141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin

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You never know when a relationship is going to be that lifeline. And I have found over and over again that for as reluctant and necessarily so as I am for kind of cultivating relationships, networking, all of those things that it's been my long term partnerships, long term relationships that save me over and over and over again.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with fathers, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello, hello free timers. We are in for such a treat today because my guest is the much awaited. I have to say this is very long overdue. Tara McMullen Tara is just someone I have always admired, Looked to her advice, loved her writing, her podcasting, how she runs her business. She is a writer, podcaster and producer. For over 13 years she has studied small business owners, how they live, how they work, what influences them and what they hope for the future. She's the host of what Works, an incredible podcast about navigating this economy with your humanity intact. But even more, I've loved watching her pilot with different formats. Be sure to check out her recent Self Help LLC narrative series. She's also the co founder of Yellow House Media, a boutique podcast production company. Her work has been featured all over the place and today we're talking about her first book. I feel like that's hard to believe because you've produced so much over the years, Tara, but it's called what Works, a comprehensive framework to change the way we approach goal setting. Welcome to the show.

Well Jenny, thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here.

We have been friends for a long time thanks to the Internet and I.

Think it was, I want to say WDS 2011.

I remember sitting at a table with.

You everybody meeting IRL for the first.

Time and it's just been Really a joy to engage with what you're doing and what you're creating over time. And also you talked about in this book our culture's obsession with goals. Maybe you can tell us, like, over this long evolution of running your business, why did this topic of goals jump out to you as something to debunk a little bit and create your own take on that's more emphasizing the process side of things.

Yeah, so I am a classic, chronic anxious overachiever from way back. My guess is that you are too, Jenny. So for me, goals had always been the thing that I organized my whole life around. Early, early in school, like elementary school, junior high, high school, you know, all the goals that I thought I was supposed to be going after there in college, even when I did a brief stint in retail management as like my first adult job, like super goal oriented there as well. And then obviously, as I started my business, I started focusing more and more on the business goals. And business goals then could relate to personal goals. And it was just very much the way everything in my life got organized. And I noticed over time that even though I was pretty good at achieving goals, I was very good at planning to achieve goals. That even though the results of those goals were becoming part of my life and I thought that they would give me what I had been looking for, give me what I was after, sort of existentially, I never felt satisfied. I never felt like I'd made it. If anything, once I achieved a new goal, I noticed that I really should have been going after a bigger goal in the first place. And that was kind of demeaning. It was certainly something that didn't make me feel good about myself. So for me, the very reason I was going after those goals was for validation, for a sense of self worth, worth for just somebody to tell me that I'm going to be okay. And what I was getting back in return was the exact opposite message that, well, you might have done this, but really you're not going to make it until you've done this other bigger, bolder thing. And that had really started to wear on me by the time I was 35 or so. So about five, six years ago now. And I started to really question whether I should be organizing my life so concretely around these very almost arbitrary goals. I noticed that there were some things that I was doing to achieve my goals that weren't really lining up with my values. They weren't really lining up with the identity that I wanted to. To hold. And I could notice myself just getting more and more exhausted. And not just in a, you know, I'm busy and therefore I'm tired kind of way, but more in like an emotional exhaustion, in a mental exhaustion kind of way. The. The things that are much harder to recover from. And I could tell it wasn't sustainable. So I started to think, all right, what else could there possibly be? At the same time, I would say that I've been talking about goals and productivity and planning for almost as long as I've been working with small business owners. And it was always something that tripped people up in a number of different ways. Some people like me, were very, very goal oriented and had to be working toward a goal to feel like there was purpose to their work. Other people were very anti goal. Like, I don't want to organize my life that way. I don't want to focus on anything. I just want to kind of go with the flow. And then of course, there's everything in between. And so I started asking questions and kind of bubbling up that curiosity around what goals really meant to people and how goals really fit into people's lives very, very early on. And so when, when I did start to question my own relationship to goals and sort of everything I'd ever learned about goal setting, it did seem like, okay, if I'm having this problem, and I know that there's all these other people out there too, who get tripped up around goal setting, this is something that I need to work through. This is something that I need to process. So in addition to spending a couple of years figuring out where I. I wanted to be and what I wanted my relationship with goal setting to be, after that initial period, I really started to do the work in public and started to share with people how my thinking was evolving on the topics. I'd answer questions differently. And then to the point where I started actually sharing the process in a workshop and just getting this immense flood of response back. Often very emotional, often very like either identity affirming or very kind of knocking people a little off kilter. But at the same time, they liked it. Like they liked being challenged in that way. And so ultimately that was what brought me to the point where I was like, this is the book. This is the book that I need to take out into the market and sell. See, you know what happens if there's a publisher around who is equally excited about this. And I've found the response to everything that I've put out to just be very affirming of that direction and choice.

