Business Tips for Culture Makers
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Business Tools
for Culture Makers
NOT interested in doing business as usual?
Good. Me neither.
The Status Quo business formulas we’re taught everywhere (see also: The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand) produce inequity and injustice…
…and we do NOT have to do it that way.
And…if we scrap the old, unjust business practices, what do we replace them with?
For the last several years, I’ve been developing alternative, justice-informed*, culture-making marketing strategies and tactics. I try them out in my own platform and with clients and then we iterate.
Here are some of the transformative, equitable #BusinessToolsForCultureMakers we’ve had success with that might be useful for you. They can help you want to grow your platform, revenue and reach…while also creating a positive social impact.
* I first heard the term “justice-informed” from Lauren Elizabeth and it’s so wildly useful.
Click for different topics below
I’m looking around at our empowerment spaces at the payment plans being offered and I’m seeing some arguably predatory practices.
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In this Business Tip for Culture Makers, you’ll learn that building consent into your email marketing is a culture making power move that is also good for business.
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See also:
Culture-making Marketing is about our business practices. We can invest in our own communities by selecting apps founded by people with non-dominant identities.
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Women with other dominant identities – white, cis, straight, able-bodied, thin – can leverage their privilege, power, and platforms to make new norms.
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White women entrepreneurs can resist and dismantle white supremacy in their own businesses and marketing by auditing the images they use.
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Our challenge is to develop that well of images while avoiding conventional, performative beauty-signalling that props up existing oppressive narratives.
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Images are an essential business resource and they have culture-making power. For a long time, I knew that but I didn’t know how to herd that set of kittens. So I avoided images altogether. I knew what I didn’t want to do — perpetuate the mandatory pretty that’s a form of internalized misogyny AND perpetuate…
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In this Business tip for Culture Makers, you’ll learn that building consent into your email marketing is a culture making power move that is also good for business.
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What if something we do all the time in online marketing actually reinforces rape culture? I’m talking about opt-ins. Cookies. Not refreshing email consent.
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See also:
I know there’s a lot of hullabaloo about GDPR and that it’s going to be bad for business, but I think it’s something culture-making entrepreneurs can champion.
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In conventional online marketing, we’re taught to “manufacture” authority with a makeover story. Why? So that people will obey our authority and buy.
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Income flow or lack thereof doesn’t tell me how evolved or talented someone is. We need to hire our emerging artists, activists and entrepreneurs.
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When I was first starting out online, I witnessed an influential woman using her platform to boost the signals of others and invest in her community.
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Using your resources and reputation to lift people starting out is a culture making tool. When we use culture-making business practices, everyone can flourish.
Read MoreSee also:
Our attention, efforts and social media comments can and do boost people into the mainstream, so we must avoid boosting the platforms of our opponents.
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Inventing culture-making business ecosystems for yourself means reading way outside your niche and asking “what if…” rather than “how?”
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To get seriously in your marketing groove and feel a sense of deep commitment to putting your work out there, journal. It connects your vision and ambition.
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**We Are Growing The Institutions of The Future**
I believe in the culture makers.
It might not feel like it, but right now -- at our home offices, tiny studios, kitchen tables, massage tables, hot desks, in our garages -- we are growing the institutions of the future.
Many of our most politically significant national organizations started off in someone`s living room as a mutual aid society.
Many a movement kicked off as a meeting around a kitchen table.
A whole lot of businesses get started at kitchen tables, too -- or in garages.
And then they grow into culture-shaping, culture-making institutions.
So....what you`re doing right now really matters.
The challenge for culture-making entrepreneurs is that a lot of the tools for growing businesses + audiences are NOT tools we want to carry into the future.
Take status quo marketing, for example.
Being visible and marketing are game-changing business skills-- ones we need to get our messages out into the world, make sales, and grow.
AND...mainstream marketing systems use shaming and subconscious triggers to get people to buy.
They leverage pain & scarcity so people will buy to `solve` the problem.
Using high-risk "persuasion" tactics and mental/social triggers is something mainstream marketers brag about (!!!!) and teach.
This is the NORM.
These are all dominance tactics. And dominance is not a practice I plan to carry into the future.
We do NOT have to pour oppressive practices into the foundations of our future institutions.
