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Rooted & Relentless is the podcast for big-dreaming, soul-led entrepreneurs building businesses—and lives—on their own terms.
Hosted by Biz Growth Strategist & Operational Powerhouse Steph Rubio, this show blends unfiltered business strategy with personal growth stories, mindset shifts, a touch of randomness, and plenty of humor to keep you laughing. Everything is on the table. It’s raw, real, and relentlessly honest.
New episodes drop weekly(ish). Bring your notebook & an open mind. This is where strategy meets soul, & scaling doesn’t mean selling yours.
Hang with Steph:
Boost Your Biz Strategy Sesh: https://www.stephrubio.com/small-business-consulting
Find Out Where You're Blocked w/ The Biz Blocker Quiz: https://www.tryinteract.com/share/quiz/6810432a8fa23ab768307116
Follow (& DM me - really, I love DM chats) on IG: https://www.instagram.com/virtually_stephrubio
Hi. Hi. Hi. Welcome back to another episode. This one I'm really excited about, but I'm going to sound like a broken record there because I'm always excited about this.
Steph Rubio:Hello. We've established that. On this particular subject, I'm asked about it every so often. I think I found myself talking about it on a couple of different occasions with folks who are close to me in our online business industry and are comfortable kind of talking to me about this. What I'm digging into today is showing up and living your values in your business.
Steph Rubio:We're going to we're going to span a couple of things here. Politics, your values in business, and human rights because those intertwine quite a bit. I get asked on occasion in my business and mostly from folks that I trust, like in the online space and that I've developed relationships with. And they have come to me directly sometimes and just ask my thoughts on sharing about this in business. Hey.
Steph Rubio:I'm Steph Rubio, your go to for no nonsense chitchat on growing a business and life that you actually love. Around here, we're rooted in who we are even if we're still learning to love her, getting clear on where we wanna go, and we're relentless in our pursuit to get there. We're clawing our way out of survival mode and learning to bet on ourselves. We get into the nitty gritty of growth in life and in business, money, identity, boundaries, healing, leadership, parenting, partners, and all the messy bits in between. If you're ready to grow on your own terms, laugh a lot, possibly cry a little, maybe laugh until we cry if we're lucky, then hit subscribe, and let's get into it.
Steph Rubio:This is Rooted and Relentless. Grab your notepad and hold on to your tits. This one's for you. In my opinion, this episode is all about my opinion and what I think and how you approach this and how you show up in your business and how you cover these things or don't and some benefits and pros and cons just to get you thinking about it. No one really calls it like your values, but they'll call it politics and your business.
Steph Rubio:Typically, when people ask me about sharing my political views and business and what I think about it, they're putting everything like values and human rights in one political bucket, and to me, those are very different things. So, I'm going to attempt to do this in a way that doesn't talk about me or my values. If I do, it's going to be like as an example, but that way it can hit everyone because people may be shocked by some of my values and what I hold dear to me because people make assumptions, right, stereotypes. I'm a southern white woman. There's a lot of stereotypes that come with that.
Steph Rubio:But if you dig a little bit deeper or I live a bit louder through my values and how I feel about politics and business and human rights, you'll find that it differs from the stereotype that is assigned to many women of that same demographic. The first thing I get asked frequently is how I feel about sharing that and keeping politics separate from your business, especially last year when there was a really big election. And my my fault is, well, first things first. If you don't think that politics affects your business, then you're just a dumb dumb. And I mean that with love, truly, but it does.
Steph Rubio:Who do you think makes the policies that affects our business? Who do you think makes the policies that determine if we can hire what we pay those people? Our taxes, our insurance, our licenses. If we can call someone a contractor versus an employee, what classifies them as contractor do you even know? Unless you've worked in this space before, you start hiring someone, you can't typically in most states tell a contractor what hours they can work.
Steph Rubio:And if they come to specific meetings, then you're treating them like an employee. A contractor has to be able to set their own hours. Who do you think dictates all these policies? It's all political. That is all political.
Steph Rubio:Okay? So now talking about politics and understanding and playing a part in it are two different things. Sure. You don't have to show up and be loud about your political views, but you also cannot ignore that politics affects your business. If that's the path you're walking, you're choosing ignorance and that's not going to serve you in the long run because this all most definitely affects your business.
Steph Rubio:If then on the other hand, we talk about things that are human rights that have unfortunately become a part of our political system and people weaponize it to get votes essentially, that's a difference. That starts to lean into values for me. So things that are political and shouldn't be, that typically, I think, what people are meaning when they come to me and they ask me how I feel about, like, politics and business and keeping it separate and how they're working with someone whose views are wildly different or me being a consultant and coach. Sometimes people are looking for that similar values in that type of relationship, which I think is great. So what you're not going to get from me is a very black and white answer answer here on like you should or shouldn't do that.
