What Works | Small Business Podcast With Tara Mcmullin

In This Episode: * 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 Back in 2016, the odd-job platform TaskRabbit ran a series of ads in New York City subways. Imagine a photo of a thin, white woman in upward facing dog pose on a yoga mat. She’s blissed out. Above her, the poster reads “Mopping the floors” in trendy, pseudo handwriting script. Below her, the TaskRabbit tagline reads “We do chores. You live life.” The ad campaign communicates the promise of letting your

In This Episode: * Why Michelle Ward decided to retire as the When I Grow Up Coach to go all-in on the 90-Day Business Launch* Why a complicated business model (and her peer mastermind) made the decision pretty clear* How she made the transition and the impact its had on revenue* How she’s reprioritizing business & life so she’s focused on what she really values Small business owners are famously susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy. If you’re not a familiar, sunk cost fallacy is the idea that the more we sink our time, money, and other resources into a project or idea, the more likely we are to stick with it even when it’s not working. Our resources are limited—or at least feel that way. So we’re attached to them. Deciding to invest precious resources into an idea then creates an attachment to that idea. The more attached we become, the less likely we are to willing detach. The more resources we sink into a project—and the more attached we become—the fewer choices we seem to have ab

Have you heard? The average human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s! Thanks, internet.  TV journalists and politicians talk to us in sound bites, assuming we don’t have the attention for more nuanced analysis. Boomers bemoan fast media like TikTok and Instagram.  It seems like attention might be one of our scarcest and most precious resources. But 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. Before I get into the latter, let’s debunk the former. It turns out that the panic over our attention spans being less than a goldfish’s is a pseudo-scientific soundbite in and of itself. Actual research psychologists say they don’t really study “attention span” as a discrete component of how we think. Instead, attention span is relative. How long we can pay attention to something depends on the task, our level of interest, and the varied circumstances we bring to a given situation. F

In This Episode: * 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 We all have an abundance of identities. I’m a woman. A wife. A mother. I’m a business owner, a writer, a podcaster. I’m a runner, a yoga practitioner, a paddle boarder. I’m an introvert, a book lover, and a new cat parent. I am many other things, too. The professional world—as built by white men—has been a place where we leave our other identities at the door. We transform into whatever the job requires of us and try to ignore the rest. There’s a passage that really encapsulates this in a book I read earlier this year—Having and Being Had by Eula Biss. She writes about a conversation she had with her mom: “The hardest part of worki

I am a fast person. I walk fast. Cook fast. Write fast. Talk fast. Work out fast. It’s like I’m always moving towards some urgent need or trying to escape some impending disaster. So I’ve been working on slowing down for the last few years. To do that, I have to be mindful. I have to be present enough to notice that I’m zooming around and get curious about why. Then, I can take a beat and slow down the tempo. I say that like it’s easy, or like I even remember to do it on a regular basis. I don’t. I find it hard to look around at the world—the news, the market, my family, my community—and not feel the pressure of urgency. Things change so fast today, yes. But the problems we face and the opportunities in front of us are also urgent. It’s not just the speed with which things happen. It’s the fleeting window of possibility we have to make changes or seize the moment. In her book Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown writes: “There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we fac

In This Episode: * Why brand strategist Alice Karolina created the ethical move, which helps small business owners navigate building more ethical marketing and sales systems* How the ethical move evolves as they practice reflection and collaboration* Why Alice prioritizes moving slowly when it comes to building the business* What they’re discovering as they incrementally investigate what building a business that prioritizes ethics looks like I had always thought I was running a pretty values-driven business. I cared about people and tried to operate always assuming the best of them. I developed programs in the spirit of experimentation—a core value for me. And I utilized transparency and honesty in my marketing and sales processes. But at the same time, I didn’t ask a lot of questions. If someone told me it was totally fine to do X, Y, or Z marketing tactic, I believed them. I operated my business that way through October 2016. Then, I had a wakeup call and a lot of questions. Like many

In This Episode * How Future Proof Skills Lab founder Liz Wiltsie has build her business on her North Star values & the movements she belongs to* How she makes room for difference, both in her own business and in her work with clients* What she’s decided not to do with her business because of her values Imagine yourself sitting at a table. In front of you, there are all your favorite art supplies. Maybe there are paints, crayons, or pastels. Maybe there are stacks of magazines and illustrated books you can cut up for a collage. Maybe your art is music and your favorite instrument is on the table. Or maybe, like me, your favorite art supply is a tablet—one you can draw & paint with as well as create written art. On their own, the art supplies don’t amount to much, right? The value of a tube of paint, a trumpet, or a pen is based on what we have the potential to do with it. Art supplies are tools and raw materials for creating. We imagine something and start to make it, or we get inspire

