We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Susan Otten a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Susan, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience comes from growing up on our family’s dairy farm. Everyone worked and had to problem solve and figure things out every day. Resilience was so normal, I can’t every recall a time when I didn’t have to be resilient.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I have had an amazingly successful career, with companies around the US in a variety of industries, such as technology with15 years at Apple, agriculture (with two global Fortune 500 companies, behavioral health consulting group and owning my own consulting and logistics companies. By the time I moved back to my home state of Minnesota, I knew I wanted to give back in a more meaningful way than just getting another big corporate job. So I founded my own logistics company to help small business who have a strong element of doing good with their shipping and storage needs. We not only handle shipping their orders to customers and retail locations, we also provide strategic guidance, marketing and engineering services.
Because we also “practice” doing good, I took over 5 months off in 2022 to thru hike with our daughter the 2194.3 miles of the Appalachian Trail to raise research funds and awareness for Parkinson’s Disease. My husband was diagnosed in his early 50s, so this was very much a journey of purposed and passion. We raised over $95,000 and were named The Michael J Fox Foundation’s “Rookies of the Year” award.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Hiking the Trail taught me the importance of the right tools – training – team, not only for being able to complete the journey, but these lessons also apply to business, leadership and LIFE! Without the right:
– tools, tasks cannot be efficiently accomplished
– training, to more effectively use the tools solve problems and deliver more value
– team, to work together toward accomplishing a common goal too big to go after alone
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
In our logistics company, Indie Do Good, we look for companies who have unique products and a strong brand promise for their target customer. We challenge these companies, if they don’t already, to have a strong element of good, helping their communities and our world. We look for companies who are passionate about sustainability, giving back to help others and to be good partners in making the world a better place. We look for clients who are collaborative, sharing successful lessons they have learned to help others.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://indiedogood.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sueotten -and- https://www.facebook.com/IndieDoGood/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sueotten/ -and- https://www.linkedin.com/company/indiedogood/?viewAsMember=true
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@appalachiantrailforparkins1185
Image Credits
Credit to Susan Otten, Gretja Otten, and Indie Do Good
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
