What Works: Recent Episodes

Tara McMullin

Exploring how we navigate the 21st-century economy with our humanity intact

Today’s episode is a sneak peek of Work In Practice, my new 12-week training program for guides of all kinds. This program offers a toolkit for identifying the beliefs and stories that make a more sustainable relationship with work possible. If you’re a coach, consultant, manager, or trainer who works with people rethinking how they work, this is for you.

"Anyone can succeed if they work hard and apply themselves!" That's the voice of meritocracy.

Unfortunately, that sweet, encouraging voice can easily turn to "If anyone can succeed if they work hard and apply themselves, why aren't you working harder?!"

Meritocracy sounds great when you're on the side of opportunity. However, personal setbacks and systemic oppression can easily turn meritocracy into the voice of failure.

Footnotes:

Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard in Slate's Juris Prudence and on 5-4
Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
"Leaving the Cult of Never Enough with Manisha Thakor" on What Works
"What is Capitalism Realism?" on What Works
The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits
"'The Meritocracy Trap,' Explained" by Roge Karma
Psychopoliticsby Byung-Chul Han

Every episode of What Works is also published in essay form and delivered in my newsletter: whatworks.fyi

Work with me: I’m teaching a 12-week training program for coaches, managers, consultants, and guides of all kinds starting in September. The program is called Work In Practice, and it’s a deep dive into the social, political, and economic systems that impact what we believe about work.

Love What Works? Support the show and help me reach more people with assumption-busting ideas about work, business, and culture by becoming a Premium Subscriber. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus episodes, full-length interviews, and quarterly workshops

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There are rules you know about—and rules you don't. Some rules are written down—and other rules are "just the way things are." And there are rules that make things clear to everyone—and rules that exclude through their lack of clarity.

Charlie Gilkey is on a mission to bring those unclear rules and unspoken agreements out in the open and improve the way we work in the process. His new book, Team Habits: How Small Changes Lead to Extraordinary Results, is both a treatise on better work and a detailed manual for achieving it.

In this episode, I talk with Charlie about how what seems obvious often isn't—and how that negatively impacts our work environments. We also talk about how to start changing things for the better.

This episode is one part of my longer conversation with Charlie! You'll hear more from him in my upcoming series, Strange New Work. Coming in September!

Footnotes:

Team Habits by Charlie Gilkey
Get the Better Team Habits newsletter on Substack
More about Charlie and the team at Productive Flourishing
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Every episode of What Works is also published in essay form and delivered in my newsletter: whatworks.fyi

Work with me: I’m teaching a 12-week training program for coaches, managers, consultants, and guides of all kinds starting in September. The program is called Work In Practice, and it’s a deep dive into the social, political, and economic systems that impact what we believe about work.

Love What Works? Support the show and help me reach more people with assumption-busting ideas about work, business, and culture by becoming a Premium Subscriber. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus episodes, full-length interviews, and quarterly workshops—including August 24's Breaking the Self-Sabotage Cycle.

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Play, learn, work, retire—those are the four stages of what Mauro Guillén calls the sequential mode of life. In his new book, The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society, he proposes a new story for moving through life. It's a story that actually reflects the facts on the ground—rather than our grandparents' idea of what life was supposed to look like.

In this episode, I talk with Guillén about his research and his vision for how life, learning, and work could be different.

Footnotes:

The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Societyby Mauro Guillén
Find out more about Mauro Guillén

Every episode of What Works is also published in essay form and delivered in my newsletter: whatworks.fyi

Work with me: I’m teaching a 12-week training program for coaches, managers, consultants, and guides of all kinds starting in September. The program is called Work In Practice, and it’s a deep dive into the social, political, and economic systems that impact what we believe about work.

Love What Works? Support the show and help me reach more people with assumption-busting ideas about work, business, and culture by becoming a Premium Subscriber. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus episodes, full-length interviews, and quarterly workshops—including August 24's Breaking the Self-Sabotage Cycle. Upgrade your subscription today!

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This is the 8th edition of This is Not Advice, my "not-advice" column for premium subscribers of What Works. Today, I'm talking about our over-reliance on metrics and how easily we're seduced by reductive data. When does a metric turn into an incentive for bad behavior? And why are we so happy to accept the feeling of clarity and certainty without actually understanding what's going on?

Click here to upgrade your subscription and get the full episode! Or learn more about becoming a Premium Subscriber.

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Making work for the public seems to come with a slew of fuzzy social expectations. What do we owe our readers, listeners, viewers, and followers? What more is expected beyond the post, episode, or video? How do you navigate the tension between care and boundaries?

When I came across a LinkedIn post that Randi Buckley made, I felt a wave of relief. Her answer to those questions? Nothing. We owe nothing more than we've already given. In this episode, I share wisdom from Randi, additional wisdom from Jordan Maney, and a lot of the inner workings of my own mind.

Footnotes:

The LinkedIn post that started it all
Find out more about Randi Buckley
Find out more about Jordan Maney
No Time to Spare by Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's first blog post

NEW: I’m teaching a 12-week training program for coaches, managers, consultants, and guides of all kinds starting in September. The program is called Work In Practice, and it’s a deep dive into the social, political, and economic systems that impact what we believe about work.

Every episode of What Works is also published in essay form and delivered in my newsletter: whatworks.fyi

Love What Works? Support the show and help me reach more people with assumption-busting ideas about work, business, and culture by becoming a Premium Subscriber. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus episodes, full-length interviews, and quarterly workshops—including August 24's Breaking the Self-Sabotage Cycle. Upgrade your subscription today!

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The media give us wildly exaggerated images of wealth and consumption. And even if we recognize that a tv show or an Instagram account is more fantasy than reality, those images impact what we believe we should be earning and buying. MoneyZen author Manisha Thakor calls the result Counterfeit Financial Culture and argues that it's one of the reasons we end up feeling like we're never quite enough.

In this episode, Manisha details Counterfeit Financial Culture, and I offer the mimetic theory of desire as additional context for understanding the situation.

Footnotes:

Find out more about Manisha Thakor
MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your Enough by Manisha Thakor
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis
Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and the New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han
Capitalism and Desire by Todd McGowan

NEW: I’m teaching a 12-week training program for coaches, managers, consultants, and guides of all kinds starting in September. The program is called Work In Practice, and it’s a deep dive into the social, political, and economic systems that impact what we believe about work.

Every episode of What Works is also published in essay form and delivered in my newsletter: whatworks.fyi

Love What Works? Support the show and help me reach more people with assumption-busting ideas about work, business, and culture by becoming a Premium Subscriber. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus episodes, full-length interviews, and quarterly workshops—including August 24's Breaking the Self-Sabotage Cycle. Upgrade your subscription today!

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At age 50, Manisha Thakor realized that she'd sacrificed her life at the altar of work. How did that happen? And what was she to do about it? Manisha's new book tackles how to unwind a toxic relationship with work and money.

Footnotes:

MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your Enough by Manisha Thakor
Find out more about Manisha Thakor
Alienation by Rahel Jaeggi
Capitalism and Desire by Todd McGowan
What Works by Tara McMullin

NEW: I’m teaching a 12-week training program for coaches, managers, consultants, and guides of all kinds starting in September. The program is called Work In Practice, and it’s a deep dive into the social, political, and economic systems that impact what we believe about work.

Every episode of What Works is also published in essay form and delivered in my newsletter: whatworks.fyi

Love What Works? Support the show and help me reach more people with assumption-busting ideas about work, business, and culture by becoming a Premium Subscriber. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus episodes, full-length interviews, and quarterly workshops—including August 24's Breaking the Self-Sabotage Cycle. Upgrade your subscription today!

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This is an excerpt from the 7th edition of This is Not Advice—a not-advice column exclusively for premium subscribers. In this episode, I take a closer look at flexibility. When is it a feature? When is it a bug? When does flexibility create more opportunities for learning or value? And when does it devolve into chaos?

To hear the whole episode, become a premium subscriber for just $7 per month. You'll get twice monthly This is Not Advice episodes, plus (mostly) full-length interviews with the people I feature on the show, and more! Go to whatworks.fyi/subscribe

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This episode originally ran on May 25, 2022. It's been lightly remixed for today's release!

“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 episode, 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 Annie
Individualism and Economic Order by Friedrich Hayek
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
“The Philosophers: Loneliness & Totalitarianism” on Vox Conversations

Every What Works episode is also published in essay form in my newsletter. Subscribe FREE or become a premium subscriber for bonus content for just $7/month. Go to: whatworks.fyi

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Individualism and Economic Order

So much of our modern discourse around productivity, empowerment, entrepreneurship, and personal growth includes messages about our bodies. These messages might not be explicit, but the messages are there—and our brains pick them up loud and clear.

Similarly, we might not realize that we’re sharing messages that insert themselves into how others perceive their own bodies—but many of us are. It’s impossible to talk about self-discipline, accountability, or efficiency without those concepts leaving their marks on our flesh.

This episode covers a tiny sliver of all the ways that the medium of self-help acts on our bodies. But my hope is that it will encourage you to think critically about the messages you receive about your body and the messages you share that might impact others’ bodies.

You’ll hear from independent beauty culture journalist Jessica DeFino, body confidence influencer Tiffany Ima, and Flaunt Your Fire founder India Jackson.

This episode contains frank talk about bodies, weight, beauty, dieting, and related topics. I know that these subjects can trigger harmful thoughts and behaviors for me if I’m not careful. So please, take care while listening to this episode.

This episode originally aired on October 18, 2022. It's been slightly updated for this rebroadcast.

Footnotes:

Subscribe to Jessica DeFino’s newsletter about beauty culture and the beauty industry.
Follow Tiffany Ima on Instagram.
Listen to the Flaunt Your Fire podcast and learn more about India Jackson.
Erica Courdae on reconsidering your normal, as well as “Normal is a Life with Michelle Kuei” on the Pause on the Play podcast.
“Body acceptance stops at the skin. Why?” by Jessica DeFino
“The Skin as an Antidote to Consumerism” by Jessica DeFino
“How White Supremacy and Capitalism Influence Beauty Culture” by Jessica DeFino in TeenVogue
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon
“Postscript on Societies of Control” by Gilles Deleuze
Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
“Rachel Hollis Part 1: Hashtag Relatable” on Maintenance Phase
“The Trouble with Calories” on Maintenance Phase
“Bodybuilding vs Powerlifting vs Weightlifting” on Shape
Confidence Culture by Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill
Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman
3 Books for Remembering “You Have a Body”: On disability, on chronic illness, and on our bodies in society

You can find essay versions of every What Works episode at whatworks.fyi - where you can become a premium subscriber, support my work, and get bonus content for just $7 per month. Upgrade today!

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This is an episode of "This is Not Advice," a bonus podcast I do for premium subscribers of What Works. Instead of just a teaser this week, I wanted to share the whole episode with you. If you'd like to receive future episodes, go to whatworks.fyi/subscribe and become a premium subscriber for just $7/month.

For this edition of This is Not Advice, I wanted to piggyback on the conversation I had with Jay Acunzo about social media generally and Threads specifically. Part of the conversation that didn't make it into the main piece involved the ratio of how much creating versus consuming we do online. On this, Jay and I have very different philosophies. I don't think he's "doing it wrong," but I did want to tease out the factors that influence whether we [can] spend more time creating or consuming online—and how that impacts the work we do.

It's an episode about craft, gender, genius, and moving beyond the creating versus consuming dichotomy.

Click here to read the full piece and get links to everything I cited in the piece!

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This is an episode about Meta's new app, Threads. It's also about Substack and Substack's new-ish feature, Notes. But really, it's an episode about what we're looking for from the category we call "social media" and how we think about achieving those ends. And perhaps what it's really, really about is how we go looking for and creating meaning in the digital sphere.

Jay Acunzo, a writer, podcaster, and public speaker who thinks a lot about online content, was one of the 100+ million people to give Threads a try over the last week. I was not. So I wanted to see how he was approaching the platform, why he joined in the first place, and maybe, just maybe, how he's thinking about making meaning online.

Footnotes:

Find out more about Jay Acunzo, his podcast, and his newsletter
Substack Notes
"Threads is a mecca of Millennial brain rot" by Kate Lindsay on Embedded
"Meta unspools Threads" by Casey Newton on Platformer
"To quit or not quit social media: opportunity cost can help you decide" on What Works
John Austin's How to Do Things With Words
Performativity in the theory of Judith Butler
"Queer Failure" by Kate Tyson

Find written versions of every What Works episode at whatworks.fyi

Love What Works? Consider becoming a premium subscriber for just $7/month. Not only do you help support my work, but you also get access to bonus episodes and other goodies.

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"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," say Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek.

Capitalist liberal democracy is construed as the "end of history"—the culmination of millennia of civilizational progress, the inevitable outcome of a long march toward justice and freedom. But is it? And if it's not the best system for our economic and political needs, what is the alternative?

It's almost impossible to imagine. But, despite what Margaret Thatcher said, there is an alternative—many, in fact. We just haven't dreamed them up yet.

This is the argument of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, a great little book that wrestles with big questions and ends on a surprisingly hopeful note.

In this episode, I'll share some reflections on our identities as consumers and the nature of capitalist realism. Then, you'll hear the latest episode of the Books Applied Podcast with Iggy Perillo. Iggy and I discussed the book for her podcast and I loved it so much that I wanted to share it with you, too!

Footnotes:

Iggy Perillo and WSL Leadership
Books Applied Podcast
Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
"Media Frames UPS Strike as Harming You, the Consumer and Protagonist of Reality" by Adam Johnson in The Column

As always, you can find my opening essay, plus a condensed transcript of my conversation with Iggy, at whatworks.fyi

Love What Works? You can support my research and writing by becoming a premium subscriber on Substack for just $7/month. Thanks in advance!

Join me for a workshop on how to pitch yourself to podcasts! I'll walk you through how to find shows to pitch, what to include in your pitch, how to prepare, and how to ace your interview. The 90-minute workshop is Wednesday, July 12 at 12:30pm ET/9:30am PT. Find out more at yellowhouse.media/workshops

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Welcome to the 5th edition of This is Not Advice, a non-advice column for premium subscribers of What Works. If you’re already a premium subscriber, thank you! If you’re not, I still think you’re great—and you can read a solid chunk of this column for free. Or, subscribe to get access to full-length columns and podcast episodes.

Or, read this excerpt here.

Next week, I’m teaching a workshop on how to pitch yourself to appear on podcasts for YellowHouse.Media. I’ll show you how to find shows to pitch, how to think like a producer, and how to prepare for your interview. Click here to learn more & register.

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"Failure" got a glow-up sometime in the last 20 years. Instead of something to be feared, gurus tell us to embrace failure. That failure is a waypoint on the path to success. But this shift in our relationship with failure has only further inscribed the winner-loser binary that causes so much of our anxiety about the future.

What if "failure" wasn't part of the "success" formula? What if we looked beyond conventional notions of failure and success to question whether those ideas even matter at all? Whether they serve us at all?

Today on the podcast, Kate Tyson (Strathmann) is queering failure. She's questioning what it means to build a business or a project without the normative notions of success and failure. And how calling those norms into question allows us to imagine new and different ways to do business—or any kind of venture.

"Queer Failure" is an excerpt from [Im]Possible Business by Kate Tyson.

Footnotes:

[Im]Possible Business by Kate Tyson
Follow Kate's writing on Substack
The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam
Fox Market and Bar in Montpelier, Vermont
"Don't Bail Out the Restaurant Industry" by Tunde Wey
Saidiya Hartman
Étaín Underthings
Runway's Entrepreneur Universal Basic Income program
Wanderwell Bookkeeping and Consulting
"Queer Theory" by Nancy Harding in Key Concepts in Critical Management Studies

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Buckle up—today's episode was inspired by something that got me really worked up this week: "I think home-baking is one of the stupidest things anyone can engage in," says Rick Easton of Jersey City's Bread and Salt.

This episode is about shoulds and supposed-tos, baking at home, and the ways we devalue certain kinds of labor. Whether or not home-baking is your thing, you'll recognize the way value is narrowly defined by culture and, I think, gain new language for the worthiness of work that doesn't fit the capitalist mode.

Footnotes:

"Leave the Baking to the Professionals" by Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker
Bread, and How to Eat It by Rick Easton and Melissa McCart
"On Bread" via From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy
"What could 'food is political' mean?" via From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy
King Arthur Baking: Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Loaf
Breadhead by Greg Wade
History of Low-Carb Diets on Wikipedia
"I love bread!" Weight Watchers commercial
"Home Cooking can be a Feminist Act" by Nigella Lawson
"Men More Likely Than Women to be Seen as Brilliant" via NYU
"When Male Chefs Fear the Specter of 'Women's Work'" by Meghan McCarron, Eater
"The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" by Audre Lorde,YouTube
"The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" by Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Essay versions of every episode of What Works are published at whatworks.fyi — subscribe FREE to have them delivered straight to you. Or become a paid subscriber for just $7 per month and get access to bonus content, discounts on workshops, and more! Go to whatworks.fyi to learn more.

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"Outsiders" shoulder a disproportionate burden when it comes to fitting in. Can we demand more from the "insiders?"

This is a preview of the 4th installment of This is Not Advice, a not-advice column for paid subscribers of What Works. If you’re not a paid, enjoy the first half of this essay (audio or written) or upgrade your subscription to access the whole thing. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus content and help me make this show!

For a written version of this episode, go to: www.whatworks.fyi

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What gets labeled as "authentic" is often quite predictable. It's a market-compatible expression of what was once something unique or personal. Authenticity is a vibe—and a valuable one at that.

"Predictably unique" is how David A. Banks defines authenticity in his book, The City Authentic. Authenticity, or what's "predictably unique," describes how culture, place, and style are packaged to become recognizable—and, therefore, consumable—to a general audience.

And while Banks's interest is in the politics of urban planning, his analysis spoke to a question I've pondered for almost as long as I've been a Very Online Person: Why does authenticity often feel so fake?

How can a form of expression feel legitimately authentic one day and discernibly contrived or derivative the next? Is it the expression or my perception of it that changes? Why does "authentic" become an aesthetic, a legible set of features that denotes the "real?" And why does formulaic authenticity convey such social capital (or at least promise to)?

I tackle these questions and more in this episode!

Footnotes:

The City Authentic by David A. Banks
"'She Looks Like an Instagram:' How Empowerment Became a Brand" by Tara McMullin
"The Strange Logic of Value in the Attention Economy" by Tara McMullin
The Jargon of Authenticity by Theodor Adorno
"Personal Branding and the Crafting of Self" by Tara McMullin
The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media by Emily Hund
How to be Authenticby Skye Cleary

Every episode of What Works is also published as an essay. Go to read.explorewhatworks.com or subscribe to get them automatically delivered to you! You can also chip in $7 per month to support my work and to get access to bonus content.

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On June 8, Skye Pillsbury opened the latest edition of her newsletter, The Squeeze, with the header RIP Gimlet. She continued:

I’m heartbroken over the news that Spotify has laid off another 200 podcast employees, though I’m not shocked.
— Skye Pillsbury, The SqueezeI devoured Alex Blumberg's Startup when it first came out, which was about a year before I started podcasting. Then, I inhaled Reply All when it launched, and despite its later troubles, was genuinely moved by its final episode. I lapped up Blumberg's earnest interviews with entrepreneurs on Without Fail. I even had the privilege of interviewing Blumberg during a course I taught at CreativeLive.

I followed Gimlet's acquisition by Spotify with interest (and a healthy dose of skepticism). The bumpy ride that they've had since then was utterly predictable. Though, like Pillsbury, I find the news that Gimlet is no more—at least in any recognizable sense—quite upsetting.

This short dispatch is about podcasting and the podcast industry—but really, it's about why we shouldn't judge success—or run companies—using the logic of Wall Street.

Footnotes:

"RIP Gimlet" in The Squeeze by Skye Pillsbury
"Spotify to Layoff 200 Employees in Podcast Strategy Shift" by Amanda Holpuch, New York Times
Startup by Alex Blumberg & Gimlet Media (Excerpts from Season 1, Episodes 1, 2, and 4)
Reply All by Alex Goldman, Emmanuel Dsotzi, PJ Vogt, and Gimlet Media
Without Fail by Alex Blumberg & Gimlet Media
"Podcast Companies, Once Walking on Air, Feel the Strain of Gravity" by Reggie Ugwu, New York Times
"A U.F.O. Podcast Zooms Past the Competition" by Reggie Ugwu, New York Times
"Crooked Media Hires Vice’s Lucinda Treat as First CEO, Gets Funding From George Soros’ Investment Firm" by Todd Spangler, Variety
"'You Paid WHAT?!' Or, How Echo Chambers Distort Prices and the Way We Think" by Tara McMullin

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Every episode is also published in essay form at: taramcmullin.substack.com

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I’m about to write the most journalistic thing I’ve ever written: I received a tip.

I wish I could say it was an “anonymous tip” because that sounds even more journalistic. But it wasn’t anonymous, though I won’t say who it was. Anyhow, my source told me about a small business owner—someone who sells online courses and does quite well—paying an outrageous sum for a fairly standard service.

This, of course, was not an isolated incident. I didn't really need a tip. I know all about this kind of thing. Wildly inflated prices grace all manner of products and services within the creator economy, coaching industry, and "online business" space in general.

‘What’s going on?’ my source wanted to know. ‘How do people get caught paying so far above market rate? And why do people charge prices so out of whack with the market?’ I totally paraphrased all that. Here's what my source really asked about: "the gaslighting inflationary online pricing bubble."

In this episode, I endeavor to get to the bottom of the Gaslighting Inflationary Pricing Bubble Online—GIPBO. I discover that it's not so much an economic problem (although that's part of the story). It's an epistemological one.

Footnotes:

"Hostile Epistemology" by C. Thi Nguyen
"Neoclassical Economics" on Investopedia
"The Epistemic Seduction of Markets" by Lisa Herzog in The Raven
"Escape the Echo Chamber" by C. Thi Nguyen
"The Art of Rent" by David Harvey

Love What Works? Share the show or newsletter with a friend who would appreciate a critical look at work, business, and leadership in the 21st century.

And please consider supporting the work I do by becoming a paid subscriber. This episode alone took over 30 hours to research, write, edit, and produce. You can contribute (and get access to some sweet bonuses!) for just $7/month. Click here to contribute!

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Over the last two years, I've transitioned from identifying as a business owner first to identifying as a writer and podcast first. In the first year—2021—I didn't realize that's what I was doing. But over the course of this year, it was quite intentional. Making that shift has allowed me to explore creative territory that I didn't think I could explore when my primary function was content marketing.

In this week's episode, I talk with India Jackson about transitioning from content marketer to writer and podcaster. I share what it's meant for my work, my sense of identity, and my mental health. Plus, we talk about some of the difficult decisions I had to make on this journey.

Tune in to India's show, Flaunt Your Fire, wherever you listen to What Works or at flauntyourfire.com

Footnotes:

Find out more about India Jackson and Flaunt Your Fire
Find out more about Pause On The Play
Hear India on EP 398: Good Bodies and EP 294: Offering Bespoke Services
Jay Acunzo's LinkedIn post

Grab your copy of my new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting!

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The shelves are full of products that promise to fulfill your values: ecofriendly, independent, cooperative, woman-owned, Black-owned, sustainable, etc. And right on! Unfortunately, not every product that claims to align with your values really does. Often, values-marketing is more about maintaining the status quo than it is about doing things differently. That’s what I call “values hijacking.”

Values hijacking occurs on the consumer level, but it also occurs on the cultural and political levels. Marketing, government policy, incentive structures, and cultural norms can all short circuit our critical thinking about what action to take.

On today’s episode, you’ll hear about one my husband’s biggest soapbox issues, and then I’ll turn the mic over to Erica Courdae, host and founder of Pause on The Play, and we’ll go deep on how our values become hijacked by systems of power.

Footnotes:

More about Erica Courdae and Pause on the Play.
POTP Episode 178: Values hijacking, capitalism, and systemic change with Tara McMullin

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What is a goal really? What purpose does a goal really serve? And is that purpose truly benefiting us, the goal-setters?

These are big, messy questions. But they are far from abstract. Our answers to these questions—whether we know it or not—shape the way we work and live on a daily basis. This intermediary space—the space between philosophical questions and practical implications—is a place I happily hang out in all day long. Luckily, I know someone who likes hanging out in that place as much as I do!

His name is Charlie Gilkey. He’s a friend of the pod—as well as the co-founder of Productive Flourishing and author of Start Finishing. He’s also the host of the Productive Flourishing podcast.

Today’s episode is a rebroadcast from the Productive Flourishing feed. Charlie and I talk about why in the world I wrote a productivity book, how the cultural code we operate in impacts the way we plan and set goals, how that code disproportionately harms some more than others, and much, much more.

Footnotes:

What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting by Tara McMullin
More about Charlie Gilkey
Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey
Listen to Productive Flourishing
Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

Written versions of each episode drop on Thursdays at explorewhatworks.com. Get them deliverable to your inbox by subscribing at explorewhatworks.com/weekly.

