Like the title suggests, I have a podcast!

And when I say I have a podcast, I mean WE have a podcast because I am cohosting it with one of my long-time business friends – Alana Rivera of Etta and Billie Bath and Body Care.

Introducing Welcome to Running a Business – a podcast about everything we didn’t know about running ​a business, and those times we were better off wallowing in ignorance.

Alana and I have spent the better part of a decade talking about small business strategy on our own, and thought that we should bring more of these conversations into the open and talk to even more people about their experiences.

We kick it off with an interview of one of the biggest champions of small business, Donna Maria – the CEO of Indie Business Network. Donna Maria was creating memberships in the earliest days of the internet – before you could set up recurring payments, before people were discovering brands on social media, when eCommerce was a pipe dream for most small businesses, she made it happen. 

This first interview with Donna Maria left us all with lots of feelings (content warning that she brings up a traumatic event that happened to a friend of hers). We got to touch on how our experiences as women, craftspeople, and business owners all intersect.

We have more interviews already recorded, and even a couple of episodes where just Alana and I dive deep and ask each other to reflect on lessons learned. We hope you’ll come along and learn with us.

So who are we to be dishing out small business advice?

Together and separately, Alana and I have been through the gamut – trade show success and misery, scaling headaches, DIY approaches that worked out great (and some that didn’t). We try to bring you the most honest talk we can and hopefully save you some headaches along the way.

Alana started her bath and body care company by making soaps in her kitchen. Over time she scaled up to include lotions, body washes, balms, scrubs and more. Currently she creates private label work, and coaches soap makers and other bath and body care companies to help them build their best businesses.

Me? Most of you know me by now, but I am a jeweler and metalsmith with over 20 years of practice. I had a jewelry production business for 12 years and prior to that worked as an eCommerce manager for Melissa Joy Manning, managing sales, developing custom clients, and content design and strategy for email marketing.

Since about 2018, I have taught the financial planning portion of the business planning courses at the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center. I am also a small business advisor for them and for Women’s Economic Ventures in Ventura County, CA. 

Our aim with this podcast is to bring a refreshing level of honesty about what it takes to start, operate, scale, and fund a small business. And also how our personal lives get involved because sometimes you can’t leave yourself out of the equation. Talking about all of this out in the open makes it all less scary and solitary, don’t you think? 

Patreon subscriptions are free, or you can subscribe at the $3 level to throw a tip in the tip jar. Looking for more non-monetary ways to support our podcast? Subscribing on your favorite platform, liking or rating are all helpful.

And you can listen to our podcast on Spotify or I Heart Radio (not Apple yet, because they have more strict rules, apparently?)

Why do this now? I needed some inspiration

Sometimes you really need to chase the shiny objects. It’s the chase that keeps you engaged, enlightened, and enthusiastic about your work. Finding out if there is a better, more fun, or even just a different way of thinking about your work can help you with that stuck feeling that we all get from time to time.

Starting a podcast had actually been in the back of my mind for years. Alana and I had joked about making one together, but something about 2024 made it the right time for us to chase this particular shiny object. Maybe it was the general chaos that we felt then and still feel, maybe it was a bold sense of “Why not us? Why NOT now?”

Learning a new process, working through frustrations (what DOES this button do in the editing software? Why won’t Apple approve our upload – did we swear too much?) and using our brains in a new way is one way to build resilience into our lives.

Getting to ask what if, trying something new, and doing the scary thing of putting a new project out into the world can build your resilience skills in so many ways. Having the chance to chase your curiosity is something that I hope all of you can experience too.

Like, Subscribe, and join in the conversation on our Patreon.