We’ve spent the past few months deep in a series on pandemic clarity—hearing intimate stories about people whose relationships to work have changed dramatically over the past two years. But the more we listened to others’ stories, the more we realized…it was time to tell our own.
We’ve spent the past few months deep in a series on pandemic clarity—hearing intimate stories about people whose relationships to work have changed dramatically over the past two years. But the more we listened to others’ stories, the more we realized…it was time to tell our own.
In today’s episode, Sara is joined by Active Voice operations manager and Strong Feelings producer, Emily Duncan, to talk about their own reckonings with work. From the founding of Active Voice during the pandemic to confronting exploitation in the music industry, they offer glimpses into the reality of being leadership works-in-progress.
What we do is really tech and UX and UI focused. But I do think that there's a ton of overlap in multiple industries. And I see myself as having the ability to take some of what I've been learning here and bring it back, take that fire from the Greek gods and bring it back down and share it. If I can come and help educate even just one person on their rights and what they deserve, I think that it will have all been worth it.
—Emily Duncan, Ops Manager at Active Voice
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Emily Duncan 0:00 All of a sudden, all of these big questions came flooding in, and I was like, "Yeah, why do things work this way? Why does the freelance industry work this way?"
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:23 Hey, everyone, welcome to Strong Feelings, a feminist podcast about work. I'm your host, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and if you've been listening this spring, you'll know that we've been deep in a series on pandemic clarity, hearing intimate stories about people whose relationships to work have changed dramatically over the past two years. We heard from Kate, who left tech after a painful pay equity battle and became a small batch ceramicist.
Kate Rotondo 0:48 I wake up in the morning, and I don't spend an hour and a half on the highway just getting to work, only to be paid less than my peers. I actually am in control of my work life and how much I make. I am the one who sets the prices for my mugs. I'm the one who decides what my work hours are.
SWB 1:04 We heard from Julie, whose meeting with a leadership coach to talk about executive presence ended up somewhere else entirely.
Julie Threlkeld 1:11 That was the moment I knew I really needed to look at if I could retire because, clearly, it was not going to be good for me or for the people I worked with to keep going down the road of leadership when this was not going to work out for either of us.
SWB 1:24 We met Joann, whose whole mindset about work changed when her organization moved to a four-day workweek.
Joann Lee Wagner 1:30 My ideas around work were very productivity-driven. It was very much that an organization's leadership needs to be almost like a watchdog, making sure people are doing their work. Moving into the four-day workweek for me personally, it's just letting go.
SWB 1:47 And we met Alison, who shut down her work life for a few months, and came back completely changed.
Alison Taylor 1:54 I realized I do not need the things that I have been told that I need. I do not want to participate in the Thunderdome of American capitalism. I do not want to participate in being on the hamster wheel.
SWB 2:11 If you missed any of those episodes, go back to them. Those stories are moving and really inspiring. Which leads me to today. Because the more I listened to other stories, the more I realized, it's time to tell my own. So what's changed in my own relationship to work? And what does that mean for Active Voice, my baby company that I'm trying to grow into a rock solid resource for tech and design leaders who don't just want to recreate the status quo? Well, that's where we're going. And to keep me honest, and make sure I get into the juicy stuff, I invited my producer Emily Duncan to join me on the other side of the mic, because not only does Emily edit the podcast, but she runs operations for all things Active Voice. So she gets to see firsthand when I'm stressed and overworking or when I screw up as a leader. And not only do we talk about that, we also get into Emily's own pandemic reckoning. And it's a real one. Here's our convo.
SWB 3:08 Hey, Emily.
ED 3:10 Hey, Sara, how are you?
SWB 3:11 Can you tell our listeners just, like, a little bit more about who you are and what you do at Active Voice?
ED 3:16 Sure. So if you're on our email list, you've probably seen some of my handiwork. I'm the operations manager at Active Voice, and I also produce Strong Feelings.
SWB 3:26 Oh, my gosh, you do so much more than that. Emily is one of my favorite people, everybody. You know, I found her on Upwork in 2021, about a little over a year ago. And I was looking for some help with audio production for the podcast. And after working with you for like a couple of episodes, I was like, "Oh, this is so easy. Oh, this is so great." And it was such a joy to get you more involved with Active Voice and to bring you closer into all of the work that we do. And I realized though we kept expanding your role, and then turning it into a staff position this year, and because you kind of kept joining in like "Oh, we'll add you to this. Add you to that—"
ED 4:09 Yeah, yeah chaining things together.
SWB 4:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't really do like a classic interview process for this specific role. And so I didn't ask you that much about sort of your work history. And I'm wondering what was work like for you before Active Voice?
