The Start Listening Podcast

The Original Hackers — Disability Lead on the Leadership Pipeline Nobody Is Building

Most companies treat accessibility like a compliance checkbox. A ramp here, an updated HR policy there. Disability Lead has spent years watching what happens when companies think they're done — and what they're missing is almost always the same thing: they never thought about who gets to lead. Emily Blum and Clare Killy are the CEO and Director of Programs at Disability Lead, a Chicago-based nonprofit that develops and connects leaders with disabilities to civic and professional opportunities. The stat that stops the conversation: only 3% of C-suite leaders identify as having a disability. Not because the talent isn't there — because the pipeline was never designed to move them through. Disabled people are, by necessity, some of the most sophisticated problem solvers in any organization. They've spent their entire lives creating access and solutions in a world that wasn't built for them. That skill doesn't disappear when they walk into your company. It gets underused, or it walks out the door. This conversation gets into what a genuinely welcoming organization actually looks like before a candidate ever applies, why the "we're pretty inclusive, I think we're good" response usually signals the opposite, and what it costs a company — in retention, in problem solving, in culture — to keep building leadership pipelines from the same pool. If this is the conversation you've been needing to have, start here. thinkvoen.com [http://thinkvoen.com] ---------------------------------------- More from Disability Lead disabilitylead.org [http://disabilitylead.org] → Virtual public events each take place a few times a year Disability Power Series: featuring disabled thought leaders from across the country Our Stories: a curated storytelling hour featuring stories of lived experience from our Members -- free, virtual, and anyone can register  ---------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE TO OUR SUBSTACK MAILING LIST: https://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast [https://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast] ---------------------------------------- This episode was produced by Cat Fincun and VOEN Consulting. It was edited by Angelina Gurrola.

Part 2 of How the Hell Did We Get Here: Evolutionary Science of Why We Accept Systems That Hurt Us

This is Part Two of How the Hell Did We Get Here? And Can We Do Anything About It? Most people who defend systems that are hurting them aren't stupid. They aren't weak. They aren't uniquely susceptible to propaganda. They're human — and the human brain was wired, across hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, to accept existing power structures because challenging them was genuinely dangerous. It still is. This episode gets into the science. Social dominance orientation — the psychological tendency to accept hierarchy — has a measurable, heritable component. The average American scores a 2.98 out of 7. Most people aren't enthusiastic enforcers of the system. They're defaulters to it. And the conditions that shift that score aren't individual willpower. They're narrative. The stories absorbed about what work is, what success looks like, what you're worth. The question isn't how to break through the psychological immune system that defends existing beliefs. It's how to create conditions where people feel safe enough to lower it. Part Three is coming.  ---------------------------------------- If this is the conversation you've been needing to have, start here. thinkvoen.com [http://thinkvoen.com] ---------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE TO OUR SUBSTACK MAILING LIST: https://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast [https://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast] ---------------------------------------- This episode was produced by Cat Fincun and VOEN Consulting. It was edited by Angelina Gurrola.

The Should That Isn't Yours — A Story of Walking Away and Building on Your Own Terms

Everybody has a version of the path they were supposed to take. The degree, the company, the title, the ladder. Most people follow it long enough to realize it was never actually theirs — and then stay anyway. This episode is Cat's account of what happens when you stop. Not the inspirational version of that story — the actual one. Three months of swinging between hyper-focus and couch rot. A network that needed rebuilding from scratch. The specific moment of realizing that saying yes to everything that came her way was just a more self-directed version of the same problem she'd left. Going slow when every instinct said move. Building a North Star big enough to navigate from when the day-to-day got loud. The difference between a should and a what if isn't always obvious in the moment. Knowing which one is driving a decision is the skill nobody teaches you — and the one that determines whether what you're building is actually yours. ---------------------------------------- If this is the conversation you've been needing to have, start here. thinkvoen.com [http://thinkvoen.com] ---------------------------------------- Bonus materials for this and other episodes on Substack. substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast [http://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast] ---------------------------------------- TOPIC AND GUEST SUGGESTIONS: startlisteningpodcast.com/#suggest-a-guest [http://startlisteningpodcast.com/#suggest-a-guest] ---------------------------------------- This episode was produced by Cat Fincun and VOEN Consulting. It was edited by Angelina Gurrola.

Childfree Lives are no anomaly — Lady No Kids on the $15 Trillion Untouched Market

The room was full. Christine was nodding. And somewhere in the middle of a presentation about tax shelters for kids and leaving legacy for family, she realized she hadn't actually agreed with a single thing. That moment is the founding story of Lady No Kids — and the business case hiding inside it. Women living without children represent a market that could reach 40% of North American women by 2030. There is almost no infrastructure built for them. Not in finance, not in hospitality, not in consumer products, not in community. The conveyor belt of life — school, partner, suburbs, kids, community — drops these women off quietly and without warning. Christine Burns describes turning around in her 30s and realizing the erosion happened so slowly she didn't notice until it was gone. The businesses that will win this market aren't the ones that show up with a pink version of what they already make. They're the ones that understand what these women have already figured out how to do alone — and build for the gaps that remain. Finance without next-of-kin assumptions. Adult travel that is broader than honeymoon getaways. Community that forms around interest and not life stage. That's the infrastructure Christine is building. And it's the conversation most brands haven't had the wherewithal to start. ---------------------------------------- If this is the conversation you've been needing to have, start here. thinkvoen.com [http://thinkvoen.com] ---------------------------------------- Where to find Christine and Lady No Kids: Instagram: @ladynokids_ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christineelizabethburns/ [http://linkedin.com/in/christineelizabethburns/] Website: lady-nokids.com [http://lady-nokids.com] ---------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE TO OUR SUBSTACK MAILING LIST: https://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast [https://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast] ---------------------------------------- This episode was produced by Cat Fincun and VOEN Consulting.

Tracking Before Purpose — How a Grab Bag of Metrics Can Tell You a Story That Isn't True

The metrics being sold to you as success indicators were designed to be easy to show, easy to screenshot, and easy to feel good about. Feeling good and being healthy are not the same thing. More damaging than flattery metrics are the blame metrics. 10x the ROI per employee in the next 90 days — there's 30 to 70% untapped capacity sitting inside your current team right now." This is what's flooding founder feeds. Metrics that support finger pointing instead of revealing the missions to rally around. The marketing budget that gets cut because the impact on new customer acquisition or customer lifetime values weren't attributed to the effort. The engagement drop-off that blames the customer journey when the cost and audience aren't aligned. Metrics should be helping you steer, not flatter you into complacency or scare you into cutting the wrong things. This episode is the counter-argument. Cat walks through the five metrics most likely to be lying to your face — and introduces VOEN, four tenets for measuring what's actually real in a scaling brand. Ace Hotel built one of the most influential hospitality brands of the last 30 years and lost 40% of its portfolio because the vision was never structurally held. Independent bookstores survived Amazon by refusing to compete on Amazon's terms. The difference between those two outcomes isn't luck. It's what you're actually paying attention to. ---------------------------------------- If this is the conversation you've been needing to have, start here. thinkvoen.com [http://thinkvoen.com] ---------------------------------------- The extended version — three metrics per tenet, how to collect each one, and Peloton as a cautionary tale — is on Substack [https://thestartlisteningpodcast.substack.com/p/see-your-business-clearly-with-the?r=7qontn]. ---------------------------------------- TOPIC AND GUEST SUGGESTIONS: Submit here [https://startlisteningpodcast.com/home#suggest-a-guest] ---------------------------------------- This episode was produced by Cat Fincun and VOEN Consulting. It was edited by Angelina Gurrola.