Pancake Town Podcast

Alternate Title: "That's Gross"

In this week's episode, Michelle and Emily discuss the constant internal struggle that a lot of makers have when designing new products: Do I give my customers what they want, or do I tell them what they should want?  Should I work to please my customer's every whim, or am I the tastemaker?  Spoiler: It's a really tricky combination of both!

This week, Emily and Michelle react to an article on thecut.com written by Natalie Beach > a ghostwriter for Instagram influencer, Caroline Calloway.  Natalie's side of the story reveals that Caroline created a social media persona with the sole purpose of selling a memoir to publishers (and that she bought tens of thousands of social media followers along the way).

But, somewhat ironically, Caroline wasn’t even able to write her own posts, let alone a memoir, which is where Natalie stepped in and their dark friendship began.  It’s the kind of story that unfolds in a made-for-Netflix limited series... and theirs is probably already in the works.

read the full article: "I was Caroline Calloway" by Natalie Beach via the Cut.com

GET READY FOR SOME REAL TALK: In this week's episode, Michelle shares her strategy to deal with a recent drop in wholesale sales and enlists Emily’s help to brainstorm new ideas.

This week, Emily fills Michelle in on her (very rainy) weekend vending at Andersonville Arts Festival...  but not before the two rant about the aftermath of an Instagram post that unexpectedly went viral the day before.

In this week's episode, Michelle and Emily investigate the new free shipping strategy implemented on Etsy and how it’s affecting not only Etsy shop owners, but potentially all small businesses with online shops.  Since Emily and Michelle no longer operate Etsy shops themselves, they reached out to the Pancake Town and Show of Hands Facebook groups for others' opinions on these new changes.

They also learned a lot about the motivation behind Etsy’s corporate leaders from a really insightful & well-written Vox.com article by Kaitlyn Tiffany.

This week, Emily and Michelle attend Renegade Craft Fair’s flagship summer event in Chicago which prompts ranting about one of their favorite topics: Shopping Local!  They share their purchases from the show (which means LOTS of shout-outs!) and remind fellow small business owners that they shouldn’t expect their customers to shop small and local if they aren’t also making it a priority themselves.

In this, the very first Drunk Business Advice episode, Emily and Michelle give Pancake Town listeners their best *intoxicated* answers to questions about business.  They (try to) help a jewelry designer & stay-at-home mom with prioritizing her revenue streams, they (attempt to) answer the age old problem of finding a work/life balance, and they (eloquently) share their top financial investments.

Have a business question you want us to (drunk) answer?

If you'd like to submit a question (or questions) for our next Drunk Business Advice episode, please send them to us at [email protected]!