Episode 229 · 4 September 2025 · 53:44
This Isn’t Working: What Business Gets Wrong About People and Profit, with Meghan French Dunbar
Featuring Meghan French Dunbar
This Isn’t Working: What Business Gets Wrong About People and Profit, with Meghan French Dunbar
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Meet Meghan French Dunbar
The Best Boss They've Ever Had
interview#best-boss#leadership#linkedin
Masculine vs. Feminine Leadership Traits
The Power of Active Listening
interview#active-listening#communication
How Meghan Revolutionized Her Hiring Process
interview#hiring-process#interview#revolution
What Isn't Working – Shareholder Supremacy
Fiduciary Responsibility: The Phrase We Hide Behind
interview#fiduciary-responsibility#corporate-governance#ethics
You Can Be the Richest Man and Treat Everyone Like Garbage
Zingerman's – A Favorite Case Study
interview#zingermans#case-study#business
Eileen Fisher – Timeless Clothes, Radical Values
Meghan's Startup Journey – Learning the Hard Way
Would She Do It Again?
interview#regret#reflection#magazine
The Brewery Built to Employ People with Disabilities
interview#brewery#disabilities#employment
This Isn't Working – Who It's For, Who It's Not For
interview#book#target-audience#purpose
Top 3 Takeaways
Show notes
This Isn't Working: What Business Gets Wrong About People and Profit — with Meghan French Dunbar
Guest: Meghan French Dunbar — author, speaker, business anthropologist, and former CEO who built a nationally distributed magazine before realizing she was chasing all the wrong metrics. She has interviewed over 1,000 business leaders and her new book, This Isn't Working, argues that everything we've been told about business success is upside down.
What if everything we've been told about business success is completely backwards?
Meghan joins Al and Leanne to challenge the banana-hoarding billionaire mindset — why we celebrate exploitative leaders and what that says about our values. She shares how one of her best hires started with an unexpected, deeply human conversation, why shareholder supremacy is destroying wellbeing, and the companies proving there's a better way. From Zingerman's to Eileen Fisher, Meghan shows how treating people well leads to long-term profitability and resilience — and why shifting from extrinsic motivators like money and titles to intrinsic motivators like purpose, growth, and autonomy is the real path to sustainable success.
Top 3 Takeaways
Learn to actively listen — don't just wait for your turn to speak. Genuine connection starts with curiosity and vulnerability, not prepared questions. Some of Meghan's best hires came from conversations that went completely off-script.
Redefine success around stakeholder benefit, not just profit. Companies that treat people well — employees, customers, communities — dramatically outperform traditional competitors over the long term. Shareholder supremacy is a choice, not a legal requirement.
Choose intrinsic over extrinsic motivation. Research consistently shows that purpose, growth, and autonomy drive better performance and wellbeing than money and titles. The businesses that thrive are the ones that turn up the volume on what makes work meaningful.
More From Meghan French Dunbar
- Website: meghanfrenchdunbar.com/book
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/meghanfrenchdunbar
- Substack: meghanfrenchdunbar.substack.com
- Email: meghan@frenchdunbar.com
- Book, This Isn't Working (use code TLW for 20% off): hachettebookgroup.com
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Leanne ElliottPicture this for me. You're studying monkeys in the jungle, and you discover one monkey who's hoarding all the bananas, sitting on a massive pile, fighting any other monkey who comes close, while all the other monkeys struggle to find food. What would you do? You'd study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it, right? Well, according to our guest today, that's exactly what we should be doing with billionaire business leaders.
Meghan French DunbarAnd as humans, we put that monkey on the COVID of Forbes. And say that they're the pinnacle of success in business and in life because they're hoarding wealth while other people go without, and especially when they're hoarding wealth from the people who helped them accrue it.
Al ElliottMeet Meghan French Dunbar, former magazine CEO, business anthropologist, and quite possibly the only person who's ever got her entire fist stuck in a peanut butter jar in college. No follow-up questions on that one, apparently.
Leanne ElliottMeghan built a nationally distributed magazine, raised funding, and looked successful on paper, but behind the scenes, she was working herself to the bone chasing all the wrong metrics until a half-drunken Zoom call during COVID changed everything.
Meghan French DunbarThis moment over like a pumpkin beer in October, crying my eyes out, was like, oh my God, I have been thinking about success in the entire wrong way. Like, this is success. Success is impact, like the purpose, the meaning.
Al ElliottToday we're asking, what if everything we've been told about business success is completely backwards? This is gonna challenge how you think about growth, profit, and what it really means to win in business.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al and I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Al ElliottMeghan French Dunbar has interviewed over 1,000 business leaders in her career. And in her new book, This Isn't Working, she challenges the fundamental assumptions about how we build companies. But this isn't just another one of those anti-business manifestos. It's actually a roadmap for entrepreneurs who want to succeed but don't want to sell their soul.
Leanne ElliottWe're going to hear how active listening transformed her hiring process, why she thinks shareholder supremacy is destroying society, and the surprising companies that are proving you can be wildly profitable While treating people extraordinarily well.
