How To Develop A Feminist Business Strategy With Staci Hauschild

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Diane: Hey, Hey, today's guest Staci Hauschild helps feminist visionaries with strategic planning, business management and team leadership. And I was curious to understand how we can use these strategic tools to smash the patriarchy. And here we are. Hey Stacy. Welcome to the show. [00:00:15] Staci: Hi, Diana. Thanks for having me. [00:00:17] Diane: So let's kick off with a little bit about you, Angela. [00:00:21] Staci: So, as I mentioned, as you mentioned, I'm Stacy and I call Wahaca, Mexico home. I'm an American who left the states I almost 20 years ago. And I've lived all over the world. And here in Wahaca, I am a certified director of operations and better vetted click up consultant. And I support feminist entrepreneurs. To smash the patriarchy one deadline at a time through strategic planning and operations management. So my entire mission is to run your business so that you don't have to. [00:01:00] Diane: First up let's discuss feminist visionaries. How do we know if we are one or if we want to be one, how do we get stopped? [00:01:09] Staci: Oh, my goodness. That is such a good question. And I think you could ask 15 different people, their definition of feminism, and you would get 25 different answers. For me, I, I did, I identify as a feminist because I believe that women are human beings who deserve equal rights. Now, when that, that basic definition. I also believe that inclusion diversity and representation matter, and I see that as an extension of the feminist movement as well. When it comes to entrepreneurship, feminist entrepreneurship is doing business in a way that puts people before profit and treats. People as human beings and once their business to make a difference in the lives of others, their team and their community. [00:02:11] Diane: while you were speaking, I heard, I believe a lot, I believe a lot. So it sounds to me like it's a kind of values question. Would you say that that's something that you look at in the people that you work with? [00:02:23] Staci: The short answer is yes. I believe that business is changing and people want to work with other people who have similar values. If I am hiring someone to support me in my business, I know that I'm supporting them. Financially, and that they're going to turn around and spend that dollar on something that's important to them and money talks. And whether we believe in a capitalistic system or not, we do live in this system. And I think that many of us understand now that small groups of people can make change. So we want to work with other people who have the same value set as us and. Create a community where we can foster change, not just in the lives of other female entrepreneurs but for ourselves and our communities as well. [00:03:21] Diane: And so is that then your starting point for the strategic planning, for the business management, et cetera, are you going into a client and being like, show me your values and then let's plan based on those values. [00:03:36] Staci: Yeah. so that's an interesting question. So I think if you go to my website, it's very polarizing and P and you will self-select whether or not you want to work with me or not. And. I am not here to judge at all. What level of feminist you are. And so going back to you know what you said, how do we know a, for a feminist? I mean, there are people I'm following online that I look at and I go, oh my gosh, I can't reach out to them. Or I could ever work with that because they're talking about things that like, I haven't even thought about. You know, and I think that is also like, as women, we are very, very critical of ourselves. And so, I just want to mention that because that goes into, so if you come to my website, it's very polarizing. If you like. Anti-feminism anti-woman, you're going to click off and that's okay. But if you are at any level and I don't have a rating system, but you're at any level, for lack of a better word, when we do strategic planning, the first thing we're looking at is creating an unbreakable foundation in your business. And that includes mission, vision, and values. I was specifically, I was trained to. Carry out the strategic mapping model by an operations, Oregon certification. What I added in there was step two, which is to also create uh, diversity equality and inclusion statement, because I think that because of That helps you understand the type of clients you want to help. And also helps with Hebraic helps with hiring later on in your business as you're growing and helps people understand what you believe in. So your values and my top value is humor that has nothing to do with feminist business or anything like that. Right. And so your value. May not depending on how you run your business and what you believe in and the services that you have, those feminist values or your beliefs in diversity, inclusion and equality may not come out in your values, but they will come out in your DEI statement and people that want to incorporate that into their business model, their strategic planning and the way forward. I understand that that's an important part of business. [00:06:11] Diane: Okay. So, so we know that the feminist vision shows up in our vision mission. Values or DEI. It's going to show up in one of those places, somewhere in the foundation of our business. Now, how does that thing through strategic planning, help to like smash the patriarchy? Like, what are the walls, I guess, of