Episode 22: Hard at Work: Leadership, Loss, and Finding Yourself Again with Merritt Minnemeyer

What Happens When You Stop Outsourcing Your Wisdom

How to Rebuild Your Life — and Leadership — When It All Falls Apart

Summary

In this episode, I talk with coach and speaker Merritt Minnemeyer about conscious leadership, reclaiming your voice, and how to lead without losing yourself. We dig into what it means to "come home to yourself" after life knocks you sideways, and why middle managers are the quiet linchpins of workplace culture. Meritt shares her personal story of radical reinvention, the neuroscience behind meditation and gratitude, and why human-centric leadership isn’t fluffy—it’s essential. If you're navigating burnout, questioning your next step, or tired of leadership that feels disconnected from real life—this conversation is for you.

Takeaways

1. Self-trust is a muscle. Most people already know the next right step—they just need help hearing themselves again. Coaching isn’t about giving answers; it’s about helping people listen inward.

2. Middle managers hold more power than they think. You don’t need a C-suite title to be a change-maker. Strong relationships and strategic influence can shift workplace culture from the inside.

3. Meditation and gratitude aren’t woo woo—they’re neuroscience. Even a two-minute practice can help regulate your nervous system and shift you out of a stress spiral.

4. Conscious capitalism isn’t just for startups. Values-driven leadership, stakeholder orientation, and human-centered decision-making lead to more sustainable (and yes, profitable) business outcomes.

5. Coming home to yourself is the real work. The most effective leaders know who they are, what they value, and how they want to show up—in every room they enter.

Notable Quotes

“You’re not trapped. You just haven’t met the part of you that knows another way—yet.”

“The answer isn’t always outside you. Most of the time, it’s buried under noise and self-doubt.”

“Leadership isn’t a title. It’s a relationship built on trust, integrity, and knowing who the hell you are.”

“When we’re stuck, the lie is: we’re the only one. You’re not. You’ve never been.”

“We are narrative creatures. The question is: what story are you telling about your life—and is it still serving you?”

Chapters

00:00 — Welcome + Meet Merritt Minnemeyer

03:00 — What it means to “come home to yourself”

08:00 — Reinvention after loss: Merritt’s personal story

13:00 — Choose well, choose wisely, choose love

17:00 — Tools for moving through feeling stuck

22:00 — The science behind meditation + gratitude

27:00 — Conscious capitalism 101

33:00 — Challenges in the nonprofit + philanthropic space

38:00 — How middle managers can influence systems

43:00 — Quiet as resistance + finding perspective

47:00 — TED Talk + Sloth story

48:30 — Where to find Merritt

Keywords: burnout, workplace culture, middle managers, conscious leadership, executive coaching, trauma-informed leadership, gratitude practice, meditation for leaders, women at work, human-centric workplaces, self-trust, leadership reinvention, nonprofit leadership, values-driven leadership, work-life integration

Show Notes:

• Merritt can be found at masterofonecoaching.com and just click on “book a private complimentary session” to redeem your free half hour of coaching from her

• You can learn more about Decolonizing Wealth, the book we discuss, at the Decolonizing Wealth Project website. And you can buy the book, by Edgar Villanueva, here.

• Here’s a website about conscious capitalism

Transcript

Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:01.838)

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Hard at Work. So happy to see you all. I'm very excited about our guest today. I have the amazing Merit Minnemeyer on. Hello Merritt. It's so great to see you.

Master of One (00:19.371)

Hello Ellen, thank you so much for having me.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:31.618)

So Meritt is the founder of Master of One Coaching. She's a professional certified coach, a recovering actor. which we'll get into, an international speaker and a passionate catalyst of the conscious business movement, which we also will want to talk about. So welcome. So glad to have you. And I'm going to kick you off with the first question everybody gets. Give us your 60 second Wikipedia blurb. What do you want people to know about you?

