92: Fostering Thriving Artists with Laura Gouin
Laura Gouin is a director, writer, and actress who got tired of starving and essentially created the company she wishes would have been around when she was starting out. She loves leveraging her experience in theater and film casting to custom match clients with their most ideal support, drawn from the creative arts. These Artful Admins are taken through her systematic training program, founded on principles of teaching learned from her MA in education. In addition to her creative background, she has worked professionally in team augmentation, sales, business development and operational management. Her unique approach to hiring, training, and team building has served organizations for over two decades by placing hires that stick long-term, and fostering teams that thrive.
Quotes:
“The cycle of rebirth, renewal, it's pretty standard for artists, that creation cycle. Sometimes things have to end for something new to begin, to create that space for that. When artists come into satiated artists for employment, that doesn't have to end. That creative cycle continues because our clients are patrons of the arts. They know that who they're hiring are artists. They are energized by getting that creative mind on staff.”
“We don't connect with anybody if we don't know how to tell a good story. And I think that's where artists really excel. We understand that there's a narrative. We're all meaning making machines. Together collectively, let's make the best meaning we can.”
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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
“We don’t connect with anybody if we don’t know how to tell a good story. And I think that’s where artists really excel. We understand that there’s a narrative. We’re all meaning making machines. Together collectively, let’s make the best meaning we can.”
Transcript:
Laura Goen is a director, writer, and actress who got tired of starving and essentially created the company that she wishes would've been around when she was first starting out. She loves leveraging her experience in theater and film casting to custom match clients with their most ideal support drawn literally from the creative art.
These artful admins are taken through their systematic training program at Satiated artists. Which is founded on the principles of teaching learned from Laura's MA in education. In addition to her creative background, she's also worked professionally in team augmentation sales, biz dev, and operational management.
Her unique approach to hiring, training and team building has served organizations for over two decades by placing hires that stick long term and fostering teams that thrive. I'm so excited to be talking to you. Let me tell you a little bit though, listener about satiated artists. Satiated artists was born out of a belief that we are all able to show up as the best versions of ourselves.
When we have enough and a desire to counter the trope of the starving artist, satiated artists strives to bring that ideology to every interaction that they have with their clients and their team members. They serve nonprofits as well as forward-thinking entrepreneurs and organizations by custom matching them with fractional admin support from their creative team, which frees them to focus on the things that only they can do.
Satiated artists serves their team of artful admins with livable wages, which is so freaking incredible benefits training and opportunities for meaningful side hustles that actually support their creative endeavors. Laura, so many things we could go off on so many different directions and tangents, but I'm excited to talk to you about satiated artists and what you've built there.
Thanks for coming on and talking to me. You are welcome. Thanks for having us. Yeah. So the first question would be to just talk about maybe the personal moment or a story that first really made you realize I, you alluded to it a little bit in your bio, but when did you first realize that artists need more than applause?
It's more than getting to the show or having a gallery or an exhibit that they really need actual sustenance care and work. Yeah, so I'm an artist myself. Play directing, acting. Started off in Chicago, doing the side hustles, the, the, the work that, um, you have to do to pay your rent and, and, you know, eat, working two internships, trying to do theater.
And it was difficult. It's really hard. I mean. We see it in the movies. We have this like dream idea of what it's like to be the starving artist and you're just out there like some Bohemian Rhapsody song and that's not what the world is like at all. The reality is you have to pay rent, you have to eat, and the pathway to doing that makes it really difficult to have the bandwidth and headspace to create.
And I personally experienced that. So I don't know if it was exactly a seed moment. It. It's just been my life of trying to have enough. Yeah, it's interesting because when you talk about the both to be creative and also to pay your bills. I'm in a phase right now. I'm approaching 50. I am a creative at heart.
I love photography. Um, I love to write, singing, any of those kind of things, not so much. But what I'm finding is that this stage in my life where I thought I was going to have a lot more space, I'm still hustling with my business. I'm still parenting, I'm now caretaking for my mother and my grandmother.
