The landscape of the business world is changing for the better and to help people prioritize family, personal life, and passion. Not only do these changes make for better employees, but they also improve the overall quality of their lives. Today’s guest is an incredible entrepreneur whose mission is to help other business leaders lead with purpose! Meghan French Dunbar joins us today to discuss her impressive career, the book she’s just written, self-care, and so much more! Join us as we delve into the power of women in the workplace, even touching on the often feared ‘P’ word (patriarchy), and discuss what men can learn from female leaders in business. We go on to talk about how workplace culture is evolving with younger generations before Meghan shares her suggestions for helping people be more vulnerable in group networking settings. Meghan even tells us what to expect from her in the near future. Finally, our guest tells us where to find her online. To hear all this and even be reminded of the power and importance of listening, be sure to tune in now!
The landscape of the business world is changing for the better and to help people prioritize family, personal life, and passion. Not only do these changes make for better employees, but they also improve the overall quality of their lives. Today’s guest is an incredible entrepreneur whose mission is to help other business leaders lead with purpose! Meghan French Dunbar joins us today to discuss her impressive career, the book she’s just written, self-care, and so much more!
Join us as we delve into the power of women in the workplace, even touching on the often feared ‘P’ word (patriarchy), and discuss what men can learn from female leaders in business. We go on to talk about how workplace culture is evolving with younger generations before Meghan shares her suggestions for helping people be more vulnerable in group networking settings. Meghan even tells us what to expect from her in the near future. Finally, our guest tells us where to find her online. To hear all this and even be reminded of the power and importance of listening, be sure to tune in now!
Guest Bio:
Meghan French Dunbar is a purpose-driven business leader and the founder of Conscious Company Magazine. She launched the magazine in 2015 with the mission of highlighting businesses that make a positive impact. After navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship, including burnout, she sold the company in 2017 and served as CEO until 2020. Meghan now leads Tide Turn Labs (formerly Women Led), a community for purpose-driven business leaders, co-founded Stakeholder Business, and has written her first book, This Isn’t Working, set for release in August 2025.
Key Points From This Episode:
Quotes:
“We feel like we don’t have permission in society to, like, take time off and be with our families and like, do these sorts of things, and sometimes, when one person does them, then someone else feels like it’s okay to do them.” — Meghan French Dunbar [0:26:09]
“[Women] have to learn how to express all of the traits that men have been brought up to express. So, we learn how to. – We speak masculine traits and feminine traits, which in reality is just human traits – that we all should have learned how to express in the beginning.” — Meghan French Dunbar [0:32:29]
“The number one predictor of longevity in human life is social connections, meaningful, deep, rich social connections.” — Meghan French Dunbar [0:52:24]
RESOURCES:
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[0:00:08.0] Laura Eich: Welcome to Love in Leadership, the podcast where we explore what happens if you bring a little or a lot of love into the workspace. My name is Laura Eich, I’m joined as always by the one and only, Mike McFall. Mike, how are you doing?
[0:00:19.0] Mike McFall: I am well, I played hockey last night, and then –
[0:00:21.9] Laura Eich: Oh, very good,
[0:00:22.5] Mike McFall: Tonight, I have the Bombers Christmas party.
[0:00:26.6] Laura Eich: Adorable.
[0:00:27.9] Mike McFall: Yes, it is. I mean, we’re not going to use – as we’ll talk about later with Megan in her interview, I should be okay with saying that my Christmas party with my hockey team is going to be adorable.
[0:00:40.6] Laura Eich: It is, yeah.
[0:00:42.0] Mike McFall: Yeah, it’s hilarious.
[0:00:41.8] Laura Eich: There’s no problem with that.
[0:00:42.7] Mike McFall: No, it’s so much fun and –
[0:00:44.0] Laura Eich: Is that who you played hockey with last night?
[0:00:45.8] Mike McFall: Yeah, yeah, yeah –
[0:00:47.6] Laura Eich: The Bombers, okay because isn’t there the Barons as well?
[0:00:50.3] Mike McFall: Yeah, that’s the Sunday night team, that’s the 15 and over team. Tonight’s the Bombers, but this Christmas tradition that we have is Christmas shopping.
[0:00:58.9] Laura Eich: Oh.
[0:00:59.0] Mike McFall: And so –
[0:00:59.5] Laura Eich: Like, you all go Christmas shopping together?
[0:01:01.1] Mike McFall: Listen, listen, listen.
[0:01:02.4] Laura Eich: Okay.
[0:01:02.9] Mike McFall: So, you know, Bob Olson?
[0:01:05.1] Laura Eich: Yes, love him.
[0:01:05.6] Mike McFall: Yes. So, we used to go and we have a few cocktails, and then we’d go Christmas shopping because Christmas shopping is way more fun if you’ve got a few cocktails in you.
[0:01:18.5] Laura Eich: Sure, I’ve had that, straight up.
[0:01:19.5] Mike McFall: Yeah, yeah-yeah, and this is back in the day where you shopped at stores, right?
[0:01:23.1] Laura Eich: Right.
[0:01:23.8] Mike McFall: More often too that more Bombers started coming, and then we had an event, I don't know, probably 15 years ago now where people showed up with their Christmas list but then like, half the group is like, “Oh, we’re not going shopping.” And so now, the annual Christmas shopping part is we go to the bar.
[0:01:44.9] Laura Eich: Oh, very good.
[0:01:47.5] Mike McFall: Yeah. So, that’s tonight and then –
[0:01:49.1] Laura Eich: Very fun.
[0:01:49.9] Mike McFall: Tomorrow, I’m going to a Redwings game with our goalie, Chuck, to see the Redwings play the Montreal Canadians, and I’m very excited about that too.
[0:01:58.0] Laura Eich: Oh my gosh.
[0:01:59.3] Mike McFall: Yeah.
[0:01:59.7] Laura Eich: What a hockey filled couple of days, don’t your kids have hockey now too?
[0:02:03.0] Mike McFall: Yeah, constantly, yeah.
[0:02:04.1] Laura Eich: Oh my gosh, it’s a lot of hockey.
[0:02:05.4] Mike McFall: Yeah, and I mean, it really is great for me.
[0:02:09.5] Laura Eich: Yeah.
[0:02:09.7] Mike McFall: Like, really great for me, you know? I’m just accepting it as awesome. Like a lot, you know, it’s maybe a little bit too much.
[0:02:17.8] Laura Eich: Nah, never.
[0:02:18.8] Mike McFall: Yeah, we’ll see, you know?
[0:02:20.4] Laura Eich: It’s fine.
[0:02:21.1] Mike McFall: Yeah.
[0:02:21.9] Laura Eich: Very cool. My week so far has been all work all the time. It’s been a little bit too much. It’s okay, no, it’s been – it’s for a good cause and I think the good cause is that kind of everyone has this somewhat arbitrary deadline of you know, Christmas Eve, Christmas day, wanting things to really slow down between Christmas and New Year’s, so, everyone’s working a lot this week.
It’s like, we’ve all silently decided to frontload our weeks with a lot of meetings and things like that. So, it’s been very busy but it’s coming to an end because we are about to Christmas week, which will be great.
[0:02:57.4] Mike McFall: Is that why every area of my life is a disaster right now?
[0:03:02.3] Laura Eich: Oh, yeah. Oh, if I – I’m literally too embarrassed to show you my office because –
[0:03:07.9] Mike McFall: No, I promise you, I mean, I wish I could turn my computer and show you like, in my office at home is a disaster.
[0:03:14.6] Laura Eich: Oh my gosh.
[0:03:15.2] Mike McFall: My car’s a disaster, my closet’s a disaster.
[0:03:17.2] Laura Eich: Everything.
[0:03:18.4] Mike McFall: Like –
[0:03:19.0] Laura Eich: We just need time.
[0:03:20.5] Mike McFall: Oh, man.
[0:03:21.2] Laura Eich: We just need some time, and like there’s more stuff because there’s like presents, and behind my camera, which you can’t see is a bassinet full of Christmas presents because Charlie has discovered Christmas presents and how much fun they are to pull apart and things like that. So, I had to give them off the ground and so, anyway, yes, everything is a little chaotic and I think it will all get better next week, thank goodness.
[0:03:43.2] Mike McFall: Yeah, yeah, we’ll have a little break and yeah, and my kids are sleeping in. Like, and they don’t typically do that.
[0:03:50.6] Laura Eich: That’s nice.
[0:03:52.5] Mike McFall: It is.
[0:03:52.5] Laura Eich: So happy.