I totally agree. What I love about the book and your podcast is. It seems like you're really owning your role as a questioner in the space and have had to go through a process more than once, as we all do, but of giving yourself permission to be who you are and have the needs that you need and step back from, like, the way it's done, or.

We all experience this, like, the way.

Everyone else is doing it online. But now I almost see you as.

Like, an investigative business journalist uncovering every.

Rock and just saying what's actually under here. Do we need to do this this way? Is this serving us? Is this just for our ego and validation? Even the whole notion of capacity is something that, when I saw you specifically write about capacity, true capacity versus what we think we should have, we can be more honest with ourselves about what we're doing in our business and not just what works in business, but then what works for each of us, which.

Is the whole message of your show.

And body of work and this book. We were talking before we hit record of, you know, in 13, 14 years of doing this out loud, where you're building a platform, there are inevitable moments where you need to change gears and you actually realize, like you were saying, you're not just tired, you're actually getting exhausted and depleted. And the first shift, I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit. The first one I saw you do specifically with the podcast was, like, peeling off from Creative Live. And I always think about moments like that. And then more recently, it was transitioning your community, your private community, it can be so scary.

So I'm just wondering, you know, in.

Those moments, like, when you come to a realization that you are exhausted, the way you're working isn't working, like. Or pick a different transition that stands out to you, how do you get the courage to, like, admit it, say it out loud, and then communicate it when it feels really hard sometimes to let a good thing go?

Yeah. Oh, this is such a funny subject always for me to talk about because I'm a person who loves change and novelty. And so there are some kind of what other people perceive as, like, big choices that are just incredibly easy for me to make and that I really enjoy. And then there are other things where I am in the same boat with folks who don't ever make the decision until it's about three years too late, right? Or not too late, but three years later than you should or than in retrospect, than you should have. And so actually, the two moments that you've described there kind of hit Both of those kind of feelings for me. So originally when I started my podcast, it was with a company called Creative Live, where I'd been doing online video education, making classes for them on small business and marketing and all of that stuff. And I had approached them in early 2015 with the idea that, Hey, y' all are on YouTube. You've got your own video broadcasting, but you don't have any audio media right now. And this seems like something you could do really, really easily. And it's something that I would really like to do with you. Like, this could be a really great way to market not only my classes and the other business classes, but really the whole catalog and kind of present the vision of small business and creativity and creative business through the lens that makes sense for you all. And they were like, yes, absolutely, this sounds great. So we spent the better part of that year kind of hashing out what the premise was going to be and how it was all going to work. And I was just thrilled to be doing it and doing it with a team that was going to make it super great without me having to learn anything or pay other people to do it. And so I think we went on the podcast journey together for about a year and a half. And I went through a series of producers. The first two producers that I worked with were producers that I had worked with previously on Classes. They are very good friends of mine and they really wanted to help me make the podcast great. And that was awesome. And then both of them left. They actually left separately to form their own online learning company that has been incredibly successful. They were actually on episode 100 of the show talking about exactly that. But what that meant then was that I was working with producers who I knew and who I liked, but that didn't have the same level of buy in with the show or with me. And it became clear right around that hundred episode mark that CreativeLive didn't know what to do with the show anymore. They didn't know how they wanted to use it best, and so they weren't really devoting many resources to it. On the other hand, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the show and I had the resources to devote to it. I knew we could do it in house at that point. And I knew that it was going to be a logistical and administrative nightmare. If I tried, like, CreativeLive would have gone with me, they would have gone wherever I wanted to go with it, but I wouldn't have really had their full support, only in terms of, like, their resource Allocation, which I totally support. So I said, hey, can I take the show over? And they said, sure, what do you need? I was like, the feed, that's it.