Introducing Recovering Overachiever Club

Recovering Overachiever Club is a 3-week deep dive into why we strive and what we can do differently in the new year. Join us November 29-December 20 for exclusive essays, podcast episodes, and conversation—oh, and earn a few merit badges, too. Learn more!

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Do we really have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé? Yes. And no. And… it’s complicated.

There is a never-ending stream of advice about how to make the most of your time. And honestly? Most of it is just bullsh*t. That’s because there is no way to hack yourself or your work to produce more in less time if your emotions are fried, your energy is drained, or you’re dealing with the effects chronic illness.

This conversation—originally broadcast as a Spotify Live—is an unflinching look at what it means to consider our multidimensional capacity in the realms of work and life. You’ll hear from my friends Jenny Blake, author of Free Time, and Charlie Gilkey, author of Start Finishing—and me, too!

Note: the audio quality on this episode is totally listenable—but it’s not our normal podcast quality.

Footnotes:

Get What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting by Tara McMullin
Find out more about Jenny Blake
Buy Free Time by Jenny Blake
Find out more about Charlie Gilkey
Buy Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey

Written versions of our podcast episodes land on Thursdays at explorewhatworks.com. Get them delivered straight to your inbox by subscribing at explorewhatworks.com/weekly

Introducing Recovering Overachiever Club

Recovering Overachiever Club is a 3-week deep dive into why we strive and what we can do differently in the new year. Join us November 29-December 20 for exclusive essays, podcast episodes, and conversation—oh, and earn a few merit badges, too. Learn more!

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It’s been almost exactly 7 years since this podcast first launched as Profit. Power. Pursuit. Since then, we’ve produced 400 regular episodes (with some bonuses here and there). You know, I’ve written many more than 400 blog posts and emails. But we don’t number those—plus, they are published across different sites on the web, so I never have a handled on just how many times I’ve hit “publish.”

400 episodes is a lot. It’s more than the vast majority of podcasters will ever make. The only reason I bring that up is because today’s episode is about the power of practice. Developing a podcasting practice is the only way to consistently put out a strong episode week after week. But developing a practice of any kind was not something I knew how to do 7 years ago.

This episode dives into what I’ve learned about practice from 7 years of podcasting. Plus, I share an excerpt from my book (out today!) about the satisfaction of practice in an achievement-oriented world.

Footnotes:

Join Tara TODAY for a live reading and Q&A about the book
Buy What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting wherever you buy books!
Listen to Tara’s interviews about the book on this Spotify playlist

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Hustle. Grind. Boss up. Do more. Love them or hate them, these words are embedded into the ways we think about work and entrepreneurship. But as we’ve seen with the enormous growth of the r/anti-work subreddit and the panic about quiet quitting, more people than ever are thinking about different ways to go about building their lives, careers, and businesses.

As we close out the Self-Help, LLC series, I wanted to address where our productivity hang-ups come from, who our productivity really benefits, and how we might go about doing things differently. This episode is in 2 parts. The first half or so is an introduction to how employers (including self-employers) profit from unpaid work and why the productivity-wage gap has become so immense. The second half of the episode is my conversation with Jadah Sellner, about the vision for business she lays out in her new book, She Builds.

Footnotes:

Find out more about Jadah Sellner and her new book, She Builds.
“TikTok ‘5-to-9’ Trend Shows Quiet Quitting Hasn’t Killed Hustle Culture” on Bloomberg
Dolly Parton rewrites her working woman’s anthem for SquareSpace
THE ULTIMATE MORNING ROUTINE (parody)
Revolution at Point Zero, essays by Silvia Federici
Data on the productivity-wage gap (Economic Policy Institute)
Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Essay versions of each episode of the podcast come out on Thursdays at explorewhatworks.com and in my newsletter. Sign up free: explorewhatworks.com/weekly

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

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I wanted to include an episode on bodies in the Self-Help, LLC series because so much of our modern discourse around productivity, empowerment, entrepreneurship, and personal growth includes messages about our bodies. These messages might not be explicit, but the messages are there—and our brains pick them up loud and clear.

Similarly, we might not realize that we’re sharing messages that insert themselves into how others perceive their own bodies—but many of us are. It’s impossible to talk about self-discipline, accountability, or efficiency without those concepts leaving their marks on our flesh.

This episode covers a tiny sliver of all the ways that the medium of self-help acts on our bodies. But my hope is that it will encourage you to think critically about the messages you receive about your body and the messages you share that might impact others’ bodies.

You’ll hear from independent beauty culture journalist Jessica DeFino, body confidence influencer Tiffany Ima, and Flaunt Your Fire founder India Jackson.

This episode contains frank talk about bodies, weight, beauty, dieting, and related topics. I know that these subjects can trigger harmful thoughts and behaviors for me if I’m not careful. So please, take care while listening to this episode.

Footnotes:

Subscribe to Jessica DeFino’s newsletter about beauty culture and the beauty industry.
Follow Tiffany Ima on Instagram.
Listen to the Flaunt Your Fire podcast and learn more about India Jackson.
Erica Courdae on reconsidering your normal, as well as “Normal is a Life with Michelle Kuei” on the Pause on the Play podcast.
“Body acceptance stops at the skin. Why?” by Jessica DeFino
“The Skin as an Antidote to Consumerism” by Jessica DeFino
“How White Supremacy and Capitalism Influence Beauty Culture” by Jessica DeFino in TeenVogue
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon
“Postscript on Societies of Control” by Gilles Deleuze
Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
“Rachel Hollis Part 1: Hashtag Relatable” on Maintenance Phase
“The Trouble with Calories” on Maintenance Phase
“Bodybuilding vs Powerlifting vs Weightlifting” on Shape
Confidence Culture by Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill
Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman
3 Books for Remembering “You Have a Body”: On disability, on chronic illness, and on our bodies in society

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

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We form an impression of our voices early in life. While it might shift some as we age, those impressions tend to stick with us. For many of us, what we learn about our voices is how their don’t quite measure up to the ideal: too high, too low, too soft, too loud, too this, too that. This is especially true for women, queer people, transgender people, non-native English speakers, Black people, people of color, indigenous people, and really anyone whose voice doesn’t fit into the white, male baritone mold.

So what do we do? We try to sound more like everyone else. And that can not only mess with our ability to use our physical voices, but it messes with our ability to use our metaphorical voices and confuses our sense of self.

Samara Bay, a Hollywood dialect coach who’s worked on blockbusters like Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy, is on a mission to help everyone find “permission to speak.” In this episode, we dig into how the self-help imperative to “own your voice” might be more complicated than it sounds.

Footnotes:

Find out more about Samara Bay
Pre-order Samara’s book Permission to Speak
“I still have a voice” by Alice Wong
Samara Bay on Anna Sorokin and Elizabeth Holmes’s voices
Women and Power by Mary Beard
More about African American Vernacular English on Pause on the Play
College students talk about their relationships to their Southern accents on Dolly Parton’s America
“The Magic of Voice Transitioning with Nicole Gress” on Camp Wild Heart with Mackenzie Dunham
“Me minus me” on This American Life (Sandy Allen’s vocal transition)
“If you don’t have anything nice to say” on This American Life (complaints about female voices)
More on the mid-atlantic accent

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

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There’s an influencer for every thing these days. Camping equipment? Sure. Nutritional supplements? You bet. Miniatures? You know it. College admissions? But of course. In this episode, though, we’re going to focus on one of the original influencer niches: MOMS.

The rise of the influencer ushered in a new outlet for self-help. Now, not only are there motivational books and talks, there’s a product endorsement to help you live your best life. Influencers give us, perhaps, the direct line between personal growth and consumer capitalism. I talk with the author of the forthcoming Momfluenced, Sara Petersen, about all of that and more.

Footnotes:

Subscribe to Sara Petersen’s newsletter
Pre-order Momfluenced
“Life After Lifestyle” by Toby Shorin
“The Rhetoric of the Image” by Roland Barthes
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Episode 393 with Kelly Diels
Episode 395 with Steph Barron Hall
“The Influencer Industry: Constructing and Commodifying Authenticity on Social Media” by Emily Dean Hund

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

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If your Instagram feed or Explore page looks anything like mine, then you likely see a preponderance of posts about personality types, conditions, or other self-knowledge. We’re hooked on learning about ourselves! And perhaps even more hooked on sharing what we’ve learned—which means that the Instagram algorithm (as well as TikTok’s and Pinterest’s algorithms) has learned to love this kind of content, too.

In this episode, I explore discovering ourselves versus making ourselves, why self-knowledge is big business on Instagram, and how creating viral personality content can wreak havoc on the creator’s psyche. To dig into this with me, I invited @ninetypesco creator, Steph Barron Hall, onto the show.

Footnotes:

Find Steph Barron Hall on Instagram (@ninetypesco)
Learn more about working with Steph
How to be Authentic by Skye Cleary
Learn more about the Enneagram and find your type
The Nine Types of Rest
Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
“Double consciousness”
“Looking glass self”

Essay versions of each episode are posted at explorewhatworks.com every Thursday. Or, sign up FREE at explorewhatworks.com/weekly to get them delivered straight to your inbox.

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

★ Support this podcast ★

Footnotes:

Edelman Trust Barometer 2022
“Confidence in US Institutions Down; Average at New Low” Gallup
“Fatigue, traditionalism, and engagement: the news habits and attitudes of the Gen Z and Millennial generations” American Press Institute
“We’ve stopped trusting institutions and started trusting strangers” by Rachel Botsman (TED Talk)
“The Change Rules of Trust in the Digital Age” by Rachel Botsman (HBR)
“Gun Culture and Wellness Culture Come From the Same Place” by Alan Levinovitz (Huffington Post)

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

★ Support this podcast ★

It’s not only self-help or entrepreneurship products that are sold as tools for “empowerment” today. It’s just about everything: makeup, clothing, workout equipment, vitamins, office supplies… Whole brands are built around the promise that a purchase won’t just solve your problem, it’ll make you a better, more fulfilled person. But empowerment isn’t for sale—only the status quo.

In this episode, I talk with writer and coach Kelly Diels about empowerment marketing and what she calls the “female lifestyle empowerment brand.” You’ll also hear from independent beauty writer Jessica DeFino about how empowerment is leveraged by the beauty industry.

Footnotes:

Learn more about Kelly Diels
Learn more about Jessica DeFino
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
How to be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment by Skye Cleary
Helen Gurley Brown as quoted in Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
“The Rhetoric of the Image” by Roland Barthes

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

★ Support this podcast ★

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 Progressive
Why does the insurance industry have so many mastcots? on Planet Money
Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
More about Marshall McLuhan (”The medium is the message”)
Nixon’s universal health care plan proposal
Reaganism & Thatcherism
The Old is Dying & the New Cannot be Born by Nancy Fraser

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or at explorewhatworks.com/book.

★ 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.

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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 Money
More about Stacey Vanek Smith

Episodes 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

Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. Find it anywhere books are sold or 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/book

My 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!

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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 Park
Caribou population cycles
Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Sea by Bathsheba Demuth
Beargrass
Mast fruiting
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Are recessions normal?” on Make Me Smart
Economic cycles on Investopedia
Spotted lanternfly and tree of heaven
Timothy Snyder on the Ezra Klein Show
“The best of all possible worlds” from Candide
A history of recessions in the 20th and 21st centuries
Rana Foroohar on the Ezra Klein Show

Article 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/weekly

Have 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!

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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 Harvey
EP.385: Who do you work for? on What Works
Connect 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 McMullin

Essay 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

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“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.

The post EP 388: Extra Context: Not Getting Paid appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

“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.

The post EP 387: Context Clues: Is there hope beyond positive thinking? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 386: Extra Context: Getting Paid appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 385: Context Clues: Who do you work for? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 384: Context Clues: Do you love your work? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

“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.

The post EP 383: Extra Context: Rugged Individualism appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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 make for a fair refund policy?

The post EP 382: Context Clues: What makes for a fair refund policy? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 381: What happens when you take a 4-month break from business as usual? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 380: When does overdelivering become overcompensating? with Allison Davis appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 379: Why do we choose squeezing more in over taking time off? (Time & Money 8) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.”

The post EP 378: How much time do you work? with Anne Ditmeyer (Time & Money 7) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 377: What game are you playing? (Time & Money 6) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 376: What Is Our Time Worth? With Keina Newell (Time & Money 5) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 375: Is this really a new economy? (Time & Money 4) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.”

The post EP 374: How do you measure quality time? with Elisabeth Jackson (Time & Money 3) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 373: Should we lower our expectations? (Time & Money 2) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

“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.

The post EP 372: What Is Money? with Paco de Leon (Time & Money 1) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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?

The post EP 371: How does emotional labor impact our work? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 370: What is the creator economy? with Gina Bianchini appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 369: Do your goals make you a better person? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

“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

The post EP 368: What Does Growth Without Striving Look Like? with Rita Barry appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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

The post EP 367: Moving Into A New Chapter with Darden Creative Founder Tamera Darden appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 366: Unpacking Business Grief with Charlene Lam appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

What abundance 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.

The post EP 365: Asking Abundant Questions To Solve Business Challenges appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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

The post EP 364: The Abundant Value of Virtual Assistants with Janice Plado Dalager appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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!

The post EP 363: Making The Hard Call With 90-Day Business Launch Founder Michelle Ward appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 362: Debunking The Myth Of Scarce Attention appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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

The post EP 361: Embracing Your Whole Identity With Coach & Consultant Angela Browne appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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 Vegology.

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, instead of merely good copy on a website.

The post EP 360: Slowing Down To Make Sustainable Choices appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When you orient your motive toward making room for difference, including people who's experiences aren't like yours, taking steps to not hurt people with your business, I think you can find both some peace and the motivation for real, lasting change.

Today, I have a conversation with Alice Karolina. Alice is a brand strategist as well as the founder of the ethical move, which champions ethical marketing and sales among small business owners.

Alice and I talk about how the ethical move came to be, the values that guide the work the ethical move does, and how the business is set to evolve into the future.

Now, let's find out what works for Alice Karolina.

The post EP 359: Operating An Ethical Business With the ethical move Founder Alice Karolina appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 358: Imagining New Ways To Work With Future Proof Skills Lab Founder Liz Wiltsie appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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 like we're honoring our values. Instead of getting clear on what actually honoring our values looks like and then deciding whether we can participate in existing systems and ways of working—or whether we need to create something new.

And that's where today's conversation with coach, podcaster, and writer Mara Glatzel begins. Mara is the host of Needy, the creator of Tend, and the kind of person I naturally think of when I think about operationalizing values. But what you'll hear Mara tell me first is that, a while back, she realized that the kind of life and work she wanted for her clients wasn't the kind of life and work she had structured for herself.

That's easy to understand since Mara's values and the values her business is built on run counter to the values of capitalism and workism.

What I'd love for you to think about as you listen to this important conversation is what you take for granted as you build your business. What assumptions do you bring with you? What shoulds and supposed-tos get in the way of fully realizing—and operationalizing—your business's values?

Mara and I unpack how she did that for herself and what's come out of the process—and I think you'll find the conversation a creative jumpstart for considering how you could do things differently too.

Now, let's find out What Works for Mara Glatzel.

The post EP 357: Building A Business Based On What Matters With Coach Mara Glatzel appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I have 3 more contributions to this month's discussion about systems. Each one tackles a different aspect of this idea that "systems just are."

Writer Mary Beth Huwe shares a beautiful definition for systems as a whole and how that applies to the way she approaches working with her clients.

Krysta Williams, an artist and systems support person for small businesses, shares how seeing businesses as systems has led her to a more holistic approach to business-building support.

And Amy Kuretsky, an acupuncturist and business coach balancing two businesses, shares how she created a care system for herself as an entrepreneur to make sure she has what she needs as her businesses see massive growth.

The post EP 356: Creating A System Of Care appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 355: Cash Flow Is A Feminist Issue appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I’m talking with Coach Pony founder Christie Mims. Christie helps coaches build a real business with her program of the same name. Plus, Christie is host of the Coach Pony podcast, a show we lovingly produce at YHM.

I knew I wanted to talk with Christie about her processes & systems—but when she told me about her two competing sales funnels, I had to know more. What I learned is that by honing her full sales system—and not just an individual funnel or two—she celebrates the complexity that comes with any buying process.

This conversation is going to be a treat for anyone who wants the inside scoop on how sales funnels actually work. And it might also be a cautionary tale.

Now, let's find out what works for Christie Mims!

The post EP 354: Making Sales A System With Coach Pony Founder Christie Mims appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When you bring a systems thinking approach to business strategy, management, sales, marketing, and even the creative process, how does that shift your decision-making and action?

To kick off this month, I wanted to start with a conversation from my own team—the YellowHouse.Media team. I asked Sean McMullin and Lou Blaser to talk with me about the systems they're using to manage the podcasts we produce and how they're organizing that in Clickup.

Moving to Clickup was absolutely a case of getting the beat. Sean had to pay close attention to how our podcasts hosts worked, what was different from the way hosts who are always on deadline versus hosts who work ahead approach their work, and how software was either adding or removing friction from the process.

Sean and Lou talk about all of that and more.

So let's find out what works for managing projects at YellowHouse.Media!

The post EP 353: Dancing With Systems In Clickup With Lou Blaser & Sean McMullin from YellowHouse.Media appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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, Nayla Bahri, Mytili Jugunaathun, and Lisa Townsend on how they've leveraged their strengths.

The post EP 352: Personal Strengths Make Strategy Stronger appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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!

Now, let's find out what works for Kris Windley.

The post EP 351: Thinking Differently With Writer Kris Windley appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I still struggle with belonging. I struggle with the constant fear of unfamiliar situations and people—along with the fear of plenty of familiar situations and people—something Laura James describes in her book, Odd Girl Out.

But I can also see my outsider perspective as a strength—and one that I can leverage.

My guest today surprised and delighted me when she started our conversation off with her own exploration of belonging—and how finding that intrinsic sense of belonging has become a real strength for her while also leveraging her outsider perspective, too.

Reva Patwardhan is a coach and facilitator who guides changemakers and leaders working for social change to help them lead with confidence, clarity, and purpose.

This conversation had so many high points for me. We kick off with belonging, but we also talk about deep processing, narrowing the scope of her work, noticing, systems, and why slowing down is so important.

Reva and I also talk about her experience through the lens of ADHD, as well as her experience as a highly sensitive person.

This conversation is rich and useful, whether you're a neurodivergent business owner or not. Reva's experiences lay out a beautiful framework for better understanding yourself and your own strengths - so with that...

Let's find out what works for Reva Patwardhan.

The post EP 350: Slowing Down For Success With Coach Reva Patwardhan appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This month, I indulged myself a bit with our focus on the podcast. I wanted to talk to other neurodivergent business owners about how they leverage their strengths in their businesses. It’s part personal research project and part public service.

The public service part is the part where, even if you’re not neurodivergent, you start to see how your own strengths can give you creative direction in how you build your business. You can filter how you build your business through what truly makes you feel effective, alive, and capable.

You can adapt your business instead of always adapting yourself.

I could think of no one I wanted to kick off this series with more than Brittany Berger. Brittany’s personal leadership and advocacy was some of the first that made me think, “huh.”

Brittany is the founder of Work Brighter, a platform that provides resources and encouragement for neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill people who want to make productivity techniques work for them.

Brittany and I talk about how she manages her energy, how she structures her day, and why self-disclosure has been key to finding her way, as well as—and this is crucial—why she can write about the intersection of pop culture, productivity, and content marketing like no one else.

Now, let’s find out What Works for Brittany Berger!

The post EP 349: Updating Your Default Settings With Work Brighter Founder Brittany Berger appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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.

The post EP 348: Knowing When To Get Out Of The Way With Let’s Do The Books Founder Mark Butler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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!

The post EP 347: Carving Out Space For Creative Work With The Autonomous Creative Founder Jessica Abel appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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!

The post EP 346: Finding The Right Blend With Financial Behaviorist Jacquette Timmons appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

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!

The post EP 345: Putting Your Business In Maintenance Mode With ScaleSpark Founder Susan Boles appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Do you ever get the feeling you’re white-knuckling it through business ownership? Like if you just squeeze the wheel hard enough and focus on what’s in front of you, you can keep your business from ending up in a serious fender bender (or worse)? I’ve certainly felt that way. All throughout 2020, I felt like […]

The post EP 344: Time To Take A Break? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

It's a huge opportunity to take better care of each other. An opportunity to make our little corner of the world a better place through the vehicle of business. And we just won't do that alone.

Today, I have 5 ways we can team up to do bigger and better things.

SEO consultant Meg Casebolt shares a story about teaming up to create a truly unique experience. Writer Lee Prescott offers her experience in teaming up to level up the way she serves. Renee Rubin Ross shares her story teaming up through collaboration and partnerships.

Floral artist Linda Ruel-Flynn shares how teaming up gives her a chance to explore her creativity in new ways. And brand strategist Alice Karolina shares how she's team up to build a movement.

The post EP 343: 5 Ways To Do More & Better By Teaming Up appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

One of the people I observe who is not only skilled at asking for support but has the professional chops to explain to me how she’s done it and why it matters is therapist and resilience consultant Shulamit Ber Levtov.

From the jump, I’ve been so impressed with the way Shula elegantly names her needs, directly asks for support, and clearly states her boundaries. Every time she shares, it’s a little mini masterclass for me.

So I wanted to bring her into this extended conversation on teaming up.

Shula and I talk about how she ended up working on resilience for women business owners, why she took a month off last year to prevent her own period of burnout, and how she structures the ways she asks for support.

Shula also walks us through some exercises for naming our own emotions and needs.

The post EP 342: Getting Help Before The Ish Hits The Fan with Shulamit Ber Levtov appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

What can you do with your business if you look beyond your individual needs and your individual success?

That's a really exciting question to me.

What kind of impact on the collective could this business have? How I can I use this business to meet others' needs, too?

These questions don't have many easy answers. But they're fertile ground for imagining different ways of doing business.

It's with this in mind that I want to share my conversation with Kate Strathmann. Kate and I share many similar concerns about the state of online business and the even the broader small business, freelance, and gig economies.

As always with my conversations with Kate, this might be confronting at times. You might be nodding along, digging on what we're saying, and then all of a sudden feel a twinge of recognition that isn't as nice.

But none of this is aimed at your personal responsibility for where we've gotten as a market or even the things you've done in your business.

Our goal is to explore some big, hard questions about how we do business and how we can better take care of each other.

Stay tuned to hear us talk about the messages we consume that make it hard to imagine things a different way, why focusing on individual success causes us to devalue the care work that goes into making our businesses work, and why small business owners feel trapped between the worker class and the owner class.

Plus, Kate offers some powerful questions for reframing the potential of your business and gets super pragmatic about the choices we can make without becoming a martyr for the sake of positive change.

The post EP 341: Taking Better Care Of Each Other with Wanderwell Founder Kate Strathmann appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I am introverted, I do have social anxiety, and I'm autistic.

That's a pretty thick soup to be wading through as a manager.

The main reason I wanted to share that before you hear this interview is because my experiences as an introverted boss may be quite different from your experiences if you're also an introverted boss.

The other reason reason I wanted to share that is because, before I had the framework of autism to make sense of my life, I was constantly working against myself in an effort to fix things I perceived as problems & deficiencies.

While I'm still working to become a better manager and leader, I'm also looking much more objectively at how I can build structures that don't require me to work against my nature quite so often. In so many ways, my autism is a strength for business-building, writing & podcasting, and team-building. But it takes work to embrace those strengths when they're so different from what other people expect!

Alright, here's what you're going to hear in this interview—Annie and I talk about how I find team members, why you need to know what you're really hiring for before you start looking, how I'm onboarding new hires now, and why you don't want to clone yourself.

The post EP 340: Managing As An Introverted, Anxious, and Autistic Boss: Tara’s Interview On The Rebel Therapist With Annie Schuessler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I met Podge back in 2019 and was immediately struck by her thoughtfulness and humanity—both in life and business. Podge helps business owners and organizations make better hiring choices, manage their people well, and build humane cultures at work. She’s the founder of Small Business Co-Pilot and hosts a monthly free round table discussion called The Manager’s Huddle.

Podge and I talk about why managing has gotten the rap it has, how we can make our teams our business’s #1 asset, and what it really takes to prepare to hire.

The post EP 339: Hiring For The Upside With Small Business Co-Pilot Founder Podge Thomas appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

How do you know what content should be free? And, what should be paid for? This month, we’ve been talking all about building an audience and/or finding customers—as well as how those two things are different. And one of the things a conversation about audience-building always comes back to is content. What kind of content […]

The post Q&A: What Content Should Be Free? And What Should Be Paid For? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This month, we've explored finding customers and building an audience—which are not the same things.

Every business needs to find customers. But not every business—not even most businesses—needs to build an audience.

Yet, so many small business owners get hung up on building their following counts or email lists instead of doing the things that actually lead to sales.

