Episode 278 with Michelle Calcagni: The Importance of Knowing Your Audience

Join me on this episode of the Ready Yet podcast as I chat with guest Michelle Calcagni about the critical importance of understanding your audience before creating content. We'll dive into the pervasive issue of businesses not investing time in audience research, differences in challenges faced by large corporations vs. small businesses, the role of anxiety and mental health in entrepreneurship, and embracing curiosity and humility to build authentic connections Don't miss this episode packed with insights on how to truly connect with your target audience and improve your business strategies.

GUEST RESOURCES

Michelle Calcagni is the founder of PhoneBox Group, a strategic advisory firm specializing in diverse audience engagement. With a diverse background spanning startups to Fortune 200 companies, she leverages her global experience and MBA to create tailored solutions for clients. PhoneBox is committed to delivering results and giving back to the community, particularly women- and minority-led businesses.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleacalcagni

https://phoneboxgroup.com

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Transcript

Episode 278 with Michelle Calcagni: The Importance of Knowing Your Audience

Transcribed by Descript 

Erin Marcus: All right. Welcome, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast. And my guest today, Michelle Calcagni. Did I do that correctly? Hopefully. Awesome. I'm excited to talk to you. We've been having an awesome green room conversation. So before we get into all of this, I got to make it feel fancy, right?

Erin Marcus: Before we get into all of it, tell everyone a little bit like who you are and what you do. 

Michelle Calcagni: So I am here in Chicago, just like you, love it. And I run a small consulting firm called Phone Box. And we're really focused on helping our clients take the time and invest the time to understand their audiences.

Michelle Calcagni: We've done on the marketing side and the crisis comms side and the analytics side. And here's the funny thing after. I dare say 40 years of me being in this career, which is horrifying. The one thing that comes up over and over again is that organizations just don't take the time to really consider, understand, and listen to the audiences they want to reach before they start just pushing out content.

Michelle Calcagni: Everything is about content. So that's our mission. Let's stop the presses. Let's understand each other so we can form real connection because the content kind of is the paperwork. Great. And this comes after years and years in corporate. So I did my time in corporate and aerospace and defense and food distribution in the United States and globally.

Michelle Calcagni: So went from big, huge to really tiny with a tight focus. And I really love it. 

Erin Marcus: And the problems everywhere, like it's interesting to me it doesn't matter how big the businesses are. The problem is everywhere. And I say this in the small entrepreneur world, I say this all the time.

Erin Marcus: You didn't do the work before you went to work. You went out into the world and you went to a networking event or you're posting things online, but you didn't do the work. And I know at least for a small business. One of the reasons it happens is because nobody goes into business to do that work. This is not why they open their own business.

Erin Marcus: This is not the fun part. This is not what they want to do, but it's a pervasive problem at every level. 

Michelle Calcagni: It's huge. And what's really sad for me, when I see entrepreneurs and I do a lot of work with startups and accelerator programs, and it's amazing to me, it's everybody has this mental list of what they need to do to be a real business.

Michelle Calcagni: I must have. A Twitter now X, I must have Insta, I must be on Facebook, I must be having a website, I must have an email, all these musts that are implied, but they never think about A, what the heck are we going to put on these things that is relevant to the people reaching, and by the way, do the people we're trying to reach actually want to see us there?

Michelle Calcagni: The reality is, if you start by thinking about people first, and your audience first, and what touches them, and where they go for answers, you might find out that Instagram feed that all your competitors do is really irrelevant. And if you're small, even if you're big, who can afford to waste resources on a channel nobody cares about?

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's gotten worse. I think. Yes, absolutely. Go figure. And I'm not saying, by the way, I'm not saying that because I'm now of the age where I can say, back in my day that's not what I mean. I think it's just gotten worse because of how society has altered, right?

Erin Marcus: There's no barrier to entry in the noisy marketplace. And there's no fact checker that anybody now believes in, which means at a young age and even at an old age, we're all subjected to everybody's lies and everybody's highlight reels and everybody's. everything and we think that's right and normal and so we emulate it.

