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How can our businesses be an extension of our embodied values & political view?
If we’re interested in doing business in more embodied ways, we have to examine how the inherited marketing and business practices many of us have been indoctrinated into are not rooted in the values WE hold dear.
Today we’re speaking with Feminist Business Educator Kelly Diels about marketing practices that can shift culture & what it looks like in practice.
From social media to email marketing, how we choose the images we use and what we actually market, Kelly shares with us practical suggestions for genuinely liberatory practices in business.
“If we’re making policies, we’re holding power.
Kelly Diels on being a business owner
We’re creating culture.”
In this interview, we explore:
- How Kelly incorporates her political & culture-making practices into her business
- Transcending the inherited status quo marketing tactics to align selling with your values
- The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (FLEB) & how to know if you’re centering this (or your body of work) in your marketing
- Strategies Kelly uses in her business to shift culture – from email consent, how she chooses imagery & signal boosting
- The input Kelly uses to fuel prolific (& powerful) expression
- Creating consistency on social media when you’re an ebb & flow kind of person
About Kelly Diels
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Kelly Diels is feminist educator, writer, and coach. She specializes in feminist marketing for culture-makers. She’s here to raise awareness about how the business-as-usual formulas we learn everywhere actually reproduce oppression. She develops and teaches alternate, feminist marketing tools to help us do it differently (and better).
Resources from today’s podcast
- Kelly’s work
- Kelly on Instagram
- Feminine Embodiment Coaching – an emotional embodiment & vulnerability-based professional training for coaches
- Primal Feminine Flow – Embodied At Home Movement Practice
- School of Embodied Arts
- Leave a podcast review on iTunes here
- Thought or reflection to share? Leave a comment on Instagram here
Transcript
(This transcript is generated by AI so might not be perfect)
Hello and a very warm welcome to this conversation with myself. Jenna Ward, hostess of the Future is Embodied conference and Kelly Diels feminist educator, writer and coach. In today’s conversation, we’re exploring marketing practices that can shift culture and how we might transcend the business as usual formulas to instead find more feminist marketing tools that can help us to work differently and better. This is a very rich conversation, really useful for any coach, entrepreneur person involved in marketing or copywriting or selling their services or skills to the world. And we’re taking a look at how many conventional marketing strategies can reproduce systems of oppression and how we might instead shift our businesses to create new culture by using different practices. Kelly is very generous in sharing some of the practices that she uses around social media, copywriting, email marketing, and pricing her work. And so this is a really valuable conversation for anyone who’s interested in creating a more feminist, a more genuinely liberatory or embodied way of marketing and selling their work. A really warm welcome to this conversation because that’s essential as I warmly welcome you Kelly. So to get started, I’d love just to hear a little bit about you personally and know what is your mission, your passion as a creative, as an entrepreneur, as a human, and how did you find yourself doing it? Because you have a very specialty, beautiful body of work and I would just love to learn a little bit about what the heart of it is and how you got to be doing that. Kelly Diels (02:07):
Yeah, there’s a couple of threads I think we can weave together. So one is that I’ve always been a little bit of a rebel. As soon as I write down a list for myself, there’s no chance that anything on that list is getting done because now I’m going to recoil about being bossed around. I have this little streak inside of me that doesn’t respond well to authority pressure. I also have a history, and this might resonate with some people or it might be too much information, but I have a history of surviving childhood sexual abuse. And I can tell you that when I was 11 years old, I was at the library hanging out at the library all day, every day during the summer. I love the books and the magazines, and I started reading Ms Magazine and I discovered in Ms Magazine that there was a thing called sexual abuse and it was actually relentlessly common all over the world, and it was a thing that happened to girls and women.
(03:04):
And it happened because we live in a society that privileges men and treats women’s bodies as objects. And I learned about power and what happened for me in that moment when I discovered that is all my shame that I had been experiencing in my life went away because I realized like, oh, it’s not that I’m a uniquely bad girl or a bad person and that’s why this is happening to me. This is not my shame to carry. This is his shame to carry. There’s nothing wrong with me. And it’s just like something happened to me in that moment that it just dissolved my shame and activated my power so I could start making evasive moves. I didn’t go to the police until I was much older like 10 years later, but I started protecting myself and advocating for myself in a way that I hadn’t before.
(03:52):
Not that an eleven-year-old should have to do that, but I’m just trying to say to you there is a real power in understanding. There are social circumstances and power circumstances that have nothing to do with you, but that land on you and mark you and wound you in very specific ways that feels personal. And when you realize it’s not personal, it’s not you, it’s not because you are uniquely defective, then the shame dissolves, the power activates. And so having that visceral experience
of shame-dissolving power, activating because I could see a bigger system at work that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with me, that was a really signature moment in my life and I’ve had that moment several times throughout my life. So now it’s just become a truism that when we map the larger circumstances, when we understand the systems we’re navigating and the power dynamics we’re navigating, we can dissolve shame, we can get out of shame and into our power.