And it's like, oh, that creativity just gets so squished and constricted and hard to find. And so I just am thinking about artists who that has been their desired source of income and their lifestyle, um, in terms of paying for their lifestyle, like is what I meant to say. When you're also trying to navigate the burden of what it costs to live, it's just hard to find that creativity or let it let it blossom as it should.
I'm also curious, Laura, about kind of the language around. Endings. I'm curious about how you navigate with the artists that come into your space and inated artists. Are you talking with them at all or does it come up about like, are they ending their artistry work and putting it aside to then do this admin support work?
Is it supposed to be supportive of each other? Are they choosing? Maybe some of them choose to end that. World and launch into something else. I'm just curious about that and how maybe the arts worlds can support natural closures and endings. Yeah, great question. I'm gonna answer that two ways. So as an artist and as a play director, we're constantly creating temporary family.
So we have a beginning, we have a middle, we have an end, we have a celebration, we have a performance, and then we strike the set right. And then we have a, a moment of rest until we start it all over again. So I think that that cycle of, you know, rebirth, renewal, it's pretty standard for artists, that creation cycle.
Sometimes things have to end for something new to begin, right, to create that space for that. The second way I wanna answer that is that when artists come into satiated artists for employment, that doesn't have to end. That creative cycle continues because. The really cool thing is that our clients are patrons of the arts.
They know that what, who they're hiring are artists. They are, um, energized by getting that creative mind on staff. We live in a world where we can work from remote. We live in a world where we can do so many things asynchronously. And, you know, artists are master jugglers, so they might step away for an audition.
They're gonna come back and a client's not gonna know them. Anything's been missing. So, um, the delight is that it really is a meaningful side hustle job. While they can actively pursue their art, and we hope, we hope that they're gonna make it big. The tough reality is most artists never make a living doing their art.
So the other benefit to clients is that. They've got support who aren't gonna leave to climb up some sort of corporate ladder if they are doing meaningful work and their ability to create is, is being sustained. That's almost like the best, uh, benefit package. We provide benefits as well, but that's, that's a pretty good benefit package.
I love so much that you said that about like the creation cycle of, say you use the example of a play and I, I have brought that up in several of my other podcast conversations around, there are so many people who literally go into their job knowing it will end. One of our recent podcast episodes was, was with Wellesley Michael.
Who worked on the vice president's, uh, digital team as she was running for office, she knew going in there was an end date. And so I've been curious about how do you sustain something when you know it's gonna end, but you are bringing light to it. Being a creation cycle then gives some attention around the starting something that you know is going to end because it is intentional.
I just, I love that so much that you said that. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about the, like myth of the starving artist? You talked a little bit about it, um, already, but like, what's the cost when we, not only if we're creatives, but when we internalize it for other creatives. Um, how do you help artists rewrite that story of the starving artist for themselves and maybe even for your clients to expand their understanding?
Yeah, great question. I mean, it's a trope for a reason, right? We've romanticized it, uh, in movies, in books. I think there are probably a good number of people who are stuck in an office space or sitting at a desk staring out the window thinking, you know, I just wanna, it's, it's like the, the mountain man, uh, fantasy or the artist fantasy, or the, I'm just going to.
All of these things, all of this grind that I do day to day, I'm just gonna drop it. I'm going to run off for my big break and it's gonna be so easy. It'll be just like that film I saw, I'm gonna drop my barista apron and go to an audition and, and end there. And it's dangerous because the reality is, uh, we do have responsibilities and we can choose whether to view those responsibilities as grind or a, a means to.
Sustaining ourselves so that we can do the things that we're put here to do, that we can have that, that meaningful life that we're looking to have. I don't think that trope is only in the realm of artists. I think everybody wants to run off and join the circus, so to speak. The way we help artists is understanding their value.