Master of One (00:48.842)

Well, what I want people to know about me is that I think right now my mission is to help people come home to themselves. And that is in the framework of executive coaching in the creative field. So that means theater, dance, visual arts, entertainment, film, music, et cetera.

Master of One (01:10.28)

I'm finding so often right now that we need this sense of community and connection and the arts and entertainment and those serve as venue, a place for us, like a physical place, but also a spiritual place to connect to who we are as people, the best parts of what's being human and also to each other. And so I think there's no better time than to lift these people up who are stewarding and leading culture into the next iteration.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:39.404)

I love that. I love that. As someone who has worked in a lot of arts organizations, I think that's so amazing. And I know you don't only work with nonprofits, which we talk about a lot on here, is nonprofit and public sector and how sometimes we don't get the resources that the private sector can get. So it sounds like you're able to maybe gift those resources, not gift, but give those resources to people who might not otherwise get them.

Master of One (01:57.34)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Master of One (02:08.19)

Well, and a lot of what I do is helping people find the resources within themselves, right? So we typically, especially in nonprofits, but not necessarily always, we typically think that it's outside of something else that we need, another product, another app, another person to come in and tell us what to do, give us the answer. And so my job is to help people find, that, I mean, obviously we're gonna need to learn things and build our skills and develop ourselves.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:24.408)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (02:35.87)

But that often when we have arrived in an executive seat, we're there for a reason, right? We have experience, we have wisdom, and we may not have all the answers available to us, but we do have resources within ourselves to be able to find those answers. And it doesn't mean just writing another check and spending a bunch of money on something that may or may not work. It really is, how can I find...

the wisdom and guidance within myself to make great decisions. mean, the people in these seats, know, the impact of their decisions is sometimes hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for any one decision, and they can impact hundreds or thousands of lives in any one decision. Like that's powerful influence. so my job, they often come to me saying, tell me what to do. And my job is not that. My job is to say, no, actually, you already know what to do, or you can find what to do. But let's find that answer within together.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (03:31.5)

I love that. It's definitely a tenant of my coaching as well, which is, I'm not a consultant. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to help you figure it out on your own. And it's really beautiful because the answer is in you. But it's funny, I just did a workshop last night on how to start something when you feel stuck. And for women in particular, it is so easy for us to lose our own voice and our own feelings, the feeling of what you want to do, which is really our instinct. And we're so used to just looking at our neighbors and just trying to plow forward and doing what we think we should do. And I love that your approach really helps get into helping people remember that they have the answers. And I'm just curious, what are some of your approaches for that? I know it's definitely individual to each client, but how are some ways you help people get there?

Master of One (04:30.79)

Yeah, so it is individual to each client in a sense because every client is going to have their own pathways that are built or not built or need to be rebuilt, etc. And obviously I'm not a therapist. I'm not going to come in and help them deal with trauma in a way that heals that. But I do also have a deep bench of referral partners. So like, this sounds like a therapy thing. Maybe I should go over here. Because oftentimes what's happening is what you're talking about getting stuck in a loop of not trusting myself or should I be doing what other people say I'm doing that sometimes many times comes from trauma right so that's not something that I can help them heal but I can recognize it and say okay this is anxiety we can help work with this or this is trauma you're stuck you know we don't need to refer you out and then I can work with that therapist so that that is one tactic that I have one of the tools in my tool belt sometimes

It's really about asking the right questions and often times it's just helping people become more familiar with their own thinking and the way they approach their own problems. I have a client I'm working with right now who we talk about Catch-22s all the time because his anxiety has him back into a corner.

You know, with every decision, it's like, well, if I do this, this is going to happen. But if I don't do this, that's going to happen. It's like, well, that sounds like you're stuck. It's a well, I am stuck. I'm like, well, you think you're stuck. But here we are again in this pattern where you believe you're stuck. So let's talk about workarounds from this pattern. And just being able to identify and go, that's a pattern.

