From False Urgencies to Force Multipliers

“There is so much false urgency I have fallen prey to that I’ve learned about through this business. I don’t want to see other people making those mistakes, especially women,” says Joan Kanner on past challenges in business. Alongside co-host Michelle Bond, they kick off the second season of Proofing Stage. Likening the podcast to a business self-defense course, Michelle and Joan aim to equip female business owners with the necessary knowledge to fend off unexpected or unfair obstacles.

The duo shares their diverse backgrounds and their journey from career frustrations to creating their own ventures: a company driven by karma, a music app, and their crave-able concept, Bottoms Up Bagels (BUB). As they take stock of their first season, they reflect on their growth as queer female founders and the role of the podcast in offering business insights and enhancing their network. They discuss the expansive potential of podcasts and their mission as force multipliers—to be the mentors and coaches they didn’t have. 

Today's episode sets the stage for what’s to come in Season 2 and acknowledges the great work of Season 1 producer and contributor, Amanda Schwarz. Michelle and Joan hint at a lineup of diverse guests for the new season and explore the concept of “proofing” across different fields.

Whether you are tuning in to build your business chops or just learn from real people with genuine stories Proofing Stage is set to rise to the occasion. 

So, join Michelle and Joan as they:

• Put the "omen" in women
• Give a nod to their best teachers 
• Institute a crash course in defensive entrepreneurship
• Preview upcoming guests and topics
• Surprisingly hold back on their use of expletives

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Theme music by Thorn Haze
Podcast cover art by Lisa Orye
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

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Transcript

Joan Kanner (00:00.302)

And we want to make sure we can arm people with knowledge to learn from them, but to also arm them with knowledge to make sure it's harder for people to get away with some of the nonsense they pull on female business owners. If we're less easier targets, right? That'll happen less and folks will have to learn to behave differently. So, in essence, it's going to be like a business self-defense course. 

Michelle Bond

Like defensive driving - [it] helps you more than you think it will. [laughs]

Joan Kanner

[laughs]

Michelle Bond

So same, same, same. We know what they say about a good defense…

Joan Kanner

It's a best offense?

Michelle Bond

Exactly. 

[theme music]

Michelle Bond

This is proofing stage with me, Michelle Bond.

Joan Kanner

And me, Joan Kanner. We're queer female founders who over a decade ago envisioned - and created - products and services designed with end users in mind. Go figure!

Michelle Bond

Frustrated in our prior careers, we began to consider what all our energy and passion can do if we use it on our own terms. A company with karma as its driving force. A music app that put users in control. And, for the last eight years, a bagel business. 

Joan Kanner

This podcast is about our experiences and the nitty gritty of being an underrepresented small business owner. Just like we've worked to fill the gap in quality bagels, lox, and schmear,these conversations fill the gap of knowledge, mentorship, and straight talk that are missing from other business pods and success stories. 

I come to the table with a ton of customer service and compliance experience, from a sports complex startup to new university centers to many years in grants and contracts administration, not to mention social science research, including focus group and survey work. 

Michelle Bond

And I've combined a passion for hospitality, communications, and PR, with community development and diversity training. All with the aim of engaging others to actively show up in the spaces we all occupy. Together, we have a lot to offer and we have a lot to learn. 

Joan Kanner

So, join us and our brilliant guests in this space between, “attagirl” and “I told you so.” 

Michelle Bond

All right, well, welcome everybody to season two of Proofing Stage. I'm your host, Michelle Bond.

Joan Kanner (02:19.438)

And I am Joan Kanner. And together we put the omen in women. 

Michelle Bond

Oh, nice. Boom, boom. 

Joan Kanner

It's gonna change probably every week. Be prepared everybody for the… I can just hear all the eye rolls like in succession. 

Michelle Bond

[laughs]

Joan Kanner

[Laughs] People listen to this asynchronistically, right? So, they may not be rolling their eyes at the same time. It'll just be like a rolling eye roll. 

Michelle Bond

It would be like a wave, be like a stadium wave of eye rolls. 

Joan Kanner

“What shit will Joan say next?”

Michelle Bond

That's exactly what I picture.

