The Nuts & Bolts Of Building A Stronger Small Business
“Tara is a master at bringing together knowledgable, generous business owners who have worked hard to build their businesses–and are willing to share it all.”
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About What Works
What Works is a free weekly show that takes the mystery out of how small businesses really work.
With each episode, Tara deep dives with a small business owner and asks about how they manage their marketing, money, operations, team-building, growth, or personal leadership. She asks the nosy questions you’ve always wanted to ask other business owners!
Why a podcast?
We produce the What Works podcast because it makes learning on-the-go easy. You can take this free in-depth audio content wherever you go and listen whenever you have time using apps like Spotify, Castbox, Castro, and Apple Podcasts.
New to What Works? Try This Episode:
Creating A Focused Brand With Studebaker Metals Founder Alyssa Catalano
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EP 298: Creating A Less Harmful Sales System with Wanderwell Founder Kate Strathmann
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!
EP 297: Selling A New Program With Proof To Product Founder Katie Hunt
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!
EP 296: Putting The Humanity Back In Sales With Lawyer Autumn Witt Boyd
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.
EP 295: It’s Always A Work In Progress
The market is constantly changing. New technology, new trends, new players....
BONUS: Refining How I Offer Business Support Over The Long-Term
Hey, it's Tara McMullin, and this is a special bonus episode of What Works,...
EP 294: Refining Your Offer With SpeakEasy Cooperative Founder Michelle Markwart Deveaux
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.
Are you a small business owner with an unconventional or highly thoughtful way of working?
Would you like to share the nitty-gritty of how you do things with the What Works audience?
We’re always looking for guests, especially from unusual industries, using creative business models, and from underrepresented communities.
Here’s how to be considered:
- Let us know 2-3 processes or strategies you use in your business that are unconventional or incredibly thoughtful that might make a good angle for a 30-40 min deep dive interview, or…
- Share a personal inflection point in your business–like a mindset shift you made and how it played out in your business