Steph Rubio:What you're getting from me is one, when it comes to politics, first, make sure it's political and it's not human rights when you're asking me this question. So when I'm talking politics, I'm not talking human rights issues. I am strictly talking about some of the things I mentioned earlier. You don't have to shout how you feel about the policy they're implementing, about how it's gonna affect your taxes, or if you can hire a contractor on your social media or in your marketing or on your webpage or anything like that. That's a choice, but you should definitely know that it's going to affect you.
Steph Rubio:It all affects you if you run a business. And if you want to run a smart business and a profitable business and you want to grow it over time, you're going to need to be in the know about things that affect your business or partner with folks who do, legal folks, accountants, people like that, that can hold you accountable and keep you legal. Now, let's flip the other spectrum of that and start to talk about values a bit because values are what you live by, whether you have documented them and they're strictly about your business or you just have values in your life, those things that you feel strongly about. Like, I can't have ice cream before dinner because it'll mess up my belly and I won't be able to eat vegetables, which are good for my health and will help my eyes and I can afford whatever. Going down a fake rabbit hole here just to keep it lighthearted but give you the idea of what a value is.
Steph Rubio:So if you haven't already, first I would encourage you to get really clear on what you do value. You can go to my website and find them, but one of those is keep growing. I wanna keep expanding my knowledge. I wanna keep expanding how I'm open to other ways of thinking and doing things. I just wanna keep growing.
Steph Rubio:That's not always going to be a revenue line item for me. There is a value in showing up and living my values. When you see that misaligned, people lose trust in you and then turn, they don't buy from you, and it can also hurt your reputation. And in business, our reputation is literally what makes or breaks us. So let me give you another example because even though one of mine has keep growing, if I didn't show up and live that value, first I want to.
Steph Rubio:My Stories, my Snaps on social media should show you living my That's where I'm the most personal in Stories on Instagram. That's where I'm building my personal brand, not even the same as on My Grid where I'm being a bit more educational at sometimes and trying to pull in new eyes. I live by my values, and you should be able to see that. So there shouldn't be many surprises then when you start working with me. Here's a couple of things before we get into an example of why this can be important, but I do still think it's a choice.
Steph Rubio:And when you lose trust and you lose reputation, ends up costing you if you don't live by your values is when you let me see how I wanna say this. It's not that you avoid even talking about what your values are, it's that you do and then you don't actually live by them. So, you can see this online in the coaching space especially if the crux of someone's marketing and messaging for their new program is all about how they make you charge your worth, how you can scale your business because you charge your actual rate and that helps your profit margin. And then behind the scenes, they pay their people like poo and they don't practice what they preach there. That's misaligned values.
Steph Rubio:You're teaching people one thing, saying that you know how to do it and you know the value in it and you're going help them live a better life. And then behind the scenes, you're not doing the same thing. First, I then feel like you're a liar and you're just doing it for clout. And second, I'm definitely not going to work with you and other people are going to notice that, and that's what I mean by it affecting your reputation. Let's talk about other ways that that can affect you.
Steph Rubio:I think collaborations, right? If you're going to collaborate with someone, let's say it's a podcast guest. When I have a guest on this podcast or you're a guest on another one, you wanna at least make sure I call this a vibe check, but you could call it a values check. You wanna make sure there's some synergy there and there's some things that you guys agree upon and that you have some baseline matching in your values and what you care about because that's going to be a piece of digital content that's going to live on and you don't want to find yourself wrapped up in or being exposed to an audience because that's going to happen, right, when you have a collaboration. If we're going with the guest podcast episode, when I publish that podcast and I share it with this person and they've agreed to share it with their audience via their newsletter and their own social medias, now I'm being exposed to an entirely new audience.
Steph Rubio:Great for visibility, great for reach, great for new marketing and lead generation, right? If you've now reached an audience of a thousand other people that have horribly misaligned values, are you actually doing yourself any favors? Are they going to dig in and learn about you and realize they don't want to work with you or you don't want to work with them and you wake up miserable in three months because you did and you sacrifice something that actually means a lot to you, danger in that, there's danger in that. Values also show up in your boundaries and your client experience. So again, in this online space and this work from home era, boundaries are huge.
