What Works

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 ★