Conjuring Self Centered Businesses feat. Sarah M. Chappell
Writing, coaching, teaching, working with your brain more than your hands. My amazing guest, Sarah M. Chappell, calls this “knowledge work.” We’ve learned through experience that there is no Right Way to be that kind of businessperson. To thrive as a knowledge worker, you need to work in a way that centers your whole self. Sarah and I will help you figure out what questions you can ask to start making that happen.
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Mentioned:
Sarah M. Chappell is a writer, strategist, and coach helping to build the future of knowledge work. Her online memberships, cohort-based courses, and group coaching programs have supported over 1,000 small businesses and solopreneurs. The Think Piece podcast and blog are both available at thinkpiece.fyi. I recommend starting with the excellent episode “Burn It Down.”
Make Magic:
Being Self Centered is about knowing what you want to do - and be - in your life. Your ambitions, what you want to accomplish, are only small parts of that. What are your desires? What fuels your energy and passion? How do you want to spend your days?
Transcript: A Spell to Let Yourself Give It a Try Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.
Hello, my love, and hello especially to my entrepreneurial witches out there. Today’s episode of Mind Witchery has a special, special guest. I was so excited to have Sarah M. Chappell come and join me to talk about creating self-centered businesses. She and I, we know a thing or 20 about this. [laughs] Sarah M. Chappell is a serial entrepreneur herself. She is a business coach, and a business consultant. And she is the writer of an amazing blog and newsletter called Think Piece, and the creator of a fantastic podcast called The Think Piece Podcast. I adore Sarah. I think Sarah is one of the most thoughtful, most creative, most—astute—voices out here in the business coaching community. And it was so much fun to talk to her about a little theory I’ve been rolling around in my own head. So I hope you enjoy this conversation, and I also hope it’s the first of many, that Sarah and I will have, here on the show.
Sarah M. Chappell, I am so excited to have you on Mind Witchery today. Welcome!
Sarah M. Chappell: Oh, Natalie, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Natalie Miller: Yes. I have to say, we are peas in a pod. We're both coaches.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yes!
Natalie Miller: We're both business strategists.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yes!
Natalie Miller: We're both serial entrepreneurs.
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs] Yes!
Natalie Miller: We're both creatives. I think we have different—like I know you like to boulder, and I do pilates; and you weave, and I knit. I think like we have different interests in that way?
Sarah M. Chappell: I knit! I knit!
Natalie Miller: You knit, too? Oh!
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah!
Natalie Miller: Both knitters, yeah! So anyway, here we are, like creative, feminist, badasses, trying to make our way in the world, and to help other feminist badasses make their way in the world as well.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah. I love that you're opening up just with the multifaceted nature of our experiences, but also just for me, what you've picked up from me, and I from you, in these interactions—it’s something that I’m so deeply frustrated by in general, right, is this flattening and commodification of all the parts of our identities and our interests and our passions and our—and our hates. [laughs]
Natalie Miller: Yeah!
Sarah M. Chappell: And just to be introduced with a, “Hey, you're into a bunch stuff that”—like, newsflash, I don’t sell anything I knit! Like, not a business, just a thing—it just makes me excited.
Natalie Miller: Oh, good. Yeah. That’s actually what I’m really hoping to talk about today, is a theory I’ve been kicking around in my head, and I can’t think of a better person with whom to unspool it. I think we creative entrepreneurs—or you might call us—I’ve heard you call us knowledge workers. Actually, could you just explain that a little bit, what you mean by knowledge workers? Because I love that phrase.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah. Knowledge workers is a term that comes from Peter Drucker, who was the most famous management consultant and writer of the 20th century. I don’t generally subscribe to a lot of management consulting guidance, but Drucker is a really important figure, in that he was one of the first to name and notice this shift from physical labor work to cognitive work as the primary generation of profit in the Western world in particular. And that of course has shifted dramatically over the past decade. So, knowledge workers are essentially people who use their minds, what my husband likes you call “You make emails for a living.” [laughs]
Natalie Miller: [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: He’s not wrong!
Natalie Miller: Handcrafted! Handcrafted emails!
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah, handcrafted emails!
Natalie Miller: [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: Which is why AI is such an affront. I work so hard to handcraft my emails!
Natalie Miller: I know, I know. [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs] In contrast to, for example, working in manufacturing, working in a factory, which obviously a lot of people still do. But that’s the distinction. So, I talk a lot about knowledge work entrepreneurs as kind of a broader label for creatives, for writers, for a lot of different kinds of business owners who are doing stuff that is more cognitively driven, versus, for example, making something with their hands.
Natalie Miller: Yeah. And it’s interesting, because I think for many of us, there’s kind of an intersection of knowledge work and service work, right? So, I’m coming up with ideas, I’m coming up with strategies, but really what those ideas and strategies and perspectives are for are for helping people, right? I’m making knowledge, and I’m also caregiving. Doesn't that just become a whole exhausting thing? [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: The idea of care work. And I also always love to caveat—physical labor often is very cognitive work as well, right? It’s a huge amount of skill to do any of those things.
Natalie Miller: Yes.
Sarah M. Chappell: But, yeah, exactly, often this element of service and care work is very tied, especially in the coaching space and online education spaces, to the development of knowledge and intellectual property.
Natalie Miller: Yeah. Okay. So here’s my idea, that I’ve been kickin around. I think that if we are in the business of knowledge work, care work, if we're at that intersection in our businesses, I’m thinking business has to be self-centered.