The drive to build an audience partially comes from the false belief that "scale" is the universal goal for all businesses.

Many successful businesses never scale—or they don't scale in terms of serving thousands of people instead of tens of people. They might scale in terms of efficiency or price or team—but scaling up one or all of those things does not require you to build an audience.

But everywhere you look on social media, someone is telling you that you have to scale.

As Maggie Patterson put it, they're serving you poison and then selling you the cure.

Now look, if you're excited about scaling up or you've found success with scaling up, wonderful!! I personally love the idea of serving at scale and enjoy speaking to an audience.

But I also recognize that this is the best way to build a business for only a teeny tiny segment of the business owner community.

A stronger, more sustainable, more effective way to build a highly profitable business is to...

wait for it...

Stay small and do things that don't scale.

Today, I have 3 more stories of people who are serving and building in a really impactful ways without building an audience in the way you might have been taught.

You'll hear from messaging consultant Dr. Michelle Mazur, branding expert Amy Walsh, and leadership consultant Nancy Hess.

The post EP 338: Why Staying Small Leads To Big Results appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Nothing fosters human connection faster than a story.

Stories are the most direct way to tell someone else—or a whole audience of people—an important truth about you. Stories give us shared experiences and emotions to build relationships from.

Stories make even the biggest concepts or most technical information feel real.

Practicing storytelling has been a game changer for me in the way I communicate, market, and teach. And I believe it can do the same for you.

Today's episode is a sort of conversation-meets-workshop excerpted from a special joint event for The What Works Network and Standout Podcast Club.

I talk with Tell Me A Story founder Hillary Rea about how we can more effectively use stories in the content we create and why stories have such a positive impact on our results as business owners.

This conversation is chock full of ideas, explainers, and ways to experiment with story so you can forge a deeper connection with your audience.

So settle in for this conversation on connecting with story with Hillary Rea!

The post EP 337: Connecting With Stories With Tell Me A Story Founder Hillary Rea appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I’m talking with Felicia Sullivan, a brand strategist who has built a thriving business on marketing activities that don’t scale. Felicia works with startup founders and small businesses doing $10-20m in annual revenue—folks who aren’t looking for business help on Instagram.

So Felicia spends her business development time on 3 things: coffee dates, writing long-form articles geared directly to her prospective clients, and referrals.

This episode answers some of the questions I’m most frequently asked about when it comes to marketing businesses that aren’t built on online courses (which, you know, is most of them).

Get ready to take some notes.

The post EP 336: Marketing Without Scale With Brand Strategist Felicia Sullivan appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Social media celebrity is not a requisite for success—no matter how many attractive business influencers give you the impression that it is.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

This week, I’m talking with Andréa Jones, the founder of OnlineDrea, a social media marketing agency, and the creator of Savvy Social School, a training community all about social media marketing.

After all I just shared about building an audience, this might seem like a strange segue. Why talk to a social media marketing expert when it seems like you might not have to do this whole social media thing the way you have been?

Well, it’s because Andréa understands that finding customers is different from building an audience. She understands it because she helps people do both while also being acutely aware that the growth of her agency isn’t driven by building an audience.

This conversation gets into the relationship between building an audience and finding clients—both as they relate to Andréa's business and as they relate to her clients’ and members’ businesses.

I love this conversation because there's a bunch about what Andréa actually does with social media in her own business, there's a bunch of insightful observation about what's happening out there in the marketing world, and there are some really actionable ideas you can use, too.

The post EP 335: Finding The Right Strategy To Market Your Business with Savvy Social Podcast Host Andréa Jones appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

What's the ROI on mental space?

What would it be worth to you to get some peace of mind?

What would you be willing to do to alleviate a bit of uncertainty from your life or business?

All this month, we've been talking about simplifying and the immense benefits you can experience by building a simple business.

We're going to close things out here by taking a look at how operational improvements can create a profound sense of relief—and open up mental space that you didn't even know was cluttered!

The post EP 334: Creating Mental Space With Simple Changes appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Andréa and I are both on a mission to bust some of the assumptions that people have about what's good for business when it comes to social media marketing.

For me, it's a small part of what I do. But for Andréa, this is her whole business. Andréa runs a thriving social media marketing agency called OnlineDrea as well as a training community for small business owners called Savvy Social School.

I've featured Andréa here on the pod before and we talked about how she approaches social media pretty differently when it comes to her own business versus how she manages social media for her clients with very different business models.

Good news: next week's episode is a follow up to that conversation.

I respect the heck out of the way Andréa approaches social media and the way she trains other small business owners to manage their own marketing. And so when she asked if she could interview me about the unconventional approach I've taken to social media this year, I was honored.

What follows is that conversation. If you like this conversation, you're going to love Andréa's podcast, the Savvy Social Podcast—so check that out wherever you listen to What Works. And tell her I sent you, okay?

I asked Andréa if I could rebroadcast this conversation here at What Works because I think it gives a glimpse into how simplifying can help you focus on quality over quantity.

So without further ado, let's get into. Listen up for the most concise explanation I've ever given for the philosophy behind What Works, why I'm focused on remarkable content this year, and how that focus has simplified the way I produce content for social media.

I also talk about how I view my primary job at What Works as a content creator—which is a job I love but isn't right for everyone.

The post EP 333: Simplifying Social Media Content Creation With Andréa Jones and Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

How do you make a big change to your business model without making it harder than it has to be? How do you navigate sunsetting an old offer (or a few), raising your prices, or shifting your target client? After spending a whole month talking about simplifying on What Works, I’ve had more than a […]

The post Q&A: How Do You Make A Big Change To Your Business Model? appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I'm convinced that every entrepreneur has a fantasy business that they daydream about.

It's free from all of the baggage and assumptions that we've built up around our existing businesses.

And I'm also convinced that that fantasy business—as pie-in-the-sky as it may be—has something to teach us about our existing businesses.

They can show us how we'd market differently, set policies differently, and protect our time differently. They show us the kinds of relationships we'd prefer to have with clients or the type of work we'd rather be doing.

And, maybe more than anything, they show us just how simple a business can be.

With a few exceptions, I don't think most of us daydream about convoluted, complicated businesses. We dream up simple businesses—ones that thrive with minimal BS.

Today, I'm sharing 3 ways that I built my fantasy business—the one I'd been dreaming about for years—and how it's different from What Works.

In this episode, you'll hear:

Why making changes to an existing business is less like steering a big ship and more like dragging the anchor behind you
How focusing on process & systems helped us create a simple business model
What we did to create an offer that was an obvious "yes" for the right people and an obvious "no" for the wrong people
And how we've gotten away with almost zero marketing since we got started almost 2 years ago

The post EP 332: Maybe Simplicity Is Just A Dream… appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Doing more and inevitably making things more complex is the main tool we've been trained to use.

This leads to all sorts of predictable challenges, though—challenges like the ones I talked about last week with Brigitte Lyons & Sophy Dale—things like scope creep, lack of traction, unsustainable working hours, and less revenue.

It can also lead to leaky boundaries, resentment, anxiety, relationship troubles, and, yes, burnout.

If you identified with their stories and the consequences of Brigitte & Sophy’s more complex businesses, keep listening. This week, we're talking about what they did to simplify and the incredible results they've created.

And if you're wondering whether this could be the problem you're experiencing... that you might have made things harder and more complex than they needed to be... but you're not quite sure yet...

I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say, "Yep, that's probably true."

Today's conversation should give you hope.

Alright, let's dive into how Brigitte & Sophy actually restructured things, how doing business is different today, and what the results have been—hint: they're both making more money.

The post EP 331: Embracing Simplicity With Brigitte Lyons & Sophy Dale appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, we're kicking off both a series on simplifying and a set of two episodes with businesses owners who have direct experience with dramatically simplifying their businesses—and in turn, creating immense growth.

Brigitte Lyons is the founder of Podcast Ally, a PR agency specializing in getting experts and idea people booked on podcasts.

Sophy Dale is a copywriting mentor, messaging coach, and brand storyteller who helps coaches, designers, and course-creators write compelling copy.

Both Brigitte and Sophy know what it's like to run complicated, bloated businesses.

And both of them figured out what the real problem was they wanted to solve. For Brigitte, it was scope creep that caused her to always be reinventing systems and getting involved in projects she shouldn't have. For Sophy, it was a lack of traction due to the fact that she was actually running three businesses so no one quite knew what she was offering when!

In this episode, we're going to get into how they ended up with complex businesses in the first place, how they identified the need to simplify, and what the process of actually letting go of that complication looked like.

In next week's episode, we'll dive into how they actually restructured things, how doing business is different today, and what the results have been—hint: they're both making more money.

The post EP 330: Letting Go Of Complication With Brigitte Lyons & Sophy Dale appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Sometimes it can feel like you don’t find opportunity, opportunity finds you. But even then, it’s the fact that you were paying attention—listening, watching, taking it all in—that allows you to act on it. It can make me sick to my stomach to think of all of the opportunities I let slide because I wasn’t […]

The post EP 329: The Anatomy Of An Opportunity appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, my guest is Justine Clay, a business coach for creatives. Justine is one of the most thoughtful decision-makers I know. And her story proves that taking the time to really weigh your options doesn't mean you'll never take a big step in a new direction.

In fact, during this conversation, you're going to hear about a number of really big opportunities that Justine made—including moving to the US with her rebound boyfriend, taking a job she had no experience with, starting her own business, and then making a big pivot in the midst of the Great Recession.

Justine shares how she processes her opportunities and, ultimately, how she makes the choices she makes.

The post EP 328: Navigating The Crossroads With Business Coach Justine Clay appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Can you navigate a financially sustainable way to moving from 1:1 client services to more flexible, leveraged offers?

Yes, of course. And here's how I would do it.

Instead of figuring out what stack of offers is going to supposedly add up to the revenue you're generating from client services, put your effort into figuring out what 1 offer is going to be able to eventually grow into a revenue stream that can replace what you're generating now.

Don't figure out how to generate $10,000 at a time with multiple offers. Experiment with ideas that you can imagine growing to $100k of revenue or more. You'll still have to try some things out--and it's likely that the journey will be a little windy and involve some backtracking. But you'll have a much longer-term view of your business's financial sustainability in the end--and that is going to feel oh-so-good.

Now, this kind of thinking still applies no matter the field you're in or the business model you've built til now. If you want the opportunity to grow your business, you need to think about long-term financial sustainability--not just what's working right now.

To take this point home, I want to revisit a conversation I had with Jordan Gill, founder of Systems Saved Me, in 2019. Jordan found herself in a position that's familiar to many service providers; she was trading dollars for hours and the path to growth just wasn't clear.

So she started to pay close attention to how her clients were actually using her services and considered how she could bring them an experience that would actually create better, longer-lasting results.

After considering the possibilities, Jordan found her opportunity. She shifted her business model away from hourly client services to results-oriented VIP days. She created a more financially sustainable business by finding a way to make the numbers add up without adding MORE to her workload or burden the business's operational sustainability.

You'll hear all about that—plus how she decided on pricing and how this shift has impacted her personal sustainability in this conversation.

The post EP 327: Building A Financially Sustainable Business Model With Systems Saved Me Founder Jordan Gill appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Our core competency gives us a big leg up on creating operational sustainability, financial sustainability, as well as personal & social sustainability.

And that's the thing about investing in your core competency. It's not just an opportunity to make an aspect of the business work better—it's an opportunity to make the whole business more sustainable.

This week, as we continue our series on opportunity, keep this idea in mind because my guest has fantastic example of this at work.

Anna Wolf is the founder of SuperScript Marketing, a content marketing agency serving financial brands and professionals. Anna's story can be told through a series identifying core competencies as opportunities.

First, she identified as personal core competency and pursued that. Then, she identified a new capability—and core competency—the agency could use to make their work more impactful. And then finally, Anna focused on an overarching core competency that's empowered her to make her company much, much stronger across the board.

Anna and I talk about how she got into content marketing for the financial sector in the first place and how freelancing turned into an agency that, eventually, focused on productized services. We also talk about how getting obsessed with systems & processes helped her to clarify the agency's key core competency—and the operational shifts that have come with it.

The post EP 326: Creating Sustainable Structures & Systems With Superscript Marketing Founder Anna Wolf appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

"The Squeeze" occurs when you've run out of capacity in your business.

You simply don't have the time, energy, or mental bandwidth to do more, and so you can't really see a way for the business to grow. Still, The Squeeze convinces you that if you just rearranged the pieces or tried a little harder, you could force some fresh growth.

But alas, you just end up squeezed into a different arrangement of the same pieces.

In other words, you use what's familiar to try to work your way out of the Squeeze... and so you can't quite escape because "what's familiar" is what got you into the Squeeze in the first place.

To actually alleviate the Squeeze, you have to take a completely different perspective and see things in a new way. And that's how talking things out with others and learning how they see things differently really helps inspire opportunity.

Now, I know it's challenging to have those conversations or connect with people who see things in different ways. That's one of the reasons I started this podcast 5 years ago; I desperately wanted to bring wildly different perspectives to small business owners like you who were feeling The Squeeze. It's also why I bring business owners together through community and events, as well.

I don't have a new conversation for you today, though. Instead, I want to share my own observations—sort of a grand total of what I've added up over the years of my own business-building, my interviews, my personal conversations, and my coaching & community-building.

This is a look at what I see when I look at a business and what I hear when I talk to a business owner.

It's the overlap of opportunity and sustainability that drives the work I do with small business owners.

The post EP 325: When Opportunity Meets Sustainability With Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

All this month, we've been examining the relationships in our businesses and how we make them stronger. We looked at our relationship with our customers, our relationships to our team members, and our relationships to our community and internet neighbors. We even looked at our relationships to ourselves and our businesses.

This week, we're going to step back and take a look at the patterns that often make nurturing our relationships difficult.

A couple of these patterns are overt--and a couple are more stealthy. As you listen, I encourage you to pay less attention to the specific patterns and stories we're diving into today and pay more attention to your own curiosity at how your own relationship patterns are at play in your business. You may or may not see these exact patterns and stories as your own--but I know that your own patterns are influencing YOUR story.

You're going to hear from 4 different business owners today and I'll help you unpack the very common patterns that I see at play in each story. My goal isn't to pathologize or armchair diagnose. I just want to help you hear what I hear in these stories and celebrate the ways these business owners have overcome their patterns made really great choices for them and their businesses!

Today, you'll hear from coach Carla Reeves, real estate broker Page Huyette, coach & podcaster Shawn Fink, and attorney-turned-community-builder Ali Zucker.

The post EP 324: 4 Patterns That Make Relationship-Building A Challenge appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In other words, we need to go beyond transactional online networking and get back to building real relationships—organic, friendly, neighborly ones.

There is no one I know who is better at this than Shannon Siriano Greenwood. I met Shannon through our mutual friend Racheal Cook, invited her on this podcast, spoke at her conference, and then started producing her new podcast.

Shannon is the founder of Rebelle, which up until last March hosted semiannual conferences and monthly networking events in Richmond, VA. Now, Shannon has taken the Rebelle community virtual and hosts virtual conferences and online gatherings for women who want to play by their own rules.

I have to admit—I was a bit skeptical of Shannon at first. All I knew about Rebelle was that they were celebrities... like real celebrities, not internet celebrities. And, my uninformed assumption was that people who knew celebrities and asked them to speak at their events probably were not super genuine or "real" people.

From the moment I started actually talking to Shannon, though, I realized how wrong I had been.

This woman is the real deal. She is warm, genuine, and completely herself. When I took Sean with me to the Rebelle conference I spoke at, he too was blown away by her ability to make you feel like you're the most important person in the room.

Shannon—if you're listening to this—we adore you and we're so glad you're our internet neighbor.

On this topic of networking and getting to know your internet neighbor, I could think of no one better to talk to than Shannon, and as luck would have it, I did talk with her in early 2019 about this very subject. I'm sharing this conversation again in hopes that it inspires you to get to know your internet neighbors and expand your network.

Keep in mind, Shannon talks a lot about networking and relationship-building in person. But these concepts apply to getting to know someone online, too.

The post EP 323: Get To Know Your Neighbors With Rebelle Founder Shannon Siriano Greenwood appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, we're examining how we nurture the relationships we have with the people who work with us.

I'll be honest with you: there are so many different places I'd like to take this episode. There are so many of the lessons I've learned that I'd like to pass on. Luckily, the lessons I've learned have largely come through conversations I've had on this very podcast!

And there's one conversation in particular that I come back to time & time again. It was my first interview with my friend and founder of Productive Flourishing, Charlie Gilkey.

Looking back on this conversation, I can see that there were already lessons that had started to come into focus about how I work with people and what it looks like to nurture relationships with team members. But what I can also see is how much this conversation actually helped to solidify those learnings into how my thinking & approach have changed since.

Charlie and I talk about the operational components of the mindset shift I just dug into. We talk about the art of management, whether for one or for many. We discuss what prompted him to bring his core team on as employees instead of as independent contractors. And how we keeps his team—and himself—from becoming over committed and overwhelmed, as well as how he structures his time to enhance his creativity.

The post EP 322: Building A Stronger Team With Productive Flourishing Founder Charlie Gilkey appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

What I really love about customer experience design is that it can be so creative!

There truly is no one-size-fits-all process. Our different values, types of customers, ways of serving, skills, strengths, differentiators, points of view... they each contribute to making our customer experience uniquely our own.

During the course of this episode, we're going to look at 4 ways you can make your customer experience remarkable and help build a more intentional relationship with the people who buy from you. I'll share some things you can consider as you think about your own customer experience and you'll hear examples from thoughtful business owners who made customer experience design a priority.

You'll hear from OnlineDrea & Savvy Social School founder Andrea Jones (EP 212), financial behaviorist Jacquette Timmons (EP 141), attorney Autumn Witt Boyd (EP 296), and Bank Boost creator Sarah Von Bargen (EP 156).

The post EP 321: Designing A Remarkable Customer Experience appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this episode of What Works, I'm exploring how getting into right relationship with yourself can help you get into right relationship with your business. In the process, we'll examine learning to enjoy the process (instead of just the outcome), setting stronger boundaries, using boundaries to do business your way, and making your business your #1 ally.

You'll hear from Shirin Eskandani, Nicole Lewis-Keeber, Mindy Totten, and Jennifer Armbrust.

The post EP 320: Making Your Business Your #1 Ally appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We've inherited a pattern of over-scheduling, over-planning, and over-committing, as well as technology that eliminate our margins and induce urgency—and, with it, anxiety. We're taught to believe that more is better by cultural forces like rugged individualism and white supremacy, as well as our broken capitalist economic system.

We try to tackle too many things at once. We think we can do things faster than we really can. We forget to factor in preexisting commitments. We don’t take stock of our resources before we start doling them out—literally and figuratively.

It’s no wonder then that we so often feel “the crunch” when we’re trying to stick to our plans.

And when we’re feeling “the crunch” we’re much more likely to take action that causes harm to ourselves, to others, and to our communities.

Maybe we ignore our families or intimate relationships. Maybe we pull too many all-nighters. Maybe we resort to choices and tactics that damage the community or industry ecosystem we’re a part of. Maybe we start to believe the horrible things we say about ourselves: how slow we are, how unprepared we are, how unskilled we are—and my personal go, how lazy I am.

When we’re constantly executing our plans in a state of urgency, we’re exposing ourselves to all sorts of triggers and negative influences.

That’s not a helpful way to engage your work. It’s not the state of mind you need to do creative and critical thinking. What could leaving more space in your plans do for you? And what would it mean about the choices you need to make?

As you consider your answer, I'm thrilled to bring you the stories of 3 business owners who have recommitting to margin in their own ways. You'll hear from photographer & podcaster Yvonne Marchese, business strategist Maiko Sakai, and mindset consultant Shulamit Ber Levtov. While the details of their stories might be different than yours, I know they're going to feel familiar and could help you see your own experiences in a new way.

The post EP 319: Why Our Plans Need More Margin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, I'm closing out our series about working the plan by talking about 2nd drafts—both literal and metaphorical—with the author of Sell From Love, Finka Jerkovic.

You'll hear how it took writing a first, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink draft in order for Finka to learn what her book was really about and how it was going to serve her readers. You'll also hear how she's needed to find a second draft of what makes her feel satisfied and worthy based on her own values instead of the performance-oriented culture she was raised in.

And, of course, you'll hear how Finka planned for writing her book and discovered her writing practice along the way.

The post EP 318: Writing The 2nd Draft With Sell From Love Author Finka Jerkovic appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Flow. Rhythm. Consistency. These are all words we want to associate with how we do our work, but so rarely can we actually describe a week or even a day as flowing, rhythmic, or even possessing some level of consistency. Variable, external circumstances certainly contribute to our state of relentless syncopation. But the way we […]

The post BONUS: Finding Your Podcasting Rhythm With The Standout Podcast Club appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Obviously, we all got thrown for a loop last year when Covid hit. That wrench in the works played out different for every one and every business—but we all had to adapt in some way.

If you fought, fled, or froze, you're not alone!

I think we all responded that way initially. I certainly did—big fighting energy over here!

What was amazing to watch though is little by little, the business owners I'm in community with started to ease up on that immediate reaction and started to find a more adaptive, proactive response.

I saw amazing things happen for people when they adapted—even if those things didn't always lead to financial relief or more time to themselves.

One of those people is my guest today, the founder of The Pocket PhD, Emily Crookston.

Emily is a ghostwriter and editor who works with experts and thought leaders to help them bring their ideas to the masses.

As you'll hear, Emily's plan for 2020 was to grow her business through in-person speaking engagements. Her first gig was on March 8—and then... lock down.

But Emily adapted—taking the same strategy she was applying to speaking gigs and applied it to LinkedIn. She's seen tremendous success on the platform over the last year and I wanted to talk with her about how she adapted her plan, decided on LinkedIn, and then figured out how to make the most of the platform by working her plan.

We talk about how she made the jump from posting spontaneously to planning her content & scheduling it. We talk about the video interview series she started. We talk about how she approaches the LinkedIn algorithm (hint: she doesn't). And we talk about the results she's seen for her business.

The post EP 317: Leveraging LinkedIn With The Pocket PhD Founder Emily Crookston appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, my guest is Gillian Perkins—a YouTuber with over 450 thousand subscribers, marketing expert, business strategist, and the creator of Startup Society.

I've had the pleasure of getting to know Gillian through YellowHouse.Media, where we produce her podcast, Work Less, Earn More. Gillian is a disciplined, rigorous executor who is no stranger to making a plan and working it.

And there are plenty of conventional ways that Gillian manages the work to be done—for instance, she loves Asana!

But there was a really intriguing part of our conversation where I learned that Gillian's found her true way of working on big projects—like planning for her recent parental leave—doesn't necessarily fit the way we think it's supposed to be done. She calls it "batching chaotically" and it's a mode of operation I can definitely relate to!

In this conversation, you'll hear what Gillian's average 20-hour workweek looks like, how she changed that up to prepare for parental leave, how she made her leave plan in the first place, and what she's learned by taking time away from the business over the years.

The post EP 316: Planning For Parental Leave With Startup Society Founder Gillian Perkins appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Welcome to the first What Works episode of 2021!

This episode is going to be a look behind the scenes of my two companies and how we’re planning for 2021, some of the choices we’re making, and what we’ll be looking for as the year progresses.

Not only is this the kick-off episode for 2021, it’s the kick-off for our January series on “working the plan.” This month, I’m going to be sharing conversations about planning for parental leave, leveraging LinkedIn, and writing a book—all things that have taken intentional planning and execution!

But before we get to those, I wanted to share not only how I’ll be working the plan this year but how the plan got made in the first place.

I recorded this episode in mid-December 2020. And in that time, I've already discovered some things that are altering my plans. After all, the very act of working a plan means you're gaining new information and even discovering new ideas.

Planning is a learning process.

It's not about getting the plan right, it's about finding a starting point and then learning from the result as you go.

My plan is never set in stone. Adjusting my plan doesn’t mean I’ve failed or done something wrong. It means I'm learning. So start with my best guess of what I want to do and then adapt from there as I gain new information and experiences.

In this episode, I'll share how I'm reallocating my resources this year to better serve my companies, what commitments I've made for the year, the Strategic Priorities we're focused on, and what projects we're kicking off the year with.

Here's what works for me when I'm working the plan!

The post EP 315: How I’m Planning For 2021 at What Works & YellowHouse.Media appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, we're talking to Melissa Emler, who leads a community of educators & administrators over at Modern Learners.

As you might guess from the name of her company, Missy has been through the wringer this year! The pandemic brought an intense urgency to the work she's been doing and the change she's been trying to create in education for years. Suddenly, schools all over the world knew they needed a new approach to learning.

But that wasn't the only thing creating twists & turns for Missy this year.

In this conversation, you'll hear how Missy balances leading her company with working in the "lab" of a day job, the 3-part framework she's used to lead educators through big change, and how she created space for conversation about injustice and systemic racism in education.

