Soulful Mba

Once you’ve set goals for yourself in your business, how do stay committed and on track? Are you able to follow through when you’re accountable to others? To yourself? How you manage both external and internal expectations, according to Gretchen Rubin, holds the key to whether (and how) you’ll be able to take consistent action. How do we structure our accountability to one another as accountability partners? What do we think about mastermind groups? Listen in to learn our tips for staying on track with our goals (and why we each have different strategies that work for us). Other Mentions: RRP #317 Joy: Jelena | The FilmHustle: The Four Tendencies Book + Quiz

“There becomes an innate knowing…” When you first start something new, it helps to follow the existing path, seek mentorship, and embrace best practices. At some point, however, you’ll need to start listening to your own intuition. As we’ve matured in our business, we’ve begun to withdraw from the cacophony of advice around us and, instead, turn inward for guidance. It’s been an incredibly liberating, exciting process—and one that is far from complete. In this episode, we discuss our own journeys toward wholeness and the joy that has come from making choices in our business that embrace our core values. Joy: LeVar Burton Reads, to AdultsHustle: Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand

“Go make a ruckus.” - Seth Godin Regardless of your particular brand of business, money is not enough to drive most of you — there’s something deeper. There’s a problem that you’re trying to solve or an improvement to an existing way of doing things. If you’re an entrepreneur, there’s something special that you’re bringing to the table that no other person or business is doing in the exact same way. In our minds, you’re all making a ruckus. Ruckus-making, in the context of business, is the same thing as innovation (with maybe a little bit of a political bent). In fact, YOU having a business is a very political act. You are veering outside of the path of the dominant economic culture. The antidote to the monopolistic economic culture comes in the form of the artisan. As modern humans, we’re drawn to local, small-batch, unique. They serve as a counterweight to the heavy core of big business, big agriculture, big healthcare, and big tech. As a community creating intentional, conscious businesses, we are paving t

“We form each other. We are bound up in each other’s choices.” - Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer Integrity is about doing the right thing, being honest and consistent, and being in harmony with what you believe and how you act. It is also a critical element of being able to build anything that’s going to exist in the long run (a business, a government, a community). Do you make regular decisions in your business from a place of integrity or do you get sucked into the allure of Groupon, clickbait social media posts, or other short term solutions to sales and profitability? Most of us would not make the decision to intentionally pursue shady business practices, but integrity falls along a spectrum that creates a lot of grey area. Integrity sometimes requires that you make decisions for your business that are not optimized for short-term profitability, but rather, long term sustainability. Joy: The Lively Show #233Hustle: The Gardens of Democracy

“Our accelerating disappearance into the digital ether now defines us—we are the mediated people, whose contact with one another and the world around us is now mostly veiled by a screen. We threaten to rebel, just as we threaten to move to Canada after an election. But we don’t; the current is too fierce to swim to shore.” - Bill McKibben After returning from summer holidays, we feel compelled to incorporate more analog habits into our lives and into our business. We’ve both felt the physical acknowledgement that the pen is an extension of the human body in a way that typing on a keyboard will never be. The writer and activist Bill McKibben writes that humans have come to use screens as mediators that color virtually every experience and relationship in our modern lives. If the solution to digital overwhelm is to make a conscious effort to engage in offline living, how do we apply these analog tools to business? Offline connections. Word of mouth. Sales calls. Good old-fashioned networking. We’re all trying

“Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.” - Dr. Seuss So many of us are constantly playing the waiting game in our business. We’re, personally, in the midst of a huge transition on this front. We’ve decided to make the future of our company about agency. Taking action. Figuring it out. Self reliance. (It feels great.) We’ve identified a handful of places where we see folks get stuck in the waiting game in their businesses (many of which we’ve found ourselves in as well): Waiting for the money (to close the round, to win the next pitch c

“It’s hard to explain until you’ve experienced it. The level of power wielded over women in the tech industry rivals that in the film industry… It is so normalized, we brush it off and many of us casually participate because it’s easier. From what I’ve learned from friends, it permeates the finance and legal industries too… all these professions where the white male slightly sociopathic genius is put on a pedestal. The power at the top of that pedestal can be absolute. The struggle to get there can produce even more brutal showmanship of power. The last few weeks have helped to uproot some of the truly deep, dark abuse of power that propels white cisgender physically able men to wealth and success, and largely keeps everyone else out.” — Melinda Briana Epler With all of the headlines making news on the women in tech front, we felt it was appropriate to chime in on the conversation. Although we walked away from the investment-backed startup world over a year ago, we remain connected to a diverse community of

“At the end of our lives, all we have is our attention and our time.” - Tristan Harris We’ve led about two thousand people through social media training programs in our business, but we want to come clean in this episode and share some of our fears about the role that social media is playing in our (collective) lives. While we love social for its ability to help us leverage our brands online, we believe that there is a time and place for our digital activities. Tune in to discover why we worry about free apps more than paid tools and what’s at stake when we fail to take time to disconnect.   Although social media is difficult to compartmentalize, we’ve got some simple tips to help you add more sanity into your digital life: Turn off ALL notifications on your phone. Use the Facebook News Feed Eradicator Chrome extension Freedom Read blogs on Feedly. Facebook Groups App (unfortunately, Facebook just announced they will be removing this from the App Store) SmarterQueue Joy: You Can Thank Instagram for You

“Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression…. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult.” - bell hooks It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that this podcast is hosted by two (proud) feminists. This fact is juxtaposed with the reality that we also inhabit the hyper-masculine world of technology. Tune in to hear about some realizations we’ve recently had related to our relationship to feminism, to our industry, and to our bodies. Joy: Call Your Girlfriend Hustle: Feminine Economy