That's all I need.

So they turned the feed over to me and it was just a super easy decision. It was a super easy conversation. And I credit them so much with providing me an environment in which I could ask for exactly what I need at any point in time. I love them to this day. I've done some extra work with them in the last couple of years and they are wonderful people with a wonderful vision for online education. So that's the easy decision.

And by the way, now people might not even give a feed over so easily.

Like, it's cool that back then there.

Was no friction, but a feed now a feed with an audience, like, so.

It'S really fortunate that they didn't try.

To hang onto it and say, sorry, no, this is ours.

We own this.

You gotta start from scratch.

So I'm really happy for you that that did go so smoothly.

Yes, thank you. It's like there were at least 2 million downloads on the show at that point. I was like, I. I need this. But I wasn't desperate about them. Like I said, this is my ideal. I would like you to transfer the feed to me. And because they had been so not invested in the show to that point, they didn't really know what they were giving up.

I'm just gonna go this now.

So that all went really well. Super smooth transition. It was just a really, really, real high point for me just in terms of, like, creative expression and kind of creative direction. The second decision that you alluded to was a gut wrenching one that I waited until the absolute last possible moment I could to make it. So in 2017, I kind of pivoted my coaching program business into a peer to peer support community business.

We'll be right back just after this.

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That transition went well in that people were excited about what we were building. They liked the idea of what we were putting out there. However, from a financial model perspective, it never got back to the level that I had gotten the coaching program business to. So I was essentially building this community model, self funding it from membership fees, but still running with a business infrastructure, the systems of a business that had been much more profitable, that had had a lot more free cash flow. And so that from the beginning sort of created some friction in terms of just where I could allocate resources to make the thing work the way I wanted it to work and to provide our community with what I wanted to provide them and to provide our team with what I wanted to provide them. So we worked and worked and worked and worked and worked on making that community function well financially, kind of coming to terms with the fact that this business, at least in the near future, is not going to match the coaching program or how can I run a business like this where I'm not generating nearly as much profit as I used to? Is that what I want to be doing? And I decided yes, you know, I really believe in this concept. I really believe in the people that are attracted to this concept. I want to pursue this. Even though there's been a big decline in profit from there. I started to get to the point where I felt much more comfortable with the financial model. And then it was March 2020. So like literally January 2020, I'm on top of the world. I'm thinking, yes, this isn't what I had before, but this is going to work. This is great. And then March 2020 and the pandemic happened and of course our community was looking to the community for help and guidance and reassurance, navigating what none of us knew about what was going to be happening in the future. Was the entire economy going to collapse? Was it going to rebound? Was it going to be a slow crawl out of the hole? Are we going to be able to see people in person anytime soon? And I went into classic over functioning mode, right? So just working literally 12, 14 hour days, churning out content, churning out events, just trying to be the rock that was going to hold everything together, be the glue that I guess that would hold everything together and also, you know, trying to reassure my own team as well at the same time. And as that year progressed, working with people got harder and harder and harder for me. Working with people has always been emotionally and mentally draining for me. You know, I've always identified as a hardcore introvert. You know, as someone who I'm always working a little bit more to make sure that I'm not being weird in a social situation. And in some ways, that works really well for me as a social speaker and as a podcaster and as a facilitator. But 2020 broke me in that way because everyone's actions became less predictable, because everyone's emotions and fear and anxiety were running so high, and rightly so, just weird social dynamics started to show up, and I did my very, very best to keep up. And, you know, folks who were working more closely with me at that time said, you know, I couldn't have gotten through this year without you. You did such a good job with just an impossible situation. We could tell how hard you were working to keep it all together. And so I appreciate that that was what it looked like, at least for some folks on the outside. But on the inside, I was really quickly deteriorating. By May of the next year, I had learned that the reason I work harder in social situations is because I'm autistic and that I literally am not picking up on the same stuff that other people do. I'm literally having to calculate every social interaction in my head, you know, script things out ahead of time, really try and work through all the possibilities of what might happen and kind of leading people and guiding people through that period with that set of particular social constraints. It rightly so broke me, right. Neurologically, it was not something that I was capable of sustaining for that long. Maybe a month, fine. But a year, no, that was too much. And so I kept thinking throughout 2021, it'll get better. It'll get better. I just need a break. Let me take a break. It'll get better. And by August, I was feeling, you know, all of those thoughts, I'm better off dead. I'm better off just going away forever and quitting the Internet. And, you know, it was bad. It was really, really bad. I was crying all the time, which is not a thing that I do. I was physically, completely depleted. And I came back from my long break, the month that we spent in Montana last year, and I knew something had to change, but I didn't know how I could do it. I didn't have the resources to make the change at that point. Right. I'd stuck with it for so long that I didn't even felt like I was capable of closing things down or moving on. And so I still had put off the decision until I was in a meeting with my full time employee at the time, our community manager. And we were just talking about, you know, like, ideas for 2022. And I said, you know, I'm really close to getting this book deal. I'm really thinking about kind of making a move into more of a media forward business. And she said, well, cool, what's the role for the what Works network in that? And like, it just kind of spewed out of me, there is no place I can't do this anymore. That was a really hard conversation because she knew that was her job. And so saying I can't do this anymore was also saying, you're fired. Obviously not like that.

