— by Gwendolyn Kuhlmann
Because it is very rare that I meet someone like me, and believe me, I’ve been looking.
Let me explain.
When I entered the world of online business, I came from over a decade of studying and singing professionally in opera. It is an art form that uses every other art form at once to tell an epic story: music, singing, dance, costume/stage/makeup design, carpentry, pyrotechnics…you name it, there’s space for it in opera. It was multi-media art before that was a thing. They called it “grand” instead.
All that to say, my life revolved around stories. And telling them big.
So when I left the stage, I started out as a copywriter, and my approach felt obvious: tell a story.
Every social media campaign, every sales page, every article anyone wanted to create needed to feed back into the epic overall story that the business was trying to tell. In my case, these were mostly personal brands being built to support businesses providing anything from life coaching to publishing, spiritual healing to dentistry.
And the thing I kept noticing, over and over again, was that people didn’t understand the story they were telling and how it connected with what they were doing.
There are no templates for authenticity or fulfillment.
Yes, every entrepreneur has a vision.
But they aren’t always connected to their story, and that makes the vision hard to hold on to and actually create a business you love out of.
What I’ve found is this: every answer you’re looking for is in your story — the story of you, the story of your business, the story of the need in the world that demanded your business.
I will be writing more about this in an upcoming article, but suffice it to say, when I looked around at my clients, I saw a bunch of women (with brilliant ideas and top-notch skills, but little business experience) paying top dollar to online business advisors/coaches/managers, and yet getting few results, because none of those people they had hired took the time to listen to who they were and what they actually wanted to do.
And no shade on them — it wasn’t the method those advisors and managers sold. Instead they sold a “tried and true simple plug n’ play method to make money that works for every business in [niche].”
Except often, it wasn’t working.
Your strategy must come from your truth.
When you work with an entrepreneur driven by passion and commitment to their vision, you cannot put them in a box. You cannot say there is only one way to sell/market this brand that was built in order to break the mold in their industry. They need to be free to break the mold wherever it doesn’t fit.
After a short time, I became a creative strategist behind the scenes in the businesses I originally wrote for, because I had the most powerful information in their business: I had their story. I had helped them get clear on their vision. I knew why they were doing this. I knew what it meant to them. I know the hole they saw themselves filling in the marketplace.
In short, I knew their context.
And when you know someone’s context, you can be the most honest and productive person to bounce ideas off of.
I got to be the person holding up the mirror, putting chapters of their lives and their businesses together in ways they hadn’t seen, because they were too close to it. But with their story in hand, I could reflect them back to themselves in a way that had cohesion.
I decided to build a business out of that act of listening and reflecting for the same reason most people build a niche brand online: I found the part of what I did (copywriting/creative direction) that I really loved, and I decided to focus on just that.
I wanted to help people tell their stories. Day in and day out. Because I understand it’s more than storytelling. It’s helping entrepreneurs find their truth and build off of it, so when they see a business or marketing method that makes sense for them, they can recognize it. Or they can make their own path and feel confident that it’s right. It’s breaking those binds of self-doubt.
What I was embarking on wasn’t business coaching, exactly, even though it felt like it at times. Maybe . . . business therapy? Business strategy? I went with naming it The Idea Doula: one who accompanies and empowers the creator in their path to creation.
And the seed, the root of it, is the story.
There are remarkable similarities between doulas and gardeners.
When I met Terra (Rootstock’s Editor and Chief-of-Staff), I had been asking for months to find a “me for me.” Someone who could hold that space like I hold the space, could connect the dots and see the possibilities like I do. I had just started creating art again — this time as a creator and director of large scale community art projects — but I didn’t want to stop the work I did for other business owners, because I have seen over and over again how essential and powerful it is. I wanted some way for the Idea Doula to live on, without pouring more energy into Running the Business than Doing the Business.
And there was Terra. With a business partner named Ryan. They’d built an entire infrastructure and body of work that looked an awful lot like what I provide, but just a little different: a little more built out beyond the needs of beginning-stage solopreneurs, leveraging this work to serve clients at every phase of business growth and every size of business – from seed to harvest, as they say – with all the offerings you wish a team of gifted storytellers and marketers could help you with in a business: positioning, messaging, strategy, and execution.
In fact, with the right eyes, it looked like what we were all doing was interconnected. Like there was a space exactly the size of an Idea Doula that needed filling over at Rootstock. If you listened closely during our lively, stimulating, downright nerdy conversations together, you could hear that puzzle piece clicking satisfyingly into place.
Ryan and Terra are people who see business like I do: places of creation and expression where every voice, every story matters. People who understand that the vision can only root when it’s connected to the story — people who know the kind of questions to ask and the kind of space to hold in order draw out your story in ways that will serve your business.
I’m thrilled to join Rootstock. Because it is a business that supports founders and leadership in companies of all sizes to grow from their truth. Their team has the skills, the background, the infrastructure, and the satisfied client base to prove that what they do gets results. Having them see in me what I see in them is about as affirming as it can get.
I’m bringing the Idea Doula’s signature offer, Tell Me Your Story, to Rootstock, where we have further refined it, making it into a session designed to draw forth the core truth your business is here to share with the world. The kind of truth that gives perspective and clarity in those moments we would otherwise feel stuck, lost, unseen or unheard.
We’re calling it the Kernel of Truth.
It’s an accessible way for founders, entrepreneurs, and growing leaders to get started on their journey into thought leadership.
I can’t wait to hear, reflect, define, and leverage your story with Rootstock, and to see how your business grows as a result.