Michelle Calcagni: And you're right and I think the fact that it there's that low barrier entry I mean it's three seconds to go open your new Instagram feed but on top of that I'm one of 

Erin Marcus: seven Facebook accounts okay so there's no barrier to 

Michelle Calcagni: entry. That is mind blowing in and of itself. So many questions.

Michelle Calcagni: But I think the other thing too that's really problematic is there's so much comparison going on, right? So it's not a case of people sitting down with a white sheet of paper and or with a consultant or with a trusted set of advisors and saying, let's look at our audiences and how can we reach them?

Michelle Calcagni: Instead, it's turning into my competitors have an Instagram. So I have to have an Instagram, but here's the secret. You don't know what their engagement numbers are. And by the way, followers don't equal money. 

Erin Marcus: No, sanity metrics mean zero things. 

Michelle Calcagni: Exactly, so all of a sudden you talk to people and say, so why is it you think that your brand requires this number of channels that all have to be serviced?

Michelle Calcagni: And it's my competitors do it. That's 

Erin Marcus: how it's done. I'm suppose that's how 

Michelle Calcagni: that's how we have a checklist. But I think that's such a demon too. So you see about all the unhealthiness that comes from social media and the comparison game anyway, it's bad enough on a personal level. But now when you start applying it to businesses, like you're just contributing to the churn, you're not a clear set of eyes, you're not a new perspective.

Michelle Calcagni: And all you're doing is you're using up your resources. And that is 

Erin Marcus: tragic. And I think especially now. The other thing it does, it wastes time, it wastes your money, it wastes your energy, it wastes your effort. You feel horrendous, by the way, because it doesn't work. Then you feel like a failure.

Erin Marcus: But the other thing it does is it makes so many people put in all, and I do, I really do come from a place of empathy 99 percent of the time. You see these gifted people with, Ways to help people and because of what they think they're supposed to do, they end up a poor imitation instead of the authentic self that would make a difference.

Michelle Calcagni: I think that's such a real factor, especially for women who are in business. There's that piece of should, and it gets into you and it seeks you. And for a lot of us who came from corporate, I know you've got a corporate background too. We're all carrying the baggage as much as we might try and get rid of it.

Michelle Calcagni: Consciously or unconsciously, we have the baggage of the reality being that often success in a corporate context means fitting in, not starring, branching out and expanding out. And so you know I feel so bad when I go to these accelerator programs and I hear people talking about we have to do X because X is what everybody does.

Michelle Calcagni: It's the model. Why? And I work with b schools too. And I'm always amazed when I go to a case competition and I hear them using the same language from case to case to case. And I'm like, but what makes you interesting and something I'd invest in, in a pitch slam competition is not that you managed to use all the same terminology as the guy who was five minutes before you.

Michelle Calcagni: It's that you were scared and you were, excited and maybe you stayed up in the middle of the night created this just because you wanted it not because the market demanded it and then you talk to people first and i think that i like to hear that's happening but i think you're right i think the tendency is much more to say Everybody else is doing it.

Michelle Calcagni: Therefore, I shall and oh, look at the metrics. We can see say that they're successful. We don't know if they actually probably know their cost of goods is entirely out of whack. And that's one of the 

Erin Marcus: things I learned when I first got into my entrepreneurial world is I was seeing, Oh, I, 400, 000 a year.

Erin Marcus: And then I was trying to, yeah, but you spent 450 to get it. So it's a deal in the hat. 

Michelle Calcagni: We don't know and we're never going to know, right? My organization created this core assessment tool for entrepreneurs and we did it specifically because in all of our experience working with entrepreneurs, but even big companies, which is scary, but small ones is where we focused.

Michelle Calcagni: It's human. They would take humans, right? And we would say, look, take a look at your business. And it always became the same thing. It was we invested a ton more money in our content. But you're handing out your product for free. Oh we have 80, 000 likes, but none of them convert. I think it's just such a shallow conversation, but it is, it does really root in that piece of.

