The SpeakEasy Cooperative

The SpeakEasy Cooperative We teach creative brains to think like business leaders so they tear down toxic systems & make money.

We are a consulting and coaching firm that uses a variety of personal and professional development strategies to help voice teachers, performers, musicians, and other service-based business owners in the arts become profitable and self-loyal. At the heart of our mission is the joy of witnessing individuals discover their true potential and purpose in the world. We foster this growth through our core values of business savvy, tenacity, and radical hospitality. Whether you join The SpeakEasy Cooperative®, become a member of the How to Run Your Voice Biz Without Hating Your Boss Accelerator Program, or choose 1:1 coaching, we are here to give you the tools and support you need to build a sustainable and money-without-shame business.

09/15/2026

“I thought you just ran a voice studio.”

Michelle’s accountant assumed a music teacher couldn’t have checked her own numbers. Then Michelle proved otherwise, and the whole room shifted.

Here’s what gets us: no other field is expected to know everything and nothing at the same time. People revere what we do as artists and educators, and still assume we couldn’t possibly handle the business side.

So we want to hear it. Have you ever been talked down to for being “just” a music teacher? Drop it below. 👇

Full episode this week — subscribe so it hits your feed the second it’s live.
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Everything ended up in your head because that is where a business goes when nothing else is built for it.The follow-ups....
09/14/2026

Everything ended up in your head because that is where a business goes when nothing else is built for it.

The follow-ups. The policies. The pricing decisions. The scheduling. The tiny tasks that somehow become your whole week.

Get that business stuff out of your head, and stop being tired for reasons no one else can see.

What Your Artist Business Needs Next is a free 3-part series that helps you identify whether your business needs money, time, or capacity most right now.

Start the free 3-part series and discover what your business needs next: https://thespeakeasycooperative.com/what-your-artist-business-needs-next/

09/02/2026

A deadline three weeks out stays abstract to an ADHD brain until it's basically on top of you.

The brain chemicals wait for the crisis, so the panic ends up doing real work supplying the dopamine and adrenaline the brain wasn't generating on its own.

That's why telling yourself to feel the deadline earlier goes nowhere.

The move is to manufacture a little urgency on purpose, before the real thing shows up and takes over.

Full episode on motivation is live now.

🎧 Listen on the How to Run Your Biz Without Hating Your Boss Podcast, Episode 11: What to do when your motivation is in the toilet

08/27/2026

Urgency feels like motivation. It's a trap.

When you lean on a fire deadline to get things done, your brain floods with cortisol and adrenaline and starts to believe the only way you do good work is under pressure.

Rely on it long enough and you train your brain to depend on self-created crises to get anything done.

Fret not, ADHD friends! We know urgent = important for ya, and we cover exactly that in this episode as well.

The full conversation on motivation (and what to do when yours is in the toilet) is live now.

🎧 Listen to Episode 11 of the How to Run Your Biz Without Hating Your Boss Podcast

08/26/2026

And the podcast is back! For Episode 11 we focused on “What to do when your motivation is in the toilet…”

Here’s a little peek into the framing behind this episode. More clips to come!

🎙️ Check out the full episode wherever you love to listen to podcasts: How to Run Your Biz Without Hating Your Boss.

08/24/2026

I rarely talk about faith-related things.

I’m more of a “they will know you by your fruit“ deconstructed and reconstructed gal.

And it may surprise you to know that I have a masters degree in worship, theology, and the arts, and I’m acutely qualified to talk about faith things in addition to all the other things I’m qualified to talk about.

Am I being absolute and judgmental in this reel? Indeed I am.

Am I holding back the benefit of the doubt? Indeed I am.

Do I see this as a table flipping moment instead of a “let people be people, they’re doing the best they can?” Indeed I do.

Will I delete later because once I calm down I’ll wish I was more kind about it? Indeed I may.

But y’all, I am STUCK on this:
If one cannot bother to do the things that needs to be done in order to stage a show properly, one should not be doing it.

Getting theater out into the world is hard. And yet thousands of people figure out how to do it every day!

Thousands of people with smaller budgets, tighter deadlines, and a higher sense of integrity than some yo-yo butts out there that thinks they’re above all the rules.

(for those of you out there that work your ass off in order to make sure that you’re doing it the way that it needs to be done, may all the blessings from all the deities fall upon you and may your next season bring you a volunteer brigade that can move mountains)


By the third week of August, the fresh-start itch kicks in. New calendars. New color-coded spreadsheets you swear you'll...
08/20/2026

By the third week of August, the fresh-start itch kicks in.

New calendars.
New color-coded spreadsheets you swear you'll stick to this time.

The backpacks at Target hit different, because for a lot of us the real new year isn't January. It's now.

And every year we stand at the start of it and ask the same thing: how is this year going to be different?

There's a name for why that question lands so hard right now. Behavioral economists call it the “fresh start effect.” Wharton's Katy Milkman found we're far more likely to set a goal and stick to it right after a temporal landmark like a new week, a birthday, or a new semester. Your brain treats the date like a clean page.

Here's the part most of us skip: we ask what has to change and forget to ask what has to stay exactly the same. We treat a fresh start like a full renovation, as if the business that was mostly working was just a rough draft.

Discernment is the slower move.

Pick one thing you've been quietly resenting or quietly loving without examining why. A rate. A boundary. A policy.

Ask if it still works.
Ask if it still feels true to how you want to run things now.
Let the answer take longer than five minutes.

New season doesn't require a new self.

What's the one thing you're sitting with this week? Tell us below.

08/19/2026

We’ve gotten so afraid of causing harm that we stopped asking the questions that actually help people grow, and called the avoidance “being with them.”

Do no harm is not about keeping people comfortable. It’s about staying accountable to the work, even when the work gets uncomfortable, because that’s where the growth lives!

If you’re a coach, bodyworker, music or other teacher, I have encouraging news. Our job isn’t to protect people from discomfort. It’s to stand at the edge of it with them, steady, so they don’t have to go there alone. 💕

Save this for the next time you catch yourself softening the question that needed to be asked.

And imagine me asking YOU the hard question… “Are you going to ask the Golden Question?”

A slow quarter only feels like an emergency when you haven't built the reserve.This is the part nobody trained us for. Q...
08/11/2026

A slow quarter only feels like an emergency when you haven't built the reserve.

This is the part nobody trained us for.

QuickBooks found that most small business owners are managing their own cash flow with zero training in how to do it. The majority never learned it, so they're guessing as they go. When things get lean, it feels like a five-alarm fire instead of a Tuesday.

And the losses can be real.

Coaches and creatives everywhere are seeing client numbers shift right now. But if a slow quarter feels like an emergency, that's information. It tells you the reserve isn't there yet, the one that makes lean months cautious instead of terrifying.

None of this is a character flaw. It's how the human brain responds to scarcity. It's also fixable.

That's the work we do inside The SpeakEasy Cooperative. We help you build a relationship with your own money that lets you ride out a lean season without panicking.

Being your own bank instead of hoping the calendar stays full.

We say the honest thing, we back it with data, and we teach you what to do with it.

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