[0:03:53.5] Mike McFall: It is, it is nice but like, you know, you got to wake them up and get them ready for school and they’re pissed, like they don’t want to get up, right? And so, like we were talking about how the two-week break that’s coming up for them is going to like, poof, we can finally reset a little bit, yeah.
[0:04:08.7] Laura Eich: Yeah, that will be so good for all of us. Amazing. The other thing that happened this last week was, our company holiday party, which I just love, I just love it. Everyone shows up and there’s lots of hugs and there’s lots of cookies exchanged and some people were dressed like elves and some people were in this like, two gentlemen with light-up full suits that had Christmas cats on them.
I was trying to figure out how to explain what happened here, they looked very dapper. It was – I just love the holiday party because we don’t all get to be in the same room all the time. I felt like there was a ton of celebration. How people have worked this year, a lot of celebration of not just like, the things we’ve gotten done because we have gotten good work done but that people are doing it with such good intention, and like, with core values in mind and it just – it felt good, it was a good day.
[0:05:05.2] Mike McFall: Yeah. My highlight was we do the awards around our core values and so there’s five core values and we give five awards, and then there’s the exclamation point, which is considered to be like, the MVP, I guess, is a way to say that and it – is it always – the MVP is always one of the five award winners, correct?
[0:05:25.3] Laura Eich: I don’t think so.
[0:05:26.2] Mike McFall: Yeah, I wondered that and –
[0:05:27.6] Laura Eich: I don’t think so, I think that happens this year, yeah.
[0:05:31.5] Mike McFall: Yeah, yeah-yeah. Okay. So, anyway, I was wondering about that. I think it’s happened a couple of years.
[0:05:35.8] Laura Eich: It might, yeah.
[0:05:36.8] Mike McFall: Yeah, but anyway. So, you know, Brook Gory won that and she told me that – and you know, if you know Brook’s story with us, it’s just – it’s so heartwarming, right?
[0:05:47.8] Laura Eich: Yeah.
[0:05:48.1] Mike McFall: And she said she sent the video of John’s presentation of the award to her dad, and that her dad cried.
[0:05:55.4] Laura Eich: Yeah.
[0:05:55.9] Mike McFall: And that, she’s like, “My dad’s not a crier,” you know? And it’s like, so meaningful that we’re – that you can, you know that by being part of our world and she’s grown so much and she’s just, you know, it’s remarkable, and then to know that like, you’re having that kind of impact, the organization, that our teams are having that kind of impact with each other and so on is just, I mean, it’s beautiful.
[0:06:21.5] Laura Eich: Brook has done so much work on herself and her future and like, I love that it was recognized, and I love – I especially love when people tell us how their parents react because like, I know how my parents react to anything, and they’re like, “I’m so proud of you.”
[0:06:36.8] Mike McFall: Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
[0:06:37.9] Laura Eich: I just think that’s really special and something we don’t necessarily talk about when we’re in the middle of the workday.
[0:06:42.8] Mike McFall: Yeah.
[0:06:43.6] Laura Eich: Is how, how their parents might respond and –
[0:06:46.8] Mike McFall: It reminds me of we have – we had someone who worked in the apps world, you know, relatively serve junior, tenured employee, went to a family function, and he was telling his dad who was a banker about the company and what we have going on and how, you know, our purpose and then you know, the vision, and I remember he came up to me and I didn’t know him well but he came up to me and he said, “I want to let you know that my dad told me not to believe you guys. Not to believe it’s true, not to, you know, like, there’s no way.”
[0:07:17.1] Laura Eich: Whoa.
[0:07:17.5] Mike McFall: And I was like, “What?” Like, “Oh my gosh.” I sat and I talked to him for a while about it but you know, it’s amazing to me how that someone could have that much cynicism in their – from his dad, you know? And that was –
[0:07:35.1] Laura Eich: Yeah, that’s an – it’s an interesting segue into our conversation today, actually.
[0:07:37.8] Mike McFall: It is.
[0:07:38.3] Laura Eich: Because we are going to get into that and some of the generational effect on business and the workplace and our expectations of business, and –
[0:07:49.7] Mike McFall: Well, yeah, and the fact that it was his dad and like –
[0:07:51.9] Laura Eich: His dad, yeah.
[0:07:52.5] Mike McFall: And like, the patriarchy and the, you know, that that’s not how the world works, son, you know? Like, come on, you know? It’s crazy.
[0:07:59.9] Laura Eich: We’re going to get into it because our guest today is Meghan French Dunbar, who I don’t even know how to explain her, so thankfully, she’s going to explain herself and what she does in the world but people just need to know this woman is brilliant, she’s incredibly intelligent, incredibly influential. She’s making waves happen in the business world trying to make sure that business is a force for good. So, let’s get into the conversation with Meghan French Dunbar.
[0:08:25.6] Mike McFall: Yeah, let’s do it.
[0:08:27.0] Laura Eich: Here we go.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:08:28.9] Laura Eich: All right, Meghan French Dunbar. Welcome to the podcast, how are you doing this morning?
[0:08:33.9] Meghan French Dunbar: I’m living, I’m living the dream, you know? A little tired, got a three-year-old and a five-year-old, it’s eight AM in the morning. So, I’m here.
[0:08:42.0] Laura Eich: You’re great. Did you get some coffee? Do you have some coffee?
[0:08:45.2] Meghan French Dunbar: I have coffee, I have BIGGBY COFFEE in hand.
[0:08:47.6] Laura Eich: Oh, great, even better.
[0:08:48.7] Meghan French Dunbar: I have a kombucha in hand because you know, bolder, I’ve got a smoothie and water, we’re great.
[0:08:53.0] Laura Eich: Oh, wow, you are prepared with beverages, I appreciate that. All right, I am also prepared but mostly just with coffee and then, more coffee, and then a little bit more coffee over there. So, I‘m going to have you if you could please introduce yourself by way of telling us who you are, where you’re from, and what is it that you do in this world? We like to start with the heavy-hitting questions.
[0:09:15.1] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah. I think I’m trying to figure out the story for myself because I feel I do a lot of things, and so I’ve been leading with kind of my purpose, which I have been centering all of my work on inspiring and educating people about good business, and when I say good business, I mean businesses that somehow have a larger purpose and make the world a better place as a result of their operations, and so that comes in many forms.
I just finished a book, so I guess I can technically say I’m an author, a writer. I used to be a journalist, I host events, I host workshops, I do CEO retreats, so I dabble. I’m a dabbler who is trying to inspire people to think about business differently, and I live in Boulder, Colorado, and I don’t remember what else you said, was some parts of the question?
[0:10:06.9] Laura Eich: Who you are, maybe you cover that in your purpose.
[0:10:10.4] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah. I’m a grateful human being who has two kids and a delightful partner, a life partner, my husband of 15 years. I am a good friend to a lot of people, daughter. I’m an aunt, I am a sister, entrepreneurially afflicted human being with ADD. Yeah, I’m a creative.
[0:10:35.9] Mike McFall: Well, I would, if I can, I would add to that list that you have been a leader in the term we used to use was, in the conscious capitalism movement, right? In terms of doing business – well, doing business good isn’t how you said that. Doing good business, is that what you said? Yeah.
[0:10:58.1] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah, it’s just good business.
[0:11:00.9] Mike McFall: And you know, your history there, you know, the entrepreneurial component with the magazine, can you just tell, you know, that was – that’s a remarkable story, I love that story. Can you just give us a little flavor on that one?
[0:11:14.1] Meghan French Dunbar: Yes. So, in 2014, I had just done my MBA with the focus on sustainable management and was a total business wonk, all about kind of sustainable, purpose-driven business, good business, however you want to talk about it but business, using business as a force for good, and I was hired as a managing editor of two magazines here in Boulder, kind of focused on conscious culture, Yoga.
And one day I went out to have dinner with a friend, and she and I were talking about why a business magazine about this space, about the good business movement didn’t exist, and I was like, “Something has to, I don't know.” We went back to my house that night, we researched it and couldn’t find anything, and I was like, “God, wouldn’t that be so cool if someone launched a business magazine like that?”
And that night, I got fired via email at 1:00 in the morning because while I was at that dinner, I had turned off my phone and my boss had sent me a series of text messages that you know, post 5 PM on a Friday and I didn’t answer. So, she sent me an email that said, “This isn’t working.” And the next morning I woke up, I read that email and I cackled out loud to my husband, and was like, “I think that the universe or something is telling me that I’m supposed to do this bonkers idea of launching a business magazine.”