I'm sure that's how it was received or I imagine that's how it was received. And so I told her exactly what I had just said, which is that I don't know how emotionally I'm going to make this transition. And she, Shannon, really took the reins on that and helped me work through, along with my therapist, helped me work through how I could set really solid, hard boundaries on what I was going to be available for and what I was not going to be available for through the transition. And mostly it was what I'm not going to be available for. So, you know, I still was producing content, I was still making the podcast, I was still doing the things that aren't nearly as draining on me, but I wasn't having the hard conversations. I wasn't present ultimately in that last month of the year when I was transitioning out of the community. And I felt really horrible about that. And everyone agreed, everyone involved in this sort of processing and decision making, that that was exactly what I needed to do. And that was really, really, really hard to remind myself that I'm not just hiding, I'm not shirking my responsibility. I am physically and mentally in a place where I cannot be present for this. And so when I say that, you know, I put this decision off until it was almost too late, I mean it very, very literally. Luckily, the transition went fairly smoothly. We were able to refund people who should have been refunded, let other subscriptions kind of peter out because they were going to be able to stay in the community. And Mighty Networks, who was hosting the community, came along and said, hey, we'd love to support this community after you're gone. And they hired my full time employee, paying her a lot More money than I could. And there are still folks having conversations over there. I haven't been back since we announced it. I can't emotionally, but it's been a smoother transition than I could have ever hoped for, even in as difficult as it was. Sorry, that was a lot.

I am so grateful. Thank you for sharing your thought process around this because I think there's so much talk about what to create in our businesses and so few people talk about these really tough decisions and as you said, like getting to a point where it's affecting your entire outlook on life. It's not a small thing and I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I also did shut down a community I had for five years. I think mine I did was at the end of 2020, so same as you, I probably burnt myself out over functioning. And also the emotions were so heightened during that time that it just like my sponge was so soaked and then some. So just like you. But it's really hard to shut it down when there's all these people that you care about that you've been getting to know for five years, that they have connections with each other. Like, I'm curious if that played a role in having you stick with it for longer than might have otherwise.