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” - Albert Einstein The relationship between humans and technology goes back thousands of years, but who decides what gets built — and how? As science and engineering surges within academia and within our broader culture, the humanities have been in steady decline. But what gets lost when art, literature, and philosophy constantly take a backseat to STEM? Other Mentions: Learning to Be Human, Tech’s Moral Reckoning, Toward Humane Tech, Nir & Far Joy: Edward Tufte’s WorkHustle: IDEO’s Design Kit

In the new economy, where the societal gatekeepers have largely been removed, everyone has the capacity to be a teacher (and also, of course, a student). Given the explosion of online education over the past five years, we’ve taken the position that online learning represents a cultural zeitgeist. In this episode, you’ll discover the reasons why we think it would be a shame to miss out on this historical business opportunity. Joy: MOOCs, edX.orgHustle: Namastream Software

When you’re able to channel your inner curiosity, your entire relationship to your business changes. What’s the difference between passion and curiosity? What role does curiosity play in your life and business? It’s one thing to build products, programs, and services based on the surface-level needs of your audience, but it is a whole other endeavor to genuinely inquire about their deepest hopes and fears — but that’s where the magic happens. You have to learn new things all the time as an entrepreneur, so you might as well enjoy the process of discovery. Other Mentions:Curiosity improves memory by tapping into the brain’s reward systemBig Magic Joy: How Curiosity Changed My Life || This is Your Brain on CuriosityHustle: The Marketing Seminar

According to Cal Newport, “If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.” In an age of hyper-connectivity, it is so easy to move through our days without ever accomplishing anything meaningful. Because of the cacophony of social media notifications, text messages, and an overflowing inbox, the process of deepening our skills and creating original work has become a rare occurrence (and borderline subversive) in our culture. Today’s episode explores the reasons why deep, focused work matters if you want to create something of value in the world and live a rich, intentional life. Joy: Simplicity ParentingHustle: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

In this episode, we discuss why you should NOT undervalue yourself, your business, and your entire industry by offering inexpensive products, programs, or services. We talk about the difference between "free" and "cheap" and why we recommend and often create valuable "free"content but constantly urge our clients to stay away from "cheap." We also discuss the dangers that come along with underpricing, particularly the negative energetic relationship that develops between you and your clients. Resentment is dangerous territory, folks. Charge what you’re worth. Joy: You Are a Badass at Making MoneyHustle: DailyWorth

Often, we don't do a fantastic job of acknowledging our own success. Some wise folks are rumored to have said that comparison is the thief of joy (FDR and Mark Twain, to name a few). It's so true, right? When we look back and try to imagine our old selves achieving our current accomplishments, we realize that we are often WAY too hard on ourselves. Listen in to learn why we are making joy an even bigger priority in our lives and business. Other Mentions: FREE Social Media Summer Camp! Joy: The Five Minute Journal Hustle: Find an Accountability Partner

How many people do you need in your audience in order to build a sustainable online business? What’s the difference between a follower and fan? How many fans do you need in order to make a living from your craft? How can you leverage your role as a small business owner in the modern economy?Find out why generosity, kindness, and vulnerability are key to building your tribe online and learn about the seven specific benefits your business can receive from having a tribe of committed and loyal fans. Other Mentions: Episode #17: Networking, How to Build Community and Grow Your Tribe Online Joy: How We GatherHustle: 1,000 True Fans

Part of successfully launching a modern (online) business is figuring out how to create focus within an ever-expanding barrage of distraction. As entrepreneurs and innovators, we are inherently drawn to new ideas, new courses, new strategies, but we’ve seen over and over that success comes to those who are able to drill down deep and focus on executing one idea at a time.  If you want to see big results in your business, we strongly encourage you to focus on just one quintessential client, one message, one call to action, one product offering, and one social media platform. Joy: Good Life Project’s Sheryl O’Loughlin InterviewHustle: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

We are all a part of the gig economy, whether we like it or not. How has this new economy shaped the way we live and work? How does this shift relate to each of us and our businesses? More than a third of the U.S. economy (with similar numbers in Canada) is engaged in this new way of working, but have we really considered its implications — both as individuals and as a society? We discuss the path from employee to freelancer to entrepreneur and explain why we believe that freelancing is best used as a stepping stone along the journey to entrepreneurship. Other Mentions: Female, Bootstrapped, and Profitable in Silicon Valley Joy: Tulsi TeaHustle: Is the Gig Economy Working?

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive is “What tools do I need when getting started as an online teacher or coach?” Our answers might surprise you (and cost a lot less than you might think).  There are so many incredible software tools you can incorporate to streamline and simplify your online business, but it can be challenging to determine the very best (and most affordable) options — especially when you’re just starting out. We break down the tools that we recommend at various stages of business and discuss when you can get away with using free tools and when it makes sense to upgrade to paid software. Resources Mentioned: Asana, Trello, G-Suite, Canva, Namastream Software, iMovie, MailChimp, Convertkit, Squarespace, Slack, Airstory, Repurpose Joy: eteeHustle: Soulful MBA Course

What are the taboo topics that nobody is really talking about in modern entrepreneurship? We take inspiration from a blog post recently written by Grace Bonney, 10 Things People Don’t Talk About in Business (But Should), and pull back the veil to discuss some tricky truths that we’ve uncovered in our own businesses. We touch upon issues of hiring, firing, contracts, building relationships with team members, assertiveness, harnessing fear, work-life balance, apologizing, growing apart, walking away, leaving room for grace, playing the long game, and not having all the answers. Joy: In The Company of WomenHustle: Deep Work