What Works

It’s hard to escape the language and politics of self-help today. Whether you’re browsing your LinkedIn, Instagram, or even TikTok feed, there’s a very good chance that the first post you see offers up some idea for living a better life or growing a more successful business. Shoulds and supposed-tos are cultural currency. We gain social capital sharing advice or “giving value.” And that’s left me wondering: are we all in the self-help business now?Today’s episode kicks off an 8-part series called Self-Help, LLC which will explore that question from a number of different angles. In this episode, I’m taking a close look at a particular construction of personal growth and entrepreneurship culture: winners and losers.Footnotes:Dr. Rick for ProgressiveWhy does the insurance industry have so many mastcots? on Planet MoneySelf-Help, INC by Micki McGeeMore about Marshall McLuhan (”The medium is the message”)Nixon’s universal health care plan proposalReaganism & ThatcherismThe Old is Dying & the New Cannot be Born by Nancy Fraser ★ Support this podcast ★

Self-help is everywhere. But for a long time, I tried to avoid it. "I just focus on business," I'd say. What I didn't realize back then was how much the structure, grammar, and discourse of personal growth permeate every layer of a business—and the entrepreneur behind it.Self-help sells. It's an $11 billion industry that's predicted to go to $14 billion in the next 3 years.And that's only counting products and services that are sold under the banner of "self-help." Even bigger than the explicit "live your best life" market is the valence of messaging, media, and cultural ventures that orbit it. In fact, there is a very good chance that, in one way or another, you and your work are part of the greater self-help ecosystem. You don't have to be a life coach, motivational speaker, momfluencer, or day planner designer to produce products and services that tap into the desire for a better, easier, or more fulfilling life. You might be a copywriter that leverages personal growth messaging in the copy you write. You might be a non-profit director that leverages donors' desire to "make a difference" to raise funds. You might be a management consultant that helps companies build better workplace cultures so employees feel a greater sense of purpose.Or, like your humble podcast host, you might one day make the startling discovery that: yes, you wrote a self-help book after more than a decade of declaring that you help people build better businesses, not better lives.I've gotten really curious about the business and politics of self-help. What makes self-help-inspired messaging so effective? Why are we constantly on the lookout for better ways to live and work? What compels us to follow aspirational Instagram accounts? Are we all in the self-help business? Next up on What Works, I have an 8-part series called Self-Help, LLC. It's a look at how the gospel of self-improvement shapes our lives, our work, and the businesses we're building I talk with writer Sara Petersen about Momfluencing, sociologist Patrick Sheehan about the coaching industry and backlash to credentialed experts, and brand strategist India Jackson about how our bodies are shaped by self-help. I also talk with Nine Types Co founder Steph Barron Hall about the draw of self-knowledge on Instagram, coach and writer Kelly Diels about the female lifestyle empowerment brand, and coach and author Jadah Sellner about the politics of hustle culture. My intention is that this series gives you a fresh perspective on what you create, what you consume, and how the underlying values of self-help culture influence them both. We'll dig into the business models behind explicitly self-help ventures and examine how less explicit personal growth businesses build on self-help's logic.The first episode in this series—Winners and Losers—drops September 6. Make sure you hit "follow" in your favorite podcast player and share the show with a friend who loves to think critically about the world we live in. ★ Support this podcast ★

The economy seems like a monolithic entity we measure, manage, and adapt to. But really, economics (as a field) and the economy (as a system) is really just an agglomeration of human decisions. What’s in? What’s out? What’s up? What’s down? And most importantly: Why? In this episode, I talk with Stacey Vanek Smith, a co-host of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money and this summer’s guide for Planet Money Summer School. We talk about how someone with no economics background can get so obsessed, how the economy is a profoundly human system, and, of course, inflation.Footnotes:Planet Money Summer School“GDP & What Counts” (Summer School 2)“Why is the Fed so boring?”The Indicator from Planet MoneyMore about Stacey Vanek SmithEpisodes of What Works are published as articles every Thursday. Get them delivered straight to your inbox at explorewhatworks.com/weekly Leave a review, browse old episodes, or leave a voicemail at whatworkspodcast.com Pre-order What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting at explorewhatworks.com/book ★ Support this podcast ★

What’s a Big-G Goal? Well, those are the kind of milestone targets we set. At that time, my Big G Goals were about how many new members I could enroll or what kind of stages I could speak on. At another time in my life, writing a book was a Big G Goal of mine. And before that, completing a Ph.D. was my Big G Goal. They’re the kind of goals that make you feel validated for about 24 hours after you achieve them—or make you feel like a failure if you don’t.Well, "a failure" was exactly what I felt like. So I went back to the drawing board. I wiped the slate so clean that I started to question whether Big-G Goals were helping me make my life better or whether they were simply squeezing me into stories someone else was telling.My new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting, arrives on November 1. But you can pre-order wherever you buy books: explorewhatworks.com/bookMy guess is that, as a listener of this podcast, you’re interested in approaching life and work in new ways. You think critically about the shoulds and supposed-tos you grew up with. You notice how it always seems to be “up to you” to fix yourself, rather than questioning whether you’re broken at all.You question conventional ideas of success and achievement. You notice when conventional wisdom starts to infringe on your values.This book is for you.I can guarantee you that it’s different than any other book on goal-setting—because it’s not really about goal-setting at all. It’s not a thinly veiled pep talk. It’s not about turning structural problems into your personal to-do list.What Works will change the way you think about goal-setting—but it will also change the story you live in. Life and work don’t have to be structured around the next achievement or milestone.What Works will help you take on the big questions that bubble under the surface of most advice on success and productivity—the philosophical, cultural, and political discourses that unconsciously shape how we think.But in the end, What Works will also offer you a practical framework you can use to discover what works for you.Pre-Order What Works today! ★ Support this podcast ★

How do you prepare your small business for economic ups and downs? Is a recession inevitable? And what even is a recession? In this episode, unpack why the economy cycles through periods of boom and bust. I also demonstrate how a similar cycle is at play in the online business space. And I offer some strategies for making sustainable business decisions—no matter what happens with the economy.Footnotes:Gates of the Arctic National ParkCaribou population cyclesFloating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Sea by Bathsheba DemuthBeargrassMast fruitingBraiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer“Are recessions normal?” on Make Me SmartEconomic cycles on InvestopediaSpotted lanternfly and tree of heavenTimothy Snyder on the Ezra Klein Show“The best of all possible worlds” from CandideA history of recessions in the 20th and 21st centuriesRana Foroohar on the Ezra Klein ShowArticle versions of episodes are posted at explorewhatworks.com every Thursday. To get those articles delivered straight to you, free of charge, go to explorewhatworks.com/weeklyHave a question about an episode of What Works? Is there something you've noticed online, in the news, or in your business that you're curious about? Go to zipmessage.com/whatworks! Leave me a message, and I'll try to respond in a future episode! ★ Support this podcast ★

Personal brand development is now a mainstay of college career preparation. Young social media influencers are well-versed on the language of personal branding. It seems cultivating your personal brand is a prerequisite for navigating the 21st-century economy. Public image has a long history, of course. But how has our relationship with ourselves changed since we started to put so much effort into emphasizing the most marketable parts of our identities? This episode tackles the history of personal branding, the labor of self-branding, and why so much value is being created in the “social factory.”Footnotes:“Sentimental ‘Greenbacks’ of Civilization”: Cartes de Visite and the Pre-History of Self-Branding by Alison Hearn (The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture)“Cartes de Visite,” Art Gallery of New South Wales (YouTube)The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler“Meat, Mask, Burden: Probing the Contours of the Branded Self” by Alison Hearn (Journal of Consumer Culture)The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles by David HarveyEP.385: Who do you work for? on What WorksConnect with Tyler McCall on Twitter“On the internet, we’re always famous” by Chris Hayes (The New Yorker)“The Problem with Personal Brands and the Labor of Authenticity” by Tara McMullinEssay versions of each episode are available every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. To get them delivered straight to your inbox, sign up free at explorewhatworks.com/weekly ★ Support this podcast ★

“You could make money with that!” That’s probably the first thing you hear when someone discovers you’re an excellent baker, or designer, or potter. Even if your hobby is collecting super hero figurines, someone has probably suggesting “monetizing” that interest. There is all sorts of historical, economic, and sociological context for this. But in this episode, I talk with someone who typifies not getting paid for what you love to do: my husband, Sean McMullin. You’ll hear how Sean’s extended family in Utah and Montana, as well as his time living in an Iñupiat village in rural Alaska, shaped how he thinks about work he doesn’t get paid for.Footnotes:More about the Iñupiat people “I grew up in a church led by a prophet” by Meg ConleyYellowHouse.MediaSean McMullin on Instagram Essay versions of each episode are published every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. Get the delivered straight to you by signing up at explorewhatworks.com/weekly ★ Support this podcast ★

