Podcast Archives

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EP 263: Turning Your Values Into Action With Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coach Erica Courdae

Feb 4, 2020

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.

EP 262: Honing Your Craft Using Smart Project Management With Kickass Conferences Founder Isaac Watson

Jan 28, 2020

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.

EP 261: 5 Project Management Tools These Small Business Owners Can’t Do Without

Jan 23, 2020

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.

EP 260: Tracking Complex Projects With On-Demand CFO Christina Sjahli

Jan 21, 2020

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.

EP 259: Managing The Creative Process With Brooklyn Book Doctor Founder Joelle Hann

Jan 14, 2020

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.

EP 258: Managing Multi-Layer Projects With Kaye Publicity Founder Dana Kaye

Jan 7, 2020

The Nitty-Gritty: How Kaye Publicity founder Dana Kaye plans and manages multi-layer book publicity projectsThe tools she uses to track progress, run reports, and organize the information that goes into every projectHow her team members take ownership of different...

EP 257: End-Of-Year Mailbag Episode With Tara McMullin

Dec 24, 2019

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!

EP 256: Discovering What You Need From Your Business With BrainSpace Optimized Founder Hailey Thomas

Dec 17, 2019

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.

EP 255: Taking Stock & Setting New Intentions With Podcasting Advocate Elsie Escobar

Dec 12, 2019

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.

EP 254: Transforming Your Business Model With Growth & Impact Strategist Toi Smith

Dec 10, 2019

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.

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