(04:46):
I think that is actually the heart of my work is how do we dissolve shame and get into power, get out of shame, into power? And I even think that’s the heart of my work as a business coach and a marketing teacher because a lot of us have a lot of shame around charging for money or asking for attention as we advocate for our brands and businesses. We have a lot of shame about that because we shouldn’t be doing that. We shouldn’t be asking for attention. So wherever I can help culture-making entrepreneurs dissolve their shame about asking for attention and dissolve their social conditioning, that asking for attention as a woman is wrong. Wherever I can do that, I feel like I’m doing my work, which is dissolve. Shame, get out of shame, get into power. So there’s many different arenas into that, but that’s the work,
Jenna Ward (05:33):
And it’s such a very necessary body of work because I have to say for myself, there’s been very different circumstances, but a very similar activation and empowerment of understanding the systems that we exist within and using that information to better navigate how I am and how I show up in the world.
Kelly Diels (05:58):
I say that’s how we make evasive moves. It’s like I think about Wonder Woman and the Invisible Jet. If you don’t know you’re looking for an invisible jet, you can’t see it. It just looks like a woman hurtling through space. But if you know what to look for, you can see the shapes of those invisible barriers and now you can stop smashing into them and now you can stop getting walloped by them you didn’t see them coming. So I want us to be able to map that invisible power terrain, map the circumstances, and then make our invasive moves as culture makers so that we don’t get decimated by them and so that we can creatively shape something new. I say we play the game to change the game that comes from my friend Meghna Madjavadar. She’s brilliant, but that’s what we’re doing. I’m here to win and help win, but not in the existing rules because the existing rules have harmed me. They’ve harmed so many women. I know they harmed so many people with marginalized identity. So the rules, the status quo as it is, is not acceptable. How do we reshape it? Well, first we have to stop getting walloped by it. We’ve got to be able to make those invasive moves.
Jenna Ward (06:59):
I think this is really useful because you’ve described yourself as a business coach. Your work extends into copywriting also into the realm of personal development. I feel as it is shifting definitely into power. So I think it’s quite unique and I don’t see a lot of this in the marketplace. There’s a lot of great analysis down the end of the spectrum of activism. What are these social conditions? How does that work? Then there’s this personal development work of transforming shame. But when we get up into how does this now infiltrate and influence how I operate and run my business, there’s often not a lot of this full spectrum analysis, which is why I’m not going to lie. I’m big fan of your work and I followed you and recommended you for ages. So I am really curious just to hear your thoughts around the entrepreneur.
(07:57):
Like you and I are both online entrepreneurs, predominantly the entrepreneurial landscape as it exists, and we are in different parts of the world. You’re in the northern hemisphere, I’m in the southern hemisphere. So we have different experiences of what the landscape is and everyone joining us for this conversation, we’ll have a different impression of what the entrepreneurial landscape is. But my sense is this full system analysis in terms of how our work is either shaping a better culture and future or not is actually woefully lacking. Most of what’s happening in a lot of industries is really problematic. And I’m just curious to hear a little bit from you in terms of what you feel the landscape is and why you’re so passionate about bringing this into particularly the business setting. Because I don’t see it happening. I don’t see it as a common conversation. Yeah,
Kelly Diels (08:51):
I think it’s getting more and more common. I’m seeing more and more people have it, but it is still woefully inadequate and there’s very few of us. But here’s the thing. Before I came to this work as a business teacher, I taught political philosophy. I’m a political theorist by training, so there’s a connection there and I couldn’t turn it off. So when I started wanting to work online and do my services online first as a writer and later as a business teacher, the status quo marketing tactics that I was being taught, the inheritance that I was being taught didn’t resonate with my personal principles. They’d actually completely contravened my personal principles. So I was being taught to manipulate and trick and lure people into situations where they were making subconsciously triggered decisions, which is counter to everything I stand for in this world. And so in order to get my people into transformative business work, I was having to trigger them into disempowered decisions.
(09:58):
And I was like, how do I do that? It literally undermines my work in the world. So I was having a problem with the inherited status quo business tactics. I couldn’t line them up with how I wanted to work in the world and what I was trying to do in the world. So I had to do something differently. So I had to start making up counter moves. I had to start making up different ways of marketing, different ways of emailing, different ways of copywriting so that I was landing in this high consent place with transparent decision-making empowered decision-making rather than disempowered decision-making. I had to make it up. And I guess the full spectrum analysis is when we have a picture of the bigger conditions, we understand how ideas shape culture and how practices shape culture. And then we understand that we are culture makers in our businesses where we are literally making policies.
(10:49):
What are we? We’re little institutions. We are making policies that our clients have to adhere to. We’re making policies about how things unroll. If we’re making policies, we have power, which means we are shaping culture. If we are making media in the world, we’re not just being assaulted by women’s magazines who tell us we’re fat, ugly, dumb and need to buy this perfume. We are now the culture makers creating the media that shapes other people because we’re posting on social media. So I just want us to understand in the full spectrum analysis that culture isn’t just acting on us. The inheritance isn’t just something acting on us. It can flow through us and if it can flow through us, we can make a new outcome. What comes out of us can be different. So that’s what I want is I want us to understand that whatever’s flowing through our business, whatever’s flowing through the media we create as advertising, it is shaping culture. It is shaping other people. So what is the impact we want to have? And that often means we have to deviate from what we’ve been taught, and that’s what I’m trying to do is invent ways for us to deviate and make counter moves.
