Meet Ronii Bartles

We recently connected with Ronii Bartles and have shared our conversation below.

Ronii, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of resilience. You have to get comfortable with “failure” and reframing it into “what did I learn?” There are a lot of great quotes about failure, but college and MBA programs don’t teach you how to handle failing over and over. But you’re not special and can’t bypass it. It’s a rite of passage that all business owners have to go through. I recently wrote the story of my career and all the “failures” I went through; projects that never got off the ground, building IP assets only to rebuild them again (and sometimes again), launches that no one bought. But persistence and resilience kept me going to the next thing that did succeed.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I work with business owners to find relief, success, and freedom through simplicity. I believe business isn’t hard, we make it hard. And I have developed a philosophy + framework I call the CEO of Simplicity. My mission is to get people out of overwhelm and into flow by simplifying and prioritizing their mile-long to-do list. My process is to inventory, prioritize, and streamline so that you can work on the things that matter to you.

Over the past 17 years, I’ve worked on everything in a business from bookkeeping to Facebook Ads. I’ve sat at every seat at the conference table, and I’ve made money and scraped by on pennies only to have to choose between toothpaste and cheap wine (the wine won, it has alcohol and alcohol kills germs, hence your teeth are clean, you’re welcome). This has made me a well-rounded business manager because I understand how a business works and how it needs to work holistically to be successful. I focus on creating real-world, results-oriented systems + processes, which earned me an impressive list of credentials, including an MBA from The Citadel, former President of the Charleston American Marketing Association, and a Most Influential Women in Business Rising Star Finalist.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think the #1 skill that most people lack but think they are great at is listening. Studies show that people only listen to 13% of what you’re saying. Before someone is finished talking, we’re already thinking about how we’re going to respond. Clients hire you to help them with something, and how are you going to help them if you only listen to 13% of what they are telling you? Working on your listening skills alone will help you provide a better product or service, hence getting you more referrals and sales.

Another skill that I think is important is problem-solving under pressure. By the time clients come to me, they are already overwhelmed and spinning, which makes it hard for them to make any decisions. So, being able to hold space for how they feel and keep a level head to help them solve a problem has helped me get my clients the results they want.

Finally, a skill that goes a long way is being adaptable. If you are rigid in your processes, systems, and solutions, it’s going to be hard to retain clients. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of streamlining and creating processes, but not every situation is exactly the same, so being adaptable will go a long way in helping your clients get the results they want.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

I get overwhelmed with the menu at the Cheesecake Factory! I end up with the first appetizer on the menu because I can’t get past page 3 of 23. Owning your own business is a lot like that menu. There are so many options and hundreds of proven strategies, and you feel like you have to try them all. There is always a friend or colleague or coach telling you what you should do because everyone has an opinion. So you end up creating a lot of busy work that gets you nowhere except being overwhelmed and burnt out. I developed a framework to help myself and clients get out of overwhelm. It starts with inventorying everything you are doing and being brutally honest about it all. From there, we move into getting clear on what you want so we can streamline and get rid of the things that don’t work anymore. I have one friend who calls it “the gift of taking things away.” There is so much relief in knowing what you want and getting rid of the rest and not feeling guilty about it.

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Dana K Davis Media

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