Sarah M. Chappell: Tell me more! [laughs]
Natalie Miller: Right? Like I’m just thinking—and I have to say I was affirmed in this, in listening to the inaugural episode of The Think Piece Podcast—entitled, everyone, because you're going to run to listen to it next—“Burn it Down.”
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs] Yep.
Natalie Miller: [laughs] I was like, “Let’s start strong, Sarah!” Yeah, where you kind of talk about how you effectively dismantled a business that you just weren’t that into anymore. Right?
Sarah M. Chappell: Seriously. Yes. [laughs]
Natalie Miller: Yeah. It’s like, “I’m sorry. I just don’t—I’m just not that into it anymore.” And I will say in my own coaching practice, that is exactly the person I’m encountering all the time, the person who’s like, “I built this thing. It makes money. I hate it.” Or, maybe not “I hate it.” Actually, no, sometimes they do get to the point of “I hate it.” But like, “I’m not into it anymore.” Or, “I find myself wanting to escape it.” Or, “I’m bored.” You talk about boredom, also, right? So I’m thinking—these businesses cannot work unless they are centered around our self-interests, sustainability, energy—like, situations, right? Tell me what you think of that, right off the bat.
Sarah M. Chappell: I completely agree.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah. I think that in a way that I find very sweet and very desirable and very—eager to have be true, again, even if it’s not now—this shift to kind of communal focus, community care rather than self-care, a shift out of isolationist and individualist, into collective thinking, is something I’m really passionate about. And, we actually don’t live in that culture. There is no extended collective care. So, one of the reasons I think businesses are so fascinating is that they really are—unless you are running a co-op model, and even then, because of our cultural indoctrination, I’m not sure how successful it is—I think businesses are inherently at this stage individualistic. And pretending they're not is a big, big problem. So when you say these need to be like self-centered, I’m like, I completely agree, because the place where care workers in particular get into a lot of trouble is believing that their self shouldn't matter in service of the collective, in service of their community, in service of their clients and customers. And when we go down that road, right, without an actual collective care culture, if you end up burnt out, if you end up exhausted, if you end up bored, if you end up hating it, there’s only one person. Where does the buck stop? It stops with you.
Natalie Miller: Right.
Sarah M. Chappell: Can you curse on this podcast?
Natalie Miller: Oh, fuck yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: Just checking. [laughs] I was like—I had one like bubblin up, and I was like—ffff.
Natalie Miller: Oh, please. Please.
Sarah M. Chappell: Forgot to ask.
Natalie Miller: Please. Yeah, yeah. Please. I love that point that you make about how we can have this vision, this ideal, of a more community-oriented way of supporting ourselves in this world. Right? And I think I wanted to especially highlight the care work part of the particular kinds of knowledge workers that I think probably you and I both tend to support, right? I wanted to highlight that care piece because I think there is a very foundational deep desire among these people to help communities, to help other people, to be in co-creative thriving, right? To do this all together. And, at the same time, like not only is that happening in a culture where community care in many ways doesn't exist; also, it’s happening in a culture where most of us doing this work are conditioned to disregard our own needs and desires, who we are conditioned to think that our desires are selfish, and selfishness is like cardinally terrible, is damningly bad. And so we end up doing things we don’t really want to do out of a sense of obligation.
Sarah M. Chappell: Oh, yes. And additionally, I think Sarah Jaffe in the book Work Won’t Love You Back, talks a lot about the deskilling of care work, the process through which caregiving became associated with something that was innate, especially for women, and as a result was worth less financially. In her book she talks about the history of education a little bit, and how education was largely the responsibility of men, until it was transferred to women, and at the same time became something that was significantly less respected. Because it was just “natural for women to care for children,” so they should do it out of the love of it, right? And I think that, coupled with the cultural fear of, yeah, being selfish, of being told—even though we see it’s not true, we see the people who behave differently are the ones who succeed, we're still told that we need to share, right? We're told that having a desire is immoral, effectively, if we want to get into our kind of Protestant roots. And then coupled with this idea that, “Ah, but caregiving is natural. You should be able to do it all day. It’s not really work. Don’t you love it?”
Natalie Miller: Right.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah. I think it’s a recipe for a real mess, in many situations, but especially when you're running your own business and trying to provide that labor to people.
Natalie Miller: Absolutely. Yeah. So I thought maybe we could both share a little bit our experiences of trying to do this [laughs].
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah.
Natalie Miller: So here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking maybe the opposite of a self-centered business is a self-compromised business, where you've compromised yourself, right? So here’s my example. I was running a yoga studio, a very large yoga studio, ostensibly with my partner and husband, but really it was me. And, thousands of people attended classes at this studio. Dozens of people worked at this studio. And [laughs] this is the best way for me to express like what happened—I would, back in the day of kind of forcing myself to keep this thing going—even though I was done, I wasn’t even that into yoga anymore, I didn’t want a brick and mortar business, I had started coaching and really what I wanted to do was to coach and I wanted to lead retreats, but I was like kind of stuck in this business—I would watch Moana and I would get to the part in Moana—maybe you already know it, if you're listening [laughs]—the part in Moana where the grandmother is singing at the end, and she’s just like, “I know you're the daughter of the village chief. I know there’s all this responsibility on you. But you know who you are. You are a voyager!” Right? I would sob! That song would come on; I would cry. My children, my little girls were basically like, “Um, mom, what is happening?” I was like, “I—I’m locked. I’m locked in a role that I don’t want to be in.” And like, here’s the thing. I felt at that time it would be selfish to leave. Right? I was like, “Ah, I’ve got to wait. I’ve got to set them up. I have to like—” In reality, I was holding it together, and I thought somehow I could orchestrate some kind of like baton-pass where—no one else was going to hold it together, right? Like I thought I could do it, but I couldn't do it. And, yeah, that’s kind of my example of like ultimate—I was so compromised. It was not what I wanted to do. It was not what I enjoyed doing. It’s not where I was growing. It was not what I was curious about. It was not fun for me. Any of those things. And so, I basically held on until I couldn't anymore, and—that’s how it went.