Oh, a hundred percent, absolutely. For me, the whole point of moving into that peer to peer support community model was people and creating a space, a different kind of space for business owners to come together where there wasn't a guru, there's not an expert. It's a community of curious people who have things to offer and have questions that other people can answer. And so. So it was 100% about the people from the get go, which is also what made it so damn hard. And really, you know, the community itself, I had been building for five years as well, and it was essentially an extension of communities that I had built previously. So there are people in the network still that I have known for 13 years. Right. And have been working with in one capacity or another over the course of that 13 years. And so, yeah, I felt like me moving on or shutting things down would be abandoning people. It's one of those things that I think we all have those kind of personality traits that we fear that we have, but really it's probably the opposite. Right. Like I always fear, and in many ways rightly so, fear kind of my responsibility in relationships and how much I'm able to give or not give. And so everything about the decision to move on was triggering those fears, both on a Group level and on an individual, person, by person level. So that was by far the hardest, hardest part.

Hearing about the Mighty Network's solution is also similar.

So inspiring because it's like at your.

Lowest moments or these toughest decisions, you cannot imagine what the resolution is going to look like. You've got to start taking the steps.

But then, you know, at the 11th.

Hour, mighty network says, hey, we're interested. We want to maintain this. It's a win, win.

Shannon gets hired for even more money.

Like, you would have done it anyway, even if those things weren't going to happen. But the fact that they did is also a testament that sometimes doing the right thing, no matter how tough, good things can happen on the other side that don't get unleashed until you release that energy that's now stagnant, if not through the floor, like getting drained completely.

Yeah. I think it's also a testament to sort of the very ethos of the community in the first place, which is peer to peer support in that it was relationships that made it possible for me to step away in the way that I did. And those relationships were cultivated over years. So, you know, when Shannon and I made the decision and set the dates and all of that for when we were going to wind things down, I emailed the founder of Mighty Networks because we'd gotten to know each other over the years. She's been on the podcast a couple of times. I really respect her and look up to her. And I just said, hey, wanted to give you a heads up. This is happening. And she said, when can we hop on the phone? And got on Zoom with me and first said, how are you doing? Right. The answer was not good.

That's what.

I would have burst into tears.

That's when I just would go.

But then she said, we've talked about this at Mighty. We want to help you. We want to be there for you. And so, you know, I think that it's so easy as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as people who are very kind of proud of their independence and who maybe have really bought into the solo entrepreneurship line or story, to think that all of this happens either because you're super deserving of it or because you make it happen on your own. And that is so not the way it works. The way it works from top to bottom of this particular corner of the economy is relationships. And, you know, never know when a relationship is going to be that lifeline for you or is going to be that person who helps you out with your book launch or that person who you know, shares a post or shares an offer that you're making that really changes the game for your business or for your personal life. And I have found over and over again that for as reluctant and necessarily so as I am for kind of cultivating relationships, networking, all of those things, that it's been my long term partnerships, long term relationships that save me over and over and over again, even in spite of myself totally.

And this feels like a paradox of the way you've described your personality, but certainly what I feel too. And there was something I read in your book that the relief it gave me to know that another person felt this way was so enormous. And I haven't forgotten it since I read the line you say in the book. You said, if only I was more social or outgoing, if only I had a different personality. And that sometimes there are times you experience a shutdown from overstimulation that you say renders me mute. And at another point you said, I'll never be the kind of person who has multiple close friends and a circle of pals who I socialize with regularly. I can't tell you, Tara, how often I have the thought, if only I was more social or outgoing, literally the same words, if only my personality was different, I would be better at building and maintaining relationships. And my listeners now have heard me say it a million times. The only reason I have friends at.

All in the business world are these.

Podcasts because I don't reach out. Like I didn't reach out to you and say, let's have a catch up call. It was like, oh, Tara's launching a book.

Great.

One of us writes a book, then we get to get on a podcast. I have so many shoulds around relationships because of what you just said. That in my life too, of course. Relationships are what make the magic happen. And yet it is so not in line with my day to day energy to do it. Like, I don't know, I could be alone 24 7, be really happy for a long time.

And not that I want to be.

Alone forever or I don't want to have relationships, or I don't love the friends and colleagues that I do have, but I'm just wondering where you're at in your journey with this of knowing how important it is and yet feeling like, I don't know if you feel this. I feel my capacity for it is so freaking small compared to other people.