“Positive thinking” comes in many forms: New Thought, the prosperity gospel, manifestation teaching, self-help guides, and more. It’s hard to argue with thinking positive thoughts! But when positive thoughts become a substitute for curiosity and inquiry about real challenges, positive thinking can lead us away from real solutions. In this episode, I explore my own encounters with the world of positive thinking and how facing reality has actually given me more hope. Footnotes:More about Mary Baker EddyMore about Ernest Holmes and The Science of MindMore about Norman Vincent Peale* The Power of Positive ThinkingMary Kay Ash on YouTubeConfidence Culture by Shani Orgad and Rosalind GillRhonda Byrne on YouTube“Farm-To-Table: Reciprocity in Every Seam” (Christy Dawn ad)“Manifestation, eugenics, and flower oil” by Meg ConleyCultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda MontellAt The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah BakewellHope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit Essay versions of each episode are available at explorewhatworks.com each Thursday. Get them delivered straight to you by signing up at explorewhatworks.com/weekly ★ Support this podcast ★

Who doesn’t love to get paid? So we’re going to talk about how that actually happens. Not the dollars and cents of getting paid, but the form and structure. In the previous two episodes, we examined our relationships to work—both paid and unpaid. And it got me thinking about how we actually account for the ways paid work, well, pays—and especially how that impacts business owners and independent workers. I’m talking the difference between wages and profit, how surplus labor creates profit, and specifically how I structure my own pay in order to have a better perspective on my work.Footnotes:Surplus Labor in Radical EconomicsKarl Marx via The School of Life“The ‘Cult’ of Passive Income” via Tiffany Ferguson ★ Support this podcast ★

It seems like every business owner or freelancer I know wants to quit social media. But very few people are actually doing it. It seems easier to imagine the end of your business than the end of social media, to paraphrase Mark Fisher. There’s something about our relationship to social platforms that makes them feel inescapable. And, perhaps without even noticing, it’s started to see like we’re working for them more than working for ourselves. In this episode, I unpack our relationship to platforms and who profits from our labor. And it starts in an unusual place: the recent Etsy strike. Footnotes:“Etsy sellers will go on strike in April and ask customers to boycott” on The Verge“Why Etsy sellers are going on strike” on Yahoo Finance“16,000 shops join Etsy strike” via KERORob Kalin speaking to the World Economic ForumMark Zuckerberg testifying before the House Energy & Commerce Committee“How Facebook (Meta), Twitter, social media make money from you” via InvestopediaTyler McCall on Instagram and Twitter ★ Support this podcast ★

I grew up expecting to love what I did for a living. I was encouraged to choose a career that I was passionate about. But when I did, I bumped up against the stark reality that work I loved didn’t pay the bills. At least not in any straightforward way. In this episode, I explore the context of “doing what you love” and how it shapes the way we build our businesses or careers today.Footnotes:Analysis of wages during the 90s (BLS)Eupsychian Management by Abraham MaslowTarget Commercial: “Come in for workout gear, leave feeling empowered.”Dan Olsen on The Ezra Klein ShowThe Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord“The Passion Paradigm: Professional Adherence to and Consequences of the Ideology of ‘Do What You Love’” by Lindsay DePalma“Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work” by Kathi WeeksWork Won’t Love You Back by Sarah JaffeMore about Lou Blaser and Midlife Cues“To My Brothers and Sisters In The Failure Business” by Seymour KrimWorks Progress Administration ★ Support this podcast ★

“Rugged individualism” is the very language we speak in America. It shapes the way we approach work, family, and society. And rugged individualism has a direct impact on the decisions we make about our businesses and careers. In this short Extra Context bonus, I unpack where rugged individualism comes from and highlight a different way forward.Footnotes:Rugged Individualism Monologue by Terry Smith "The Myth of Rugged Individualism” by Robert Reich“We’d Like To Thank You, Herbert Hoover” from AnnieIndividualism and Economic Order by Friedrich HayekHope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit“The Philosophers: Loneliness & Totalitarianism” on Vox Conversations ★ Support this podcast ★

No one likes being asked for a refund. In fact, I find the thought of it stomach-churning. And when what’s being refunded is the product of your time, experience, and expertise… it’s tempting to put every obstacle you can think of between a customer and a refund. In this episode, I’ll take you on a journey from the 17th century all the way through the modern era of online business refund policies to answer the question: What makes for a fair refund policy?Footnotes:About Josiah Wedgwood“Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur in Salesmanship and Marketing Techniques” by Neil McKendrick“Beyond The Pottery: The Creative Giant, Josiah Wedgwood” on YouTube“They Broke It” by Judith Flanders“What a Hundred-Year-Old Department Store Can Tell Us About the Overlap of Retail, Religion and Politics” by Tobias Carroll“Many (Un)happy Returns? The Changing Nature of Retail Product Returns and Future Research Directions” Journal of RetailingOnline Outlier & Regina AnaejionuMore on “caveat emptor” (the buyer beware)“Is the customer always right?” The Merck Report, June 1915“Is the customer the enemy?” by Chris MacDonald“The Customer As Enemy” by Michael SchrageKaye Publicity & Dana Kaye Full written versions of each new episode are available on Fridays or sign up for What Works Weekly to receive them in your inbox. ★ Support this podcast ★

At the end of 2021, I stepped away from my business: left our community, off-boarded my employee to another company, and focused on my mental health. Over the next 4 months, I wrote a book and thought about what might be next for me and my work. In this episode, I share what I’ve been up to in that time and what I might do in the months to come. Resources: * What Works: A Comprehensive Framework For Changing The Way We Approach Goal Setting* NYU’s Intro To Creative Nonfiction course* Catapult’s Writing Pitches That Land Bylines* How Your Personal Priorities Shape The Way You Design Your Business Essay versions of new What Works episodes are posted on Thursdays. Sign up for What Works Weekly to get it in your inbox! ★ Support this podcast ★

I’m sure you’ve heard it before: underpromise and overdeliver. But is that really the best way to do business? Or does it just give us a permission slip for self-exploitation? When does overdelivering become overcompensating? And when does being generous just morph into entrepreneurial martyrdom? I sat down with sales coach Allison Davis to talk about overdelivering, generosity, and when it all gets to be too much. We talk pricing and scope of work—but we also talk about familiar relationship patterns and how they play out in our expectations for ourselves or others. Resources: * Allison Davis* Down Girl: The Logic Of Misogyny by Kate Manne* Kate Manne on Forever35* Living A Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed* EP 371: How does emotional labor impact our work? ★ Support this podcast ★

I’m bringing our Time & Money series to a close this week by exploring why we choose squeezing more in over taking time off. I share how The Squeeze works, why work gets more intense over time, and some of the economic incentives that keep us from making different choices. Resources: * “Feeling The Squeeze? Why Your Business Feels So Tight” by Tara McMullin* “Busy vs Squeezed: How To Tell The Difference & Why It Matters” by Tara McMullin* “Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren” by John Maynard Keynes* Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher* Protestant Ethic & The Spirit Of Capitalism by Max Weber* “When Time Is Money: Contested Rationalities of Time and Challenges to the Theory and Practice of Work” by Barbara Adam* Can’t Even by Anne Helen Petersen* Wintering by Katherine May Love the show? Share What Works with a friend: pod.link/whatworks Or leave a tip! ★ Support this podcast ★

A lot of the work we do today doesn’t much look like “work.” The divide between work-life and life-life is flexible and porous. So what does that mean for the way we spend our time? Or how we earn a living? In this episode, I share designer, coach, and consultant Anne Ditmeyer’s story of rethinking how she works thanks to a big move to Paris. And, I argue that perhaps we need a radically different way of thinking about what work is—instead of a better “work-life balance.” Resources: * Learn more about Anne Ditmeyer* Lost In Work, by Amelia Horgan* Episode 349 with Brittany Berger ★ Support this podcast ★

The systems we operate in all have different incentive systems: our business models, the social media platforms, our economy, the culture at large… And many of these incentive systems have become simplified and gamified—changing the way we view the results of our work and the goals that we hold. In this episode, I explore how the philosophy of games can help us identify when we’re just trying to “game the system” instead of taking effective action based on our own values and goals. Resources: * C. Thi Nguyen at the Royal Institute of Philosophy* Nguyen on The Ezra Klein Show* How Twitter Gamifies Communication* *What Tech Calls Thinking* by Adrian Daub* *Games: Agency As Art* by C. Thi Nguyen ★ Support this podcast ★

Most of us learn the value of our time in our first jobs. Even as we get more experience and our hourly jobs turn into salaried jobs or freelance projects, the specter of selling your time for a particular wage looms. In this episode, I talk with Wealth Over Now founder & Money Files host Keina Newell about how she thinks about the intersection of time and money. I also offer up a light history of wage work and how that history influences as business owners. Resources: * Wealth Over Now — Keina Newell* Money Files — Keina’s podcast* What is the domestic system?* What is the Fair Labor Standards Act?* Further reference: Labor writers Kim Kelly & Sarah Jaffe in conversation* EP 341: Taking Better Care Of Each Other with Kate Strathmann* Games Against Humanity: C Thi Nguyen on the Conspirituality podcast ★ Support this podcast ★