Al ElliottSo in a moment, we'll meet Meghan properly and discover why the best job interview of her life started with a conversation about fertility struggles. Oh, and I accidentally called her Meghan Furlong Detroit in a previous episode, so we'll find out how she responds to that just after the break. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform, for My name is Meghan Furlong Detroit.
Meghan French DunbarWhat? No, no, sorry, wait. It's Meghan French Dunbar. What I do, I study business. I say that I'm— my best friend, Hannah, when I was talking to her about, I don't know what I actually say that I do anymore, she's like, you're a business anthropologist. You geek out about studying business, and I have done for the last decade, journalism, events, podcasts, all sorts of things. And I've interviewed over 1,000 business leaders in my time, and I'm just super passionate about it. I'd say the thing I'm probably most famous for is in college, I woke up and I had my entire fist stuck inside of a peanut butter jar. No follow-on questions. Thank you.
Al ElliottWe first met you in a LinkedIn thread where someone called you the best boss they've ever had, and then weirdly said, because you had some of the most deepest personal conversations, I believe on day 1. Tell us, what was that first day and what the heck did you talk about?
Meghan French DunbarI mean, this is the thing about leadership that I think we sometimes forget is that The more human we are, the better. And I, as I co-founded and was CEO of a magazine, it became nationally distributed publication in the US and events and podcasts. We did a fundraising round. It was a nice, nicely sized little media company. And we were looking for a new editor-in-chief of the magazine. And Vanessa Childers, my beloved hype woman, walked in the door and She was just so human and so personable. I was just doing interview after interview after interview, and so many people were showing me the shiniest, most polished versions of themselves. And Vanessa came in, and yes, there were accolades and a resume to back up her skills, but she was just open and honest and human and was talking to me about her fertility journey, and I opened up and talked to her about a miscarriage I had previously had and how we really, as a team, that was one of the things that we really worked on was giving people space to grieve, to be human, to whatever you're going through, we will figure out ways to support you even though we're a small team. And that was just— That was day one. And I hired her, I think, on the spot before we even finished the interview. I just knew that she was gonna be the best, and she was up until when I resigned and left the company. And we still work together to this day, and I adore her.
Al ElliottImagine if I was interviewing Vanessa, how would I be able, as a male, be able to build a similar kind of rapport?
Meghan French DunbarI think we've bifurcated some concept of masculine and feminine characteristics or skills or traits, and in reality they're just human traits. And we've had societal conditioning that makes women feel like we're supposed to and allowed to be vulnerable and listening and communicative and compassionate and all of these things. And that men are, you know, they're all the business skills, that their leadership qualities, that they're supposed to be decisive and confident and—
Al ElliottYeah.
Meghan French Dunbarcompetitive and aggressive and all of these things. And we do a disservice to every single human, regardless of gender identity, when we say, you men can't access these particular traits, these are feminine traits. All of that to get to vulnerability and talking about things that are personal is something that anyone can do regardless of gender identity. I mean, my brother and sister-in-law had a very sincere fertility journey as well, and I immediately think of my brother in that situation. If Vanessa had mentioned the challenges they were going through, you know, men often feel like they have to be a little bit more closed off in general as I've worked with them. But my brother could have 100% related to her or asked her questions about it. I mean, that's the thing.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Meghan French DunbarThere's either opening up and being vulnerable and relating to people if there's something there that you understand and can develop that connection via empathy because you know you've been there, you've done it, or it's just active listening, like asking human beings to go a little bit further or share anything more that they wanna share about what it is that they have brought up. Instead of immediately changing the topic because it feels uncomfortable, active listening is the go-to. And it's, of every leader that I've interviewed, the number one skill across the board that people say has made them the most effective at leadership, regardless of industry, type of business, is genuinely listening and actively listening and asking people to tell more about whatever it is that they want to talk about. I learned this at a leadership program that I went through, and there, There's kind of 2 main principles with active listening. One is if you are active listening, literally don't do the thing that I first mentioned about empathizing and bringing it, relating to them with something that you've experienced. Active listening, when you, most of us, we autobiographically listen. You say something, I went to Greece this summer. Oh, I went to Greece 2 summers ago. And that like, we feel like we're building connection by finding some sort of mutual shared understanding of something. So But when you take the— when you say that, then you're bringing the attention to your story. Active listening is, the main principle is, how do I keep the— how do I keep listening to the person who is speaking? So you don't say the autobiographical thing that you want, your brain naturally comes up with. Keep the attention on them and then avoid yes/no questions. And like all of the follow-on questions are—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Meghan French DunbarCan you, do you wanna tell me more about that? Or, is there anything from that that you wanna expand upon? Or, how did that make you feel? Or anything that is open-ended and invites them to gently go further if they want to. I think the like simplest question that doesn't put pressure on is, is there anything more that you wanted to talk about with that? Or is there anything more that I can understand, that you can help me understand about that? And it's such— when you're with someone, I've been with people who are like master active listening. And when you hear people like Bill Clinton, I've never met him, but people are— when people like talk about Bill Clinton, they used to be like, he makes you feel like you're the only person in the room. Whenever you hear that, Yeah. That means that person is an active listener because they actually, even if it's 1 or 2 follow-up questions where they show they're genuinely engaged in what you have to say. One, we're very rarely actually present with the people that we're together with at this point in life, with everyone on phones and distracted by all the things. And then 2, even if you are present with someone, we often fall into that rhythm of I say something, you say something, I'm waiting to say something that I wanna say. But just asking people to expand and elaborate on what they are actually saying and being genuinely interested in it as a gorgeous skill to work on.