ED 4:22 Yeah, you know, you want to talk about reckonings. This whole season has been about people's reckonings with work and their relationship to work in the pandemic. You sort of came into my life at a big period of reckoning and change. When the pandemic started, I was living in New York, and we got to the point, my husband and I, where we were like, "Okay, do we want to try to rough it out in New York? Things are getting kind of bad, but our health insurance is local?" Or do we want to go spend some time with my family who were back in the Midwest, and maybe, like, be able to go outside, see some grass, drive a car. And so we moved back to Iowa.
5:00 And my other job when I'm not Active Voice is I'm a musician. And so you know, things, things were a little bit on pause. And I was using this time to, like, really better myself. So I was doing like Pilates twice a day with my friend, and I was going to learn the piano finally. And I was doing all these things, and I ended up injuring myself. So I got a nerve injury in both of my hands, and that knocked out all of my music and all of the things that I'd been doing to keep busy and to avoid thinking about the pandemic.
SWB 5:29 Oh my god. And people should know, you're a flutist, right?
ED 5:32 Yeah. So I need both my hands.
SWB 5:34 Kind of important.
ED 5:35 And I lost both of them at once.
SWB 5:38 Oh my gosh.
ED 5:39 So I had a job in the music industry, and I had been freelancing, and now sort of all of that had gone away, the pandemic had knocked out work, my injury had knocked out what little there was. And I had a lot of time to think. And I got really sad, because here I am, I'm so lucky to still have a job in my industry in an industry that got hit really hard by the pandemic, and I can't even really do it. And I'm also not really happy at that job. And I'm not really happy with music right now. I just sort of feel like my life is happening to me and I'm not an active participant in it.
6:16 And so I went back to basics, and I was like, "Okay, pretend you're in third grade. What do you want to be when you grow up? What's going to make you happy and excited right now in this moment?" And I was thinking back to some other skills that I had, and some things I could do with the injury, and some work that might be in demand right now. And I, in my master's program, had learned how to do audio engineering. And I had always really liked it. I liked the puzzle pieces of putting things together. And so I made a really concerted effort to brush those skills up and actually get some training. It was something that I could do with my hands that was a lot lower impact than almost any other thing. And it was related to my industry still. And so yeah, that's how I got started in podcast editing. And I threw up an Upwork post, and we connected. It was like perfect timing.
SWB 7:05 It was perfect timing for me, that's for sure. I'm really curious. What did you think about Active Voice? What did you think about me? Like, what were you thinking as we started working together?
ED 7:14 I loved the podcast. Before you, I had been doing sort of freelance work on other things. So I got one thing that to this day, I have no idea what it was. So somebody had asked me to take this piece of audio and they wanted it cleaned up. So I also do audio repair. And I was listening to it, and it basically sounded like it was gonna get used for someone to sue someone about like work payment not getting paid. So I had random jobs like that. I did another podcast that was pretty rough. They were brand new. They were a baby podcast, and it was about like AI. And so Active Voice was actually like, "Oh, this is what I would listen to. This is a podcast that I would listen to on purpose if I wasn't working here."
7:58 And so that was really exciting. And in getting to know you more, I don't know, I started thinking so much more about my work history and my industry as a whole. Because a lot of what we do here at Strong feelings is questioning our defaults, right? Questioning why the systems that are in place, work the way that they do and how they got to be in place in the first place, and who gets left behind. And I had never thought about that in classical music. And then all of a sudden, all of these big questions came flooding in, and I was like, "Yeah, why? Why do things work this way? Why does school work this way? Why does the freelance industry work this way?" And I was just really excited to be along for the ride in exploring these questions in the tech industry, but also, taking what I've been learning and applying it back to the music industry where I started.
SWB 8:52 Gosh, I'm really glad that you been able to do some of that. And I think it's, like, once you start seeing those things, you can't unsee them.
ED 8:59 Yeah.
SWB 8:59 Sometimes that's also tough, where you're like, "I can't turn this off."
ED 9:02 No, definitely. It's like, "Well, I can't go back." It's like The Matrix. You've all of a sudden, like, seen the plug that was in the back of your head, and now you can't pretend that it's not there anymore. So one thing I've always been curious about with you is I came in when Active Voice was up and running, and I was really surprised to learn that it is actually what we would consider a startup. It's pretty brand new, and also you started it in the pandemic? Is that right?
SWB 9:29 Yeah, that's actually something I really wanted to talk about. Like, when I think about my own relationship to work, the story of how Active Voice came to be is really central to that. There's a lot to it, both really good stuff and stuff that was really hard. You know, I was consulting for a long time before Active Voice. So I was self-employed for like, forever at this point, span of like, 10 years. But I was consulting, so I was doing UX and content strategy work on, like, sort of project-basis with clients. And I was also doing, you know, speaking engagements and writing books.