I feel like I've spent a lot of my life as an artist myself trying to explain why. The skills that we learn, uh, are translatable to many stages, including the business stage, whether it's your kid in school participating in a, a play production. They're learning how to move kinetically with others in space.
They're learning how to create together as team. Uh, they're learning budgeting and time budgeting and money, budgeting. They're learning how to create something from beginning to end. I think that that's something valuable. It's, it's not a competition, it's a thing that we're doing together. I think honestly, the whole world could use some of those lessons.
So yeah, I think that for artists who have been constantly having to define their value on other stages, we can help show them how showing up with those creative minds are actually that kernel. You know, we look at really creative ways around. Obstacles because we know during tech week, I mean it's called hell week for a reason.
Things are gonna go wrong and we have to figure out how to solve them. I think that same mindset on the business stage is so helpful, especially for an entrepreneur who, you know, the top priority Monday morning might become the bottom priority five minutes later when 10 other emergencies arise. And so having a thought partner who's providing you with support in the background.
Uh, who understands that cadence and can pivot with you. Uh, is game changing. Yeah. I just wanna share one quick story. We had a, one of our entrepreneurs, we were in support of, uh, he was going on a motorcycle trip around Europe and he was going over this mountain pass. He wasn't sure if it was going to even be open or not.
And this was pre AI where you could probably just, you know, have some, you know, AI bot find this out for you. Uh, his administrative assistant through satiated artists. Found some chat groups, found some people who had just gone over two hours earlier who could say that the mountain pass was clear. Oh my gosh.
And he was able to continue his journey, you know, so That's amazing. Um, we show up as, as doers, not just, you know, someone who's gonna work on a list. Yeah. It's interesting when you were talking Laura, I was just thinking about the beauty of a supporting actor. And also the beauty of method acting, and Hmm.
Well, I often say that I'm a method actor when I serve as an interim because I'm coming in and absorbing and becoming. What that organization needs. I will then exit and I will become something else for someone else. And I just think about that a lot when you were talking around the beauty of folks being able to come in and bring all of that amazing set of skills that we wouldn't normally get if we're just hiring quote unquote administrative support or operational support that comes with the experience that shows that they've worked, for example, nonprofits for the last 20 years.
I just think it's. So, so innovative and so cool. Could you talk, speaking of being innovative, can you talk a little bit more deeply about the support and the benefits that you offer the artists that come to Satiated? Um, because it's yes, financial in the wonderful, um, cocoon of things that you offer, but also relationally and emotionally.
Um, I just, I'm so obsessed with what you've created. Um, so if you could talk a little bit about what it means to be a satiated artist and what you provide. I essentially created the company I wish would've been around when I was starting out. As such, we know that it goes beyond just what you make financially.
So, of course there's a livable wage. Our benefit package includes everything from 401k Once you've been with us for a year, you know, some of our solo, uh, earners that we, we work to serve, they're never gonna have a team. They're never gonna be able to provide those sorts of benefits. They're happy to contract through us knowing that they're.
Support person is being taken care of. So once you've been with us for a year or more, you get 401k. We match that at 4%. You get all of the standard ones that everyone should get, you know, paid sick leave, uh, PTO, that accrues paid holidays. We get a technical stipend. And if you're with us full time, we consider full-time, 30 hours or more a week because that equals 40 to 50 hours in an office.
Uh, you'll get access to health insurance as well, including vision. But beyond that, we also do training. So we have an education director, we have. A number of courses that we've digitized that we're actually gonna be launching soon, uh, for the public as well, you know, for people who can hire and they, they can figure out how to find the right talent, but maybe they want them to have our style of training.
Our project management course alone is 10 hours Executive assistant course, uh, operational coordinating social media. So we provide pretty robust training, but then we provide long ongoing care for our team. They meet regularly. Our coach, they have access to the team. So if like a client is looking to, I don't know, roll out some new CRM, their artful admin might pop into our Slack channel and say, Hey, what are you guys loving?