I’ve been talking about the “new economy” since about 2010. But more and more, I recognize that the economic possibilities created through the internet aren’t nearly as new or innovative as I’d first thought (and hoped). It seems that the old economy is just making itself over as the not-so-new economy. In this episode, I explore 3 processes of the old economy—speculation, financialization, and liquidation—to pinpoint how they’re showing up in our digital world of independent work. I weave together the housing market, creator economy, Great Recession, and crypto promises to help you situate yourself in this strange, not-so-new world. At times, it’s a bleak story—but ultimately, understanding where we’re at gives us a better opportunity to make different, more humane choices. Resources: * CNBC Interview with NewNew Founder Courtne Smith* Investopedia on financialization* *The Big Short* by Michael Lewis* Michael Lewis on 60 Minutes* “How the financial crisis changed jobs” from Marketplace* Gig Economy explainer via Marketplace* NFTs explainer via Marketplace* “How Money Became The Measure Of Everything” by Eli Cook* “The complicated reality of doing what you love” by Marian Bull* Greater Fool Theory on Investopedia* “I crowdfunded a novel using cryptocurrency” by Elle Griffin ★ Support this podcast ★

There’s more than one way to measure success—and there’s more than one way to measure time. How do you account for the time you spend working? And is it really the most effective—for you—to spend it? In other words, what constitutes quality time when it comes to the way you work? I talked with business operations coach Elisabeth Jackson about how she changed her overwork habit, how she measures quality time for herself & her clients, and why she doesn’t love the word “productivity.” Resources: * Find out more about Elisabeth Jackson* More about Frederick Winslow Taylor* *Lost In Work*, by Amelia Horgan* EP 373: The Eggbeater Effect, listen or read ★ Support this podcast ★

We spend money on lots of tools designed to save us time and work. But all too often, those tools just end up raising our expectations. Why do work in less time when you could do more work in the same amount of time?! In this episode, I examine “the egg beater effect” and why we should, just maybe, lower our expectations a bit. Resoures: * You’re Wrong About: The Stepford Wives* More Work For Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowan* Episode 371: What is the creator economy? with Gina Bianchini* Episode 364: The Abundant Value Of Virtual Assistants with Janice Plado Dalager* Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren by John Maynard Keynes ★ Support this podcast ★

“Time is money.” Ben Franklin gave us that chestnut in 1748—and ever since, we’ve been trained to think of our lives as opportunities for making a buck. This week, we start a series exploring the “time is money” construction. But before we think through how we spend our time, we’re going to think through money: what it really is, how we relate to it, and some of the factors that make it “weird.” I talk with Paco de Leon from the Hell Yeah Group and author of the brand-new book, Finance For The People. Resources: * Finance For The People, by Paco de Leon* The Hell Yeah Group* The Nerdletter ★ Support this podcast ★

Emotional labor is an under-appreciated, under-compensated type of work. But it’s essential for navigating the 21st-century economy. Entrepreneurship almost always brings with it a need for managing our emotions to lead and care for others. And this expectation is only doubled when the entrepreneur is a woman or marginalized person. What’s more, the type of marketing that many of us are told to do today is thick with emotional labor: showing up with confidence, using your personality as leverage, banking on your sense of self. It’s no wonder so many business owners are burning out. In this episode, I tackle: What is emotional labor? And how does it impact our work as entrepreneurs? Resources: * The Managed Heart by Arlie Russell Hochschild* The Impact Equation by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith* What Is The Creator Economy? With Gina Bianchini* The emotional labour of academia in the time of a pandemic: A feminist reflection by Michelle Newcomb ★ Support this podcast ★

What is the creator economy? And why are so many creators… miserable? Mighty Networks founder Gina Bianchini was the first person I knew talking about the creating economy. She’s passionate about helping entrepreneurs, organizers, and creators see why building independently beats trying to amass huge audiences on the usual platforms. In this episode, we talk about what the creator economy is, how the game is rigged, what’s making creators miserable, and how she sees a different way forward. Plus, we’ll discuss research from the massive independent study that Mighty Networks commissioned. Resources: * How “Building An Audience” Is Different From “Finding Customers”—And Why It Matters* What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub* Lost In Work: Escaping Capitalism by Amelia Horgan* The New Creator Manifesto (Research on the creator economy)* Mighty Networks* Creators Calculator* Subscribe To What Works Weekly Looking for a transcript? I’m publishing every episode in essay form on Thursdays at explorewhatworks.com! ★ Support this podcast ★

The way we set goals often invites a load of comparison and competition. We can even create a moral hierarchy of more and better. In this episode, I explore the roots of moralizing around the goals we set, borrowing from Dr. Devon Price, Max Weber, Kate Manne, and Simone de Beauvoir. Resources for diving deeper: * *Laziness Does Not Exist* by Dr. Devon Price* Max Weber* Morality* Kate Manne on the immorality of diet culture* *You Belong* by Sebene Selassie* Simone de Beauvoir & The Ethics of Ambiguity ★ Support this podcast ★

“What does growth without striving look like?” Rita Barry posed this question 3 years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. In this episode, I talk with Rita about the journey she’s been on to answer that question as her company has exploded. We dive into validation-seeking, social conditioning, and identifying what you really want in the face of so much “common sense” about what success looks like. You’ll hear Rita’s story, plus commentary from writer Anne Helen Petersen (via Librairie Drawn & Quarterly) and psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe (via Renegade Inc). Find out more about Rita Barry at ritabarry.co This year on What Works, I’m exploring how we can navigate the 21st-century economy with our humanity intact. Read articles, listen to the archives, and sign up for What Works Weekly at explorewhatworks.com ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why Darden Creative founder Tamera Darden decided to shut down her business at the end of 2022—and how that decision evolved* How she wrestled with the practical, emotional, and financial questions around this big decision* The experience that led her to reclaiming her original vision for the business* How she’s planning to move forward and what it means for the way she works in her own business How do you know when it’s time to quit? It’s a question I’ve been asked countless times over the years. Sometimes, the question is asked in frustration or sadness. A business owner will tell me they’ve tried everything; they’ve tried everything; they’re at a loss about what to do next. Other times, the question is asked sheepishly, with almost a tone of guilt. The business owner will tell me that they’ve been successful, maybe even more successful than they dreamed. But that something isn’t right. They’re unhappy or just feeling the pull of a new challenge. Either way, knowing when to quit is almost never clear cut. When I sat down with Tamera Darden a couple of months ago, we were scheduled to talk about values and how her business has operationalized those values. But in our pre-show warm-up, she told me she’d decided to shut down her business at the end of 2022. So we pivoted. I let her know we were doing this series on letting go & beginning again and offered, if she was ready, to talk about her decision. We went there. I was struck by her willingness to occupy uncertainty and liminality. And I was impressed by her self-confidence, even when things weren’t quite crystal clear. I told her to let me know if anything changed in the 8 weeks or so before our conversation would actually go live. A few weeks ago, she sent me a message. She needed to make an update. Her decision had evolved. I hesitate to say she’s changed her mind—you’ll hear why. Instead, she asked more abundant questions about what was next for her, why she felt compelled to shut down the business, and what other options could look like. What follows is both parts of that conversation. It’s a rare look into the reality of how entrepreneurial decisions evolve if we let them. Tamera Darden is the founder of Darden Creative. She’s a photographer, creative director, and business mentor with a vision for helping Black women-owned businesses thrive. Changing your mind is hard. Doing so in a public forum is even harder. I believe very strongly we owe it to ourselves to normalize coming to new conclusions based on new information, questions, or perspective. I hope this conversation creates some space for you to let your own positions evolve. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Creative grief worker & curator Charlene Lam shares how grief impacts us—as humans, leaders, and business owners* How she discovered a passion for understanding grief and helping others process after the death of her mother* The practical exercises she uses to process feelings of loss Toward the end of 2020, I started to hear the murmurs of something I’d come to learn was called “ambiguous loss.” Of course, 2020 was full of loss and grief. There were goals, events, and—of course—people who were no longer with us. But there was also an amorphous, chronic type of grief that set in. The murmurs spoke softly of pain and exhaustion that couldn’t be attributed to any one particular loss. In 1999, Pauline Boss coined the term ambiguous loss for exactly this kind of feeling. In a conversation with Krista Tippett, Boss said: “We like to solve problems. We’re not comfortable with unanswered questions. And this is full of unanswered questions. These are losses that are minus facts.” For me, the ambiguous loss of the last 2 years has been felt as a sort of ongoing liminality. I’ve felt stuck between the life, goals, and identities that were part of my pre-2020 life and the next life, goals, and identities that have yet to take form. And while this is my sense of a personal ambiguous loss, I think it also mirrors the ambiguous loss we’ve faced as a society. As the pandemic has worn on and social change has stagnated, we keep catching glimpses of what might be on the other side. But the promises that “it’ll be over soon” have become ever harder to believe. We’re stuck between our pre-2020 world and the world that has yet to come into focus. Grief in general, and ambiguous loss in particular, might seem like an odd topic for a business podcast. But it was conversations with small business owners that made me realization how important talking about grief is for us. Business owners like us go through all sorts of experiences that can bring on a sense of loss or grief: the failed launch, a canceled event, the lost opportunity, an unmet goal, the loss of a team member, or the end of a working relationship. But our natural optimism as entrepreneurs, as well as a culture that doesn’t make much room for grief, means that we rarely pause to observe and process the transition. So last December, we decided to devote this December to letting go, processing grief, and beginning again. At the end of last year, this topic felt urgent—but now, this topic feels timely. While I think we’re all still feeling deep uncertainty about what’s next, we have a little distance from the onslaught of fear. I’ve talked to a bunch of people who finally feel like they have the capacity to make a decision about moving on and process what that means for them. Today, I want you to meet Charlene Lam, a creative grief worker, as well as a business mentor, content marketing strategist, and curator. She’s the creator of The Grief Gallery and Grief. Grit. Grace., where she writes, speaks, and curates exhibitions that help people process their grief. Charlene and I talk about what grief is and how we process it—as well as how grief shows up for us as business owners and what we can do to let go of what was and begin again with a new vision. ★ Support this podcast ★