this, this feminist house that we're building. If that's the foundation [00:06:39] Staci: Yeah, that's a great question. So we look at, once we get past the unbreakable foundation, mission, vision, and values, we go to step two, be more equitable. Then we move to step three, which is. I forgot what I call it, my fancy, my fancy name for it. But step three is looking at the nine pillars of your business. [00:07:05] Diane: Oh, we're not building a house. We're building a temple, [00:07:08] Staci: I like that. [00:07:09] Diane: my bad, my bad [00:07:11] Staci: I like that. I like that. [00:07:12] Diane: building, our feminist temple. [00:07:15] Staci: I love it. I love it. Yes. We're looking at nine pillars and I like to think of these pillars as board of directors, because it helps it helps understand as, as solar preneurs or people with small teams, we're being pulled in multiple directions and their voices inside our heads, they need to work on this and our business, or we need to work on this and on our business. Or what about that? Or you're sitting on this or, oh God, I'm working too much. Ariana should be working on other things. Right. So I like to consider them boards of your board of directors, directors. So we look at your nine areas, your nine pillars, United board of directors, whatever you want to call them. So I might, some people like to give them names because they they're like, okay, this is this person. Who's like the angel and the devil on your shoulder. Right. It's like this, this is this person, right. That I want to be working with in my business right now. So for example, The, one of the pillars that we look at is money and finance. And we look at a variety of things, but one of them is, is your business supporting you financially? Like not a big aha moment, but is your business supporting you financially? So number one, are you paying yourself? This is a feminist value. Your business is not a hot. Right. Are you paying yourself? But to go even bigger than that is your business supporting your long-term financial goals, which include savings and retirement. If you aren't saving or you aren't investing, do you want to, usually the answer is yes. And if you're going to invest, are you investing in. Stocks index funds, whatever. That's not my expertise. And in putting your money where you want to be putting it. And a lot of people, they may be investing blindly, not knowing what companies they're actually supporting and saying, okay, are you paying yourself? Number one, but going bigger are your investments in line with what you want? And if not, do we need to readjust your investment portfolio as an example, when we're looking at when we're looking at marketing making sure that we are using inclusive language. So I am trying to get away from using, Hey guys. I mean, that was ingrained in me. From the beginning. I also live in Mexico where there are 99 girls, 99 elementary girls in a S in a classroom. And one boy, we're going to use the masculine version of the word kids. Right. And so in our marketing, are we using inclusive? Folks, people y'all, whatever you want to use and getting away from girl boss and things like this, that just, that just don't diminish. I think some, again, this is, these are these, these are my beliefs. He said the people that work with me you know, I'm not in any way trying to say that you shouldn't use these terms if they align with what you believe. But I think sometimes as entrepreneurs, we can diminish ourselves by using cutesy feminine terms. As opposed to owning that we are a CEO or an entrepreneur, and then we can exclude people by using words in our marketing that we don't even, we don't even think about [00:11:09] Diane: So essentially what we're saying is we have this feminism embedded in that foundation, but it's also kind of reaching. Th the kind of core of the pillars as well. So like finances, yes. We want to make money, but are we making it in a way that supports our feminist value and using it in a way that supports it in marketing the same way as it working for us in a way that's in line with our values, but also including everybody else. So it's kind of an inward and an outward look on each of the pillars. [00:11:42] Staci: Yeah. I think that's a good way of explaining it. And I would also say that. When I do strategic planning with a client, it's not all a hundred percent feminist focused, whether you're a feminist or not, you need a bookkeeper. Okay. [00:11:57] Diane: Even if you're not a feminist, please do some kind of planning and have somebody look at your money. [00:12:02] Staci: that's right. And even if you're not a feminist. you need to sell. [00:12:07] Diane: I don't need to pay taxes. [00:12:08] Staci: That's right. I'm not a feminist. I don't need a sales page. I'm not, I'm not a feminist. My business, my business operates so officially you would never believe it. I would say that the feminist strategic planning is the feminist aspect is an extra layer that helps you run your business and plan in a way that fits your values. [00:12:34] Diane: So let's talk about what some of the other pillars are, so that people can think about whether or not they're actually applying strategic planning in a really balanced way. Because what I find when I talk to people about strategic planning is it's usually very focused on marketing and sales traditionally in entrepreneurship. [00:12:53] Staci: And why, why do you think, why, why has that been the case in the past? [00:12:58] Diane: Well, I think money has always been seen