Yeah, let's jump into it. So, as we kick off season two, we just want to take a half step back and look at what we've talked about so far and also discuss some ways that we're going to be expanding and evolving in this current season. And I don't know, I think season one was definitely foundational, both for obviously the story of Bottoms Up Bagels, but what we hope to be a broader conversation. And so, Joan, I don't know, I was just wondering like what, why was season one important? 

Joan Kanner

A big thing for me about season one, you mentioned foundation building. I feel like we know a lot of people through our business deals, but as a way of being a force multiplier, there came the pod. It was a great thing. Like you don't. Like unlike other physical products with a podcast or technology generally, it's way more scalable. So, it was important for us to start the pod.

But it's also really important for us as women and business, which is women generally, to, as part of that foundation, give you a sense as listeners, when it comes to like who we are as people, to know how we operate, what we've done, to also explain what qualifies us to be talking about women in business and to help position ourselves as people who can be like mentors, as coaches. As people to be beside you through your journey and to also be there for people who have curiosity about business generally, whether or not they're deciding for themselves as to whether or not they want to start something. 

And also, I'm just here or people who want to reflect on themselves as women in the world and the challenges there. So not quite self-help, but… and not quite the House of Woo. Again, I'm going to come to the House of Woo.

Joan Kanner (04:41.134)

I don't live there, but I do occasionally visit. But to be able to think about those audiences and then also by nature of doing season one, right? To get a sense as to who our audience is, all those personas, but not mega personas. 

Michelle Bond

Not mega personas. It's true. Season one was foundational both, I think, because when we started it, we were really in the thick of this proofing stage period for our business, Bottoms Up Bagels. And over the course of time, realized the power in not only the catharsis of sharing your story, but also of inviting people in to some of those moments. We've gotten such great feedback about things that people could relate to, you know, whether they work in food or not, whether they own a business or not in terms of those dicey moments they've had with people or the red flags that they've seen or the dudes in their lives showing them all their toys or the fact that, wherever possible, seeing that you have a choice in the way that you show up in the world and, you know, how you embrace the challenges before you in a given day. And sometimes that's with grace and sometimes it's with cringe. But, you know, it's all part of the process. And so, I appreciate what you're saying about the foundational pieces of showing and telling what we've done.

You know, that's right. We had a whole episode I don't think that ever even aired about what qualifies you because we felt like it was really important to demonstrate that we had something legitimate to share. But I think even that is a little fraught, right? Because there are lots of people selling lots of things all the time. Some who have perfectly… some that have many experiences to choose from to do that and some that have no business doing it. 

But, we're in a landscape where all of those things can be consumed equally. And it makes it challenging to figure out where you fit in. 

Joan Kanner

For me, I should also say it was crazy in nine episodes and in quick rapid succession, might I add, to give a deep dive into eight years of a food business. And I still kind of marvel at us doing that. We did a decent job. I think it's going to be a great way in season two for us to build upon the different themes that came out of that and to make sure that...

Joan Kanner (07:01.614)

While yes, it's really helpful to have sessions or learnings or webinars or discussions specifically about like your type of business, especially if you do have a business of your own. There's so much of what we've talked about and are going to talk about to your point that are completely extrapolatable no matter what the hell you do in life. And when I say that we want to make sure that our discussions are extrapolatable to different fields, what I mean is 0 when it comes to bookkeeping, generally, that is bookkeeping. 

When it comes to getting boiler plate ready and having an assessment for you and your business as to whether or not you should apply for a grant and which boiler plate you should use for doing that, the tax implications of that… it doesn't matter what the hell your business is. There's still like those same structures when it comes to grants. So, I want to make sure that those are some of the concrete things we'll talk about. 

And then we're going to have a session about business insurance. So that's very generalizable. No matter what kind of business you have. Talking about the steps you need to prepare for a potential loss and doing it when you're not in crisis. Thinking about what you have to do to prove the losses that you've had. Yeah, we're going to use examples from our food business. And there's a lot of cringe in that in terms of what it's like when you have anything that’s perishable, right? But, generally, these processes and the people that we bring on, that knowledge is going to be applicable to you.

And that's very important to us because, and I'll say this again and again and again, [about] other people's pods and our pod. We want to be the mentors that we didn't have. And by that, I mean the champions. Because for me, I know some of the best instructors, the best teachers I have ever had in my life have been the people who actually did the work. The people who have actually been the practitioners, the people who have actually done it. 