In This Episode: * The key values that coach Mara Glatzel has built her business on* How her human-first approach to business gives her a framework for caring for herself and for her clients* The belief systems she’s worked on unlearning to better fulfill her values* How being “well-resourced” gives her what she needs to respond when things get stressful Years ago, I was the trainer at the Borders Books & Music I worked at. It probably won’t surprise you that I loved this role. I poured over the training manuals. I thought about better systems for acclimating a new bookseller to a store with some 90,000 titles. I took seriously my job to communicate company policy, as well as the special privilege of working for a company with a mission and values like ours. You can imagine me now putting air quotes around “special privilege.” Understandably, I couldn’t remember the company’s mission and values now. So looked them up and found them on an old Blogspot blog from around the time I recit

Systems have a reputation. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, as I have, “Oh, I’m just not a systems person,” you might know what I mean. Often, the way we talk about systems is tangled up in talk about software, procedures, rules, and a sort of legalistic structure for “this is how we do things here.” When you say, “I’m not a systems person,” you’re likely expressing the kind of claustrophobic feeling that comes from being confined to a set of rules—even if they’re rules you yourself created! When you say, “I am a systems person,” you might very well be expressing the relief that having clear instructions and a solid expectation of how a goal is accomplished can deliver. Systems are a way of easing anxiety for you. I can easily find myself in both camps. I might identify as a “systems person” in the morning and “not a systems person” by the afternoon. And I’ve noticed that, for me, there’s a moral component to how I’m feeling about systems at any given time. When I’m feeli

In This Episode: * Tara explains how using a system-thinking approach to money makes it easier to invest in the growth of your business* Why cash flow is a 3-dimensional way to think about your business’s money* How the different components of a cash flow system work together to create a desired outcome* Why managing for cash flow creates the conditions to live out feminist values in your business 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. Find this episode in article form by clicking here. Radically rethink how you set goals: pre-order Tara's new book, What Wo

In This Episode: * Why Coach Pony founder Christie Mims uses 2 “competing” sales funnels to accommodate for different ways of buying* How she melds both sales automation and a human approach to produce 7+ figure sales* The nuts & bolts of what both sales funnels entail and how they actually work together* Plus, why Christie’s approach is inspiring but, ultimately, might not be the best approach for you How reliable are your sales? How steadily do new customers buy? How loyal are your retainer clients or repeat customers? Every business owners wants to feel confident when it comes to sales. Not just how to close a sale, but really how the chance to make a sale presents itself, how the process evolves, and how that final decision gets made. Can you engineer a more reliable sales system? Yes, you sure can. But it’s not the “if this, then that” kind of process that many reductive sales courses try to sell you on. It would be awesome if I knew that every time I did a particular task

In This Episode: * Why Sean McMullin & Lou Blaser, from YellowHouse.Media, switched their project management software from Notion to Clickup (and why it’s not the right move for everyone!)* How they’ve reduced their podcast management procedure from 75 sub-tasks to 11 umbrella tasks* Why streamlining the procedure has allowed them to bring a more customized approach to each podcast they produce* How focusing on the system behind podcast production has helped them create a lot more capacity for new clients A couple of months back, I read a downright beautiful article about systems. Yes, you heard that right: a beautiful, thoughtful, and useful article about… systems. It was written by Donella Meadows, an influential environmental scientist and leading thinker on systems change in the 20th century. The article outlines 14 principles for *dancing* with systems. But today I want to focus on the first: get the beat. When we talk about business systems, it’s easy to default to software,

Personal strengths are like a photo filter. Imagine you’ve got a photo that’s… fine. You upload it to Instagram or VSCO or some fun photo editing app. And then you scroll through the filters until you find one that brings the picture to life. With the tap of a button, you can make the photo go from washed out colors to… black & white, or soft shades of peach and pink, or punchy shades of blues and greens. Your filter might up the contrast or even everything out a bit. Personal strengths can do the same thing for your business strategy, marketing tactics, or the way you deliver your offer. So what happens when we start to use personal strengths as a filter for business? First, it becomes much easier to make decisions about what steps to take next. The strengths filter makes it easier to see whether one path or another is going to work better for you. But second, your strengths filter can help you find creative ways to do some of those shoulds and supposed-tos that just feel so m

In This Episode: * Why writer Kris Windley decided to learn how to illustrate her articles* How doodling has helped her work with her ADHD* How she finds the idea or image she wants to illustrate for each piece* The metaphor she uses to think about skill-building I’ve become a bit obsessed with the concept of “sensemaking.” Really, I’ve been obsessed with it my whole life, I just didn’t have a name for it. Sensemaking is the process of taking sensory information and situational knowledge and creating a framework for meaning and decision-making. Okay, I know, that sounds kind of heady. But really, we do it all the time. Imagine you venture into the kitchen after a long day in your home office. The kitchen is torn apart. You see dishes stacked on the counter, cupboard doors open, and pantry items covering the table. You smell a slightly chemical citrus scent in the air. Your spouse isn’t there to ask what the heck is going on. Quickly, you deduce that they got the idea to deep clean