Al ElliottYou've interviewed, as you said, over 1,000 people. How has this active listening helped you to understand people better than just asking questions?
Meghan French DunbarI always, I would come with my prepared questions, but I would usually say, you know, here's all the questions that I think I'm gonna ask you. And I'm a naturally curious human, and when you say something that I want to key in on, I'm probably going to follow up on that. And the way that the person who I learned this from talked about it was the idea of you just open the next door that interests you. And so whenever anyone says something that I find to be particularly interesting, it's honestly just actively Being genuinely curious and staying present to like, what are they actually saying? And following through on a follow-up question. I've had a lot of people be like, I talked about things in that interview that I've never spoken out loud before. And I'm like, it's because we're not great at actually listening to each other when it comes down to it. Even if we have our prepared questions. Um, it's, it's hard to stay present and engaged and listen to someone for a full hour, which I think is what we're trying to tell people to do right now.
Leanne ElliottWe've heard how Meghan revolutionized her hiring process through genuine human connection, but here's where her story gets really interesting and a little bit controversial.
Al ElliottYeah, Meghan built a magazine about conscious business practices, but she was simultaneously burning herself out chasing traditional startup metrics. And also preaching the opposite message. The irony was not lost on her.
Leanne ElliottAnd she's got some very strong opinions about what's broken in the business world. We're talking 40% of Amazon workers filing injury claims and a profit-at-all-costs mentality that she argues is literally destroying society.
Al ElliottBut before you think this is just another anti-corporate rant, wait until you hear about the companies that are doing it right. This and so much more is covered in her book, This Isn't Working.
Leanne ElliottAl asked Meghan who it's for, and perhaps more importantly, who it's not for.
Al ElliottYour book is called This Isn't Working. What isn't working?
Meghan French DunbarI mean, I'll start with the meta, the big thing that isn't working, which is shareholder supremacy and the profit-at-all-costs paradigm that has really just taken over the business world over the last 50 years that has caused business leaders to be incentivized to exploit human beings and resources to the best of their ability to make money as long as it's kind of legal. I mean, one of the statistics I found in the book is that 40% of employees have filed some sort of worker injury or worker health-related concern at Amazon. Like, that is profit maximization, like cutting corners on safety measures, overworking people, like It is just squeezing every last drop of productivity and efficiency and not treating human beings as human beings. Like, there's Monsanto covering up research that shows that their products are literally killing people. There's Purdue Pharma showing— pushing oxycodone, knowing that it's highly addictive. Like, there's all because of profit maximization. And specifically publicly traded companies. Both Milton Friedman's 1970 article in the New York Times about shareholder supremacy came out in the exact same year that the SEC in the United States decided that we needed to do quarterly returns for publicly traded companies. And so all of a sudden we have profit as the end-all be-all, and you have to do it as quickly as possible because you're going to be judged on it every 3 months. And You can look at pretty much most markers of societal wellbeing from 1970 on, and most of them are like precipitously declining as a result of shareholder supremacy.
Al ElliottI think I understand why companies do this, but is it not their responsibility to maximize it for shareholders?
Meghan French DunbarSo fiduciary responsibility, this is like this gorgeous little phrase that we hide behind so that we can do whatever we need to maximize profit and say, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders. And there is a new wave of businesses coming through, benefit corporations here in the United States, where it's a legally structured entity and your duty is to maximize your benefit to stakeholders, not shareholders. And so that is a legal obligation. So that is one way to very clearly get around it. The other point that I consistently make is when you're talking about fiduciary responsibility, you could 100% say that 40% of workers being hurt and all of the terrible business things that we do that is maximizing profit, it might be in the short term. In the long term, it is the number one way to destroy your company. The most resilient, long-term profitable organizations that have stood the test of time are investing in their workers, are doing all these extraordinary things to make the lives of the people that they're working with better. And in turn, they have incredible retention rates, loyalty through the roof, customer brand acquisition, like every single marker of business success. There's one company, Chorani Syrups, which in the US, if you ever go to a coffee shop and say, I want a vanilla latte, They have been around for 100 years, and they're like these people who started the flavored latte craze. They're the syrups that are almost in like every single coffee shop. They've grown 20% year over year for 34 years in a row under their CEO, Melanie Dulbecco, and they're nearly a billion-dollar company because they invest in their workers. They invest in all their stakeholders. They treat people well, and in turn, those people help the company succeed. Firms of Endearment, Raj Sisodia's book, which was one of my kind of first books that I read that blew my mind. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to learn more about this entire industry. He's the co-founder of Conscious Capitalism. They studied businesses like this, firms of endearment, meaning companies that tried to maximize the benefit to all stakeholders. They outperformed the S&P 14 to 1 throughout the length of their study. Like, there's tons of research behind this. Like, when you're saying Fiduciary responsibility, the best way to ensure that you are in fact ensuring fiduciary responsibility over the long term is to do oftentimes the very opposite of what most of these companies are doing. MIT's recent research on the Great Resignation found that the number one source of employee resignations is toxic workplaces.