When I think about some of the people or would-be mentors for our business. I think to myself because these are people who never owned a business. They may have like worked in food tangentially and put out a shingle of being this expert, but they didn't do the work. And that's one of the things that differentiates what we're doing with Proofing Stage. We've done the work. We know a lot. We have a better sense as to what we don't know.

Joan Kanner (09:27.598)

And we want to… that's why we want to bring on other people who know what the hell they're talking about. Because we [want to] make sure that we give you guys the best product possible. 

Michelle Bond

Yeah. And it's time, you know, we've talked in planning for this episode about the first, the very first episode of the pod, you know, “so why are we doing this?” And we've, as a prompt to ourselves and thinking this through, “why are we still doing this?” Right? And that's exactly right. 

Because our stories are out there. There will be more to tell as, as you know. Topics come up and things resonate when we're talking with specific guests, but, you know, it's okay. Like now we're at a phase where we're trying to amplify not only our own voices, but other peoples’. And, so, on that note, we do have a few changes for this season, which before we get too deep, I do want to talk about. 

And number one is that you'll notice, Amanda Schwarz, our producer who helped get things rolling with us in season one. She has moved on to other projects, so she won't be with us going forward, but we did just want to thank her for all of her great work and vision to help get this thing started and support throughout the process. 

Joan Kanner

About Amanda, I know she's still going to be lighting it up when it comes to her own business, Mended Digital. And for folks who didn't know, she wasn’t just a maestro of sound, as being a former DJ and really caring about the quality of that, and also having her own podcast. But she was just great to have like as a voice as another small female owned business throughout the pod. 

And I feel like her getting it, not just in terms of the technical end, but in terms of the professional end, was really necessary. And I'm sure there's a couple of gems out there, including in our bonus episodes that people really appreciate featuring Amanda. And I am quite sure, and thank you in advance, Amanda, for allowing, thank you in advance, Amanda, for anything that you send us in terms of how I sound. “Annunciate, Kanner, annunciate. Stop swallowing words.” 

Michelle Bond

“Wind it up, Michelle. Reel it in.”

Michelle Bond  (11:38.798)

Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. 

Joan Kanner

So, I feel like there's definitely be getting some notes from her, but thanks again, Amanda, for working with us on this foundational season. 

Michelle Bond

100%. And, so, Joan and I will be co-hosting season two together. And you won't just have to hear from us though. 

Joan Kanner

Now what do muralists, DEI experts, and poet laureates have in common? It's not rhetorical, by the way, there's an answer. 

Michelle Bond

Okay, I was thinking of an answer, but I was gonna say artists., But DEI experts? Well, like I find the commonality of space, space making in all of those people. But I think you have an answer you want to share. 

Joan Kanner

I do. 

Michelle Bond

How did I know?

Joan Kanner

These, among many other talented, interesting people, will be guests on season two! 

Michelle Bond

Love it. Love it. 

Joan Kanner

So, you'll see how all of those talents together to interest you, engage you, and then make things a little easier for you. By nature of like some people who are experts in certain fields and going there about the nitty gritty of running businesses.

Knowing that there's challenges ahead, I never want to seem discouraging because I feel like we can talk about how we as women stop ourselves from starting a business, from saying certain things. When discouraged from speaking out and in doing so, we can limit ourselves from conveying knowledge that can be very helpful. Whereas men are less likely to do that, meaning stop themselves from saying something, from doing something, from leaving their job, having less family time to start something new.

They're less likely to be discouraged from pursuing something. They're cheered on when they forge ahead. They're less likely to be discouraged because they're turning their backs on certain responsibilities. And all that impacts women from starting in the first place, from continuing when they started and also from taking necessary risks going forward. And I feel like by taking what traditionally the patriarchy has told us is gossip and then breaking it down to just information sharing, we're going to be making it harder…

Joan Kanner (14:08.782)

… as a network of women in business, making it harder for basically people who've tried to like, oppress us, to be barriers to get in the way. We're going to make it harder for them, and make it just slightly easier for ourselves moving forward. At least that's my [goal].