Sarah M. Chappell: I relate a lot to that. I’m trying to think of a single example of this. I feel like this is one of my ongoing things that I am learning, the self-compromise, and I find myself often kind of recontorted into some figure, some shape, that is not natural to me.
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm.
Sarah M. Chappell: The example of closing this big product that I’ve had is a good one because when I created it, it was a membership program for people who were starting online businesses in the spirituality and wellness spaces. And, I created it for a couple reasons. I created it because I thought there was a need. This was several years ago. There were of course plenty of online business programs, but I didn’t see a lot of stuff that was what I was looking for and what I thought people needed. And a lot of the people that I worked with and knew in my audience didn’t feel supported by the existing programs. The program itself was a membership with some core content, some coaching, community, that kind of thing. And it was very low priced, for what it was, and it continued to be for the duration of its time. [laughs] It took me about a year and a half to realize I didn’t want to do it anymore, and I kept going for almost four years. So, there you go.
Natalie Miller: Yeah!
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs] It took me about a year and a half to be like, “Wow, this is not what I want to be doing.” And it’s not because there’s anything wrong with it; I just am not somebody who’s great being fixed into place. I do not do well pinned to something. And every time I would try to make a change or make a shift or move it, I felt both kind of energetically, but also in terms of actual feedback, that I was disappointing people. The process of closing it has been really fascinating—completely fine for people to send me feedback, I welcome it, that’s not really what this is about—but to see people be shocked, surprised, sad. People asking me to extend access to content. Asking me to make things downloadable for them that they're not—kind of like do this kind of stuff. I even ran a program a little while ago that had a replay for two weeks; half of the people who purchased emailed me asking for extensions. And when I see things like that, I’m like, I am really out of alignment here. Because if I—I was like, I—“No. I’m not going to do that.” But every time I have to say that, every time I say “no” and I affirm a pre-stated boundary, I feel like I’m letting everyone down. I feel like I am breaking some kind of—not like business contract; some kind of social contract, right, to make myself available, to make my work available in the way that people want it to be available to them, to meet them where they are in a place that I never said I was willing to go.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: And that gap between the boundary that’s stated—that’s a whole other conversation—if we don’t state the boundary, we don’t have the boundary, there is no boundary—that’s a great conversation to be had. But the boundary that is stated, and then where you're willing to go beyond that, or you do go, because of the guilt, shame—that piece, with shutting this program down, has been very hard for me.
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm.
Sarah M. Chappell: And people say, “Where can I go? What can I do?” And I’m like, “Guess what? There’s a whole world out there. I can’t let it be my problem.” Oh, but it is, Natalie. I still kinda feel like I wanna die a little bit.
Natalie Miller: [laughs] Listen, I absolutely know. I absolutely know. I still see people—I live, still, in the place where my yoga studio was. I still see people in the grocery, and they say, “It just wasn’t the same anymore, after—” And I’m like—my initial feeling—well, actually, I’m going to be very honest about this—my initial feeling is like, “No shit.”
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: [laughs] Right? Like, my—my initial feeling is like, “Yeah, that’s right, I’m—magical.” Like [laughs] “Yes, I did—I brought magic to that. I brought my whole heart and soul.” So yeah. So that’s the initial thing, is I do still have—and that feels self-protective, and that feels an integrity, right? That feels like a part of me that is like—I’m so interested that you said, “My program was at a very low price point, a very low price point for what it is,” right? I think that if we are in that self-compromised place, if we're not getting the recognition or the money or whatever that is commensurate with what we're putting in, that is self-compromised, yeah? So anyway, that’s my first thing. And then, I will be like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” “I’m so sorry”—right?
Sarah M. Chappell: My first thing is usually a knee-jerk reaction—I have some kind of demand avoidance things—I’m like, “Do not tell me what to do. Do not ask me for anything. Do not ever perceive or talk to me”—I’m like—my first response is kind of like—which I would never respond—is a “Fuck you.” Right?
Natalie Miller: Yeah!
Sarah M. Chappell: I’m like, “Fuck you.” Like, “You've had years with this content. You could have engaged with it at any time.” Like this very ungenerous place, which I’m not—it’s probably true, but it doesn't mean it’s where I want to act from.
Natalie Miller: Right.
Sarah M. Chappell: Followed swiftly by intense shame for feeling that in the first place, right?
Natalie Miller: Yes!
Sarah M. Chappell: For feeling this resentment, which comes back to the self-compromise. And then followed—yeah, followed immediately by the feeling like I have failed somehow, for having a response and for not having able to solve the problem, and for not being able to make everybody happy. And that is the self-compromise. And yeah, I think price and program structure and all of those kind of tactical pieces are a huge part of how we end up in these places. One can imagine—well, I don’t know; if you were over yoga, maybe not—I think often we can imagine, first of all, if we wanted to solve the problem, we usually can, is my belief. It’s when we realize we don’t want to solve it that it’s time to really move on. But often there are ways to set up things where there’s room for more growth or room for more change.
