Olivia Garretson shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Good morning Olivia, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
It’s music. every time.
Getting lost and wandering in my thoughts.
I visit a lot of versions of myself there
Some are faded and live in places I’ve outgrown
The youngest are the most sure and proud
Life makes the most sense when there’s music nearby for me
The thoughts that start messy and tangled, become more tangible
More focused and driven.
The most alive.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Before I ever built systems for businesses, I learned them behind a counter. Feeling the effects that get passed down to every person on crew when something is failing.
I’ve been a line cook moving in rhythm with six burners and too many tickets. I’ve spent countless hours on the retail floor in a tech department, juggling cables and customers and the tiny ballet of a team trying to keep it together on a Saturday rush when the newest Nintendo switch dropped. Those jobs taught me how operations really work. Not in theory, but in heartbeat and muscle memory. First-hand having it ground into me. If you’ve worked, you know exactly what this feels like. Problems passed down. I wish I was heard. On and on that list could go. Symptoms of system failure or poor execution from someone three people up. And most of the time, that person who is causing your problem has someone else causing them an issue.
As the founder of Garretson Consulting, I help founders and teams do what I learned there: keep things moving, but then getting past the triage, and building support and space so when a system fails, it doesn’t get passed on forever. Most people come to me when their dream has started to feel heavier than it should. They’re brilliant, but tired. Their systems can’t keep up with their vision. What I do is help them see the invisible patterns, the bottlenecks, the missing handoffs, the weight no one noticed piling up. We work together to build scaffolding so they (and everyone else) can breathe again.
I didn’t build this company because I wanted to be a consultant. I built it because I care about people doing good work without burning out trying to hold it all together. I want operations to feel like rhythm, not rescue.
And truthfully, I’m still learning. How to make clarity feel human. How to grow something that runs clean but still beats with heart. Building in the infrastructure for when someone is working hard on a deadline, so that whatever they drop doesn’t drop a paint bucket on the person below. If you’ve figured out pieces of that, I’d love to hear how you did it!
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was messy and loud in the best way. I had no fear of what anyone thought. I would talk to every person who was within 10 feet of me. and for those 20ft away? Well, that’s why I had feet that moved.
The park was a wonderful place – small pond with a walking trail that I lost my first training wheel on and kept riding anyway. the giant concrete frog painted green that I would climb up every time. I don’t remember a time where I would leave without speaking to every person there.
Impossible or intimidating were not words that I knew.
The piece of little me I will always be searching to get back, is my curiosity of other people and who they are. I still have it, always will. But reclaiming it to that degree prior to the repressions of life. That will always be my fight. Walking confidently and knowing how whole of a human I am, and that being the fuel and confidence to meet anyone, anywhere, any circumstance. I’m still fighting for that back.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
An infinite amount of the most simple thing that I knew in my head and had heard often, but never really got. Stubborn.
It took me going hand-to-hand with chronic illness to slow down. I enjoyed my life, but I never realized how much you could savor it if you just slow down. Listen more. Let other people show up for you at the inconvenience level of friendship and humanity that I was eager to give, and terrified to take.
It taught me that I will always have a problem that is too big for me to solve alone.
It taught me that I should find out who I was, and if I actually enjoyed my own company. What happens when it’s quiet, and everything in the body you live in is painfully on fire, won’t work, and you can feel your cells actively dying. When you can’t digest food, can’t sit upright, can’t hardly think because everything hurts.
Who am I when I can do and be nothing.
As it turns out, when I can’t accomplish anything and have to rely on people to a degree most won’t experience until they age much more – I’m still a human. And that is enough.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
That the problem is the system.
It rarely is.
We like systems because they don’t have feelings and there’s a decently straightforward answer as to why it isn’t working.
You can fix a spreadsheet. It’s not easy to fix the way people stop trusting each other. And no – a few group activities won’t cut it.
Most of what breaks isn’t workflow. It’s exhaustion. Fear. Pretending you’re fine.
Someone stopped saying what they need, and someone else built a workaround that became policy. That’s how half the “processes” out there are born. Someone does more or less than they agreed to, and someone else pays the price of that shift.
We keep pretending business is clean when it’s actually heartbreak with an invoice attached. Screaming into the void where you tried to communicate and it wasn’t comprehended and now you’d like to frisbee your laptop out the window. Me. I’m the person who wishes I could do that. Less now that I build myself sustainable systems but still. Definitely still happens.
What I do is build things that support people, not just data.
Something that doesn’t fall apart the second someone finally admits they’re tired and someone on their wing needs to help for a moment without loosing their balance.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. How do you know when you’re out of your depth?
When I don’t know the next small step.
That’s usually the tell. The map falls off and I know the feeling of what I’m looking for, but not the action required for it. Thankfully – many other people do. Finding them and asking is so important. I wouldn’t be anywhere near who I am today without every person who has gifted me their time and knowlege.
My grandpa would walk around with a notebook and pen. I can still see him pulling it out of the front pocket of his denim button down. You never caught him without it. We’d swing through the hardware store for something on the way back to the farm, and he’d wind up talking to someone about something they knew – and he’d write it down.
I feel out of my depth always. But if I didn’t, I’d never learn anything new.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/garretson.consulting
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviagarretson/
- Other: Email: [email protected]
Image Credits
Man Walking – by Bob Price
People Sitting in Cafe – by Mike Jones
Pedestrian Crossing – Photo by Paweł L.
Woman Hands Typing on Laptop – Photo by Gülşah Aydoğan
These are all licensed through www.pexels.com
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