Steph Rubio:It's one thing I work very heavily on with clients and boundaries can range from charging your worth and not backtracking on your offers when someone flinches at your price to telling people when you're going to be online and available to work with them and when you're not. This is how your boundaries show up in that. For me, family is first. So I have to be able to put boundaries in place and communicate that clearly because of my value to be available and go to kids events and take them to doctor's appointments and not burn out and still be able to be a mom and put my family first. That's where you see the values aligning with me setting boundaries.
Steph Rubio:If you find out that someone's don't have integrity because they are saying one thing in front of folks and then going behind the scenes and being completely different, then you have misaligned values and that's going to lead to discomfort and just a terrible client experience over time. Okay, let's go back to the other end of the spectrum and make something very, very clear. In my opinion, human rights are not political. Access to healthcare shouldn't be political, but it is. What women do with their bodies shouldn't be political, but it is.
Steph Rubio:You see where I'm going with this? I think that goes a lot more towards values and what people value and don't, and typically, this is a hard pill for folks to swallow. The folks who can stay neutral about these topics, about these rights, about these issues, even about things in politics because they have become political, the folks who can stay stagnant or stay neutral aren't the ones affected, so it's a privilege. You see that? A lot of people struggle understanding that, and if you're hearing this, you also might struggle understanding that.
Steph Rubio:But if you have the choice to stay neutral, that means that the problems are not affecting you. Therefore, it's a privilege to make that choice because the other people don't have that privilege. They're the ones that are suffering from the discrepancies or the issues or what people are arguing over, right? You get to choose how you show up and what you share in your business and what's valuable to you or not. I do live my values and live by them, and when I see something that I feel very strongly about, like laws that Texas passed about women's bodies and specifically pregnancy and what women were having to go through, like literally carrying dead babies inside of them when a woman should just be able to mourn the fact that she couldn't carry her birth to term, that gets a little problematic for me, and I'll pop on my Instagram, and I'll make it very clear how I feel, and I'm okay with that because I would rather work with aligned people, you know, but I don't make it a crux of my content pillars.
Steph Rubio:I don't make it a point to put it out there all of the time. It's when I see issues, and I wanna make it known, and I wanna have deep conversations, and I want others to live my values with me. I want you to keep growing, and I want you to keep expanding, and I want you to keep looking at other ways of doing things. I want you to keep considering everyone affected by something, not just your way of thinking. Overall, you have to consider the pros and cons of each.
Steph Rubio:Pros of this level of sharing are gonna be trust with people. They're gonna trust you because they have similar beliefs as you. There's gonna be clarity from the beginning and alignment, which longer term will lead to satisfaction in your working relationships when you share this because there's no question on what you believe and what others do and where you're aligned and where you're misaligned. Some cons to sharing it are you may grow slower, so you should be aware of that. If revenue is your goal and you have to have a certain revenue to reach those values or give your family a better life or other things, then you need to understand that slower growth may be a result because you're going get exposed to that whole new audience of a thousand folks that I mentioned earlier from that podcast guest.
Steph Rubio:It's not going to matter if you have misaligned values. That means slower growth. That means less leads. But again, more higher quality, more chance long term potentially of sticking around, people valuing that you care about what's going on around you. And then there's possible backlash depending on how much you share, how deeply rooted your beliefs are, how much they clash with others' beliefs, then you could be opening yourself up to backlash.
Steph Rubio:So be aware, obviously, if you share in that capacity. At the end of the day, I just want you to realize that it's not about being loud. That's not why I'm approaching this subject. It's about being clear in your business. So, you don't have to be loud to be clear.
Steph Rubio:Being loud about it is your choice, but not being clear is where it will definitely cost you. So, think about what's best for you, your business, your values. Figure out what you do value. Understand that if you don't live by them that you're showing up a bit phony and people are going to see through that. Be honest with yourself about what you value and then you'll naturally show up and live those.
Steph Rubio:Anyways, you have options here, and you just need to think through those. Whether you show up and talk about them or don't, whether you are loud or not, at the end of the day is up to you, but you cannot ignore that there are implications to either choosing or lack of choice. And if you're not clear on your values, there's also implications to that. And if you're not clear on politics affecting your business, where you want to talk about them or be educated on them or not, there are implications to that. If you want to be really clear on the human rights issues you care for or don't care for, That's a choice.
Steph Rubio:There are implications for choosing or not choosing. So just be aware of those and make smart decisions. Okay. Bye. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Rooted and Relentless.
Steph Rubio:If it made you laugh, nod along, or grab that cute little notebook of yours and scribble something down, please hit me with the SSR. Subscribe, share, and review, as in leave a review. Don't forget to tag me on Instagram at virtually underscore Steph Rubio and tell me what you're reading this week. Seriously, a live for a good book moment. Thanks for hanging.
Steph Rubio:Bye.