That's not actually necessarily true or applicable now. It's just a way, a loop that I get into that I can identify and then I can strategize around it. But one of the lies that our anxiety and depression tells or just being, or trauma tells us is that we're alone and we're the only one. Like we're the only one that's ever having to dealt with this decision, where the only one has ever felt doubt, where the only one, there's no one who's gonna be there to help us, right? So part of our job as a coach is to be there, not just a coach, but I'm a strategy partner, right? Is to be, hey, I'm gonna be your body double for a moment, we're gonna talk about this through this together, and you're not alone, because I'm sitting right here with you, and I'm gonna prove that loop wrong right here and now.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (06:58.702)

Mm, I love it. That's my favorite part is like, hey, I'm here and I'm all yours. And I think it's so rare that we gift ourselves something just for us and coaching or therapy both. I used to have them on the same day and I'd be like, it's Ellen Day. Like it was the best day ever and also exhausting. yeah, mean, what a gift, right? Because I love coming in and saying, I am here for you a whole hour.

Master of One (07:15.655)

Oh! Hahaha! Yeah, yeah, You're right.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (07:27.542)

Let's do it. And I think it's, I wish more people would do it. So I'm happy to hear that you are working with a number of clients in the arts world in particular. But let me get into a couple of my questions because you have had such an interesting journey to where you are. And a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast, who I work with and I'm sure who you work with, are maybe middle-aged, a little before middle-aged and kind of wanting something absolutely different than what they've been doing, but not knowing exactly how to get there, or even if they can, because of all the responsibilities and all the life and everything. And you had a pretty severe turnaround in your mid-30s and really kind of changed paths and built your own path. So I'd love to hear a little bit, as much as you want to share, how that came about and how you got to where you are.

Master of One (08:23.92)

Well, I think this is such an interesting topic for me right now. I mean, I'm always happy to tell my story. And of course, you know my story more intimately than some since you I have known each other a while, but more than a while. But it's been a minute or two.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (08:37.089)

I know, I feel old.

Master of One (08:42.566)

So I'm always happy to share that as part of the story and I'm happy to do that. And also what I'm finding right now too is in this Gen X sort of moment of our lives, right? Or whether it sort of, I don't know, 45 or 46 to 55 or whatever we are,

Master of One (08:58.31)

When that happened, for those of us, for those of who listening, when I was 34 years old, my husband Peter was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and passed away at 35. We had three small kids. My life blew up. It became like a dumpster fire and I had to not only reinvent what I was going to do with the rest of my life because I had to mourn.

not just the loss of my darling husband and the father of my children and all of the family and everything that came with that was forever changed. I also had to mourn the loss of the life that I thought I was going to have.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (09:29.655)

Yeah.

Master of One (09:31.109)

It's one thing to do that when you are 65 or 70, right? And I'm not saying one is better or worse. I'm just saying it's a different perspective. When you're 35 and you're building a life with somebody and then all of a sudden that somebody isn't there anymore, that mourning for me was profound and it would call me out. And it asked me some very hard questions. was who are you actually going to be? Because the person who you thought you were going to be no longer exists in the iteration that you thought it was going to be. it was completely, I completely dismantled my sense of self. Which sounds dramatic, but in fact that's what happened. And not just because of the loss, but because of how I started showing up in that grief, I was not happy with.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (10:26.749)

interesting.

Master of One (10:27.833)

I did not like the person who is, the version of me that was showing up in that grief. I behaved in ways that was not in my integrity all the time. I was, and I don't mean this to judge myself. was talking, like I'm talking about from the inside perspective. I want to be somebody who does this differently.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (10:48.707)

Hmm.