10:00 And there were a lot of things about that that I loved, especially, I mean for years, I really loved it. But at some point, I kind of stopped being as interested in the kinds of projects I was working on. I wasn't really sure what kinds of projects I wanted to be working on. I was, I think, starting to feel a little bit dissatisfied with the amount of time I was spending kind of heads down, trying to solve problems and not enough time working with people, and the people conversations I was having were, like, the things that were the most exciting to me.
10:34 And then, on the side, I had been working on Strong Feelings, on this podcast, with Katel LeDû, who runs A Book Apart, who was a really good friend of mine. And that was where I think some of my interests sort of came together around bringing a feminist lens to leadership, and starting to, like, set some of those seeds. And so from there, back in 2019, we launched this event series in Philly here locally called Collective Strength. It was like a, you know, feminist event series. We brought people together around topics that were related to the workplace, right? So leadership and workplace issues from a feminist lens. And at the time, her and I were also doing a lot of collaborating, like, we were hosting some workshops together at conferences, and we were starting to look at how else we might collaborate.
11:27 So that was the point, when I really realized, "I think I want to stop consulting." Like, "I think I want to kind of take the stuff I've been doing on the side and pull it more to the center." And at the same time, I was really unsure because I knew how to make money as a consultant. I understood the model. But I wasn't really sure what this other model might be. And I was like, "I don't really know what does the sort of like profit and loss statement look like for this other kind of business?" or like, "Who's paying us for what?" It was a little unclear. And I was also not 100% sure, kind of where our collaboration was going.
12:05 All of that was really weighing on me in 2019. And it was during all of that that I also did a coach training program. And that was amazing in a lot of ways, because there was this, like, big new skill set, I was learning. And I started to see ways that that would connect to my work. And it helped me kind of visualize what sort of business this could be. And at the same time, it was also a period where you can't really go through a program like that without doing a lot of self-reflection.
ED 12:33 Yeah, I bet.
SWB 12:34 Really, you're actually like, demanded, the curriculum is a lot of self-reflection. And also, you're working with people who are practicing their coaching skills, which means you have to then get coached, right? Because you trade back and forth in all kinds of different setups. And it was during that time when, you know, it really clicked into place for me that I had actually been running my business from a place of fear for a really, really long time.
ED 12:59 Say more about that. "A place of fear." What do you mean?
SWB 13:02 Well, it's something I think that I'm continuing to understand better and more deeply. But one of the things that I realized was that when I was consulting, it's like, things were going well. But I had a big fear of vulnerability, or certain types of vulnerability. I never wanted anybody to think that I needed work like, "Oh, that's desperate," right? Like, don't ever tell somebody something like, "Oh, wow, that's so interesting. I'd love to work with you someday." Oh, no, no, no. I had this feeling of like, "Don't say that you want anything. Don't want things. Do stuff. And then dot dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Hopefully, work comes to you eventually."
13:45 But it was so passive. And I realized that a lot of that passivity, I mean, that was a fear thing because if you say what you want, and then you don't get it, you can feel like a failure or rejected. Right?
ED 13:58 Right.
SWB 13:58 And so there's self-protection in there, it's like, "Well, if you just don't want anything..." And that was one where I was like, "Oh, wait." And this is where, you know, led me into some newer and deeper ground in therapy to that was like, "Oh, wait, where did that come from? And like that comes all the way back to childhood. I absolutely learned that you know, don't need things because if you don't need things, you can't be disappointed and let down."
ED 14:23 Yeah, you also have more control that way too. If you don't need things then, you know, it means that you can take care of yourself.
SWB 14:28 Well, yeah, I mean, and that was a way to protect myself. And then there's this other fear, I think connected to that, related to that. It was definitely that fear of failure, or that like, fear of being out of control. And for me, that's also…it's like a hyper-independence thing, which is like, "No one's looking out for you, but you. So you better figure it out yourself," which also turns into, "You got to do everything yourself. You have to control everything. You can't really trust anybody else to do anything." And that's something I learned also as a kid, where, again, it's like these tools that were meant to be protective. Yeah, if you're in an experience where you really can't rely on anyone else, you do have to learn to be hyper-independent. And also, that can lead you to a place, or it led me to a place, where it didn't feel like I could rely on anybody, even if I could have. Or, I wasn't setting off vibes of collaboration because all my vibes were like, "I'll figure it out. I'll handle it. I got it."
15:30 You know, some elements of that probably helped me be able to work independently, originally. And then they kind of stalled me out, I think, in a lot of ways and made the work that I was doing also oftentimes feel like it took a lot of work. It took a lot of energy. Okay. I love speaking and writing, right? But you know, it takes a lot more energy to write a talk, and then like, find places that want you to give that talk, and give that talk to a bunch of strangers.