Plus, you'll hear how Missy uses a key question about change and figuring out who we want to become to meet the moment to lead herself and others.

The post EP 314: Discovering Who You Want To Become With Modern Leaders Co-Founder Melissa Emler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, we’re continuing our series on leading yourself with Alethea Fitzpatrick, the founder of Co-Creating Inclusion—a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting practice.

Alethea told me that her go-to practice for navigating the twists & turns of this year has been focusing on what she can control and letting go of what she can’t.

As you might guess, Alethea’s consultancy has experienced massive growth this year—which has been its own challenge—while she also had to deal with pandemic life with 2 kids in New York City.

I’ve watched Alethea navigate big emotions, uncertain outcomes, and limited capacity and her openness & grace in the midst of oppression and violence has been astounding.

The post EP 313: Focusing On What You Can Control With Co-Creating Inclusion Founder Alethea Fitzpatrick appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When you’re building a business, you’ll inevitably experience ups and downs, ebbs and flows.

When things are bad, it can feel like every success you’ve ever experienced is being washed away by failure.

But, of course, the truth is that we’re always learning and moving forward.

As we continue our series on leading yourself and examining the practices that small business owners used to navigate this wild year, I’m thrilled to introduce you to coach and founder of The Change Agency, Valerie Black.

I met Valerie at this time last year and was immediately struck by her mix of gentleness and tenacity. She is both strategic and intuitive, open-hearted and strong-willed—not that any of those things are mutually exclusive, of course!

Valerie has had a year of ebbs and flows, as she put it.

And I wanted to capture her story and learn more about the self-care practices that saw her through this year.

The post EP 312: Surfing The Ebbs & Flows with The Change Agency Founder Valerie Black appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This month, I wanted to take a look back at how they’ve led themselves through this wild year.

So I spoke to 4 small business owners who each had a very different experience this year. What they all have in common, though, is a fine-tuned sense of self-leadership.

Sometimes that self-leadership took the form of intentional practices of self-care. Other times, it was finding the courage the make big decisions. And still other times, their self-leadership stared down challenges with intense creativity & imagination.

My first guest in this series is Emily Thompson, host of Being Boss and founder of Almanac Supply Company.

Emily had a big year—she separated from her long-time business partner Kathleen Shannon. She reimagined the Being Boss business model. She pivoted an in-person event to the online space. And, she got creative about how to replace a major revenue stream for Almanac.

Emily and I talk about all of these moments and much more.

The post EP 311: Finding The Full Body Yes With Being Boss Host Emily Thompson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, I'm talking with financial coach and the founder of Wealth Over Now, Keina Newell.

Keina and I started this conversation with the frame that we were going to be talking about learning mindset skills. And we definitely talk about that.

But after reflecting on this interview, I think what we talked about the most was unlearning many of the habits and patterns that she'd learned along the way.

Keina and I talk about what she thought the problem was and how she tried to fix it before landing on learning and unlearning key mindset pieces, as well as the self-coaching system she used to finally start the reprogramming. We talk about the process she uses on a daily basis to examine what she's thinking and how it could be holding her back. And, we get into the extraordinary results she's been able to create as a result of this work.

The post EP 310: Unlearning Default Thoughts With Financial Coach Keina Newell appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, you're going to hear from four small business owners who have learned to see things in a new way--to shift their perspective--and as a result show up differently for themselves and their businesses.

I've got stories from writing coach Beth Barany, Work Brighter founder Brittany Berger, business finance coach Lauren Caselli, and speech language pathologist and life coach Melissa Page Deutsch.

Each one has a very different story of how they learned something new and it shifted their perspective. Pay attention to how that new perspective helped them see both their challenges and their opportunities in new ways.

The post EP 309: How To Change Your Perspective appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

All this month on What Works, we're talking about leveling up our skills and, this week, I've got the inside scoop on a brand new joint venture that friend of the pod Dana Kaye and her new business partner Felton Kizer put together. Knowing what I've learned about my own second company, not to mention working with a business partner, I knew this conversation would teach us a lot about the skills that go into building a new business.

You might remember that Dana Kaye is the founder of Kaye Publicity, a PR firm for authors, as well as the host of the podcast, Branding Outside The Box. Felton Kizer is a photographer and the founder of Off-Kilter Media.

Together, they've just launched Bouquet Stock Photography. They wanted to see more people of color, those in the LGBTQIA+ community, non-binary folks, and those with different sizes, ages, and physical abilities represented in the photography that's available for brands and creators online.

But launching this new business required them to level up.

In this conversation, you'll hear how they decided to partner up and what skills they've learned to communicate clearly, divide labor, and work together effectively. We also talk about the specific skills they needed to make the business a reality—like ecommerce design, search engine optimization, and revenue sharing.

The post EP 308: Leveraging Old Skills & Learning New Ones With Bouquet Stock Photography Founders Dana Kaye & Felton Kizer appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This year—both as predicted and rushed along by the pandemic—has seen a wave of new community-based businesses.

And lots of people are learning just how different this skill set is!

I wanted to talk with someone else who has experienced this shift first hand and I was thrilled when Christianne Squires agreed to share her story.

Christianne is the founder of The Light House and, formerly, Bookwifery. You're going to hear all about these two businesses—and what makes them different from each other over the course of this conversation.

You'll also hear how Christianne has been nurturing her skills as a community builder and how that's pushed her rethink how she creates value, what her people need from her, and what her role is in the community. Plus, we talk about a bonus skill: discernment.

The post EP 307: Mastering A New Model With The Light House Founder Christianne Squires appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This month, we're exploring how we level up by learning new skills.

We all bring a unique skill set to our businesses. Some of us bring the skills we learned in school or corporate careers that transfer directly into the work we're doing today. Others bring certifications and licenses from careers that no longer serve us.

Some of us bring skills from our hobbies, personal adventures, or relationships. Others bring skills they had no idea would be useful but have been invaluable to their growth.

The way we leverage our existing skills and learn new ones helps us to creatively solve business problems, invest ourselves in future outcomes, and differentiate our brands.

Over the course of this month, we'll hear from a number of small business owners who have spent time and energy on learning a new skill so they could level up some aspect of their businesses—or, in one case, start a new one.

Today, I'm talking with Kris Windley, who realized that she could level up her writing business by learning illustration skills.

Kris is a professional writer, certified teacher and curriculum developer, and describes herself as a happily amateur illustrator.

In this conversation, not only will you hear how Kris learned to illustrate and how she uses it in her writing—but you'll also discover the way she's learning how her ADHD brain works and how it influences the way she thinks and processes information.

We also talk about why learning new things is hard—and what to do when you feel stuck.

The post EP 306: Finding A New Way To Communicate With Writer Kris Windley appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Speaking up for yourself and your business is no joke.

Putting your ideas, stories, or information out there can be daunting. Any number of things might be going through your mind:

Is this really helpful? Hasn't this already been said a million times before? What if someone yells at me? Who am I to say this? What if they think I'm weird? Is anyone paying attention at all? What if it goes viral and I get inundated with replies?

And it's not just the head stuff that stops us!

Sometimes the challenge is finding our people and speaking directly to them. Sometimes the obstacle is finding a message that makes a connection. Sometimes it's the logistics or the technology that throw you for a loop.

So many things can stand in the way of us speaking up for ourselves and our small businesses.

Today, I've got 5 stories for you. Each story is from a small business owner who identified a hurdle they had to speaking up and found what worked for them to overcome it.

You'll hear from Pocket PhD founder Emily Crookston, photographer Janeris Marte, brand strategist Helen Tremethick, Niche Partnership Consulting founder Mary Beth Simón, and speaking coach Johanna Walker.

The post EP 305: How To Keep Speaking Up (Even When Things Go Wrong) appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, we're talking with Annie Schuessler from Rebel Therapist.

Annie helps therapists and other healers move their businesses beyond private practice. She has her own podcast—also called Rebel Therapist—and we talk about how hosting her show has helped to use her voice.

But we also dive into how Annie has been borrowing other people's audiences all year long through a podcast tour, a concerted effort to pitch other hosts and appear on other shows.

Not only has her tour been successful—but it's helped create incredible results in her business, like overselling her last Create Your Program group coaching offer.

We talk about how Annie finds shows to pitch, the research she does to pitch them, how she tracks her pitching, and how she's overcome the fear she first felt when getting started on this project.

The post EP 304: Speaking To New Audiences With Rebel Therapist Founder Annie Schuessler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I'm all in on curating. And I think it's something that most small business owners should consider as a potential way to use their voice and highlight their perspective.

So to take things really meta, as I was curating this month's Speak Up theme, I knew I wanted to include a curator.

Jessica Williams came to mind.

Jessica is the curator behind #jesspicks, a weekly newsletter for side hustlers. Jessica is herself a side hustler, working during the day at &yet, run by previous What Works guest Sarah Avenir. But on the side, she's been helping small business owners for years.

Jessica and I talk about why she started the newsletter, what she includes each week, and how she manages her workflow to make sure it gets done. We also talk about what producing over 200 editions of the newsletter has taught her and how it's impacted the level of confidence she feels in using her voice.

The post EP 303: Creating A Curated Newsletter With #jesspicks Creator Jessica Williams appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Suzanne Chadwick is so good at showing up and connecting with people. In fact, she does it every week day morning—a habit we talk about during this conversation.

Suz is a bold branding, business, and speaker coach who helps women create businesses that fit their lifestyle. Her coaching helps female entrepreneurs show up in bold ways and share their messages online and on stages.

I invited Suz onto the show to talk about how she cultivates the confidence and go-getterness that exudes from the way she speaks up. And I expected to have a conversation about going big—and we did—but my big takeaway from this conversation is in how much she prioritizes the small ways she can connect with people, the little things she does to make people feel seen and included.

So I hope you listen for that and consider how that can apply to the way you speak up and show up, too.

The post EP 302: Connecting With Confidence with Brand Builders Academy Creator Suz Chadwick appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest today is Hillary Rea, the founder of Tell Me A Story. Hillary helps entrepreneurs, leaders, and change makers identify that personal narratives that create powerful communication.

Now, you might think Hillary had this whole speaking up and taking a stand thing under control.

She did, too.

In fact, in episode 226, Hillary shared how she's found the confidence to stand on stage and share vulnerable personal experiences through storytelling.

But earlier this year, just after Covid-19 upended her business, Hillary realized she had let herself, her story, and her stand get watered down. She was trying to squeeze into a mold that she assumed other people wanted her to fit into.

This is the story of how she reversed course, started speaking up for real, and the challenges she faced as she did.

Hillary and I talk about how her business shakeup this year helped her see what had become a big problem, how she tried to fit in and avoid looking like a weirdo, the concrete changes she made to how she presents her work, and the ongoing challenges of continuing to speak up in a stronger way.

The post EP 301: Taking A Stand With Tell Me A Story Founder Hillary Rea appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This is our 300th episode of What Works! To celebrate, What Works host Tara McMullin and top podcasters, Emily Thompson (Being Boss), Elsie Escobar (The Feed, She Podcasts), and Jessica Kupferman (She Podcasts) came together for a live podcast recording. We looked back at 2020 and shared what we’ve learned about ourselves, our shows, and […]

The post EP 300: Celebrating A Milestone With Emily Thompson, Elsie Escobar, Jessica Kupferman & Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, I've got 4 more stories to share with you from small business owners who have intentionally done things their own way when it comes to sales and selling. They've found what truly works for them--even if it bucks the prevailing wisdom or would make a bro marketing expert role his or her eyes.

These stories come from business coach Ashley Gartland, marketing expert Amy Lippmann, designer Mel Richards, and work reinvention coach Lydia Lee.

Listen for how they incorporated these same considerations into finding their own unique sales systems. They designed their systems with personal values, strong relationships, reduced anxiety, and agency in mind.

The post EP 299: How To Design Your Own Sales System appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This show is called What Works for a reason.

Sometimes it's a declaration: this is what worked for this small business. And often, it's a question, "What works?"

Today's episode is very much a question, many questions, really:

What works when it comes to selling when you want to avoid manipulative or exploitative practices?

What works when your values conflict with many of the best practices of selling online but you still want people to buy your stuff?

What works when it comes to sales in a business that is actively anti-racist and anti-capitalist?

And even more bluntly: Can you even sell things without causing harm or perpetuating harmful systems?

My friend Kate Strathmann is the founder of Wanderwell, a bookkeeping and consulting firm that grows thriving businesses while investigating new models for being in business.

Recently, Kate took a bit of a detour from how she's used to building her business, which is 90% referral based and fueled by deep relationship- and community-building. She decided to offer a small group program called the Equitable Business Incubator as a way of exploring anti-capitalist business practices and how they apply to the small businesses we're building.

To fill the program, Kate need to sell differently.

Which led her to asking the question: Can you even sell things as a anti-capitalist?

While that might not be your specific question, I have a feeling that you too have wondering how you can effectively sell your offers without causing harm, perpetuating harmful systems, or damaging relationships. And that's why I knew Kate and I needed to explore this topic on the show.

This is a conversation about what a kinder, less harmful sales process could look like—and it probably contains more questions than answers. But I'm confident those questions can help you find the answers that are right for you and the sales system that you want to build to make your business stronger.

We start out by defining what we're really talking about when we talk about capitalism and anti-capitalism. Then, Kate shares how the Equitable Business Incubator came to be and how she ended up selling it. And then we dig into what makes many of the sales formulas and best practices being taught today problematic—and how to think differently to create your own alternative practices.

Now, let's take a look at what works for creating less harmful sales systems!

The post EP 298: Creating A Less Harmful Sales System with Wanderwell Founder Kate Strathmann appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today's guest is Katie Hunt—who is a member of the former group and serves the latter group.

Katie is the founder of Proof To Product, which helps creative entrepreneurs run and grow thriving product-based businesses. She works with designers, illustrators, and artists to help them develop in-demand product lines and get them sold in stores all over the world.

Not long after the pandemic threw her business and the industry she serves for a major loop, Katie and her team launched Proof To Product Labs to provide a completely digital, ongoing support opportunity for business owners when they needed it most.

And that launch was a smash.

Katie and I get into all of the nuts and bolts of how she adjusted the offer to meet the moment and how she warmed up her audience before the campaign, as well as the exact mix of emails, podcast ads, and social media content she used to sell the offer when it went live. We also talk about how she sees the sales system evolving in the future and how the offer has been received now that people are using it!

The post EP 297: Selling A New Program With Proof To Product Founder Katie Hunt appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I'm talking with my friend Autumn Witt Boyd, the founder of The AWB Firm, which specializes in helping online business owners protect what they've built.

Autumn and I talk about why she started tinkering with her sales process in the first place, the speed bumps she experienced along the way, why her sales process ended up too automated, and how she's taken a more human approach and actually gotten much better results.

The post EP 296: Putting The Humanity Back In Sales With Lawyer Autumn Witt Boyd appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The market is constantly changing. New technology, new trends, new players. We can either treat the constant changing and uncertainty as a threat… …or we can treat it as an invitation to see everything we do as a work in progress. All this month, we’ve been looking at the process of value creation–how we wind […]

The post EP 295: It’s Always A Work In Progress appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Hey, it’s Tara McMullin, and this is a special bonus episode of What Works, the show that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how small business owners take decisive action to build a stronger business. This is the third and final episode in a series on how I’ve approached creating and delivering value through the […]

The post BONUS: Refining How I Offer Business Support Over The Long-Term appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Refining the product or service you already offer can be as good—or even better—for giving your business a shot of energy as offering something new.

When you refine or repackage your offer, new people might notice it who passed it by before. New methods of delivery might give you back some serious time. A new price point might unlock a new level of profitability for your business. A new message or angle on what you really offer could open your eyes to a whole new way to market what you do.

In other words, refining your offer could lead to a new, bold vision for your whole business!

This is exactly what I talked about with today's guest, Michelle Markwart Deveaux, founder of FaithCultureKiss voice studio and the SpeakEasy Cooperative.

Michelle is a voice teacher... as well as champion for voice teachers who want to empower students, performers, podcasters, and voice talent of all kinds to use their voices in powerful ways.

Michelle started out teaching voice with the same kind of offer you'd expect any voice, piano, or instrument teacher to use. Students paid her for each lesson and they called it a day.

But as she started to hate how transactional that method was and how guilty it made her feel for doing work outside of her lessons, she started to refine her offer—and ended up creating a whole new model for teaching voice.

We get into all of that and more, including how she doubled her rates and delivered 3x the value, how she structures her packages, and how she got started teaching voice online. Plus, we talk about how she took what she learned refining her original voice teaching offer and created a new offer to help other voice teachers, too.

The post EP 294: Refining Your Offer With SpeakEasy Cooperative Founder Michelle Markwart Deveaux appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In This Episode: Why Sean and Tara McMullin chose to “productize” their full-service podcast production offer at YellowHouse.Media… and what productized services actually are What’s included in the package they offer–and why they don’t often custom or a la carte services How the productized service model allowed them to quickly create a small group coaching […]

The post BONUS: Why We Chose Productized Services For YellowHouse.Media appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Offer development is an incredibly important part of running a service-based business. Without a careful strategy and thoughtful process behind how you create value, you are likely to get stuck in the trap of trading time for money or wind up overwork & overwhelmed.

That’s why I wanted to make sure we included a bespoke service-based business in this series on creating value.

I invited India Jackson, the founder of Flaunt Your Fire, a full-service brand visibility agency, to share her approach to how she creates value and constructs the services she offers clients.

India is clear on what her agency does and what it does not do.

She’s clear on why her agency offers the types engagements it does and why some projects just aren’t right for them. And, she’s clear on how her team adds value to the services the agency provides—so India isn’t stuck doing everything herself.

Even if you don’t run a service-based business, this conversation has a lot to offer. Listen in and consider how you might be trying to do too much with your product-based business or how you’ve succumb to making offers that aren’t aligned with your values or best work.

The post EP 293: Offering Bespoke Services With Flaunt Your Fire Founder India Jackson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This is a special bonus episode of What Works--the show that takes you behind the scenes of how small business owners take decisive action to build a stronger business.

This is the first episode in a three-part series taking a closer look at what's worked for me as I've developed a new ways to create and deliver value over the years, both here at What Works and now at YellowHouse.Media.

Today I'm sharing how our latest What Works offer, a live program called The Commitment Blueprint came to be—tracing it from its humble beginnings as the seed of a major life and business shift for me to a successful webinar, to a paid template, and finally to the live program version.

The post BONUS: How I Created 2 New Offers When People Asked Me, “What’s Next?” appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This month, we’re focusing on how small businesses create & deliver value.

How do we develop new offers? Put together new packages? Build new products?

We’ll be deep diving into 3 businesses and how they create & deliver value.

I’ll also be sharing a series of short bonus episodes looking back at how I’ve created & delivered value over the years—and how that process continues to evolve both at What Works and at YellowHouse.Media. Plus, we’ll close out the series by hearing from a few more business owners who have found creative ways to create and deliver value through the offers they make.

As I mentioned earlier, “What’s next?” is often a question that helps you figure out how to create and deliver value beyond what you’re already doing.

A product or service that solves a particular problem might shine some light on the next problem that needs to be a solved. A product or service that creates a delightful experience might simply leave the customer asking for more.

Or “What’s next?” might simply be a request to go deeper, keep working together longer, or investigate new possibilities.

Alisha Robertson found herself with a whole bunch of customers asking her “What’s next?” after she released a book called Living Over Existing. After a lot of thought, some customer research, some soul-searching, Alisha came up with her next move.

Alisha and talk about how the LOE Collective came to be, how she’s set up her community to meet those “What’s next” needs, and how she created the Intentional Success Path to guide her members through more “What’s next” questions. Plus, Alisha shares why she also created a physical welcome kit to send to her new members.

The post EP 292: Figuring Out What’s Next For Your Offer With LOE Collective Founder Alisha Robertson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The future is hazy.

It's unknowable. And that makes taking decisive action to build a stronger business much more challenging.

But we have a choice. We can either fight it--and metaphorically try to shake that damn ball until we have a complete picture of what the future is going to be.

Or we can make decisions based on the information we have, a solid understanding of our goals, and an acceptance of the uncertainty of it all.

Waiting until you have all the answers you need or want is a great way to keep spinning your wheels. While embracing uncertainty might be risky and it's can definitely be scary, but it's the only way we move forward.

This month, we looked at 3 different stories of embracing uncertainty. Lou Blaser told us how a big life change allowed her to look at her business in a new way and see how she could finally build the business she'd been dreaming about for years. Sarah Avenir shared how she leads herself and her team through uncertainty. And Cher Hale told us about getting clearer and clearer on her vision for life and business--and the big moves it required of her.

We're rounding out this conversation about embracing uncertainty today by hearing from 4 more small business owners: Podge Thomas, Melissa Dinwiddie, Kat Lu, and Amy Feierman.

Each entrepreneur embraced uncertainty in a way that allowed them to move forward despite not having all the answers or a guarantee of what the future would hold.

My guess is that you'll hear a version of situation or question you're wrestling with right now in at least one of these stories.

The post EP 291: Reply Hazy. Try Again. appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest is Cher Hale, the founder of Ginkgo Public Relations.

Cher is full of incredible stories of figuring out what she wants and taking action to make it happen—from making a big personal moving, to going full-time with her business, to embracing a bold new "why" for her business.

We talk about why she made the move from working on the Vegas Strip to getting weird in Portland, how she used retainer clients to take her business full-time, and how she rewrote some of the harmful mindsets she held. We also talk about her mother's erotic romance novels and how Cher was inspired to make a big shift in who she serves with her business and why.

Don't worry—this interview is completely PG.

Now, let's find out What Works for Cher Hale!

The post EP 290: Discovering Your Vision With Ginkgo Public Relations Founder Cher Hale appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I wanted to dig into what leading a team or community through a crisis can look like, and I could think of no one better to talk to about this than my friend Sarah Avenir.

Sarah Avenir—who you might know better as Sarah J. Bray—recently took the helm as the CEO of &yet, a digital development and strategy agency.

Sarah is an incredibly thoughtful leader and I knew her approach on leading both herself and her team through this time would be an insightful look at embracing uncertainty.

Sarah and I chat about how she became CEO of &yet, how she considers herself a naturally fearful person, and why a key part of her leadership is knowing others have her back. We also talk about how she structures her time, team, and approach to her work so she can focus on her own role and let other people do their job.

The post EP 289: Leading Through Uncertainty with &yet CEO Sarah Avenir appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We are all facing uncertainty--as we do every day. So I wanted to talk with business owners who have their own stories about embracing uncertainty this month and the first person I thought of was Lou Blaser, the founder & host of Second Breaks.

I've watched Lou embrace uncertainty over and over again throughout the years. I've watched her step outside her comfort zone and I've watched her take courageous action.

Earlier this year, she announced that she'd made the decision to upend her business, then a career coaching company for late Boomers and Gen Xers, and move back to the Philippines to help out with her aging m. And while she could have tried to continue with her business as is--she made the bold move to use the change as a way to rethink everything.

That's where this conversation starts--and throughout, Lou and I talk about how her business has evolved, the questions she asked herself to create the new plan, how she could use her existing assets in new ways, and how she started experimenting with her new ideas.

The post EP 288: Rethinking Your Business Amidst Change With Second Breaks Founder Lou Blaser appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, we asked members of The What Works Network to share one thing they thought they knew about money but later discovered wasn't true. Each shared a narrative or bias that held them back from fully embracing their business and their earning potential.

As you listen, consider which of these narratives are ones you're currently operating with and how you could start reevaluating them. What would you do differently if you reprogrammed those money thoughts? What decisions would you make if you claimed a new money narrative?

You'll hear from Charlene Lam, a curator and social media strategist, Maggie Patterson, the founder of Scoop Studios, Carol Hamilton, the founder of Grace Social Sector Consulting, and Anna Wolf, the founder of Superscript Marketing.

The post EP 287: The Things We Thought We Knew About Money appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

As you grow as a business owner, you can start to anticipate market changes and plan for the way your cost of goods increases. You can set a goal to position your brand in a certain way and you can become smarter about your target market so you understand the value of what you're offering more fully.

And perhaps most importantly...

You can plan for the ways your cost of doing business will evolve.

You can anticipate the team members you'll hire. You can plan for the software upgrades you'll need. You can build in margin to cover unforeseen circumstances or changes in the market that impact your bottom line.

Very, very few business owners do this from the start. But over time, you can get better and better at your pricing strategy—and even your overall financial strategy—so that you're planning for the future instead of reacting to it.

And that's exactly what I'm talking about with today's guest, Tiffany Whipps. Tiffany is the founder and designer behind Fire + Mineral Jewelry. Tiffany has been designing jewelry full-time since 2012 and she'd be the first to admit that her pricing strategy has become a lot more sophisticated since she put together her first line sheet on a whim.

I originally invited Tiffany onto the show to showcase how money flows through product-based businesses. And we absolutely talk about that. But we also talk about how Tiffany's approach to money has grown more sophisticated over time, as well as how she's now pricing for the business she wants to have instead of the business she has right now.

