Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Selena Thiele

We recently had the chance to connect with Selena Thiele and have shared our conversation below.

Selena, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
I have a new baby! She’s very sweet and relatively chill so far (knock on wood), and I’m really happy while finding this new balance between work and taking care of her. So far, she’s been very popular on Zoom calls.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m one of the co-founders of Office Mercenary, a team of US-based nerdy office workers who think of ‘getting things done’ and ‘no BS’ as their business love languages. We combine strategic business consulting, online business management, bookkeeping, virtual assistance, and more to create efficient, customized solutions for the place our clients are now and the position they want to be in the future, whether success markers are based on revenue, time, lifestyle, or amount of good trouble caused. While the Office Mercenary teams works with a variety of people in many industries, we want to make sure that the neurodivergent, disabled, LGBTQIA+, and other minority communities know that they have a friend, and frequently a fellow member, in us. In addition having a baby, this year we’ve expand our consulting services to include Fractional COO and Chief of Staff work and launched a new referral program.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
Someone once told me that, if I strongly believe in the advice I’m giving, why am I not doing those things myself? At that time, the advice I was giving were along the lines of ‘just take the damn compliment’ and ‘if you’re afraid they’re going to do this offensive thing around people you care about, maybe you need to care enough about yourself to not date that idiot.’ I got better at that, but while running this business, whose entire goal is to get business owners to stop doing things they don’t like, aren’t good at, or aren’t big-picture helpful, it was easy to fall back into bad habits. There are things I did initially that made a lot of sense while the business was very new, but I held on to doing them because it felt like I should, despite having great, reliable people and those things keeping me from doing bigger projects. Taking a little time for maternity leave and then knowing I’d be back in a more limited capacity made me come back to this lesson. I released that control, stopped (or at least limited) should-ing myself, and took the validation that nothing exploded.

When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
I’ve had weird medical issues for a good part of my life. It took a long time to figure out the root cause of most of it, but even before that, I knew certain things that made me feel worse and more worn out. Lots of stress, not taking breaks, working late because that one client realized they needed something for tomorrow at 11pm. I’d push really hard, then spend a month needing afternoon naps to function. When I was diagnosed with MS, I was sure I had to hide it, work like I was perfectly healthy. At that point, I was a solo VA, so I finally had to talk about it with clients because I felt like I wasn’t performing up to par. (I can look back and know that I was actually doing great, but in the moment it didn’t feel that way.)

That led to the right people staying and setting up a better schedule. Even better, it got rid of people who really weren’t the right fit anyway. And best, it led me to creating the Office Mercenary team with my business partner.

Now, it’s part of the conversation. Most people have, had, or know someone with medical wacky and can relate. I’ve had GREAT conversations because I’ll talk about being a business owner with medical concerns, and it does seem to consistently freak out some, which means they weren’t the right people for us anyway.

Being a new mom, this is true again. Being honest about the things in life, but having a plan to work around them, means I’m having better conversations, making better connections, and generally staying happier with my work and home life.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
Oh, yes. This actually became a core tenet of how Office Mercenary works. Generic corporate, vague blah wasn’t who we are as people and didn’t want to try to tone ourselves down to be more palatable to those who like bland, greige work interactions. I’m going to make that nerdy reference, show off my dog/cat/baby and ask about yours, and tell you if that’s a great idea, but there’s 5 things you have to do in your business before doing that is a great idea for YOUR business. Yes, I will cater to my audience to a degree, much like how I won’t belt my favorite song out as loud as possible in the quiet area of a library. I’m not an A-hole, so I adjust to be situation appropriate, but ultimately, what you see is pretty much what you’re getting.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
The story I hope people tell about me is that I cared. I don’t have the hubris to believe I will succeed in everything, but I want people to say I cared about them. Sometimes, that may mean trying to help, whether that succeeds or fails, sometimes that may mean honesty about absolutely not being able to do anything but lend an ear. I can’t Care Bear Stare at anything, but hopefully they feel that care and see the tangible things left behind because of that care.

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