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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Browse Our Episodes
EP 312: Surfing The Ebbs & Flows with The Change Agency Founder Valerie Black
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.
EP 311: Finding The Full Body Yes With Being Boss Host Emily Thompson
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.
EP 310: Unlearning Default Thoughts With Financial Coach Keina Newell
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.
EP 309: How To Change Your Perspective
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.
EP 308: Leveraging Old Skills & Learning New Ones With Bouquet Stock Photography Founders Dana Kaye & Felton Kizer
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.
EP 307: Mastering A New Model With The Light House Founder Christianne Squires
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.
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