as the success marker for people, right? And those are the two things that correlate directly to money because people forget about the fact that, oh, you actually still have to deliver on the back end of those things. What's sexy is the Facebook ad that made you seven figures overnight one day that you can now market to everybody as your new methodology. [00:13:20] Staci: and this is a tricky one because I was talking to a friend about this the other day. And I think this is something that people. Struggle with is do I, when we look at that marketing piece. So for me, when we get to the marketing pillar, it's called bam branding, advertising, and marketing, because you do need some bam in your business in order to get your message messages out there, like a hundred percent, this is not a hobby. Right. And what do you do when. Ads are the next thing in your business, in this pillar. That makes sense. And how do you decide if you're going to run ads based on what you believe about Facebook I was speaking to an ad strategist the other day, and she said, you know, sometimes we have to live within the, within the confines that we're given in order to fight against them. Like we can't change the world overnight. But we can make a difference. And so that is a personal decision and I'm never going to tell anybody they should or should not do anything in their business. My job is to help people understand that they can bring their personal values into business and make a difference for themselves, for their community, et cetera. And we're one of the, one of the, you're one of the, going back to one of the things you asked about what are the other things. So when we look at service and sales, for example, we're going to be looking at your sales funnel. And do you need to revamp your sales page again, whether you're a feminist or not, you need a sales page, right? But when it comes to selling your product, a feminist of value could be having. Making your programs and services financially accessible by offering no interest payment plans. Because if you look historically, I will speak from a white woman's perspective in the United States. My mother was, was probably what, 10 years old when women were allowed to have a credit card without the signature of a man. So if you, and that's, my mom's only in her sixties, you know, like we're not talking a million years ago here. So historically women have not had equal access to credit and we can go down that entire rabbit hole, but we won't. So just to, you know, shorten that up and if feminist value could be, I want to offer people access to my programs. And I want to make it accessible for them. I want to make their payment accessible and people go, oh yeah, I can do that. That's easy. And some and something they might and might not have thought about. And then that goes into the strategic strategic plan of, Okay. We'll do when we want to do. Do you want to do that next quarter in two quarters, depending on what we got going on, are we going to have to change our, you know, payment gateways. And so that's, I think an example of, okay. Yeah, we do want to make our programs more accessible. When are we going to do that? In strategic planning. Some people can tend to feel overwhelmed because you're like, okay, this is going really well. And we need to keep doing that. But at the same time, we want to make improvements. And my job is also to help people understand you're not going to go away and make it the improvements in the next week. This is, you know, if we're creating a sustainable feminist business. Deadline after deadline, it's step after step and we're going to get better and we're going to add things and that's just how business works in general. [00:17:24] Diane: Yeah, it's kind of that 1% rule. Like how can I do those 1% better? And then the next time do at 1% better again, and just keep trying those incremental improvements. [00:17:34] Staci: And that makes me think. Yeah. right now in your service and sales, you may want to provide you know, non-interest payment plans in the future. You may want to set up a scholarship program that. You know, allow for two people to to come into your program. Oh wait, next year, it's going to be five people, whatever it is. Right. So that's a great, I think that 1% is a great way to put it. [00:18:02] Diane: Yeah. I love that. Being able to see like how this can be applicable to each different pot. I want to like quickly logo through the like, so we've had financials, marketing, sales, and service, sorry, financials, bam, sales and service. What are the other six pillars? Just so the people, I want people to think about the areas of their business that they could be thinking about more deeply in terms of their values, feminist or not. [00:18:27] Staci: Yes. And in full transparency, I had to pull this up because I do not have them memorized [00:18:33] Diane: so disappointed in you back now. [00:18:37] Staci: money And, the finance and money and finance. Is beyond revenue. As we talked about before, it's about setting up strong financial foundations for your business and yourself, legal protection, legal protection is about trademarks, your intellectual property and contracts and legal is boring, but it's necessary. [00:19:05] Diane: And has a lot of capacity for you too. Think about the other person, not just protecting yourself in the contract language in particular. [00:19:14] Staci: A hundred percent. Yes. Service and sales. We talked about from a feminist lens. This is you know, your product product and