That`s why I know that developing new-world business practices, through a systemic lens, is necessary.
Learning how to message + grow audiences and sales IS important for our businesses right now AND for the institutions we`re growing.
That`s why I teach business through a systemic, feminist lens -- so we have the tools we need to rise & thrive, right now... ...AND in the better future we`re growing, together.
Let`s make money AND justice.
#WeAreTheCultureMakers
www.kellydiels.com
Jun 2
Dear Fat Girl*,
Go ahead and get the photos.
Treat yourself like a work of art.
🌺Because you are.🌺
love + justice,
Kelly
*and anyone whom our dominator culture has silenced, shamed, excluded, punished and discriminated against. We belong here, too. xoxo
#feministselfie #fatliberation #fatacceptance #fatshion #bodypositivity #feministaf #feminist #WeAreTheCultureMakers #wwfkd #girlboss #bossbabe #creativebusiness #womenentrepreneurs #visibility #takeupspace #womensempowerment
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photos by @daniellecohenphotography
hair & makeup by @hillaryfaystudios
May 31
When we have `other` identities, the things society tells us are our individual problems & defects...
overwork
under-earning
lack of time
lack of support
self-doubt
...are almost always a result of systemic problems that have been downloaded onto our shoulders.
But instead of acknowledging that, conventional self-help & women`s entrepreneurship spaces tell us we have a mindset issue, our morning routines are all wrong, we`re not high-vibe or not manifesting hard enough.
In that worldview, the problem is individual: it is you. The world is just. There is nothing in your way except you.
To me, that`s victim-blaming.
The individualist lens of most self-help & business training programs erases the real, systemic & generational challenges you`re navigating daily...
...which leaves us with MORE shame & FEWER practical solutions.
In our business-development and self-development courses, we do it differently.
We Are...
SYSTEMIC -->We develop business through a systemic and feminist lens so that our solutions & systems are practical and grounded in reality (and release shame instead of activating it!). No gaslighting or spiritual bypassing required 🙂
DEVELOPMENTAL -->We build structures & accessibility into our courses based on how people actually develop and create change. We specifically bake in supports for different learning styles, brains, abilities AND your nervous system into our programs
BUILDING NEW WORLD BUSINESSES --> We teach new world business practices that are very different from the status quo and designed to seed new personal & collective realities (IMHO lots of folks teaching biz to marginalized people are simply showing them how to be the exception and do exploitative capitalism better. We`re not content to "add marginalized people and stir")
MAKING MONEY AND JUSTICE -->We are very serious about our clients making money AND justice. Both are non-negotiable. So we have real business savvy, real systems and tactics that grow businesses...without compromising your principles and desire for social change
Because like you, we are here for a future in which we all flourish.
#WeAreTheCultureMakers
kellydiels.com
May 30
We don`t have to like each other to learn from each other.
We don`t need to be BFFs
or even like each other
for me to respect you and your work.
Affection is a nice bonus. But it`s not a requirement.
There`s a way in which the fetishization of "sisterhood"
-- and the expectation that affection is a precondition for our movements and professional collaborations --
sets us up for disappointment and unnecessary conflict.
If we expect to experience sisterhood...
...if sisterhood is the basis of our movement
...and we find we don`t like our `sister` community members...
...then OF COURSE we will trash, exile and shun them.
We`ll make the people we don`t like the problem, when in fact the real problem is our unrealistic expectation of love-love-love all the time.
You know, `sisterhood`.
Because, once again: we do NOT have to like each other to learn from each other.
And...thank goodness.
Because the `thou shalt be likeable` conditioning that`s drilled into girls and women is one of the things constraining our lives and our voices.
Let`s get free of mandatory gendered likeability, everywhere -- including in our feminist communities.
It`s not about charm.
It`s about a mutual commitment to justice and a future in which we all flourish.
www.kellydiels.com
May 12
Business Tip for Culture Makers #301: Use Social Media Posts To Refine Your Ideas
What if social media isn’t a time suck, after all? What if, rather than distracting you from your work, creating short social media posts can be a deliberate refinement practice that helps further develop and concisely articulate your ideas?
Read MoreSee also:
Social Media for Culture Makers: The Certification Program