Michelle Calcagni: I'm okay if you don't make immediate sales, as long as you're engaging in a true and human way with your audience, because sometimes it's a long cycle, right? I worked in aerospace, nothing gets bought tomorrow. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah, that's a decade long. 

Michelle Calcagni: That's decades long. But if you really think about how to reach your audience first, you get away from, oh, it's not supposed to, it's want to.

Michelle Calcagni: And actually, candidly, I think it's more fun, because you get that engagement and that true connection back and forth. It's a lot more fun than, let me tell you what my employees should be thinking, as opposed to, here's what my employees really do think. 

Erin Marcus: Here's, one of the things I say all the time, as you and I spout off, easily about what we, all the problems in the world, right?

Erin Marcus: But, it's easy to say. But I call it give yourself a break, but don't let yourself off the hook. What are we up against here? We're up against subconscious programming. We're up against a influx of information telling us not just passive observation we're making, but Good marketers telling you blatantly, just do this one thing and you'll become a millionaire.

Erin Marcus: We're up against the Amazon prime society where I will tell you I've been having a mini meltdown that I'm not proud of because something I bought on Amazon took a week to get to me. Never mind that I paid 20 for something that would be like 250 if I went to the pawn store and bought it. I, God forbid, had to wait for this very specific thing.

Erin Marcus: I wanted to pay very little money to get to me from halfway around the world, and I'm complaining about this, right? But this is what we've been taught about how the world works. 

Michelle Calcagni: I think so, and I also think that there is a lot of baked in authority that's not earned. So I think that there's a tendency to read an article, and I'm not saying these publications aren't great, but A, there's a difference between paid contributors and paid journalists and people who are, you can't tell anymore, you have to dig a bit.

Michelle Calcagni: But, the idea that, five ways to fix your marketing or 10 ways, the clickbait side of things has made it seem like there is a facile solution. And I know it's one of the reasons I've had a hard time with LinkedIn is because if I get one more person who has no real evidence that they've done something successful, except for build a business to tell people how to do stuff, they've never been able to be fired.

Michelle Calcagni: But 

Erin Marcus: they don't tell you how to do it. That's my soapbox. 

Michelle Calcagni: That is the 

Erin Marcus: list of what to do. I can Google that. Google now has this really cool AI thing that answers all my questions. I don't even have to check on any of the links, right? The first day just AI gives me, it's what to do, but nobody knows the missing piece.

Erin Marcus: How do you do it and how does it get applied to your goal, your skill, your strengths, your weaknesses, your inner demons, 

Michelle Calcagni: and I think we've got some mangled terminology going on too. So I actually spend a lot of time talking to people about, look. You may have heard the word consultant.

Michelle Calcagni: It's one of those things that now has lost all meaning. So I hate using it. I really want us to just let it go, but I'm not going to win that battle. But I look and I say, look, there's consultants who are freelancers who are really, intern staffers. That's nothing wrong with any of these models, but they're coming in just to fill your gap.

Michelle Calcagni: Cool. There are large consultancies that when you really look at them, a lot of it is expertise, but a lot of it is, again, you've got a big acquisition going on. You need 500 people who can turn the data for the integration. And. We're going to bring in people and have a set of desks and get that crap done.

Michelle Calcagni: Great. But then I like to think of it and then there's coaches who are now pseudo consultants, which has become very strange for me. And I've definitely turned, that's turned into my, one of my key questions now when I'm looking at working with somebody is, do you think of yourself as a coach or consultant?

Michelle Calcagni: Because I don't, those aren't interchangeable for my business, for my needs. And then there's me and I fit in this category of I'm an expert advisor. You don't want me to stay forever. You don't want to hire me full time. I want to help your team get better, but I'm here to give you advice.

Michelle Calcagni: I'm not here to write your press release. Other people do it better. That is 

Erin Marcus: a big, huge, this is a very big gap where I see people promising outcomes. And what they're teaching, which is fine. And what they're teaching is how do you achieve those outcomes. But there's no implementation. And I think there gets to be confusion.

