Misfit Story — Diane DiCarlo
She was there from day one. Here's what she's built since.
Founding member
With the band since Day 1
Referrals flowing
from Golden Rings relationships built in year one
9 out of 10 rating
and she doesn't give those out lightly
”
“Band of Misfits gave me the framework and community I needed to launch with intention, and the Golden Rings approach alone has paid for itself many times over in the referrals and client conversations that are still coming in today.”
BOM in action: Where BOM came in
Diane came to Stephen first for 1:1 coaching. Six months of structured support to get Curiosity Consulting off the ground with the right positioning, the right clients, and the right mindset. BOM became the ongoing community that kept her connected, learning, and accountable after the coaching engagement wrapped. One fed the other.
She's been here since the beginning. She's also watched it become something.
Diane DiCarlo was one of the first people to walk through the Band of Misfits door. She’s a founding member when the program was still finding its shape. She knew Stephen from before: they'd crossed paths professionally, he understood her world, and when she was ready to launch her own consultancy, his name was the one she called.
That was two years ago. The business Diane runs today, Curiosity Consulting, looks like what she hoped it would when she started: strategic engagements with mission-driven organizations, clients who actually care about the people they serve, and a workweek structured around the life she built this business to support.
She has a long view of BOM that most members don't. She's seen the program evolve through phases, watched new cohorts arrive, and she stayed month after month. Not out of habit but because she keeps finding value. That's a meaningful signal.
“It's been a really good place," she says, with the quiet satisfaction of someone who has watched an idea grow into something real.
She helps organizations figure out what to say.
Ask Diane what she does, and she'll give you the thoughtful, precise version: strategic marketing consultant who helps service organizations build roadmaps to achieve their objectives. She works with clinics, foundations, nonprofits that care deeply about the people they serve.
Boil it down further, and it's simple: she's the person organizations bring in when they have a story worth telling but aren't quite sure how to tell it, or when they're trying to get somewhere and need someone to help them see the path. She's been doing versions of this for her entire career. Now she does it on her terms.
Her client filter has sharpened over time. It used to be "healthcare." Now it's broader: service organizations that genuinely care about their customers. Mission and values aren't a checkbox for Diane. They're the whole point. She doesn't work for organizations she doesn't believe in.
That's not a rule she made. It's just who she is.
The TOOL
Stephen's Category of One framework helped Diane articulate not just what she does, but who she does it for, and why that specificity is the thing that makes the right clients find her. When the positioning is clear, the wrong clients self-select out and the right ones lean in..
The Golden Rings paid for itself. Many times over.
When Diane launched Curiosity Consulting, she needed clients. Not eventually. Now. She'd left the stability of institutional work to build something of her own, and that required filling a pipeline from a standing start.
Enter Golden Rings.
BOM's relationship-led growth framework helped Diane think systematically about her network. Not as a list of names to pitch, but as concentric circles of trust, relationship, and potential advocacy. She worked through it methodically in her first six months.
In other words, Diane didn’t chase leads, she cultivated relationships.
And now, more than a year later, the results of those early conversations are showing up as referrals and inbound inquiries from people who heard about her from someone she'd invested in long before she needed anything back. That's how Golden Rings is designed to work. That's how it worked for Diane.
"I'm seeing the fruits of those conversations now," she says. “The framework really helped me think through my relationships more strategically."
BOM IN ACTION
The result: Golden Rings isn't a sales tactic. It's a relationship philosophy. One that maps your network by depth of trust and teaches you to invest in each ring differently. For Diane, working this framework in year one built the referral pipeline she's harvesting in year two. The ROI is still compounding.
She has "peopling flu" She designed her business around it.
Here is something Diane knows about herself: she is an introvert. She’s warm, engaging, a genuinely valued presence in any room. But she has a finite tank, and too many meetings, too many social commitments, too many "just a quick call" moments in a row and she hits a wall.
She calls it "peopling flu."
It's not a complaint. It's information. And the thing about Diane is she takes information seriously and acts on it. Her business is structured around this reality, not fought against it. She protects her mornings (no meetings before 10, full stop). She monitors her calendar for weeks where the balance tips. She builds in recovery time the way other people build in deadlines.
This is what it looks like when work-life balance is a practice rather than a goal. Diane isn't chasing it. She's managing it: actively, deliberately, with the same strategic rigor she brings to client work.
BOM helped anchor that. The frameworks, particularly the Life Coin — BOM's whole-life scorecard — gave her a concrete way to evaluate whether she was honoring all the parts of her life, not just the professional ones. The community reinforced it by showing her what other people were navigating. She didn't have to go looking for perspective. It was built into the room.
.
BOM IN ACTION
The framework: The Life Coin is a visual scorecard for your whole life — work, health, relationships, energy, purpose — that makes the invisible visible. For Diane, it's not a one-time exercise; it's a reference she returns to when she needs to check whether the balance she's built is holding.
She keeps showing up. That's the most honest endorsement there is.
Diane rates BOM a 9 out of 10. Coming from her, that's high praise. She's measured. She's been here long enough to have real opinions. She's not just a cheerleader. She's a founding member who keeps investing, keeps attending, and keeps leveraging what she learns in sessions.
She builds her schedule around BOM meetings. That's not a small thing. Her calendar is intentional and protective and full. And BOM earns a standing slot.
The program has evolved since she joined. There are more external speakers, content that's followed the group from early-stage hustle to mid-stage refinement. And she's found relevance at every turn. A recent conversation around Power Projects landed exactly where she is: figuring out how to carve out time for her own business growth without letting client delivery swallow every available hour.
"There are two jobs," she says. "Doing the work and building the business. BOM helps me keep both in view."
She expects to step away at some point to take a breath, travel, regroup — and fully expects to come back. That's not ambivalence. That's someone who understands her own rhythms and trusts that what's valuable will still be valuable when she returns..
”
“The value is in the relationships inside Band of Misfits. These are people I expect to know long after we're both out of the group.”
Diane DiCarlo
Strategic Marketing Consultant
Business: Curiosity Consulting
Based in: Charlottesville, VA
Clients she serves: Mission-driven service organizations: healthcare, foundations, and nonprofits that care deeply about the people they serve
In BOM since: Founding cohort, October 2025
BOM tools she's worked with:
Golden Rings (relationship-led growth)
Category of One (positioning)
Life Coin (whole-life balance framework)
Power Projects (business focus)
What shifted: A pipeline built on real relationships. A business designed around her actual life. And a long-game network she expects to outlast the membership itself.
