Picking a Podcast Category - Entrepreneurship, Post 2 of 3

As I mentioned in previous post, setting up your hosting platform requires choosing which categories your podcast fits under. My primary category is Education and specifically self-improvement. For my secondary category, I chose Business – Entrepreneurship and here’s why.

Podcast settings page for "Connecting the Dots with The Renaissance People" showing the main, secondary and third category the show will appear under. Sara has chosen Education, subcategory Self-Improvement, Business subcategory Entrepreneurship and Society & Culture subcategory Philosophy.

Blazing a Trail

For many Renaissance People, the path to truly embrace their creativity and desire for variety in the work arose when they became entrepreneurs. Starting Renaissance Woman Consulting was how I finally found the freedom to:

Work the way I wanted
With the organizations and people I believed in
In a way that better aligned with my priorities and values

I’m still very much in the thick of building a life as a “sustainable solopreneur”, guided by career coach Jenni Gritters who just published her book on the topic which I HIGHLY recommend).

In this book, Jenni talks about the 5 Principles of Solopreneurship: intention, self awareness, flexibility, creativity and reciprocity. I’m not going to do a deep dive into this, but I want to highlight a few ideas.

Intention

The building of a Renaissance People Community grew out of my involvement in Jenni’s CREATE program. This community was just something I dreamed of before CREATE helped me think intentionally about how I would make it happen.

I created this podcast intentionally as a free way for people to get to know me and start to recognize that they have many similarities with my Renaissance People I will be talking with. I initially wrote “I will be interviewing”, but these episodes are much more of a conversation than an interview. (I also “met” Jenni via the podcast she previously co-hosted, The Writers’ Co-Op. I also recommend that, particularly the first five seasons, for others interested in starting a freelance business and rejecting the hustle culture).

Self Awareness and Flexibility

As I mentioned above, starting my own business allowed me to fully embrace being a Renaissance Woman and working in a way more aligned with my needs. In this podcasts, I’ll be talking to multiple guests about the freedoms and the challenges of this type of opportunity specifically for Renaissance People.

We’ll share strategies we’ve used to balance the freedom and overwhelm of being your own boss. Basically, how we moved beyond “I can do anything but I don’t know what to start!”

Creativity

After recording 3 interviews so far, I’m already in awe of and inspired by the creativity of my guests and I hope you will be too. I’m letting their comments and suggestions guide me as I adjust the questions I ask and the way I plan my episodes. This podcast is a flowing liquid changing constantly as it travels along. I hope this inspires other entrepreneurial Renaissance People to get creative with the business they want to build.

Reciprocity

I’m a first born daughter. I’m a Virgo. I’m a mom. I’m a business owner. I’m very good at taking care of others and stubbornly saying, “I got this. I can deal with whatever challenges arise.” But as the world keeps reminding me, we need to both breathe in and out.

I love finding the way to support the work of others, especially Renaissance People. As I mentioned in my first episode, I get a thrill out of sharing resources in the show notes which includes promoting other people’s businesses.

While some might consider having another career coach on my show for episode 3 as being a conflict of interest (after all, I offer career coaching to Renaissance People), I don’t see it that way.

First, said coach, Melissa Vining, had ME on her podcast.

Second, both of us benefit from being able to share our conversations with a wider audience. In fact, after we finished recording her episode, we even discussed a future collaboration so the reciprocal growth can continue.

In this podcast, I hope to model how uplifting others can lift you up as well, both as an entrepreneur and as a human being.

This gif, Lift Each Other Up, by libby vanderploeg is such a great visual representation of what I’m about (though I don’t limit myself to just other women).

Satisfying a Capacity for Curiosity with Denver Ritz, Multi-Passionate – Connecting The Dots with The Renaissance People