Tiffany and I talk about how her pricing strategy has evolved over the years, why she's focused on products that have more long-term value as opposed to what's trendy right now, and how she's using her goals to set prices for her new work.

The post EP 286: Pricing For The Future With Fire + Mineral Jewelry Founder Tiffany Whipps appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, we're taking a look at what happens when you're able to go all in on every aspect of building your business—product, marketing, and operations—and how that impacts how money flows through your business.

To do that, I talked with Marie Poulin.

Now, Marie has been on the podcast several times now. Most recently, I spoke with her about her decision to not build a business that scales. Funnily enough, at just about the time that interview aired, things started to change for Marie.

Marie found something she could go all in on.

And suddenly her path to the right product, the right marketing, and the right operations became clear—as did the path to making money with ease.

In this conversation, Marie and I talk about how she transformed her business when she stopped resisting and found the thing she could go all in on. We talk about how the way she makes money has changed, how she's finding her customers, how it's all impacted her personal finances, and what she's investing in now that her business is growing with ease.

The post EP 285: Going All In With Strategist Marie Poulin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In This Episode: Why grief & trauma worker Jennifer Patterson prices a significant portion of her work using a sliding scale How a sliding scale system increases accessibility to valuable healing work for people from disadvantaged and marginalized communities Why Jennifer priorities clear & direct communication when it comes to how people find the right […]

The post EP 284: Pricing On A Sliding Scale With Corpus Ritual Founder Jennifer Patterson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In This Episode The single most important lesson Tara McMullin learned about money in the last 5 years How that lesson rippled through her business and personal development as a leader Why this lesson also led with taking stock of how much her sense of credibility was tied to the money she makes How Sean […]

The post EP 283: Taking Stock Of Our Evolving Relationships To Money with Tara & Sean McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I was not a girl scout.

But I love merit badges.

As in, few things thrill me more than earning recognition for learning or doing something.

I've been chasing merit badges all my life—so much so that the pursuit of merit badges has often led me away from what I really want out of life... and toward what will earn me the next badge.

I've taken numerous jobs I didn't want just to get the merit badge. I've agreed to plenty of collaborations I didn't really want just to get the merit badge. And, I've chased a bunch of goals that didn't really inspire me just to get the merit badge.

Every merit badge I earn is just another attempt to prove to myself that I'm good enough, that I'm worthy. And each merit badge I earn only convinces me that the next merit badge will be the one that finally makes me happy.

It's only been in the last couple of years that I made this realization. And I did so with the support of my husband, my team, and coaching.

Now that I know about my merit badge pattern, I'm always on the lookout for it. I've rearranged my goal-setting, planning, and decision-making so that I have a better opportunity to notice when I'm stretching toward something I really want... or gunning for another merit badge.

I know I'm not the only person who always has her eye on the next merit badge. There's a good chance that, as a listener of this show, you're also keen on collecting accomplishments and achievements. Maybe that's been helpful for you... and maybe it's gotten you off track.

Maybe it's been a result of your own sense of self-worth... and maybe it's been an attempt to prove it.

My guest today found herself in a similar situation to me—always trying to prove she was good enough by climbing the rungs of her chosen career ladder: opera singing.

But when she earned the merit badge she had most wanted her whole life, she realized that she still wasn't happy.

I'll let her tell that story—but, listener, I can relate. And that's why I so wanted to bring Shirin Eskandani onto the show.

Shirin has done a lot of work on rewriting this pattern and she's found support for that work through coaching.

Today, Shirin is not a full-time opera singer. She's a full-time coach herself.

Shirin is a life coach, public speaker and writer who specializes in mindfulness and mindset work. She has been a featured wellness expert on the Today Show and Cosmopolitan Magazine. Shirin’s holistic approach to transformation is influenced by her background in meditation, spirituality and the arts.

We talk about achieving her childhood dream and realizing she still wasn't happy, as well as how she started to choose the thoughts that would help her feel the way she wants to feel, made the leap to coaching, and found her why. We also talk about coaching as a support structure and how coaching can help you embrace who you really want to be.

The post EP 282: Finding Support Through Coaching With Wholehearted Coaching Founder Shirin Eskandani appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

All this month, we've looked at the challenges--and opportunities--that small business owners face in getting the support they need to feel confident and prepared.

We've looked at mental health support, we've examined peer support, and we dug into coaching. This week, we asked 4 of our community members to share times when they've experienced a profound sense of support and I'm thrilled with how each of them shared a different form of support.

Rebel Therapist founder Annie Schuessler shared how being honest & vulnerable with her peers has made a huge impact on her and her business.

Business coach Justine Clay shared how a year-long program and accountability partner helped her get a new business off the ground.

Voice coach and Speakeasy Collective founder Michelle Markwart Deveaux shared how her team supports her--and has helped her see herself and her role in a new way.

And coach Leigh Johnson brings it all home by sharing how important different types of support and mindset about support was key to the growth and then exit from her last business.

As you listen, I encourage you to think about the support you already have available to you--because it's probably more than you realize on a daily basis! And I also want you to think about what support you might need to call on more or find new structure for.

The post EP 281: Business Support Comes In All Shapes & Sizes appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I started learning about high-functioning anxiety from our guest today, Nancy Jane Smith. The way Nancy described anxiety was nothing like what I thought of anxiety to be... but was everything about my experience of the world.

I've shared on the podcast before that only recently did I realize I was living with chronic anxiety. I had always identified as dealing with chronic depression and didn't recognize my normal-for-me mental state was one of high anxiety. But the more I've learned from Nancy, the more I've learned about my own brand of anxiety.

Nancy is an expert in High Functioning Anxiety. Nancy is trained as a licensed professional counselor and therapeutic coach. She's the author of The Happier Approach book and the host of The Happier Approach podcast. And, she lives every day with high functioning anxiety.

People with high functioning anxiety respond to anxiety by over-performing, by showing up to do all the things, by trying to be so good that nothing bad can happen.

That's pretty much me in a nutshell. And it's absolutely how I started off this whole crisis. I figured that I could perform my way into sanity and certainty.

Well, listener, I could not. And neither can you.

Now, Nancy and I recorded this interview before the cancelled events, the lockdowns, and the economic uncertainty. So we don't talk about this collective experience explicitly. But if you listen between the lines, you'll hear it. It's there. We might not have known it was coming yet but everything we talk about applies to this unique period of time because high functioning anxiety is so dang predictable.

In this interview, Nancy and I talk about how she thrives with high functioning anxiety as a business owner, how she's structured her business to support her with this challenge, and who she relies on for the support she needs.

Whether high functioning anxiety is your normal to or whether you're listening as someone who is interested in the many ways we find what works for our unique situations, I think this episode will be really enlightening.

The post EP 280: Thriving With High Functioning Anxiety With The Happier Approach Host Nancy Smith appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Last year, at an in-person gathering of one of the masterminds that we run at What Works, one participant told me that they didn't really need anyone to tell them what to do with their business. They knew exactly what they should be doing. Instead, they said they needed people to ask why they weren't doing it.

That's why they were in the mastermind group.

To me, that's the perfect illustration of how a mastermind group can support business owners who are committed to—not just learning a new marketing skill or figuring out how to launch a new product—but to becoming a more whole entrepreneur and building a business that works exceptionally well.

I've been running mastermind groups of one sort or another for about 5 years and I have a lot to say on the subject. But I didn't want you to just get my thoughts...

So I invited someone equally as passionate about masterminding as I am, Sarah K. Peck, the founder of Startup Pregnant.

Sarah was on the show before talking about how the Startup Pregnant podcast got started—but the whole business and community of Startup Pregnant has evolved and grown a ton since then. Check out Episode 134 for our original conversation.

Today, Sarah and I jam about masterminding—how we participate in masterminds, how we facilitate masterminds, and how we leverage them in our businesses. We also talk about the role masterminding plays in how you get support as an entrepreneur and we talk through how we structure sessions for the best outcomes.

The post EP 279: Leveraging Masterminds For Support With Startup Pregnant Founder Sarah Peck appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This month, we're tackling that feeling of loneliness and the different kinds of support we can lean on to feel grounded and whole.

Today, we're kicking things off with Chris Brogan, an author, speaker, and consultant who has been incredibly forthcoming about his own experience with depression and anxiety. Chris helps business owners feel less lonely by vulnerably sharing what he's going through on a regular basis and by regularly offering his support to those who are in the throws of mental health challenges.

Post by post, conversation by conversation, Chris is doing his part of reduce the stigma of depression, anxiety, and even failure.

You might know Chris from his New York Times bestselling book, Trust Agents, or maybe you've heard him speak on a stage or podcast. He's an incredibly prolific content creator as well as leader, connector, and all-around friendly guy.

Chris and I talk about how depression and anxiety impact his life and work, how he's structured his business to work with his mental health challenges, and how he knows what work to push through on and what can be dropped. We also talk about why he's made such an effort be visible and helpful as he goes through the ups and downs he experiences on a regular basis.

The post EP 278: Prioritizing Your Mental Health With Chris Brogan appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We've covered a lot of territory with the tools we use to run our businesses over the last month. And we're going to cover a little more today.

But I think this mindset shift around how we use technology and develop systems has been a thread that has tied all of our episodes together. Whether it was my conversation with Sean, or Jessica, or Prerna, or Holly & Arryn, I hope you picked up on the strategy that these business owners use when it comes to picking and working with tools.

That strategy isn't just about what tools or systems they use.

It's really a bigger mindset around how they run their businesses. They expect to be running, building, and growing these businesses for years to come and so they choose tools, systems, and workflows that make that easier.

Today, I want to share 3 more business owners and their favorite tools with you. You'll hear from designer & illustrator Cynthia Oswald, operations manager Heidi Johnson, and software engineer Rachel Ober. Each one is sharing a tool that's dramatically changed the way they do business--each in completely different ways.

The post EP 277: 3 Tools These Small Business Owners Swoon Over appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guests today are Holly Myers and Arryn Grogan from Lift With Holly And Arryn. They were running an online personal training business before taking your personal training business online was corona-cool!

I found Holly and Arryn through my Instagram gym family and fell in love with their joy, strength, and precision. Their content is incredibly useful and very fun and real at the same time.

Because Holly and Arryn specialize in training other coaches on the techniques they've mastered, they realized that online coaching was a great fit for them early on. Instead of constraining their client base to their hometown, they're able to coach people from all over—and coach while they're on the road, as well.

In this episode, we talk about the tools and systems they've used to build their online training business—including the equipment they prefer, the software they use for coaching, the system they use for putting together programs, and how they build content for Instagram.

We also talk about some of their favorite tools for working on the road.

The post EP 276: Tools For Building An Online Personal Training Business With Holly Myers and Arryn Grogan From Lift With Holly & Arryn appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

And this week, I'm talking with Prerna Malik about the tools she uses to run her copywriting agency, Content Bistro.

Yes, Prerna and I get into the specific tools she uses—things like Google Drive, Notion, and CrazyEgg. But we also talk a lot about her process—how she does what she does.

Like I said, process is the most valuable tool in your business and your process should determine the tools that you use.

Prerna's approach certainly demonstrates this. Her tools help her make her process work. They help her make her process more efficient. And ultimately, it's her process that's helped her build an incredible business.

The post EP 275: Tools For Building A Copywriting Agency With Content Bistro Founder Prerna Malik appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We're continuing our series on the tools we use to run our small businesses by taking a look at the tools a content-driven business uses to create, manage, and publish all that content—as well as how it actually drives revenue, too.

I could think of no one better than my friend Jessica Stansberry to talk content & tools with. Jessica is a YouTuber, podcaster, and fellow lover of tools.

She's the host of Grit, a podcast about business and lifestyle design. She's also produces videos on planning, productivity, business, and marketing for over 66,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Jessica and I chat about the hardware, software, and systems she uses to manage it all—plus her criteria for selecting or switching tools! I also asked her about the tools she uses to manage her life outside of business.

The post EP 274: The Tools That Power A Content-Driven Business With Grit Host Jessica Stansberry appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This month, we're going to take a deep dive into the tools that different businesses rely on to run.

We'll talk software, systems, and processes—plus how it all works together.

We'll talk about how things have changed, what's stayed the same, and how to know when it's time to switch up your tools.

And, we'll talk with business owners that run different kinds of businesses—digital products, 1:1 services, and agencies.

Focusing on tools is especially relevant right now because many business owners are looking for ways to run more efficiently and more effectively so that they can boost profit or create new streams of revenue as the economy is changing.

We're also trying out new tools to cope with interruptions and stress. So in this kick off episode, I wanted to talk about both of those pieces of the puzzle with my podcasting partner-in-crime, my husband and the production coordinator for What Works, Sean McMullin.

Together, Sean and I run YellowHouse.Media, a full-service podcast production agency that specializes in helping small business owners create standout podcasts that power their marketing and sales.

We'll get into the tools we use to run YellowHouse—including how we set up client dashboards, manage projects, edit audio, and consult on content strategy. But first, we wanted to share some of the tools we're using to mange stress and anxiety right now.

Let's get into it!

The post EP 273: The Tools We Use To Run a Podcast Production Agency with YellowHouse.Media Co-Founders Sean and Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I'm joined by Stasia Savasuk, the creator of Stasia's Style School. Stasia helps people find the courage, clarity, and congruency to rock their personal style. Stasia's personal story—and how she's turned her passion into a thriving business—will shed light on all the hangups you might have about your personal style and the way your personality plays into the brand you're building.

The post EP 272: Making Your Brand Personal With Stasia’s Style School Creator Stasia Savasuk appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This weekend, I spent money at my local brewery because I want to support them as they try to keep their workers employed. I spent money at a local cafe. And I spent money at Whole Foods, which might be a big corporation but one that does a helluva lot of good for its workers and our local economy.

These brands are really important to me. They represent my home, my friends, and the world that I want to live in. I value their presence and I want to see them thrive.

They've worked hard to build brands that truly connect with people.

The small business owners we support at The What Works Network are doing the same. We asked 4 of them to share how they approach brand-building and what they've done to create a genuine connection between how they show up and the people they care about.

Now, I want to let you know that each of these contributions was recorded before the outbreak had fully hit North America. But I think sharing them with you and inviting you to think about how you want to approach your own brand-building is more important than ever.

You'll hear from Layla Pomper from Process-Driven, Lou Blaser from Second Breaks, Julie O'Hara from Hearts & Brains Consulting, and Margy Thomas from ScholarShape.

Let's get into it!

The post EP 271: Brand-Building Is More Important Than Ever appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest today is Martinus Evans, the host of the 300lbs And Running podcast and the founder of the Slow AF Run Club.

Martinus isn't very "on brand" either if you consider a runner someone wears short shorts and only eats salads. But Martinus is very much a runner. And Martinus has built a brand around rebranding who you think of when you think of a runner.

Today, we're talking about building a brand that defies convention and stereotypes.

Martinus and I chat about how he got started sharing his journey to become a runner, how his first race changed his own idea of who a runner is, and why Toastmasters played a big part in him finding the confidence to go big. We also talk about dealing with negativity online and why he chose to create the Slow AF Run Club as a standalone community instead of a Facebook group.

The post EP 270: Building A Brand That Defies Stereotypes With 300 Pounds And Running Host Martinus Evans appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The hardest part of rebranding has been rebuilding the idea our customers and community have about who we are and what we do for them.

That process is never a one-way conversation. It's collaborative and co-creative, especially in a community-based business like ours.

My guest today also runs a community-based business and she's intimately familiar with the role that her community members play in the brand she's building.

Sara Dean is the founder and host of Shameless Mom Academy.

As the Shameless Mom Academy podcast started to take off, Sara realized that what she was creating wasn't just hers. It wasn't just her sharing her thoughts and stories behind a mic and her audience listening, all from their respective houses, in their separate communities.

No, Shameless Mom Academy was a connection between women wrestling with their identities as mothers and ambitious women. This connection was the real story, the real brand powering an emerging business.

Today, Sara leads the Momentum Mamas membership community, the Tenacious Mamas business & leadership mastermind, and Shameless Mom Con where she brings the whole community together to co-create the foundation of this brand—and celebrate their shameless motherhood.

Sara and I talk about the personal identity crisis that inspired her to start the podcast, how she started with a vision for making a big impact but not making a big business, how she's leaning into imperfect action, and how the Shameless Mom Academy brand has evolved.

The post EP 269: Co-Creating A Brand In Community With Shameless Mom Academy Host Sara Dean appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

What impact with the global coronavirus pandemic have on small business owners? Some are already feeling the crunch. Others are planning for the long-term fallout. Tara McMullin talks with financial behaviorist Jacquette Timmons, event organizer Lauren Caselli, and lawyer Autumn Witt Boyd about how they're experiencing the impact of COVID-19.

The post SPECIAL: COVID-19 And The Impact On Small Business Owners appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, my guest is Alyssa Catalano, the co-founder of Studebaker Metals—a metalsmithing and accessories brand that epitomizes focused and intentional choices.

Alyssa and the Studebaker Metals team have made careful brand choices about everything from how they style their products to how their products are categorized to the tools they use to craft their products to the messaging behind the products.

Alyssa and I talk about the unconventional choice to produce unisex accessories, why slow is fast and what that has to do with their brand positioning, and how their brand plays out in advertising, plus the roles of timelessness and place in how their brand is built.

The post EP 268: Creating A Focused & Intentional Brand With Alyssa Catalano from Studebaker Metals appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, we're talking to Gina Bianchini from Mighty Networks.

Now, as you probably already know, Mighty Networks is a sponsor of What Works. Plus, we're proud users of their community-building and course delivery software.

And, as such, I've seen the Mighty Networks team go through a careful brand evolution over the last 3 years.

In fact, Mighty Networks brand evolution is a perfect case study in co-creating a brand with the people who engage with it and that's exactly what I wanted to talk with Gina about.

Gina and I chat about what's stayed the same and what's changed over the last few years as Mighty Networks has grown and grown. You'll hear about Gina's light bulb moment, how building a community for Mighty Networks users helped her see how people were really using the software, and why she decided to build an online course. Plus, you'll hear how all of this learning helped Mighty Networks create a stunning new visual brand, in-house, in less than 1 week.

The post EP 267: Leveling Up With Customer Feedback with Mighty Networks Gina Bianchini appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

While there are many white women entrepreneurs who are on this journey with me, few have been so public about her learning, her missteps, and the action she's taking in her business as Whole30's Melissa Urban.

About a year ago, shortly after I finished my own life-changing Whole30, I noticed that Melissa announced she was searching for someone to lead diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts for her company. I kept my eye on those developments and always enjoyed seeing her update her audience on the hire and progress they were making.

So when we decided to do this month on leadership, I knew I wanted to talk with Melissa and the woman she hired to fill this role, Dr. Carrie Kholi-Murchison, now Whole30's Director of People & Culture. I wanted to find out why and how Melissa has been leading so publicly on this front—and I also wanted to find out what Kholi was doing to lead this change internally in the organization.

This conversation has been several months in the making—even though we recorded it less than a week ago! And I am so excited to share it with you.

Alright, here's what Melissa, Kholi, and I talked about in this conversation: how Melissa gradually woke up to the lack of diversity and inclusion in the Whole30 community, why she thought free equalled accessible and open to everyone, and the work she's had to do to not immediately get defensive when someone points out something potentially harmful. Kholi shares how she pushed Melissa on whether Whole30 was just a wellness cult for while women, the challenges of doing DEI work with an internet business, and the specific projects they've launched to make the Whole30 a more inclusive community.

The post EP 266: Building An Inclusive Community With Whole30’s Melissa Urban & Dr. Carrie Kholi-Murchison appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, my guest is Rob Walling and Rob is committed to doing things differently.

Rob is best known for his leadership in the world of bootstrapped software-as-a-service businesses. He is the founder of Drip, MicroConf, and most recently TinySeed. He's also the host of Startups for the Rest of Us and the author of Start Small, Stay Small.

Rob has chosen, from the beginning, to do things differently—and the reason is his values. His values led him to realize that he could build a business without playing by everyone else's rules—and that's made him a leader for thousands of others who are looking to do things differently too.

I talk with Rob about the throughline that weaves his different ventures together, the values that define his work, how his community and events are a reaction to the "standard" in his field, and how he views his role as a leader. Plus, I ask him how he's ensuring his values continue to play out as his community rapidly expands.

The post EP 265: Leading Differently With MicroConf Co-Founder Rob Walling appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I'm thrilled to bring Shannon Siriano Greenwood back to the podcast.

Shannon is the founder of Rebelle, which started as a conference and grew into a whole community of women who believe they have the power to define, design, and create her own version of success.

Shannon and I talk about how she became the leader of the Rebelle community in the first place, how she and her team design each event to bring their values to life, and what her role is within the growing community and event series. We also talk about how Shannon is ensuring that the values that make Rebelle great are represented as the community grows.

The post EP 264: Leading A Growing Community With Rebelle Founder Shannon Siriano Greenwood appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

But today, my guest is Erica Courdae, the founder of Silver Immersion, a Baltimore-area hair and makeup business, as well as a diversity, equity, and inclusion coach.

She's also the host of Pause On The Play, a podcast where she shares insight and expertise on fulfilling your values for diversity and inclusion in your business.

I met Erica at She Podcasts Live! in Atlanta last October and I knew she'd be a perfect fit to kick off this month on leadership.

Erica and I talk about the frustrating origin story of her first business and whether she's always been someone willing to speak up and share her truth.

We also talk about how she models her values for her team members and the clients they service—and why that's a key part of how she leads. Plus, we talk about why she ventured into the world of coaching and how she settled on diversity, equity, and inclusion as her specialty.

This is a great episode to listen to if you've felt the call to bring your own values into your business more concretely but don't know where to start or how to lead the change.

The post EP 263: Turning Your Values Into Action With Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coach Erica Courdae appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest today has had a similar experience learning the ins and outs of event planning and hosting kickass conferences.

Isaac Watson is the founder of Kickass Conferences, an event strategy and production studio based in the Pacific Northwest. Isaac helps community leaders develop and deliver transformative events for their audiences that inspire them to build a better world. So far, he's planned and managed events that have touched over 21,000 lives across the US and Europe.

Isaac is a natural event planner. I know because I've attended a number of events that he's planned and I hired him to plan a conference for me 4 years ago.

But Isaac hasn't relied on his natural aptitude for creating meaningful and engaging experiences. Instead, he's designed a process he can rely on to pull off one great event after another.

This process and the way he manages his events is clearly a product of the way he's honed his craft over the years.

He notices what works, he notices patterns, he notices the things that go unnoticed—and then he adapts the way he manages future projects.

In this conversation, Isaac and I talk about how things have evolved since his very first event, the 5 phases that every event goes through from vision to completion, how he works with clients within that process, and what it's like when it's go-time and an event is live.

The post EP 262: Honing Your Craft Using Smart Project Management With Kickass Conferences Founder Isaac Watson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, you're going to hear from 5 business owners--all member of The What Works Network members. They're sharing the project management software they use and how it fits with the way they work.

Susan Boles shares how she manages her projects in ClickUp. Joe Taylor, Jr shares how he and his team manage projects in Basecamp. Ayelet Marinovich shares how she used Trello to manage writing & publishing a book in just 6 weeks. Melissa Emler shares how she got used to managing--and automating--projects in AirTable. And finally, Jonathan Stewart shares how he took a windy road to managing projects in Notion.

Keep an ear out for why each business owner uses the software they use and how it lets them manage the work they way they want to. Remember that the software is there to help them manage projects the way they choose to manage projects--not because it's fixing them or the work itself.

The post EP 261: 5 Project Management Tools These Small Business Owners Can’t Do Without appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I wanted to know how people who work with lots of data and reports manage the process, communicate with their clients, and organize all the work to be done.

So I asked Christina Sjahli, an on-demand CFO and cash flow analyst, to share her process. Christina started her career in corporate finance and now brings that experience to established entrepreneurs in the process of scaling to $1 million in annual revenue.

In this conversation, Christina shares how she manages the financial reports that help her do her job, how she tracks changes in those reports so the history of the project is never lost, how and why she uses Trello boards to interact with her clients, and why being deadline-oriented helps her manage her own work.

The post EP 260: Tracking Complex Projects With On-Demand CFO Christina Sjahli appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Joelle is the founder of Brooklyn Book Doctor. She works with authors to help them complete their book projects—whether it's crafting the proposal or completing the manuscript.

Her job is to be as much creative partner as it is project manager.

After Joelle and I wrapped up our conversation, she told me: "the human element is a huge piece of the puzzle."

And, honestly, if you listen for this idea throughout this interview, I think you'll see what she means.

Joelle has become a master of managing for the human element in the creative process. And while Joelle has to manage the human element with her clients, we have to do this for ourselves every day.

Joelle and I talk about the tools she uses to manage different types of writing projects, what she's learned about managing projects for creative people, and how her project management system blossomed into its own offer for working clients through the book proposal process.