I always hesitate to talk about practicing an “abundance mindset…” …because it so quickly veers into positive vibes only, charge what you’re worth, girl, wash your face territory. And to my mind, that territory is steeped in scarcity and its cousin, precarity. Abundance isn’t about ignoring unpleasant feelings or people who ask hard questions. When we do that, we’re essentially signaling that our positive vibes are so precarious that something challenging or unpleasant could cause us to lose our high. Practicing abundance, instead, invites us to wrestle with hard things without fear of losing our way. Abundance isn’t about charging what you’re worth because abundance knows that markets are fickle and that human experience can’t be quantified in hourly rates or flat fees. While I readily acknowledge that “charge what you’re worth” has helped lots of people ask for more, it also reinforces scarcity thinking in the form of “getting what’s yours” or “they’re out to get me.” Abundance also isn’t about equating endless hard work with deserving more abundant rewards. It’s certainly not about sucking it up. This kind of thinking reinforces that there’s a limited supply of resources out there and you better get up before dawn to grab your bit. Truthfully, I’m not sure I can define abundance succinctly. What it means to me is a present knowing that I am enough, that I have enough, and that there is enough time, attention, and support to live a meaningful life and do meaningful work. I can’t say that this is my mindset at all times—far from it. But in the times when I’m feeling most hopeless or desperate, it’s the mindset that I eventually bring myself back to. It’s the Truth that’s guided difficult decisions and unlocked completely unexpected paths forward. An abundance mindset—when I’m truly in it—shifts my perception and presents new possibilities. Maybe one way to think about it is that an abundance mindset isn’t so much an answer to the problems of scarcity, urgency, and precarity, but a series of questions that remind you there is always a way forward. Throughout this month, my goal has been to speak some of those questions out loud. Hopefully, you’ve experienced at least a small shift in perception as a result. Today, we’ll round out this series with 3 more stories about interesting questions and new ways forward. You’ll hear from sales coach Allison Davis, business strategist AnnMarie Rose, and Athena Village founder Kelly Pratt. Listen for the shift in perception that allowed them to see a new possibility for their work and businesses. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Consultant and virtual assistant Janice Plado Dalager joins Tara for a conversation about the unique skill set that virtual assistants and other support professionals bring to small businesses* How VAs end up mistreated by entrepreneurs—and the gendered and racialized components of these relationships that make mistreatment more likely* Why emotional labor is an undervalued skill for support pros, as well as why it should be a key part of how this work is compensated* How small business owners can check their own behavior to make these working relationships more humane Back in 2016, the odd-job platform TaskRabbit ran a series of ads in New York City subways. Imagine a photo of a thin, white woman in upward facing dog pose on a yoga mat. She’s blissed out. Above her, the poster reads “Mopping the floors” in trendy, pseudo handwriting script. Below her, the TaskRabbit tagline reads “We do chores. You live life.” The ad campaign communicates the promise of letting your chores disappear into someone else’s workload. We do chores, you live life: Who is “you?” And who is “we?” Do the folks who are mopping floors ever get to be the “you” who lives life while someone else does the chores? I’m Tara McMullin and this is What Works, the show that explores entrepreneurship for humans. Independent work, the gig economy, online business—they’ve all been sold to us as ways to transcend old class divides. They promise a more level playing field for offering your time and skills. No fancy resume needed, just a willingness to put in the work. Of course, this is far from the truth. Michael Zelenko puts it this way in an article for The Verge: Instead of establishing partnerships within a community, the gig economy and TaskRabbit’s ads reaffirm a class divide, between the “You” — whose life is defined by recreational activities — and the “We,” whose lives are devoted to doing your chores. Rather than leveling the playing field, gig work and the ever-increasing push to classify more workers as independent contractors has, in effect, reestablished a servant class. Now, however, it’s not just elites and the aristocracy who get access to servant labor—it’s anyone with a smartphone and a few extra bucks to spend on takeout or housework. The more times I get my groceries delivered, the more I see my time, work, and self-care as more important than running errands. It’s a short jump to start to see those who are running my errands as less important than me. Less deserving of the good life. And, in classic upstairs/downstairs Downton Abbey fashion, the more I use these services, the easier it is to allow the people doing them to be invisible. Sarah Jaffe, the author of Work Won’t Love You Back, recently talked about the culture of entitlement to service that we have in the United States on The Ezra Klein Show. She suggested that our sense of freedom hinges, in some ways, on being able to get what we want, when we want it—without consideration for those who are making it happen. And this is where I want to pivot to talking about micro entrepreneurship and digital small business. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why Michelle Ward decided to retire as the When I Grow Up Coach to go all-in on the 90-Day Business Launch* Why a complicated business model (and her peer mastermind) made the decision pretty clear* How she made the transition and the impact its had on revenue* How she’s reprioritizing business & life so she’s focused on what she really values Small business owners are famously susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy. If you’re not a familiar, sunk cost fallacy is the idea that the more we sink our time, money, and other resources into a project or idea, the more likely we are to stick with it even when it’s not working. Our resources are limited—or at least feel that way. So we’re attached to them. Deciding to invest precious resources into an idea then creates an attachment to that idea. The more attached we become, the less likely we are to willing detach. The more resources we sink into a project—and the more attached we become—the fewer choices we seem to have about how to move forward. This is the work of a mindset of scarcity and limitation. Now, I don’t want to give short shrift to the drain on material resources any project, idea, or business can be. We can invest money in growth—and not see it shift into a return. We can invest time in a new offer—and not see it sell. We can forgo our own compensation to make a big move—and have it not work out. Those situations all suck. And the drain on resources is very, very real. However, where the scarcity narrative starts to wreak havoc is in our perception of choice. Is it possible to peer through the thick fog of disappointment and still see an array of possibilities in front of you? Maybe even an array of opportunities? Now, it’s easy to see how the sunk cost fallacy applies when things aren’t going well. But the sunk cost fallacy also applies when things are humming along, doing just fine. In fact, I’d wager that it’s harder to see different opportunities and make the choice to pursue a new way forward when things are working. When the investments you’ve made are paying off, it’s harder to walk away. But that’s just what today’s guest has done. I’ve known When I Grow Up Coach Michelle Ward almost as long as I’ve been working for myself. So when she emailed me a couple of weeks ago to ask if she could come on the pod to talk about how she’d retired the When I Grow Up Coach brand and gone all-in on her 90-Day Business Launch program, I said: hell yeah! This is a story about wrestling with long-term success and the decision to go a different way. It’s also a story about recognizing that, any time you make a big move, things like money and marketing won’t magically stay the same. And finally, it’s a story about recognizing abundant long-term opportunity over short-term consistency. Now, let’s find out What Works for Michelle Ward! ★ Support this podcast ★