ED 15:57 Yes.
SWB 15:58 And then sit around and wait. And hope that eventually somebody down the line will be like, "Oh, I saw you give a talk on this six months ago. I'd love to work with you on this project," which totally happened, but that is a lot of work. And it is actually probably a lot less work to be more direct about like, "Here's what I do. And here's how you can hire me." Like, I didn't even have a website that was like that for a long time.
ED 16:21 Yeah, this is so funny. Like, we don't ever really think of the music industry having a lot of crossover with business. And I think that there's a lot of problems with that. But this is exactly how it works to. It's like, "I'm going to take every single gig. And I'm going to be so pleasant and kind and accept whatever treatment I get. And then, hopefully, somebody's cousin's best friend was there and tells someone else, and then they hire me."
SWB 16:44 Yeah, that passivity, and then what you said, like, that being pleasant and sort of like, being in a place where you're always super easy to work with.
ED 16:51 Yes.
SWB 16:52 I mean, I wasn't necessarily always easy to work with. I don't want to pretend that that's true. But I think it's like a place where it's easy to feel like you're exploited, or you're just so passive, right? And that's what I really found was that I was so visible in a lot of ways, right? Like I was visible in my field, I was speaking up about stuff. I was riled up about stuff. So like, "passive" doesn't sound like it makes sense when you describe me. But what I was really passive about was, what was the work that I was getting, and doing, and how was I getting that work?
17:23 And so, back to that coach training program, when I was in that program, I really made a promise to myself. I was like, "You're not doing that, again. This is a big shift in your business. This is an intentional shift in your business. You have to work through that. And you have to be more direct on the things that you want. Like, let yourself launch big instead of just being like, ‘I'm doing a thing,’ right? Talk about it like it matters to you because it matters to you."
17:52 So that was end of 2019 beginning of 2020. At that point Katel decided to step away from the podcast, and stepped away from collaborating, and honestly really stepped away from me in general. And I was like, "Okay, that's okay. But then what does that mean for me now, right?" Like, now I have to rethink, right? I was like all preparing myself, "Okay I'm gonna do all this stuff. Oh, it's changing again." In the meantime, I had stopped consulting. I had stopped taking on consulting projects because I was trying to ramp up and launch this new thing. So I had to launch Active Voice, even though I felt like, "Oh, gosh, what am I doing?" Because I needed to build a new business. I am not independently wealthy. I can only stop working for so long. And so I had to launch, and I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna do this and figure it out as I go." So it's in February of 2020. And I launched Active Voice.
ED 18:43 Oh, no.
SWB 18:44 Well, and so in that time, I tried to make a big, exciting launch of it, and celebrate it, and all of that, really, like, do the thing that I tried to do. And it was within a couple of weeks that the pandemic hit. And for me, it felt like all of that work that I had done to work through my fears to approach work from a different lens. It kind of got back-burnered. Because I was in such a state of both all of the fear and anxiety of the pandemic itself and the sort of unknowns, and "I've just launched a thing. What does this mean for me? Now what? Is this going to be okay?"
ED 19:22 Yeah, I bet that was a really scary time. That's a lot to sort of hold all at once.
SWB 19:28 It was and ultimately things were fine. Things built with Active Voice, they kind of, like, built throughout 2020. But it was weird and hard. And in the meantime, that spring, I joined the COVID Tracking Project. And that was a thing that was part of the Atlantic. And it was an effort to basically collect really good data about the pandemic at a time when the data that was being collected was very bad, and that the government was releasing very little. And so this was a kind of volunteer side gig thing. And I was really excited about it, I threw myself into it really hard, leading UX and product work.
20:08 The thing I was specifically trying to do was to get this collaboration with the Center for Antiracism with Ibram Kendi off the ground. So what we were working on was this tracker for tracking racial disparity in COVID cases and outcomes. That was something that was really important to me. I really cared about it. I believed in the need to talk about racial disparity in health outcomes. And I was excited to be part of that work. So I threw myself into that extra hard. And one of the things that, looking back, I can also see is that all of that is true, but I also was looking for a place to put all of my pandemic anxiety, right? It was like a place where I was like, "Where can I put all of this fear and all of my uncertainty and feel like I'm doing something?"
20:57 I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I was in it for the right reasons. And also this other stuff. And you know, that's okay. But what I realized is, like, I pushed so hard to get a team together, to build and launch this racial data tracker, to do all of these overall user experience enhancements, because this project was getting like tons of usage and people from all kinds of media were using our data, push, push, push. And it kind of put me back where I had been, which is working from a place of fear, being really focused on like, "Get stuff done, go go go." And I wasn't spending enough time thinking about what did my collaborators need to feel good about the work they were doing? How was I coming across to them? How was they supporting them?
