Business Tips for Culture Makers

KELLY COLLAGE_Feminist Marketing Tools

FREE:

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 Brandproduce inequity and injustice

…and we do NOT have to do it that way.

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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.

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Business Tip for Culture Makers #626: Reconsider Your Payment Plans because Charging Extra for Payment Plans Can Be Exploitative

June 26, 2016

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers 611: Stop Charging Extra for Payment Plans and Do This Instead

June 11, 2020

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #220: Leverage Your Line Items (Software, Apps, Digital Marketing Tools)

February 20, 2019

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #527: Pledge to Only Speak at Events/Podcasts that are SUBSTANTIALLY Inclusive

May 27, 2016

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #816: How to Audit Your Brand Photos for White Supremacy and White Beauty Norms (And Create Different Imagery!)

August 16, 2017

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #1225: Yes, Use Photos of Yourself!

March 19, 2018

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #1220: A Culture Making Approach to Stock Photos

May 31, 2019

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #521: Refresh Consent with a Pre-Launch Email

May 24, 2020

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #529: Nope, Opt-Ins are NOT Mandatory

February 26, 2018

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #54: The GDPR is Good for Consent Culture

May 4, 2018

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #421: Ditch the Makeover Myth

April 21, 2018

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers: Hire Them When They’re Hungry. Hire Them on The Way Up.

March 29, 2016

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #1025: Invest In Your Community

October 25, 2017

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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More Business Tips for Culture Makers: Signal Boost. Refer. Mentor

June 2, 2019

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.

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Business Tip for Culture Makers #301: Use Social Media Posts To Refine Your Ideas

March 5, 2018

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?

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Business Tips for Culture Makers #624: CAUTION: how your principles and beliefs get leveraged and EXPLOITED to grow the platforms of our opponents

June 24, 2019

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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Business Tip for Culture Makers #314: Save Marketing You Love

March 12, 2018

Dear Culture Making Entrepreneurs: let’s learn from what we love.

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Business Tip for Culture Makers #130: Read Outside Your Niche and Ask “What if…?”

January 30, 2018

Inventing culture-making business ecosystems for yourself means reading way outside your niche and asking “what if…” rather than “how?”

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Business Tip for Culture Makers #1230: JOURNAL

December 31, 2017

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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Every week, I send you a

Sunday Love Letter

I write them so that…

  1. You remember your culture-making power
  2. You have the inspiration + tools you need to grow a future in which we all flourish
Are you in?

**We Are Growing The Institutions of The Future** ⁠
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I believe in the culture makers.⁠
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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.⁠
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Many of our most politically significant national organizations started off in someone's living room as a mutual aid society.⁠
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Many a movement kicked off as a meeting around a kitchen table.⁠
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A whole lot of businesses get started at kitchen tables, too -- or in garages.⁠
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And then they grow into culture-shaping, culture-making institutions.⁠
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So....what you're doing right now really matters. ⁠
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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.⁠
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Take status quo marketing, for example. ⁠
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Being visible and marketing are game-changing business skills-- ones we need to get our messages out into the world, make sales, and grow.⁠
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AND...mainstream marketing systems use shaming and subconscious triggers to get people to buy. ⁠
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They leverage pain & scarcity so people will buy to 'solve' the problem.⁠
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Using high-risk "persuasion" tactics and mental/social triggers is something mainstream marketers brag about (!!!!) and teach.⁠
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This is the NORM.⁠
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These are all dominance tactics. And dominance is not a practice I plan to carry into the future.⁠
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We do NOT have to pour oppressive practices into the foundations of our future institutions.⁠
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That's why I know that developing new-world business practices, through a systemic lens,  is necessary. ⁠
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Learning how to message + grow audiences and sales IS important for our businesses right now AND for the institutions we're growing.⁠
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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.⁠
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Let's make money AND justice.⁠
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#WeAreTheCultureMakers⁠
www.kellydiels.com⁠
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Maybe long-term exploitation is why we feel anxious about money.⁠
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No maybe about it.⁠
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#moneyANDjustice⁠
---⁠
www.kellydiels.com