Erin Marcus: Like people think they're buying an outcome. People think that if they pay the coach, the consultant, the trainer, you get the outcome. There's no work to do. You just pay that person and then the outcome comes. 

Michelle Calcagni: Yeah. I think that it's really become challenging. And I've had coaches who have been brilliant and just what I needed at the right time.

Michelle Calcagni: And I've had clients who are coaches and they're exactly what I need, but the ones who are the best, the ones who say, look, all I'm going to do is be your companion on this journey. But you're really doing the work like a therapist would, right? They're not taking over your mental health. They're helping you improve it.

Michelle Calcagni: I think the demon is the word consultant and coach is getting intermingled and then consultant gets messed up with freelancer. And all of a sudden And 

Erin Marcus: nobody knows what it means anyway. So they're just going to say, Oh, you have all the things. I want all the things. If I work with you, I'll have all the things.

Michelle Calcagni: And one thing, so you can be a consultant. And I'm not saying that people who are young or inexperienced can't give counsel. It's just, there's so much you can give counsel about. And own it and own that space. And if you're looking at, like we said, starting with that piece of, if you're looking at all the competitors are doing, there's a great article recently, or maybe it was a podcast around the New York times, they're talking about how all coffee shops in the world is starting to look the same because somebody created a model that's very Instagrammable and now you can go to all these different countries and walk into a coffee shop and it looks pretty much the same, and I think it's starting to feel that way about a lot of fields and.

Michelle Calcagni: It is because it's 

Erin Marcus: also because we are so inundated with images and we're so it used to be when I would go to other countries, I had no frame of reference for that country. So there was a sense of awe because except if I was watching a TV show where the main characters went to that country to do something.

Erin Marcus: I had no visualization. 

Michelle Calcagni: No, and it's gotten very different, right? So I started travel. I was born overseas and I've traveled a lot and such a difference even in countries like India that I've been traveling to for many years. The difference between what it was like to get a cup of coffee when I was visiting there in the early 2000s versus now it's radically different.

Michelle Calcagni: And for some people that's comfortable for some people not. But I think it also, and we have all the templates, right? The more you get into mechanized marketing and automated marketing, and everybody's using the same Canva template or the same template from Adobe or whatever it is. And now AI.

Michelle Calcagni: And now AI is going to make it even more so because they actually technically, as I understand it, pull from examples that exist to try and create something for you. So they're literally looking at the existing pool and figuring out what they can get out of it. 

Erin Marcus: There's this underlying thing, though, that I think is also at the core of this, especially in this, it's not even a small business world because the big businesses are made up of people and people are people. And, we were chatting before we even started about this idea. Humans, so many of the decisions we make are based on fear.

Erin Marcus: They really are. Most 

Michelle Calcagni: of them, I would guess. 

Erin Marcus: It's to avoid dying, basically. That's the way brains work. And so when you add in the over over, over flow of what's supposed to work, and now on the flip side, internally, you have the imposter syndrome, the anxiety, all of the mindset. The reason I come from empathy, police empathy is I'm like, it's a miracle.

Erin Marcus: Any of us are pulling anything off. 

Michelle Calcagni: It's insane, and I think what's really fascinating to me, as I've gotten older, and granted, I'm a Gen X er, so we don't always have the right language, we certainly aren't going to be. My 

Erin Marcus: favorite t shirt, I have to buy when it was on TikTok, is Gen X, raised on hose water and neglect.

Michelle Calcagni: I want to get one that just says, whatever, just write it, but whatever, that's just it. So I celebrate that. It seems, hopefully it's changing within generations because they seem to be better about communicating their feelings a lot. But yeah, but I also think that and mental health, I think that's the thing that I'm finding interesting.