What's out there? Uh, what should we potentially take a look at? So they've got community, um, and we pay them for any time they're with their coach. We do not bill clients for that. We do not bill clients for when they have taking a, a sick day. That's all kind of wrapped up into our client hourly rate. Uh, we felt it was easier for clients to just say, I'm using 10 hours of service.
I have a fixed cost for that and just know that the person's being taken care of and we want our, our team members to use those services and benefits without fearing that it might reflect negatively to the client. Yeah. So I'm curious, Laura, and we talked a little bit about this when we talked before, but could you share with the person listening you just said.
Um, something to the effect of if the client has requested and has 10 hours, so if someone's full-time with you at the 30 hours plus, does that mean that they could effectively work for a couple of different folks at a long rate? Because I'm curious, I'm, I'm guessing that people listening might be like, oh, I really am curious about having this support, but I can't probably afford 30 hours.
Can some of the artists piecemeal? Absolutely. We've got, one of our artists, in fact, just picked up a third client, so she's now at, at full time. We try to make sure we've got at least 10 hours a week of guaranteed work for our clients. That way we know that the artist has something that they can count on.
Some of our team members are only available for 10 to 15 hours a week. Mm-hmm. For example. But for those who do want full time, that is possible by taking, uh, a couple of of clients at the same time. That's awesome. The other thing I want you to just share with the listener is, I don't know if you call it a guarantee or what you call it, but if for some reason the first match.
Doesn't work out for any reason. Can you talk about what your process is, um, for making Yeah, the client and the admin, the artist to have what they need in the relationship? Yeah, so I, I'm a Midwestern girl. I believe that, you know, you have to, you have to stand behind your, your words. So our policy is if you still wanna work with us and we still wanna work with you, which basically just means we're both being good humans to one another, we'll replace the match.
Um, in fact, we just did, uh, a replacement interview cycle that we did a quick rush on because the team member that we had placed there was only working 10 hours a week with the client, but received an offer for full-time work situation, looks different for everyone. Um, we were so excited for him. We had our client in the interview room with their top three candidates.
Two days later, they had a chance to cross train with the person before they, uh, stepped away. Amazing. Um, so yeah, we've got your back. That's fabulous. Could you talk a little bit, you've, you've shared. The kind of scope of what folks can, can offer, but could you get maybe a little nitty gritty on any of your clients?
Obviously you can't share a lot of, um, identifying information, but that might be in the nonprofit sector. 'cause a lot of my listeners are going to be either board members or nonprofit leaders. And so I'm curious if there's any magic that you've seen happen for satiated artists that have been placed with nonprofits and what maybe they've been able to accomplish or help, or what the nonprofits are even asking for.
We serve a number of of nonprofits, and I would say that that's really great alignment for our artists because we wanna be doing meaningful work. And that's the work of nonprofits. A lot of our nonprofits are in the realm of making the world a better place in general, whether that's public health, whether that's rethinking how media, um, is absorbed, whether that's, uh, prison reform.
Whether that's social justice in nature, those are the core clients that we serve, and over 80% of our clients are in that realm. The way in which we show up isn't where values aligned from day one. So, and I think that that's meaningful to know that you're on the same team. I think that for our clients, uh, just knowing that upfront gives them a lot of trust.
In our artists and what we're doing. I think our artists are feeling that because of that meaningful work, uh, they're making impact with a side hustle job that feels way more than a side hustle. Does that answer your question? It does, it does answer it. And I think what, what I wanted to ask it for the reason was because there's such a stigma in nonprofit work that to hire a really great staff member or to hire some support, it needs to be someone that is from the nonprofit sector.
And I'm just always trying to debunk that. Um, I think that cross sector support and alignment can be really, really beautiful. So I'm, I'm glad that you said that, and I even was. Surprised to hear that it's 80% of your client base, which is fabulous. I have another question for you to directly address. The person listening who I know is sitting there thinking we can't afford it.