Jenna Ward (11:55):
This makes perfect sense to me because it’s an alignment of the values that I hold, as in my case, an embodiment coach and practitioner for liberation, freedom to inhabit your body, the freedom of expression, all of these values that I hold, Kelly Diels (12:11):
All of those things, yes, it’s Jenna Ward (12:12):
A way for that to also exist in how my business is run. And that has taken a lot of navigating and contemplation and learning and unlearning, and it continues to require that over the years, one of the things that I learned and unlearned from you and from your culture making expression is around the female empowerment lifestyle brand. And this was actually when I was very first introduced to your work many, many years ago, and it was pretty pivotal to me because as you named this particular harmful culture making dynamic, I began to look at where am I doing this and what do I want to do instead? So having your lens of analysis really helped me personally to do much better in the way that I represented my work. I’d love it if you could share a little bit with us around what this is, what it looks like for those who might not have heard it before.
Kelly Diels (13:11):
So I have this archetype that I see and I call it the female lifestyle empowerment brand, and those words are very carefully chosen. So what I see is female that we are encouraged to show up in super feminine ways and to objectify our femininity and our beauty and our status and our privilege in order to get attention. And that to me is problematic because not everyone can do that. So what that says is the only people who are allowed to show up online and make money are people who are professionally pretty white thin, high status wealthy, all of those things, and they are allowed to have attention. Well, what is new about that, right? And what do you do if you’re a fat woman? What do you do if you are a brown or a black woman? What do you do if you are disabled?
(13:59):
What if you do when you identities deviate from all of the high status markers of oppression and privilege, what’s now your path to power? So I want us to question that whenever we’re feeling like we have to show up in that way and find ways to show up as we are and in our images and media that we create, make sure that we’re not only showing those images, that creates a very narrow culture where only certain people are allowed to be visible. So we have an opportunity not to do that. So that’s one of the trends is we are supposed to be likable, pliable, objectified, and we are asked to do it to ourselves in order to gain respect and resources. Then I see lifestyle. So I see people using their lifestyles to signal wealth and leisure to other overworked and overwhelmed women. And what that is is displaying a power differential saying, if you do what I do, then you too will have this thing.
(14:55):
So instead of showing up with actual earned status, which is credibility, authority, expertise, knowledge, 10,000 hours, all of the things that we create in our bodies of work, we’re encouraged to show up instead of as leaders as lifestyle. Let me show you my cute kids and my vacation and my pretty shoes, and I’m just like, that is nothing new. And that is just perpetuating privilege because then how do you show up if you don’t have pretty shoes or three kids or you’re queer or So again, it’s just reinforcing the most privileged identities. We can do something different than that and still make money. I’m making a ton of
money and I don’t do those things. And I also have to add, acknowledge I’m blonde, I’m pretty, I’m a white woman, all of those things. So I just have to note that when I’m showing up, I also a woman in a bigger body, I’m a fat woman, so I take photos of myself and I put my whole body out there all over the place.
(15:50):
If you look at my Instagram, because I’m trying to show, look, your biases about fat people aren’t true. Here’s how I actually am and I deserve to take up space. And every time I do that, I’m creating more space for other women who don’t fit that female lifestyle, empowerment, brand mold, which is just the perfect white woman, which is nothing new. And then empowerment is how in our women’s empowerment spaces and our self-development spaces and our business entrepreneurship spaces, we use the language of empowerment, but we’re not using it in the way that it really means. And what I mean is we use words like liberation and empowerment and feminist, but we are using it in ways that just mean I personally am going to advance. It doesn’t mean we are going to change our culture. And what I want us to do is if we’re going to use political language and inspiring language that gets people on our projects because they want to be part of this girl power movement, they want the advancement of women, then we need to actually have some things that have a bit of a collective consciousness.
(16:55):
We need personally to have a collective consciousness and not just be about let’s make some rich white ladies a little richer. So I want us to, if we’re going to use those kinds of language, I want us to actually have some stuff to back it up. If not, don’t use it because it creates the illusion that you are this thing when you’re not that thing. And then brand is, this again, is nothing new. Throughout history, women have been objectified. We have been objects for sale, and now we are learning ways to turn ourselves into objects for sale. So we’re self objectifying and I’m just like, why do we have to do that? I’m not an object for sale. So when you buy my work, you are not buying me. You’re not buying into relationship with me. You are buying my ideas. You are buying my expertise, you are buying time with me or a course with me, but I’m not going to objectify myself with presenting myself the way my culture wants me to present myself in order to be acceptable. I’m not going to worry about being acceptable to the male gaze. I’m not going to worry about turning myself into knots to be what our culture says acceptable. I’m going to be my fat smart self and I’m going to make money doing it, and I’m going to make sure that I teach other people how to stop struggling, stop under earning and start flourishing instead
Jenna Ward (18:16):
As you speak, I got a strong vibe of no shame here, just all the power, which is exactly what you were speaking about at the beginning. And I feel like there’s such a deep level of analysis, contemplation, and accountability in the, what would be the acronym? Flip?