The post EP 259: Managing The Creative Process With Brooklyn Book Doctor Founder Joelle Hann appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The Nitty-Gritty: How Kaye Publicity founder Dana Kaye plans and manages multi-layer book publicity projects The tools she uses to track progress, run reports, and organize the information that goes into every project How her team members take ownership of different areas of each project Why she’s learning to take a more top-level role in […]

The post EP 258: Managing Multi-Layer Projects With Kaye Publicity Founder Dana Kaye appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We've had a helluva year here at What Works. We've talked to over 100 small business owners, published more than 80 episodes, and tackled 12 different themes this year.

What Works is special because we focus on the people who are making their businesses work every single day.

We believe we all have a lot to learn from each other—and the more honest & transparent we are about how our marketing, operations, tools, product development, or sales processes work, the better chance we all have for success.

On this episode, it's no different—except, instead of me being the one asking the questions, you are!

The post EP 257: End-Of-Year Mailbag Episode With Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today's guest mentioned early on in our conversation that she found herself taking the work that came to her, growing her capacity to be able to bring in more work, and never really stopping to ask herself how she was designing her business.

Her name is Hailey Thomas and she's the founder of BrainSpace Optimized, where she helps entrepreneurs plan, execute, and complete projects in 90 days or less.

Unfortunately, Hailey suffered a big, personal loss that made her rethink the way she'd been doing business to that point.

We talk about how her tunnel vision led her to skipping her initial grief, why she let go of her clients and contractors, and how she started to process what she truly needed from her life and business.

The post EP 256: Discovering What You Need From Your Business With BrainSpace Optimized Founder Hailey Thomas appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, my guest is Elsie Escobar. Elsie is the co-host of LibSyn's podcast The Feed as well as their community manager. She's also the co-host of She Podcasts, a podcast and community of over 14,000 women podcasters. Her mission is to help more people use their voice and make an impact through the craft of podcasting.

With everything she has going on, it would be easy for Elsie to forget what she's accomplished in a year.

It would be easy to dismiss the small wins and important insights she's experienced.

That's why Elsie has developed a personal process of looking back, assessing her opportunities, setting intentions for the new year.

Elsie and I talk about the energy of the end of the year—and how it can contribute to feeling like we need to catch up no matter how much we've achieved. We also talk about the experience that catalyzed her will to look back and set intentions, as well as how she's trained herself to recognize her true capacity.

The post EP 255: Taking Stock & Setting New Intentions With Podcasting Advocate Elsie Escobar appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today's guest is Toi Smith—a growth & impact strategist who has wrestled with this same question.

Toi and I talk about how her identity and business model has shifted from virtual assistant to online business manager to strategist and why each pivot was necessary. We also talk about the ups and downs of making these changes and the impact each shift has had on her rates, working hours, and client load.

Pay close attention to how Toi talks about her mindset shift away from thinking of her work as labor and into thinking of it as thought partnership and leadership.

She's had to dismantle and reassemble the way she thinks about how she and her business creates value in order to realize the full potential of her own entrepreneurship.

The post EP 254: Transforming Your Business Model With Growth & Impact Strategist Toi Smith appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Our self-talk keeps us on the edge, always wondering if we're good enough, smart enough, or tough enough.

Tonya Dalton would like us to know there's another way. In fact, Tonya has worked hard to rewrite her own stories, clean up her own self-talk, and embrace the joy of missing out.

Tonya Dalton is the author of The Joy of Missing Out and the founder of Inkwell Press. She's also the host of the hit podcast, The Productivity Paradox.

I wanted to talk with Tonya about how embracing the joy of missing out has transformed her own self-talk as an entrepreneur. We chat about the glorification of busy in today's culture, the litmus tests we subject ourselves to, how we can rewrite stories that aren't serving us, and how Tonya actively chooses what she wants to miss out on so she can embrace more of what she really wants out of life and business.

The post EP 253: Discovering The Joy of Missing Out With Inkwell Press Founder Tonya Dalton appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

For our final episode on our series on designing exceptional customer experiences, I spoke with Linda Lopeke, the founder of SmartStart.

Linda knows that customer service starts long before the first purchase is ever made.

She's designed her entire client on-boarding system to set clear expectations, ensure fit, and make new clients feel at ease. Instead of crossing her fingers and hoping she doesn't run into customer service problems, Linda has crafted a process elevates her client experience.

I talked with Linda about the lengthy application process she uses, why she interviews every prospect before they can work with her, and how she brings on a new client step-by-step.

Play close attention to all the opportunities Linda has to set expectations throughout the process and reduce the friction of doing the work.

The post EP 252: Making New Clients Feel At Home With SmartStart Founder Linda Lopeke appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, we're examining customer service that might not scale but has helped the company create massive growth.

The Tyme Iron, created by today's guest Jacynda Smith, is a unique hairstyling tool that's meant to replace both your flat iron and your curling iron so you can create a variety of styles for medium-length to long hair.

When you look at it, you get it.

But when you use it? Well, that can be a different story.

Faced with questions and even some frustration from new users, Jacynda made an interesting choice. She decided to FaceTime her customers, one at a time, and walk them through the process of creating the style they wanted to create with their new Tyme Iron.

In other words, Jacynda made the choice to do something that doesn't scale.

But instead of abandoning that choice as the company grew, she doubled down.

As you'll hear, the company now employs 5 full-time virtual stylists whose job it is to sit down with new customers, one on one, and help them style their hair with their new Tyme Iron.

I had to know how this process is managed, plus I wanted to know how investing in this premium customer experience has benefitted the company overall.

The post EP 251: Teaching Customers How To Use Your Product One At A Time With Tyme Iron Creator Jacynda Smith appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Allie LeFevere is the co-founder of Obedient Agency—a full-service humor marketing agency.

Truly, the first time I landed on their website, I can describe my experience as nothing less than surprised and delighted. It's not funny for funny's sake—it's humorous for clarity's sake. Every piece of it serves to define who they are, what they do, and who they do it for in the most unique ways possible.

I had to know how this brilliant branding & positioning functioned on the inside. Had they designed equally surprising & delighting client experiences?

Yes, of course they have.

Allie and I talk about how that website got built—which is a great look at the brainstorming process they use throughout the agency. We also chat about how they infuse humor into every touchpoint they have with a client, how they manage each client touchpoint, and why client fit is such an important piece of the puzzle.

The post EP 250: Creating Wildly Fun Client Experiences With Allie LeFevere appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Viktor Nagorynyy is the founder of Project Army. What started as an SEO and digital marketing consultancy has blossomed into a full-service website support & hosting company that prioritizes customer service and experience.

Viktor shares how doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing has led to big results, why customer service is so important to him, how prioritizing customer service has helped the company grow, and how he utilizes social media to offer help to anyone—even if they're not a customer.

The post EP 249: Standing Out With Exceptional Customer Experiences With Project Army Founder Viktor Nagornyy appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Nicole is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker turned business therapist & mindset coach who helps entrepreneurs identify the patterns that cause friction and dysfunction in their businesses. She helps them identify trauma of all kinds, rework habits, and redefine relationships—with themselves, their team members, and their businesses.

I wanted to ask Nicole how she helps her clients establish strong & clear boundaries while maintaining exceptional customer experiences in their businesses.

We talked about how to know when you have a boundary problem, why unclear communication is unkind, how to renegotiate boundaries when there's a problem, and what kind of routines we can put in place to keep boundary issues from happening in the first place.

The post EP 248: What’s Working In Setting Boundaries While Delighting Customers With Coach Nicole Lewis-Keeber appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Ashley is a business coach who specializes in helping overwhelmed, frazzled entrepreneurs streamline their businesses and work less—while they continue to grow.

Ashley took me through her whole client process—from on-boarding, to communication, to workflows, to off-boarding. You'll learn about how she manages the whole client experience through a customized Trello board both she & the client accesses. And you'll learn how she's streamlined her own packages to allow her to provide the best experiences.

This interview—and this whole month—is going to be full of aha moments you can immediately apply to your own business to find what works.

The post EP 247: Managing Exceptional Client Experiences In Less Time With Coach Ashley Gartland appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I spoke with one of my oldest business friends, Rebecca Ching, about some of the mistakes she made when she took a huge leap forward in her therapy business and opened a multidisciplinary brick & mortar practice. Today, Rebecca is both the founder of Potentia Therapy and an Integrated Leadership Coach helping entrepreneurs and leaders navigate the complexities of leadership today.

Rebecca shares both the errors in her execution and the errors in her thinking that led to some difficult years.

She also gets into some deep reflection around her personal identity and sense of worthiness that really resonated with me. For many of us self-described "achievers," making a mistake or failing at a venture isn't just a set back—it rocks us to our core.

If that's you too, I think you'll especially appreciate this conversation.

The post EP 246: Learning From Your Mistakes With Leadership Developer & LMFT Rebecca Ching appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Cynthia Morris is the founder of Original Impulse. She coaches writers, artists and entrepreneurs to get out of their own way so they can finish projects that matter. She's also the author of The Busy Woman's Guide To Writing A World-Changing Book.

Cynthia and I talk about her 20 year journey of business ownership, creative exploration, and coaching. I ask her about the lessons she's learned along the way and how she's kept the business going for over 2 decades.

Pay close attention to the commitment she made to taking risks and the willingness to do the hard creative work she asks her clients to do.

The post EP 245: Coaching Yourself To Stick With It With Original Impulse Founder Cynthia Morris appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The Nitty-Gritty: How coach and business strategist Jo Casey manages her anxiety as an entrepreneur The situation that revealed just how big an impact anxiety had on how she ran her business How setting clearer boundaries and doubling her rates helped to get back on track Why she’s simplified her business as a way of […]

The post EP 244: Managing Anxiety As An Entrepreneur With Supernova Collective Creator Jo Casey appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tommy Griffith is the founder of ClickMinded, a comprehensive digital marketing training company that started as a simple, in-person SEO workshop.

Tommy and I chat about why he made the decisions he did, how he kept going when things were nowhere near awesome, and how his expectations routinely got in the way of his execution.

The post EP 243: Living Up To Your Own Expectations With ClickMinded Founder Tommy Griffith appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Alethea is the founder of Co-Creating Inclusion, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm with a mission to shift culture and drive equity through workshop facilitation, leadership development, and business integration.

But Alethea has also been the founder of a host of other ventures!

To continue our focus on resilience and entrepreneurship, I wanted to talk with Alethea about the long and winding journey she's taken to get to where she is now. Because where she is now is authentic, organic growth and a whole new level of success doing work that is incredibly important to her (and to the world).

The post EP 242: Embracing Uncertainty To Grow Your Business With Co-Creating Inclusion Founder Alethea Fitzpatrick appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I invited my dear friend Charlie Gilkey back on the show to talk about the subject of his new book, Start Finishing: How To Go From Idea To Done. It's perfect for this month we're spending on resilience.

You see, Start Finishing, sounds like a book on productivity—and it is. But it's the kind of productivity book that only a philosopher could write. And this is the kind of interview on productivity, decision-making, planning, and doing your best work that only a philosopher could give.

If you don't know Charlie already, let me give you a bit of background. Charlie is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Nebraska. He was a logistics officer in the Army National Guard and was deployed in Iraq. He's now the co-founder & CEO of Productive Flourishing, which helps people build better businesses through strategic planning, system development, self-mastery, and personal effectiveness.

I wanted to find out what resilience has to do with the way we do—or do not—complete the projects that we start and the goals we half-heartedly commit to.

My conversation with Charlie certainly provided some answers to that question—and a whole lot more.

The post EP 241: Finishing What You Start With Start Finishing Author Charlie Gilkey appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, you're going to hear from me.

A few months back, I got an email from Malia Russell, the founder & host of Big Dreams. Bold Moves., which helps expat families deal with the challenges—and opportunities!—of living and working abroad. Malia wanted to know if I'd do an episode on what works for What Works.

So I invited her to interview me and pick my brain about how things have evolved at What Works, why we've landed on running things the way we do, the mistakes I've made along the way, and what goes on behind-the-scenes.

By the end of this interview, I think you'll have a better idea of why I'm steadfastly committed to What Works and the philosophy that powers it. Plus, you'll learn more about what's working for us right now.

The post EP 240: Leveraging Commitment To Find What Works With Tara McMullin And Big Dreams Bold Moves Host Malia Russell appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest is Debra Giunta, the founder of Design Dance, a community dance education company that's reaching over 1500 K-12 students with arts education and social-emotional learning every year.

I talk with Debra about her vision for Design Dance and how it led her to making important choices about when she started hiring help. We also talk about how Design Dance has expanded from its original school partner into 50 different sites, how she hires teachers to manage all those programs, and the nitty-gritty of how the business runs on the inside.

The post EP 239: Expanding Your Capacity Beyond The Classroom With Design Dance Founder Debra Giunta appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest is Natalie Gingrich, the founder of The Ops Authority.

After spending 15 years in corporate at a Fortune 150 company, she dove into entrepreneurship leveraging her project management and HR experience to assist high-level influencers in the online and small business worlds. What she discovered along the way was that there was a ton of super capable women whose skill sets were not leveraged and whose natural tendency toward leadership wasn’t acknowledged.

In this conversation, Natalie and I talk about why she decided to create a certification program instead of an online course, why she takes screening candidates very seriously, and how the certification unfolds from start to finish. We also talk about some of the new opportunities she sees for growth now that the certification program is underway & successful.

The post EP 238: Scaling Up With A Certification Program With The Ops Authority Founder Natalie Gingrich appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest today had a business that resembles so many: one that required her constant input, expertise, and care just to stay afloat.

While she felt like it was already a success in many ways, Katey Schultz realized that her business wasn't really meeting her needs. She wanted more of a challenge. She wanted more time. She wanted more money.

So Katey started to look at how to scale her offer, a monthly mentorship for writers.

This conversation is the story of her journey to do that. We talk through the mindset shifts she needed to make, the experiments she ran, and the aha! moment that made her realize she'd scaled the wrong thing.

The post EP 237: Discovering What Scales With Writer & Maximum Impact Founder Katey Schultz appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Carol is the founder of Speaking Your Brand, a speech coaching agency that helps women entrepreneurs and executives craft their signature talks.

I wanted to ask Carol how she worked out the recipe to her own special sauce so she could start training the first speech coach she brought on board.

Carol and I talk about the time and energy she put into working with clients 1:1, paying attention to exactly how she worked her magic. We also chat about how she knew it was time to hire, what have been her biggest fears throughout the process, and how her mindset about the business she's building has shifted.

The post EP 236: Leveraging Your Special Sauce With Speaking Your Brand Founder Carol Cox appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Susan Boles is the founder of ScaleSpark, a consulting firm that helps companies break through growth ceilings by fixing back-end processes and creating systems designed to scale.

One way she does that is by addressing operational capacity problems through software. She helps business owners and their teams get more done by better utilizing the software they have—or the software they should be using.

In this conversation, I ask Susan what's working for her clients—how she helps them identify their operational challenges, choose the best software, and adapt their processes to create additional capacity. We also talk about the challenging work of implementing new software—and how to make a change easier and more effective.

The post EP 235: What’s Working To Scale With Software With Scale Spark Founder Susan Boles appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, my guest is Marie Poulin—our first 3 time guest here on the pod!

Marie is not someone to miss the important questions. Her and her husband Ben are building Oki Doki with the life and work they want to lead top of mind. That choice has brought them face to face with some scrutiny from people with a scale-or-die mindset.

Marie recently wrote a lengthy article about her choice not to scale—or, not to scale in any conventional way—so, of course, I wanted to bring her on the show while we're covering scale to talk about it!

Marie and I chat about the hybrid business model Oki Doki has developed, the cocktail party conversation that shook her up, how she approaches finding a equilibrium with her energy, and how her focus on profitability has paid off.

The post EP 234: Choosing Not To Scale With Oki Doki Co-Founder Marie Poulin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Building a subscription-based product is one key way small businesses can scale up.

But they can require a significant trade-off in at the beginning. It takes time, energy, infrastructure, and savvy marketing to get to a point where the business is healthy and profitable.

I know this from personal experience.

So does Callie Willows, the co-founder of The Membership Guys. Callie runs Member Site Academy, a leading training resource and community for membership site owners.

Callie and I talk about why The Membership Guys chose to focus on just one offer, the mindset shifts she's had to make running a membership site, the operations that go into keeping members happy, and how running a membership site is a great fit for her as an introvert.

The post EP 233: Creating Scale With A Single Offer With Membership Guys Co-Founder Callie Willows appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Is it too early to start thinking about scaling your business? Absolutely not! Tara & Sean McMullin have started a brand new business and are starting with scale in mind from the get-go. Here's how they're doing it.

The post EP 232: Scaling From The Start With Yellow House Media Co-Founders Sean & Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, for our final Candid Confidence Project conversation, my guest is Victoria Klein.

Victoria is an author, entrepreneur, and a certified online business manager.

I’ve been digital acquaintances with Victoria for many years—like since selling advertising was the best way to make money with your blog.

Victoria is a master at questioning assumptions and making unconscious choices conscious. That’s what our conversation is all about.

Victoria and I talk about risks she’s taken and the experiments she’s run—and how they’ve helped to find a new level of confidence. We talk about why she decided to go back to school to study Japanese, how her business has evolved, and even how her personal life has been shaped and reshaped by the risks she’s taken.

The post EP 231: Taking Risks And Experimenting With Confidence With Author & Online Business Manager Victoria Klein appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Jodi Brandon has more than 20 years' experience in book publishing. Today, her passion is working as a book coach and editor for creative entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to serve their business with a book.

Jodi took 2 full years away from her business full-time to care for her mother. We talk about how she made the decision, the challenge of trying to keep up, how she felt when she started back in her business, and how she's adjusted both her work and her mindset.

The post EP 230: Finding The Confidence To Come Back After Major Loss With Book Coach Jodi Brandon appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Victoria R. Clark is the founder and managing attorney of Clark Law in Washington, DC.

Victoria and I talk about why she decided to start her own law practice in the first place, how she became more confident talking about herself, and how she took a new approach to what she can control on a daily basis. We also chat about how aspects of the business have evolved as she's gotten more confident in what she's doing.

The post EP 229: Leveling Up Your Confidence With Lawyer Victoria R. Clark appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest today is facing challenges like these head-on.

Her name is Dr. Katie Linder and she's the creator of the Radical Self-Trust Podcast Channel. Katie developed the Radical Self-Trust framework as a way of helping herself and her clients source a new level of trust and confidence in themselves so they can overcome any obstacle.

Katie and I talk about the self-doubt she struggled with initially while launching her business, how she balances the public persona of confidence with lingering self-doubt, and how showing up & sharing actually gives her confidence.

We also discuss the Radical Self-Trust framework and how it can be used to discover a new path forward.

The post EP 228: Trusting Yourself & Your Decisions With Coach Katie Linder appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Abby and I talk about how she ended up working for so little and what she needed to do to raise her prices. We dive into all the feelings that came up around raising her prices and discovering the real value of what she was offering.

The post EP 227: Raising Your Prices With Confidence With Content Marketing Strategist Abby Herman appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Hillary Rea has always found confidence in showing up on stage and sharing stories. But when she realized that a project she'd been working on for 8 years hadn't grown the way she hoped, her confidence took a hit.

We talk about how Hillary found her love for storytelling, how being visible makes her feel more confident, and how she's finding a new sense of confidence after a setback.

The post EP 226: Showing Up With Confidence With Tell Me A Story Founder Hillary Rea appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

A couple of years ago, Michael Karsh and Elizabeth Madariaga started Edios Media to help thought leaders & educators create high-quality video education. I spoke with Michael & Elizabeth in Episode 101 and I wanted to bring Michael back on the show to take a look at how his and Elizabeth's mindset and confidence level has evolved as they've worked with giant clients like Google, Facebook, Salesforce, and The Sundance Institute.

Michael and I talk about the first big deal they signed, how the clients they serve today are different from what they initially expected, and how the business itself has evolved to serve those clients.

The post EP 225: Finding The Confidence To Close Big Deals With Edios Media Co-Founder Michael Karsh appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Jamie Varon made a big lifestyle change over the last few years and I wanted to know where she found the confidence to do life differently as a small business owner.

We talk about the year she spent living and working in France, how she's redefined satisfaction for herself, and how she balances setting goals with finding peace in what already is. We also talk about the very real implications these changes have had on her business and professional success.

The post EP 224: Building Confidence Through Consistent Action With Shatterboxx Design Founder Jamie Varon appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I might seem confident in myself and my business... I've been learning that my confidence is based on something completely out of my control.

I share my story to kick off The Candid Confidence Project!

The post EP 223: Confusing Confidence and Status With What Works Founder Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We know you have big goals for the rest of this year. There are numbers you want to hit, things you want to create, and relationships you want to nurture. And, we know those goals can often make you question your ability and readiness.

The Candid Confidence Project is designed to guide you through examining your own stories about confidence, how you handle insecurity, and how you find the drive to level up.

The post ANNOUNCING: The Candid Confidence Project appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, my guest is Brooke Roberts, the founder & host of Brazenist, an online education and offline experience company helping goal-getters to future-proof, redefine success, and live a brazen life. Brazenist is Brooke's latest venture in a line of successful businesses and a traditional career in taking people to faraway places.

You'll hear how a high school trip to Europe helped her embrace the wide world beyond her rural Kansas hometown. You'll also hear how an accidental career in the study abroad space helped her launch not just 1 business but 2!

Brooke and I talk about her process for planning events—whether their simple meet-ups or retreats in foreign countries. Plus, we talk about her non-negotiables and past mistakes.

The post EP 222: Planning & Hosting Events All Over The World With Brazenist Founder Brooke Roberts appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I'm joined by Amy Scott. Amy is the founder of both Nomad Editorial and Nomadtopia, a hub for inspiration and resources for location independence. Amy opted out of her office job and traditional lifestyle back in 2004 and never looked back. She now keeps a home base in Buenos Aires while she travels the world with her Argentine husband. Her podcast, Nomadtopia Radio, features interviews with people living their version of Nomadtopia.

Amy and I talk about the steps she took to create a location independent lifestyle, the initial challenges she overcame, and how her life has evolved since becoming a digital nomad. We also talk about the nitty-gritty of tech, tools, and techniques it takes to live life on the road and run a business at the same time.

The post EP 221: Fitting Business Into A Full-Time Travel Lifestyle With Amy Scott appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Kate Leese is the co-founder of Kinetics Consulting, which helps electric and gas utilities create a culture of safety and preparedness.

Kate and I talk about how she made the move to full-time travel and how it impacted the way she approaches her life and work. We also discuss the logistics of working from the road, how she finds team members, the systems they use to manage projects, and how the way their team is built helps them stand out.

The post EP 220: Managing A Team From The Road With Kinetics Consulting Co-Founder Kate Leese appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Kelly Higdon is a business and lifestyle coach who prioritizes her time off so much...

...that's she's worked up to taking a full 3 months off from her business every year.

Unfortunately, Kelly's inspiration wasn't a well-timed shower idea or download from the universe—it was a trip to the hospital.

You see, Kelly wasn't always so good about making space in her business for her life. At one point, she was working full-time as private practice therapist, growing a business on the side, and growing a baby. She was working all the time—and it caught up with her.

Kelly shares that story and her process for planning that much time off. She walks me through how she plans for life first and then makes her business fit in the space that's left, as opposed to the other way around. She also shares how her business is different—and how it's growing differently—than when she was working all hours of the day & night.

The post Ep 219: Prioritizing Time Off With Calibrate Your Year Creator Kelly Higdon appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

As you’re listening to this, I’m somewhere between the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Acadia National Park in Maine. Sean and I are celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary in the only way we how: in a National Park! That’s right, I’m on vacation—but that doesn’t mean the business comes to a standstill. We’ve worked […]

The post Ep 218: How I Build Flexibility Into My Business With Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The Nitty-Gritty: What inspired Thien-Kim Lam to develop a subscription box and virtual book club for a niche audience How she channeled her love of romance books and her experience selling adult toys into the subscription she would have loved to buy herself How she’s connecting with the right people using a Facebook group, author […]

The post Ep 217: Finding A Niche Audience With Bawdy Bookworms Founder Thien-Kim Lam appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

So what's working for you when it comes to building your audience and connecting with the right people? Could you stick with it for the next 10 years? Can you deliver consistently, week in and week out? Are you leaning towards mastery and making sure everything you do represents your business in exactly the way you want it to?

The post Ep 216: There’s No “Right” Way To Grow Your Audience appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Eli Trier organizes community projects for introverts and quiet revolutionaries. Her goal is to raise the level of discourse around a topic, bringing people together and growing audiences in the process.

I was so impressed with Eli's approach and how it tied into our values and philosophy at What Works... that I hired her to help us with our first community project—coming out in August.

Eli and I talk about why it's important to her to deep-dive on important questions and involve a diverse set of voices in the discussion. We also get into the nitty-gritty of how Eli's community projects work, how she plans for them, and how they help her reach both her audience-building and sales goals.