So, fast-forward, I cofounded this, like crowd-funded, the first issue of the magazine, which we called Conscious Company Magazine. The first issue came out January 1st, 2015 and we got into every Whole Foods in the world. So, national distribution right out the gate, and I felt like, I had like boarded a train and had no idea that it had left the station and so, we – I mean, I was 30 years old, I had five months of print magazine experience under my belt before I launched this and all of a sudden, I was like, CEO and editor in chief of a nationally distributed print publication, and interviewing huge leaders around the world all about this topic.
And so, that went on, we grew, we did investment round, we launched events, podcasts, membership community, the whole thing, and from ages 30 to 35, I ran this community, we sold it about halfway through in early 2018, and so, I stayed on until 2020 as the CEO of the whole young subsidiary brand, and we merged with a bunch of other companies as well and it was like, tale of two cities, best of times, worst of times in my life.
I got to live the dream of I was getting paid to talk to like, Mike and Bob are on the cover of our magazine, and I was getting paid to like, go talk to my heroes and learn about this and just geek about business all day and do podcasts and go to like, Eileen Fisher’s house and sit in her foyer, which is like – I was like, I couldn’t even believe what’s happening. Like, the most unbelievable experiences and I had the – I was an entrepreneur like, bootstrapping entrepreneur in the print publishing industry, which is a terrible industry.
And we, you know, it was like, beg, borrow, and steal to keep the doors open. It was so stressful, so hard. So, I left in 2020, so Mike, I appreciate this idea of me being a leader in the space. I feel like I was able to kind of curate a lot of the conversations that happened in the space because I had these events and the podcast and the magazine and all this content we’re creating and I saw my role as celebrating the people that were actually doing business sin a responsible way, and that felt incredible.
And so since that time, I’ve just wrote my first book and I’m with Hachette Book Group, and so that’s another way that I get to kind of steer the conversation and I host a kind of CEO retreats, membership community with CEOs who are doing this type of work. So, I still get to play in the space and who knows where it will go from here but it’s been a bonkers ride.
[0:15:13.5] Mike McFall: I wish this was a four-hour podcast.
[0:15:15.1] Laura Eich: Yeah, I know.
[0:15:16.3] Mike McFall: So we could go deep on that story because there’s so many. I mean, every time we’re together, I hear some other – some other thing, some other story, you know? But tell us about your book project, you know? And give us the – you know, why you did it, what you're trying to do, and then what it – what is the project?
[0:15:35.3] Meghan French Dunbar: Yes, well, you said you wanted me to like, air on going deep in the story, so we’ll just go there. So, I resigned from the company that I loved so much, five months after coming back from maternity leave with my first child. I resigned on February 1st, 2020, my last day was March 13th, 2020 and on March 17th, we’re in lockdown, and I had a nine-month-old son.
And I went from being CEO, you know, public speaker, traveling around, and going to business conferences and my ego was just like, so gratified to like, locked in my home, full-time caretaking mom. Like, it was just absolute whiplash, and it 100% kind of happened for me because a lot of things happened as a result of being locked in my house, and I had like all of the extrinsic validations stripped away from my life overnight.
And I am like, from, from the get-go, was a high achiever. Just like, got all the blue ribbons and all the sports and all the academics and all the things and won all the awards and like, I just like, achievement was my life, dream, and goal, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t do that, and I didn’t know what else existed. Like, I couldn’t orient myself and my sense of self-worth and what I was supposed to do as a human being in the absence of achieving.
So, that was kind of one of the reasons that’s happened, and the other part was, like I mentioned, running a business as a young female entrepreneur was an extraordinary experience, and I was like panic attacks, depression, anxiety, it was – it was so hard, and what I noticed was when I would speak about how hard it was and how much I was struggling kind of behind the scenes with other entrepreneurs, other business leaders, everyone would kind of be like, “Yeah, like, this isn’t – it’s really, really hard.”
All of us were suffering behind the scenes and disproportionately, I was noticing that those conversations were happening with women, and I don’t know if that was because women are more open about their struggles or what was going on. So, I had those two pieces of kind of contacts going into lockdown. This is a very long story but I promise, it will come back. So, I got pregnant with my second child, like I don't know, what was that?
Early 2021 and had a, like terrible complications with my second pregnancy and was on bed rest for a very long time, and putting a human being like me, who legitimately is diagnosed with ADD, like I love entrepreneurialism like I love creating. I’m a big – like – I had a lot of energy and just putting me in bedrest was like, I can’t even imagine a worse scenario for me but this was this moment where I was like, forced to stop.
And like, take stock of everything and look at all these things, and so I really started to dig into like, why were women struggling, why – what do we do about this whole, like, extrinsic validation situation, and I had this inside around a book project, which was looking at the ways in which business is broken, which has been a passion project of mine for like, 10 years. Like, how business is harming everyone, full stop.
And explicitly, in disproportionately how it’s impacting women, and you know, took that out, got an agent, did the whole thing, and I was like, my goal was like, “I hope I can get a book deal with somebody.” And my agent was like, “No.” Like, “This is the conversation that needs to happen. We’re going top five.” And I was like, “What does that mean?” She’s like, “We’re going to top five publishers and I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t get picked up.”
And I was like, “What, what? Like, oh my, oh good.” I got a book deal with Hachette Book Group, they’re the third largest publisher in the world, and my editor is the former director of MIT Press. Like, it’s a whole – I have a whole team around me now and the book is called, This Isn’t Working, and I would say it is for everyone. The audiences, in fact, women but the lessons within a hundred percent apply to everyone in the business world.
But it’s very much looking at the ways in which business is broken and then through a leadership lens, a workplace culture lens, and how we think about and define success on a personal and business level, how those things if you shift them from one place to another, it not only improves performance, kind of on an individual and business level but it improves your quality of life and your sense of fulfillment and the way that you feel like they’re flourishing as human beings. So, you know, just telling all the world.
[0:20:13.6] Mike McFall: That’s it.
[0:20:13.8] Laura Eich: No big deal.
[0:20:15.5] Mike McFall: That’s it, you know, you know.
[0:20:16.8] Laura Eich: Oh my gosh. Well, we can be done. Like, “Okay, we’ll just go read the book.” That’s so, so impressive, and so in line with who I think of you as. I’m going to go – this is something we haven’t gotten to do in any other podcast because I don’t think we’ve had the right context for it but something I’m curious about is the space you – so, I’m using quotation marks, that doesn’t work on a podcast but that you dabble in would be.
I imagine, like, you talked about, you had this great validation, external validation coming from everywhere when you were doing the magazine and you had the conscious company events. What I’m wondering is, how are you currently, I don't know, taking care of yourself when it comes to like, knowing that the work you’re doing is worth it and good.
[0:21:09.8] Meghan French Dunbar: Oh, Laura, yeah. So, this is – I mean, and this is why I say, COVID for me was a gift because like, I was like, forced into isolation for two years to just like, think, and then the book, the process of writing a book, I mean, Mike, you’ve done this multiple times now. It’s – it helps you get down your thoughts and codify them in a way that you – like, there’s no – there’s no other way to do it.
It’s like it’s such an extraordinary experience, and so for me, I was able to kind of build some frameworks and really think about how these things apply to my own life because I not only like, riffed from personal experience but it will be in 75 extraordinary business women and got all their insights and tried to like, what are the themes and all the things but – so, the way that I’ve been looking at this is, I came up with this framework of soul success. So, the way that we typically – I raise is what I call social success.
You know, we have all the external pressures that might be parents or media, or friends, or whatever it is but there is like, you know, our narrative of like, you do the very best you can at the school so you can get into the best schools, so you can get the best jobs, you can make the most money, and work yourself to death until you hopefully hit 65 at which point, you’ve saved enough money so you can actually go back and do all the things you actually want to do and maybe enjoy your life a little bit.
So, we all have those narrative, and it makes us make decisions that potentially go against our passions and the purpose that we want to achieve in life, and so every single woman that I have spoken to who is just on fire about her career and flourishing and happy has like, thrown the social success script out the window, and pursued passion, and passion through the lens of like, things that light them up, things that they’re interested in.
Like, one example is Caroline Duell, she runs All Good, which is like lotions and sunscreens and stuff, and she – like, super interested in healing. and herbs and like the healing space and like study that for 10 years, and all of a sudden, it turned into this little goop that she is selling at Farmers Market and now it’s all of a sudden, a 10-million-dollar company, and like, all of these women, it’s like, they found something that they were like, “Oh, I’m so interested.”