Natalie Miller: I’m just going to repeat what you just said because I think it is so striking and important. If we want to solve the problem, we can. If we are into it. If this is what we want to do—“Yes, I want to have a yoga studio,” or “Yes, I want to have this product”—we absolutely can use our amazing minds to figure it out, right?
Sarah M. Chappell: Yes.
Natalie Miller: And, if we're just not into it, if the desire piece isn’t there, I do at this point sort of believe there is this little protective mechanism in there that is like, “No. No. I won’t.” And let’s do this, Sarah; this is kind of fun. If we look back, what were the signs? Like, in year—
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: —it also took me four years to leave the yoga studio. So what—like year one, year two, what were we noticing? I will say one thing for me is, I was missing deadlines. I was procrastinating. Yes, the newsletter was due; I didn’t want to write it. Yes, the schedule needed to be made; I just didn’t want to think about it. Yes, the teachers—blah, blah. I was pushing off all this kind of stuff. There’s one thing that I noticed.
Sarah M. Chappell: When I would get emails from people in the program, or people who were interested in the program, I would have anxiety attacks.
Natalie Miller: Mm!
Sarah M. Chappell: Could not read it. I saw an email, and I would die. Then I couldn't not read it, because I had to know what it said, and to know if I was in trouble.
Natalie Miller: Oh. Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: Email is still something I have some trouble with, though much better. But that feeling like already, in year one—I’d say actually as soon as we opened—because there were a handful of people who were not a good fit, who I ended up helping along their way—but it was my first time running a program of that size, that many people. I wasn’t kind of ready for the scale of problems, in the sense of like there weren’t new problems, but now you have all these people with these problems.
Natalie Miller: Yes.
Sarah M. Chappell: And I from the beginning had to deal with the sense that I had done something wrong, because these people were here, and they weren’t happy.
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm.
Sarah M. Chappell: And that piece was, from the beginning, this belief that I—or this feeling that like I was doing something wrong, or else this wouldn't be happening.
Natalie Miller: Yeah! Yeah. And it’s like, am I not delivering what’s valuable? Did I attract the wrong person?
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs] Yeah.
Natalie Miller: Did I make a mistake in not having an application? Right? It’s like the kind of avenues of self-blame are many. [laughs] Are very many.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah. Instead of just being like, “I don’t know. I don’t know how you got here, but you don’t have to stay!” [laughs] Like it didn’t need to be a thing, but it was a thing. It was a referendum on my like ability to do this.
Natalie Miller: Right, right. And it’s like, yeah, in that—in my vision, what I kind of want for myself, what I want for you, what I want for the people with whom I work—uch, I want Sarah centered in herself so much that she’s not unmoored by an email, right? For me, I—
Sarah M. Chappell: I want that, too! [laughs]
Natalie Miller: Yeah, right? Listen, me too. Let’s work on it together. An astrologer told me once, she was like, “Oh, this is the project you're working on.” I was like, “What?” She’s like, “For humanity. This is the project you're working on.” And I was like, “Oh! Thank you!”
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: So for you it’s like the self-contortion, and it’s a similar thing for me, actually. It’s like, how can I be myself in community? How does that work? I don’t know. In any case. I think also that resentment piece, that is kind of a sign that it’s getting worse. It’s like, the rash is spreading when resentment sets in. When someone asks a very basic question, and you're like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Right? [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: Yes. Yes.
Natalie Miller: Yes.
Sarah M. Chappell: Often I find that’s a misalignment between like price and labor, right? For me it’s like the number one indicator that something is off in that—sometimes it’s the wrong fit or whatever, but usually there’s a compensation issue.
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm!
Sarah M. Chappell: But it becomes also a habit, right? Resentment becomes a habit. Resentment—like you said, the rash spreads. It becomes an infection.
Natalie Miller: It sure does.
Sarah M. Chappell: So it’s a really tough one to shift.
Natalie Miller: And I think, yes, price and labor. And in that, I think we can also acknowledge, it is a fuck of a lot harder to continue doing what you don’t want to do. Like I can labor at something that I’m excited about, and it doesn't really feel—I’m not gonna go all “flow state, it’s not even work”; no, it’s still work, but it doesn't feel taxing on my soul. Whereas if I’m doing what I don’t really want to be doing, it does feel taxing on my soul. And so it begins to be that like there’s no amount of money that feels like it’s enough for me to keep running this fucking thing. [laughs] Right?
Sarah M. Chappell: Someone asked me that question once: “What would you need to make to keep doing this?” It’s a question I come back to a lot. If the answer is, “I cannot think of a number,” then like, it’s done. This is dead, right?
Natalie Miller: Right.
Sarah M. Chappell: All right, so year one, two, you start procrastinating. What happens after that?
Natalie Miller: Yeah. It’s like you're procrastinating. You're getting cranky. You're getting anxious.
Sarah M. Chappell: Cranky.