Um, we don't have the budget, we don't have the structure. Can you talk a little bit about, and you, you covered it a little bit with the training and the coaching that you offer, but how would you. Kind of address that mindset of either scarcity or around budget or, you know, a lot of nonprofit leaders are burned by having to do onboarding and then it doesn't work out.
Yeah. I feel like that's all they're doing when they bring on a new team member is trying to get them up to speed. I'd be curious if you could share maybe some examples or even just some, like, stop thinking that way. Encouragement, uh, for the person listening. Yeah. Well, I mean, that is scarcity thinking, you know, and we all are looking for satiation, right?
Kind of the heart of what we provide. Um, I, I would say just first of all, I get it empathetically. I get it. Uh, we have fixed resources and we're trying to do more with less it feels like every day. So I get it. We are not the, the. Least expensive organization out there. We're also not the most expensive. I think we're quite affordable.
When you look at it in general, our hourly rate is 40 an hour, and that includes, you know, everything wrapped up into that. So I try to be very transparent with the numbers, both with my team and with my clients. I want everyone to know where the money's going, so there's no questions. And what gets wrapped up into that are all of the benefits, knowing they have a person.
Knowing they've got support on replacement matching. I would say if, if, if we wanna do some hard math, the, you know, the expense of vetting, hiring, onboarding, retraining, re onboarding, rehiring can get pretty cumbersome. So just knowing that you've got a support person, a support company, that that's what they've been doing.
For, gosh, 14 years now. And I think that's really helpful also. And, and that you're covering kind of the wellness piece of it too. Your, yeah. Your company is delivering to the client, a person who has the support that they need. You know, I think of a lot of placement places and it's literally just, here's your person and they're, there's nothing else.
Um, so not only is those right, the financial and the benefit pieces taken care of, but their professional development, I mean, the Slack channel to be able to say like. Hey, uh, I need help with this thing. I mean, I, I benefit myself from consultant groups where we can go and say, my client asked me this thing.
Like, what do I say? Um, so that's really, really powerful and so helpful. And I also just think, you know, a lot of the, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on was to just be able to share this episode in the future with clients who need a chief of staff type person or that operations admin type of, of help to be able to just encourage them that it, there's.
There's an option out there. Yeah. And that's interesting you said a chief of staff. You know, oftentimes we'll have someone start with one of our clients as an executive assistant, and they're there to make one person's life easier. And as we know in any organization, when someone comes in and makes your life easier, you can do more.
You start giving that person more and more and more duties. So typically, you know, we'll go into a direct hire sometimes with these clients in six months to a year and that person's being offered office, you know, operations manager roles, going from an executive assistant to an operation management role, for example.
So I think, I think that's so helpful. I think too, another thing to keep in mind, a lot of our clients, they work with funding. And they may have like a fiscal sponsor or, uh, they may work on funding cycles. So for them, they know that they need the help, but maybe they had to cut some full-time staff and they can only see three months or six months down the road.
So we don't lock any of our clients into contracts. I mean, freedom and flexibility is also at the heart of what we wanna provide, both for our artists as well as our clients. So we obviously hope that it's gonna be a match for life, but nobody's locked into that. And we've had clients who have, uh, gone on like.
Re-upping their contract with us saying, okay, we're gonna continue another three months, we're gonna continue another three months. And then moved into a direct hire when they had the, the capacity to do that. Yeah. Is that then also something that is of interest or maybe it's not, uh, where someone might need a project based kind of a thing?
Like, we have this project for six months. 'cause a lot of funding also is. Launch this pilot and then we'll see if we wanna continue funding. Does that work well for your model where someone comes in and says, let's do it for six months, knowing that it will end or maybe it won't and maybe it would continue?
Or do you really hope that there's the idea and interest that it would be, try it out, see if this is a good fit, and then continue on. Yeah, I mean, our hope is that we get an ongoing, uh, because we're doing, you know, we're employing, we're going through all of the, the hiring, uh, onboarding costs, but. Given the way the world is working right now, the more fractional we can be, the more we can satiate our clients.