your service suite, your launches and your launch cycles and your competition. Visibility and marketing your bam. Right? We talked about, we talked about this one already operational efficiencies. These are all the things that help us that make business easier for us to run. How, and so we look at your operational efficiencies and inefficiencies processes, procedures, systems, workflows, et cetera. Now, as an operations geek, I love this stuff. When it comes to a feminist perspective that could mean does the email marketing system that we use support the things that we believe in, and then you look at it and you go, oh God, no, well, shit. Now we got to change our whole email marketing system by next Monday. Absolutely not, but it's just making people aware of. Of how the things that they do in their personal life, they can bring into business. And it's never my job to say, you must change your email marketing system. If this, you know, if these people are donating to black lives matter, if these people aren't right, it's not my job. And you may not have the capacity the time, the money, whatever to do that now. And that's why it's called planning. Okay. I'm not running a hobby here. It is a business. This is important, but it's not as important as this other thing. So we're going to put it in the plan. And when that quarter comes up, we're going to revisit it. And for now we're going to forget. So that's how I think you know, the feminist lens can come into operational efficiencies and it can also operational efficiencies also allow you to run your business more efficiently as the name suggests. And it's about not burning yourself to the ground. The hustle and grind culture is real and looking at ways that you can do business. So that you are not burning out [00:21:28] Diane: And I think also that hustle culture is very masculine in its energy. So if you do have the feminist lens, it allows you to look at how could I do things at work for me? Without judging it against what has traditionally been done? [00:21:42] Staci: yes. A hundred percent. And I would also add to that. Hustle, the hustle culture is very masculine, but women have got sucked into it. Moving on to client. So this is the pillar where we look at your client journey, client satisfaction off boarding retention, and client experience is. That pillar that a lot of people want to focus on. Because as women, we are people pleasers. And we think that if this person on Instagram is giving gifts to their clients, we should be giving gifts to their clients. And what I like to present is an alternative to gifts. I'm not against gifts. What I'm not a big fan of is gifts. Aren't going to use, and then they get put in the landfill because environmental racism is real and there are different ways to support your clients that don't involve an extra expense for you, extra work for you and can create those raving fans and a great client experience. And, you know, a couple of examples of those that could be a gift card too. I mean, a lot of people use Starbucks again. I'm not here to judge. Starbucks is easy. It is everywhere. Here in the United States it could be a gift to, from a you know, an [00:23:17] Diane: be at a local coffee store, right? Like a small roastery or something. [00:23:21] Staci: Exactly a local coffee store and artisan, if you don't want to go the gift route, it can be writing your client, a testimonial about the work that they do. And then that thing gets recycled digitally around the you know, around the interwebs forever. And it's social proof that after you worked with them, you can see what a great job they're doing in X, Y, and Zed. And they appreciate that. [00:23:47] Diane: If they have a YouTube show or they have a podcast reviews, are every creator's love language, [00:23:53] Staci: hint, hint, Diane says exactly. [00:23:58] Diane: I wasn't even trying to be subtle. [00:24:02] Staci: Exactly. Covenant company culture is the next strategic objective that we look at. And this one is huge for me. I. And he, I am very passionate about creating work environments that people want to show up in every day and enjoy. And this includes, you know, the obvious diversity and inclusion, but also leadership and how CEOs show up as leaders. And you know, when I come onto people's teams as a director of operations or an online business manager or so many, you know, we, we work in a space where you can call yourself a digital unicorn. You can call me, you can call me whatever you want. Empowering your team members is super important. I am just a firm believer in hiring the right people. Supporting them and getting out of their way and also being a leader. And I think this is, you know, I mentioned this at the very beginning. Humor is a huge, is like my number one value humor allows people want to go to work where they enjoy their job. They enjoy their environment where they are respected and appreciated. If you're having fun, it is a hundred times easier. To come to somebody when you respect them and be like, I disagree with this, or, Hey, I think we could do this better. A lot of visionaries. Don't like people management and they don't have to do it if they hire an online business manager or do you owe or whatever, but at the same time, not everybody's ready for that, depending on where they're at in business. Right. And so, helping to people to understand that if they hire correctly, they don't need to micromanage them. [00:26:04] Diane: Right. A hundred percent. What's our next one. [00:26:07] Staci: The very last but