Michelle Calcagni: Is that piece of mental health? I think for a long time has been defined as how much crap can you take with a straight face and not keel over and have a mental breakdown? And it's funny as I talk to more, especially women who are running their own businesses or responsible for large groups of businesses, like a really big, segment or division or whatever.

Michelle Calcagni: I'm hearing the word anxiety coming up, but not in a sense of I'm scared, but in the sense of I have this burden I have to carry just as I have to carry. My gender, I have to carry what era I was born in, where I live, my It's 

Erin Marcus: normalized, right? It's a badge of honor. It's normalized. It's I was so guilty of it, and it's a battle I still face, is how heavy of a load can you carry, and being proud of yourself for I don't even Torturing myself?

Erin Marcus: I don't even 

Michelle Calcagni: It's bonkers. And you don't really realize that it's not you. I'd recently have a lot of conversations about it. My dad passed away in late January of this year. And so a lot of it gets assigned to grief, right? I have some inertia going on, some lethargy, it's grief. And that's absolutely true.

Michelle Calcagni: But what's fascinating is when I really started thinking about it, I was like, a lot of it is also just, I'm exhausted. I'm just exhausted. 

Erin Marcus: Mental load. 

Michelle Calcagni: Yes. And I don't 

Erin Marcus: feel it as much in the same way. 

Michelle Calcagni: It's the mental load. It's the mental load. And I started peeling back and being like, okay, let's start talking with friends.

Michelle Calcagni: Let's talk with colleagues. Let's talk with people and find out where's this coming from? Am I missing something? And the number of people that I talked to who said, oh yeah, I finally figured it out. This is anxiety. This is no joke. And the number of people who told me to go see inside out too, because of how well they think it represents anxiety.

Michelle Calcagni: But the fact that we can say it's anxiety. It's not that you weren't tough enough. You didn't want a man up. You couldn't have it. My least favorite, you don't have the right mindset. No, stuff is scary and it bugs you and you're allowed to have, and if it accumulates over years, it really drags you down.

Michelle Calcagni: And so I think entrepreneurship can be a wonderful, glorious thing, but I also think in a lot of ways, it's breeding some bad habits, in the sense of it being, look how tough I can be, especially when you look at some of the more tech bro y side of things. The 

Erin Marcus: bro y side of things. To me, I see a split.

Erin Marcus: This is gonna, I'm gonna piss people off here, but here we go. I see a split. I see the bro hustle side. Yeah. And I see the broke women side. Broken women's side. I see a lot of inertia because of people holding on to the label of we have this awareness, I'm trying to come up with a way to articulate this and not be a total dick but I'm Gen X and here we go.

Erin Marcus: There's a big difference to me, and I could be wrong about this, but there's a big difference to me between awareness that there's an issue and awareness as, and then holding on to that label and never doing anything about the victimhood of it. Yeah. There's a difference between, and I see a big group of women, and there's men in there too, wanting to just talk about the feelings, but never do anything about it.

Michelle Calcagni: And I think you see also, I see a lot of binariness about it, right? I'm so frustrated by the binariness of this. So it's I have anxiety or I don't, it's no, that is a gradient. And you can have anxiety that deserves merit and empathy, but you be also might be high functioning, right? But I actually heard that phrase the other day.

Michelle Calcagni: Somebody said, I'm a high functioning anxious person. I was like, Oh, that's bloody brilliant. I was like, Oh, great. So I could be that instead of being, I'm not a high functioning alcoholic, but we're certainly used to the term. And so I think you're, I think that binariness gets in there, right? So it's, instead of it being a, I have shades of this, I have moments of this, I have experiences of this, I'm not going to be agree.

Michelle Calcagni: I will be a grieving daughter for the rest of my life. Technically, my father's not coming back now, but I don't think after this year, after a period of time, the wearing of that badge of grieving daughter, the badge is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller because the rest of my life is going to expand around it.

Michelle Calcagni: It will no longer be the big issue of the day. It's going to be one of the things that's happened in the past, just like everything. And I think you're right. It's that danger saying, look, Imposter syndrome sucks. Anxiety sucks, but there are shades of gray here. And if we look at every label, 

Erin Marcus: it's the label, right?