Have you heard? The average human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s! Thanks, internet. TV journalists and politicians talk to us in sound bites, assuming we don’t have the attention for more nuanced analysis. Boomers bemoan fast media like TikTok and Instagram. It seems like attention might be one of our scarcest and most precious resources. But I’m starting to wonder whether attention is really a scarce resource. Perhaps what is truly scarce are media and messages worth paying attention to. Before I get into the latter, let’s debunk the former. It turns out that the panic over our attention spans being less than a goldfish’s is a pseudo-scientific soundbite in and of itself. Actual research psychologists say they don’t really study “attention span” as a discrete component of how we think. Instead, attention span is relative. How long we can pay attention to something depends on the task, our level of interest, and the varied circumstances we bring to a given situation. For instance, I might be able to work on an essay for hours at a time because I’m fascinated by the subject and in a creative flow. But on another day, even though my interest hasn’t changed, I might not be able to sustain 5 minutes of distraction-free work because I didn’t get enough sleep or I’m feeling anxious about something. What’s more, according to a BBC article debunking this “common knowledge” about goldfish and attention spans, goldfish do actually have the ability to pay attention! Scientists have been studying fish for over 100 years to get a better idea of how memories are formed and how learning happens—precisely because fish are able to “pay attention” long enough to do both. So, it turns out that scientists agree that given the right task and the right circumstances, we have an abundance of attention. That’s not to say that we don’t also have personal, neurological, and systemic challenges with paying attention. But it is to say that, as marketers, we don’t need to fight for our own slice of attention tartlet. How, then, could we approach marketing and business-building differently? Business owners tell me about how hard it is to reach people on a regular basis. How hard it is to get people’s attention. These business owners try to keep up with the algorithm changes, the trends that are going viral, and the memes that get noticed. This complaint is a red flag 🚩. That’s a meme joke. Algorithms and memes aren’t the way to access an abundance of attention. And when gaming the algorithm and leveraging the memes does pay off? That attention is precarious—fleeting. The attention we do get paid is more like an impulse purchase rather than a long-term investment. Many people today have a greater supply of money than they do time. So getting someone to pay attention—which is a function of time—might be harder than getting them to pay currency. And yet, it’s understood that the work we create for the payment of attention doesn’t have to be as high quality as work that people pay money for. Quality attention requires quality work. When we make work designed to satisfy the demands of the algorithm, we’re rarely making work that satisfies the interests of the people we want to connect with. Just because something gets likes or reach doesn’t mean people are really paying attention. Today, the mediascape is very different from when I became a blogger and social media user back in 2009. Platforms were real channels for sharing whatever it was that you wanted to put online. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * How Angie Browne‘s career has evolved into embracing her whole identity as a coach & consultant* Why she’s exploring big questions about our identities and how we work* What she did to establish how she wanted to work with clients and companies in this chapter* The story she’s rewriting a personal story she’s been telling for years We all have an abundance of identities. I’m a woman. A wife. A mother. I’m a business owner, a writer, a podcaster. I’m a runner, a yoga practitioner, a paddle boarder. I’m an introvert, a book lover, and a new cat parent. I am many other things, too. The professional world—as built by white men—has been a place where we leave our other identities at the door. We transform into whatever the job requires of us and try to ignore the rest. There’s a passage that really encapsulates this in a book I read earlier this year—Having and Being Had by Eula Biss. She writes about a conversation she had with her mom: “The hardest part of working isn’t the work, my mother tells me, it’s the passing. She means passing as an office worker—dressing the part, performing the rituals of office life, and acting appropriately grateful for a ten-hour shift at a computer.” When we opt to forge our own path as business owners, it’s easy to imagine that we’ll escape these rituals, avoid assimilating to the expectations of the office. And sure, some of them we do escape from. But there are plenty we end up sticking with—like trying to be grateful for spending 10 hours in front of a computer. And there are others we adopt as part of our new work: the rituals of social media, networking, email responsiveness. It’s not so much that dressing the part, performing the rituals, or adapting to your work environment is a bad thing. It’s there also needs to be space for the identities, responsibilities, and personal needs we have outside our job descriptions or client agreements. Making that space is one way we practice abundance. It might mean rearranging your schedule. Or, it could be a clause you add to your contracts that acknowledges that missing an appointment or rescheduling because of a family need is not the end of the world. It could be a having a colleague you do a mutual mental health check with each week. Or, it could be as simple as acknowledging the transitional space at the beginning of meetings before you get down to business. This week, my guest is Angela Browne, a coach for luminaries and a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant for organizations. Part of our conversation is about the way she’s learned to bring her whole self into her work—whether in her former work as a head teacher or in her roles. But another key part of our conversation revolves around abundant curiosity—the kind that is willing to ask bold questions without needing to have definitive answers. My hope is that this conversation will inspire you to consider how you can both make space for your many identities in the way you work and make space for abundant curiosity. Now, let’s find out what works for Angie Browne! ★ Support this podcast ★

I am a fast person. I walk fast. Cook fast. Write fast. Talk fast. Work out fast. It’s like I’m always moving towards some urgent need or trying to escape some impending disaster. So I’ve been working on slowing down for the last few years. To do that, I have to be mindful. I have to be present enough to notice that I’m zooming around and get curious about why. Then, I can take a beat and slow down the tempo. I say that like it’s easy, or like I even remember to do it on a regular basis. I don’t. I find it hard to look around at the world—the news, the market, my family, my community—and not feel the pressure of urgency. Things change so fast today, yes. But the problems we face and the opportunities in front of us are also urgent. It’s not just the speed with which things happen. It’s the fleeting window of possibility we have to make changes or seize the moment. In her book Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown writes: “There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work.” Maybe we could call it strategic FOMO. The fear of missing out on the chance to change course, solve a challenge, make things better. Of course, good strategy is never created quickly. Changing course, solving challenges, making things substantively better is slow work. Otherwise, it’s not strategy—it’s just another crappy repair on top of a history of band-aid solutions. Slowing down is key to building a business that operationalizes and embodies its values. When you slow down, you can ask yourself better questions, gather diverse perspectives, get curious what’s really needed, and take time for quality. And that’s really why I’ve been working on slowing down. I’ve become acutely aware of the friction and dysfunction that making a fast decision causes. I can easily see how speed has made it harder to make sustainable, humane choices. I’ve also become aware at just how lovely it can feel to pause and check in. To say, “let’s revisit that next week.” To luxuriate in exploring how things could be done in ways that epitomize my values and honor my capacity. Today, you’re going to hear from 4 other business owners who have also found that slowing down has helped them operationalize their values in their businesses. You’ll hear from Sarah Cottrell, the founder of Former Lawyer, Gracy Obuchowicz, a self-care consultant for companies & organizations, Yvette Ramos-Volz, a glass artist & aromatherapist, and Jennie Morris, the founder of Vegologie. Each one is finding ways to create the necessary space to check in with their core values before making decisions about their business—big or small. By slowing down, they make their values a core operational consideration, ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why brand strategist Alice Karolina created the ethical move, which helps small business owners navigate building more ethical marketing and sales systems* How the ethical move evolves as they practice reflection and collaboration* Why Alice prioritizes moving slowly when it comes to building the business* What they’re discovering as they incrementally investigate what building a business that prioritizes ethics looks like I had always thought I was running a pretty values-driven business. I cared about people and tried to operate always assuming the best of them. I developed programs in the spirit of experimentation—a core value for me. And I utilized transparency and honesty in my marketing and sales processes. But at the same time, I didn’t ask a lot of questions. If someone told me it was totally fine to do X, Y, or Z marketing tactic, I believed them. I operated my business that way through October 2016. Then, I had a wakeup call and a lot of questions. Like many people, I had so many questions about how the United States had gotten to that point. I had questions about the deep betrayal that I felt as a woman and the deep betrayal that wasn’t at all new for women of color, LGBTQ folks, immigrants, and disabled people. And all of those questions started to trickle down into my business. I started to see ways that I was inadvertently replicating power structures I wasn’t okay with. And I started to see how it’s so easy to turn a marketing campaign into a misinformation campaign. I wanted to figure out how to do things differently. I have learned so much over the last 5 years. And I’ve changed a lot of the ways I personally operate—as well as the operations in my business. We regularly explore what it looks like to live and work our values as a community. And one thing I’ve wrestled with in all that change and learning has been why we’re doing things differently and why we endeavor to do better. It’s easy to let “wanting to do better” become wanting to follow the right rules, get the language just right, or make sure that you speak up in just the right way when something horrific happens. This is a pattern that so many white, straight, women like myself fall into. And I know it’s one that I could easily fall into being the rule-loving, achievement-oriented person I am. Last year, one of my commitments was a reminder for me to examine my pattern of defensiveness. I talked about it a bit here on the podcast. This year, one of my commitments reminds me to speak up, to not avoid conflict, just because I have something difficult to say. As I’ve worked through those patterns and altered my habits, I’ve gotten pretty clear on what I do want and don’t want when it comes to doing business differently. What I do want is to regularly examine the work I put out into the world to make sure it leaves room for human experiences that are different than mine. I don’t want to exclude or hurt people by virtue of the way I do business or even share my own story. What I don’t want is to live in fear of saying the wrong thing, getting called out, or being cancelled. And the good news is that by focusing on leaving room for other people’s experiences and taking steps not to hurt people with the language I use or the stories I tell, I don’t have to live with that fear. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode * How Future Proof Skills Lab founder Liz Wiltsie has build her business on her North Star values & the movements she belongs to* How she makes room for difference, both in her own business and in her work with clients* What she’s decided not to do with her business because of her values Imagine yourself sitting at a table. In front of you, there are all your favorite art supplies. Maybe there are paints, crayons, or pastels. Maybe there are stacks of magazines and illustrated books you can cut up for a collage. Maybe your art is music and your favorite instrument is on the table. Or maybe, like me, your favorite art supply is a tablet—one you can draw & paint with as well as create written art. On their own, the art supplies don’t amount to much, right? The value of a tube of paint, a trumpet, or a pen is based on what we have the potential to do with it. Art supplies are tools and raw materials for creating. We imagine something and start to make it, or we get inspired and follow that inspiration. Our values can also be raw materials for what we create in the world. They give us something to work with, make with, imagine with. The strength in our values isn’t simply in knowing them or putting them on our websites—their strength is in what we do with them. What’s more, we can express those values in different ways. Just like you and I will create something completely different with the same palette of paint, you and I might build very different businesses even if we’re working from the same set of values. The way I build my business model or core competency based on a value for community care is going to be different than the model or competency you build out based on your value for community care. So maybe now, you imagine sitting at a table with your values in front of you. They’re the raw materials you have to play with. Also at the table is what you have to offer and who you’re offering it to. Now, you get to make art! That might sound like a simplistic or even naive way to think about business-building. But let me tell you: it works. And not only that, it makes choices like how to market, what price to set, or how sell much much easier too. Starting with your values as raw materials helps you shape your business, instead of letting shoulds & supposed-to’s shape it. My guest today is a perfect example of this. Liz Wiltsie is the founder of the Future Proof Skills Lab and the host of Sustainably Human At Work. She’s a trauma-informed, abolitionist skill builder on a quest to support small business owners to create more intentional, imaginative, and connected workplaces. Liz and I talk through the values her business is built on, as well as the movements her business uses as the focal point of her work. Plus, she sheds some light on how both our needs and our values end up manifesting in different ways, as well as how that applies to the workplace. Now, let’s find out what works for Liz Wiltsie. Some of the thinkers Liz mentioned in our conversation: Janaya Future KhanJake ErnstJames-Olivia Chu HillmanDrive by Dan Pink ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * The key values that coach Mara Glatzel has built her business on* How her human-first approach to business gives her a framework for caring for herself and for her clients* The belief systems she’s worked on unlearning to better fulfill her values* How being “well-resourced” gives her what she needs to respond when things get stressful Years ago, I was the trainer at the Borders Books & Music I worked at. It probably won’t surprise you that I loved this role. I poured over the training manuals. I thought about better systems for acclimating a new bookseller to a store with some 90,000 titles. I took seriously my job to communicate company policy, as well as the special privilege of working for a company with a mission and values like ours. You can imagine me now putting air quotes around “special privilege.” Understandably, I couldn’t remember the company’s mission and values now. So looked them up and found them on an old Blogspot blog from around the time I reciting them to my trainees in the fluorescent-lit breakroom. Ready for this inspiring list? As of 2005, the values for Borders Group, Inc were: Leadership, Results orientation, Respect, People development, A positive workplace, and Customer service. Yeah. Nothing innovative there. You could probably look in the training manual for most mass retailers and find something remarkably similar. That’s the thing about company values, right? They seem to be there to sound good, to tell trainees that the company cares about more than profit. We roll our eyes or tune out completely. In practice, these values mean nothing. They mean nothing because they are rarely operationalized in any meaningful way. When Borders said they valued “respect,” how does that translate to the daily work of the average bookseller or warehouse employee? And who or what is doing the respecting? My fellow booksellers and I respected each other—for the most part, it was a great group of people to work with. But did I feel respected by corporate? Rarely. That’s not to say that I don’t believe any large corporation is capable of operationalizing their values. Patagonia, for instance, has a set of values that is designed to impact its decisions as a company and the daily work of employees. Patagonia’s values are more like directives: build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to protect nature, not bound by convention. Damn, that’s good. I can imagine sitting in a meeting about product development, or warehouse operations, or marketing and actually using those directives to guide both strategic direction and execution. And essentially, that’s what I mean when I talk about operationalizing your values. It’s taking what you say is important to you & your company and turning it into material decisions, procedures, and ways of working. It’s finding ways to get creative with “the way things are done” so that the way you’re actually doing things reflects what matters to you. I think this is of unique concern to small business owners because we have incredible potential for doing things differently—and so often just don’t. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much we take existing systems and ways of working for granted—and then find ways to operate within those conventions that make us feel lik... ★ Support this podcast ★