Natalie Miller: It’s just not that fun anymore. Another thing that I noticed was my colleagues would be really into—“Oh, I’m going to try this, I’m going to try that.” And I was just like—this is how I felt in graduate school, also, actually, when that was not a fit for me—I’m like sitting on the sidelines going, “Why would you want to give a paper? That sounds—”
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: Everybody’s like, “I applied here and here and here, to like take a paper to a conference.” And I was like, “Why would you want to go to a conference?” I had that feeling with my colleagues, where they were like, “Oh, I’m going to try this new strategy. I’m gonna—” And I was just like, “Why?” There was no kind of growth avenue. Because I can almost always get down with a growth avenue. I’m like, I like to learn. I’m a good student. I like to do that. There was nothing—I was like, “No, I don’t want to learn my way into a better place. Like I just—don’t want to do this anymore.” Does that one resonate with you?
Sarah M. Chappell: Oh, yeah. I think for me that really came probably in the last—probably like last year, was when I was like, “I’ve got no growth avenue left.” That was kind of into year three. Before that, I really did—I found the growth avenue, which was—growing. [laughs] It was like, “Great. I’m just going to really master sales at sale. I’m going to kind of like throw myself into building a lot of systems and processes, and kind of like creating in that direction.” Thinking, of course, that maybe there would be some level of growth, and some amount of money where I would be like, “Yeah, this is great. I can just—I can just keep doing this.” Which didn’t happen. And then once I had done that, and I was like, “All right, I’m sure there will be challenges I haven't thought of yet”—because that’s how everything is—but I was like, “I can see the growth path now.” It was like, “I’ve got the basics covered. I know what’s required to get to the next few steps.” And I was like, “I don’t wanna do it.”
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: “Nope. Don’t care.” Couldn't be bothered.
Natalie Miller: Right! Couldn't be bothered on a good day, and “fuck, no”—
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: —on a not-so-good day, right?
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah, yeah.
Natalie Miller: Like where it’s got that edge in it, yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: Oh, yeah.
Natalie Miller: I also think in the woo sense—what do you think about this?—I think energetically, things that were easy to sell before aren’t easy to sell anymore. It’s like your list isn’t really growing, or you're not really attracting new people, or your socials are kind of falling flat. It’s almost like just the balloon, it has like lost some of its air, and there’s just a flaccidness [laughs]—
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: —right? It’s just like, “Oh, that wasn’t as great as it has been before.” That’s also I think for me—now, listen, business is fickle as fuck, so like there’s lots of reasons for those things to happen. But if it’s happening recurringly, it’s like things just aren’t really working, I do sort of feel like maybe the vibe is—something’s energetically shifted.
Sarah M. Chappell: Definitely. Yeah. And I agree; I think like one bad week or whatever on social media is certainly not something to panic about, because—
Natalie Miller: No,
Sarah M. Chappell: —so much of that is out of your control. But there is a feedback loop, right, in terms of how you feel, whether you want to engage with it. We got away with—I’ll say I got away with—reusing a lot of this original content for a long time to grow that program, like in terms of my messaging, and my marketing. And at some point it did stop working. And at that point—I like—I was like—I worked on a couple new things, and maybe I’d get a little bit of an injection, and could do that, but it was exactly that; it started to fall flat. And the thing is, if I was interested in it, right, I would have been naturally creating new stuff. I wouldn't be trying to reuse and repurpose for years on end the exact same stuff. Something would have sparked my mind.
Natalie Miller: Right.
Sarah M. Chappell: So it becomes, I think, the vibes are off. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not able to give it life force, it will die.
Natalie Miller: And to me that circles around again to like why this business has got to be self-centered, because you give it life. And listen, I couldn't do what I do without my team, so I have people who help me, thank goodness. I don’t ever want to pretend like I’m doing it alone. And-slash-but, who’s writing the things? Who’s running the things? Who’s creating the things? Who’s doing the coaching? That’s me!
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah, I definitely believed for a long time that I could hire myself out of most of those things. I was like, “This will keep—this will be great. I’ll just hire a team, and they're going to just do it for me, and I’ll just be”—I didn’t even know what—"the CEO.” Which is not something I really care about. “I will be the singing, dancing Sarah that they roll out for the calls.” Right?
Natalie Miller: Yeah, the show pony.
Sarah M. Chappell: “I will be the show pony!”
Natalie Miller: “Here’s the show pony! Look at her tail! So fluffy!” Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs] Exactly. “I will have a fluffy tail.” And, that’s actually really hard. And it’s really hard on businesses of much larger scale than yours or mine. It’s very easy to think that these very large companies have solved that problem, and they haven't. We routinely see major corporations go through huge stock losses and all sorts of problems because of the CEO change, because of something like that. Those things matter even in very big companies. They definitely matter in small ones. Yeah. I was like, “This will be great. I’ll hire myself out a bit.” Nope, that didn’t work. [laughs]
Natalie Miller: Like that’s a little adage in online business, is like, “Replace yourself.” And I’m like—that always actually pinched me, a little bit. I always found that a little pinchy. I was like, I don’t think anyone is replaceable. My particular UPS guy isn’t replaceable. He’s—incredibly skilled! And he’s so friendly! And like he is not replaceable! He is a whole human, and there’s not another one like him. You know?
Sarah M. Chappell: Yep.
Natalie Miller: So yeah, this idea that somehow, yeah, we can hire Sarah out of her own business—it’s like dropping the Sun out of the solar system. It’s like, no, the system needs a star in the middle, right?
Sarah M. Chappell: It does. And if you're not willing to do that anymore, there really isn’t a business.