The post EP 215: Growing An Audience Together With Community Builder Eli Trier appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Rachael Kay Albers is a marketer who hates marketing. As the founder and creative director of RKA ink, a branding, web design, and digital marketing studio, Rachael has helped hundreds of small business owners all over the world stand out online without selling their soul or playing the manipulation game.

When not crafting epic, unforgettable brands for her clients, Rachael hosts Awkward Marketing, a business comedy show blending fun-size small business advice with storytelling and sketch comedy, for entrepreneurs who want to create epic, unforgettable brands online.

The post EP 214: Creating Content That Stands Out with Awkward Marketing Creator Rachael Kay Albers appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

I asked Kim what's working when it comes to SEO today—not just from a technical standpoint, but from the perspective of building audiences hungry for the products or services we offer. As part of our "what's working" series, Kim shares her own experience working with clients and how SEO has helped them build much bigger audiences.

The post EP 213: What’s Working In Finding New Fans With SEO Coach Kim Herrington appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Andréa Jones has worked with hundreds of small businesses, startups, and podcasters since 2014 by helping them create social media strategies that save them time and amplify their message. She’s also the host of the Savvy Social Podcast, a weekly show for budding entrepreneurs and she's the founder of Social Media for Podcasts, a social media agency for podcasters by podcasters.

But I didn't ask Andrea on the show to talk about crushing it on social media.

Instead, Andrea and I talk about how she uses social media behind the scenes to develop relationships with people who can help her get in front of the right people. She explains step-by-step exactly what she does to find people to connect with, start a conversation, and follow up—plus, how she manages it all in Asana.

The post EP 212: Building Your Audience Behind The Scenes With Social Media Strategist Andrea Jones appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When I made the decision to all but start over with my email list, it was a decision to do the work to find that number, rediscover the right people, and rebuild my audience from there.

The post EP 211: Building An Audience With Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

As an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and mother, Kate Northrup has built a multimedia digital empire that reaches hundreds of thousands globally. She’s committed to supporting ambitious women to light up the world without burning themselves out in the process. Kate teaches data-driven and soul-driven time and energy management practices that result in saving time, making more money, and experiencing less stress.

The post EP 210: Doing Less To Achieve Your Goals With Do Less Author Kate Northrup appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

As you listen to these stories, consider the emotional or mindset transformation that had to happen alongside each new decision made based on something as seemingly objective as numbers. Put yourself in these small business owners’ shoes and think about what it took to start operating in a new way, regardless of the evidence.

The post EP 209: 7 Surprising Things Small Business Owners Learned When They Ran The Numbers appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this interview, Jordan and I talk about how her business model evolved into VIP weekend offerings, how her pricing strategy has evolved with it, and the numbers-driven marketing she does to support the model.

The post EP 208: Pricing By The Numbers With Systems Saved Me Founder Jordan Gill appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My business had been making well over $100,000 per year before I finally hired a great bookkeeper who could help me understand what was really going on with our finances.

There is absolutely no shame in not having your bookkeeping and financial reporting figured out right now. But today the day you need to start moving in the right direction if you want to experience more clarity and growth for your business.

Today, we're continuing our "what's working" series. This series features consultants, service providers, and software companies that help make small businesses work. They offer a bird's eye view across industries and business models to help us parse the trends and systems that are actually working for lots of businesses.

The post EP 207: What’s Working In Tracking Your Business Finances With Kaitlyn Louvier From Bench appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Madison and I chat about how she ended up with 2 businesses in the first place, how she knew something needed to change, and how her workdays have changed now that she's reprioritized her businesses. We also discuss how she's becoming aware of her identity as a busy person—and the challenges that creates.

The post EP 206: Choosing Between Two Businesses With Grace & Vine Founder Madison Wetherill appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The Nitty-Gritty: Why Rita Barry chose to focus on helping clients understand the numbers when it comes to their website traffic The mistakes small business owners make that prevent them from taking advantage of the information they have The first step Rita takes with every new client Why Rita maps the customer journey and how […]

The post EP 205: What’s Working In Traffic & Analytics With Rita Barry appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest today is Jennifer Johansson, a mixed media artist, living and working in Carbondale, Illinois. Jennifer studied art and education in college, going on to teach high school art and art history for 15 years. About 9 years ago, she was able scale back her teaching to focus more on her art.

In an effort to spool up her art business, Jen started sharing her work on Pinterest. And one day, she noticed a particular pin was sending an outsize amount of traffic to her website. Not only that, it was generating comments and emails from interested people.

But they weren't so much interested in buying her artwork as they were in learning how to create the art they saw on Pinterest.

Jennifer spotted the opportunity—which was distinctly different than Brigitte's!—and started to take action.

In this conversation, Jennifer and I talk about the pin that went viral, the decision to build an online course about her unique style of art, and the nitty-gritty of how she created the course. We also chat about how her business has evolved as a result of pursuing this line of business.

The post EP 204: Creating Value After Going Viral With Jennifer Johansson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When I signed off on my taxes last month, it was the first time in 10 years that I didn’t owe any money to the IRS. In fact, I got a refund. Now, I’d love to tell you that’s because I was much more diligent with my financial planning. And, that is partially true. But […]

The post EP 203: Running Your Business By The Numbers With Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Claire Pelletreau is a Facebook ad strategist and the host of the Get Paid podcast.

A few years ago, Claire took some maternity leave—and that maternity leave ended up being twice as long as she originally planned.

Coming back to work was, as she put it, terrifying.

She worried that she's lost her edge and had gotten left behind by changes in the market.

But what she ultimately found was that the seed she'd planted years ago was still growing... it just took her a little time to reclaim her confidence for tending it.

Claire and I not only talk about her return from maternity leave, but why she took a gig subcontracting for another ad strategist, how she found a new level of confidence, and how her own offers have evolved—flops and all. We also discuss the return of her brilliant podcast, Get Paid.

The post EP 202: Rebuilding Your Business After A Break With Ad Strategist Claire Pelletreau appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The Nitty-Gritty: How Brittany Berger came up with the idea for the Work Brighter newsletter How Work Brighter evolved as she continued to work her day job—and then as she struck out on her own What her current vision for Work Brighter is and how it informs her growth strategy Why Brittany chose to think […]

The post EP 201: Turning A Side Project Into Your Main Gig With Work Brighter Founder Brittany Berger appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Even in a successful small business, sometimes things don't go to plan. In our 200th episode, we dive into 6 stories about things that didn't work out--and how they got back on track again.

The post EP 200: Weathering The Ups & Downs Of Entrepreneurship Over The Long Haul appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Racheal Cook is the creator of Sweet Spot Strategy and the CEO Retreat.

Racheal and I talk about how she came up with the idea of the CEO Retreat, how it solved a persistent problem for her clients, and what her greatest fear about hosting the event was. We also discovered how the idea has evolved and the role it plays in her business today. Hint: it's big!

The post EP 199: Leveling Up Using A Simple One-Day Event With The CEO Retreat Creator Racheal Cook appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The Nitty-Gritty: How a conversation at a networking event planted a seed for Abundance Practice Building founder Allison Puryear What the first business coaching program Allison led looked like Why she knew this opportunity was the right thing to pursue How Abundance Practice Building has grown and evolved since that first group I’d like to […]

The post EP 198: Finding A New Opportunity To Serve With Abundance Practice Building Founder Allison Puryear appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

My guest today is Val Geisler. Val is an email marketing specialist and the founder of Fix My Churn.

Today, Val is wrapping up a 12-week email marketing program that netted her about $90,000.

But just 6 months ago, this kind of result would have been hard to believe.

A small offer—a 2-hour workshop on the research behind successful email marketing—changed everything.

I talk with Val about how she came up with the seed of her big idea, how she sold the workshop that started it all, and how she developed the 12-week program once she knew it would be a success. We also discuss the mindset behind starting small and why it was key to her accomplishment.

The post EP 197: Growing A Sold-Out Program From The Seed Of An Idea With Fix My Churn Founder Val Geisler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this episode, you’ll learn how Bonnie Gillespie, the author of Self-Management For Actors, planted a seed before she even started her business. Her bridge job as a show business industry columnist blossomed into an empire that is still rooted in the words she wrote over 20 years ago.

Email by email, article by article, blog post by blog post, book by book, even tweet by tweet, she’s strategically pieced together her body of work.

Bonnie and I talk about how she realized her first book was waiting to be born, the way she used an automated Twitter account to develop a new product, how she stays in dialogue with her audience to fuel the content she publishes, and why she doesn’t buy into guru culture.

The post EP 196: Building An Empire One Piece of Content At A Time With Bonnie Gillespie appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

There was something about this group of people: down to earth, honest, and thoughtful. The group never suffered the same drama that so many other online groups suffered.

It was a positive and constructive place to be.

Unfortunately, it just didn't fit into my big plans. It was always on the back burner.

Then, at the end of 2016, I decided to pull the plug on our main offer, Quiet Power Strategy. I was ready to grow something bigger and even more useful for small business owners.

The post EP 195: How Small Ideas Lead To Big Success With Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Janeris Marte had been a photographer for 18 years with limited success. She was a self-described jack of all trades.

She could specialize in photography for adoptive families.

Instead of creating portraits of anyone who popped into her inbox, she could focus on connecting with a community of people she knew well with a service that could transform their families.

In this interview, you'll hear how Janeris decided to focus on adoptive families, how she connects with new clients, and the specialized packages she's able to offer because of her niche.

The post EP 194: Finding A Niche In A Crowded Market With Photographer Janeris Marte appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We asked 4 members of the What Works Network to share what has worked for them and each gave their own take on how business can benefit from a less-is-more approach to doing business.

The post EP 193: Doing More With Less: How Small Business Owners Take A Minimalist Approach appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Nicole is the host of Real Talk Radio, a podcast that digs deep into the lives of athletes, writers, entrepreneurs, parents, coaches, and activists. Four years into finding an opportunity to coach people who wanted a similar lifestyle to hers, she decided to make a big change.

Nicole decided to do away with coaching and digital products and just get paid to having fascinating, honest conversations with people living fulfilling lives.

The post EP 192: Creating What You Love Using Patreon With Real Talk Radio Host Nicole Antoinette appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

You can clean up your business and still have a mess on your hands. In this quick episode, Tara McMullin explains why AND how you can use that to your advantage.

The post EP 191: Your Business Is A Mess–And That’s Okay With Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

For most people, working just 3 days a week is a pipe dream. But Mindy Totten made it reality. She went from working 6.5 days per weeks as a craniosacral therapist to working just 3 days per week. Find out why Mindy attributes the biggest change to an internal shift.

The post EP 190: Getting It Done In Just 3 Days Per Week With Oasis Center For Craniosacral Therapy Founder Mindy Totten appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

People are a core part of any small business. Today, Mighty Networks' Audra Lindsey shares how you can create an amazing experience for the people your business brings together—without spending a ton of time or energy to do it.

The post EP 189: What’s Working In Community Building With Mighty Networks’ Senior Community Strategist Audra Lindsey appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Jereshia Hawk who got real with me about a similar experience to mine... thinking that more offers would mean more money.

When she realized that just wasn't happening, she went back to what she knew best, focused on one single offer, and... made bank.

The post EP 188: Streamlining Your Business Model To Just One Offer With Services That Sell Creator Jereshia Hawk appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Is your business neat & tidy? Or... could it use some decluttering? Throughout March, we're talking about streamlining, focusing, and cleaning up our small businesses. Here's how I've done it--with suggestions on how you might do it too!

The post EP 187: Spring Cleaning Your Small Business appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Kerri Twigg has leveraged LinkedIn to build a thriving career coaching brand with a waitlist of prospective clients. She shares exactly what works for her as she shares content, connects with new people, and vets potential clients.

The post EP 186: Finding Clients On LinkedIn With Career Stories Founder Kerri Twigg appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Four members of the What Works Network share what works for them when it comes to expanding their networks and nurturing relationships with colleagues.

The post EP 185: Finding Your Personal Networking Style appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Lauren Caselli thought small business entrepreneurship was messy and stressful... and then she started taking her business seriously. Find out how life has changed for Lauren and how she runs her business differently now.

The post EP 184: Taking Your Small Business Seriously With Lauren Caselli Events Founder Lauren Caselli appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Meeting new people--colleagues & prospects--is a key aspect of growing your business. But networking can be intimidating! We ask Rebelle Con founder Shannon Siriano Greenwood what's working in small business networking.

The post EP 183: What’s Working In Professional Networking With Rebelle Con Founder Shannon Siriano Greenwood appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

It's possible to design a product people are clamoring to buy AND for that product to serve a much, much bigger mission. Learn how Fear Her Fight Athletics founder Maria Rodriguez combines smart product development & activism.

The post EP 182: Launching A Brand On A Mission With Fear Her Fight Athletics Founder Maria Rodriguez appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tara's business has changed a lot over the last 10 years. Find out more about the journey--and why CoCommercial is now The What Works Network.

The post EP 181: How Tara McMullin’s Brand Has Evolved Over The Last 10 Years appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Jen hosts multiple writing retreats every year, in addition to supporting writers through her community, The Writer’s Oasis. Plus, she’s the author of 6 books—with over 1 million copies in print.

Jen and I chat about the role of retreats in her business, how far in advance she starts planning, what’s working for her right now to sell her retreats, and how she structures each event for both her participants and herself.

The post EP 180: Selling & Hosting Retreats With Writer Jennifer Louden appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Think there's 1 right way to run a coaching business? Think again. About a year ago, Kyla Roma started pioneering a new model for the way she’d deliver business coaching. In our interview, we go behind-the-scenes of how that model evolved and how it works today.

The post EP 179: Reimagining The Coaching Business Model With Business Strategist Kyla Roma appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

We want to celebrate the most effective habits of small business owners in our network.So, we’ve asked 4 members to share what’s working for them as they reexamine and refine their own routines.

The post EP 178: The Most Productive Habits Of Thriving Small Business Owners appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Meagan Francis, founder of Life, Listened, discovered a whole new entrepreneurial mindset as she made the transition from the owner of a content marketing business to the employee of a marketing & communications firm to the head of her own podcasting business.

The post EP 177: Evolving Your Entrepreneurial Mindset With Life, Listened Co-Founder Meagan Francis appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

It’s tempting to think that to do your best work, you have to hunker down in your creative cave, scratch out your brilliant thoughts by the fire, and only emerge once you’ve had your eureka moment. In fact, I know plenty of thinkers and entrepreneurs who have tried to do exactly that. Margy Thomas is not one of them. In this week's episode, learn how Margy is co-creating her legacy work with the people who need it most.

The post EP 176: Shaping Your Message While Sharing It With The World With Scholar Shape Founder Margy Thomas appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Facebook ad costs are rising fast. So what's a small business owner to do? Amanda Bond, The Ad Strategist, explains what's happening and why--plus a framework for using ads when your business is ready.

The post EP 175: What’s Working (And What’s Not) In Facebook Ads With The Ad Strategist Founder Amanda Bond appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

After over 10 years in this business, I’ve seen a lot when it comes to social media. I’ve been around for Blogspotting and LiveJournaling. I’ve seen the rise and fall of the Twitter empire. I remember when organic reach on Facebook was a given and I watched as Instagram morphed from iPhone snaps to carefully […]

The post EP 174: Creating Real Value On Social Media With Creative Genius Law Founder, Patrice Perkins appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The small business landscape is constantly evolving. At What Works, we've noticed 5 key trends start to take on a life of their own--and we predict they'll play a huge part in shaping 2019 for small business owners. Up next: Investing in physical products.

The post EP 173: Investing In Physical Products With Inkwell Press Founder Tonya Dalton appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The small business landscape is constantly evolving. At What Works, we've noticed 5 key trends start to take on a life of their own--and we predict they'll play a huge part in shaping 2019 for small business owners. Up next: reapproaching high-touch services.

The post EP 172: Reapproaching High-Touch Services With Perfect Planning Events Founder, Tara Melvin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The small business landscape is constantly evolving. At What Works, we've noticed 5 key trends start to take on a life of their own--and we predict they'll play a huge part in shaping 2019 for small business owners. Up next: focusing on real relationships.

The post EP 171: Focusing On Real Relationships With The Jordan Harbinger Show Host Jordan Harbinger appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The small business landscape is constantly evolving. At What Works, we've noticed 5 key trends start to take on a life of their own--and we predict they'll play a huge part in shaping 2019 for small business owners. First: prioritizing sustainability.

The post EP 170: 5 Trends Shaping Small Business In 2019: Prioritizing Sustainability With The When I Grow Up Coach Michelle Ward appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Mia Scharphie believes in the power of a virtuous circle. It’s all about proactively cultivating the business allies within your realm who help take you to new heights -- in business and in life. In this episode, Mia shares exactly how she cultivates strong business allies by making asks, connecting over a virtual coffee date with people she admires, and so much more.

The post EP 169: Leveraging The Wing Woman Effect With Build Yourself Workshop Founder Mia Scharphie appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The stories we tell ourselves as entrepreneurs make up our mindsets. These stories create a pattern of expectations and beliefs. Every action you take and every decision you make is filtered through these expectations and beliefs. We asked 5 small business owners to tell us about what works when they make shifts in these mindsets.

The post EP 168: Shifting Your Mindset To See Yourself And Your Small Business Differently appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Maggie Patterson, Principal of Scout Studios, recently made a huge pivot in her company. For the first year or so of business, Maggie worked primarily with online business owners. But when she saw that business wasn’t growing and finding leads became increasingly harder, Maggie knew it was time for a shift.

The post EP 167: Focusing On Bigger, Longer, and Local With Scoop Studios Founder Maggie Patterson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Must See TV might be all but a thing of the past but there is still one place where appointment television is alive and kicking: live video broadcasting. Today, you can get up close and personal with your favorite brands, celebrities, influencers, and entertainers streaming places like Instagram Live, Facebook Live, and YouTube Live. Plus, you can hang out with a community of fans, ask questions, and suggest topics while you watch.

Small business owners and emerging creators are using it for big business results. Sai Hossain, founder and CEO of Crowdcast, is leading the charge. He's taking live video broadcast beyond the webinar to build audiences, nurture relationships, and drive revenue.

The post EP 166: What’s Working In Live Video Broadcasting With Crowdcast Founder & CEO Sai Hossain appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Jessica Fialkovich knows what it takes to start and grow a successful small business. And, she knows how to buy and sell them. Today, Jessica’s the President and Co-Founder of Transworld Business Advisors—Rocky Mountain and she strategically leads and supports her team.

In this episode, Jessica outlines exactly how she and her team set the yearly company goals. She also describes goal setting is a personal process -- and how she works with each team member to create goals that work to motivate and inspire them.

The post EP 165: Tracking Goals While Managing The Day To Day With Serial Entrepreneur Jessica Fialkovich appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

If your business feels stuck, it could be the way you think that's to blame. Listen in to an excerpt from Tara McMullin's new book, Subtle, and learn how the "Special Sauce Mindset" could be the answer to your special snowflake problems.

The post EP 164: From Special Snowflake To Special Sauce–An Excerpt From Subtle appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Dana Kaye does things differently. She won’t give you the same run-of-the-mill advice that other publicists will… and that not only helps her company grow, it also helps her clients reach new heights. In this episode of What Works, Dana describes how partnerships lead to smart and intentional growth. She also discusses how important networking and expressing gratitude is for small (and big) business.

The post EP 163: Profiting From Partnerships With Branding Outside The Box Founder Dana Kaye appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Natalie Sisson spent the better part of six years working remotely and traveling around the world. And while many of you likely know her as the Suitcase Entrepreneur, she’s set her bags down to make a home in her native New Zealand (puppy and partner included!). Although life’s changed quite a bit for her from her working-and-traveling-the-world-days, Natalie’s still teaching business owners how to create a more sustainable and profitable business using smart systems. Her latest feat? Launching the brand new book, The Freedom Plan. Through it’s pages, Natalie teaches entrepreneurs how to reclaim their time, streamline their business, and be more profitable while living your ideal lifestyle and feeling on purpose.

The post EP 162: Owning A Business Instead Of A Job With The Freedom Plan Author Natalie Sisson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

It's important to show your customers that you care. But saying "thanks" can be more than a note or gift. We asked 5 small business owners what works when it comes to showing gratitude and elevating your customer experience.

The post EP 161: Gratitude Is The Whole Customer Experience appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

More than 44 million Americans have a side hustle to earn extra money for living expenses, savings, and investments. But having a side hustle doesn’t necessarily mean you have a plan for quitting your job and going full-time with your business. In this week's episode of What Works, Lagom Body Co founder Kristen Runvik shares with us how she divides her time between life, job, and business, how she finds new customers without spending all of her time marketing, why she has a love/hate relationship with Instagram, and more.

The post EP 160: Finding New Customers Without Marketing Your Life Away with Lagom Body Co Founder Kristen Runvik appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Despite the annual warnings that email marketing is losing its effectiveness, email continues to be a top sales driver across industries and business models. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone uses email to drive sales the same way they did 5 years ago or that they're using the same strategy as the business next door. How are the leading businesses using email marketing in the current environment? Isa Adney, ConvertKit's resident educator & webinar host, has her finger on the pulse of email marketing today and shares a variety of examples of how business owners are using email marketing to their advantage—without letting consume your every waking hour.

The post EP 159: What’s Working In Email Marketing With ConvertKit’s Isa Adney appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Jason Van Orden founded Internet Business Mastery ten years ago -- and over the last decade, he successfully grew it into a well-known resource for starting an online business. Yet, as the business boomed, Jason started to feel more and more discontent with his work, especially during the last couple years. Through scaling the business and automating it, Jason lost connection with his creativity and passion.

The post EP 158: Building A New Business From His “Unique Genius” With Strategist Jason Van Orden appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When Elena Rue was pregnant with her first child, she didn’t meet with leads in person once she started showing. “I didn’t want them to assume that’s going to change StoryMine,” she says. Which, of course, it didn’t. Instead, it altered her perspective on running a creative business as a parent -- for the better.

The post EP 157: Planning For Parental Leave With StoryMine Co-Founders Catherine Orr & Elena Rue appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Sarah Von Bargen writes and teaches about “the space where money and happiness meet.” In this episode of What Works, Sarah walks us through her decision-making process to transform one of her popular eBooks into an online course and everything else that goes into promoting and running it.

The post EP 156: Teaching Live Courses For Maximum Results with Yes and Yes’s Sarah Von Bargen appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Underneath their ambitious and confident facades, small business owners experience quite a bit of fear. Since our goal is to bring you honest conversations about what it really takes to run a small business, we thought it was high time to talk about the fears we all face on a daily basis. We spoke to 11 small business owners and several themes emerged. These themes were echoed in the conversations we’ve been having about fear all month long at CoCommercial.

The post EP 155: Small Business Owners Get Honest About Fear appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When you find what works in your business, you want more of that. But what happens when you reach success and realize that you want something else? Today’s guest, Jadah Sellner, can tell you more about that. She’s the former cofounder of Simple Green Smoothies, the wildly successful online resource for recipes and cleanses.

The post EP 154: Exiting One Business And Starting Another With Jadah Sellner appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Kate Strathmann’s company Wanderwell Consulting pays homage to Aloha Wanderwell, the first woman to travel around the world by car during the 1920s -- and a woman who continued traversing the planet for the rest of her life. That same adventurous, quirky, and unconventional spirit threads through everything at Wanderwell, from how Kate hires and leads to how she works with clients in a “pretty off-beat, feelings-oriented, and very non-traditional kind of way,” she says.

The post EP 153: More Leading, Less Managing with Wanderwell Founder Kate Strathmann appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Mike McDerment, FreshBook’s cofounder and CEO, joins the podcast today to talk about how he structured his design agency to create more time to work on FreshBooks, why they used a secret company to test new features before launching them to the FreshBooks customers, and how important strong values are to create a strong company culture.

The post EP 152: Reinventing Your Product–Twice–with Freshbooks Co-Founder Mike McDerment appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Natasha Vorompiova wants to help you amplify your impact through systems. That might look like organizing and optimizing your inbox or clarifying how your business operates. But Natasha isn’t just passionate about systems: she’s always looking for ways to optimize her own life and limitations to show up with more clarity in business. In this episode, she shares just how she does that through affirmations, paring down to just one-on-one clients, and much more.

The post EP 151: Doing More With Less With SystemsRock Founder Natasha Vorompiova appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The jewelry trade isn’t always known for its sustainability -- especially when it comes to sourcing diamonds. Today, that’s changing because jewelry designers like Christy Natsumi are making conscious choices to source diamonds and gemstones from vendors with honest supply chains.

The post EP 150: Juggling A Jeweler’s Business Model with Designer Christy Natsumi appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Srini Rao writes at least 1,000 words a day and yet the majority of them you’ll never read. Why does he write so much, knowing that most of it won’t see the light of day through a blog post, an email, or a book chapter? Srini argues that within that daily practice comes some of your best work… and the essential opportunity to master your craft.

