75. Integrating Values Into The Art Of Online Business with Rick Mulready
Building A Business Based On Values
What would it mean to have a business that feels as good to you as it appears on the outside?
How would it feel to have a business that is aligned with your values and is creating and infusing those values into everything it does? That supports and protects people from all backgrounds, especially those who have underrepresented and marginalized identities?
To have that business means being an owner who is comfortable being uncomfortable, willing to be vulnerable, and who will lead from a place of kindness, love and caring.
Rick Mulready joins India to reflect on his journey of bringing his values into his business and his podcast without sacrificing success or growth, and how his approach to integrating his values into the business continues to evolve over time.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How to use your platform to explicitly communicate your values
How social media turns values into a shallow commodity used for approval
Why your values need to be infused into how you show on your platform and in your content
Why conventional business advice isn’t for everyone, and how to let go of what doesn’t work for you
Helping Businesses Get to the Next Level
Rick Mulready is the host of The Art of Online Business podcast and an industry leading expert in teaching online experts how to optimize their online business to take them to the next level. He has a not-so-secret superpower of simplifying Facebook and Instagram ads, teaching thousands of online entrepreneurs all over the world how to create consistent leads and sales with ads.
He’s built a 7-figure business as an online expert and course creator from the ground up using Facebook and Instagram ads and shows other online experts how to do the same without getting sucked into endless guessing games or unnecessary overwhelm.
Before starting his business, he spent 12 years in corporate Internet advertising, working with the likes of AOL, Yahoo!, Funny or Die and Vibrant Media where he sold and managed online ad campaigns for some of the largest brands in the world.
How Rick Flaunts His Fire
On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, Rick Mulready (he/him) says that Flaunting His Fire means being unapologetically himself.
It’s “having the ability to show up as yourself and be able to share your gifts with confidence.”
He says that this idea has come up for him in conversation with his wife recently, not just in his work, but also in their relationship with the pressures of the day to day of work, life, and family.
“It was really about taking that time for ourselves and sort of getting back to the basics, if you will, of being ourselves with each other, showing up as the confident humans that we are.”
Being an Example of His Values
Rick says his “why” in his business truly started to shift when his daughter was born in 2018. His motivation evolved from making a lot of money with a lot of flexibility to wanting to be able to show his child different possibilities for making money that he wasn’t shown growing up.
He says that while integrity was always a key value of the business, the meaning expanded after having a child, along with his other values.
“I didn’t want to just live by these values and make decisions through the filter of these values. I wanted to be an example of these values for my daughter.”
Over the last several years, and with the work he has done with India and Erica Courdae, he says that he has gotten much clearer on, and more able to articulate, his values. He says that, in particular, the events of 2020 surrounding racial justice caused him to begin to think more deeply about his values and communicating them explicitly to his audience.
He says that earlier in the life of the business, he would have been more concerned about alienating potential clients, but now “I wanna repel people who don’t align with my values.”
India says “there’s an immense power in taking the values that we know we have deep down and defining those words, because words like integrity, words like advocacy, like vulnerability, can mean so many different things to so many different people.”
Rick says that he has noticed shifts in who he attracts to his business, but one of the biggest changes has been getting asked more often about his positions on various subjects.
As his biggest platform, he also uses his podcast to communicate his values. He also prioritized making the values explicit on the information page for the Art of Online Business Accelerator program, as the other major source of traffic to the business, as well as how they vet potential podcast guests and Accelerator applicants.
“When I’m able to bring guests on the podcast that align with our values, that is attracting more people to my audience that are aligning with those values as well. And then again, repelling people that don’t align. And that’s totally fine.”
Your Values Are Not A Commodity
Rick says he has been challenged on the strategy of prioritizing the highest-traffic channels for communicating values and not trying to make a statement across all channels all the time.
He had a member of the Accelerator program ask why he wasn’t communicating his values as explicitly on Instagram, because that was the space where she engaged with his brand.
But between low engagement and the misalignment of Instagram’s values with his own, Rick still doesn’t feel that focusing on the platform is the best use of his efforts.
“I can reach three quarters of a million people on my podcast in just a few months versus having eighty people see something on Instagram.”
India adds that the push to show up everywhere at once can also turn values into “a commodity that you need to parade around in certain places so you can get a stamp of approval. It’s very surface.”
Rick agrees that values can become a commodity and “on the flip side, what the reality is, is they’re not living by those values.”
One way that shows up for him is in his frustration with the values people espouse, but the content they continue to engage with from people who are out of alignment with those values, with the excuse of “well, I’m just a fan of that person, have been for a long time. I don’t care what they do; I’m gonna continue to be a fan.”