Yeah, I mean, I think podcasting is like the greatest gift that introverts and autistic people and all sorts of neuro neurodivergent people have ever received. When it comes to networking, I am much, much, much more likely to have what I feel is an effective conversation. And I don't mean effective in, like, I got something out of it or that it furthered a goal of mine or I grabbed a new networking connection. I mean, effective as in, like, I don't feel like I really royally effed up.

If it has a very specific context. So doing podcast interviews is physically draining to me in a way, but not nearly as emotionally or mentally draining as a coffee chat where there's no agenda and we're just there to get to know each other. Like, please. Just even talking about it, mentioning it, I can feel it in my chest.

I know, like, wriggling in my seat.

Yeah, yeah. And so. So right now, I'm in a place where I'm exploring, developing relationships with people outside of our space. And that, to me, is really exciting. And it sort of gives me a new energy around the idea. So just as a for instance, you mentioned the Self Help LLC series that I'm doing on what works right now. And I knew that one of the pieces that I wanted to talk about there was just sort of the coaching industry in general. And I came across this paper by a PhD candidate at the University of Texas. It was a sociological research around career coaches. And I was like, I have got to talk to this guy. Now, this isn't really like a networking thing, but it was the willingness to be able to reach out to someone who has absolutely no idea who I am, absolutely no idea what I do, why I do it, how I do it, any of these things. He's probably not really thinking about getting publicity for his academic work yet, but being willing to email him and say, hey, I read your paper. You're spot on. I would love to talk to you on the podcast about that. And I loved that conversation. And it felt like, okay, this is a person I can keep my eye on.

And.

And, you know, the next time he comes out with a paper that's relevant to the audience, something that I want to talk about, I get to aisle him up and we could have another really great conversation just like the first one. So, yeah, the podcast is great for that. I think for me, where I'm at is that I am still keeping social contact to an absolute minimum. So, for example, I turned 40 in September. And, yeah, and my husband and I agreed that the best thing I could possibly do for me for my birthday was to go someplace by myself. So I went to up into the Adirondacks to a lake, you know, in a cute little cabin with a private dock. And I stayed there four days and talked to no one. And it was wonderful. It was so great. And I was in tears thinking about leaving and going back to people and sound and noise. Yeah, that is my default mode. I would also be 100% happy being by myself 247 for a long time before I started to miss human contact. Which is not to say that I don't love my husband. I love my husband. I love my kid. And, you know, I like to be by myself. And as you said, that creates a lot of challenges when it comes to building a business, to building a platform. I look at the influencers today who are building massive platforms by being online and available and sort of documenting things all the time. You know, people putting TikToks out every single day or multiple times a day, people going live on Instagram every single day. I couldn't do that. I can't do that. And I'm lucky that I got to build my platform at a time when that was not the expectation.

And, you know, I think about all of the opportunities that I've missed because I don't have the ability, I don't have the capacity, I don't have the resources to be able to develop a network and relationships and that would make those opportunities possible. And at the same time, I think the quality of the relationships that I've been able to build over the years through live events, through the podcast, through creative Live, those have been the people who've really been there for me when I've needed it. And they are the people who know that when I ghost on them, that it's not personal, that it's not about them. It is 100% about me. And that when I am ready to come back into the world, I will be happy to talk to them again.

Yes, right. That. Me too.

Like, they just have to know.

I joke. I put the snail back into email.

And like, you know, I think the people who do stick around learn that.

We'll be right back just after this.

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It's interesting as an outside person who loves you and your work, that making these tough decisions and honoring who you are, like shutting down the community, transitioning out. Well, you've now written a book and the Self Help LLC series is so brilliant. I feel like I'm listening to you in a sandbox playing like playing with.

The academic papers and these interesting guests and the mood board of the music and the whole vibe. And it is rewarding to see you.

Honor yourself and then we all get to experience the fruits of that of like the richness of your inner world and your mind. And it just feels like you gave.

Yourself some kind of new permission around the podcast to like really do it. I don't know, I'm curious to what if that was one of those easy decisions, but of just saying I'm going to really double down on this and.

Do the format in a way that yet is a tremendous amount of work. But so awesome what you're creating.