Systems have a reputation. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, as I have, “Oh, I’m just not a systems person,” you might know what I mean. Often, the way we talk about systems is tangled up in talk about software, procedures, rules, and a sort of legalistic structure for “this is how we do things here.” When you say, “I’m not a systems person,” you’re likely expressing the kind of claustrophobic feeling that comes from being confined to a set of rules—even if they’re rules you yourself created! When you say, “I am a systems person,” you might very well be expressing the relief that having clear instructions and a solid expectation of how a goal is accomplished can deliver. Systems are a way of easing anxiety for you. I can easily find myself in both camps. I might identify as a “systems person” in the morning and “not a systems person” by the afternoon. And I’ve noticed that, for me, there’s a moral component to how I’m feeling about systems at any given time. When I’m feeling like a systems person, I get the moral high ground of being someone who follows the rules and does things “the right way.” When I’m feeling like I’m NOT a systems person, I get the moral high ground of being a creative, think-outside-the-box kind of person. Of course, it’s just as easy to get down on myself about either side of the moral equation too. When I’m feeling especially systems-oriented, I often feel I’m not as creative as I should be. When I’m feeling creative, I often beat myself up for not following the rules. I have no idea if my moralizing about my waffling identity around systems is normal or not. But I suspect that I’m not alone. I bring all this up because I think it’s easy get caught up in moralizing about the way we run our businesses. It’s easy to translate “this is how we do things” to “this is the right way” to “I’m good because I do things the right way” or “I’m bad because I don’t do things the right way.” Morality, suffice to say, is also a system—it’s a cultural system for understanding what is good and what is bad, as well as what makes someone a good person and what makes someone a bad person. And like every paternalistic either/or system I can think of, moralizing tends to do more harm than good. Maybe you don’t see your identity around systems and your business as a moral issue. I might be way off in left field here! But, I gotta tell you, I hear a lot of confessions from business owners. They confess that they have procedures but don’t follow them. They confess that they don’t have a marketing system. They confess that they’re so tied to their procedures that they can’t think strategically about whether what they’re doing is actually creating the results they want. They confess that they’re stuck in analysis paralysis because they’re looking for the best system for achieving their goal. In other words, I hear confessions of perceived sins on either side of systems as a moral issue. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Tara explains how using a system-thinking approach to money makes it easier to invest in the growth of your business* Why cash flow is a 3-dimensional way to think about your business’s money* How the different components of a cash flow system work together to create a desired outcome* Why managing for cash flow creates the conditions to live out feminist values in your business It’s easy to think 2-dimensionally about the money in your business: revenue and expenses. But 2-dimensional thinking makes it much harder to find the money to grow. If you can start to think 3-dimensionally (revenue + expenses + time), then you can expand your opportunities. Managing for cash flow gives you a way to see the interconnected components of money in your business. Plus, it’s a way to powerful financial systems and live out feminist & anti-colonialist values. Find this episode in article form by clicking here. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why Coach Pony founder Christie Mims uses 2 “competing” sales funnels to accommodate for different ways of buying* How she melds both sales automation and a human approach to produce 7+ figure sales* The nuts & bolts of what both sales funnels entail and how they actually work together* Plus, why Christie’s approach is inspiring but, ultimately, might not be the best approach for you How reliable are your sales? How steadily do new customers buy? How loyal are your retainer clients or repeat customers? Every business owners wants to feel confident when it comes to sales. Not just how to close a sale, but really how the chance to make a sale presents itself, how the process evolves, and how that final decision gets made. Can you engineer a more reliable sales system? Yes, you sure can. But it’s not the “if this, then that” kind of process that many reductive sales courses try to sell you on. It would be awesome if I knew that every time I did a particular task, I could count on a sale. It would be awesome if I knew that stringing together a series of specific actions would supercharge my sales. But so many things impact the way people buy… that it’s impossible to reduce sales to a single process or procedure. That said, we can still dance with our sales systems! So let’s return to Donella Meadows’s article on dancing with systems. Meadows encourages us to “celebrate complexity.” Now, you might be thinking… “But Tara, what about building simple business models? What about creating simple marketing procedures?” I’m glad you asked! The reason we actively build simple structures, models, and procedures for our businesses is because the world is a complex place. When we focus on simplicity in how we design our businesses, we really can celebrate complexity in the world and our customers’ lives. Meadows writes: There’s something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines and not curves, to whole numbers and not fractions, to uniformity and not diversity, and to certainties and not mystery. But there is something else within us that has the opposite set of tendencies, since we ourselves evolved out of and are shaped by and structured as complex feedback systems. When it comes to sales, I believe our goal is to create the simplest system that celebrates the reality of complexity in the environment. So what makes the environment we’re selling in so complex? Timing, trends, current events, seasons, budgets, competition, competing messages, personal histories, family needs… The list could go on and on. Every customers brings their own complex set of influences to the table when they interact with your business—especially in the sales process. This is one of the reasons that “sales funnels” so often fail. A sales funnel is usually built from the business’s perspective—a perfect scenario of “if this, then that” actions that assume a lot about the people who are going through that funnel. But no matter how niche your target customer or client is, ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why Sean McMullin & Lou Blaser, from YellowHouse.Media, switched their project management software from Notion to Clickup (and why it’s not the right move for everyone!)* How they’ve reduced their podcast management procedure from 75 sub-tasks to 11 umbrella tasks* Why streamlining the procedure has allowed them to bring a more customized approach to each podcast they produce* How focusing on the system behind podcast production has helped them create a lot more capacity for new clients A couple of months back, I read a downright beautiful article about systems. Yes, you heard that right: a beautiful, thoughtful, and useful article about… systems. It was written by Donella Meadows, an influential environmental scientist and leading thinker on systems change in the 20th century. The article outlines 14 principles for *dancing* with systems. But today I want to focus on the first: get the beat. When we talk about business systems, it’s easy to default to software, automation, or project management. But a system is much more organic than that. And if we don’t allow for a system’s inherently organic nature, we miss out on really understanding that system in order to work with it, dance with it. Meadows explains that a mistake we so often make when we approach systems is that we see understanding the system as a way of predicting and controlling its output. She writes, “The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable.” I get that that might be frustrating—especially as we see data and the ability to instantly connect with customers as modes for the ultimate in business predictability. It can also be a relief. If the goal of understanding systems isn’t to control them or predict their output but to dance with them and learn from them, we don’t have to be so hard on ourselves! And that brings me to Meadows first dance step—get the beat. The mistake I see business owners make with systems is that they try to impose systems on their businesses. They create or build systems for different areas of their businesses. But that negates the systems already at work in a business. And inevitably, trying to create a system instead of investigating a system, leads to frustration. Meadows writes, “Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.” So let’s say you want to work on your marketing system. If you start with a blank page and start building something from scratch, you’re missing out on all of the data & feedback that already exists in your marketing system as it is now (whether you know it’s a system or not). If instead, you map out your existing marketing system, no matter how haphazard or messy, you can start to ask some really interesting questions about that system: * How did we get here?* How else could this work?* What might happen if we don’t make a change?* What are the long-term ripple effects of allowing this system to continue to play out... ★ Support this podcast ★