21:44 And ultimately, when I left that project, a few months later, it was kind of a wake-up call: okay, I need to spend more time really dealing with my own trauma, and thinking about control, and boundaries, and all of these things that I had been working on, but kind of came into sharper focus.
ED 22:04 Yeah.
SWB 22:04 And I was just like, I can't have the work life that's going to be functional for me, and I can't have a business that I actually want to run unless I figure out how to trust, and let go, and slow down. So yeah, when I met you, in early 2021—
ED 22:22 This is all the context, right?
SWB 22:24 That was all on my mind. Yeah, exactly. I was like really scared. I was really scared of repeating old patterns. And I was also trying not to, like, put any of that onto you as you were just getting going. So for me, I was trying really hard to show up in a way that I would feel proud of. I felt like I was just being really fucking careful. And I think that I've definitely worked through a lot of that. But it was a heavy time. And I was also very aware of making it a heavy time for you was like, not fair. Would you have guessed any of that was happening?
ED 23:02 No, I would not have guessed any of that was happening. I appreciate that. There have been so many moments to point to in our brief, but also just really deep time of working together that I've just been so surprised. Like, "That's not how a boss acts…but they should.” How many people do we know that think, "You know what, I realize that I'm dealing with a lot of things. And I'm going to consciously work to not put that on the people that work with and for me?" Not a whole lot, I would imagine.
SWB 23:30 I wish everybody did. I think it's something I've always maybe wanted to do, but I don't know that I really was good at it or knew how. And I remember when you started working with me, one of the things that was so valuable was you had a really defined kind of scope at first. You were producing episodes. But you jumped in and could really own stuff, and you would proactively tell me, "Okay, here's this thing. This is when this thing's happening." It really helped me because I felt like, very quickly, I could trust that you understood sort of the end-to-end thing that needed to happen, right? It wasn't just the tasks, but you were attending to the end-to-end cycle of a podcast episode. And I could let go of control, and so a lot of that fear dissipated. And it was, for me, really meaningful to go with that and to be like, "It's fine, Sara. It's fine. Send the files and stop thinking about it," which had never really happened for me before.
ED 24:27 Yeah, I didn't know any of that. But I'm really happy. One thing that's really important to me in work is being helpful and being able to take things off of people's plates. I've sort of always been that way in the work that I do.
SWB 24:40 Yeah. But, at the same time, you know, I'm curious. Being helpful and taking things off people's plates is great. But also—
ED 24:48 There's a seedy underbelly.
SWB 24:50 Yeah. You know, we've talked a little bit about that. You mentioned to me before that one of the things you really felt for a long time was like, it is your job to be grateful. And you mentioned it about music, right? Feeling like you need to always be pleasant and take every opportunity. And I'm wondering, what are you when you're not just being helpful and grateful? What are you needing to unlearn?
ED 25:10 You know, in preparing for this episode today, we were saying, you know, it might be a great end to the season to talk about our own reckonings and also just the journey that we two have been on and Active Voice has been on in the last couple of years. And I actually stopped and thought about, what does my work history look like? And what is my relationship to work? And I think it's a little non-traditional. When you're a musician, you don't really get career coaching and job training. I mean, even at the most basic level, most musicians I know don't know about, like, quarterly taxes—like bare, bare bones business things. We're just not taught them. And so I got my master’s at Juilliard, and my first job out of grad school was working at this app.
25:50 And I feel so silly looking back at it now. But it was the sort of thing where someone posted on a Facebook job page. And I wrote and said, "This is really interesting to me. I'd love to work there." It was an audio app. And the team was great. And they said, "Great, cool. Can you start Monday?" And I went home and was like, "Cool. I have a job. I don't know if I'm gonna get paid."
SWB 26:10 Yeah.
ED 26:10 I don't know what my hours are. But I have a job. So that was sort of my first work experience outside of school. After that job, I worked at another industry-related job. And this time, I was like, "Okay, I've learned, I know what amount of money I want to ask for. I'm just looking for that moment that you see in TV where they ask you, “what rate are you expecting?” or for them to like, slide the piece of paper across. So I'm all ready to go. And none of that happens. I show up to an in-person trial day, I guess you could say. They wanted to see what I would be like actually working at this business, very small business, second employee after the owner. And at the end of the day, it was, "Cool. Okay, so I guess I'll see you tomorrow and is $20 an hour, okay?" It's sort of like one foot out the door. Like, "Yes, you have the job. And also, I'm only going to pay you $20." And the way that it had sort of been broached, made the discussion feel very emotional, right? Like, if I pushed back, it would feel like I was ungrateful. And then she'd give it to somebody else. And so I felt very strong-armed to say, "Yes, $20 an hour is fine."