Michelle

No, that's a really good point. And I think one of the things that I certainly realized over the last year plus when we've been in this very concentrated stage of trying to just open our network, get out from under doing all the work and try to look at the business at like a 10, 20, 30, 60,000 foot level and try to get advice and guidance from other people, is that it's been really hard to find the right next step. 

Like I think you said this on a different pod that we were recently on and you were talking about you know, advice to people and just thinking about looking at the people who are just a few steps ahead of you, rather than the people who figured out the whole thing and are running like a multimillion-dollar business, right? And because their, their inputs are going to be actionable and more immediate. And I think that's one of the things that we realized is we had such important and necessary conversations with people across industries who were very generous with their time.

And many of these women were just kicking ass. Um, but what we realized oftentimes, we came away from those conversations just still feeling a bit adrift because they were already either in a completely different place, you know, where they are a national player or where they, um, had investment that they didn't even need to seek. Like they were perhaps a, like they were a subject matter… not a subject matter [expert], they were, you know, the technical founder of their business, whatever it was. And had been approached by investors to play that role. So, they had already had a different starting place, you know, and I'm not even saying better or worse, but there are other people who, like us, started as a mobile food business. But then as you're talking to them, you come to find out, oh, well, actually, they already had backing, and they were a mobile food business while…

Michelle Bond (16:33.262)

… their first brick and mortar was already being built. And so, they were just doing it more as a way to drum up business and marketing for when their actual brick and mortar launched. Again, great. But for us, it just left us like, “okay, but we did that already and we did it for these reasons and we're trying to get to this next other step and what's the way that we get there?” So, then we start talking to people in like CPG or manufacturing and they're like, okay, well, what you got to do is X, Y, Z.

So that's also changing an entire model, which, you know, we even contemplated, but it still wasn't, it wasn't like, here's how you scale a food business that wants to actually make food for people to eat sometime soon after you make it. Right? 

And so, um, one of the other things with this space is just to hopefully have enough different voices where, regardless of where folks are in terms of their entrepreneurship journey or their life journey, they can get something out of it and they can find someone to talk to and to listen to and to relate to that can help get them to whatever the next step is on their journey. 

Joan Kanner

I think realizing like where you're starting from is reasonable. It shouldn't completely hold you back. It's part of your story. One story that we both got when we were talking to someone in the food industry who's doing fantastically, is that… 

It was, there's, there's an outsized place for luck in people's journeys. So, and I don't fault anyone, especially women for that. And in this particular person I'm thinking of Michelle, and you probably will realize when I give you some basic details, this woman was already working as a very talented baker in our world. And her bosses were the owners of this business.

Saw in her someone who was brilliant technically and incredibly motivating to staff and could add so much to their growth plans. And then they gave her equity and that is fucking amazing.

Joan Kanner (18:52.078)

And she speaks frankly about, you know, like her bosses being money people and having access to capital and that's incredible. But it's a very different place that we started from. And there's that ,there's a diversity of that. You know?

Michelle Bond

Yeah, no, exactly. 

Joan Kanner

You know. And there's and there's capital in terms of what can be supportive to you and your business. And there's also social capital. Networking. And then there's separately people who may not “get it” in your personal life, but they're going to show up on the first day of you doing something. They are not going to exclude you from events, even if they know that you can’t make it one out of five times, and that's supportive. And I think the family piece specifically that I know that I've been lacking, that's, that's difficult. Sometimes that makes things more difficult …than something that's more impactful than money. 

Michelle Bond

Having that support? 

Joan Kanner

Yeah, like having that support, like “get” where you're doing or maybe not even “get it,” but just being like, I don't care. “You're my, whatever the hell word they are in your life person. And I'm here to support you.” I mean, that's really to me, like something that's weighed on me. And I, I know I feel like it's showing up to like a high school football game - or like name the sport -and you know, having teachers show up in place of absent parents.

I feel like it's important to show up for people doing what we're doing. And it may not be like being in the bleachers for female business owners physically, quite yet. I would love to be around and support people physically and have the means to do that. Because I definitely would love to do that for people. But in the meantime, we have this pod, right? So, we're going to start with that.

[theme music]

Joan Kanner (20:54.83)

I had an analogy with you earlier today, Michelle, in our production meeting, but talking about driving on the highway and accidents. If you had somebody help you in your business, see so many days ahead, so many months ahead, say this is going to happen. Make sure you insure yourself for something. Make sure you're aware of this, put aside money for that. Take care of this in your bookkeeping, whatever the case is. 

