In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Ruth Schwartz, founder of a $10 million distribution company and certified professional coach. Ruth shares a pivotal early‑career story where she realized she was a terrible boss after an employee quit, prompting a deep, vulnerable conversation that reshaped her leadership style. She explains that sustainable growth stems from honest, values‑driven dialogue, asking great questions, and avoiding the know‑it‑all mentality. Ruth emphasizes that success requires a team, core values, and heartfelt conversations about shared purpose. She distills her philosophy into simple principles: keep it simple, focus on what truly matters, and align work with personal values. Ruth also promotes her book, The Key to the Golden Handcuffs, and her coaching practice, High Performance Advocates, directing listeners to highperformanceadvocates.com.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Wags Media. Wags Media provides you with everything you need to generate more customers and grow your brand. Head on over to wagsmedia.com, W-A-G-S-M-E-D-I-A dot com, to enter a contest where you can win a free done-for-you custom website valued at $2,500 for a limited time only. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Ruth Schwartz with us. She grew a $10 million distribution business and is now a professionally certified coach. She also wrote The Key to the Golden Handcuffs: Stop Being a Slave to Your Business and owns High Performance Advocates. So welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Of course, grateful to have you here, Ruth. Uh, we'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
The one that's most relevant to me, um, and of course in the as a part of the book that I wrote about not being a slave to your business is, takes me back to my early days in business when I was working with just one employee. And this, this was a business that just grew exponentially and very, very quickly. And we were pedaling as fast as we can. And I didn't realize until it was almost too late. And I only say almost because it really was too late that I was an absolute horror asshole of a boss. And my one employee came in one day and inexplicably looked at me and said, I quit. And walked out the door. And I thought we were so cool. And it took me completely by surprise. I remember getting in my car and driving over to his house and going up on his front porch and banging on the door, you know, let me in. I, you know, you must talk to me. This is not okay. You know, I'm not cool with this. And he wouldn't open the door, wouldn't open the door. And finally You know, he cracked it, let me in the door, and I got a real earful. Now, most bosses do what they do because they think that's what they're supposed to do. You know, you're supposed to behave a certain way. And, you know, and I had my own personality behaviors as well on top of that. But I realized in that moment that the only way to really and efficiently grow a business in the way that you want to grow a business is to be in a completely different conversation with the people that you work with. And the conversation at that moment was, please don't leave me, don't leave me alone. Right. I mean, that was really my, my feeling on that one particular day. But what ended up coming out of that was a much deeper conversation about how is it that we want to work together? How do we want to have relationships? What makes work valuable to us? How do we want to interact with each other and to build it in a very organic, and genuine and vulnerable way. I was never more vulnerable than I was in that moment. And it took a lot of checks and double checks. I ended up working with this man for about 20 years. And there was this ongoing dialogue, even just between the two of us. Now, of course, we grew a lot, a lot more people on our team. And so the conversation grew, but there was always this check of, you know, how are we doing? Are we being the way that we want to be? Are we creating the conversation we want to be having? Are we happy with the results that we're getting from each other? And what makes this work worth our effort in the long run? This is the basis of my coaching practice now, which is— now, I can't stop people from being assholes if they don't want to be, but there are so many better ways to change the conversation that you're having in your business and create whatever it is you really want to create with the people you want to create it with. And this is the power. And I think more and more people are really waking up to the idea that there is no formula for this except really deep and vulnerable conversations.
And what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry? And maybe you kind of touched on it already a little bit, but yeah.
So for leaders at any level, the most valuable piece of information and it comes up again and again and again, whether I'm working with owners of companies, whether I'm working with their management team or their anybody on their team, or whether I'm dealing with executives at any level in a corporate environment, is stop working so hard and being a know-it-all. The best thing that you can ever do for yourself is ask great questions and not have all the great answers. Because there's no way that any one leader has the great answer. And again, it really does come back to, well, what is the conversation that you're having? But the greatest change that I've seen in people's success as leaders is being vulnerable, not being a know-it-all and learning how to ask great questions. Of course, you have to be able to listen to the answer, but it starts with a great question.
Totally. And I think— I can't remember who said the quote or the quote's accurate, but I think I remember hearing a quote like, the quality of your life is in direct correlation with the quality of the questions you ask. So yeah, I think that's—
Yeah. And, you know, we were just talking about favorite quotes. You know, there's that famous Einstein quote too. You know, if you had to solve a problem, how do you go about it? And he said something like, I'd spend 99.9% of my time looking at the problem and 1% of my time thinking of a solution.
Ah, yeah, I like that. And I feel like you've already given us like so much in the first two questions, but like, I guess Being more general, like what's your best piece of just like overall business advice? I mean, you grew a business to $10 million. So like, I don't know, like it maybe, excuse me, dive deeper into that. Like how were you able to do that? 'Cause that's a pretty big mark right there.
You don't do that alone. It takes more people. If anybody thinks that they're doing it alone, they're actually wrong, right? It really comes down to my best advice is do it within your core values, build it with your heart, bring your people around, have great conversations. And you know what? The biggest joy in my life right now is understanding and watching people create whatever the heck they really want. And the real trick is, well, what do you really want? Right? Because we're filled up with everybody else's ideas of what's the thing to want instead of what's really important to us personally. And when you change the conversation that you're having and you start talking about what are our shared values and in what way do we impact our world, You can create anything you want.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Keep it simple.
And in your opinion, and it actually could tie in, what's the key to happiness?
Yeah, right. Keep it simple. Just really, I mean, my path in my life has been about just life is really not that complicated. It's pretty darn simple if you just allow it to be. And it's been pretty powerful in my life to just see what's really important and get rid of the rest.
And thank you so much for coming on, Ruthie. Last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find you online?
Probably highperformanceadvocates.com.
Perfect. We— I will put that in the show notes for everybody listening, and thank you again.
All right, thank you.
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