So we have, actually, it's so funny you ask that. We just launched a more fractional support option by which a client could say, Hey, I just need help now, and it's a project, and here's the length of time. What we do with that is we've got current team members who are often looking to pick up some extra work.
Mm. Already employed through us, so we don't have to onboard those costs. So if we've got the capacity to do it, uh, we're more than happy to help. That's fabulous. Um, uh, that's something that we've just launched 'cause we've realized that we can't sometimes see beyond Monday. Right. Right. Well, and I think too that there's a lot of folks that I talk with who.
Are nervous. They're nervous about what does it say if I need that admin support or that that ops support or what have you, especially founders of nonprofits tend to get really itchy and scratchy about like, how does the growth plan look? Um, and so being able to come at it from a project. Base just might be more interesting.
So I'm glad that, yeah, glad that I asked that. And glad that you've launched that. Fractional is the way of the future, I think. Um, I think so too. Yeah. It's like the potluck of business, right? It is. I'm gonna bring this. You're gonna bring that? Yep. We're gonna figure it out. Yep. Can you share maybe a wild or random or unexpected role that one of the sati shaded artists, or a couple of them have filled through the 14 years of existence?
Is there anything that you were like, well, that's an interesting match, or That's an interesting request. Wow. I really wish I had just like a, a killer story there. Um, I, I would say the one that I mentioned earlier about having to figure out how to navigate this entrepreneur across a mountain pass, uh, in the middle of nowhere, uh, was pretty wild.
I'll also interrupt my question to tell you that a couple of folks that I know who use satiated artists, um, I was on a podcast, one of mine with a guest who uses a satiated artist. Um, amazing human and that person had helped her prep for the podcast and had done some speaking coaching and had helped with like, say this, not that, here's how you get, yeah.
Here's how you, you know, so it just, it, there was really cool to see. Oh, and then another example was someone who was sharing with me about how they had launched this thing and I was like, that is incredible. Last time we talked it was just an idea and she said, yeah, my. My person from satiated artists help.
Helped with help. Yeah. I just think, you know, as you're listening to this, if there are things that that come to mind as you've been listening as Laura's been sharing. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That support would be so incredible. I would really encourage you to reach out to Laura. All of the information will be, um, in the show notes and we'll share a website and all those kind of things.
Before I ask you the last question, is there anything on your heart or mind that I haven't asked you or that we haven't gotten to that you wanna share? Hmm. Yeah, two things. I wanna actually respond to that, that earlier question because your examples helped me kind of rethink it, I guess. I just don't think of it as wild support.
It's just what we do. So there are things that our artists do every day that I wouldn't consider wild, to your point, helping someone prepare for a podcast. I, I've also had artists who are out there, uh, suddenly. Taking over the HR department and changing up all of the SOPs and showing up in a way where they're like, you know, I've noticed we've had to do that more than once, so why don't we just create a process for it and we'll make our lives easier.
I had one of our team members who it, the client was just struggling with onboarding and they were creating the onboarding so that the next person stepping into their shoes would have it easier while they were onboarding. That's one of the ways in which we show up. Yeah, I think one. Interesting story is we also got a client reach out to us and we always like to ask how clients are hearing about us.
Typically, it's someone has some our praises somewhere and we love, we love our raving fans. They're amazing. But they heard about us through an artist who they, uh, ran into at a conference. So our artist was at the conference, I think might have even been speaking at the conference who hadn't worked with us for years.
They had gone into a direct hire and just happened to be in community with this person who was talking about how they never felt like they had enough time to do all the things they needed to do. And she said, I, I know someone who can help. So that, I guess, is kind of wild. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love it. Well, and I think the, the ease of which.
You just said that around, it's not wild, it's just what we do. I think that the person listening as you're listening to this right now, you can identify some moments in your life and in your work, uh, and in the impact that you offer in the world where you're like, oh, I just need that support. I need the support where someone's just ready to show up and give it.