Al ElliottYou just said do the opposite. So what we're saying, I'm thinking that what we're saying is that we look at Zuck, we look at Musk, we look at Bezos, and apologize to you gentlemen if you are listening. We look at them and do the opposite.
Meghan French DunbarI mean, you can be the richest man in the world and treat every single human around you like absolute garbage and build a gigantic house of cards that gets so big that like they're monopolies at this point. It's like, and we're watching, I mean, what just happened with Twitter and X, like, Elon Musk's reputation and the way that he treats humans out, you know, Tesla stock is down. Like, it's starting to crumble beneath him. My dad asked me when was the last time I logged onto Facebook the other day, and I was like, I think it was 2000. Like, these brands are losing customers, and like, they're shaky houses of cards. And like, there's, I mean, there's a million There's so many arguments that we could talk about with each of these things. With Amazon being the monopoly that it is, it's hard to compete and he can do whatever he wants. But is that what we want to model leadership after? Is that really what we want to emulate as a trillionaire who's ruining people's lives? It's a personal question, I guess.
Al ElliottI want to talk more about the smaller companies. There's a fabulous book, well, I think it's a fabulous book, maybe you don't, by Bo Burlingham called Small Giants. Which talks about smaller businesses that win. And going through the entire book seems to be the theme that they care about people. There's a particular company beginning with Z, I wanna say Zimmerman's, I think.
Meghan French DunbarOh my gosh. They're like one of my favorite case studies in the United States. And when I told you I get really excited, this is like the Steve Irwin thing where I'm like, ah, let me tell you all about Zimmerman's. Anyway, I got to interview Paul Saginaw and They treat people very, very well. It was like the crux of their company. But the thing that they did that flipped the entire thing on its head was instead of franchising, which they very clearly could have done, they were this incredibly successful deli, they looked at how could we create a family of businesses all in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area where they were based so that we can boost the local economy and not just businesses that are, you know, a family of businesses, but businesses that support and feed each other. So they made a bakery that does the delis and like coffee shops and like everything that they do. And then everyone who works at these owns a percentage of all of the companies together. So it's this diversified portfolio of small businesses that create immense economic opportunity for Ann Arbor, but then also help break generational cycles of poverty because there's this gigantic employee profit distribution that's going because they have ownership in all of the different companies. They're just, they're thinking about business as a way to create opportunity for people. And then they also have this gigantic Zing Train, which is their corporate training, where they're teaching people the skills that we should have been having in kindergarten, like listening. And communication and also open book management. They are fully transparent with every single person on their team about finances. Every— they're all making decisions together, fully transparent, which is one of the things that we love to do in organizations is hoard information and not share it with people and immediately make people feel like you don't trust them and that you don't respect them enough to share company financials, even though it's the place that you ask them to work every single day. So yeah, Zingerman's is one of my favorites. They're an extraordinary company.
Al ElliottI suppose the pushback would be, well, it's okay for them. They've been going decades. They can do all this stuff. I'm struggling to take home $50,000 a year as my business owner. I can't start doing this stuff now.
Meghan French DunbarLike with everything, there's varying degrees of ways that you can turn up the volume on things. I mean, at most we had 10 employees. We were a very small company. It was stressful. I was going through all of the small business owner stuff of like, oh my God, are we going to make payroll next cycle? Like, I have been there. The last thing that I wanted to do was pop my head up to work on the business, on the things that I espouse that most companies that, you know, mid and large enterprises should be doing. Employee ownership, profit distribution, all of those things. I think that those come in layers as organizations get larger. That doesn't mean though that as a small business, you can't treat your people extraordinarily well. I mean, Vanessa very sweetly nominated me as this best boss. And I mean, we worked together 6 years ago when we were at Conscious Company and We had a third-party consultant come in and was, 'cause my company got acquired in 2017 and I stayed on as CEO. And so, I was a wholly owned subsidiary brand under, and there were 4 other brands in this portfolio under our parent company. And there was a third-party consultant that came in and audited the company culture of all 4 of the organizations and the parent company. We were trying to do some culture work and they shared with me later that like, I had the highest culture scores that they'd ever seen. And I was a small business, I was struggling. This isn't to toot my own horn, but it was very much from that place of leading like a human. I was completely flexible. I now, there's a term, results-only workplace environments, ROW workplaces, that are very autonomous, like work whatever hours you want, Work wherever you want. You know, here, just make sure you're getting your stuff done. Treating people like humans, unlimited time off. And we did this stuff as a very, very small business. And I had one person leave in the 5 years I was there. One employee quit. And we punched above our weight and we're, you know, a fantastic little company. So. There's degrees to which you can do it. And it's about the next best step, not you have to model yourself after the Eileen Fishers and the Toranis of the world that have these humongous— they're doing very big things that small companies can't afford to do. But as you get larger, there are things to consider.