“I love learning about this thing and I’m going to follow it to the end.” Instead of, “I should study accounting so that I have a stable job.” So, there’s always passion, then there’s always the purpose side of things. Like, you can be very passionate about something but it doesn’t – it’s not particularly meaningful. You can also, be making a great positive impact in the world but you’re not passionate about what you do.
Like, those things, like, they don’t necessarily come together always, and so there’s passion, there’s purpose, and then the thing that I was identifying is quality of life. So, that’s like the Venn diagram I created for myself, is, quality of life, passion, purpose, and so my quality of life, I came out of COVID, like, I popped up in 2022 and was like, “Well, what just happened?” Like, I don't know, like, I have another child now, I’m unemployed, I don't know, I feel so weird.
But I was very clear on how I wanted to define the way that I worked to support my quality of life, and so like, I work from nine to three, I stop at three. I do not work nights, I do not work weekends, I do not open my email before 9 AM. I took my email and Slack off my phone, like – and then I started really thinking about the things that brought me joy and made me feel super happy, and intrinsic validation, which the three key drivers of intrinsic motivation are purpose, growth, which I see those, like, growth and passion are very synonymous.
Like getting better and better at something that you care about and autonomy, having some sort of voice choice or freedom, and for me, I’ve been an entrepreneur for 10 years. The autonomous side of things, you can be an entrepreneur and have zero freedom because you built something so big that it requires all of your time, and you’ll be like, can’t get out of it, and so I was like, “I’m going to have freedom.”
I’m going to – I’m going to build until a certain point at which point, like if it starts feeling stressful, I don’t need to do it. I want to only say yes to things that I’m super passionate about, I’m only working with people that I love, and these are all incredibly privileged things we all need to make a decision about. Like, it’s not like everyone can go through and say these things, and I think you can find these types of elements in your career.
There’s flexible workplaces, there’s workplaces that have higher meaning, there’s like – there’s lots of ways in which you can figure these things out. For me, I had a blank slate and for two and a half years, I’ve been rocking it, and I’m like, dogged about committing to my own boundaries. I took all of July off this year and like, went to Canada and paddle-boarded every day with my kids, and not something I’ve ever done.
And my – it’s like, for context, my husband is a lawyer, he’s a partner at his firm. He took July off too, and like, it’s like, we feel like we don’t have permission in society to like, take time off and be with our families and like, do these sorts of things, and sometimes, when one person does them, then someone else feels like it’s okay to do them. He had a partner at his law firm who two summers ago took six weeks off.
Because he did that, Scott felt permission to do it this year, and now I guarantee next summer, someone will feel permission to do it next year, and so my husband and I are pretty clear about quality of life standards and what we want to do and I refuse to let go of them.
[0:26:38.6] Laura Eich: And also now an extra thanks for doing this podcast at eight AM because it’s for your nine AM start time. So, thank you.
[0:26:45.7] Meghan French Dunbar: I will say, I will say. I only – I only break boundaries for people I love. Like, if I'm excited about something, I’m like –
[0:26:54.2] Laura Eich: Thank you.
[0:26:53.9] Meghan French Dunbar: But if it doesn’t feel like work, it’s like this isn’t work for me.
[0:26:56.1] Laura Eich: Sure.
[0:26:57.2] Meghan French Dunbar: This is just fun.
[0:26:58.2] Laura Eich: Yeah, I know that feeling. Incredible. I’m going to give you just a little bit more extrinsic validation just for a quick second because Mike and I – I don’t think we’ve talked about this but like, the conscious company, the leader’s forum events that you ran were like monumental milestones, particularly for – not just for our company but for Mike and I, personally.
The reason I wanted to know like, I love that you have found soul success, I love that you have found the ability to validate yourself internally but I hope you always know that there are still ripple effects being felt from the work you have done and man, from the sound of it, from the book that we’re all going to read, that’s going to have like, monumental impact on people, especially, it sounds like on women.
But I also think those types of things are so good for men to read. Think of even at the forum, I remember Mike and I having conversations where Mike, you talked about like, “I guess I don't know what it’s like to be a woman in business,” kind of conversations, like you were learning a lot from Jocelyn Macdougall and like, things like that, where there is some realizations about just what we didn’t understand about one another and anyway, I just wanted you to know.
There’s still impact being had from your past work and I’m so excited about your current work and future work because you’re having huge impact on the world.
[0:28:23.8] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah, those events were like my favorite things to do.
[0:28:26.3] Laura Eich: So beautiful, I love them.
[0:28:28.8] Mike McFall: So, thanks for that. That was good because those events were impactful. They were and – but I wanted to dive into maybe the sort of purpose of this podcast, which is Love in Leadership, and what are your takes on what women can bring to leadership that is lacking today, you know? Because – well, that’s the question, I don’t need to give a because. What is it that we all are going to be doing better in 20 years, 30 years because women are becoming so much more powerful in leadership and in corporations and so on?
[0:29:17.2] Meghan French Dunbar: I know. I don’t know how – well, screw it, I’m just going to –
[0:29:18.8] Laura Eich: I’m just going to sit back and wait.
[0:29:19.4] Mike McFall: Yeah, just do it.
[0:29:21.0] Meghan French Dunbar: I’m just going to go – so, I’m going to use the P word, the patriarchy word, which like, terrifies some people and I’m happy to like, define it if it’s helpful but this was something that – and it’s actually at a CEO retreat we were doing, Mike, I think it was the interface one, and someone in the group said, “I think women are better leaders.” And like, some part of me was like, smugly satisfied.
Like, “Yeah, we are, I know we are.” And through the process of writing the book, I’ve actually come to the place of saying like, I think that idea that women are better leaders is harmful, and there’s a number of reasons why, and this is patriarchy. So, the idea of patriarchy in its simplest form is like societies and regimen hold the power, and this has been true of human civilization for about 10,000-ish years.
It has not the natural order of things, we’ve been around as a species for about two million before the, like, from two million years, there’s like, vast amounts of evidence that we lived, we like, coexisted in like, equal, kind of nomadic groups. There’s a number of reasons why, agriculture, monotheistic religions, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Patriarchy becomes a thing, and this societal narrative that men have more power than women becomes intrenched it what we do.
And I promise, I promise this is going to come back because this is like such a long answer, I’m going to try to make it not as boring. So, patriarchy is, you know, patriarchy makes it so we have our gender roles. Like, women are the caretakers and the providers and they’re there to like, support the men as they go and lead and do all the important things in society, and as a result, as children, we are conditioned to express certain traits.
And these are traits, these are human character traits, like there is vast amount of research that women don’t come out of the womb as compassionate, nurturing, supportive, communicative caretakers, and men don’t come out of the womb – like, we come out of the womb like blank slates, and then we are conditioned to express certain traits in certain ways, and so young women were given like, Barbie Dolls and house sets and were told to dress up and be nice and be quiet.
And like, take care of each other and build relationships and all these things, and men, it’s to compete, to dominate, to be aggressive, to fight, to win, like all the things that make them good leaders and you know, so on. So, here is where we are today. This is still a pretty like, of course, this is a blanket statement but most women and men are raised differently, and we’re conditioned and told to express different traits as we’re rising up.
But then, women, to break into any male-dominated field, which is everything, literally, tell me, someone tell me woman-dominated field, like doesn’t exist, business, politics, media, like every single thing. So, to get into those things, which have been shaped by men, we have to like, learn how to express all of the traits that men have been brought up to express. So, we learn how to like, be decisive and confident and compete and do all these things.
And like, essentially, we come like, bilingual. We speak masculine traits and feminine traits, which in reality is just human traits, like all the traits that we all should have learned how to express in the beginning but men don’t have – there’s no reason for them or pressure on them to develop the kind of feminine, “feminine traits” that all the women are conditioned to as young women because like, there’s no reason for them to do so.
And also, it’s not even that there’s no reason for them to, so they’re often like, ridiculed. There’s like, the whole like the toxic masculinity, like when a man is kind and compassionate and listens and all these things, there’s like this idea that he’s not as manly or something. So like, they’re actually discouraged from expressing “feminine traits.” So then, all – every single contemporary leadership study in the last like, five to 10 years has demonstrated that the very, very best leaders have a wide range of healthy character traits that include masculine and feminine.
What we call masculine and feminine, which I think, labeling them as such makes it so we think they only pertain to one gender but they don’t but women just come into the workplace and we are able to be compassionate and communicative and empathetic and all the things that are – these are great leadership traits, and we can do the masculine things. So, it’s making it so all of these studies keep coming out saying, women are better leaders, and I’m like, yes and no.
