiple hats as a person.

I have a full-time job. I’m running the business. I’m a PhD candidate. I do lots of things, , lots of busy things that take a lot of time, but I, I didn’t have the words. Uh, to explain what was going on with my business and branding until I worked with you. And I think that a lot of those words I’ve been able to translate over into what’s going on with my research.

So with, when we have a new project or we have a new, um, study that we’re doing, I’m talking about consistent fonts that we use in our recruitment strategy or colors [00:27:00] that, um, you know, tie into the messaging that we’re hoping to get across. And I don’t think that. I don’t think that branding for the scientific community is really a thing or something that we even think about, and I wouldn’t have known about any of it without working on, you know, this whole, this whole business together.

So, mm-hmm. , 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: And I think what I’m hearing you say about it is that it’s just a, it’s more potent. What you deliver is more potent. It’s. Intuitive for the user, customer, client, whatever term you want to use. You said when a brand is really strong with how they present themselves and how they communicate and how they story tell, it’s like you don’t even notice.

It’s just an experience that you become a part of. And from my perspective, when that happens, it’s like, Change becomes so much more fluid and gathering a community and and pulling people to [00:28:00] you that hold the same values becomes. So second nature, when those pieces of brand are in place and with something as critical as like the public health industry, I’m like, Listen guys, let’s have like a big branding summit for all of the public health.

But honestly, with what they’re doing, they’re, they’re communicating massive needs that people have in the world and doing it without the power of. Right. Leaning solely on logic and data and explanations and things like this. I’m like, Well, what if we pull in storytelling? What if we pull, Which goes against like the way that you write as a scientist, right?

Like there is no, there is like very little storytelling in terms of emotive storytelling in science. It is 

GUEST: Erika Austhof: oh, 100% , 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: right? And I’m just imagining what could be possible if more of that emotive storytelling was brought into the sciences and what change could happen because of that. 

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, I, [00:29:00] um, you know, as an epidemiologist, sometimes I hear about other research studies or things that are going on, and I was part of a research study earlier last year, and the branding on that study made me feel like I was part of a community and I finished my entire participation in the project because I felt like I was contributing to a bigger.

And I think that that goes a really long way with public health data or cohorts, which is just a group of participants or people that you follow over a long period of time, um, lost to follow up and missing data, or people not taking, you know, surveys when they’re supposed to, or it’s delayed or anything like that.

That contributes a lot to how we’re able to analyze the data and what we’re able to do with that data once it’s all done. So if, I think if you have a consistent message, What the data is, why we’re collecting it, why it’s so important for you to be involved in having recognizable like a logo or, um, colors that when someone receives a survey or a mailing, they know that it’s part of that study [00:30:00] and they know that they’re part of that community that’s actually gonna help change in the area that they’re in.

I think it can go a really long way to. Move our field forward. 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: Mm-hmm. . So any field people listening. If you’re in an industry where there is not a lot of consistent storytelling, there’s not a lot of strong emotive communication, it feels more sterile. Like consider the ways that brand could come in and really help deepen that relationship with anybody that’s involved, because ultimately where we’re moving just as a collective, but also where we’re moving.

Consumerism going forward is we are becoming so much more aware and intentional about. What we say yes to, where our money goes, what will we become a part of? And that’s such a beautiful side effect of literal decades and generations of people just being sold to, rather than people now wanting [00:31:00] to buy and invest based on values and based on intentionality and awareness.

And I really see this kind of becoming. Global change where industries that haven’t prioritized that sort of human to human connection are gonna have kind of a rude awakening in terms of we’re actually 10 times more effective when we care about building community and when we care about telling a cohesive story and sharing our vision and all of these things that pull people to us and create loyalty and create engagement and create that shared like ethos of what we’re trying to create.

And I. Admire you so deeply. I know I’ve like literally said that a thousand times this, but Eric, I see you as somebody that is not afraid to take on gigantic problems. You’re not afraid to be somebody that goes first. You’re also not afraid to be somebody that speaks up about, Hey, this is not working.

Let’s find a better way to do it. And positioning yourself as the person that’s gonna figure it [00:32:00] out like that is my definition of a change maker and I. I love that everybody gets to hear this story and gets to hear what brand has represented for you and your business and where you see it growing your industry.

So I just appreciate you coming on, like sharing your story with us. I am so inspired, I got chills multiple times throughout this conversation. I’m not even joking. My calves are all goosebumps right now.

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Thank you for that reflection. I mean, it was awesome working with you and I’m so excited for where the business can go.

Um, I know I have a global vision and I know it’s gonna go really far and I’m just so thankful that I met you and you came into the business at the point that it did, um, in the beginning when it wasn’t. It was just an idea. Um, and yeah, so thankful for your mentorship and everything that you’ve put out there.

So yeah, thanks for having me. 

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: Aww, sisterhood. Everybody could feel it. Okay, so if anybody is looking for your services, where would you like them to go? And then if anybody [00:33:00] wants to just connect with you professionally, or even just cuz they’re really inspired by your story, where should they go? 

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Yeah, so if you wanna uh, learn more about Angle, you can go to our website, which is angle consulting.com.

Um, I also am really present on LinkedIn, so that’s Angle Consulting llc. If you wanna connect with me, uh, professionally on there. I also have an Instagram, which is Epi Erica. The epi part of it is epidemiologists, so, um, and it’s E R I K A and I’m sure Tristan will put all of that in the notes so you can easily find me, You.

HOST: Tristan Thibodeau: You got it. Well, thank you so much. This has been so fun, and I just, like I said, have so much respect for you and really deeply cherish the time I got to spend with you helping you bring this creation to life. So thank you so much for your time today. 

GUEST: Erika Austhof: Thanks, Tristan.