In This Episode: * Why coach Reva Patwardhan counts her intrinsic sense of belonging as one of her top strengths* How “deep processing” allows her to work with high-achieving women in unexpected ways* How she’s learned to work with her ADHD instead of against it* What she’s discovered at the intersection of neurodivergence and being a woman of color I think a lot about belonging. In fact, “belonging” is an ongoing conversation between our community advocate, Shannon, and I. We talk about belonging because one of the biggest concerns that prospective Network members and new members have is whether they will belong. They ask if there are people like them in the community: people with a similar business model, people from the same industry, people who come from the same background they have. On one hand, these questions are easy to answer. Typically we can say, “Yes! There are people like you here.” But on the other hand, a sense of belonging isn’t just a factor of who you’re in proximity w

In This Episode: * How Work Brighter founder Brittany Berger leverages her unique strengths to create a custom approach to productivity and structure* Why she tracks her mood and energy to make her working time more effective* How she’s reimagined traditional productivity “rules” through the lens of neurodivergence and chronic illness* How her obsession with pop culture has become a strength for creating compelling content How do you operate in a world that’s not designed for you? How do you make sense of instructions that weren’t written for you? How do you navigate expectations that weren’t set with you in mind? These are big, personal questions and, thankfully, we’ve started taking a look at the answers at a cultural level and not just at the individual level. But until we see some serious change to a culture that privileges white, male, thin, neurotypical, heterosexual, cisgendered, hierarchal, and non-disabled ways of living, we’ve got some adapting to do. It’s easy to think t

In This Episode: * Why Let’s Do The Books founder Mark Butler has been working on getting out of the way for his team* How he’s evolved the way he works to take a break from creating chaos while still leaning into his strengths for experimentation and ideation* Why he’s focused on finding the space to quiet his mind* How he’s created an environment where his team members can really thrive in ownership of their work Entrepreneurs have a reputation for having control issues. They also have a reputation for being real idea people. And what happens when you combine those two qualities? Well, it can be total chaos. Chaos can be building a system then immediately trying to quote-unquote improve it. Chaos can be hiring up a team but never really letting them do their jobs. Chaos can also be trying do 10 different things at once and juggle them all yourself. 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 al

In This Episode: * Why Jessica Abel believes carving out space to work on experimental and creative projects is key* The strategy she recommends for buying the time you need to do creative work* How she measures creative projects in “developmental markers” and “success markers”* And why she’s committed to building a team that helps her make room for big picture thinking and creative projects It’s one thing to get your business to a point that’s stable and sustainable. It’s another to make room for big projects like writing a book or building a new offer. And it’s yet another thing to carve out the space to work on a creative project that may or may not ever bring financial benefits. It’s those big projects—the business-related and the not-so-business-related—that so many business owners dream of being able to spend time on. Sometimes, we put them on our calendar—block out a week or even a long weekend—but then life happens. Some quote-unquote emergency bleeds into the time we’ve se

In This Episode: * Why financial behaviorist Jacquette Timmons is more interested in finding the right blend that finding a balance between work and life* How she approaches the way she engages with work to stave off burnout* Why rest is part of the work she does* How the structure of a business contributes to whether we’re able to find the right blend for ourselves Reminder, this month, Tara is taking a break from hosting and handing the mic over to her husband & business partner, Sean McMullin: I have a confession, dear listener. I was once late to the start of a group coaching call because I was… taking a nap. Through some combination of oversight and calendar failure, I missed that I had a call that I needed to be on until Tara woke me up! So embarrassing. And while I’m committed to making sure that never happens again, I’m equally committed to continuing to take naps in the middle of the day. Taking a nap in the middle of the day is one thing I’ve done to find the right bl

In This Episode: * Sean McMullin asks Break The Ceiling host Susan Boles what she’s learned about creating a business that runs itself* Why maintenance mode is key to creating the space to experiment and try out new ideas without breaking your business* How to view your business in smaller pieces to create your own minimum viable maintenance mode* Why creating the systems you need to take a break before there’s a crisis is critical This month’s series is all about “taking a break”—so Tara is taking a break from hosting and handing the mic over to her husband, producer, and business partner, Sean McMullin. Take it away, Sean! I never want to do work I can’t walk away from. When Tara and I started YellowHouse.Media, it was really important to me that we set it up in such a way that—eventually—it could run itself. We had built this great life together. We could travel, explore, and pursue interests outside of work—and I was only going to be game for this whole entrepreneurship thing if it woul