Kelly Diels (18:38):
Yeah, flip. Isn’t that terrible? Doesn’t that sound like something you’d blow out of your nose? I love it. Flip, but Jenna Ward (18:42):
I think that’s perfect for it because don’t want to be that. Make sure I don’t have a picture under the Eiffel Tower with croissant being like, come train with me because I happen to be in Europe. I see a lot of these coaches and people online whose mega wealth is built just because it’s just this incredibly beautiful aesthetic that is presented to the world. And underneath what I hear a lot of you say in terms of what’s the alternative and then what are we shifting the gaze really to, and I know you take a stand for this, I believe, is around really developing what your body of work is and your signature body of work is. And you’ve even demonstrated it on this call in terms of your early experiences that really informed you that transformation of shame to power and how that is now really super centric to your body of work.
(19:36):
It’s in the world, and I feel like in my case, for example, my body of work is around the skill of feminine embodiment and the skill of really resensitizing your body to become a full spectrum woman. That’s my body of work. It has a lot to do with the identities that I hold because this shapes my personal experience of how I’ve come to it. And all of my clients will have very different bodies and very different experiences in how they come home to their body, but it also has very little to do with my identity as a mother of one or what my lifestyle looks like or where I live or how many holidays I take a year. The body of work has nothing to do.
Kelly Diels (20:24):
Yeah, you’re trying to lead with your actual substance, your actual credibility, and I am not even mad honestly at people who embody the female lifestyle and power brand. The social conditioning to do that is very strong and it’s just the status quo.
That’s what we’re all taught. We’re all in the water, we’re all wet. I’m not mad at any individual people. All I’m trying to do is show that there’s a pattern here that we are implicitly being coerced into subconsciously, and we don’t know there’s another way to be. So all I want to do is raise attention to this thing is actually not good for us individually because it makes us play small. We have to shave off the edges of who we are to fit in that box, and that’s never good for your business. And it’s not good for our culture because we’re just reinforcing this narrow little sliver of who’s acceptable.
(21:12):
So it’s not good for us, but I’m not mad at anyone who’s doing it because that’s 90% of what we’re taught. I just want to provide an alternative and I never go after individuals and be like, this person is this, and no, they were raised in the same culture I was. Let’s try to do it differently. And I don’t have any control over their businesses at all, so I can make a ruckus in their comments. And all that means is they’ll send me a legal letter, doesn’t mean anything. Right? So what I’m interested in is who wants to do it differently? Come, let’s play.
Jenna Ward (21:46):
Yes. I also feel like if we’re shifting away from this outdated model, it forces us to really clarify, well, what is your body of work? What are you taking?
Kelly Diels (21:58):
Yes. What is your work? Jenna Ward (22:00):
And to really, because that’s very difficult to distill and nail and it takes a lot of time and expertise to really develop and claim and even understand what your body, I was doing my body of work for a few years before I really was like, oh, that’s what it is. And so I feel like any process that can actually help us to speed up or to crystallize what our body of work is by not doing these destructive or performative marketing tactics, but actually forcing us in a way to really look at what is it that you’re taking a stand for? What’s the heart of it? What’s the system that exists as a body of work? I feel like anything that supports or encourages us to distill and crystallize this is ultimately much more valuable for a business because that is an asset.
That’ss, not you. That’s your intellectual property, that’s your system, that’s your process. That’s actually what sits at the heart of a business. I believe this body of work.
Kelly Diels (23:10):
It is. Can I just, I want to invite one of my bodies of work in right now. One second, Speaker 3 (23:14):
Please. Yes, baby. Oh, you’re soaking wet, baby. I’m recording a podcast right now. How you doing? You’re soaking wet, so I’ll be a few minutes. Love you so much. Thanks.
Kelly Diels (23:38):
Can you shut the door? Thanks. I don’t know if you leave that in or not. I don’t care. Either way. Somehow I feel it might even be a culture move to leave it in, but sorry, I’m
Jenna Ward (23:46):
Good with leaving it in. My little one just ran past my office window just to scare off a bird in my garden. I was like, I’m pretty sure we can all hear her screaming and yelling. I didn’t hear it in the background, but I think
Kelly Diels (23:58):
She’s probably Jenna Ward (24:02):
Okay.
Kelly Diels (24:02):
Sorry. No. Oh, sorry. Coming back. Jenna Ward (24:06):
Yes, please.
Kelly Diels (24:07):
Okay. Your body of work is your number one business asset. This is why people come to work with you. Sorry. Jenna Ward (24:16):
Yeah, it’s number one. I’m just being like, yes, I’m so down. Kelly Diels (24:20):
The more you talk about it, the more you talk about it, the more people understand that this thing exists and the more you say, I have a process that helps you do this to move out of this and into this, the more people will want to work with you. So yes, of course people will be attracted to you. Wealth signaling, of course people will be attracted to you, privilege signaling. Of course they will, but you’re never going to have a lot of confidence in your work if that’s how you’re getting them in because you don’t know if they love you and love your work for what you’re actually bringing to the table or for that image that you’re presenting. And what I find about myself is I can talk about my work all day long and if I am talking about my values, that is a never ending source of marketing fuel, talking about what matters to me.