SWB 27:18 Oh, my gosh.
ED 27:18 I have a master's degree and a ton of experience.
SWB 27:21 From Juilliard. Just, no big deal.
ED 27:24 From Juilliard. For this music job.
SWB 27:26 You say "strong-armed," you know the first thing I was thinking was like, "This sounds super manipulative." Underpaid, also, and just like a really manipulative way of hiring somebody. And, like, it gives me all kinds of icky feels.
ED 27:40 Absolutely. I mean, I was talking about how musicians aren't trained in how to advocate for themselves and how to be employees. The flip side is that they're also not trained in how to be managers. You know, musicians, it's not infrequent that they decide, "I want to start a business." You know, some people do a record label, and some people have their own orchestra, and some people start a publishing company. And they don't know that they need to have that management component, that that is a separate skill that needs to be honed and a muscle that needs to be flexed, and learned, and grown. So a lot of exploitation happens.
SWB 28:14 I think it's a thing people don't learn in a lot of industries or don't value as a skill set, you know? "Oh, like, I'll just kind of deal with that as it comes. It's on the side. It's a nice-to-have, but it's not something that I necessarily need to focus on, spend time on, invest in getting good at." And it's like, "Man, how much time did it take you to get good at your craft, right? Your other things, your practice of whatever that is, whether it's music, or tech, or whatever, it's like—
ED 28:38 Exactly.
SWB 28:39 Can you imagine that actually learning how to interact with people, and lead people, and run a business that follows, like, basic labor law, that that also perhaps takes knowledge and practice, too? Weird. Okay, so you get this, like, heading out the door, "20 bucks an hour, come back tomorrow, bye." And then you took the job.
ED 29:02 I took the job. And immediately, I mean, this is sort of a pattern is I immediately sort of hated myself for it and also started justifying, right, "Oh, but I'm going to work really hard. Oh, but I'm going to take all these things off this person's plate. I'm going to be so invaluable that of course, they will increase my rate because how could they not when I prove my value?" I've noticed that that is a big pattern that I've had to unlearn is that you don't have to earn the right to be paid a fair wage.
SWB 29:31 Agreed.
ED 29:56 You know, you should just get it by virtue of being a person that exists.
SWB 29:34 Right, and it's one thing to say, like, "If I expand my capability, if I expand my skill here, I can get a raise, I can move up," which is fine. But the idea that, like, the original wage is not a living wage, not appropriate with the skills,, no, no, no, no. You have to start at a baseline that's acceptable, and then move upward from there.
ED 29:55 Right, and how indoctrinated I was, the rate that I was going to ask for when you know, that piece of paper slide across the table cinematic moment was going to be $40 an hour, which is also under market value.
SWB 30:06 It's not a high rate, but also, you got half that.
ED 30:09 I got half that, and was grateful for the opportunity to get half of that.
SWB 30:15 So what was the opportunity actually, like, like, once you were in the job?
ED 30:18 You know, I really ended up liking the work. A lot of what I did was people-focused. I worked a lot with artists, and I was working in the genre of music that I play a lot. So I play mostly contemporary classical, like, living composers, "it got written five minutes ago, let's put it on" kind of music. And so that was the type of art that we were making at this company and the type of artists we were working with. Any time that we were planning an event or we were working with artists, I felt like I was really in my element and was really loving it. But—
SWB 30:51 There's a lot happening in that "but."
ED 30:53 Yeah, but that's not always the day-to-day work. There's a lot of other stuff. And when there's only two employees, you are basically responsible for everything in every kind of bucket. And there's a lot of room for side tasks to get introduced that have nothing to do with your role. And so I was starting to experience these little scope creeps happening of, like, "Oh, I have a costume that I need. Can you go and pick it up for me?" Sure. Okay, that's kind of related to my job, you know, we're doing this event. Sure. And then it was, "Can you drive my car to pick up some people?" And it was like, "Okay, I don't really feel comfortable driving your car. I'm not insured by you. And I've never driven your car." And then it turned into, "Can you run these forms over to my husband for his business that has nothing to do with our business?" And so it became almost like personal assistant.
SWB 31:48 Yeah.
ED 31:49 And I just...when that really ramped up, it was like Burnout Central. I'm already not getting paid fairly. Every single decision I make is being questioned because I was in this dichotomy of "Why isn't this thing taken care of? Why isn't it taken care of? I need this to be done." And then when I would take care of things, it was, "Why did you do that? You should have run that by me. I need to prove every single thing." So I'm already not getting paid fairly. I'm in this weird soup where every decision I'm making is questioned, and also I'm being reprimanded for not reading minds. And now I'm also a personal assistant. And so I was just like this, this is not sustainable for me. I gotta get out.
