Meet Ruthie Bowles, an Authority Marketing Strategist and the Founder of “Defy The Status Quo”, a content marketing consultation that is working to help other businesses succeed and change their industry.
Ruthie is a career jumping entrepreneur who knocks out marketing overwhelm for her service-based, purpose-driven clients. She helps grow personal brands for social impact professionals using Authentic Authority Building Strategies by working with her clients to help them stand out in the sea of experts. Using the Radically Authentic Authority Marketing Method, Ruthie aims at increasing her client’s audience and improves their lead generation. This US Army Combat Veteran is a proud owner of a mini-farm, is the host of a successful podcast, and is married and has 4 kids.
The second oldest among six siblings, Ruthie was always an academic high-achiever but often struggled with her identity because of her mixed ethnicity. She says, “It’s hard to find where you fit when you’re not white enough or Black enough“. Growing up in California and then Pennsylvania, her family was not financially well-off but she and her siblings grew up in a loving and caring environment.
Ruthie has served in the Army for 8.5 years as a Persian Farsi translator. She left the army when she was pregnant with her third child. Later, she went back to work as a federal contractor to buy a house, but the company didn’t have many opportunities for her upward growth, so she started marketing consulting on the side. Talking about shifting her career entirely, Ruthie elaborates, “While pregnant with my 4th child, I had already started marketing consulting. Once she was born, I used my maternity leave to grow my business from part-time to full-time. I realized that I worked too hard in my life already to do something that makes me unhappy. Once I embraced that, it seemed like quitting my old job was the only logical choice.”
Ruthie is a marketing strategist that focuses on service-providers, coaches, and consultants. She helps her clients use their authority strategically to build trust and credibility in their industry. She crafts marketing strategies using in-depth analytical skills, a fresh marketing perspective, and EIQ tools. Talking about her start-up, Ruthie says, “At Defy The Status Quo (DTSQ), we help our clients create authority marketing strategies that involve content marketing, interviews, and speaking engagements. From strategy to content execution, we can help you from step 0 to scheduling that phone call. We work almost exclusively with B2B consulting firms and digital service companies”.
The three-pronged approach at DTSQ tackles authority marketing from a variety of sides, focussing on helping their clients position themselves as experts while combining competitor analysis and search engine optimization (SEO) to help their websites become 24/7 salespeople. Their method consists of Construct, Create, and Cultivate.
Ruthie had a lot of obstacles in her way. Because she didn’t have a professional network in her then-industry, it was hard for her to connect with the right people. She believes that the very best opportunities were always out of her reach because of the lack of a professional network. Even today, her life is not challenge-free. She says, “My challenges now include effective time and energy management. As business owners, we have to guard those jealously. People will use up both of our most important resources“.
Ruthie feels that her life has changed because of her brave decision of changing her jobs and starting afresh. Now, she gets more time with her kids and can focus on projects that fill her with a sense of purpose. She elaborates, “I would still be struggling to take care of my kids and my goats, chickens, and ducks if I hadn’t chosen to pursue my entrepreneurship dream”.
The response to Ruthie’s venture has been overwhelmingly positive. In addition to her client work, she also speaks for events or does interviews at least once per week to share her perspective on B2B marketing, personal branding, marketing strategy, and being an entrepreneur. She says things that people think but won’t say themselves, and thus, has a fairly unique presence and level of candor.
Ruthie knows that it is difficult to make such a life-altering decision, but still advocates it to people who are struggling to find their purpose. She says, “It’s supposed to be scary. You grow when you go outside of your comfort zone. When you have an idea that scares you a bit, it’s a sign you’re going in the right direction”.