Erin Marcus: Labeling 

Michelle Calcagni: drives me batty. And so even if I say I have anxiety, that doesn't mean I need to be institutionalized tomorrow, but it also doesn't mean that a coach is all I need to get through it or a really good book. There's somewhere on the spectrum. It is and there are bad days and good days. And I think, especially as we see entrepreneurs trying to be very authentic online, the challenges online drives you to a binary definition.

Michelle Calcagni: I am this, or I am X or Y or Z or whatever. And again, you're missing the nuances of your audience. So even going back to the original premise, which is the more you understand people, the more you connect with them, and that helps your business, your life, everything. The reality is people have days when they feel really anxious and they have days when they don't.

Michelle Calcagni: And people are really anxious about some things this year and not anxious about them the next year. But the more we label them, we force everybody into some kind of a demographic, I think a lot about kind of characteristics to identify your target audience. And I work with four in the model that I use and I see people getting stuck on demographic and never getting to the psychographic.

Michelle Calcagni: Yes, they never get there, right? Because they're so stuck on the demographics of the labels. They never get to the least 

Erin Marcus: interesting thing about anybody. The fact that I am 54, 125 pounds, lives in, this town, is the least interesting thing about me. Why would anybody make that the only thing they, if they're trying to reach me, that's the, who cares?

Michelle Calcagni: And some groups do it really well. Sports does it really well. The example I always use when I'm teaching about psychographics is the Cubs and the Sox. Yeah. Oh, they're completely different people. And it's not, there's a great ad a while back with, the comparison of the two and it was brilliant.

Michelle Calcagni: I need to find that again. The idea of is I'm a Cubs fan. I've been a Cubs fan since I was young. I live on the South side. There's a whole lot of stuff that goes on with that. If you're from Chicago, Barack Obama, stating he was a Sox fan and Michelle saying she was a Cubs fan, that, that means something, but that's like a graphic piece.

Michelle Calcagni: It's not just what it means to me. It's what it means to them. Yeah, and we're so busy saying you said you're this and my label says this means this that we're not saying wait a minute. What does that label mean to you? If I say I have anxiety, it just means I have to deal with some baggage and I need to work through it and I need to be aware.

Michelle Calcagni: But if somebody else says they have anxiety. Doesn't mean the same thing. This is not an on off switch. It could mean something. It can be, they're just nervous about going and making a speech. That's not to minimalize that. It's to say it's very different. And if I want to connect with them, I've got to have those nuances.

Michelle Calcagni: It's amazing how those nuances get lost. And I think for today's entrepreneurs. That's where I think, as Gen Xers and the boomers and whatever else you want to call those of us born in the sixties and prior can contribute is being able to say, look, a little bit more time on this planet.

Michelle Calcagni: Probably gives us a little bit more ability to say, Hey, let's look at those shades of gray a little bit more carefully. Yes. A hundred, 

Erin Marcus: right. And 

Michelle Calcagni: force those conversations. 

Erin Marcus: And where are you limiting yourselves? Not just, because of the label you're choosing to hold on to. 

Michelle Calcagni: Right, and why is being better than before the definition?

Michelle Calcagni: So I was, I haven't done it yet, but I read an article about, somebody wrote an article about how they love this new email system they read about, and they love it because Gmail is 20 years old and they said, this is what somebody created email knowing what we know now, but not trying to improve Gmail going with a white sheet of paper.

Michelle Calcagni: And I thought, wow, that is really an interesting premise. I'm going to go check out that email system because I'm not interested in an improvement on Gmail. There's Outlook. There's other stuff. Those things have evolved. But how, wow, that is an adventurous thought. What would this thing that is a lifeblood of business in so many ways, what would it look like if you started from scratch?

Erin Marcus: And it is completely different. If you look at all the tools we use, the older, the tool, the iterations they've done to improve themselves still suck as new things come on the market and with that, white sheet of paper, sky's the limit. 

