I was raised to be a gracious host.
It's an art form in the southern US. When successful hosts bring people together, they know who to invite, who to introduce, who not to seate together, and who shouldn't be in the room at all. They invest in the right people, not just collecting followers. So when they bring people together it always for a purpose.
They know how to keep the room flowing, making introductions, keeping glasses filled, so no one is ever neglected.
"That isn't just manners. It's how relationships not only get built on purpose instead of by accident, but they become the most valuable asset you have."
40+ years of relationship-built business
5 businesses, 2 online
350+ founders and business owners
I made my first sale at age 5, at my family's produce stand.
At 13 my sister and I noticed people kept asking for flowers to plant in their yards. We wrote up a plan. A $300 loan from my dad got us seeds, pots, and dirt. We made $1,700 that first year. Paid my dad back, and put the rest into the next season.
By the time I was a senior, we had a plant nursery that had outgrown us and our schooling, so my parents took it over. Today, my dad and little sister still run it. 30+ years later.
My dad had one rule he repeated more than any other:
"Your reputation is the one thing you actually get to keep. Everything else comes and goes."
He meant it literally. I watched him pull dead plants back out of customers' cars. No receipt. No argument. No policy.
why I can do this
I'm autistic, formally diagnosed in my thirties.
It's always been hard to understand why people don't just say what they mean. It would be the simpliest approach. But I've learned the hard way that's not the best way to interact.
So I spent my whole life studying the way people communicate. And it's turned out to be a huge advantage with my work because I've had to learn on purpose what most people just 'know' and never think twice about.
5 businesses of my own. 350+ business owners I've helped build theirs. 40-plus years of watching what works between people, what doesn't, and seeing the difference between the two whether it's in person or online.
Manners gave me the standard. Pattern-spotting lets me see exactly where it's missing. The 40+ years are how I know what to do about it.
Any one of those alone is a personality trait. All three is a methodology.
"I can translate what your words — spoken or written — are doing to the person hearing them."
With Tech I'm Part of the bridge generation
ICQ chat rooms. Forums. World of Warcraft guilds. I met people online and then met them in person, and it never once occurred to me to value my online relationships as less than my in person ones.
They were just people. In other places.
I adore what online technology opened up. Some of my closest friendships and best clients wouldn't exist without it. We're not in the same place and it never mattered.
"It's all real life."
everyone says put yourself in their shoes.
It never made sense to me. How can you possibly do that when you don't have their feelings, their stories, their experience? That's only hearing through your own filters.
That's what led me to the Beside Method.
I stopped trying to feel what they feel. I stand beside them instead. Setting down my biases and beliefs, I listen, ask, and let them tell me.
People who feel heard, trust.
every business i had ever built
ran on people who already knew me
3 generations of business owners. Everyone in town knew who my family was.
So it was a real adjustment when at 31. I left a marriage, my home, and the business I'd spent 13 years building, and moved to Colorado for a corporate job where I literally knew no one.
The 2008 recession took that job. And after 100s of job applications, I started a house cleaning business, because it fit in my car.
Everyone told me... wrong business, wrong timing... cleaning is a luxury service during a recession.
2 months of flyers, and job boards. Not one client.
What got me in the door was the ads. What got me the job was asking what they actually needed and wanted. What got me the referrals as the quality of the service.
Natural products. No smells. Putting every item back as I found them. The details got me my name shouted out.
4 years later, I had 23 clients. 5 or 6 came from the orignal ad. The rest through my network.
Then I put a free ad on Craigslist services section where people were already looking.
My first client was a judge with MS who couldn't clean her own home. The second a pregnant mom. The third a busy executive.
"I built that network from nothing. And I can tell you it's a heck of a lot harder to grow a business when no one knows your name, than when they do."
hosting looks like generosity. it's actually a decision about who gets your time.
You pick who's in the room. You decide who gets your attention. You build the guest list. You choose which rooms you walk into and which invitations you turn down. Then once people are in the room, every one of them gets your regard. Not because they might buy. Because you invited them.
I had a client on retainer who had burnt a relationship through cold pitching, so bad I wasn't sure it could be recovered.
We recovered it. Not as a client. Instead, he became a referral partner, an inside source on his industry, and the reason my client got 15 new leads.
My client cold-pitched all 15 in DMs in an afternoon. When I asked him why, when he had my help, he said, 'because it's faster and I can get more.'
That's now 15 companies who won't take his call.
He invited them into the room, but didn't give them his regard.
I was stunned. Because when you hand me someone's name, you're lending me your reputation for the length of that conversation. I know exactly what that costs if I get it wrong. It's the one thing I was raised not to spend.
WORDS FROM OUR CLIENTS.....
"I don't think I had fully acknowledged the fact that I was a business person and that I was in business. Taking that course and realizing, and listening to everybody else, you know that really changed my perspective and made me realise that, yes I am running a business so all of these things that we spoke about in the course really do apply to what I'm doing."
"Go see Heidi — she tells you how to talk to people to get clients."
how we work
We don't coach from the sidelines. David and I work inside your ecosystem, as practitioners and peers, helping you see what's already there and do something with it.
Because when relationships are built well: referrals feel natural, opportunities stop being random, your name travels without you chasing it.
"And your business starts to feel like something you own again."
Hi, I’m Heidi
Gen X. Based in Denver.
I started university in art at 18 and dropped out inside two years out of boredom, starting my second business at 21. At 34 I finally got my IT degree, before spending over a decade doing content and social strategy with corporate clients. I've seen content work at scale. I know exactly what it can do, and exactly what it can't do on its own.
I'm a tea drinker, not a coffee one, with a weakness for cheese, chocolate, wine, and laughter. I'm also a reader, reading on average 150 books a year. And I've been a food blogger since 2011 at Simply Sophisticated Cooking. I thought being a chef would be my path for a while, but I hated the hours, although I've still cooking in some fantastic locations like the 6 weeks cooking 3 course meals at a B&B in Italy with my husband David as my sous chef.
David is my co-founder, business partner, and husband.
He spent 25+ years in oil and gas engineering before joining me to build this. He sometimes struggles with being an entreprenuer after so many years as in corporate, but he's brilliant at our design, video, brand photographys, and managing my live events so I can focus on talking to you. Together, we're the layer of content, most people see.
I teach collaboration because I live it. We built this together — not because I couldn't do it alone, but because this is the life we wanted.
"Some of our best client relationships started over conversations about food, travel, or the ridiculousness of trying to "hustle" your way through perimenopause... or working with your spouse without killing each other."
you met them. now what?
It's Tuesday morning. You're scrolling past someone you met at a conference in March. You clicked. They said let's stay in touch. You like the post. You keep going.
4 times this month. 4 people who could have changed your year.
You met them. Now what?
I still feel the weight of the day when I don't post. I know better than almost anyone that the post isn't what closes anything, and the pull is still there.
So this isn't about doing more.
The work isn't about changing who you are. It's about building a system around who you already are.
Because it was never about being visible.
It's about being known.