not least is professional development and training or what I like to call it. Tit. so training, education and development. And when we get to this aspect, what we're looking at. Is how you. are investing in yourself and your business. One aspect Russell looking at boundaries aspect number two. [00:26:31] Diane: Okay. [00:26:32] Staci: So when we look at your, how you are investing in yourself, what we're looking at is. How many courses have you purchased that you've never used [00:26:45] Diane: I feel so judged right [00:26:47] Staci: because you had a fear of missing out, where do you actually need to develop versus what do you need to outsource? A lot of times female entrepreneurs. Get stuck in the, I need to learn more. I need to learn more. I need to learn more and we are afraid to put ourselves out there. And I don't, I think it happens at every level. It's like every level, you know, new level, same devil. As I've heard somebody say before, and so we want to, we we're learning, we're learning, we're learning. I'm not against learning. You had to learn. I mean, you had to learn. Start a podcast, right That was important. Only You Diane can be the podcast host of your business. Right. I had to learn about strategic planning, but I don't need to learn about, you know, how to dance on tick-tock. If that's not what I want to do, that's a bad example. But [00:27:44] Diane: You don't need to learn how to keep your books. You can hire a [00:27:47] Staci: That's a better example. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. And so we're looking at that. What do you need, what areas do you really truly need to develop? Is there a retreat that you want to go to versus what can you outsource? And. If you have courses that are sitting there that you've never done, do you want to do them or do you just want to ditch them? And there's no judgment there because we're looking at a sunk cost. Time is more valuable than the money you've already spent. And if you don't need that course, then you don't need it. Moving on. When we look at boundaries, we're looking. At putting up the walls and the temple that we don't want people to be coming into. Right. And that is about when do I work? When do I not work? How do I want my team to communicate with me? Is it through a project management tool or is it okay? Five different team members are pinging you on Facebook messenger, email, slack, Voxer, and whatever else you got going on. Right. What, how do you want to show up and what do you want and what do you want to let go of? And that's it. [00:29:04] Diane: yeah, I think that's so nice. And well-rounded for people to just have a moment and be like, do I even have planning and all of those stages? And then how do I want to align those? With my business. Is there a particular pillar that you feel like everybody struggles with at first? So that is the one that people are likely to hit it. It's going to feel a bit discouraging, but they just push through. They can do it. [00:29:27] Staci: I would say. The area that people struggle with is writing their mission statement. That's not even the pillar, And the pillars, they kind of take care of themselves because after. People like I guide them through all these different areas and they just get a dump, everything out. And I say, are, do you have any sticking notes laying around? Do we need to add these to this pillar? Visionaries love a good butcher block paper on the wall with all their ideas. And one of the things I like to say is your team is not feeling confident when you hold the computer up to the wall and say, here's my plan for the next two weeks, you know? And so it's like, okay, let's take those ideas. I think that you should use butcher block paper. I think that you should use whatever you want, but when we get it into a plan that your entire team can see, it needs to be in a place that you're tired and Pyre team can see not on the wall in your office, right. Those things kind of take care of themselves and I can help people decide. Okay, great. These are all the things that you said based on. Your mission statement, which we'll come back to in a minute and your vision statement and your revenue goals, which one of these pillars do we need to build first or work on first. Right? And those things fall into line. A lot of people struggle with their mission statement. And I like to say it's absolutely necessary because. It not only helps you to create a real business, but it helps you understand why the fuck you're doing this some days when you actually just want to burn it all down. And so that is challenging for people. When I work with people to do a mission statement, it's one sentence. It's not your. Biography. It's not your elevator pitch. So for example, my mission is to smash the patriarchy through operations period. Right. That's why I get up every day. That's what I do. What I do on Monday. I had a shitty day. I took the day off that's okay. I got back to it on Tuesday. We're not perfect. Right. So that is the hardest piece of it, but it's absolutely foundational because then it's like, okay, what services are we creating? do I have too many services and it. all builds on itself. I think for some people, vision can also be challenging depending on who you are. There are some people who it's very, very hard to see like five, 10 years. In the future. And I'm like, I don't care about five to 10 years in the future in online business, three months is a lifetime. Like tell me what the next year looks like. We're good. And so that can