Roundup: some things to enjoy this week
Including a panel of independent retail business owners I hosted last month with Aeolidia.
Welcome. I’m Katherine Raz. I own a shop in Tacoma, Washington called The Fernseed and this is my newsletter about running an independent retail business in the age of Amazon, Covid, etc. If you’re a shop owner, or you sell products to small retail businesses, or you’re just curious what this whole business is about, you’re in the right place. (And if this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive it yourself right here. It’s free!)
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It’s a busy week around the plant shop, so I’m falling back on the tried-and-true link roundup. Here are a few things I think you might find interesting, some of which are related to running a business.
I facilitated a panel discussion with some independent retailers last month, hosted by Aeolidia, that aimed to answer the question, “Is it really possible to run a brick and mortar business that prices competitively, pays employees well, gives back to the community, and still makes a profit?”
You can read the re-cap and watch a video of the panel on the Aeolidia blog.
I really enjoyed hearing how some of the other business owners were tackling employee engagement and retention, as well as sustainable, actionable ways of giving back to their communities. It was especially inspiring because we’re all at the same basic level, with similar financial and operational constraints. Definitely worth checking out the re-cap or the video!
I’ve been reading Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead recently. I’ve been in business for a little over three years now, and in that time I’ve learned pretty much everything I’ve ever known about managing people and leading teams… because I never did either before. And I still have a lot to learn! Gah, I remember seeing my aunt, who worked for a global IT solutions company, read management books in the late ‘80s. On the one hand I thought she was pretty cool (she played tennis, she had modern European furniture), and on the other hand I couldn’t believe how consumed she was with managing her teams at work. I didn’t think it was a bad thing, I just thought grown-ups made a really big deal out of something as simple as just talking to people. You need them to fill out spreadsheets? JUST TELL THEM. Then you can get back to tennis and wine spritzers and Danish Modern stuff.
Now I’m the 40-something reading management books. THIS IS HARD. I was definitely bringing a 9-year-old’s people management capabilities to Fernseed when we first launched. I thought if I was everyone’s friend and we were all cool and stuff, people would just do the things and everything would be great. I also thought it was good to show vulnerability by bringing my personal problems to work, telling people who worked for me that I had no idea what I was doing running a business, that kind of thing. What I like about Dare to Lead: Brené Brown has distilled a lot of the early, dumb mistakes I made (and I think a lot of people make) about empathic leadership into a good set of rules to live by. Things like:
When facing a crisis, you should acknowledge that it’s okay to feel worried and leave space for people’s feelings. But you should also provide some kind of a road map for navigating ambiguity.
Don’t use your personal issues as a tool for garnering sympathy from your team. You can be a whole person at work, but it’s better to do that by owning your professional mistakes, or by empathizing with someone you manage when they’re going through a hard time (“hey, I’ve been there, I get it”) than by dumping outside issues on people.
Be really clear about defining expectations and creating boundaries. Simple things like agreeing on what the definition of “done” looks like on a project or task rather than assuming everyone is on the same page, or letting people know you need to take a day off after working 8 days in a row.
I also like Brown’s advice for defining whose opinions matter to you. Because you will face criticism and backlash if you’re doing anything in the spotlight, you need to decide in advance how to deal with harsh feedback so it doesn’t drain you and you can keep going. Some of Dare to Lead is a little feely-feely, but that’s Brown’s style. Maybe it sums up stuff we already know to a degree, but it’s comforting to see it all spelled out so succinctly.
Speaking of struggling with vulnerability, I’ve been enjoying reading about professionals who have made some vulnerability missteps, particularly on Linkedin. I say “enjoying reading about” not because I like to snicker at them from the sidelines, but because I think we’re in a weird event horizon phase of oversharing-as-social currency and it’s interesting to see how it plays out in the public sphere. Oversharing has never bothered me—I know I do it—but I do dislike the overused, standard “getting-vulnerable social media post” format, which I think commodifies our human feelings whether they’re authentic or not. Before I share something vulnerable on Instagram, I have to ask myself: who is this for? What is the goal here?
