Jenna Rutschman wants to introduce you to her tribe of startup mavens.
These are ladies with a knack for business β women who know how to navigate motherhood, startups and Fortune 500 companies.Β
Her new podcast The Get It Girl Show is all about telling stories and giving advice women entrepreneurs can learn from.
Because Rutschman has been there.
For about 13 years, she worked in corporate advertising agencies in Phoenix, managing all facets of marketing and business development for clients. In that career, she says she pitched to big-name companies such as Zappos, Ancestry.com and CBS.
Along the way, she has mothered two kiddos and juggled her own projects, as a "weekend warrior" photographer doing engagement shoots and headshots and a short-term-blogger, who had first child not long after starting the blog. Her kids are now 6 and 3.
Around 2014, Rutschman launched her own marketing consulting firm Left of West and helped her brother cofound The Bathroom Sink, an online concierge tool that coordinates shipping replacements for toiletries just before they run out.
She comes from a family of entrepreneurs and already has another idea brewing.Β
About two years after her year of startups, Rutschman and her family moved back to Tucson. Her husband is a native β his family settled the Patagonia area way back when β and she moved to Tucson in 1999 from New York to study media arts and photography at the University of Arizona.
The first season of the podcast, which launched Feb. 4, hops between interviews with women entrepreneurs from around the country and the founders of WineBlock, a startup out of Seattle. They share the minute details of actually turning an idea between girlfriends into a real business.
Rutschman developed the idea for the podcast while working with WineBlock founders Lauren Calabrese and Brenda Kirkpatrick on their startup.
Her own podcast-listening habits had her feeling like the marketing and startup podcasts out there weren't quite capturing the perspectives she knew other women had to share. That inkling collided with a conversation she had with the WineBlock founders about their frustration toward being referred to as "girls" in the business world.Β
"A lot of marketing podcasts are run from a female perspective, but the startup podcasts weren't," says Rutschman, 36. "There were a lot from well-connected middle-aged white dudes, and so when I was talking to Lauren and Brenda about their journey, I thought, 'Oh, this would be really interesting to be explored as a podcast.' Some do talk to women entrepreneurs, but they're interview-based so they don't get really deep into the steps that you need to take ... the nitty-gritty details ... the trials and tribulations of startup life."
And so the Get It Girl Show became a thing, produced by William Smith.
You can find the podcast in the iTunes or Google Play stores, where Rutschman drops a new episode every Wednesday. Next week's interview is with Alyssa Gallion, the founder of Celebrate for Good, a local event planning philanthropy startup.
Β "I just want to provide an empowering platform where women feel that they can collaborate and talk to each other honestly and candidly about topics that affect us as leaders and business people," Rutschman says.
This is how she's bringing her experience to your ears. So listen up.
Editor's note: This interview has been condensed for clarity.
More of your backstory, pleaseΒ
After graduating from the University of Arizona, "I interned in the music industry in New York City. ... I loved the experience and started to work with them full time after college, realized I did not have the salary or savings to make it work in New York City, and my older bother lived in Phoenix at the time ... so I landed in Phoenix and my goal was to save money and move back to New York City ... So I got my first job in marketing at a company called Madison Ave in Tempe and it was 2004, and I was interviewed and got the job and didn't really have any marketing experience. ... I moved throughout my career to other companies like Terralever (now LaneTerralever)."
Working for corporate versus working for yourself
"When you're in a strategy role at an agency, you kind of run your own world and work with business development finding and identifying clients and pitching them and invoicing them and going over proposals, and then you're in charge of running the team ... and making sure the work is getting done and the marketing strategy is in place and we're sticking to it. ... The first year-and-a-half (of owning Left of West) was the most amazing freedom I've ever felt, because I was able to be at home, working from home, picking up my kids and dropping off my kids, and it gave me more mom flexibility that I didn't have when I worked at ad agencies. The thing I miss most is all of my team is freelancers, so I feel kind of isolated at times ... so that's been the hardest part of owning my own business."
Why make a podcast just for women?
"One thing you learn when you're a marketing professional is not to be a generalist. The stake in a marketing strategist's heart is when somebody says, 'Everyone is my target audience.' And you're like, 'No. Not everyone is your target audience.' Even a company like Target, everyone is not their target audience ... I had always had the gift of gab and was feeling lonely in my day job, so I felt like there was a missing voice of someone who was candid and would not be afraid to talk about some of the things women go through that men don't especially in entrepreneurship and startup worlds."Β
Talk about those challenges
"This is kind of simple, but being called a girl, like the constant rhetoric that you are young ... the honey, the sweetheart ... Women do it too, and sometimes worse. Β I remember early in my career, there were some amazing women I worked with but a few in particular that didn't always get along, and it trickled down so bad I remember being 24 and saying, 'I'm never going to do that.' And I have been in a management position most of my career, but have taken great effort to mentor or be there for the women who work for me or I work with ... I think the other thing is women get marked as being emotional, and so because of that they're not as smart. I have also worked in places where it's the good ol' boys club and the men are going to happy hour and making decisions about accounts. And motherhood in general is insane." Β
How do you factor in the mom life?Β
"I worked for this one company for a short time ... but I had to go to a Mother's Day tea, and I turned my phone off to focus on my daughter. ... She had made all of these cute things and done all of these nice things, and when I was driving back I had missed so many calls from the owners, and it was like, 'You know where I was. It was on the calendar.'"
Who to expect on your podcast:Β
"I'm also going to interview not just women who are in startups, but women who are leaders in different ways. ... Women, I think, get labeled in certain ways, like stay-at-home mom or entrepreneur or corporate girl, so I want to talk to people who are in all different worlds because I think that I just want to form a community that is for empowering women. And we do have some men slated for the show. It's not like a man-hater thing."Β
What's your message to women entrepreneurs:Β
"I'm a strong believer in planning and organization to really power through with what you're planning to do. You have to have goals and you have to understand how you're going to reach those goals. You have to have a bigger picture from a strategy standpoint, but also understand it tactically. You need to learn to delegate and that's something I learned early in my career or there is no way I would have lasted 13 years working in advertising agencies. You have to learn to give work to other people in your situation ... You have to ask for help."Β
You can also hear Rutschman this weekend at Ignite520, which Tucson Young Professionals is hosting and #ThisIsTucson is a sponsor of. She'll be the one moderating the panel "The Future Is Female" on Saturday.Β