(25:03):
I can do that all day long every day. It’s not hard. So it’s easy for me to market when I’m proud of my work and I’m proud of the way I’m marketing and I want to talk about what I’m doing. I don’t necessarily want to show you pictures of my backyard or what have you. I remember there was a moment where I was pretty seduced by this thing and it sort of proceeded that a light bulb like, oh, this is a thing, and I took a really cute picture and I was going to post it, and then I noticed that there was a towel in the background hanging in the back of a chair. So then I tried to make my kid do the cute thing again after I moved the towel. And then I was like, what am I even doing with my life at this moment in time?
(25:38):
Right? I’m staging my life to get attention. The reason that works though is because humans interpret signs of wealth and of privilege as signs of leadership, and that subconsciously gets us in our obedience mode, and that’s useful for sales. If someone’s going to obey you when you say bye, that’s useful, but that’s not how I want to operate. I don’t want people making subconscious obedience decisions because I’m displaying signs of privilege. I want people to see the ideas and be like, yes, I want to work on that thing. Let’s do that thing anyways. I know we can market and lead with our work. I’m not saying build it and they will come. I’m saying build a body of work and then talk about it everywhere.
Jenna Ward (26:21):
Totally agreeing with you on all fronts around that. Now, in terms of build a body of work, speak about it a lot. You are very prolific in your expression. You’re a copywriter, I believe by trade, and I find that you have your expression when you put pen to paper or maybe it’s fingers to keyboards, whatever it is you write some very compelling copy, copy that is insightful, valuable, meaty, you’re, what’s your secret?
Kelly Diels (26:56):
I read a lot and I was just talking to a friend of mine who has two phds and we were talking about the writing process because we are both very prolific and we were both saying, when you have lots of ideas coming in and you’re reacting to them and you’re synthesizing them, it’s easy to flow on the other side sometimes most of the time. So usually it’s just as long as I’m getting lots of high quality creative input, I have high quality creative output. The only time that that’s different for me is if I’m trying to write a book, then there’s a point at which I have to stop researching and just sit down and make it mine. But for shorter pieces of content like blog posts, newsletters, social media reels, all those things, in order to create, I need high quality input so that I’m always feeding my ideas.
(27:43):
And I guess the other piece of that is ideas. You can be an adequate writer, but if you have hot ideas, it will come through. So it’s really, again, paying attention to your body of work and staying on your leading edge. Lots of incoming ideas mean lots of outgoing ideas. Ideas are the source, and honestly, that is what people pay me for is for my ideas. And whether you are an embodiment coach or a massage therapist, whatever, even what you’re doing with your body, it’s still coming from your ideas. It’s your approach to massage therapy. It’s your strategic understanding of bodies, it’s your instinct about what to do. So sometimes what I hear in the embodiment space is that we are supposed to get out of our heads and into our bodies, and I’m like, my brain is part of my body. I need all of it. I need all of it. I need the physical sensation. I need the emotions. I need the intuition. I need to pick up the psychological cues around me, and I need my brain to be part of this. It’s not just what am I physically sensing, it’s also what meaning am I making out of it? And that is then my contribution.
Jenna Ward (28:50):
This point has actually been a really big theme of our conference because we’ve been speaking about how are we creating a more embodied future and what kind of analysis, what kind of your brain is part of your body, what kind of understanding of the systems and the ways that we are operating do we need in order to really fuel and inspire and really be not only just sensing in our body, which is an incredibly important skill and gift, and one that’s underdeveloped for a lot of people, but how do we actually bring even more conviction in our wanting to live in body based heart centered ways, while also having a really intellectual analysis of how we got here and how it’s actually going to shift. So I very much appreciate the intellectual component. I feel like we’ve spoken with a lot of incredibly brilliant women and people over the course of this conference who all have something really valuable to add. And in my experience, it’s very catalyzing for me and it reveals new sources of power and passion within me to have that level of analysis. I’m hungry for it.
Kelly Diels (30:11):
I am
Jenna Ward (30:11):
For it. I see it as a full spectrum, just like a full spectrum human. Kelly Diels (30:15):
Well, and what I think too is the link between my brain and my heart is tight. The reason I’m applying my analysis to things and trying to figure things out and strategize about things and understand the history of ideas and how did we get here and how is culture flowing through us and how can we interrupt it is because my heart is active, because I feel it. This is a source of love for me. I’m the mother of five black children, so I have a ringside seat for the oppression and discrimination that they
navigate in this world. I don’t have the same experience as them, but I see it and I advocate for them, and they’re a soft place to land. So when I look at the world and think this world is not safe for black children and black adults, that is my heart talking and then that brings my brain online.
