How to Run Your Biz Without Hating Your Boss

Ep 10: What the Heck is The SpeakEasy Cooperative and Savvy Music Studio? After nine episodes of talking business, creativity, leadership, and all the ways we accidentally make our own lives harder, we realized something important: We never properly introduced ourselves. In this episode, Michelle and Sara pull back the curtain and share the stories behind their businesses, their careers, and their...

Episode 9: MTNA Recap: Conversations, Questions, and … Crabs? What happens when two business coaches attend a major national music conference? In this episode, Michelle and Sara share their experience from the 2026 Music Teachers National Association conference in Chicago. From the fun and energizing moments to the deeper patterns they observed in how musicians approach business, money, and growth...

🎙️ Episode 8: Is Your Business Eating You Alive? The problem isn’t your workload. It’s who’s in charge. In this solo episode, Michelle gets real about what it feels like when the business you built starts running you. Not always in dramatic, burnout fashion, but in the quieter, more dangerous ways: constant mental load, reactive decisions, and the slow erosion of your time, energy, and identity. I...

🎙️Episode 7: Getting Off the Hobby Horse (and Building Something Stable) At some point, every self-employed creative has to decide: Is this a hobby… or is this a business? In this episode, Michelle and Sara unpack what really happens when you treat your business like a side project instead of the legitimate, revenue-generating entity it actually is. From loosey-goosey bookkeeping to guessing at pr...

🎙️ Episode 6: Ideal Clients or Endless Hustle “Ideal client” is one of the most talked about (and most avoided) concepts in small business. In this episode, Michelle and Sara dig into what an ideal client truly is, why the idea makes so many business owners uncomfortable, and how skipping this work quietly leads to burnout, resentment, and hating your own business. An ideal client isn’t a perfect...

In this episode of How to Run Your Biz Without Hating Your Boss, Michelle and Sara do something a little different: they open the mailbag. If you’ve ever reread an email five times before hitting send, replayed an awkward conversation in the shower, or laid awake wondering whether you handled a business situation wrong — this one’s for you. Drawing on years of experience helping hundreds of perfor...

Why the Hell Would I Get a Business Coach Anyway? Have you ever asked the question “Why the Hell Would I Need a Business Coach Anyway?” In this episode of How to Run Your Biz Without Hating Your Boss, Michelle and Sara tackle the question many creative entrepreneurs secretly ask but rarely say out loud. Whether you’re coach-curious, coach-skeptical, or convinced you’re doing just fine on your own...

Ever feel like your boss never lets you take a break… even though you are the boss? In this episode, Michelle and Sara dive into why creative entrepreneurs and self-employed folks are notoriously bad at resting — and what to do about it. They explore the messy truth behind hustle culture, guilt-driven productivity, and the myth that rest is a reward instead of a right. Expect real talk, humor, and...

Episode 2: The Five Stages Of Marketing Grief 🎙️ Welcome to Episode 2 of How to Run Your Business Without Hating Your Boss! In this episode, Michelle and Sara will be talking all about The Five Stages of Marketing Grief. If you’ve ever wanted to throw your laptop out the window because marketing feels exhausting, confusing, or downright grief-inducing, you’re not alone! In this episode, Michelle a...

Episode 1: Why “Scaling” Might Be Killing Your Arts Business Welcome to the very first episode of How to Run Your Business Without Hating Your Boss! Hi, we’re Michelle Markwart Deveaux and Sara Campbell — two business strategists who’ve helped hundreds of voice teachers, music educators, multi-teacher studio owners, performers, and creative entrepreneurs build sustainable, money-making businesses...