Personal strengths are like a photo filter. Imagine you’ve got a photo that’s… fine. You upload it to Instagram or VSCO or some fun photo editing app. And then you scroll through the filters until you find one that brings the picture to life. With the tap of a button, you can make the photo go from washed out colors to… black & white, or soft shades of peach and pink, or punchy shades of blues and greens. Your filter might up the contrast or even everything out a bit. Personal strengths can do the same thing for your business strategy, marketing tactics, or the way you deliver your offer. So what happens when we start to use personal strengths as a filter for business? First, it becomes much easier to make decisions about what steps to take next. The strengths filter makes it easier to see whether one path or another is going to work better for you. But second, your strengths filter can help you find creative ways to do some of those shoulds and supposed-tos that just feel so meh. What if you approach email marketing through the filter of relationship-building? That’s going to look pretty different than an email marketing strategy based on ideation or analysis. What if you create an online course but filter it through of teamwork? That’s going to look pretty different than an online course based on focus or competition. What if you prioritize networking but filter it through humor? That’s going to look different than networking based on discipline or strategy. And when you apply your strengths filter to come up with creative ways of reimagining these actions and systems, not only will they feel more natural to you, they’ll be more effective too. I’ve got four more stories of business owners leveraging their strengths for you today. And the thread that runs through each of them is how using personal strengths as a filter allowed them to make components of their businesses more natural and effective. You’ll hear from Lysa Greer, Mary Knox Miller (Nonprofit Video Lab), Dr. Nayla Bahri, Mytili Jagannathan, and Lisa Townsend on how they’ve leveraged their strengths. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why writer Kris Windley decided to learn how to illustrate her articles* How doodling has helped her work with her ADHD* How she finds the idea or image she wants to illustrate for each piece* The metaphor she uses to think about skill-building I’ve become a bit obsessed with the concept of “sensemaking.” Really, I’ve been obsessed with it my whole life, I just didn’t have a name for it. Sensemaking is the process of taking sensory information and situational knowledge and creating a framework for meaning and decision-making. Okay, I know, that sounds kind of heady. But really, we do it all the time. Imagine you venture into the kitchen after a long day in your home office. The kitchen is torn apart. You see dishes stacked on the counter, cupboard doors open, and pantry items covering the table. You smell a slightly chemical citrus scent in the air. Your spouse isn’t there to ask what the heck is going on. Quickly, you deduce that they got the idea to deep clean the kitchen and had to step away for a bit. The job is almost finished but there’s still a ways to go and you’re hungry for dinner. You take the initiative to order pizza. That’s sensemaking. You went from “what the heck is going on here?” To “dinner is on its way” in less than 60 seconds. Anyhow, I’ve always got my eye out for a new way to make sense of the world. A framework, a script, a visualization, a map, a diagram… I love these tools. And I make good use of them in my own head. But my sensemaking tools don’t always make it out of my head. In the last year or so, I’ve really started to recognize that I have a unique strength for explaining how I make sense of things and that my frameworks are helpful for others, too. Score another for neurodivergence! That said, it’s taken some practice find my public sensemaking rhythm. The way I write and speak has evolved quite a bit in a short time—at least from my perspective. But the other thing that’s shifted for me is the ability to turn ideas into a visualizations and graphic representations. I’ve never thought of myself as very good at visual art or graphic design—even though I wished I was. Then, I had a conversation with writer, developmental editor, and communications consultant Kris Windley. Kris told me all about how she’d been learning how to draw to support her writing—and that helped manage her attention & focus as she navigates ADHD. I don’t think I can overstate how much this got my wheels turning. It wasn’t until January that I really got to work on the project finding ways to illustrate my ideas. But once I got started, I couldn’t stop! Here 8 months later and almost a year after that conversation, I feel like I have a really powerful tool in my toolkit. And that that tool leverages a strength I had only been using at half-power. This episode is a rebroadcast but, if you follow my non-podcast work, I think it will have new meaning for you now—as it does for me. And regardless, I think it’s really encouraging to hear about how Kris has intentionally and methodically introduced this new skill into the way she works! ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why coach Reva Patwardhan counts her intrinsic sense of belonging as one of her top strengths* How “deep processing” allows her to work with high-achieving women in unexpected ways* How she’s learned to work with her ADHD instead of against it* What she’s discovered at the intersection of neurodivergence and being a woman of color I think a lot about belonging. In fact, “belonging” is an ongoing conversation between our community advocate, Shannon, and I. We talk about belonging because one of the biggest concerns that prospective Network members and new members have is whether they will belong. They ask if there are people like them in the community: people with a similar business model, people from the same industry, people who come from the same background they have. On one hand, these questions are easy to answer. Typically we can say, “Yes! There are people like you here.” But on the other hand, a sense of belonging isn’t just a factor of who you’re in proximity with. A sense of belonging isn’t situational. It’s intrinsic. And if through trauma, oppression, toxic relationships, injustice, or cruelty you’ve lost your sense of belonging, it doesn’t matter how much the people around you are like you. You can still feel separate and other. Belonging isn’t a switch you can turn on and off. At least not in my experience. One of the threads of that ongoing conversation that Shannon and I have about belonging is indeed about my experience—and about how her experience is pretty different. A couple of years ago, we reached the joint revelation that we have different default settings when it comes to belonging. When she walks in a room, she assumes she belongs. And in a uncommonly positive result of confirmation bias, she typically starts to confirm her belonging in all sorts of social and situational ways. When I walk in a room of people—which I try to avoid at all costs—I assume I don’t belong. I assume I’m missing the memo on something everyone else has known for all time. I feel cut off and I shut down. My own confirmation bias starts to pick out all the reasons why I do not belong in that room with those people. While that probably sounds pretty awful, and it is, I believe that it’s also caused me to build a strength in leadership. As a leader, I interact with a group in a different way. It’s understood that I am on the outside, not belonging in the same way to the group as others. And similarly, being on the outside, gives me a better perspective on the group and their challenges. So it works out pretty well. Sebene Selassie writes about a similar phenomenon in her extremely excellent book, You Belong. Sebene examines the benefits of living in the margins of society. She writes, “If we imagine each circle is made up of people who are facing inwards, the closer you are to the center, the less you see. Conversely, if you are in the outermost circles, you have the greatest perspective.” Are there real issues with being in the margins of society? Absolutely: lack of access to resources and lack of participation in decision-making chief among them. But operating on the outside gives us perspective we can use to do real good in the world. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * How Work Brighter founder Brittany Berger leverages her unique strengths to create a custom approach to productivity and structure* Why she tracks her mood and energy to make her working time more effective* How she’s reimagined traditional productivity “rules” through the lens of neurodivergence and chronic illness* How her obsession with pop culture has become a strength for creating compelling content How do you operate in a world that’s not designed for you? How do you make sense of instructions that weren’t written for you? How do you navigate expectations that weren’t set with you in mind? These are big, personal questions and, thankfully, we’ve started taking a look at the answers at a cultural level and not just at the individual level. But until we see some serious change to a culture that privileges white, male, thin, neurotypical, heterosexual, cisgendered, hierarchal, and non-disabled ways of living, we’ve got some adapting to do. It’s easy to think that these adaptations are a constraint. A limitation of what’s possible. And honestly, sometimes they are. But often, these adaptations are leveraged as strengths. Truthfully, I didn’t think these questions belonged to me for a long time. I thought I’d been gifted with talent, intelligence, and at least a bit of charisma and that I really should be able to make it all work pretty easily. It wasn’t until I ran straight into a wall of burnout after college that I started to question whether that was really true. It’s been 16 years since I hit that wall. Since I sat on my professor’s couch and cried that I just didn’t know if grad school was the next step for me. Since my mom took the truck up to Syracuse to move down the furniture we’d already moved into my grad school apartment. And over those 16 years, I’ve tried to fix myself. I’ve tried to become the kind of person who operates in this world naturally, who follows the instructions to a T, and who easily meets and exceeds expectations. But last year, I got curious. As I talked about some of my own breakthroughs and personal successes in terms of learning to manage myself better and execute on ideas, I got gentle messages from folks urging me to be careful about not taking neurodivergent experiences into account in the way I explained what I was working with. At first, my reaction to these messages was the deep concern that comes along with inadvertently harming someone or making them feel like they don’t belong. But then, once I understood their own experiences better, I started to wonder: is my experience really that different than theirs? Or rather, do my experiences fit the norms as neatly as I’d like them to? I found myself wanting to reply that I appreciated their messages, truly, and this doesn’t come easily to me. It’s the hardest work I’ve done in my life. Over time, the evidence grew and grew. No, my experience didn’t fit the norms. It might be different than other people’s but my sense that I didn’t belong to the shoulds and supposed-tos of culture, relationships, productivity, or emotions became clear. At the same time, I was hearing even more women talk about themselves and their experiences in ways that felt haltingly familiar... ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why Let’s Do The Books founder Mark Butler has been working on getting out of the way for his team* How he’s evolved the way he works to take a break from creating chaos while still leaning into his strengths for experimentation and ideation* Why he’s focused on finding the space to quiet his mind* How he’s created an environment where his team members can really thrive in ownership of their work Entrepreneurs have a reputation for having control issues. They also have a reputation for being real idea people. And what happens when you combine those two qualities? Well, it can be total chaos. Chaos can be building a system then immediately trying to quote-unquote improve it. Chaos can be hiring up a team but never really letting them do their jobs. Chaos can also be trying do 10 different things at once and juggle them all yourself. It’s not easy when it feels like your life or business are in chaos. It’s hard to find the space to take a mental break, let alone some time away from work. My buddy Mark Butler, has been working on lessening the chaos from the last few years and so I knew he was the perfect person to round out this series on taking a break. Mark is the founder of Let’s Do The Books, as well as a CFO for 7 and 8-figure coaching businesses. He’s generous, rigorous, super fun to hang out with, and makes for great bear bait (that’s a story for another time). Mark is actively working on quieting his mind, exploring how to create the best conditions for his team members to thrive, and learning when to get the heck out of the way—or else allow chaos to creep back in. We talk about all of those things—plus how his high value for family influences the direction he’s taking his work-life. Strap in. Let’s find out what works for Mark Butler. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why Jessica Abel believes carving out space to work on experimental and creative projects is key* The strategy she recommends for buying the time you need to do creative work* How she measures creative projects in “developmental markers” and “success markers”* And why she’s committed to building a team that helps her make room for big picture thinking and creative projects It’s one thing to get your business to a point that’s stable and sustainable. It’s another to make room for big projects like writing a book or building a new offer. And it’s yet another thing to carve out the space to work on a creative project that may or may not ever bring financial benefits. It’s those big projects—the business-related and the not-so-business-related—that so many business owners dream of being able to spend time on. Sometimes, we put them on our calendar—block out a week or even a long weekend—but then life happens. Some quote-unquote emergency bleeds into the time we’ve set aside. Other times, we dwell in the daydreaming. Pinterest boards are curated. Research is done. Ideas are floated past significant others or mastermind groups. But nothing material ever comes of it. While Tara will gladly tell you that I’m a huge fan of daydreaming, I also want to make at least some of those dreams real. Last week, when I talked with Jacquette Timmons about finding the perfect blend of your work days and weeks, I mentioned that one of the things in my particular blend is working on art throughout the days. I love that I’ve developed a working life that allows me to simultaneously kick butt & take names producing podcasts at the same time I’m exploring my passion for visual art. It’s taken commitment, experimentation, and a lot of work on business systems—not to mention some serious mindset work!—to get to that place. And that’s exactly what I wanted to talk with today’s guest about. What does it take to be able to carve out the time and energy to pursue big creative projects? Jessica Abel is the founder of The Autonomous Creative and the creator of The Creative Focus Workshop. She’s also a cartoonist, author, and educator. She helps all kinds of creative people juggle the work that pays with the work they dream about. Our conversation isn’t so much about taking a break from work entirely. It’s about taking a break from one kind of work to focus on the projects we so rarely make time for. Jessica and I talk about how her work has evolved over the years and how she’s able to juggle so many projects herself, as well as the patterns she’s noticed among creatives, the routines that can help us make sense of our time, and how she paces herself. Now, let’s find out what works for Jessica Abel! ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why financial behaviorist Jacquette Timmons is more interested in finding the right blend that finding a balance between work and life* How she approaches the way she engages with work to stave off burnout* Why rest is part of the work she does* How the structure of a business contributes to whether we’re able to find the right blend for ourselves Reminder, this month, Tara is taking a break from hosting and handing the mic over to her husband & business partner, Sean McMullin: I have a confession, dear listener. I was once late to the start of a group coaching call because I was… taking a nap. Through some combination of oversight and calendar failure, I missed that I had a call that I needed to be on until Tara woke me up! So embarrassing. And while I’m committed to making sure that never happens again, I’m equally committed to continuing to take naps in the middle of the day. Taking a nap in the middle of the day is one thing I’ve done to find the right blend of work, rest, and recharging that works for me. It’s a small way that I take a break almost every day. At different times in my journey with YellowHouse.Media, I’ve been overwhelmed and overworked. It felt like there were never enough hours in the day or days in the week. And that is not okay with me. So I started to make changes. I changed the time I got started in the morning, I changed the project management tool we use, and I changed how I interacted with clients. Soon enough, I wasn’t just feeling less overwhelmed and overworked. I had time for a nap! I also had time to take breaks periodically throughout the day to work on my art. Solid systems, strong client relationships, naps, and art is the perfect blend for my day. You probably have your own ideal blend for how you spend your time—whether working or otherwise. Maybe you save working on your big projects until after 10pm. Maybe you take 1 week off per quarter. Maybe you don’t schedule calls on Mondays or Tuesdays. And if you don’t have found the right blend for you yet, now is the perfect time to think about what it might be and start experimenting you way to it. Today, I have a conversation with one of my oldest business friends for you on exactly this subject. Jacquette Timmons is speaker, coach, and financial behaviorist who helps people make human choices with their money. I wanted to find out what taking a break and taking care of herself meant to her. And eventually the conversation got to this topic of finding the right blend—so that whether you’re working, resting, exercising, eating, or exploring your other interests, you feel satisfied and fulfilled with the way you’re spending your time. Now, let’s find out what works for Jacquette Timmons! ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Sean McMullin asks Break The Ceiling host Susan Boles what she’s learned about creating a business that runs itself* Why maintenance mode is key to creating the space to experiment and try out new ideas without breaking your business* How to view your business in smaller pieces to create your own minimum viable maintenance mode* Why creating the systems you need to take a break before there’s a crisis is critical This month’s series is all about “taking a break”—so Tara is taking a break from hosting and handing the mic over to her husband, producer, and business partner, Sean McMullin. Take it away, Sean! I never want to do work I can’t walk away from. When Tara and I started YellowHouse.Media, it was really important to me that we set it up in such a way that—eventually—it could run itself. We had built this great life together. We could travel, explore, and pursue interests outside of work—and I was only going to be game for this whole entrepreneurship thing if it wouldn’t completely disrupt that life. We actually talked about our initial approach to building a business that could work without us in Episode 232. And later in September, we’ll talk again—this time with our production coordinator Lou Blaser—about our latest steps in making that happen. It’s taken some serious time and intention to get to the point where taking real time off or dramatically reducing hours for an extended time is possible. But here we are. Last week, we took our first trip of this Hot Vax Summer. And later this month, we’re driving out to Montana to enjoy a month in the mountains again. We’ll still be working but the business will largely be in maintenance mode. Which brings me to today’s topic. When Tara and I decided I’d take over for her this month and explore the topic of taking a break, I immediately knew the first person I wanted to talk to. My friend and YHM podcaster Susan Boles. Susan is the founder of ScaleSpark and the host of Break The Ceiling. She has an eye for efficiency, systems, and automation that makes her the perfect candidate for talking about how to put a business in maintenance mode. And, Susan, like many others, was forced to wrestling with the reality of building a business made for maintenance mode when the pandemic hit and schools closed. During our conversation, you’ll hear that story and why it’s so important to her to have a business that runs in maintenance mode. You’ll also hear how Susan can fall prey to shiny object syndrome and other distractions just like any other business owner, as well as how she’s combating self-sabotage and how she balances work as a creative outlet with taking breaks. Now, let’s find out what works for Susan Boles! ★ Support this podcast ★