(31:03):
It’s like, okay, so what do we do about this? How do we understand this? How do we shift this? My experience as an abused child, abused girl child, that is a very embodied experience and my love for other women and other children, not just my own, is brings my analysis online. So why is this happening? How do we change it? What do we do about it? And it’s one of the reasons then that I have very high consent practices in my entrepreneurship and my business and my marketing because if I want to create a culture where consent is valued, I cannot override it in my own business. That’s being a culture making whatever I’m trying to create, I’m trying to do myself in my own things. That’s culture making. So my brain and my heart, the system is tight. It’s not like my head says this and my heart says this. It’s like my heart gets activated, my brain joins the team,
Jenna Ward (32:00):
And together they figure out something. Fabulous. Right. So you speak about this concept of culture making. If you could give us some, you gave a beautiful example just then around consent, and I’ve seen in your email newsletters very clear consent. It looks like I’m going to start talking about this launch or this event, and I’m checking in, do you want to hear this or not? And having really clear, just really, really clear consent around that. I’ve learned a lot from watching you do that, and I think it’s really beautiful. I’m wondering if there’s any other tools or practices around this concept of culture making that you might be able to give us to give people who are listening and joining us for this conversation, even more of a sense of what does it look like to actually employ perhaps countercultural, but culture making practices in the way that we decide to run our business so that it can be more aligned with our values? Are there any other practices or tools?
Kelly Diels (32:58):
I mean, I have lots. Jenna Ward (33:00):
I’m sure
Kelly Diels (33:01):
I’ll give you a meta skill for this so that you don’t have to just substitute my judgment for your own. So the meta skill is whatever in our culture that you see as being harmful, what are the practices that are creating that? And then look at your own business and your own leadership. What can you do that’s the opposite of that as a starting place, we don’t want to just stop with being opposite, but what are the alternatives? So when I say that I make a connection between overriding women and girls consent with fostering sexual abuse, that isn’t just something that only happens between two people in these weird little, that’s a culture wide thing where women’s consent is overwritten. So then I’m like, okay, so in my business in marketing, how am I overriding consent? How can I build up the practice of consent so that it becomes normal?
(33:54):
So that you pointed out for example, that when I’m about to launch, rather than just assuming because you’re on my list, that you want to receive 20 emails over 20 days about a program, I send an email zero, which is like, Hey, I’ve got this thing coming out and before I send you anything, let’s check in. Do you want to receive these 14 emails? Because if not, you can click here and opt out of those emails. You’ll still get my newsletter. So I don’t assume consent isn’t one and done one and done consent is part of the problem. So I’m like, what do I do in my world where I have actual control over the policies? What do I do that is different? Another one would be, I mentioned about my fat body. Our culture does not like fat. Women does not like fat people has real strong biases against them.
(34:38):
I’m supposed to disappear, I think, and not exist. So what do I do? I put my photos everywhere and I take up more space so that other people in different bodies feel like they have permission to show up as well. That’s culture making. I specifically in my imagery don’t only put out images of thin pretty white women. I’m specifically looking for how do I embody the future that I’m envisioning in my media and I create images like that. So that’s what I want us to do is whatever assets we have, whatever things we are creating, whatever things we have control over, whatever we object to, is there a different way to do it in our own policies where we are the actual bosses, you actually have control over that, and that is creating a little microculture in your business that your clients and your teammates are experiencing.
(35:29):
That is you creating a little microculture in your home where you experience a different reality and learn different norms. And when those bubbles start linking up and your bubble intersects with my bubble, we start creating this bigger and bigger culture where these things are the norm. That is culture making. It is not simply that we are born into cultures and they irrevocably shape us. Yes, that happens. We shape them back. If we all disappeared tomorrow, so would our cultures. So
that means they flow through us. Whatever we do creates culture. So the meta-skill is look at what you object to and then look at areas where you actually control things and what can you do differently.
Jenna Ward (36:09):
Another one that I observe you do is kind of signal boosting. So if we are shifting away from these models of competition and scarcity and there’s not enough for everyone, and I have to kind of feel threatened by other people who might have something to contribute to the conversation, if we’re shifting away from that and instead to there’s more than enough, and each of us have our specific spot, I assume that’s possibly part of the analysis underneath your really clear signal boosting and sharing of a lot of other people’s work, which I noticed that you do. And in fact, one of our other speakers at the conference, Dr. Kimberly B. George, I think I found Kimberly’s work via you. Many, many, many moons ago. Know each other well, yes, many, many moons ago.
Kelly Diels (36:59):
So she’s someone that is a great example of someone to learn from. She has robust feminist analysis and she operationalizes it so we can figure out how to build our liberation, our liberatory consciousness. So I think she’s amazing. I lost the plot.
(37:17):
Signal boosting. Yes. So signal boosting is important to me because I want us all to win. And I know the game is stacked against women entrepreneurs and women in general. So I want us to rise, and one of the factors for a successful career or successful business is being able to network. That’s what we call it, the old boys club, because those things actually work. So if we can create a feminist ecosystem where we are shining each other up, we are telling each other about each other’s work, and we are making sure that opportunities circulate, then where all of our businesses are going to do well, I even signal boost people who would be my direct competition. But I don’t think there is competition, right? There’s lots of clients in this world and I cannot possibly handle them all. So there’s lots of room for all of us to do.