Like, it’s not that we’re naturally better leaders, it’s that we’ve like – the circumstances have made it so we can express a wider range of traits, and when we say that women are better leaders, it makes it so we’re essentially saying, men can’t evolve in a way, and express compassion and empathy and communication, and so we’re essentially say like, when you say, “Men can’t do these things,” it makes it so they don’t even try.
But they absolutely can. Like, Nathan Havey is like a perfect example of this. Nathan is my business partner and he is highly adept at expressing a wide range of traits. He and I are very great at communicating and like, he’s been able to develop these feminine, “feminine traits,” and he’s a much better leader as a result, and so Mike, when you ask like, what do I think women bring to the table when they come in over the next like, 10 years.
I hope it is encouraging men not in like a prescriptive way but inspiring men to embrace this entirely like natural set of skills that they should have been conditioned to know how to do since birth but they’ve like – it’s like been beaten out of them, essentially, and as men envelop these and we become, like if you look at these workplaces, like the number one driver of employee engagement right now is feeling cared for.
If a man can like, understand how to demonstrate that and then get like the toxic masculine traits off the table because like leadership has become synonymous with just pure masculinity, whether it’s a healthy trait or an unhealthy trait. Unhealthy traits are like, dominance, aggression, abuse, like, violence, you know, these things that have become like very normalized in the workplace. So, like replacing those with the healthy “feminine” what I hope happens just for like, the longest answer humanly possible.
[0:36:12.2] Laura Eich: It was a beautiful answer, to be clear. I think all that contexts was important. I feel like people, myself included, just learned a few things, which is fabulous. Mike, how does that land for you as the resident male on this phone call?
[0:36:25.6] Mike McFall: As the resident male on the podcast? Yeah, resonates beautifully, and you know, I completely relate. I relate because I have a five-year-old and eight-year-old boy, and I watched them, and we really truly have tried building an environment that isn’t sort of the male prescriptive, you know, environment. I’m puzzled, you know? I’m puzzled by it because you know, they attack each other with swords and they beat the shit of each other with hockey sticks and it’s like, what are you guys doing, you know?
But I mean, so I look at leadership and like this, the feminine traits that you were talking about, they are the traits that we need to be engaging with people, and we are men, and I’ll just say men, like you know, of course, there’s men that are great at this but I think many men struggle with the, you know, things like empathy and compassion, communication. I did an informal study, Laura you remember this, where I sat in meetings probably for a couple of weeks and I just did checkmarks in terms of when people were interrupted and whether it was a man that interrupted or a woman who had interrupted.
And it was like, 85% men were interrupting, not just women but anybody, right? And it’s like, and then like 15% we’re women, and that’s – I mean, it’s just a good example. It’s like, you know, I’m sure there’s good data out there on that but it lands wonderfully for me, you know? I think it is where we have to – the direction we have to move and we have to learn and it’s still today, there is such a social acceptance around male traits and being a male, right? That is a very hard thing to break, you know? It lands for me, it lands for me in a beautiful way.
[0:38:33.9] Laura Eich: I wonder how it will play out over time because I imagine when you were describing all the accidental or non-accidental conditioning that happens because yeah, that’s a real, real thing where the – when I found a dinosaur onesie for my one-year-old little girl, I was so pumped because I was like, “Thank you.” Like, I think dinosaurs are awesome and it has cute little like dinosaur feet. It is the cutest thing ever.
But like usually, it’s unicorns and teddy bears and penguins and they’re all pink and blah-blah-blah and everyone who attended my baby shower knows I had this whole like, “Please don’t make everything pink” like blah-blah-blah thing going on, and so when I say I wonder how this will play out is because I think that conditioning is like a – it has to change generationally and as those generations change, then the education will change.
And then, the workplaces will change because even I think in a lot of the education around business still, we generally are hearing things that I think harken from the more boomer generation and it was a lot of, that was you know, highly influenced by the military and things like that and unionization and things that were like hierarchy and top-down and, “This is how we control everything,” and blah-blah-blah and like that’s all still there.
And I feel like it’s currently colliding with the current up-and-coming generation into the workforce, where they’re like, “That doesn’t have to be like that.” Like, we’ve gone through this, like people can have lives, people can have – people can work at home, people can have their kids out in the family room right now and still get their work done and maybe even do better work because they are not spending three hours commuting each way, which is what I used to do.
And like, people can have better lives and better lives actually make and create better employees and maybe there is actually a better way of doing business but it takes so long to like have that change happen and then to work it into what becomes normal. That feels just like this, it feels like the slowest process ever but I think that’s the direction we’re headed.
[0:40:46.7] Mike McFall: Yeah, it feels slow but when you look at it in the increments of thousands of years, you know? Yeah.
[0:40:52.5] Laura Eich: Right.
[0:40:52.9] Mike McFall: I think it’s happening fairly quickly actually.
[0:40:55.2] Laura Eich: Sure.
[0:40:55.8] Mike McFall: I’m hopeful about that. I had an experience sitting at an airport, sitting next to like four engineers and this one engineer was just complaining and complaining and complaining about how his people don’t want to work. They don’t want to go the extra mile, that they you know, that at 5:00 they’re done, like where’s the work ethic and so on. Then, he goes into this whole thing about retirement.
And how, he was probably in his late 50s I would assume, and he was going to go on to retirement and he couldn’t wait to you know, be able to like paddle board with his kids or his grandkids and go fishing and you know, all of this. So, I’m like, you know, and I interrupted, and I was not part of the group and interrupted and I said, “You know, what’s really interesting about this is the people that work for you are just doing the stuff you want to do in retirement with their lives when they’re young, right?”
“And so, you’re prescribing that for yourself at 60 or 65 or whatever it is, all they’re saying is we want to do that today.” I found that amazing.
[0:42:01.8] Meghan French Dunbar: There was a women’s thought leaders gathering last year and there’s a big-name woman at my table and she is talking about this like up-and-coming generation and saying that they were so entitled and I said like, “Can you give me an example?” and she said, “Well, they keep demanding work-life balance.” And I was like, “Okay,” and she said, “I had to kill myself to get to where I am today and I am still killing myself.”
And I said, “So, what are you saying that because you had to kill yourself, you want other people to kill themselves for their career?” Like, because I suffered, you want other people to suffer? Like shouldn’t we as like as we’re growing and becoming elder generations essentially say I had to kill myself, I don’t want the next generation to have to do the same. Like, there’s like this whole paying your dues and blah-blah-blah in land of the great.
So, the great resignation, you know, I like can’t the number of managers and leaders I’ve talked to who’s talked about this idea of people being entitled and that being the reason for the great resignation. When MIT researchers looked at the number one reason for the great resignation it is toxic workplace culture.
[0:43:16.6] Mike McFall: Yeah.
[0:43:17.2] Meghan French Dunbar: Like, the next – the up-and-coming generation just don’t stand for this shit, like –
[0:43:20.1] Mike McFall: Yeah, I’ve always been and I’ve always try to be very public about the fact that I am not a workaholic. I am far from a workaholic. People assume I’m a workaholic based on the role I have, right? And I’ve always said that if it takes me being a workaholic to have a successful enterprise, I don’t want the successful enterprise, right? It just seems like such a simple mentality, right?
Like, if it takes 70-hour work weeks and a whole ball of anxiety and depression, the stuff that you were talking about earlier, like why would you want that for your life? Like, the value of what you’re creating, is it worth it? And to me, it’s always been a really simple equation, it’s like, “No, it’s not worth it,” right? And so, you know, that’s something Laura, I think you really hit on something important, right?
Which is still today boomers control a shitload of our world, just through wealth, through influence, through you know, and it is that it’s going to time out, right? Like that’s going to time out and so, you know, I agree that that is still a huge, huge sort of weight that is like still over everyone is that mentality of command and control and you know, like you said, like I worked hard and I pulled my bootstraps up, you know?
You love that one, it’s like, “Oh, God, what are we, dinosaurs, you know?” That’s spoken to a 53-year-old man too, so.
[0:44:58.4] Laura Eich: Well, it’s about modeling that behavior because even Meghan, that was such a good example from the table you’re at. You’re talking to this really influential I’m guessing important, you know, female leader, who is modeling that the way to be to show your success is actually by being like, you know, “Yes, I killed myself and I expect anyone else that wants to be in my same position has to be that too because I think that’s the only way.”