There’s nothing quite like having a podcast guest who I’ve actually met in person to make the conversation flow! The episode is littered with delighted laughter as we dig into Denver Ritz’s many areas of interest and ever-changing expanding realms of expertise. While the focus of his passions may change, Denver’s story has a throughline of dedication to connection, authenticity and leading with curiosity.Promised Show Notes Materials (take a drink):Sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my podcast and what’s happening in the Renaissance People Community.What’s this Renaissance Mindset I keep talking about? This “quasi-manifesto” episode explains.Work with me to confidently live an expansive life with the help of one-on-one coaching.Sara’s The Growth of Growing playlist on YouTubeMichelle Obama’s article about why she doesn’t like the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”Curated list of quality children’s books compiled by A Mighty Girl for Pride MonthThe morbid podcasts Denver enjoys True Crime All the Time, True Crime All the Time Unsolved, Morbid (SiriusXM podcasts)Follow Denver on Social Media:LinkedIn | TikTok (new plant-themed "Dirt with Denver" account)A few things Denver and I discuss:The noun that needs to be created in the English language to describe Denver’s multi-passionate identityDenver’s expertise in HRDenver’s philosophy in his volunteer work with boys in a mental health facilityMore and more areas of Denver’s expertise (and where they overlap with Sara’s)Why authentically connecting is at the core of all of Denver’s effortsWhy Denver wants people to use himWhy Denver (and Sara) don’t like the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and what Denver asks insteadWhy Denver thinks of himself as a “neck”The evolution of Denver’s identity related to his sexuality and how that’s analogous to Sara’s use of “Renaissance Person”How Denver and Sara use curiosity as a superpowerWhy some corporate environments made it difficult for Denver to thrive as a Renaissance PersonPrioritizing tasks and filtering joy in your calendarImprov GameOff on a Tangent – Why a queer person (and ally) can love Harry PotterRapidish Fire QuestionsDenver’s love of morbid rabbit holesQuotes from the episode:(Denver) I always tell my people, "Use me or I'm useless." And that's another thing that I say all the time. And people get scared to actually use people. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I want you to reach out because I'm continuously check in on you. Because that's my role. Because I, I have genuine care and care and love for my boys. But I need them to check in with me as well. And so it's about building that, that reciprocity, I guess you could say.(Sara) Let's say you wanted to inspire curiosity in a first grader about thinking about the future and about a career. What kind of questions would you like to ask them?(Denver) Ask everything but the question. So I have lots of rules, and my number one rule of leadership is get comfortable being uncomfortable. But the one right after that is we as leaders, and in this situation, I'm gonna put whoever is talking to this first grader as a leader because you're leading the conversation. We need to ask more questions and say fewer things, fewer statements.(Denver) Another thing I always say is whoever I'm working with is "the head". They're the head of the organization. They're the head of this decision. They're the head of their life. I'm the neck. That is my role as a consultant, which I consider myself a consultant core, period. I'm a consultant. And my job as a consultant to get them looking in the right direction.(Denver) Do what brings you joy, and we need to just stop knocking people's joy. If they like Star Wars, let them like Star Wars. If they like plants, let them like plants. If they like playing Pokemon Go, let them play Pokemon Go. It doesn't matter. It's not your life.(Sara) My children and I, we have the saying, "Don't yuck my yum." And it comes up with food, and it also comes up with lots of other things. It's like, "This is my yum, OK? Don't be yucking it." And it works.(Sara) I almost see myself as reclaiming the term renaissance and taking it back to its origin, which is a French word meaning rebirth. And so I'm more about, when I'm talking about Renaissance People, yes, the Renaissance Period is one example of the word renaissance being used, but there is also the Harlem Renaissance. That's a fairly well-known time period. And I'm just reclaiming the term renaissance and saying, no, it doesn't mean, like, rich white men putting the patriarchy over everyone else and saying that intuition and deep wisdom and knowledge of the Earth doesn't mean anything. I'm pulling it back and saying it means rebirth and it means regrowth and growing and expanding.(Denver) I have this giant windshield in front of me. It's because I need to continuously look forward because that's the direction that I'm going. But I also have this little mirror that's hanging on the windshield that looks backwards. And it's OK to look in that because it's showing me how far I've come. And I can recognize that. But I shouldn't be living in that mirror.Follow me, Renaissance Woman Sara Kobilka, on LinkedIn, where I put most of my social media energy, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.If you’re extra curious, check out Renaissance Woman Consulting to learn more about some of the many types of work I do.And should you care to support the production of this podcast, I’d love it if you’d buy me an oat milk cappuccino, my caffeinated beverage of choice.This podcast is hosted and edited by Sara Kobilka.Theme music is by Brian SkellengerPodcast distribution support provided by K.O. Myers of Particulate MediaMentioned in this episode:Free NewsletterSign up for my free Newsletter for Renaissance People to stay updated on this show, learn about my expansion experiments, and find opportunities to work with me and engage others in the Renaissance People Community.

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Picking a Podcast Category – Post 2 of 3