(38:06):
Well, I also think that I’m not the expert of everything. So I want to stay in my lane and do my work, and at the same time, I care about a lot of other things. So I’m going to signal boost people who are doing really important work that I’m not doing and understand that that takes some responsibility off my shoulders. I don’t have to be all things to all people. The world can be changed when we’re all doing our part. So my job is to signal boost the people who are doing the things that I can’t possibly do, and I also signal boost the people who are doing the things that I can do because there’s more than enough to go around. And this is how you know what I was saying about empowerment. It’s not just one person doing better at the expense of everyone else. It’s when we are all doing better and when we’re all flourishing, which is what we’re here to do.
And when we have the tools to boost each other as a collective, not just to be like, I’m going to be the one who crawled out of the crab bucket.
Jenna Ward (39:02):
Yes, that excites me a lot because I have more people to play with. Kelly Diels (39:08):
But it also takes responsibilities off your shoulder too. So I’m really passionate about trans rights and Black lives matter, but it’s not my specific work in the world, right? I am here as a teacher and a philosopher and a business teacher. So the people who are doing incredible activism work in those spaces. It’s not my job to take opportunities away from them or to do parallel work or try to be the expert in this space. It’s my job to signal boost their incredible work. And guess what? Then I can bring my particular genius and focus on that. And it’s when we all bring our tools to the party that something really happens.
Jenna Ward (39:45):
I love this. Now, I’ve heard you say in this interview just a little while ago, you said, and I’m making tons of cash, something along those lines. I’m making tons of banks, something along those lines. It was an indicator towards things are going well and you’re really successful in sitting in that. I’m really curious if you have any thoughts around, I think for a lot of people when we think of culture making and the idea of letting our businesses be informed by our values, our politics, that might mean that we have to earn less or that we can’t be really financially abundant because there’s a lot of stereotypes around really passionate healers, entrepreneurs, women who were starving.
Kelly Diels (40:31):
Just wondering Jenna Ward (40:32):
If you wanted to speak to that. I think it’s an Kelly Diels (40:33):
Area. Yeah, I want us to flourish. I’m not here for any of us to starve or do worse or under earn and over give. I want to interrupt that. That’s really important to me. So here’s what I know. The most successful marketing is when you zig when
everyone else is zagging. So if you show up in your industry and you are being you and no one else can be you, and you are saying what matters to you, and you are building your ethics and your principles and your political commitments into your practices. Now your marketing is completely different than anyone. It is completely yours. That is a marketing asset. Your principles are a marketing asset right there in you. You don’t have to perform them. So whenever you’re doing that, your marketing is going to come alive and people are going to want to be around you.
(41:20):
And what happens in their heart is they look at that and they consume all of that, and their result is it’s you and only you. So that kind of marketing is a number one asset. So when I was trying to be a female lifestyle empowerment brand and taking the towel off the chair and restaging the photo, when I was trying to do that, I was playing small. I was trying to be somebody else. I was trying to fit into the stereotype of the perfect woman, and I had to shear off all the things that were really me and what I really believed in. And as a result, my marketing and my images were just totally mediocre and flat and just like everyone else’s. But when I took myself off that leash and I started thinking about all the things I had been shamed for and thinking that they were sources of power and using those things, then I started standing out and my business completely took off.
(42:12):
So I know for a fact when you market in that way, your marketing stands out and your business does better. I also was vaguely ashamed of my work before when I was trying to be a female lifestyle empowerment brand because it never felt authentic. And it felt like if I wasn’t showing up shiny, working happy and smiling, then I needed to disappear. So then I had to disappear for long amounts of time. So I would stop and start constantly. Well, stopping and starting is terrible for your business. You need consistent momentum and traction. You can’t stop start, stop, start, stop, start and ever get momentum. So when I started being aligned with my work and marketing on my terms, my way unapologetically with my principles and my social justice commitments, now my business did well because I could do that all day every day, consistently had lots to say about all of those things, and I could just be me. I didn’t have to play small. I could just be me. So now I’m not ashamed of my work. I love talking about it. I love to send that email. I’m not ashamed. So if you are not ashamed of your marketing, you will do more marketing. If your marketing is distinct because you are distinct, your marketing will do better. Your business will do better.
Jenna Ward (43:25):
This makes perfect sense. Now, you just were mentioning one of the things that really supported you was shifting the shame around your marketing, and then that created a lot more consistency because you didn’t have to go and peek out and then hide when you weren’t so perky. Most of my marketing is about deep, uncomfortable vulnerable stuff. So I feel like right, the opposite
Kelly Diels (43:48):
Of,
Jenna Ward (43:48):
I feel like I’m the opposite. I poke out when it’s like, ah, are things feeling gritty? But that too shifts with time. But I wanted just to laser in. I know we have a lot of individuals joining us for this conversation who identify as embodied practitioners, but who also identify with kind of a devotion in the flavor of the feminine, which is this feeling non-linear, more cyclic human being. And in the way that I run my business, I want to be able to embrace my feminine qualities of not always having to be super linear or keeping to an external timeline if that’s not what my inner season or my inner state is like. And so I’m just wanting to hear some of your ideas and comments. I know you have some around this idea of you need to be consistent in your business. And then how do you also honor your body? I have some practices that I already use around this, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too.