be challenging or some people get overwhelmed by the things that they do envision, but they're not sure how to get there. And again, that's why we work on clarity direction and a plan. [00:32:33] Diane: Yeah. I think one of the things I see when I talk to people about their mission is they get stuck trying to make it like punchy. Like they think it's like a tagline. And so if you can just remove like the marketing aspect from it for a minute, you may never tell. And what your mission is. They, you may have your elevator pitch and all the other things that you use, but your actual mission that like yours is very simple language. I mean, it's very clear what it is, which is what you want. But I think people try to get really clever with mission and then they get really stuck because we get stuck with everything copywriting. So like just don't copyright your mission. Talk about what it is that you want to do and then be like, how would I tell that to someone in one sentence, preferably like a seven-year-old. [00:33:19] Staci: yes, a hundred percent. And I think the reason, a lot of people, a lot of people struggle with it is. It's the thing. It's one of the things that they skipped over at the very beginning, but I don't have time to write a mission statement. I need money. I need to get some clients in the door. I need to get, you know, I need to be creating some Instagram stories. I need to do all these things and they're not wrong. Like, you know, I didn't create a mission statement when I first started, I was like, I need to do all those things. Right. But at a certain point, it is foundational because. It is exactly. It's why your business exists full stop. [00:34:00] Diane: Especially, if you have a team, you can have a team and not have a mission statement. Cause they have to know whether where that point it's like that north star for your business. [00:34:10] Staci: They have to know why they're coming to work every day and what everybody is working towards. And that's also why the strategic plan is important because if people know, oh, okay, we're going to be focusing on marketing this. Then they know they're going to be focusing on marketing, no surprises and that empowers people to show up. And it also, I think if they, if the entire team is moving in the same direction, it's much, and this goes back to the company culture aspect, the entire team is going in the same direction. And you see how things could be done differently. You're going to be more inclined to speak up because you know, your ideas are going to be heard. [00:34:57] Diane: So much power from a strategic plan from just making you a better business person to helping your team to smashing the patriarchy. I love it. so to finish up, I always like to ask my guests a couple of questions and I'll be really interested to see your answers in particular to this. So first up, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? [00:35:18] Staci: This is a great question, because this is something we talk about in the boundaries aspect of the professional development pillar. For me in a state example that I use, I don't work in the morning. My mornings are dedicated to coffee and reading, walking the dogs and Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it's yoga. And then that means I start work at about 10 30. Am I perfect? Nope. Have I. Have I broken my boundaries. Yep. What happens is I am incredibly anxious and stressed out because I checked email at seven 30 in the morning, or I've checked click up, which is my project management tool. And I say things that have come in from the night before. And I think that I need to do them immediately and it throws my entire day off. So that's my boundary. Do I do it all? Nope. Do I see the consequences of when I don't adhere to that hundred percent? [00:36:20] Diane: All linking back to it's that foundational start to your day for you. [00:36:25] Staci: A hundred percent. [00:36:26] Diane: Okay. Finally, I'm looking forward to this one. What's the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you've been given as an entrepreneur. [00:36:34] Staci: Woo. Oh, I would say that I need to be active on social media all the time. [00:36:41] Diane: How active would you say you are on social media? [00:36:45] Staci: I am active on LinkedIn because LinkedIn works for me as an operator. But. I would and I would say that this is a really tricky question. I would say that when I first started, I thought I needed to be on all of the social media platforms all the time and getting my messaging out there, but that's not true to me. It's not authentic to. And it's exhausting to me. And I tried it and I got burnt out and I put my efforts into network and relationship marketing and LinkedIn. So that's, I guess my answer would be the blanket statement that you need a lot of social media? [00:37:37] Diane: we've had such a, well-rounded like almost like a, how to go and audit your business feminist or not back into your values. I'm sure people are going to have more questions and want to connect with you on this topic. Where's the best place on social or on your website for them to carry on the conversation. [00:37:59] Staci: So no surprise. As I mentioned, LinkedIn, you can find me at Stacey Haas child on LinkedIn, and you can also learn more about strategic planning on my website, Stacy hochschild.com. [00:38:14] Diane: Awesome. I'll be sure to link all of that in the show notes as well. So people can easily find you. Thank you so much. [00:38:21] Staci: Thanks for having me, Diane.