And it’s like, this generation is not accepting that and I love it so, so much, especially I know one thing that’s different in my view from my parents when I’ve talked to them about this because they are, they are my boomers that are my close at hand to be able to study, and they have an expectation around retirement that I don’t necessarily carry because I don’t know that the retirement landscape is going to look the same.
And so, like I am not waiting to find out, I am not waiting to travel, I’m not waiting to spend my life then because I don’t know that I’ll be able to afford to retire because of how the world is going and things like that. So, that is a huge expectational difference that does affect my behavior and probably the next generation’s behavior as well is like they don’t have the same expectation. I mean, they don’t have the same expectation around college.
They don’t have the same because college has gotten so expensive and just puts people in debt for their whole lives and they are being raised by people that know that and have that different – anyway, we don’t. Anyway, Meghan, what are you doing next? You said you just finished your book, is it published? Is it available? Can I buy it?
[0:46:36.4] Meghan French Dunbar: You can pre-order it.
[0:46:37.6] Laura Eich: Okay.
[0:46:37.9] Meghan French Dunbar: It comes out August 5th, 2025, the pre-order link just went live two weeks ago.
[0:46:43.4] Laura Eich: Nice, we can put that in the show notes too.
[0:46:46.2] Meghan French Dunbar: Oh.
[0:46:46.4] Laura Eich: Yeah.
[0:46:47.9] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah. So, yeah, I’m – what am I doing? I’m trying to plan for this book launch and to do it in a way that feels sustainable and really healthy for myself because this is like one of those moments where you’re like, you want to like capture all the momentum from this monumental thing that you’ve just done, and like, I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old.
I don’t want to be on the road a whole bunch, I want to do the whole thing so I am building that out right now. I have – I still work with the wonderful Jocelyn Macdougall, who you mentioned earlier. She and I are business partners and cofounders on our, we call it Tide Turn Labs, and so we do workshops and retreats with women and I imagine we’ll have a healthy appetite for those when the book comes out and that is like my happy place is doing retreats and events, and I love having groups together.
Like, I’ve gotten to do this four times in the last year and a half with Mike and like, hosting retreats and doing a little like deep dives on businesses and I want to do those. So, that’s a big part of it as kind of the experiential component and then probably more writing, speaking, that sort of thing. I am trying to do it in a way that feels really healthy, I guess. I feel a little bit like I get to narrate my own future, trying to be really intentional about it instead of just being reactive.
[0:48:05.0] Mike McFall: One thing, Meghan, that is really nice today is that you know, the events that are powerful are not typically – well, I shouldn’t say this but I don’t know this for sure but you know, the in-person events around a book launch, yeah, you know? Like, the real powerful ones are you know, getting into a podcast that is going to have you know, 5,000 downloads, right?
And that’s how this world happens and you can do that sitting right where you’re sitting right now, you know? And that’s is a beautiful thing. You know, around that, I was doing probably two to three podcasts a week for months and months and months around my book launches and they’re great too because you, oh, you just get into this rhythm around them, right? And like, you know if you do a podcast a month, it’s always a little stark, you know?
It’s like, “Well, I got to do a pod,” but like when you’re doing them constantly, which you will be I’m sure, you know you just get into this nice flow, this nice rhythm and I look forward to seeing you on all that stuff. That’s going to be cool.
[0:49:04.2] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, and we’re attempting to take the book launch events and make them into something meaningful. So, we have like we just talked Susan Griffin-Black, she’s the cofounder, co-CEO of EO products in the Bay Area and I talked to her last week and she – it’s their 30th anniversary next year and she’s like, “Let’s do a 30th-anniversary women’s leadership forum for the book launch with like, all of the women from the Bay area and we’ll invite all the people.”
“And we can like have these conversations in salon-style dinners,” and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, like what, that’s like a dream come true,” is to actually get to use the book launch events as meaningful retreats and workshops and make them substantive instead of like, cheese cubes and plastic glasses with wine and awkward networking.
[0:49:54.3] Mike McFall: Yeah.
[0:49:54.9] Laura Eich: Please read the book.
[0:49:55.6] Mike McFall: Oh yeah, and then show up to an event and there’s you know, you travel all day to get somewhere, you show up to an event, and there’s 11 people there, you know? That’s always a joy. All right, so the salon-style dinner, you have an uncanny and beautiful ability to get people to open up and connect and I would love for everyone, love for everybody to go have groups that they belong to where they get to do these kinds of things, you know?
And we’ve done forums here within BIGGBY that were powerful for people and so on. Help me understand, you’re talking to leaders right now, and if leaders want to create that kind of an environment where they can bring, say eight, 10, 12 people together in some kind of a dinner or some kind of an event, what is it that you prescribe they do in order to get people to open up, to become vulnerable, to share you know, the inner workings of what they have going on?
[0:51:02.3] Meghan French Dunbar: Wow, this is the third time in two weeks that this topic has come up. I have a little like a salon dinner instruction download that I had them putting on my website, meghanfrenchdunbar.com. So, I have like a cheat sheet that folks can go and look at all the instructions because they are pretty – they are pretty detailed but the thing – so, the idea of the salon-style dinner is one conversation for the group.
Zero crosstalk, let one person speak at a time, everyone is present, engaged, and active while listening, and so I think there is a couple of things in terms of instructions beyond the like, timing and number of people and all of those things but one is to model kind of being open and stepping into that next level of vulnerability yourself. So, typically if it’s a group that I have never worked with, I tell the story first or I have someone there who I know.
Like Nathan or Hannah, who I can say like, “I’m going to ask you to go first because I know you have a really good story around this,” and essentially, the person who goes first sets the tone, and if you model something open and beautiful from the beginning, then everyone feels the permission to do the same and what I continue to find is that like when you look at it’s the Harvard longitudinal study, the number one predictor of longevity in human life is social connections, meaningful, deep, rich social connections.
And, as human species, we crave having meaningful conversations but we just don’t know how to do it, and so when you build a salon-style dinner, you’re giving everyone the permission to do it and yes, there are people who are uncomfortable speaking in front of a small group, about you know, kind of things from their life, or whatnot but when – the more they see other people do it, we actually like, we crave being able to do that in a group of people.
We want it and so it’s giving each other the permission, having like a facilitator who can help folks orient and you know, understand the ways in which things go, and then I mean, Mike, you’ve seen me like sometimes when people break my rules in my salon dinners like I am not shy of being like, you know, “Excuse me, guys, like we’re not having crosstalk right now.” Like, I keep the container pretty tight to the boundaries that I set because it’s really important to build that.
And the other thing is like the question, the question that you ask the group is I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the question that I want to ask a group when I am preparing for one of these because it really matters what you ask. We hosted a little miniature one in Boulder when Bob and Michelle were here at Nathan’s house like last year and the question that I offered was, “What’s something about one of your parents that you hope to emulate?”
And I got to hear a story from Bob that was like, one of the richest most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard and so it’s like the question is very, very important. I think I’ve said that you know, 20 times in different ways at this point. So, you get it.
[0:54:11.8] Laura Eich: I love that so much and I remember actually at a – kind of just company leader’s forum, we did an activity around the game “vulnerability is sexy” one time. That was like a miniature version of this where it was every person had two minutes or something to answer one of the questions and I remember this was one of those times I’m actually going to bring it back to the probably female or feminine characteristic things.
It was I think the first time I’ve ever spoken in a group activity where I didn’t feel pressure for fear of being interrupted and it was like the first time I’ve ever experienced that, where I was like, “I don’t have to rush through my answer to make sure that I hold everyone’s attention,” because I was given everyone’s attention and like, there’s a real – it’s like this crazy psychological thing that happens when you know no one is going to interrupt you.
No one is going to – everyone is just listening, they’re just there with you, and like it’s really cool, and I think it can be done super, like big and heavy and intentionally around like a dinner table. I think it could also probably be formulated for a, you know BIGGBY COFFEE staff meeting, where it’s like everyone is given a minute to answer something but even just that and knowing that they have everyone’s attention and they’re not going to be interrupted I think is a really powerful thing to practice and to learn.
And it creates that much more of a meaningful connection because you know not everyone is thinking about what they’re going to respond with and blah-blah-blah, just quiet. It quiets everyone’s internal voices a little bit I think and lets them listen better. So, it’s a really cool process.
[0:55:46.9] Meghan French Dunbar: The gift of presence and listening, the number of times I’m in groups, some people are looking at their phones or I cannot understate how important and how meaningful it is to get people presence and genuinely listen to people and it build profound trust and deep connection between people if you can do it.
