The Boss Profiles: Tara McMullin on podcasting and business pivots

The Boss Profiles is a weekly series featuring women entrepreneurs, artists, and creative business owners who make a statement in Megan Auman Jewelry. This week I’m featuring one of my earliest business friends, Tara McMullin.

Tara is the founder of What Works, a private support network for small business owners, and host and executive producer of the What Works Podcast.

Let’s start with a #nothumble brag. What’s great about you and your business?

We are not afraid to ship. My whole team will joke about how fast I can have an idea, come up with a plan, and make it happen. But the truth is, that kind of speed isn’t really a solo endeavor.

Our company is built to ship. We give a lot of attention to making sure that the things we do on a regular basis are a well-oiled machine, which then allows us to play and experiment with new ideas as they come up.

That means we can respond to customer feedback or changes in the market very quickly. It also means we are able to spot a new opportunity and take advantage of it before lots of other people do.

If you only had an hour a day to work on your business, which hour of the day would you pick and what would you do?

I’d say 10am! That gives me plenty of time for a strong workout which primes my brain and body for serious productivity. I’d probably spend that time talking to a small business owner for an episode of my podcast, What Works.

We’ve built our business so that the podcast really is the engine that drives everything else. It supplies content for our community conversations, it gets us in front of new audiences, and it helps me connect with new people.

There is no single activity that drives the business forward more than working on our show. (And let’s be real: I’m not going to fit more than one activity into a single hour.)

What is the bravest thing you’ve done in your business?

Three years ago, I pivoted away from a million-dollar-plus line of business because I realized that it had become out of alignment with my values and vision. The decision wasn’t hard–but the repercussions were.

In order to make the pivot, I brought on new team members, built an all-but-new offer, and completely changed the way I marketed the business. While the company itself runs more smoothly than ever before and our customers love what we do for them more than ever before, we still haven’t made up the revenue we lost in the pivot.

I’m confident we’ll get there–and grow to well beyond what we were producing 3 years ago. But it’s been a tough road.

How do you pick yourself up after a bad day or bad spell in your business?

If it’s just been a bad day, I prioritize movement. Running all the miles, lifting all the heavy weights, or climbing over walls is my antidote to anxiety. It will break whatever spiral I’ve gotten myself into and flood my system with some good old-fashioned endorphins.

If I’m having a bad spell in my business, I prioritize follow-through. One of my most common forms of self-sabotage is letting myself off the hook when a project has gotten to the “good enough” stage. But I know I feel best about the work I’m doing when I truly give it my all–no matter what the results are.

Photo Credit: Sarah Der

Megan Auman Jewelry is all about celebrating strong, confident women. Who’s a woman who is inspiring you right now?

Oh, my! There are so many strong, confident women inspiring me right now–in politics, sports, business, the arts… but I’ll make an unexpected pick. There’s a woman named Kyra Condie who just punched her ticket to the Tokyo 2020 games in sport climbing.

This is the first time that climbing is being included in the Olympics–and, in deciding to include it, the games combined the 3 climbing disciplines into one climbing event. Most climbers specialize in just one of those disciplines: lead, boulder, or speed. So to get into the Olympics for climbing, climbers like Kyra had to retrain for 2 new events they might never compete in on the world stage.

I’m just so impressed and inspired by the motivation, dedication, and follow-through required to adapt to that challenge.

Connect with Tara: Her website. Her Instagram.

Tara is wearing the Flourish earrings in bronze.