Natalie Miller: Right. So, another place where we resonate, I’ll say, is that I also—and maybe our interests indicate this, right; our evolving creative interests indicate this—I don’t want to repurpose the hell of out of my stuff. I don’t want to do the same thing again and again and again and again. I totally can see how smart—if productivity and efficiency are the measures of smart [laughs], then that would be very smart, right? Natalie, could you just create something and then just keep running it again and again? But for me, no. I can’t. And I know you said a similar thing in your “Burn it Down” episode, and I’m just kind of curious how that’s sitting with you lately, this like, “Fuck. All the things that would ostensibly make my life easier”—right—just run the same thing again and again—are intolerable. [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: There’s two issues, right? I really love when personal desire and strategy actually line up. It is actually way harder to keep running the same thing again and again and again. Because you need new people who want to buy that same thing. Right? Say if we're talking about coaching or an educational experience, or something where people are less likely to buy it more than once, like you don’t make, I don’t know, cheese, or whatever. I was like—I’m having a big moment where all I’m thinking about is cheese [laughs].
Natalie Miller: [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: I don’t know, yesterday, all of a sudden, I was like, “The only thing I care about right now is cheese!” Unclear. Anyway, unless you make cheese, a consumable—essentially unless you make a consumable good, right, as in then it’s gone at the end, you have to find new people. And this is one of the things that’s so fascinating about the online space in general, that pulls so much of its philosophy from, essentially, venture capital and software—
Natalie Miller: Yes.
Sarah M. Chappell: —where this is a belief that the actual like market cap for your business is the entire world, right? When the entire world is onboarded, then you'll have hit your market cap.
Natalie Miller: [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs] The whole world. But it’s actually hard, because it means that you're always in audience growth mode, if you're selling the same thing over and over again. And that’s fine. But there’s something that is a little bit easier, actually, which is to make new, interesting things for the people who you really want to work with, who are probably already hanging around you. So it is really resonating with me, but it’s not something I’ve solved. Because I actually—here’s my deep, dark secret—I’m actually a really slow creator. I get feedback that I do things very quickly, and that I ship really fast, and people are like, “Oh, you had an idea, and then did it! So fast!” I’m like, “No.” [laughs] No. Everything that shows up has been kicking around in my brain for years.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: I’m a digester. I’m a chewer. I’m a ruminator. And things tend to come out, and they appear fully formed, but they are not. So I’m like, yes, I want to make new stuff all the time. And, uch, I have not figured out a way, frankly, to charge enough to give me the time to make new stuff. Because I am slow. I am so slow.
Natalie Miller: I love that you know that about yourself. And I’m wondering, when you're working with people who are supporting you, have you figured out a way to like let that be okay?
Sarah M. Chappell: When it comes to team, I think very much in terms of like discrete and siloed tasks, like things that are clearly defined so that people have high autonomy. And autonomy is a big value of mine, anyway. But that creates a lot of freedom in the sense that theoretically, I’m not really part of their workflow in such a big way.
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm!
Sarah M. Chappell: Which helps.
Natalie Miller: So yes.
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: So, yes, right? So, yes, you have figured it out. Yeah. Because I think ultimately, like, I think the knee-jerk is to say, “I’m slow. So what can I do to get faster?” Or, “Wow, I ruminate. So how could I stop ruminating?” Or, you know. For me it would be like, I have so many ideas and what tends to happen is like they pop out like I’m a popcorn maker and there’s no bowl, and they've got to go everywhere. And then there’s a little rumination bowl that like catches a couple kernels and then those actually come to fruition. But if I’m working with a team member, you know, I’m sort of like, “Are you ready?” [trilling sound] Like [laughs]—“Ideas!” And they just know now, like, “Oh, Natalie is having ideas. Okay, cool. I’m going to collect as many of these as I can, and then we'll circle back, but I know we're not actualizing this, we're not operationalizing it, we're not like—this is how Natalie’s mind works.” Right?
Sarah M. Chappell: That was actually a huge issue I had with some people I was working with in my old program, where the difference between ideation and implementation was very challenging, and it caused a lot of stress. Because I am also—lots of ideas. Lots of ideas. Not a problem. And, I didn’t find out until much later that it was causing some very specific stress. That wasn’t clear. That’s something I would think more about now in terms of like onboarding and preparation, and like what the expectations are. I like the idea of you talking about having a team member who is gathering up some of those ideas and then circling back, right? Which is something I really value. I’m like, “Yes! Thank you! For bringing that back to my attention.” Because I’ve probably gone off and again, I’m worrying about cheese, or knitting something. Like I’m a little bit of a squirrel.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: So, yeah, that piece I think can be really hard, especially when people are maybe used to more corporate environments where they have more insulation from some of the big ideation. Though I imagine a lot of people are familiar with having bosses who say that things matter and then give you no follow-up on them. [laughs]
Natalie Miller: Yes. Yes. I think that’s a whole thing. And actually that maybe brings me to a foundational point, which is that self-centering is so important in this world where we are always compromising so much. All of us, right? Like we’re all—late capitalism asks us to compromise so much. You and I live in the United States. The country in which we live asks us to compromise so much, right? And we are white women, so we don’t even know the half of it. We don’t even know the half of what compromises are required, yeah?
Sarah M. Chappell: I completely agree. There are very few people who are able to live authentically in this world, and I venture close to none, if they are engaged in this economic system. Even the people who seem to have a lot of freedom clearly do not. And there is something that I’ve always found, just—I get a little ambivalent about calling business radical, because of the system it’s inherently plugged into, but there is something a little radical about carving out just a bit of space, where you do what you want to do.