SWB 32:28 Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I can relate to this idea of being, like, a small business owner, where I'm like, "Okay, you're the only staff member besides me." Where I'm like, there are things that you do that are not purely in expertise sweet spots you have, right? There's some stuff that's a little more administrative.
ED 32:46 Yeah.
SWB 32:47 But at the same time, I feel like there's a line. We don't live in the same city, so I could never ask you to, like, get my dry cleaning, or get me a latte or something. But also, like, I would never ask you to do those kinds of tasks, right? Because there's a piece of it where I'm just like, you're not a personal assistant. And that's not Active Voice work. Who the hell am I Anna Wintour? Like, come on. And also, like, I never want to be her, right?
33:13 And I think that there's a piece there, where it's like, just because somebody's working for you doesn't mean that they're kind of at your beck and call, which I think is a very weird vibe to bring to being a manager. That if somebody is employed by you or managed by you that they're kind of, like, at your disposal or at your whim. Even if they're junior to you, even if they are oftentimes picking up tasks that you delegate to them, they're still professionals with an expertise who have a scope, and you gotta at least like think about "How does this fit into their job?" And if it's a little on the edge of the job description, sometimes like, okay, that's a fine thing to have a conversation about, but there's a point at which you owe somebody more than that. I think.
ED 33:58 The thing that actually got me to quit my job—so I was still freelance for you. I was still on Upwork freelance editing and repairing audio. And you and I had conversation. I had done I think a couple episodes, maybe two or three at this point.
SWB 34:10 Yeah.
ED 34:11 And you were like, "I don't think that you're charging enough."
SWB 34:14 Uh-huh.
ED 34:15 "I'm gonna pay you more." And my initial reaction was feeling bad. I was like, "Oh my gosh, please don't pay me more. Why would you take that burden on yourself?" And then it was like the first time the veil was lifted from my eyes, and I was like, "That is a very odd reaction to have for somebody willingly offering you more money.
SWB 34:35 I think I just actually went in and changed the rate.
ED 34:37 It was such a small thing. But it really set me down this path of, "Yeah, you are really undervaluing yourself. You are really making a lot of excuses in the way of, 'Oh, people can treat me this way, and it's fine, because I do believe that the scales will be balanced at some point in time. That obviously people won't continue to exploit you, because everybody is fundamentally good.'" And it's like, those two things don't need to be linked. They shouldn't be linked. You should be comfortable advocating for yourself, and it's a business relationship, it's not an emotional one. Nobody's taking care of your well-being because they like you. I needed to take that piece away.
SWB 35:15 Yeah. Yeah.
ED 35:15 I was getting a little bit too emotionally invested in that way, or making the relationship something that it wasn't. And if I could just get myself into a little bit more of a business mode, I was like, I think that that's gonna make me a lot happier. And it's actually going to fix a lot of these problems that I've been feeling of being taken advantage of, feeling like my life is happening to me, right? That work is just piled on me. And I'm not a willing participant. That I just sort of shovel my way out. And it did; it really started to turn around once I had that mindset.
35:46 I still have relapses. It's something I'm still working on. I am a work in progress. But it has definitely become a different default setting where when somebody asks me to do freelance work, or musician work, or whatever, I give myself more pause to think things over. I don't immediately jump and say "Yes, of course, thank you so much for thinking of me. I will accept your rate." I sit down, and I think about it, and I say, "What's your emotional capacity, your mental capacity, physical capacity?"
SWB 36:11 Yeah.
ED 36:11 "Think about all the things that are going to have to go into this task before you do it. How many hours of unpaid labor are we talking? How much out of scope time are we talking? What's it actually going to take you to deliver this product?"
SWB 36:23 Yeah.
ED 36:23 And then decide if it's something that I want to do. It's a very different method than I've had in the past, but it has saved me a ton of anxiety and anguish.
SWB 36:33 Yeah. You know, it's interesting, you mentioned taking the emotional piece out of it because I think the way I've been thinking about it is like, I feel emotionally invested in you and our relationship, and I care about it. And also, I think that the foundation of a business relationship, there's a foundation that's transactional. And the emotional relationship can never take the place of a fair transaction. So no matter how much you like somebody, whether you really believe in what they're doing, or whatever, if there's not a fair transaction, it's not an equitable relationship.
ED 37:12 That's a great way of explaining it. Absolutely.
SWB 37:15 So I think about, like, what makes this a fair transaction in terms of compensation, benefits, do you have the stability? Like, what are the things that I'm offering to you in exchange for your time and expertise? And if that isn't worth it, then we have a problem. And having a good sort of human relationship is wonderful to build on top of that. But again, it can't be, like, filling the gap of an inequitable transaction. What finally gave you the courage to do it? To quit?
