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Show Notes:

You don't have to create your business based on what's already been done. In this moment, there's no excuse to create your business by default.

How do you create a new vision for what your business will look like?

That's the question I'm tackling today. Our guest, Michelle Auerbach, is an author and consultant for entrepreneurs and organizations. She suggests mining science fiction for some of that vision.

In my own business and the whole rest of my life, I've been on a journey of reading the work of Octavia E Butler to help me gather inspiration and a new vision.

In Parable Of The Sower and Parable Of The Talents, through the main character, Lauren, she introduces a new way of looking at the world and a new model of leadership. I highly recommend these books and also the podcast Octavia's Parables. They're incredible sources of inspiration and ideas.

We're co-creating a new world. Our businesses are part of that new world.

Here's some of what we talked about:

How she uses a 3-part story strategy to help her clients communicate
Helping businesses and organizations become more kind and just
Choosing to do a portion of her work for no fee
Working with privilege and with difference
How she works justice and equity into her practices
Working to change the consulting world into one that is more collaborative and less competitive
Using science fiction to see a possible world and then create that world
Mining Becky Chambers books to help create a vision to communicate through the pandemic
Finding wisdom from people who come from different fields
Identify your superpowers through naming your science fiction role model
Using her vision to say no to opportunities that aren't a fit.
Why she says no to working with the financial services industry and said yes to working with McDonald's
Writing a book in 40 days during the pandemic and using it to amplify voices that wouldn't usually be published within traditional publishing