Al ElliottEileen Fisher.
Meghan French DunbarShe makes timeless clothes that are comfortable and predominantly cater to like 50 to 70-year-old women. But she's been in business since 1984, nearly a billion-dollar fashion empire, and is one of the coolest leaders I have ever had the opportunity to meet. When I got— so that cover was our 3rd cover of our magazine. It's the first cover that she had ever done. She's notoriously reclusive. She's very, very shy and very quiet and really does not like the media. And, but because of what my little magazine stood for, which was impact-driven businesses and businesses that do good for the people and the planet, she, we sent her a copy of the magazine and said, hey, do you wanna be on the COVID And she said, this is like the first time I'm in a Grant cover interview. I went to a really gorgeous home in Irvington, New York. And I thought that I was gonna be meeting Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada. Like, fashion icon, CEO mogul. I thought she was gonna be so New York and mean. And I was like this, like, just like little country mouse from Colorado wearing $15 power suit that I bought at Marshalls, the like discount store here. And I walk in and she's like the soft— she's the kindest. She listens. Like she starts the interview by asking me a ton of questions. She's kind of shy, like just not the type of leader I was expecting. But then you learn about what she does with her organization, which, I mean, this was, it's either the Washington Post or New York Times wrote her up years and years ago. She was like, well, when I started making enough profit that it felt like I had enough, like naturally the only thing to do would be to give it to my employees. Like that doesn't There's no other, they're the people that helped build the brand. Why would it go to anyone else? She also built the brand organically and had very little outside investment. So she was able to make decisions like this, but she's a certified B Corp. She, they started the entire, one of the started entire programs around the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. They, by 2020, made nearly all of their fabrics environmentally sustainable. They do workers' rights programs. Like, Every single stakeholder in their value chain, they have found a way to improve their life in very significant ways, like their employees all the way down to like their community. They host leadership workshops in Irvington, New York, and online programs. I did one yesterday. Like, they're— everything is about, I have enough, how do I give it back? And it's unbelievable.
Leanne ElliottMeghan's laid out the problem. It's shareholder supremacy culture that's making banana-hoarding monkeys into business heroes.
Al ElliottBrand new sentence right there.
Leanne ElliottBut here's what I absolutely love about her approach. She's not just complaining about what's broken. She spent years finding the companies that are proving there's a better way.
Al ElliottAnd these aren't just feel-good stories. We're talking about businesses that are dramatically outperforming traditional companies. While treating people very, very well.
Leanne ElliottMeghan's journey to understanding this wasn't theoretical. She learned it the hard way through her own startup experience, and that story is both heartbreaking and inspiring. While Meghan was building this conscious business magazine and interviewing all these amazing leaders, she was simultaneously destroying herself chasing the exact opposite values. And it all came crashing down during COVID in the most unexpected way. We'll hear how after this very short break. Did you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. You're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that will be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Meghan French DunbarI think there's lots of different ways to think about building an organization. And this is one of the things, because like I got stuck on the grow scale as quickly as humanly possible.
Al ElliottAnd like, Is this with the magazine, Meghan?