Natalie Miller: Yeah! And I think something potentially countercultural in doing that in a way that amplifies or feeds different values, right? Like, there are no time cards in my business. We don’t do that. We don’t look at time in that way, for example. I’m just never going to do that, because it’s not important to me. For me, creativity is so important, and so anyone who works for me, I’m like, “So what are you interested in? What do you want to do? What excites you about this? How do you want to co-create?” Always kind of looking at those pieces. And it feels like we do have this opportunity, A, to carve out a little bit of space where we can do what we want, and also to—model that? To invite other people possibly along in that? And that feels like the best we can do. [laughs] I don’t know. It feels like, what else can we do? I don’t know!
Sarah M. Chappell: That modeling, and then identifying the places, yeah, where you can do things differently, is one of the most potent things that you can do as a business owner. I have an essay I’m working on now right that is right now in its rant stage, and I’m trying to get it into essay stage [laughs], about how important I think it is, even though it’s challenging, for business owners to really take more time to think about the systems that they are engaging with, the values that they are bringing to their work. And I don’t mean this in the sense of, like, “Know your core values.” I mean, I do. But like in the sense of like the—the deeply engrained values, like around hiring and team, for example. Right? About maximizing people’s time. And creating enough space for the education and the conversation to question and develop new ideas, and how critical that is, in the sense that being a business owner means that you are choosing to participate in a very active way with the government, in a very active way with the oppressive systems in this country, in particular. And that we have these small, small little fiefdoms over here; we have the possibility to do exactly that, right? To choose to do some things differently. Especially I think with team, I think, is one of the biggest places that you have the possibility. And it’s hard to prioritize that. It’s hard to take the time away from finding new customers or making new products or doing this stuff. But I think you're right. I think that these are places where you really can choose to do something different.
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm, yeah. And I also—I was thinking about this this morning, because me, as my own boss, I have given myself [laughs] freedom now, to use the morning for a walk, where generally speaking, Sarah, morning is when my perimenopausal brain is clearest. Morning is the time I’m most likely to write. I’m mostly to create a podcast episode. Morning time, that is really kind of the golden time for me to do my knowledge work. And, it’s summer. It’s beautiful. I’ve been having all kinds of health things. I told myself, “You know what? Wellness is a really important value. Wellness is the value that wants more attention.” And so, we're talking about like our teams; even if you don’t have a team, you are your team. You yourself are your staff, right?
Sarah M. Chappell: Yes. [laughs]
Natalie Miller: If you're working on your own. And so how do you treat you? What’s okay for you? What’s your leave policy like? What’s your wellness benefit? Are you replicating a way of being successful in capitalism that we know is actually not successful? It’s exploitative. It’s personally and culturally and collectively damaging.
Sarah M. Chappell: Wow, yeah. You are your team; it’s so true.
Natalie Miller: Yeah! And I think that that piece about the self-centered business, that piece of like, “Listen, actually this whole thing is depending on you, and your magic, and your curiosity, and your—wellness.”
Sarah M. Chappell: I have some chronic health issues, and it has always been a central part of the business—it’s one of the reasons I started the business in the first place. I’m also just kind of constitutionally unemployable, and every time I try to do something even remotely close to that, I just am—I was like, “Oh, man, I am the worst—I am the worst employee.” I need to stop saying that on podcasts, because if I ever need to get hired, everyone is going to be like, “This girl says she’s a terrible employee.” But I am. Overall, yes, I have a more balanced life than I would if I had to commute and go to an office all day and do that. But, oh, I am so mean to myself sometimes, still.
Natalie Miller: Oh yeah!
Sarah M. Chappell: It’s so hard to carve out that space for the wellness. I actually have health on—I have a Post-It note of like my current core focuses, and that’s one of them, for me.
Natalie Miller: Yeah!
Sarah M. Chappell: Health, creativity, and fun are my current focuses. But, I’m going to leave—it was just a “holiday”—she says in quotes—this past week, and I didn’t tell any of my clients that I was taking off, because I felt guilty.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: And I was like, “Interesting, Sarah.” It was like, “Who fucking cares?” [laughs] It’s like, what are they gonna do? Fire you? Come on! [laughs] You're going to take a day off? But yeah, it’s—that piece of taking your morning walk, recognizing that like if you're not well, and whatever that is for you—but if you're not able to do these things, right, if you're not able to be the Sun, to be the star, it doesn't exist. None of this happens.
Natalie Miller: Right. None of this happens. I was so curious to see where this conversation would go, and I’ve loved it. I mean, honestly there are 20 branches that I want to just climb out on with you, and be like, “Okay, let’s talk about scaling” and—[laughs]—
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: —because that’s bullshit, and—[laughs]—you know, like, “Let’s talk”—
Sarah M. Chappell: I know.
Natalie Miller: There’s a million things. A million things. However, this feels really good as just a way of thinking about and [sigh] advocating for—that’s what it feels like—advocating for a particular kind of self-centeredness. Like, you've got to know who you are. You’ve got to respect your rhythms and your body, and what works for you, and what doesn't work for you.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yes.
Natalie Miller: Yeah? What else do you think it looks like to be self-centered, that we can kind of leave our listener with?
Sarah M. Chappell: Yes. Know yourself. Know what you need. My other of many Post-Its is a “memento mori” Post-It. I am someone who finds a lot of inspiration from thinking about death. I don’t find it particularly morbid; I find it really critical. I think it’s one of the most true things about being alive. Regardless of what you think happens during or after, it will happen.