[0:56:06.5] Mike McFall: We have in my class I coteach with Brian Hayden, he does a whole two-hour workshop called Listening Fast and his position on it is to be a successful entrepreneur, one of the most powerful traits you can have is being a good listener because when you’re a good listener, you uncover insights into what’s happening for people, whether they’re your employees, whether it’s your customers or vendors, or whatever it might be.
And you know, I know that students are like, “We’re in an entrepreneurship class and we’re talking about listening, you know? Like, aren’t we supposed to be talking about creating a deck and like how do we get our first five-million-dollar investment, and aren’t we supposed to…” and he’s up there talking about listening and it is a beautiful, beautiful class.
[0:57:01.7] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah. Every – so, I think I asked pretty much every single person that I interviewed for the book about top leadership skills, and the number one answer is listening, being able to be present, attentive, and listen and Susan Griffin-Black from EO Products, and one of my favorite quotes, I’m going to just paraphrase but she said at some point along her leadership journey, she learned that the point of listening is to reduce suffering.
I was like, “Oh my God, that’s so brilliant.” Like, she’s like, “I just listen to reduce suffering,” and when you come from that place and that’s like stakeholder management 101, right? That’s like, ah –
[0:57:45.1] Laura Eich: Well, that’s going to get written down and put on some board somewhere in here because that’s beautiful.
[0:57:51.9] Meghan French Dunbar: Susan Griffin-Black, Susan Griffin-Black people, she’s the best.
[0:57:55.0] Laura Eich: Amazing, and I know we need to wrap up because we’re officially like over on time I feel very bad taking any more of your time since you already gave it to us at eight AM.
[0:58:03.3] Meghan French Dunbar: I’ll hang out all morning, 24 hours, I’m here for the long haul.
[0:58:06.8] Laura Eich: Oh, I love this. I was going to point out though that Mike, he had another sort of long-term ripple effect is Mike had me do a meditation when I came to his class that fully was inspired or stolen from our time at Conscious Company. That was one of those like leader’s forum because it was one of those major things was the idea of getting centered and like letting go of what happens before.
Like, nobody does that in the business world, you just come in, you know, next meeting, next meeting, next meeting, next meeting, and like you’re always carrying the last thing. You’re usually following up from the last thing and things like that and like, we wanted to introduce the idea of like, let go of whatever is outside of this classroom right now and just be here, be here for a second, all of your worries will be there waiting for you later, and things like that.
But that was yet another ripple effect, it’s just amazing how much that’s impacted our world and our time and continues to, so.
[0:59:02.0] Meghan French Dunbar: Sometimes I dream of a future with those events happen again because the number of people that have asked me and told me, I mean, just yesterday I had someone told me about something happening at the World Changing Women Summit. Like, so if I can figure it out I think bringing those back online might be on the future.
[0:59:20.4] Laura Eich: Awesome, let me know when I’ll be there for all of them. Meghan, for people who are now like in love with you as we are, where can they interact with you, find you? You mentioned meghanfrenchdunbar.com, but you also mentioned Tides –
[0:59:33.5] Meghan French Dunbar: Tide Turn Labs, which is formerly women-led as Jocelyn and I work. Stakeholderbusiness.com is where I work with Nathan and we have the Stakeholder Business Society, and LinkedIn is always a great place to find me. I attempt to post there regularly.
[0:59:53.3] Laura Eich: Good job, I theoretically do too, and I am pretty sure the last time I posted was a year ago.
[0:59:58.5] Mike McFall: I went to your website and I can’t find the salon dinner directions.
[1:00:03.6] Meghan French Dunbar: Oh, it’s coming and it is literally –
[1:00:05.7] Mike McFall: Oh, it’s coming.
[1:00:06.3] Meghan French Dunbar: Written.
[1:00:07.3] Mike McFall: Got it.
[1:00:07.8] Meghan French Dunbar: Yes, yes, yes, I have a mentee and I met with her on Monday, and she asked me for the instructions, and then someone from the Stakeholder Business Society and mastermind mentioned it yesterday and asked me for instructions, and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to put it on the interwebs.” So, it will be there by the time this is published.
[1:00:25.8] Laura Eich: Awesome, and then your book is called This Isn’t Working, coming in August but it’s available for preorder where?
[1:00:33.6] Meghan French Dunbar: Now on the interwebs. It’s on Hatchet Book Group, Target.com, Amazon.
[1:00:42.3] Laura Eich: Okay, it’s everywhere.
[1:00:43.6] Meghan French Dunbar: Yeah, you can – if you just do this isn’t working, Meghan French Dunbar, and you Google it, it pops up all over the place.
[1:00:49.8] Laura Eich: Awesome. I can’t wait to read it, it’s going to be amazing. I’m a little miffed that I have to wait until August but it’s fine.
[1:00:57.5] Meghan French Dunbar: If I can get you an advance copy.
[1:00:59.6] Laura Eich: That would be cool. All right, anything else that you want to leave in the space? Anything you want to tell other people who are dabbling trying to make the world a better place through business doing – trying to do good through business?
[1:01:12.6] Meghan French Dunbar: No, I don’t think so. Just to have a sincere gratitude and appreciation for you two. I’m a huge fan and have been for years now and like I said, I feel like I’m just hanging out with my friends right now. This is an awesome work that you are doing spreading this message to folks and I am just in awe with both of you.
[1:01:32.3] Laura Eich: Oh, we are in awe of you.
[1:01:33.9] Mike McFall: Thank you.
[1:01:34.4] Laura Eich: I promise we are bigger fans of you.
[1:01:36.7] Mike McFall: Yeah, kind words, thank you.
[1:01:39.4] Laura Eich: Yeah, that’s very sweet. Sometimes we for sure should do like a four-hour episode and have Nathan on here too, maybe even Jocelyn. It would never end, it would be a full day-long episode. It would be super fun and super inspiring.
[1:01:53.4] Meghan French Dunbar: It would be the weirdest episode ever.
[1:01:55.7] Laura Eich: Weirdest episode ever, somebody’s got like a long karma if they knew that episode for, so.
[1:01:59.3] Mike McFall: I think we have to do that.
[1:02:00.7] Laura Eich: I think so too, I think it would be fun.
[1:02:03.7] Mike McFall: Yeah, gosh, I can’t even imagine where that would go.
[1:02:06.1] Meghan French Dunbar: Nathan and I have a – this is after John Nash from A Beautiful Mind, we have him for we call it “Nashing” which has been Nathan and I calls ourselves in a room for three hours and it’s at the whiteboard and we just like, “La” and like we – it looks like a place from beautiful mind in there, so he and I can get real weird about the business world and then add Jocelyn in there and it would just be –
[1:02:27.6] Laura Eich: I can only imagine.
[1:02:28.9] Meghan French Dunbar: Ridiculous.
[1:02:29.8] Laura Eich: Incredible, incredible minds put together. Thank you so much, Meghan. Thank you for the time, thank you for joining us early in your day, I appreciate it, and I’m just so excited for what’s to come from you. Your mind is beautiful.
[1:02:42.2] Meghan French Dunbar: Thanks.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[1:02:52.6] Laura Eich: I continue to be Meghan French Dunbar’s biggest fan.
[1:02:57.3] Mike McFall: She’s amazing. You know, I spent time with her through the Stakeholder Business Society and you know, we always end up sitting next to each other at dinners, you know? We do and it’s hilarious because she hinted to it in the episode but – or maybe it was prerecording but you know she and I, we go at it, and it’s so much fun, right? You know, not only is she brilliant and wonderful and beautiful and you know, just inspiring. She’s also just so quick and so engaged and so, you know?
[1:03:31.3] Laura Eich: Oh, yeah.
[1:03:32.4] Mike McFall: Yeah, it’s wonderful.
[1:03:34.5] Laura Eich: Something I remember from leader’s forums and that I’ve experienced every other time I’ve interacted with her, which is not as many times as you’ve had the chance but is the sincerity with which she communicates is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Like I remember sitting at a leader’s forum back in the day where she was sharing her story and especially sharing her story about some of the anxiety around the publication at the time.
And it was the first time I had seen I think I had ever heard a leader admit to like work causing panic attacks and work causing like, physical harm to a person, and like she just laid it out there. A lot of times people elude to it, “You know, I’m really stressed out. I’m really not okay.” I’m blah-blah-blah, but she was like, “So, I found myself on the floor of my bathroom, you know, not breathing” kind of thing.