Yeah, I mean, I think it started really the beginning of 2021 where I started to embrace long form writing again. I mean, I've always written fairly long form for the Internet, you know, a thousand words here, 2,000 words there. But I started to explore ideas that I felt really required research. A lot of words, a lot of revision, you know, multiple drafts. And so the media environment of our business at that time started to revolve around these much more meatier pieces of content. And I loved it. Right. I remembered again how much I love writing, how much I love thinking, how much I love research.

How much I love distilling like a hundred ideas down into some sort of thesis, hopefully. Right. And so when I was able to step away from the community at the end of last year and sort of redevelop myself to podcasting and long form writing for myself, kind of moving into the direction of the podcasts that I love listening to seemed to be a no brainer creative choice, at least as an experiment. And I've thought at different times throughout the year, oh, when I'm done with this batch of episodes, when I'm done with this series, then I'll go back to an interview format because it's so much easier and I just can't quit is like playing in a sandbox for me. It's like, what are all the different connections that I can make around a particular theme to elucidate something that is an even bolder, bigger question in the world in general. You know, in the book I talk about creating commitments instead of goals. And I only did one commitment for this year. Normally I do three, but this year was one commitment which was ask bigger questions. Oh, yeah, ask bigger questions. Ask bolder questions, Ask better questions. Like, what does it look like to make content that revolves around a question rather than an answer? And you can't do that with content marketing, right? That's not how content marketing works. To do marketing, at least in our world effectively, you've got to be able to say, oh, I have some answers for you. Here's a taste of the answers. If you would like more answers. You can buy my program, you can hire me for a consultation, you can purchase our services, whatever it might be. I didn't want to do that anymore. And it was never fun for me. I never liked it. I was good at it at different times. I just didn't want to do it anymore and I didn't have to. I didn't have anything to sell. And so not having anything to sell, just focusing on writing the book, making the podcast, sending my newsletter, gave me a place where I could say, I don't have to have any answers anymore. There are no answers here. There are just questions and research and interesting people asking interesting questions too. And we're kind of fumbling through this together, but with this goal of, you know, not just submitting to whatever the system wants us to submit to. For me, that is the core of how I conceive of myself and also the core of who I want to become. And so part of doing the podcast in the way that I have this year is really taking a step into taking myself more seriously as a creator and as a writer and as a thinker, as opposed to making a certain number of sales or generating a certain amount of revenue. And I want to be clear, this is not a good way to run a business. Right?

Does this mean you've taken the pressure off the podcast to be monetizable immediately and that Yellow House Media is providing enough for you to play in this way?

That is exactly what it means. Yellow House Media, plus a little bit of savings that I held onto for dear life, even through over investing in the community over the last five years, and then the book advance and then some one off projects Here and there throughout this year. But mostly I have just not been thinking in terms of selling things. And it's been wonderful. And I am going to do my best to keep it up. I've managed it longer than I thought I would this year, and I'm gonna see how far into 2023 I can make it.

I am so with you.

It's so funny, the parallels, because I gave myself permission in 2021 not to earn any money. It was the first time since I was 10 years old. Like, when I was 10, I started selling chocolate bars at the community center. And when I was 11, I was babysitting. It was the first. First time in my life that I said, jenny, you don't have to earn anything this year. I'm going to spend into my savings with abandon.

And, like, I had some certain passive income streams that was not like the business was producing zero. But it was the first time I stopped caring because I couldn't care anymore. I just was like, I need a minute. And now.

And it was so fun. I had the best year creatively, energetically.

And so now, out of pure stubbornness, I'm riding the fumes into 2022. Like, with pure stubbornness of, like, I'm going to turn this around without the grind and the trying to sell small things to many people. Model. And so I'm with you.

It's almost like we're rebelling a little bit against the old way. But that's what your whole book is about. Yeah, the whole book is. Is that serving you?

Yeah, that is. My kind of guiding ethos in life is like. Is rebellion. Yeah.

Although on the four tendencies, Rebel is one of the tendencies. Right. Yeah. I'm a questioner because I do actually like authority, you know, on the DL, I am very happy to follow rules. That makes me very happy. But I just like to know why I'm doing them and what I decided, you know, for me at this point point is that the reason why I would continue to create content in the way I had been was not a good reason to create content for me anymore. And so I don't have to follow those rules anymore. I can make it up as I go.