The post EP 149: Combining Creativity and Productivity To Do Great Work With Unmistakable Creative Host & Author Srinivas Rao appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Ever thought of starting a business with your spouse? It takes strong boundaries, vision, and understanding to do it right: something that Charlie Gilkey and Angela Wheeler, founders of Productive Flourishing, have refined over the last 10+ years of working together.

The post EP 148: Building For Business & Life With Your Spouse with Productive Flourishing’s Charlie Gilkey & Angela Wheeler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Sometimes, the way you’ve worked for years doesn’t work anymore. Life changes and responsibilities shift. That was the case for Alison Pidgeon. As the former director of two outpatient clinics, Alison started feeling the itch to go out on her own. She was burned out, and with two small children at home, Alison yearned for more flexibility.

The post EP 147: Scaling Mental Health Services With Move Forward Counseling Founder Alison Pidgeon appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

As a startup cofounder and high achiever, Michelle Warner eventually hit a wall. She completely wore out her adrenals from working countless hours every day. But, instead of pushing through it and carrying on, Michelle’s body forced her to stop. That’s when she decided to get curious: how could she live and work in a way that aligned with her natural strengths instead of constantly pushing against them?

The post EP 146: Wellness Hacking For Time Management Success With Business Strategist Michelle Warner appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

On today’s episode of What Works, Bridget Kilgallon, cofounder of Arêt Basewear, a collection of minimal basewear for the outdoorswoman, openly shares her journey bringing a physical product to market. From hand-sewing and testing the first top to partnering with a local manufacturer to marketing the brand, Bridget walks us through her thoughtful approach to product design, branding, and customer satisfaction.

The post EP 145: Developing, Manufacturing, & Marketing An Innovative Product With Têra Kaia Co-Founder Bridget Kilgallon appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

As a new mom and a newcomer to Salt Lake City by way of San Diego, Nailah Blades Wylie sought community and adventure to reconnect with herself. That’s why she founded Color Outside, a meetup-turned-travel company for women of color who are ready to create unapologetic, joy-filled lives through outdoor adventure.

The post EP 144: Centering Women Of Color In The Outdoors with Color Outside Founder Nailah Blades Wylie appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today’s guest, Beryl Young, returns to the podcast -- and this time, she’s sharing everything behind licensing her signature work, Momtography®. So far, Beryl’s licensed twelve teachers, with plans to expand to all 50 states in the U.S. in the future.

The post EP 143: Licensing Your Signature Work With Momtography® Creator Beryl Ayn Young appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Kat Lu and Chris Tan never set out to build a SaaS company… but when a friend needed an easy way to schedule appointments online for her naturopathic practice, Chris decided to develop a minimalist calendar to automate the process for her.

The post EP 142: Growing Organically Through Unconventional Channels with CozyCal Co-Founders Chris Tan & Kat Lu appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Financial behaviorist Jacquette Timmons helps people talk about uncomfortable things. One of the ways she does that is through The Comfort Circle™, an intimate gathering where she walks her guests through curated topics about money and life over a three-course meal.

The post EP 141: Making Clients Comfortable With Uncomfortable Subjects With Financial Behaviorist Jacquette Timmons appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week’s guest is Jess Ostroff, founder and Director of Calm at Don’t Panic Management, a people-first virtual assistant agency founded in 2011. In addition to running the Don’t Panic team, she’s also a speaker and author of Panic Proof: How the Right Virtual Assistant Can Save Your Sanity and Grow Your Business.

The post EP 140: Paying Attention To The Red Flags With Don’t Panic Management Founder Jess Ostroff appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

When I got married 11 years ago, I was depressed, ashamed, and feeling like I had no opportunities left — in the way only a 25-year-old can feel.

I had always planned to keep my maiden name, which was Seefeldt, but I also planned to be a successful academic with a published work or two under my belt by the time I got married. Instead, I was a grad school drop out working as a retail manager earning less than $30,000 per year.

The post SPECIAL: Changing Your Name After 10 Years of Building A Personal Brand With What Works Host Tara McMullin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Jaime Masters is a business coach and host of the Eventual Millionaire blog and the going-on-seven-years podcast series. In this episode of What Works, Jaime walks us through her process for hiring and keeping employees happy. She also shares her tactics for firing underperforming employees in a fair and diplomatic way.

The post EP 139: Getting The Best From The People Who Work For You With Eventual Millionaire Founder Jaime Masters appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Lauren and Jason Pak are the cofounders of Achieve Fitness, a gym based in Boston, Massachusetts. While personal fitness is what they do, their why is even more compelling. This husband-wife team set out to change the industry: they want to make the fitness industry a more approachable and positive place to be.

The post EP 138: Establishing Authority With Standout Content On Instagram With Achieve Fitness Founders Lauren & Jason Pak appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Have you ever felt that you could never work for someone else, other than yourself? Sarah Bray, entrepreneur, author, and digital strategist, felt the same. That is: until she saw how she could give more life to her ideas by working on a team.

The post EP 137: Transitioning Into Intrapreneurship While Maintaining Your Mission With &yet Chief Of Strategy Sarah Bray appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

On this week’s episode, we talked with Cathy Heller, songwriter and President of Catch The Moon Music, a songwriting agency for T.V., ads, and film based out of Los Angeles. In our conversation, she shares where her love of music stems from, how she used closed doors as an opportunity to create her own path, and why she’s now offering courses for other songwriters.

The post EP 136: Playing Big With A Boutique Music Licensing Company with Catch The Moon Music Founder Cathy Heller appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

After two decades in the fast fashion industry, Susan Correa decided to leave her career as the sole breadwinner of her family to pursue a more sustainable approach to fashion. Today, Susan is the founder of Art & Eden, a sustainable clothing line for kids that approaches fashion in a slower, more intentional pace and weaves in social equity projects into the foundation of the business model.

The post EP 135: Growing A Truly Sustainable Business With Art & Eden Founder Susan Correa appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Sarah Peck is a writer and the host of Startup Pregnant, a weekly podcast where she explores and reimagines what parenting, entrepreneurship, work, and motherhood looks like. Listen to this episode of What Works to hear more about Sarah’s journey in launching Startup Pregnant, plus her vision for the podcast and her body of work.

The post EP 134: Realizing Your Idea Is So Much Bigger Than You Imagined With Startup Pregnant Founder Sarah K Peck appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Do you think there’s a better way to approach your work than just hustling hard? Jennifer Armbrust, founder of Sister and Feminist Business School, would argue there’s a more feminine way to build and grow your business.

The post EP 133: Building A Business In The Feminine Economy With Sister Founder & Director Jennifer Armbrust appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Today on What Works, we welcome Michael Sirianni, owner of Buzz, a mobile rock-and-roll inspired sandwich shop serving the Lancaster, Pennsylvania community. But Buzz is about so much more than egg and cheese sandwiches: as a B Corp certified business, Michael runs his restaurant-on-wheels a bit differently than most.

The post EP 132: Choosing The B Corp Life with Buzz Food Truck Founder Michael Sirianni appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Marie Poulin, co-founder of digital agency Oki Doki, talks about product evolution, hybrid product/service delivery, and how she is optimizing her business based on what works.

The post EP 131: Optimizing What Works For Your Small Business With Oki Doki Co-Founder Marie Poulin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Carlos Saba, the co-founder of Happy Startup School, shares what worked for getting his new business off the ground, how he's translated local events into global success, and how "engineered serendipity" plays a big role in the work they do.

The post EP 130: Crafting Communities–And Happier Businesses–Both Online And Offline With Happy Startup School Co-founder Carlos Saba appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Dr. Michelle Mazur talks about how her 3 Word Rebellion framework is making it easier to attract--and sell to--her most ideal clients.

The post EP 129: Building a Client Pipeline With Communication Rebel Founder Dr. Michelle Mazur appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Lisa Akers is both a spaceship builder and herbalist (really!) While this might sound like an unusual duo, Lisa demonstrates just how closely the two are related -- and how she balances working as an engineer and working as an herbalist.

The post EP 128: Melding Disparate Passions with Herbalist & Spaceship Builder Lisa Akers appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Michelle Fifis, founder of the Textile Design Lab, shares how she's made her membership-based business more lean-and-mean over the last year--and increased profitability at the same time.

The post EP 127: Getting Lean For More Meaningful Growth With Textile Design Lab Founder Michelle Fifis appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Ali Shapiro, MSOD, certified holistic health counselor, and founder of Truce with Food® talks about her recent rebranding and repositioning of her business--including the customer research she did, how she navigated the political implications, and why her body of work has expanded.

The post EP 126: Navigating The Process Of Rebranding & Repositioning with Truce With Food Creator Ali Shapiro appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Lacy Boggs shares how her content marketing has evolved to focus on producing clients--not just email subscribers. Plus, she shares why she's asking for more referrals and hanging out where your ideal clients hang out.

The post EP 125: Writing Content For Results with Content Direction Agency Founder Lacy Boggs appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Find out what works for Emily Thompson, founder of Indie Shopography, co-host of the Being Boss podcast, and co-author of Being Boss: Take Control Of Your Work + Live Life On Your Own Terms.

The post EP 124: Co-Writing A Book To Grow Your Brand With Being Boss Author Emily Thompson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

What Works is all about what's really working to grow, manage, and run small businesses in the digital age--as told by the small business owners themselves.

The post Profit. Power. Pursuit. Is Now What Works appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this week’s episode, Tara chats with Patrice Perkins, the principle attorney of Creative Genius Law and an American Bar Association recognized legal rebel. Patrice founded her legal practice in 2010 after realizing the creative business community was underserved by attorneys. Why? Her creative friends told her, they didn’t trust attorneys to understand their needs or […]

The post Episode 123 – Crafting An Ultra Informative Social Media Strategy with Creative Genius Law Founder Patrice Perkins appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

The guest on this week’s episode is Dyana Valentine, the oracle behind the Woke Up Knowing Experience. Dyana helps her clients go beyond purely intellectual approaches to problem solving, and wake up to new information, ideas and perspectives. She offers her service in 24 minute calls, the 24 hour Woke Up Knowing Experience, and group oracle […]

The post Episode 122 – Building An Unpredictable Business with Woke Up Knowing Experience Creator Dyana Valentine appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In today’s episode Tara chats with Lisa Robbin Young, the founder of Arch Entertainment Media and author of ‘Creative Freedom: How to Own Your Dreams Without Selling Your Soul’. Lisa is the woman behind the Creative Freedom Incubator, and hosts the web series ‘Creative Freedom’, providing inspiration and education for creative entrepreneurs. Tara and Lisa chat about […]

The post Episode 121 – Offering A Service At “Pay For Results” Pricing with Lisa Robbin Young appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In today’s episode Tara chats with Bestself.co co-founder, Cathryn Lavery. Cathryn and her co-founder Alan developed and crafted 13 products that empower people to crush inspiring goals, boost productively and create a life that matches their potential. BestSelf Co boast over a quarter of a million products sold in 86 countries, 200,000 visits to their website every […]

The post Episode 120 – Developing a Runaway Bestselling Product with Self Journal Co-Creator Cathryn Lavery appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this week’s episode, Tara chats with the attorney and founder behind ‘The Contract Shop’, Christina Scalera. The Contract Shop offers contract templates for creative entrepreneurs, including wedding professionals, graphic designers and coaches. Three years ago Christina found herself dreaming of pursuing a more creative path, and started looking for alternatives to her in-house legal job. […]

The post Episode 119 – Creating Leveraged Income As An Attorney With The Contract Shop Founder Christina Scalera appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week Tara is joined by the international, best-selling author and founder of ‘The Persuasion Revolution’, Bushra Azhar. As a persuasion strategist, Bushra helps small businesses make big bucks using the psychology of persuasion. Bushra started her business in 2014 and went from a ‘nobody’ to earning 2 million dollars in less than three years. Her […]

The post Episode 118 – Low-Key Launching With The Persuasion Method creator Bushra Azhar appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tara’s guest this week is ‘Your Kick Ass Life’ founder Andrea Owen. Andrea is an author, mentor and certified life coach who helps high-achieving women let go of perfectionism, control and isolation. Tara and Andrea chat about her newly released book ‘How To Stop Feeling Like Sh*t’. They discuss the writing process and marketing strategy, and take a look […]

The post Episode 117 – Andrea Owen – Growing A Coaching Business Using Books with Your Kickass Life Founder Andrea Owen appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week’s guest is the founder of Bonova Advisory, Breana Patel. Bonova is a minority-woman owned consulting firm providing risk and compliance services to clients across the financial service industry as well as state, local, and federal agencies. Breana brings more than 17 years of leadership experience helping banks build robust, enterprise risk-management frameworks, governance, […]

The post Episode 116 – Breana Patel – Serving & Selling To Bigger Businesses with Bonova Advisory Founder Breana Patel appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tara’s guest this week is Devon Fidler, a Cree Woman from the Waterhen Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan. Devon is a social entrepreneur, and the Chief Changemaker of SheNative Goods Inc., a brand of handbags and accessories. Devon has built SheNative to help empower and change perceptions of indigenous women and girls. Tara and Devon […]

The post Episode 115 – Growing a Business For Good with SheNative founder Devon Fidler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Jennie Nash, the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Author Accelerator, a book coaching program that provides feedback, accountability, and support for writers so they can finish their books and finish strong. Through her accelerator, writers have landed top New York agents, and been selected as Pitch-Force mentees and Women’s […]

The post Episode 114 – Scaling a High-Touch Service-Based Business with Author Accelerator Founder Jennie Nash appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This special episode of Profit Power Pursuit is focused on the trends that Tara sees coming for 2018 and how your business can adapt sooner rather than later to adapt to them. The post Episode 113 – 10 Digital Small Business Trends for 2018 appeared first on CreativeLive Blog.

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As 2017 comes to a close, Tara gives a quick hit of reflection on what’s working from a bunch of former Profit Power Pursuit guests. We e-mailed them and asked “what’s working for you right now?” As you listen, be sure to reflect on what’s working for you and your business right now. What assumptions […]

The post Episode 110 – Top Entrepreneurs Get Real About What’s Working Now appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

As we start to look toward the end 2017, Tara talks to some former guests about the one thing they thought they knew about their business but later found out they were wrong about. Here are seven great answers from successful entrepreneurs to give you something to chew on as we wind down the year. […]

The post Episode 109 – The Surprising Things Top Entrepreneurs Have Learned appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tara’s guest this week is her friend and TEDx Women speaker, writer, and leadership coach for extraordinary women, Tanya Geisler. She teaches women how to step into their starring roles, own their authority and overcome the imposter complex in their life, in their work, and in their life’s work. She’s the creator of “Step Into […]

The post Episode 108 – Taking Your Message to A Bigger Stage with Tanya Geisler appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

For this week’s special episode, we’re sharing a clip from Tara’s latest class on CreativeLive, “Create a Hiring Plan & Grow Your Standout Business”. In this class, Tara helps you prepare your business for hiring. Whether you’re bringing someone new on board next week, next year, or next decade. We focus on the necessary mindset, […]

The post Episode 107 – Hiring Best Practices with Patrice Perkins appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tara’s guest this week is Marion McGovern, founder of M Squared Consulting, one of the first gig economy companies in 1988. She’s also the author of Thriving in the Gig Economy, published by career press, as well as the co-author of A New Brand of Expertise: How Independent Consultants, Free Agents, and Intra-Managers are Transforming […]

The post Episode 106 – Navigating the Growing Gig Economy with Marion McGovern appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Alexis Teichmiller, host of the Laptop Lifestyle podcast and a content creator for hospitality brands. She’s also the full-time affiliate manager at ConvertKit, an e-mail marketing provider for creators and online entrepreneurs. Tara wanted to chat with Alexis about how she’s created a thriving side hustle while working a job […]

The post Episode 105 – Building a Business on the Side of a Job You Love with Laptop Lifestyle Creator Alexis Teichmiller appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Millie Blackwell, CEO & co-founder of Showcase Workshop, the sales content management system for large business who sell face to face. Her mission is to eradicate ring binders and printed sales collateral and ensure that every field sales rep has the content they need on their tablet or smartphone. Tara […]

The post Episode 104 – Selling One Customer at a Time with Showcase Workshop Founder Millie Blackwell appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is the founder of Freeup, Nathan Hirsch. Nathan is a serial entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring who got his start as a college student with a drop shipping business. Over the last seven years, his company Portlight has sold over $25 million worth of product and hired plenty of remote […]

The post Episode 103 – What the Heck Is dropshipping? with Portlight & Freeeup founder Nathan Hirsch appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Elizabeth DiAlto, the practical Mystic, author, podcast host, speaker, coach, and CEO behind Wild Soul Movement. Elizabeth works with women to reclaim and redefine their own womanhood and contribute to a new paradigm of culture where it is both safe and natural for women to love, trust, and accept themselves […]

The post Episode 102 – Creating a Personal Filter for Honest Social Media Marketing with Wild Soul Movement founder Elizabeth DiAlto appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

For our 101st episode, we’ve got something pretty special. This week, Tara talks with two former producers of this podcast, who are now former CreativeLive employees. In January of this year, just nine months ago, they started a production agency and consultancy called Edios Media and have rocketed to small business success in an incredibly […]

The post Episode 101 – Starting a New Business with a Bang–and Clear Priorities–with Edios Media Founders Elizabeth Madariaga & Michael Karsh appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This episode marks our 100th original episode of Profit, Power, Pursuit! To celebrate this incredible 100 episode milestone we decided to go back to the source. In episode 0, Tara spoke to the co-founders of CreativeLive, the company that co-produces this podcast with me. Chase Jarvis and Craig Swanson shared their memories of pursuing the […]

The post Episode 100 – Chase Jarvis appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this special episode bonus episode of Profit, Power, Pursuit, we’re sharing an interview Tara did with Content Marketing Strategist Lacy Boggs during her last CreativeLive course, Create a Marketing Plan to Grow Your Standout Business. Lacy Boggs is the founder of the Content Direction Agency, which helps small business owners create sales-focused content to […]

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This week, Tara’s guest is Jessica Mehring, CEO of Horizon Peak Consulting. She combines sales-focused copywriting with content marketing to help IT software, and tech clients turn clients into revenue. She’s also the creator of The Content Lab, where she trains content creators and copywriters how to get better results from their written content while […]

The post Episode 99 – The Power of a Profitable Niche with Content Copywriter Jessica Mehring appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Productive Flourishing founder, Charlie Gilkey. Charlie is a best-selling author, speaker, blogger, podcaster, and business strategist. His website has been visited by nearly 3 million people and his tools, worksheets and planners have been downloaded over 1 million times. He’s taught thousands of people how to go from idea to […]

The post Episode 98 – The Art of Management–For One Or Many–with Productive Flourishing Founder Charlie Gilkey appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Michelle Ward the “When I Grow Up Coach”. Michelle has been offering dream business guidance for creative women since 2008. She’s been featured in New York Magazine, Etsy, Newsweek, and the Forbes Top 100 websites for your career list. She’s also the co-author of the Declaration of You and teacher […]

The post Episode 97 – The Secret to Small Business Longevity with Career Coach Michelle Ward appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Katie Hunt. Katie is the founder of Tradeshow Bootcamp, host of the Proof to Product podcast and a business strategist for creative entrepreneurs. Katie got her start with a wholesale stationery line called Kelp Designs in 2009 and now helps other designers and makers find success in wholesale. Katie has […]

The post Episode 96 – Fueling Your Business with Live Events with Tradeshow Bootcamp Founder Katie Hunt appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara is joined by Emily Thompson. Emily is the founder of Indie Shopography and co-host of “Being Boss” a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want to up their game. At Indie Shopography, Emily helps creatives run online businesses from websites to marketing, to education. Emily and Tara talk about the time she bought […]

The post Episode 95 – Creating Systems for Efficiency & Productivity with Indie Shopography founder Emily Thompson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara is joined by CoCommercial’s own marketing director and the founder of B, the forward-thinking PR agency, Brigitte Lyons. Brigitte and Tara have been friends for years and love working together. Brigitte helped Tara land several huge media placements including 2 popular articles in Fast Company. Now, she leads an agency that creates […]

The post Episode 94 – Why Marketing Campaigns Fail with CoCommercial Founder Tara Gentile and Media Strategist Brigitte Lyons appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tara’ guest this week is Molly Hayward, the founder of Cora, a lifestyle brand giving women a modern method for managing their periods. Cora is changing the way women are thinking about their bodies with organic tampons, an elegant delivery experience, and sustainable menstrual products given to girls in developing countries for every monthly supply […]

The post Episode 93 – Disrupting a Very Old Market with Cora Founder Molly Hayward appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara speaks with veteran brand strategist and Creative Director Alicia Johnson. Alicia has been leading iconic brand turnarounds for over twenty years with her husband media artist Hal Wolverton. They’ve lead creative on high-profile projects such as the award-winning rebrands of Comedy Central, Jaguar, and BBC America. The couple operates their brand boutique […]

The post Episode 92 – Creating Luxury Brands With an Emphasis on Impact With Alicia Johnson appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week Tara speaks with Chris Mittelstaedt the founder and CEO of The FruitGuys, a business that serves farm-fresh fruit to offices across the United States as a way to help companies provide healthy offerings to their employees at work. Started in San Francisco in 1998, and self-funded all the way, The FruitGuys now has […]

The post Episode 91 – Making Your Business A Force For Good with The FruitGuys Founder Chris Mittelstaedt appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara talks to Rebecca Tracey, the head and only honcho at the Uncaged Life. Rebecca works with coaches of all kinds from all over the world who want to have the freedom of working from anywhere by running their own online business. She helps people get clear on their brand message, create packages […]

The post Episode 90 – Pursuing An Adventurous Life with Uncaged Life founder Rebecca Tracey appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this episode, Tara talks to Jordan Harbinger. Jordan is a Wall Street lawyer turned talk show host, social dynamics expert, and entrepreneur. He’s the former owner and co-founder of The Art of Charm consulting and coaching company and the host of The Jordan Harbinger show, a top personal development podcast. Jordan and Tara talk […]

The post Episode 89 – The Ins & Outs of Authentic Networking with Art of Charm Co-founder Jordan Harbinger appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Gabby Bernstein. Gabby is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Universe Has Your Back as well as four other best-selling books. She was featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as a next-generation thought leader, and the New York Times named her a new role model. She’s currently […]

The post Episode 88 – Cultivating A Confident Personal Brand with Bestselling Author Gabby Bernstein appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is award-winning senior portrait photographer turned educator, Galicia Virgen. Through her courses, coaching, and online groups at the 12th year, Galicia has helped hundreds of senior photographers get energized, organized, and profitable. She lives in Washington with her husband and five children and never turns down the chance to have a […]

The post Episode 87 – Finding a Niche That Leads to Success with Photographer Galicia Virgen appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Tara’s guest this week is Maggie Lord. Maggie is the founder of the popular websites Rustic Wedding Chic, Rustic Wedding Guide, & Rustic Baby Chic and the author of 5 books. Maggie is a sought after wedding & lifestyle expert who often appears on TV, radio, and podcasts sharing her insights on everything from wedding […]

The post Episode 86 – Building a Business While Growing a Family with Rustic Wedding Chic founder Maggie Lord appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

Growing a business in the New Economy means dealing with your “money stuff.” Tara highlights 6 money lessons she’s learned by building her business–and by talking to the smart business owners we feature on Profit. Power. Pursuit. Learn what needed to shift to see her earning $28,000 per year as a retail manager to growing […]

The post Episode 85 – Putting the P in Profit: Money Lessons From the New Economy appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Tara Melvin. Tara is the founder of Perfect Planning Events and Signature Concepts, an event planning and management company that offers a complete array of services to cover all facets of event planning for upscale weddings, social and corporate events from start to finish. She’s also active within the event […]

The post Episode 84 – Growing a Hands-On, High-Touch Business with Perfect Planning founder Tara Melvin appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara’s guest is Tonya Dalton. Tonya is the founder of inkWELL Press, a collection of planners and productivity tools for women looking for a little more peace in their busy lives. The company launched in November 2014 and has grown at a rapid pace thanks to their commitment to quality, focused marketing efforts, […]

The post Episode 83 – Why Physical Goods are the New Services with Inkwell Press founder Tonya Dalton appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

In this episode, Tara speaks with her longtime friend Sara Villari. Sara is the founder and designer behind Girls Can Tell gift company and the owner of Occasionette a sweet gift boutique in South Philly. Sara has worked in the gift industry since 2006. First with her own line of illustrated goods, then as a community […]

The post Episode 82 – From Wholesale to Brick & Mortar with Girls Can Tell Creator Sara Villari appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.

This week, Tara talks with Joey Korenman. Joey is the founder and Head Instructor of School of Motion, a company dedicated to providing the best motion design training on the planet. School of Motion has helped thousands of artists from all over the world improve their skills in the realm of motion design. Previously, Joey […]

The post Episode 81 – Growing a Million Dollar Online Course Institution with School of Motion founder Joey Korenman appeared first on What Works with Tara McMullin.