It'd be like driving on the highway and time stopping for one, two, three seconds even. What could that mean in terms of your breaking, changing lanes, being aware of what's going on? Hopefully you would avoid the accident completely, but [at] the very least it wouldn't be as bad of an accident because you had the extra time. And I want to give that time that's thinking back to our listeners. 

Michelle Bond

The biggest learning for me in the last several years was the acknowledgement that this is a long game. That... The constant hustle in need to feel like you have momentum and traction is, is limiting, you know, serves you and you certainly need momentum because otherwise you, you wither, right? I mean, we even experienced that in just the interruption of our model. But you need to trust that the vision for your business, the steps that you've taken to get it there, the customers that support you are there and you need to continue to keep them in mind. You can't take them for granted.

But it is a long game. You know, you can't treat every single decision like the world is on fire. And I feel like that was also, that's also my tendency. But then also when you're when it's your business and it's your identity and you're trying to put the best possible product out there and you're trying to treat everybody in the chain of things as, as best as you can. And…

Michelle Bond (23:01.71)

… you know, there's constantly something to deal with. I think you can lose sight of the fact that all the things that you have put in place to help build that sustainability and without taking the time to do that, you certainly burn out, but you also miss things. And what you're talking about in your highway analogy is that, you know, what if you didn't miss those things? 

What if you had just a little bit of breathing room that allowed you to learn from somebody else, take advantage of a different opportunity, swerve left instead of going straight ahead, whatever it is. And that's really valuable, particularly for people who are bootstrapping, because the culture is completely against you in that regard. There always is going to be more and pressure to do more and be more and take on more. 

Even if, I mean, we had a very clear set of what our goals were, we had a very clear vision, we knew what were good fits and not good fits. And yet we still fell into a lot of these traps. And so, I think just airing some of that stuff out and giving people that one, two, three beat where maybe they can make a different decision or just be like, “you know what? I don't even need to make a decision right now. I'm just going to let that one go by me.” 

Joan Kanner

That's something I've said a bunch and it's going to be one these - I hope charming - things I repeat again and again, which is: “you're on your own timeline when it comes to making a decision.” 

People are going to want to sell you services, sell you things, and throw you off your game by nature of hurrying you. Unless you are operating on someone and they need you to cut into their skull and operate on their brain, or you're otherwise in a life-saving profession, and you have to make a split-second decision based on all you know - stop. Give yourself minimally 24 hours. If a person does not respect...

Joan Kanner (25:03.758)

… your right to take that time for you and your business. Think about why do you want to do that? They want to throw you off your game. They want leverage. And there's so much false urgency I have fallen prey to that I've learned about through this business and I can't take back. But I can help you recognize those moments and not do the same stupid shit that I did. And I know I'm being a little hard on myself right now, but I'm embarrassed by those moments.

That's how I come up in the pod too, some really things that are like can be cringe. It's more valuable to me to have you learn from those lessons and to have me own those lessons, and to deal with that feeling. Just because I think it's valuable. I don't want to see other people making those mistakes, especially women. 

Michelle Bond

Yeah. Yeah. You are being hard on yourself though. You have a lot to be proud of.

Joan Kanner

Well, thank you. I do get fired up. 

Michelle Bond

No, I mean, we both do. That's the blessing and the curse. 

Joan Kanner

We could just as easily be like, “well, fuck it. We did all this work. I can't myself get to a certain level. I hit all these challenges. That's it.” Or I can work with you, Michelle, and our guests, to be a force multiplier to basically train the trainers and be the people…

Michelle Bond

Well, and it's funny, right? We both have a training background too. And it's one of the things that we both really enjoyed doing before starting BUB. And we also overlap in this kind of justice streak and this desire to disrupt things that aren't working. And it's all part of the process. 

One of the things we'll be doing too is asking some similar questions of all of our guests throughout the season. We'll have obviously some specific questions based on who we're talking to and our connection to them and what brilliance they have to share. But some things I've been thinking about in terms of through lines for this season… certainly the idea of proofing stage where we started in terms of this period of being in between something, you know, we say between “attagirl” and “I told you so.”