Meghan French DunbarYeah. I mean, I was, I mean, it was out of necessity. Like we needed to make payroll and all the things. And I was very achievement-oriented and I was espousing one thing publicly and then destroying my soul privately, working myself to the bone and just miserably depressed and chronically stressed and all the things because I cared so much about what I was doing. And I also had this narrative that I really needed to be successful. As an entrepreneur, you start, scale, grow, sell. Like, that's the formula, right? And we did sell the company, but as a distressed asset. So, it wasn't a fairytale exit. There was like zero cash benefit, but it allowed our company to keep going for a few more years, which was fabulous. That is my story. I have seen other ways to do business. And that is like what I have been looking at. So there is the, speaking of small giants, the tiny business route. There is a book Sharon Rowe of EcoBags wrote, Tiny Business, a few years ago. And she talked to, so she started her business in 1989. And the entire reason she wanted to start a business was one, she saw a hole in the market. She was doing sustainable reusable bags before it was cool in 1989. But she said she started the business so that she could have her ideal quality of life. Here's what enough money looks like for me out of this thing. Here's what enough money looks like for the few employees that I need to run it. But my priority is time with my kids, time with my family, time with my friends, time off for mental health, physical health, traveling, all the things that bring me joy and make me flourish as a human being. I'm prioritizing those, and I have this business to support my life. And for 30-plus years, she ran the business at the exact same level, said no to growth opportunities that definitely would've brought in more money because she did not want to wait to live the ideal life that she wanted until she retired, which is what so many of us do, which was like heartbreakingly prescient. When last year she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died at age 67. And she had been living the life that she wanted to the entire time and was as happy as she in the entire world because she didn't take the blue pill and try to run her company and grow it as large as possible. So there's the tiny business route, there's the Eileen route, which a lot of the companies that I talk to that are, you know, 30-plus years in the making, long-term lifestyle brand, very limited outside capital coming in so they can make whatever decisions they want. There, I think this new middle brand that I'm starting to see is people who are scaling quickly because not for purely for financial gain, but because of the benefit it brings to a number of people. And so Kuli Kuli Foods is one of my favorite examples of this. I think I think they've just done a Series B at $10 million. And Lisa Curtis is the founder. She started it as a Peace Corps volunteer seeing the moringa plant when she was doing her Peace Corps in Africa and was like, I want to help these farmers. Most of them are women. This is a superfood and they should be being— there should be a sustainable market for this. So she brought the moringa plant, moringa powders, bars, all the things. Built it as like a side gig, a side hustle from her full-time job, sold it at the farmer's market. And multiple years later when I talked to her, she said, I'm scaling this like any like high-scale, fast, quick entrepreneur would with tons of investment coming in because my ultimate goal is the more this scales, the more money we distribute to these farmers. And It's employee-owned. So it's scaling with intention. It's scaling to improve the lives of everyone involved, not just her. And this is like the paradigm switch is like, sure, you can get insanely rich off of a company if you want to and have billions of dollars and not share that with any of the other people who helped you build that company. That is your choice. But like, it just, like, it's a moral question. Like not sharing the gigantic amount of wealth that you could accrue with the people who helped you build it. Why wouldn't you help hundreds or thousands of people pull themselves up and have wealth rather than just hoarding it all? There's a, it's like fabulous tweet that I saw years ago that I referenced in the book. It's been taken down since this point, but I still confirm that it went up. It's a woman who was saying, If we are studying monkeys and there was one monkey who hoarded all of the bananas in the jungle and just was fricking sitting on piles and piles and piles of bananas while the other monkeys were walking around struggling to find bananas, we would study that monkey to understand what was wrong with it. And as humans, we put that monkey on the COVID of Forbes. And say that they're the pinnacle of success in business and in life because they're hoarding wealth while other people go without. And especially when they're hoarding wealth from the people who helped them accrue it. Like, it's just a values question for me. And there are ways to build businesses that you can do the whole scale and exit thing and share it with other people. that I'm seeing a lot of people do. There's also New Belgium Brewery is another one. They're Colorado-based. I think when they sold in 2020, they were the 3rd largest microbrewery in the world and they were employee-owned. So when they sold, Yep. the line workers were pulling in 6 figures, like on these profit distribution checks. And so, I mean, employee ownership is a huge thing that I advocate for. There's If you wanna geek out about this, Ownership Works, Pete Stavros, and no, this is not just fringe, like your Boulder lady shouting from the rooftops about employee ownership. This is Pete Stavros, who's the global director of private equity at KKR, who started Ownership Works. And by 2030, their goal is to make every single KKR portfolio company employee-owned because It makes the businesses more resilient, long-term profitability, and it breaks generational cycles of poverty and decreases the socioeconomic divide. It is like the number one way that we can actually start building a more equitable society. And if KKR is doing this, one of the largest private equity companies in the world, like, I'm not like super out there. I don't think.
Al ElliottI think from my research, it seems to me like your magazine was just an incredible idea that was your passion, but you just admitted that it was a tougher project than you thought. Given the chance over again, would you do it again?