Totally. Yep. Me too. I'm an upholder, questioner in that I can uphold my own goals, like, of what I want to create, but only if I question everything. And I'm just not willing to accept the party line. Most times I'm going to ask, why.

Are we doing it this way? Does it need to be done this way?

You can't tell me what to do. But it's true. I'm not a rebel in her framework. But that is behind the questioning is like this better make sense to me or I simply can't do it. It's not going to work. And we didn't even get into we probably don't have time for this conversation.

So we're going to do a Spotify live with you, me and Charlie, things like Prosperity Gospel. You and I were emailing like Oprah, academia, you know, back and forth.

Yeah.

So I just want to give listeners.

A teaser of really. I'm going to put the link in the show notes but go check out Self Help LLC because and the book what works. That's just a must. That's a given. Do not pass go. Both of them will give you so much reassurance that you're not crazy if some of this stuff is just not working for you. And yet these dominant narratives. I just love Tara, how you're like setting your mind to asking bigger, bolder, better questions even if you don't have the answer, and rejecting the expert guru model and giving yourself and all of us permission. So I'll end with that. This is the last question I always ask. If you could give business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

This is a very kind of tactical suggestion after this conversation. But honestly, I would give people permission to rebuild their business models from the ground up and actually look at the numbers, think about the systems, think about what they really want for their business. Think about how they want to take care of themselves with their business and how their business is going to take care of them and to do it through the lens of the business model. Like you said, I don't want to sell small things to lots of people anymore. So many people are caught still in that. Like, this is what the business model looks like. This is what it has to look like. No, it doesn't. It can look like all sorts of different things. And part of quote unquote entrepreneurship is solving the problem of what does this business look like? It's not just solving consumer problems. It's also solving the problem of how can I offer this value to people in a way that makes sense for us, for me, for the marketplace? And I just don't think enough people give themselves permission to actually look and say, is this business model working? Does this business model make sense? Does this business take care of me? I would love for everyone listening to really look at the numbers, ask hard questions, ask big questions. About the very foundation of their business and make some changes if they want to or need to.

That's so good. It's the ultimate permission slip. Like tear it all down if you need, or rebuild the model from the ground up. That is so good. And I'll just add on. And I really have to say thank you. That you sharing, being so open with what that looks like for you and how you do want to and need to take care of yourself gave me permission to say, it's okay that I feel, feel this way at all. It's okay that I don't enjoy this business model or this way of interacting with the world. And so I would also just add for listeners, it's almost like sometimes, I mean, that's why I ask this question at the end of every interview, but it's almost like I'm waiting for someone else to say it and when they say it, I feel less alone and I go, oh, it's okay that I'm like that too. And I saw Tara, you referenced Catherine May and her beautiful books in that way of like, sometimes we just need someone else to say it, to go, okay, I'm not alone. This isn't just some flaw, talking about self help llc. This isn't just some flaw or personal shortcoming that I need to overcome with grit and willpower. It's okay that some of us are.

Built this way, you know, whatever that.

Looks like and not just it's okay and that'll mean I have less or that I don't get as far, but it's okay. And that's what makes me powerful, that's what makes me worthy, and it's what makes me creative in a way that's unique to me. So that if I want to honor this boundary, if I want to honor this trait of mine, this experience of mine, I can create something that truly works for me and that is better than getting the dregs of the shoulds and supposed tos.

Beautifully said.

Thank you so much, listeners. Grab your copy of what Works. Subscribe to the what Works podcast for sure. And Tara, is there anywhere else you want to send people?

No, just explore. What Works.com is my home on the web and you can sign up for the newsletter there. And yeah, you nailed the other ones.

Amazing. Amazing. Well, this was so much fun.

Thank you for writing your book so.

That we both had a joyful reason to catch up and connect. I really appreciate it and all that you do.

Thanks, Jenny.

Thank you, Tara.

Thanks everybody for listening.

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