Rank & File

supports purpose-driven entrepreneurs to build impactful, personally fulfilling and financially sustainable businesses.

Our quarterly digital publication Rank & File Magazine, as well as the Rank & File Podcast, share practical business advice in a human and vulnerable way from fellow founders.

For the entrepreneur ready to bring their impact and financial sustainability to the next level, Rank & File offers one-on-one training programs to help founders to craft compelling brand stories and sales strategies, as well as annual learning journeys around the globe.

Meet Kari Enge, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Rank & File

I am based in Oslo, Norway
If I ever write a biography this would be its title: ‘Laying Napkins on Laps’ – which talks about my journey around the world on a yacht as a restaurant hostess and how I learned about social impact, and the importance of servant leadership for purpose-driven entrepreneurs.
To me, making an impact means: Living out my values in my business and personal life, and using my God-given talents to help other purpose-driven entrepreneurs to reach their impact goals.

What makes you smile today?

Today I am smiling because, for the longest time, I let my worries and insecurities about “business model” and what a magazine “should look like” keep me from expanding my social impact through one-on-one coaching with entrepreneurs. Once I finally let myself follow my passions to work one-on-one with clients (in addition to the support Rank & File Magazine provides), amazing things started flowing! New opportunities, new press inquiries, new partnerships, and new levels of impact came!

If there is one thing I have learned, it’s this: Following your heart, pursuing your passions and the owning the personal impact you want to create in the world should ALWAYS trump worry, doubt, fear and “analysis paralysis.”

Why should people care about your cause/vision?

I started Rank & File because I believe that entrepreneurs hold a lot of power – they have one of the greatest opportunities to impact our world through how they set-up and lead their businesses. They not only create and provide jobs, but they inspire and shape thinking, and move funds to and from. How they do all of these things matters.

Unfortunately, 70% of all purpose-driven entrepreneurs fail in their first few years of business. Rank & File’s vision is to empower and equip entrepreneurs to build meaningful, personally fulfilling and financially-sustaining businesses. Because the more purpose-driven ventures that succeed, the more good that can be created in the world.

What do you love most about your work?

I love getting to meet people whose values and leadership inspire me. Sharing their personal stories from a place of vulnerability and their business advice learned from experience inside Rank & File magazine is such an honor.

Yes, talking to people like Simon Sinek and Jessica Honegger are amazing opportunities, but what really lights me up are the conversations I have with the entrepreneurs I support one-one-one through Rank & File’s training programs.

I like to say that “their impact is my impact.” Seeing that I am making an impact in a tangible, relational way with another human being is just something words cannot describe. It’s THE biggest honor to be such an integral part of their personal transformation and to help them find success doing what they love.

Whats the hardest part about your work – and why do you still keep going?

Like all founders, it’s the inner-conversations that you have with yourself that are the hardest. (Fellow founders… you know what I am talking about, right?) It’s this foggy cloud in your head when you are juggling a million projects, putting out fires, exploring new business strategies, and just trying to keep your personal life in order all at once. It’s like you have twenty plates all spinning in the air simultaneously and you don’t want one to crash onto the floor.

For the longest time, my husband was my “in-home” therapist, ha! I talked constantly about my business and my worries. There were many tears and many moments of “analysis paralysis.”

My husband is still there for me, but I realized that the best investment I could make into the success of my business (and the success of my life) was to hire a business coach. Everyone needs that outside counsel who is not only a skilled entrepreneur but also understands coaching professionally.

And funny enough, paying for my coach helps me reach my goals faster (more than if work with one pro-bono). I am such a believer in coaches – it’s why I always have one, and why I am so passionate about being a coach to entrepreneurs myself. It’s transformational.

Who inspires you in the impact space, anyone you want to cheer on today?

It’s hard to mention just one! I get to meet so many inspiring people doing amazing things in their own ways. I truly do believe that everyone’s personal calling is uniquelly special and not superior to anyone else’s. We truly do all have our role in the big picture.

But, I literally just finished having coffee here in my coworking space with a young female entrepreneur in Oslo. Anne Stine Hole is the co-founder of Generasjon M – a social enterprise that provides jobs to teenagers who spend quality time with the elderly in nursing homes. Because they provide paying jobs to teenagers, they have an abundance of applications. And the intergenerational relationships that form between the teenager and the elderly make such an impact in the lives of both. It’s a beautiful model!

What I love about Anne Stine is that she and her friend started the whole thing while they were still in high school and continued to form it while she was in college. Anne Stine is young still, but such a leader in her own right and someone to watch. She is doing (and will continue to do) great things here in Norway.

What could everyone do right now to make this world a better place?

I recently interviewed Meredith Toering of the Morningstar Foundations for Issue 12 of Rank & File Magazine. She is working on the orphan crisis in Beijing China and caring for orphans with serious heart defects there. But when I asked her this question she told me, “The biggest impact we can make is just loving people.”

For Meredith and her team, there are so many pressing needs and issues. But none of those issues matter if they are not there to love on their babies in the home. Loving on a baby is actually teaching that baby how to love, which is the most impactful thing in a human being’s life.

“Loving people” sounds so simple, but it can be extremely hard to do. It’s way easier sometimes to let our egos take over and desire to go “do something big” with our companies to solve problems in the world. It’s a lot harder to love our spouses, our children, our families, our friends, our neighbors, and our “enemies” more deeply.

I believe that starting at home (and in our hearts) is the most important part of our social impact journey. Get that right and everything else will come.

Where can people find out more about your work?

You can find me over on rankandfilemag.com, I write a regular blog there about what I am learning as I grow Rank & File Magazine. I also dive into each Magazine Issue on the Rank & File Podcast. See you there!

Website: rankandfilemag.com