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).

Side Quest Unlocked with Elin Filbey, Multi-Passionate – Connecting The Dots with The Renaissance People

Once again, I’ve got a podcast guest whose Venn diagram of interests looks strikingly similar to my own. Multi-passionate Elin Filbey and I not only share a work history (museums, higher education and career coaching) but other factors as well, including being moms of small children, coming from the upper Midwest, teaching fitness classes, and our love of performing. In the wide-ranging conversation this podcast is known for, we cover this and so much more. Elin’s experience is proof that taking side quests makes a Renaissance Person’s life more fulfilling!Promised Show Notes Materials (take a drink):Sign up for updates on my podcast and what’s happening in the Renaissance People Community.Sign up to work with me and Find Your Golden Thread Patrick Meaney’s LinkedIn post about shaping your career like a brambleSara’s career coaching newsletter, Take it With You, focused on Packing Your Skillset SuitcaseSara’s newsletter with the word cloud of skills needed for remote jobs Appreciating Your ValueSara’s newsletter about translating your skills to potential employers Time to TranslateQueued for Thought episode introducing Conversations on Loneliness, Healing and ConnectingSocial Contract Theory was the idea I was referencing, but looking at it, I wasn’t quite remembering the full definition. Oh well!Ep. 8 Bringing Worlds Together Full Circle with Jess Rowell, Renaissance WomanTamara Poles’s guest episode where she discusses side quests on podcast Research AdjacentWhen NASA Gave Spiders Drugs to See how it Affected their Webs, 1995Ep. 10 The Forever Revolution with Jenni Gritters, Multi-PassionateMy preferred metaphor: Reimagining STEM Workforce Development as a Braided RiverA beautiful rant about “soft skills”: Stop Calling Them Soft: Why Today’s Essential Skills Are Anything ButEp. 9 A Mind for Memory with Brian Skellenger, SurvivalistUnited KaraokeElin’s podcast Curate Your Career Podcast, co-hosted with Alli Schell, Spotify | Apple Podcast | YouTube | InstagramElin’s Facebook Group Deaccessioned: A Network for Former and Aspiring Ex-Museum ProsElin’s website Deaccessioned Career CoachingFollow Elin on Social Media:LinkedIn | Instagram |A few things Elin and I discuss:Museums as a stimulating place for multi-passionatesDrawbacks of museum lifeElin’s path to career coachingHow to explain your career jumpsToxic relationship industries (i.e. museums, journalism, education, non-profits, pretty much my entire career…)Translating your skills or job titleFinding a career that fits your current valuesBeing a helper and a villagerKeys to answering, “what do you do?”How we live for the applause (and give Lind Belcher from Bob’s Burgers vibes)Quotes from the episode:(Elin) And I used to think that it was a defect or a, a liability because I was so interested in so many things. But now as I'm getting older and I'm learning more about myself, I see it as an asset, right? Because I am able to pull from all these different places and all these different ideas to inform the core of my work and what I do.(Elin) I found out later that I got placed with the finance and real estate students who were notoriously difficult because my former director told the person hiring me at the business school that I was a “velvet steam roller”. I was really good at gently pushing back on people, and working with difficult people in a way that still got things done but wasn't super inflammatory, which was a skill I learned through my career. Because when I started, I was like, burn it down!(Elin) It's an industry (museum work) that takes and takes and takes and takes and doesn't always give a lot back. I often describe it as a toxic relationship(Sara) Oh, yes!(Elin) Where it's bad and bad and bad and bad, and then you get to hold a manuscript from the 1500s and you're like, this is the best thing ever! And then you're like, rebounded and you're in love again. And then you just get shit on somewhere else.(Sara) I like sharing resources. As a Renaissance Person, are you one of those people where, you know, you join a Zoom meeting and you're adding links to things in the chat, emailing people afterwards?(Elin) It's my love language.(Elin) I heard something the other day that was, you know, everybody wants a village, but not everybody's willing to be a villager.(Sara) I love that!(Elin) Right? And I was like, oh! I caught myself too because I was like, where's my village? And then I needed to reflect, to be like, well, where am I being a villager? And I can't expect that to come back around to me if I haven't given it out.(Elin) Love a good side quest. It really just brings a lot of joy to my life. And it's also probably part of my neuro spiciness of like, I was born to dilly dally.(Elin) And a lot of times when people are wanting to leave the field or they're wanting to change, they just start running really, really fast in a direction. And sometimes you're on a treadmill and you're not going anywhere. But you feel like you're, you're really working hard. And you're running, running, running, but you're not getting anywhere.(Elin) I'm like Tinkerbell, I need applause to live. So I love just being on stage and getting up in front of people.Follow me, Renaissance Woman Sara Kobilka, on LinkedIn, where I put most of my social media energy, and Facebook.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 Media

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Picking a Podcast Category – Post 2 of 3