Michelle Calcagni: And it's scary, right? It's really scary, especially as an entrepreneur.

Michelle Calcagni: It's really scary. It's a whole lot easier to say everybody in this industry has a green logo. Therefore, I should have to have a green logo too. That's a lot easier than saying, but I don't like green. I like fuchsia. 

Erin Marcus: And that's where this all emerges, where that's why I go back to, I say, it's really easy for us to sit here and complain and talk about all the things that are wrong.

Erin Marcus: But what you're up against as an individual is. Your labels, your anxiety, your imposter syndrome, your subconscious programming. So it's easy to say don't do that, but what you have to get through, the work you have to do before you go to work, I guess if I would sum it up, is not just what we were talking about with psychographics and demographics and understanding who you're talking to, but you have to know who you are.

Erin Marcus: And have the self worth and the self confidence to be willing and brave enough to go be that authentic self. 

Michelle Calcagni: Absolutely. And to set for yourself the standards of saying. The right client that I might get might not be the right client for me. Or what is your idea? I realized the other day, somebody said, who's your ideal client?

Michelle Calcagni: And I had to pause because I can tell you I've been in business nine years. I can tell you who my clients are. I can tell you the most profitable ones are. I can tell you what industries I'm best positioned to serve, but that doesn't necessarily always align with the people I really dream of serving.

Michelle Calcagni: And when it took out the white piece of paper, does that match? And I think that's one of the real challenges. One of the upsides, I will say, because I like you, I'm an optimist at heart In spite of my whatever ness of being a Gen X er. I think the amazing thing about audiences is if you ask, they'll probably tell you.

Michelle Calcagni: They'll tell you! And you're gonna learn more than you thought. I spent a lot of time in India and I was there on a corporate assignment and we were trying to articulate why The team in Europe couldn't get the team in India to stay late. It really frustrated them because to them it was, we need this done.

Michelle Calcagni: We're in a different time zone. You've got to get this done. Why won't you stay late? We're only asking for 15 minutes. Why can't you stay 15 minutes late? And so what they heard, what they were interpreting is you're not trying that hard. This is a classic stereotypical, bad outsourcing decision by corporate, blah, blah, blah.

Michelle Calcagni: When I was there, part of my job was to try and fix some of these issues. And so I sat down and said, Hey, help me understand. It's my favorite thing ever. It requires you to acknowledge you don't understand, which I think why people don't like to do it because corporate success usually doesn't come from saying I don't 

Erin Marcus: know.

Michelle Calcagni: Yeah, I don't know. But help me understand is great. I started asking a lot of questions and it turns out the biggest reason that was happening wasn't because they didn't want to try. It wasn't because they didn't care. It wasn't because they didn't understand the importance. It's because their transportation to and from work was provided on a company shuttle.

Michelle Calcagni: And if they missed it, they had to wait four hours. It wasn't a 15 minute decision. It was a two hour decision. And by the way, They're hours being what they were. They're already working until midnight because they were trying to be on the time zones that align to their clients. And so I think it was that p and then once you explain that everybody's like, Oh God, 15 minutes that I'm not going to do that to somebody.

Michelle Calcagni: I don't want them to be away from their families for an extra 15 for 15 minute thing. I'm going to plan better to ask those questions two hours earlier because staying late isn't a, I just get in my car and go home and say, Oh God, I have to sit here in the dark for two hours. But we don't ask. And I think that this, that piece of.

Michelle Calcagni: For both of ourselves and for the people we work with, if we're willing to go to the white sheet of paper and say, help me understand, whether it's understand ourselves, understand what we're trying to accomplish or understand our audiences. It's a humble place and it's a scary place, but no one's saying you're stupid.

Michelle Calcagni: They're saying you don't understand this. And, I, one of the tattoos I got after living overseas was Curiouser and Curiouser from Alice in Wonderland, because the longer I stayed, the less I recognized, the less I knew. But I also recognize the kinder people were about wanting to share it. And so that I think you're right.