Meghan French Dunbar100%. 100%. I would do it again. And I guess this is where I, one of the things that I've been talking about and thinking about a lot lately is how you define success, which when you think about whatever your personal definition of success is, it is one of the most consequential paradigms or concepts that you have as a human being. It determines often what you study, what you spend your time on, what you're willing to compromise and sacrifice. It determines your quality of life, your mental health, your physical health. Like, throughout your entire life, your success determines so many things about how you live. And I very much subscribed to, I think it's probably very Western-ish ideals of success, of achievement, winning, money, influence, all of those things. I would say money, not so much, but I Was a high achiever growing up, high achiever. That was my thing. I liked to win. I liked to show people how impressive I was with extrinsic validation, and I felt successful when I did that. And I feel like I got pretty, pretty like, from on paper, it looked good. I started this company, I had sold it, I was still the CEO, I was traveling all the time and keynote speaking and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was 33. And behind the scenes, like I said, I was miserable, stressed, overwhelmed, like all of the terrible things, panic attacks, because I cared so much about this thing. And running a small business is really hard. Running a print magazine, like whole other conversation. It's a very long answer, but I promise it's gonna come around. So when— so I resigned from my company after I I was just so burnt out that I had nothing, I had no gas left in my tank and was like, I'm not the leader that my team deserves or that this community deserves. I resigned on February 1st, 2020, and March 13th was my last day. And on March 17th, we were in global lockdown, and I went from being full-time CEO to full-time mom to a 9-month-old. And I did not ever in my game plan want to be a full-time mom. I have ADHD. entrepreneurially afflicted. Like, I just like to create and do and be out and do the things, and it was a very hard time. So right in the middle of COVID it's like parent company shut down Conscious Company Media, my baby. We are primarily events-driven at this time. COVID, they had their reasons. Like, I totally agreed with them. And we did a Bon Voyage CCM virtual call with all of my former team members. And I showed up like half drunk, like crying over this business, just loss of identity. Everything was going wrong. I was telling my husband that I was like a child's movie star who had peaked too soon. I was in a dark place. And I show up to this virtual Zoom call and I sit back and I just lob the question in like, Tell me about like your favorite memory or one of your favorite things that we did as an organization. And it was like story after story of like, oh my gosh, like this. Do you guys remember that time that we had True Colors Brewery on stage and they had the former gang members who were talking about what it meant for them to have this economic opportunity? And then the next day, Meghan interviewed Walter Robb from Whole Foods, and then he called Meghan after the event and asked if we could get True Colors Brewery beer into every Whole Foods in the world. And like, that happened because of our event. And it was like, yes! And like, you know, people were talking about funny stories, impactful stories, meaningful things, relationships they had made with each other as coworkers, things that they had learned. And I, in this moment, over like a pumpkin beer in October, crying my eyes out, was like, oh my God. God, I have been thinking about success in the entire wrong way. Like, this is success. Success is impact, like the purpose, the meaning. We, like, as a little company that we were around for 5 years, we had such an incredibly profound impact on people's lives. The stories that we had of things that we had done that touched people's lives. It was about experience. I have an MBA, but like doing a business, it's like an education that you can't get unless you actually do it. But then also the experiences like I had, I took a float plane from Vancouver to a tiny island off the coast of British Columbia where I was a speaker at an event and got to go to Eileen Fisher's home and interview her. Like the life experiences, the memories, that I made as a result of doing this, the people that I met, the friendships that I made, the education that I got, all of that. And when you look at our key intrinsic motivators, Daniel Pink, his book Drive, the 3 that he identifies are purpose, mastery, and autonomy. And I had so much meaning and purpose. In terms of mastery, learning, growth, learning about things I was passionate about, Being a business anthropologist, I just got to, I get paid to go interview people and learn about business. And like, that's what I was doing for my career was the thing I was most passionate about. And then autonomy, like the freedom was the issue that I struggled with because I was a business owner and I felt like I had to work at all times and I couldn't, I didn't have time for anything else. But the life experiences that I had, Like I wouldn't trade for anything. And everything that I did then has created the foundation for everything that I do now. But now I'm taking lessons about how to treat myself and boundaries and how I value my self-worth and implementing them into this newer iteration of how I work and happiest I've ever been.
Al ElliottYou mentioned there about some, the impact that you had in that organization. I think your exact words were, And I think about the stories and the things that happened. Can you give us an example of something which happened, which was, just makes you get, gives you goosebumps right now?
Meghan French DunbarThe one that I mentioned of, we had, there was a brewery in North Carolina that they built the brewery to employ active rival gang members because the founder had discovered that the reason that they were having such pervasive gun violence in the community of Wilmington, North Carolina was because Like people who were members of these gangs didn't have access to economic opportunities. So he built this extraordinary business and they were at our event. We had this big annual event, the Conscious Company Leaders Forum, and they were telling their story the night before with, you know, 2 former gang members on the stage talking to our entire group of, you know, 200+ business owners. And the next day, Walter Robb, who was the former co-CEO of Whole Foods, I was interviewing him and he had heard about the gang and he literally like found my cell phone number, called me the next day, and we were able to broker this deal to get True Colors Brewery into every Whole Foods in the world because of our little event. So there's huge things like that, but then there's also like, I still have people that say things like, oh, I met my business partner at your event. Or there's Jared Myers, he is at Climate First United Bank in Florida. He talked to me about, so he was profiled in one of our magazines as you know, one of the top conscious business leaders in the country for that year. And he said that it was the first time that he was able to like tangibly show his children that the way that he was doing business was celebrated and was the— that there was a community of people who, yes, he wasn't profit at all cost and they didn't have their like diamond-encrusted yacht. But he was doing business in a beautiful way that was improving people's lives. And he was able to show his children like, look, your dad is in a magazine. Like Jessica Norwood, this extraordinary entrepreneur from Alabama, her entire community came together to like celebrate her inclusion in the magazine. And that helped her gain media attention for her company Project Runway. I mean, there was just so many stories like that of Celebrating business people for doing the right thing and people learning about business practices, implementing them, and writing us about like how it changed their company. There's, yeah, there's a lot. And when I talk about them, it makes my heart feel really good because it's awesome. The younger generation, the folks that I interface with on a regular basis, they give me so much hope. Like, They are so much more aware and just conscious and like very, like they have skills and knowledge base and communication skills that I'm like, oh, that took me 25 years of adulthood to develop that thing that you seem to have at age 20. I have a mentor or a mentee, Maddie, who is 24. She calls herself a baby adult and she gives me more hope than any human alive. Like, they're just, I find the up-and-coming generation that I talk to is inspired. They're passionate. They care about the right things. And like, there's also social media and comparison. And I didn't even have social media in college, and I couldn't be more grateful because I don't even know how you keep your head together. University of Richmond, they found, they looked at students who based their idea of success on extrinsic motivation, money, influence, title, wealth, all of those things, stacking fat cash, blah, whatever that is. And students who had their idea of success revolving around intrinsic motivation, purpose, autonomy, growth, all the things, they studied them later in life, regardless of the level of success that they had achieved. The extrinsically motivated group later in life had the same level of life satisfaction as they did in college and increased levels of stress and depression. The intrinsically motivated group had increased quality of life scores as compared to college and decreased level of stress and depression. That is like, when I got my head around that, like, yes, living paycheck to paycheck, I have been there. I was there all through my 20s. It is very stressful. And When you get to a place where you are making enough money to cover your reasonable basic living expenses, like the, you know, there's an entire study around this. Like once you hit $100,000 in salary, your happiness doesn't really increase after that.