ED 37:48 When you said, "I'm going to raise your rate, because you're not valuing yourself fairly," that was when I planned an exit strategy. It took me several months to execute. But the work that I was doing came to a point where there was going to be a natural lull. And I was like, "Take advantage of that law and do what you can to minimize the amount of blowback that you could have." Because I was also really conscious of, if this person who has been taking advantage of you decides to be very upset by you leaving, they can make things difficult for you in the industry. It was weighing that balancing act of what can I do to mitigate the harm to myself, while also minimizing the amount of time that I'm going to continue to be exploited? And so I sort of weighed those two things, and I found an end date, and then I put it in writing, which was key because it got disputed, and then I left.
SWB 38:35 I'm glad that you left. And I'm, even more than that, I'm really glad that you started to see things differently because I think that you deserve more than that. To have somebody treat you like you've let them down when you quit a job, or that, like, you're causing hardship to them, it's such an undue level of responsibility, especially when it's like, "How can I have this much responsibility over this business's success, and also this little pay?" I'm sorry, there's something doesn't add up here.
ED 39:05 That’s a good point. I never thought of it in that way. But it's true. It's like if I really am that integral of a piece to this business functioning, then you should pay me that way, then you should treat me that way.
SWB 39:16 Exactly. It makes the exploitation really, really clear. And it's an exploitation of money. It's also an emotional exploitation, right? Because it's like basically extracting that emotional investment. Right? In lieu of actually just paying you for your time. I'm so glad to hear more of this story and to just, like, understand more of where you're coming from, and where you're going right, like, how things are changing for you and to be able to be part of that. And to share some of my own too. You know, I think that there's a lot of stuff that I think I've improved on. And there's stuff that I'm definitely still working out for my own relationship to work, and then my own approach to being a leader, my own approach to running a business. And it's really great to have somebody I trust, who I can practice a lot of that stuff with and figure it out, and like, I think, continue in this process of learning and unlearning. And not to be too cheesy, but growing, in all of those ways that I don't think I could have even imagined a few years ago.
ED 40:16 Me either. I mean, I absolutely was on a path to status quo, never advocating for myself, never knowing I was able to, and just continuing that cycle of really toxic gratitude. And to be honest, it's a little nerve wracking to talk about it. I've never really talked about it before. But I think that that's sort of the first step is acknowledging what happened and acknowledging what you don't want to repeat in the future. I'm grateful that you're open to having that conversation.
SWB 40:44 Yeah, I'm trying to be open to that. What do you feel like is now kind of emerging? Like, what's next for how you think about your work?
ED 40:52 What I see in the future is continuing this work. You know, what we do is really tech and UX and UI focused. But I do think that there's a ton of overlap in multiple industries. And I see myself as having the ability to take some of what I've been learning here and bring it back, take that fire from the Greek gods and bring it back down and share it. In particular, with people in the classical music industry, because we have no formal training, and there is no class, or program, or continuing education, or anything to teach you about the business-side of being a company of one, of being a freelancer, of being self-employed. If I can come and help educate even just one person on their rights and what they deserve, I think that it will have all been worth it.
SWB 41:41 Emily, I love that. Thank you so much for talking about this today.
ED 41:44 Oh my gosh, thank you. It's so fun to be on the other side of the editing room.
SWB 41:49 And now you get to edit your own voice.
41:55 It was such a treat for me to get to sit down with Emily and to hear parts of her story that I had never heard before. And I know that there's a lot in there that many of you are going to resonate with, too. Thank you so much for being here for it. And thank you so much for listening to this season of Strong Feelings. We're going to wrap up for now and take a breather over the next few months. So if you want to stay in the loop in the meantime, head to https://activevoicehq.com/ and sign up for our monthly newsletter. We share leadership tools, I write essays about work culture, and we also post our upcoming events and workshops. You can also look for a new season of Strong Feelings sometime in the fall, just as soon as we feel ready.
42:38 Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to this season: Urszula Pruchniewska Alison Taylor, Julie Threlkeld, Joann Lee Wagner, Kate Rotondo, Emily Duncan, and all 236 of you who responded to our survey on changing relationships to work. You helped us understand so much about pandemic clarity, and we wouldn't be here without you. I'm your host, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and Strong Feelings is a production of Active Voice. You can check us out at https://www.activevoicehq.com/. And then you can get all the past episodes, show notes, and full transcripts for every episode of Strong Feelings at https://strongfeelings.co/. This episode was recorded in South Philadelphia and produced by Emily. Thanks to Blowdryer for the use of our theme music, "Deprogrammed." You can go grab their album https://blowdryer.bandcamp.com/. Have a great summer, y'all.