Today we’d like to introduce you to Tara Bethell.
Hi Tara, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I worked for a large not-for-profit in Phoenix for almost 13 years and grew into the Sr. VP of Human Resources & Risk Management role during that time. I loved the mission and the people, but it was difficult to find the passion and interest to keep improving my areas of influence repeatedly. Burnout was coming for me.
Therefore, when a friend introduced me to another local “recovering HR executive” who had left her long-time role to start a consulting firm, I jumped at the chance to be mentored by her. I learned a ton and realized I could really magnify my impact in Arizona by doing HR consulting work for many employers at once rather than just one. She supported me in creating my own LLC in 2017, which I named Copper Quail Consulting after my fourth-generation Arizonan roots.
Copper Quail Consulting (or CQC, as I like to say) really took off in late 2019, and 2020 was shaping up to be a banner year. That is, until the pandemic swept the world. I moved CQC to the back burner while I investigated an in-house HR role again and was lucky to land the HR executive role with a locally founded marketing agency in Tempe. We achieved some incredible things together and created a fabulous remote culture on the fly during my tenure. I would have stayed longer, but alas, the co-founders decided to sell their creation to an out-of-state agency, and since so many of my CQC clients had been coming back to me, I decided it was time to get back to my roots and relaunch my firm.
Now, Copper Quail Consulting serves small to medium-sized privately owned businesses and not-for-profits with retained HR services, strategic planning retreats, staff retreats, organizational health assessments and projects, wellness programs, and more! The CQC relaunch in 2024 has been so successful that an additional employee had to be hired. It feels amazing to be back in the space of serving Arizona’s businesses and helping them create healthy cultures for their employees and themselves!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth? Nope. As mentioned previously, Covid-19 threw a large wrench in my original trajectory for growth. My “jammin'” pipeline in late 2019/early 2020 dried up overnight in mid-March of 2020. All my clients and prospects reached out immediately with messages like, “Hey, Tara, can we postpone that work we were talking about you doing?” “I don’t know how I’ll pay my staff during this; I don’t think I can afford your help right now after all.” “About that scope of work, I won’t be able to sign that anytime soon…” and so forth. I told every client and prospect that I totally understood their predicament and that they should still call me if they needed anything, and I would help them navigate that crazy time as best I could. I reassured them that it would be better than watching daytime TV and that they could pay it forward to others when times improved.
Then, as luck would have it, a few months later (and once I’d accepted a full-time role with the local marketing agency), my clients had all received the PPP money and were like, “Ok, Tara, we’re going to make it! Now, can you do our summer staff retreat?” I was thrilled that they had come back to me, and I didn’t want to say no and lose the relationship, so for the next few years, I balanced working full-time in-house, served my favorite clients on the side as I could, and also taught yoga and intro to HR at Phoenix College as an adjunct (which I had kept going from my prior consulting days).
Saying “yes” to all this work was its own challenge and took me away from my kiddos more than I wanted it to. In 2022, I let go of teaching yoga regularly and in 2023 it became clear that it was time to move on from full-time work and relaunch my firm.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Besides a deep well of HR and risk management knowledge and experience gleaned over the last 20 years, I have a few secret weapons in my back pocket. The first is that I have been a 200-hour registered yoga teacher since 2018, and I have been weaving gentle yoga, mindfulness, meditation, and other self-care practices into my HR engagements ever since. I firmly believe that it is the role of both an HR professional and a yoga teacher to help people feel amazing so they can show up for themselves, their families, their community, and the people they serve as their best selves.
Further, I love a microphone. I have a natural talent for emceeing any kind of event, wrangling large crowds, running auctions, and enjoying the occasional night of karaoke at local establishments. This fearlessness has also supported my HR and yoga journeys.
Finally, humor comes naturally to me. Had I been paying more attention in my youth to this skill, I would have gone the stand up comedian route before I married my high school sweetheart and had two awesome kidzillas. I can’t help but bring my infectious style of humor to clients and students alike. It helps me to share information in a memorable way as well as develop rapport quickly with folks.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
People are the foundation of every industry, yet so many leaders get hung up on old paradigms of work. They lack the flexibility to bend and try new things to recruit, support, and retain their talent. It takes them too long to shift to support the up-and-coming talent and react to the needs of the current talent. This will be an ongoing need forever. Many grandparents thought anyone with long hair was a lazy hippie. Many parents thought anyone talking on the phone for hours was a bum. My generation wants kids to take their eyes off their screens so they can develop some social skills. Yet, when we look back at each of these younger generations, we realize they have as much to teach us as we do to teach them and that they are amazing in their own right.
Flexibility and choice are going to continue to be key in the next five to 10 years as we navigate this new hybrid work environment. Not only with hours and places of work but also with how we are paid and what kinds of benefits are offered. The gold watch is long gone, and saving for houses and retirement might become passe if new workers want to travel and have experiences instead of assets. It will be a challenging yet exciting time ahead and I feel blessed I will help local businesses navigate this next phase ahead and be part of their legacy work in Arizona.
Pricing:
- Retained HR Services Packages range from $499 to $1999 per month right now
- Strategic Planning Sessions range $10k to $15k right now
- Staff/Leadership/Board Retreats range $2.5k to $10k right now
Contact Info:
- Website: copperquailconsulting.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/copperquailconsulting/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/copperquail
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/copper-quail-consulting/?viewAsMember=true