Michelle Bond (27:24.974)

Um, but being in between in anything. You know, that's time that's not often talked about. Uh, we talk about transitions and things that we learn after the fact. And I think that's human nature, but I feel like we have a really exciting opportunity on the pod to continue in that vein. And so, I definitely want to ask people what's something they're proofing on, you know, and in some cases that could be a new project, something that like they're thinking through or looking for collaborators on or conceptualizing. It could be definitely like a new business, a new arm of a business or a new revenue stream or something like that. But, also, just in terms of where they are with the business, these are all founders and makers of one kind or another. And how are they feeling? 

Do they feel like they're...There's still they want to do. There's still more that they want to do. And they're like, you know, not there yet. Do they feel like, “oh man, like, I got to do something new. Like this stuff is, this stuff is, I've been there and done it. I need new challenges.” Do they feel like they're in like a just right stage, you know, and this is all temporal and it's all going to be based on a particular person and business and what their goals are and who the voices are that they have in the mix. But that feeling of like, you know, “where am I right now?”

Doing like… you talked about doing a zone check early on. It's like, if you were to name what the space is that you're in as a business right now, you know, how would you describe it? And so that idea of proofing both in terms of time and that balance of like diligence and patience and how people feel about it in different in different walks of life in different industries. So, I'm really curious about that. 

Joan Kanner

When it comes to the pod’s title, it did have roots in baking. If that's in any way unclear to folks.

But whenever we mentioned it to people in different professions, they have their own version of proofing. I talked to a graphic designer that we worked on for the pods’ logo. She said, “my whole life is proofs. I get to a basic iteration of something or basic standard. And then I share that with the client. And then we iterate from there.”

Joan Kanner (29:48.462)

So that's a version of proofing if you're a graphic designer or illustrator. If you're gonna be printing a t -shirt for someone, just having like a proof before moving forward. There's also proof of concept. If you would talk about including like in tech, having a minimally viable product to be able to show and help prove something. So, and to Michelle's point, you can over proof. You cannot give something enough time to get some air into it and to grow. 

Michelle Bond

And it's going to be a through line for us to think about those things and to see where our guests are with different things that they're working on. And it's not just about us and our guests. This is an open conversation. And so, we also want to hear more from listeners, you know, and some great feedback for the first season. 

And this is a slightly different model with way more opportunities to share your stories and share thoughts on topics or guests that you'd like to hear from, or if you yourself have something that you want to share. There's still some space to towards the end of the season for some additional slots. So, you know, I just want to put that out there, to, that we'd really like this to be a dialogue and we want to hear some of the things that you're struggling with too, so we can make sure that we're hitting the mark.

Joan Kanner

And there'll also be, later on in the season, we'll be throwing on a Patreon page to be able to put some bonus content. Yeah, behind a paywall. And Michelle, you and I talked a lot about this. There were a couple of points that came up for us. We wanted to make sure that we had a season on our belt and felt like we had enough stuff to engage people and to enrich the dialogue in certain things and to be something that people can execute upon when they listen to it. 

So of course, here we are, women, thinking we need to be really super qualified to be able to start asking for things and to value our time. It was also very important for us to value our time. And those are the experts that we will be bringing on.

Michelle Bond (31:55.982)

Yeah, so bonus content is still available through May. But beginning in June, we are going to fully launch our subscription based Patreon page where you'll be able to get bonus content, you know, one-on-one or, or like direct access for conversations, extra information, connection to other experts in the field, at some point, merch. 

So, just know that that is coming and either gobble up the available bonus content now, or hopefully you can throw in a few bucks to support our efforts after the month is over for that subscription-based platform. And if you find it valuable, share it with people in your life. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I am Michelle Bond, one of the co-hosts of Proofing Stage.

Joan Kanner

And I am Joan Kanner, the other co-host of Proofing Stage. 

Michelle Bond

And our theme song, Bagels for the Kraken was written and performed by Thorn Haze. If you're looking for a transcript, show notes, and any additional credits, they can be found on our website, proofingstage .com. Want to join the conversation? Email us at proofingstagepod at gmail.com. You can also find us on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok @proofingstage. 

Again, I'm Michelle.

Joan Kanner

And I'm Joan Kanner. Thanks for listening.