India says that this aspect of fandom puts people on a pedestal that “others” them and causes us to stop expecting accountability from them, and stops us from questioning why we continue to engage with them.
She adds, “Every time you take in someone’s content, you’re giving an algorithm a vote to show it to more people.”
Rick says that when he gets frustrated by those mixed signals from people, he reminds himself, “I can only do me over here. I can stay in my lane and I can take care of what I’m able to take care of, and it’s to live by and represent these values, and reflect these values in everything that I do and who I am and my being. That’s the only thing I can control.”
Values Inform Content and Focus
In terms of how his values show up on the podcast, Rick says it really has influenced everything, from what he talks about in his solo episodes, to the guests he interviews, to even how the episodes are edited.
He says in a couple of upcoming episodes, “there was something said that I was like, mmm, not cool. And where in the past I would probably just let it go…whereas now, I have a conversation with the person afterwards, and depending on what it was…I will just edit it out of the show.”
He’s also more conscious of building relationships with guests beyond a single appearance on the show, whether that means having them back when a topic of their expertise is relevant, or having those relationships expand his network.
India says that diversifying your network isn’t only about race, gender, or other demographics, but expanding the number and types of experts you have relationships with.
India notes that Rick has also refined the focus of the podcast to hone in on impact and profitability without hustle culture and burnout, including having mental health and wellness professionals on the podcast to discuss the impacts of hustle and burnout.
Rick says he has received a lot of positive feedback on those episodes, as a business podcast offering a different perspective on hustle culture.
“Yes, the podcast is about online business. Burnout and the mental health side of it, hustle culture, all these types of things are part of running an online business…It is what’s glorified and I wanna go in the opposite direction.”
Social Media Isn’t For Everybody
He’s also tackled topics in ways that run counter to the conventional advice given to online business owners, like free Facebook groups or having a social media presence, and instead asks what business owners would gain if they gave up the things they’re told they should do.
“A lot of these things I’m wanting to cover on the podcast because…people are doing it, and they talk about how successful it is for them, but what’s not talked about is, it’s not for everybody.”
Right now, Rick says his own social media is almost exclusively repurposing content, like announcing podcast episodes, and not content originally created for social platforms. If he were to cultivate more of a presence, he would want to use it to show more of a behind the scenes view of how his values align with his work and life.
“But I still haven’t done that because…social media, just in general, doesn’t come easy to me. And so I’ve decided I’m not doing it and I haven’t done it…And–I always caveat that, whatever success means to you–you can have a very successful business without doing social media.”
India agrees and says there are a number of reasons why social media isn’t a good strategy for business owners.
“Whether it’s your capacity or amount of time in a day, that it doesn’t convert for you because of the type of business you have, or the platform you’re on is drying up and becoming ancient. Whatever your reason, it’s not for everyone.”
She says when she discusses strategy with business owners, she always approaches it through the lens of what the goal is and how a platform does or doesn’t serve that goal. For instance, right now, she would advise someone looking for organic reach to spend time on TikTok, because Facebook and Instagram now have very limited organic reach.
And algorithms and functions change rapidly. She says that TikTok is also evolving along similar lines to its predecessors by allowing scheduled posts, and differentiating account types among personal, creator, and business accounts.
Rick adds that based on his wife’s experience with TikTok, it’s also clear that they are quickly evolving their ad targeting and strategy.
Aside from concerns about platform viability, there are also issues with the values of the platforms themselves.
India says, “I don’t personally love any social platform. I think they all have some problematic and sometimes racist algorithms.”
Values Are Personal
Rick says that when you’re getting clear on your values as a business owner, it’s important to remember that these values are not just for your business, it’s personal.
“You’re coming up with values that you live by and that are reflective of that through the business as well.”
And it’s not a one and done, or even quick, process.
“It’s gonna take some time, but just start to identify what are the most important things. What are the most important values to you that maybe aren’t being reflected in both your business and your personal life, and just start to get some clarity there.”
Connect With Rick Mulready:
Ready to dive deeper?
If you’re wondering how to take your values from static word to action, so you can integrate your values into how you respond, make choices, and create impact with your brand, join Pause on the Play, The Community to get access to a curated exploration on integrating your values.
This self-guided, self-paced curation also includes the workshop replay for Reconsidering What You Know About Values. Plus membership gets you access to our community discussions, Q&A, office hours, and our full library of resources and recordings.
Learn more at pauseontheplay.com/community