Michelle Calcagni: That's the biggest thing. If we can just give ourselves all the permission to be anxious, to not overlabel everybody with, one fell swoop of what some of these words mean and say, wait a minute, use that five wise method. Why? What is, what does being anxious mean to you? What does being a woman in business mean to you?

Michelle Calcagni: What does a great client mean to you? What does service mean to you? But with a white sheet of paper, as opposed to, Hey, This is how Apple does it. So therefore, how do we do it in comparison to 

Erin Marcus: Apple? You're not going to be in their own game. 

Michelle Calcagni: No, they're actually, yeah, they pretty well got that lock, but also you probably had something really cool and amazing to bring to the table and you didn't because you were so busy comparing yourself to Apple or to Tesla or whoever the articles are about that you read that week in a magazine or online.

Michelle Calcagni: And all that does is bring more anxiety, as opposed to the more you know about yourself and others. It's not going to get rid of the anxiety, but I think it gives you a comfort in feeling like you've gained an expertise that truly is unique. 

Erin Marcus: It gives you a place to start from, and I also think you really hit the nail on the head where the solution The cross the board solution is curiosity.

Michelle Calcagni: Absolutely. Absolutely. And curiosity, by the way, does not mean having a focus group and bringing people in to prove that you're right. 

Erin Marcus: Here's the other thing, listening to somebody else's opinion doesn't automatically mean you agree with them. Most people just want to be heard. And curiosity allows that space for other people to be heard.

Erin Marcus: I can ask you your opinion. That doesn't mean I agree with you. I don't even have to yell at you, no, if I don't agree with you. 

Michelle Calcagni: No, but I think that's, again, that's something that gets very ingrained, particularly in the American business structure, is that idea that if I give you a voice and you say it, that I'm obligated to either agree or disagree with you.

Michelle Calcagni: It's no, you actually can just note it 

Erin Marcus: and learn from 

Michelle Calcagni: it. And it's okay if you disagree. And by the way, saying that somebody you're glad they came to you to speak I was in a great workshop with some executives. We talked about the fact that listening is not implicit endorsement. And I think there is that fallacy of, wait a minute, if I give them my valuable time, then that's proving I'm invested in what they say.

Michelle Calcagni: No, you're invested in the fact that they're sharing it with you. You're not invested in the contents. And there's a really big difference. If somebody wants to share with you how they feel, or they hate how the company is running, and you spend a half hour listening to that doesn't mean you hate the company.

Michelle Calcagni: It means that they needed to be heard, and you're going to listen. You can still ignore everything they said. I question that decision, but you can but giving them the time is not implicit endorsement. And I think people struggle with that a lot. There, there's definitely some models that need to be shaken up.

Michelle Calcagni: So I hope that as younger people who are a little bit more open with their emotions, certainly than us Gen Xers are asking these questions, they're not accidentally now using labels as a way to continue separation or continue to continue. Nobody wants to be in a box. And the more labels you put on people, the more boxes people get stuck in.

Michelle Calcagni: So I'm hoping that the labels will turn more into definitions and guides than labels. 

Erin Marcus: 100 percent Absolutely. This is awesome. You're amazing. I love chatting with you. If people want to continue this conversation, what is the best way for them to find you? 

Michelle Calcagni: I would say find me on LinkedIn. I've been pretty quiet lately in part because some of these things we've talked about have been really frustrating me on that platform, but I'm willing to acknowledge it can be different.

Michelle Calcagni: And so I'll be diving back in again in the next few weeks. 

Erin Marcus: Love it. We will make sure all of your links are right. You're just a click away. We'll put them in the show notes. You're just a click away from everybody. Thank you for hanging out with me and spending time and giving us your insight. It's awesome.

Michelle Calcagni: Oh, thank you. This was great. I love it. When you come onto a podcast and you think you're going to talk about this, it's very businessy and it turns into this conversation about we can make everything better. This is great. Exactly. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you.