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm.
Sarah M. Chappell: Unless you're Peter Thiel. And—
Natalie Miller: [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: —the rest of us are gonna die! It’s just gonna be Peter Thiel, on his island. And I think that part of being self-centered is knowing what you want to do with your life.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: Not in the sense of what you want to accomplish, though that can be part of it, or what your ambitions are, and that can be part of it, but how do you want to spend your days? Like, this is it.
Natalie Miller: This is it.
Sarah M. Chappell: And every time—every time I read an email and get furious for no reason, is this how I want to spend my life? Is this the thing, the deathbed thought? “I’m so glad I got so angry at those emails that there was nothing to be angry about?” Of course not!
Natalie Miller: Right, right. I know, yeah. I just had this vision of a [laughs]—of a tombstone, that’s like—
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: —“Natalie Miller. She had 1,558 followers.”
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: It’s like who the—
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: —who the—like—like—who the fuck cares? [laughs]
Sarah M. Chappell: Literally, right. Like, that’s it.
Natalie Miller: Literally.
Sarah M. Chappell: That’s it. That is the tombstone.
Natalie Miller: Literally. That’s what I want to think of—no, that’s not what—that’s not who I am. That’s not what I want to think about.
Sarah M. Chappell: I think about kind of my favorite days that I’ve had, my absolute favorite days I’ve had. And Natalie, they're so boring.
Natalie Miller: Oh yeah.
Sarah M. Chappell: Like they're so dull. To anybody else. Right? Or, not the kind of thing you would write about, like, “My Perfect Day.” Uch. Perfect day is definitely a walk. It’s going to the gym. It is having some food with my sweetheart. It’s probably reading a bunch of books. Maybe I go to the beach, maybe I go to a museum. But it’s just like being around, just like kinda—
Natalie Miller: Mmhmm.
Sarah M. Chappell: I’m a very kind of active leisure person, so I’m kind of like doing a lot of active leisure things. That’s it. So I think that piece of self-centeredness is knowing what that is, for you, right? Your perfect day, not in a—it can be a big thing; like, I don’t know what your perfect day is. And some of you probably have perfect days that are extremely—like magnificent sounding. It would be entire movies. But, if we don’t know that, right, we can’t actually be all that self-centered. We have to know our desires, in addition to our needs.
Natalie Miller: Yeah. And all of that is fuel. All of that is fuel. All of that gives you perspective. Right? Like it’s so important to be a human being, first, and a human doing, also. Right? And I think that we've really—we've really fucked that.
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: We've really trained people that no, actually, you're a human doing, and then, like when you’re 72, you can be a human being, with your retirement savings or whatever. It’s like—it’s awful. You know, the one piece that felt important as you were talking about that, Sarah, is I was thinking, here’s the other thing about ourselves; we change.
Sarah M. Chappell: We sure do.
Natalie Miller: We're always changing! What we used to like is not what we like anymore. What we thought would work didn’t actually work the way we thought it would. It’s like, we are all always changing. And so, that means relationships are going to change. Businesses are going to change. Offers are going to change. Ideal client is going to change. Everything is always changing. I feel like sometimes we're trying to like zero in on this best self, and it’s not a static thing. It’s not—it’s a moving target. It’s like always going, into the future, you know?
Sarah M. Chappell: If we're lucky.
Natalie Miller: Oh, god, yes.
Sarah M. Chappell: Right? The fact that we're changing, I mean, that should be the most positive indicator of a successful life, I think. I don’t care how you change, to some extent, but like that ability to avoid fixity, to keep learning, to keep exploring. For me, at least, values wise, curiosity is one of my top values. And I’m like, that changeability—instead of it being a bad thing, a failure, you don’t want this anymore, and duhduhduh—oh, no. I’m like, “I think that’s great.” Like, yes. We are changing. So lucky to change. It’s how we know we're alive.
Natalie Miller: It’s how we know we're alive. And we do—as fucked as this moment is, because it is fucked, right—we also have a lot of space.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah.
Natalie Miller: We have a lot of space to figure out who we are. I mean, even just the internet is a lot of space to explore who we are, and what we like, and who we might want to be. So.
Sarah M. Chappell: Yeah.
Natalie Miller: Yeah. I love it. Thank you so much, Sarah, for being here. I have a feeling you'll be back! But i loved talking to you today.
Sarah M. Chappell: Thank you so much, Natalie. Such a treat to wander widely with you.
Natalie Miller: Yes! Please tell the good people—so you gotta go listen to “Burn It Down”—
Sarah M. Chappell: [laughs]
Natalie Miller: —because it’s so great. It’s the first episode in Think Piece, the podcast. So go find that on all the podcast places. But I’m sure my sweet listener is like, “Get me some more Sarah M. Chappell in my life.” Where should they go?
Sarah M. Chappell: You can go to ThinkPiece.FYI, and that’s where you'll find my newsletter, which is where I do most of my work there, and the podcast, you can sign up there, and get deep thinks; sometimes deep, sometimes not so deep, sometimes kind of ranty, to be honest. But [laughs]—that’s the best place to go! [laughs]
Natalie Miller: It’s so good, everyone, so get in on that. All right, thank you, my friend, so much for being here, and thank you, my sweet listener, so much for being here. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show. Or, if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday letter at MindWitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.
Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, Executive Producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.
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