What Works

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 ★