Um, and I think that's just really important. Uh, I think we all. Going back to the scarcity mindset, we think we all have to, we have to do it all ourselves, and that's just not true. So true. Yeah, it's so true. And the other seat I, I guess I'd love to leave your listeners with is when I started Satiated artists, I would love to say it was a well thought out plan and that I just had this clarity of vision from beginning to end.
And now I have a company that's been around for 14 years doing these great things. The reality is. I started this company having wine with my girlfriends on a porch, talking about life, and I don't know if you've read The Secret, I've never read it, but a girlfriend had just recently read it and was talking about the universe is abundant and it wants to give you all of the things that you want.
You just have to ask for it, and you can't predict how it's gonna happen. And I might have had a few glasses of wine at that point, but I raised. The wine that was in the glass that I held in my hand, I raised it up and I said, all right, universe, when am I gonna get to live a life? To which I'd like to become accustomed?
I just wanna travel and write, and I kid you not. You cannot make this up. Life is weirder than art. The very next day I was laid off work. Mm. On a Monday, who gets laid off on a Monday. There you go. Completely unexpected. And I would've never jumped out of that nest on my own. The universe was abundant, but also had a wicked sense of humor.
So I ended up, uh, just beginning freelancing and entrepreneuring on my own, uh, through a contact who had heard that our company, uh, had great people and had done layoffs. And they were looking for some consultants and stepped into that door that opened, said yes and, and I had a client who saw the impact of a project manager, which is what I was doing at the time for him, who thought differently, who showed up differently, wanted me to handle all of his accounts.
I said, look, I'm flattered, but you have a lot of accounts and I also still wanna do my art. And he said, well expand. And it was just so matter of fact. And I thought, okay, yes. And. Why am I impactful here in this moment? And I decided, oh, it's because of that artistic mind, so I'm gonna pay it forward. I'm only gonna hire artists.
I'm gonna expand with artists and it's been the best decision I've ever made. I love that. That's so cool. I'm glad you shared that. I think it goes also to the idea of like, your niching down, your version of niche is to only employ artists. And I just think that's so beautiful, um, to expand that. I'm wondering if there are ways that you see the nonprofit sector and the creative sector supporting each other.
What is maybe something that the nonprofit sector, a ritual, a policy, uh, mindset? What, what could the nonprofit sector borrow from the creative sector? Or maybe it's vice versa. I don't know. I don't wanna make the assumption, but we got a lot of stuff we've gotta figure out and we've gotta figure it out together, and, and I love a good potluck theme.
You know, we all bring something to the table and we've got enough, right? So I think looking at ways of coup supporting, you know, there have been partnerships that we've done where we've traded services. Uh, somebody needed some support, we had the support, we needed help creating a course. They had knowledge to help us create a course.
So I think looking for ways that you can provide, uh, what the other, uh, partner needs. Going beyond the monetary, yeah. Uh, providing what other partners need. I think that's one way we can show up for one another. And I think keeping in mind that no matter what we're doing, it's about the story. And we don't connect with anybody if we don't know how to tell a good story.
And I think that's where artists also really excel. We understand that there's a narrative. We're all meaning making machines. I think together collectively, let's make the best meaning we can. What a beautiful way to end a conversation about the beautiful impact and the beautiful meaning that you are not only making and birthing and creating, but sharing with others and not only sharing with the folks that are part of satiated artists, but the clients that you and I, you said it so many times and I know it's.
Part of, um, the ethos of your work is that the clients are also satiated just as much as the artists, which is just so meaningful and so powerful. Laura, thank you for not only doing the work that you do, but for joining me for this conversation. Thank you so much for having me. If you are an organizational leader, board member, or a curious staff member, take the leaving while assessment to discover your organization's transition readiness archetype.
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It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hadaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a Navigation Guide for Workplace Transitions.