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.
A few years ago, I sat with a group of entrepreneurs in the living room of a cute little condo in Whitefish, Montana. My role was facilitating conversations about their obstacles and opportunities as business owners. It was a group of super successful folks, some on...
When Simone Biles pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics, she cited a case of the "twisties." Like most Americans, I had to look that up. Turns out, the "twisties" is the term gymnasts use to describe the feeling of losing the mind-body connection that allows them to...
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.
I've been thinking about the nature of scarcity and abundance quite a bit lately. A couple of months ago, I listened to a podcast that suggested we often mistake which side of the equation scarcity is really on. The conversation was about economy-level scarcity, but...
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.
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.
"This did not feel like real life, exactly, but nowadays what did?" Patricia Lockwood I first saw the Fisher-Price My Home Office playset cross my Twitter feed on Saturday. I thought, surely, this must be a joke! This dystopian image was an attempt at cutting cultural...
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.
Doing business in a capitalist economy has a way of turning people into users, clicks, page views, and targets. As business owners with more data at our fingertips than we know what to do with, we reduce relational questions to math problems and automations. What’s...
Host of What Works
Tara is a podcaster, small business community leader, strategist, and speaker. She’s been helping small business owners build stronger businesses for over a decade.