You know, it was like, “Oh my gosh, that really does happen.” I’m like, it’s happened to me. So, it was so inspiring to see someone who like clearly I can see they are powerful, they’re brilliant, they’re capable struggling, and like having that sincerely played is just – it’s always impacted me.
[1:04:46.6] Mike McFall: It’s this concept around authenticity and you know, so much of leadership historically has been you aren’t authentic. You try to be perfect, you try to be everything, you know? And you can’t admit flaws or you can’t admit struggles and so I would define her approach and how she engages just as authentic. You know, when she’s super high, you know she’s super high.
When she’s not super high, you know she – you know? And that goes around as concept of believability, right? You believe her when she talks about something because of that authenticity.
[1:05:30.4] Laura Eich: And it’s beautiful and I just think it’s really interesting because obviously, we have lots of different people on this podcast. Some people are overseeing a staff of 10 people, some people are you know, we had Ari from Zingerman’s this season who is a co-owner with hundreds of other people of his company and Meghan is coming to the leadership standpoint from a different perspective, where she is a leader inspiring very influential leaders.
And that, like the responsibility of that is also pretty major and I just – I think it’s such good work that she’s doing. She’s saying you know, like she doesn’t have necessarily a team of 20 people that’s she’s directly impacting but she is impacting the leaders that impact thousands of people in her country.
[1:06:16.9] Mike McFall: Well, she’s leading it. She’s leading a movement frankly, that’s inspiring. You know, you talk about you think of CEOs running a business. If the point of you as a leader is to simply maximize the performance of that business, especially from the old school perspective where the point was to maximize shareholder value, period, I don’t see that as leadership. All you’re doing is you’re running an organization.
You’re a good manager of an organization and trying to maximize the assets of that organization to get to some end result. Leadership to me is having influence in the community or improving what’s happening for people in a community and that’s very much what she’s doing.
[1:07:11.1] Laura Eich: Like the ultimate leader. It’s like she’s – because yes, I agree, you have to be a solid manager of a business to run a business.
[1:07:19.0] Mike McFall: Sure, sure.
[1:07:19.4] Laura Eich: You need to be financially stable basically and yeah, it is about something beyond that, which is influencing how the work gets done and the long-term impact of what that work has on the world and things like that. So, man, I’m really – I’m legitimately really excited to read her book and legitimately bummed that it is not out.
[1:07:38.1] Mike McFall: Yeah, I know. I know but some of the stuff that she brings up, you know, this concept of patriarchy, well, it is being addressed, you know? But verbalizing it is critical, right? Getting different language in the world around leadership is critical, that’s what she’s doing is I’d love her take on this thing that women are better leaders and she’s like, “Well, I mean, wait a second, you know there are men that have the qualities that women traditionally bring to leadership, and so men can be better leaders too, right?” And to me, that’s just a really insightful way to look at that.
[1:08:23.2] Laura Eich: Yeah, I loved the balanced approach to that conversation because it is – sometimes it’s really meme-able to be like, “Down with the patriarchy,” and it’s like, “Nah, it’s not that simple,” it’s not as simple as like –
[1:08:35.1] Mike McFall: Right.
[1:08:35.6] Laura Eich: “Ladies, we’re taking over.” It’s like understanding the traditionally feminine and masculine traits and I love her metaphor of saying it’s like being bilingual. Like, being able to do both is really the goal, it’s not about one or the other. It’s about both, and that’s really what the most progressive leaders are actually just both, and that was a really cool conversation. Thanks for leaning into that.
[1:09:01.9] Mike McFall: Yeah, and her whole assessment around achievement. Yeah, that –
[1:09:05.3] Laura Eich: Soul success, yeah.
[1:09:07.3] Mike McFall: Yeah, you know that is a really powerful concept because you know, I think people get into their professions, they get into work, they – they’re driven, they’re clearly driven, right? At some point thought, it’s like, “Well, wait a minute, what am I?” Like, is it the – oh shoot, what’s the word, not intrinsic, it’s –
[1:09:30.5] Laura Eich: Extrinsic.
[1:09:30.9] Mike McFall: Yeah, is it extrinsic? That’s the –
[1:09:33.7] Laura Eich: There’s intrinsic and extrinsic.
[1:09:35.5] Mike McFall: Extra, okay, I’ll go, yeah, I was going to say extrinsic but it didn’t sound right. So, - but it’s, you know, it’s achieving for extrinsic reason.
[1:09:43.8] Laura Eich: External validation, yeah.
[1:09:46.5] Mike McFall: And it’s like at some point, you know, you realize, sort of, “Wait, that I’m doing it all so often then people lose maybe why they’re so engaged and why they’re working so hard,” and so on, and when you can translate that into intrinsic, right? And that’s what you know, that metamorphosis she went through during COVID and all that, and you know, really a powerful story and you know, it took that for her, you know?
But what does it take for you? What does it take for me? What does it take for you know, and I think a lot of times, and you're going through this right now, a lot of times it does have to do with like having children and family and seeing all of that but that doesn’t work for everybody, you know? And so, anyway, I thought that that was a really interesting story she told, and meaningful.
[1:10:37.2] Laura Eich: Yeah, yeah, and I think it’s – I recognize, everything I was saying soul success, I was pointing at my heart because I believe when she’s describing that, it’s S-O-U-L success and not S-O-L-E. I realized that’s kind of hard to hear the difference when we’re talking on a podcast. So, yeah, I believe it is like your soul, your soul success. So, I just – I think that whole concept is beautiful, she’s beautiful, she’s great. That’s all. Okay, any other thoughts that you’re hit with for now?
[1:11:10.9] Mike McFall: Well, you know, this Jocelyn, Nathan –
[1:11:14.1] Laura Eich: Oh my gosh.
[1:11:15.2] Mike McFall: Oh, I mean, I just might –
[1:11:16.2] Laura Eich: We might have to do that.
[1:11:17.0] Mike McFall: You know what? Even if we don’t, even if we don’t do it as an episode, I just want to do it, right?
[1:11:21.1] Laura Eich: We should just do that, yeah. I think we should all go to Boulder.
[1:11:25.4] Mike McFall: Oh my gosh.
[1:11:26.1] Laura Eich: I think we should all sit in Nathan’s backyard and look at the mountain that’s behind his house and sip wine, and have this conversation, and see if the world explodes because it might because –
[1:11:37.4] Mike McFall: Well, no, it won’t because they do it all the time. So, you and I will be –
[1:11:41.7] Laura Eich: I’m just so jealous. We’ll just be geeking out.
[1:11:43.3] Mike McFall: You and I will be – we’ll be bit players in that.
[1:11:47.1] Laura Eich: Yeah.
[1:11:48.3] Mike McFall: There is no doubt about it, right? But I thought that that – that would be an amazing episode.
[1:11:55.3] Laura Eich: It would be very cool.
[1:11:57.1] Mike McFall: Can we do extended long episodes, like, more people –
[1:11:58.7] Laura Eich: Oh, yeah.
[1:11:58.8] Mike McFall: Like, “Hey, oh, this one, it got a little out of hand and this one’s an hour and 45 minutes long.”
[1:12:03.5] Laura Eich: I think so, yeah.
[1:12:05.1] Mike McFall: Oh, all right.
[1:12:05.3] Laura Eich: Like, Love in Leadership XL. So, as someone who does long runs, I listen to a lot of podcasts when I’m running. I also listen to podcast when I’m putting my baby down at night but like, my runs are usually – they can get as long as an hour and a half or two hours, or if I end up training for a marathon one day, it’s going to be like three or four hours, and so, I love having long episodes of a podcast because I could just – that’s where I get in the zone and listening to people talk is, I don't know, I don't know, I think it’s fun. We’ll see if people tell us not to but I think we should do it sometimes, see how it goes.
[OUTRO]
[1:12:39.1] Laura Eich: All right, dear listener, to make sure you don’t miss an episode of Love in Leadership, be sure to hit that follow button wherever you find podcasts. While you’re there, do us a solid, and no, we’re not talking about poop but leave us a rating or a review. A review would be great, we’ve got some ratings that I’d love to hear a review from you guys. To follow along with Mike and I as we explore the world, follow us along on our social channels @lifeyoulovelab and @mikejmcfall.
If you have an idea for a guest that you think we should connect with, please email, LifeLab@Biggby.com and to learn more about BIGGBY COFFEE’s purpose of supporting you in building a life you love, please check out Biggby.com. Love you, Mike.
[1:13:16.2] Mike McFall: Love you too, Laura.
[1:13:17.6] Laura Eich: And we love you, listeners, for who you are. We’ll see you next time.