Kelly Diels (44:53):
So being consistent in your marketing and your business doesn’t mean that you’re showing up every day in efforting. Agreed. So I am an ebb and flow person. I’m a super creative person. So what’ll happen is I’ll have one week where I’m super on fire and just prolific and writing up a storm and creating up a storm, and I knocked a course out and I wrote the whole launch, amazing. And I wrote all this social posts, and what I used to do was publish it all at once, and then the other three weeks where I’m now recovering because now I’m in my ebb, I would feel bad about myself. I’m like, well, why can’t I create like that? I’m so lazy. No, I’m just an ebb and flow person. I’m a seasonal person. So what I do is I build systems and machines to support me.
(45:34):
We build machines so that we don’t have to be machines. So I build a social media system, for example, that when I’m super creative and I create a whole bunch of incredible stuff, I put it in my system and it drips it out over the next 20 days. So there is consistency in that. There is a post going out on social media, which is one of my main engines for getting clients. There’s a post going out every single day for 20 or 30 days. And at this point, I’ve been in business so long that I have like 4,000
posts in my archive that I could just recycle. I can just go in and reschedule. So all I’m trying to say is I build these systems to honor my body, to honor my creative ebb and flow, to honor the fact that I am an animal and I have seasons and I don’t have to override my body.
(46:19):
I work when I’m in flow, I work and then I save and preserve and schedule, and then I actually have time to be in ebb and get creatively recharged and all of those things. So a certain amount of underlying support and structure allows me to just do what I need to do in the moment. I also learned about this concept called medicine time or medicine days from a person named Lisa Claudia Briggs probably back in 2015 or 2016. And she told me that whenever something takes a lot out of you, high energy, and it could be good high energy, you have to schedule recovery time. So for me, going, I love to travel, but it takes a lot out of me and I love to speak on stages and it takes a lot out of me. And then I come home, let’s say I flew somewhere to speak on a stage and then I come home for four days.
(47:11):
I am wrecked. I have to recover from being in the airport where I walk 16 kilometers and shoulder to shoulder and I’m an introvert and I’m just tapped out. I need a couple of days to recover. So I have to factor that in. So whenever I say yes to going somewhere, I build in two recovery days afterwards and I charge accordingly. Whenever I know that I’m going to teach a class the rest of the afternoon, I need two or three hours to recover, I build that in and I price accordingly. So I build my recovery time, my medicine recovery time, my medicine time, my medicine days, my medicine weeks into whatever I’m doing. So I know myself to know enough that there are things that are high intensity for me that are worth doing, but require recovery. And that is part of that. And I schedule it in. And like I said, I price accordingly. I don’t just charge you for the one hour on stage. I charge you for the three days it takes me to recover.
Jenna Ward (48:01):
I can relate to that deeply and wholeheartedly, both the systems and the machines so that you don’t constantly have to be on, but also the very real recovery and whether it’s pre or post configuration that is required, the necessary view of that as part of doing the work,
Kelly Diels (48:21):
Right? I also have integration week. So everyone who works with me, you come to my classes the first three weeks of the month, and week four we integrate. So you have time to synthesize what you were learning, create the things you were supposed to be creating or just think and let it cook. And I have time off. I don’t see clients the fourth week. So I do things to rejuvenate. I do things in the back end of my business. I go out for lunch, whatever it is that I need to do to make sure my energy is high and my soft body is taken care of. And so I think part of being an ebb and flow person and being consistent is figuring out what the systems are to build the ebs in and account for them. Don’t override them, build them in
Jenna Ward (49:05):
Wholeheartedly agree. So for people who have joined us for this conversation, who would love to learn more about your work, about culture making, shifting shame into power and genuinely empowering business practices, and I use the word empowering in the real sense of the term. Where should they go to find, learn, and experience more? Kelly?
Kelly Diels (49:28):
I think the two main places would be my website, kellyDiels.com. I have a Sunday love letter that I send every Sunday, which I think is one of the most important parts of my body of work, and I’m very proud of it. So you could subscribe to the newsletter. It comes every Sunday. It’s delicious. It’s pure feminist fortification, it’s encouragement, it’s signal boosting. It’s all of those things that we need to fill us up every week. And I think the other place would be Instagram, which is Kelly Diels.
Jenna Ward (49:57):
I’ll share the links to both of those with this recording. Thank you so much for your time, your passion, your vibrancy today. It’s been a real joy to chat about all of this. So on behalf of everyone that’s joined us for the conversation and myself, thank you.
Kelly Diels (50:11):
Thank you. And thanks to everyone for listening. Your attention, your time. It’s a gift and I appreciate it.