I actually feel better when I have a platform for sharing the scary parts of managing a business, and this newsletter helps me do that for an audience of people who can opt in or out of my musings. It’s allowed me to reconcile my feelings about the performative nature of it all. I don’t need to post a crying selfie to social media because I have a more productive place to process: this Substack.
Do I think the crying CEO was wrong to post that selfie? Maybe it was insensitive to the two people he laid off, but I have a feeling those employees were going to be okay (they work in tech, they’re highly employable). And the CEO certainly had a close relationship with them! We probably shouldn’t rip into each other so much for cringe moments that don’t land well. There’s always a nuanced back story that isn’t reflected in social media, and certainly isn’t understood or discussed in the comments.
And speaking of nuanced back stories and ripping into each other, I really enjoyed the Monica Lewinsky-produced documentary 15 Minutes of Shame on HBO, which featured some high-profile subjects of public shaming. The one that really got me was the guy who was allegedly hoarding hand sanitizer in early 2020 and received death threats after he was featured in the New York Times. The real story? He’s veteran struggling with traumatic brain injury and an Amazon FBA seller. As part of his FBA business, he uses software that predicts what products will surge in popularity. So he bought a lot of $1 hand sanitizer before it became scarce, before anyone in the U.S. had died of COVID, hoping to sell it on Amazon for $4 or whatever. Then Amazon shut down everyone who was selling hand sanitizer so they could increase the price of their own product without competition. This vilified veteran was just trying to stand up for the community of FBA sellers (many of them injured veterans) that Amazon undercut by disallowing their PPE listings, but the Times spun the story to make it seem like he was heartlessly hoarding hand sanitizer trying to make a billion dollar profit.
I guess I identify with him because I supported myself for years by selling used books on Amazon while also working low-paying nonprofit and service gigs in Chicago. I know the predictive software he was using. I understand the decisions he made. He wasn’t a villain, he was just trying to get by. Now he’s struggling to make mortgage payments and still avoiding death threats.
I think our culture has gone overboard with the knee-jerk shaming of people who hold absolutely no power. As a general rule, I think we should ask: is the person receiving this backlash a person who holds any sort of power or control? If not, probably leave them alone.
I really enjoyed this Ask Polly column about struggling with the idea of self-promotion, something I think a lot of us face. I like this snippet in Heather Havrilesky’s response in particular:
Even if you can identify flaws in your book now that it’s too late to fix them, you need to try to remind yourself of why you wrote the book you wrote, what you love passionately, and what you want to keep offering to the world for years to come. Don’t become so afraid of being a self-promoting, vainglorious harridan like me that you forget to love who you actually are.
That’s how I lived for years. I collected examples of what I didn’t want to become instead of daring to read the works that humbled and thrilled me. I was focusing on books and writers I didn’t even like (and noticing their annoying self-promotional behaviors!) just so I could feel superior! But I was afraid of reading books and articles and poems that were so great that they made me look like a fumbling amateur by comparison. I was protecting myself!
I HAVE DONE THIS. Collecting examples of self-promote-y people I love to hate rather than focusing on my own work and what inspires me or, even more terrifyingly, reading or consuming things that actually inspire me (because I’m terrible in comparison). Ask Polly is a great advice column and you should subscribe to it.
It turns out I’m not the only one with a Shopify grudge! This Twitter thread summarizes a bureaucratic nightmare Shopify put a small bookstore through. (Some of you have emailed me in detail about my Shopify post and I promise to respond.)
Finally, you know I love documentaries about epic failures. Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love, and Rage (HBO) did not disappoint. It is a must-watch for anyone who has dabbled in event production. I feel like we can all point out the decisions we might have agreed with and the parts where we might have asked, “Is this a smart way to corral 400,000 people?” Again, it’s not so much schadenfreude for me as it is identifying with some of the decision makers and asking myself where I might have made different decisions (if at all).
I’ll be back next week with some real words about retail! Thank you to all who have written to let me know you appreciate this newsletter. If you have questions, comments, something you’d like advice on (can I have an advice column?) or topics you’d like me to address in future posts, please hit ‘reply’ to this email to let me know!