Al ElliottTell me about this isn't working. First of all, when's it out? Secondly, who's it for? Thirdly, who's it not for?
Meghan French DunbarIt came out August 5th. Who is it for? I honestly, on the title, it says, How Working Women Can Overcome Stress, Guilt, and Overload to Find True Success. And I did write the very, the introduction, the first chapter through the lens of that I was writing it for women. And it is a leadership book.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Meghan French DunbarWe decided My publisher and I decided that we would frame it as for working women because that is really the target market. But every single principle in the book is for anyone who wants to be a better leader. I have had men, real men in my life who have already read the book and found it to be very useful. And it is one of those things, yes, it is written for women, but It is, if you want to be a better leader, understanding the perspectives and perhaps a bit of the experience of people who are not like you is one of the best ways to be a multifaceted leader. Deepa Purushothaman, a good friend of mine, she wrote the book The First, the Few, the Only about women of color's experience in the workplace. I am not a woman of color, and reading her book helped me understand Being a better leader and a better manager because there were things that I was understanding about women of color having a very different experience than white women in the workplace that were eye-opening for me. So it is for people who want to understand how to either have a career without destroying yourself or build a business without destroying the people within it, or both.
Leanne ElliottWhat I love about Meghan French Dunbar 2.0 is that she's not telling people to abandon ambition or stop caring about money. She's saying there are different ways to define winning, and the research backs up the intrinsic motivation approach. So, before we wrap up, let's hear how to find out more about MFD.
Meghan French DunbarThe best place to find me is meghanfrenchdunbar.com, and Meghan is spelled with an H, although I think I'm the only Meghan French Dunbar in the world. So, if you spell it wrong, you'll find me, just Google it, or on LinkedIn, Meghan French Dunbar. And If anyone wants to go buy the book for 20% off, I have a discount code just for your listeners that you can use at the Hachette Book Group website where my book is, as well as Amazon and Barnes Noble and all the things. But the discount code works at Hachette, TLW. I'll give it to you.
Al ElliottThat was Meghan French Dunbar, AKA MFD, AKA Meghan Furlong Detroit. And her book may well make you redefine what rich and famous actually looks like in business context in 2024.
Leanne ElliottBefore we go, let's talk about our top 3 takeaways for leaders who really do want to build businesses without becoming banana-hoarding monkeys.
Al ElliottLesson 1, you need to learn how to actively listen because that builds genuine connections. Don't just wait for your turn to talk. Ask follow-up questions, stay present, and let people share what they actually want to share. This is the number 1 skill of effective leaders.
Leanne ElliottAnd lesson 2, redefine success around stakeholder benefit. Not just profit for profit's sake. Companies that do focus on employees, customers, and community can and do outperform traditional businesses 14 to 1. This isn't just morally right, it's financially smarter.
Al ElliottLesson number 3, choose intrinsic over extrinsic motivation. Sounds complicated, but basically research has shown that people motivated by purpose, autonomy, and growth end up happier and less stressed than those chasing money, titles, and influence. Your quality of life matters far more than impressive metrics.
Leanne ElliottFind Meghan at meghanfrenchdunbar.com. That's Meghan with an H. And use discount code TLW for 20% off her book, This Isn't Working, at hatchetbookgroup.com. I will leave all the links in the show notes.
Al ElliottRemember, you don't have to choose between being successful and being human. The best leaders are proving that you can have both.
Leanne ElliottSo stop hoarding bananas, start sharing them. And remember, in a world where you can be anything, be more MFD. This is Truth, Lies and Work. We will see you next week.
Meghan French DunbarBye.