Master of One (10:48.933)

And so who handles stress differently, who shows up for her kids differently, who shows up in her relationships differently. And I realized I didn't have much of a sense of self when I had to go through it. so it was, that was one of the profound gifts of that experience. And that sounds like, oh, it's okay. But really another part, another one of the gifts was that I was very acutely aware of the choice that I was given, which is you can continue to show up this way. Or if you want to have a different kind of life there is an opportunity to do differently and here's what you can choose. And the foundation of that choice was the story is that the night that my husband Peter passed away, he left me a letter that had all kinds of beautiful thoughts and expressions of his gratitude and his love for us that he was so grateful that he shared his life with us and what he wanted for the kids. And the last six words of the letter were choose well, choose wisely, choose love. And I often think about that and when I tell the story. People hear the words well, wildly, and lovely. Well, that's lovely and poetic, and he was lovely and poetic, and that sounds very Peter. What I heard was the word shoes repeated three times. And I was like, it took me a while to really figure out what that meant. But it did spark something in me, this idea of, wait, actually, I felt trapped by so many of my own beliefs and thoughts and need to please and need to get validation and need to get approval for so long. What you mean, I don't actually have to keep living that way was like a what? But in order to be able to make those choices, I had to fundamentally change how I showed up in the world. And so that was the beginning of me doing differently. And how do I choose well for myself and my children and my life? What does wisely look like? What does my wisdom look like? And then choosing love, I've tattooed it on my arm.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (12:43.543)

Yeah.

Master of One (13:02.148)

I think it sounds backwards, but because love can mean lots of things, It certainly, of course, we can mean romance, we mean family, but it also means love of self. It means love of, it means honoring our gifts and what it is we're here to do in the world. It is the love of community. It is the love of the earth. It is the love of whatever it is lights us up and not in a egoic way and not in a way that is like, I'm gonna show self love all the time in all the ways and you know, like sure that's part of it, but it really is this like deep, deep, what does it mean to express love from our soul?

Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:43.199)

that's hard.

Master of One (13:44.999)

And why are we talking about this on a work thing, make some connections, right? It sounds very ooey gooey, and I get that.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:50.028)

Mm-hmm.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:55.992)

But it's not.

Master of One (13:57.684)

Well, it demands that we ask some very hard questions. And our current system does not always want us to ask those hard questions because they would rather us just put our head down and do our work. In fact, I had a boss tell me once, you know, tell me you should just put your head down and do your work. And I was like, this is the wrong job for me. See ya. It's just not my nature to do that.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:02.882)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:19.991)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I hear that for sure. I think what you said, I wanna just go back for a second because I got goosebumps when you said trapped in your choices because that is such a visceral feeling for me. And I'm coming out of that now, making choices that are my own, figuring out what my sense of self is and learning all about how the system is actually.

Master of One (14:34.337)

Mmm.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:52.436)

not helpful to us finding that most of the time. That feeling is so awful and it can feel, I mean trapped. It's really hard to figure out sometimes or often how to claw your way out of that. And I feel like that's what you do. You are clawing your way out of it. If someone's listening and they're really like resonating with that or feeling like that, they're having that trapped feeling,

Master of One (15:08.863)

Mm-hmm. That's the right word, too. That's the right word, yeah.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (15:21.656)

What are some things that they could start to ask themselves or do to just crawl a little bit out of it?

Master of One (15:30.403)

A few things, I'll tell you what I work with my clients on a lot and what I did for myself.

It's gonna be a little bit different for everybody, but here are some things that I know, some approaches that I know are effective. I started right away meditating and writing. Now, everybody says that, right? Everybody says, oh, meditate 15 minutes a day or five, honest to gosh, two minutes a day. What meditation does for us on a neuroscience level is it helps us clear the noise and it really helps us put ourselves in charge of our own thoughts. We can become observers of ourselves through meditation and understand that we are in charge of how we think, what we think, and then the choices that we make based on what we think and feel. Now that doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen with one two minute meditation session, it happens with practice.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:08.942)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Master of One (16:30.134)

When I started meditating regularly, that's when my life started to change. And it was, there was one thing that I, you I had about a year or maybe two years where I was running and doing yoga, you know, very every day. I was doing one or the other about every day. And that was a way to keep me sane. That was a way to keep me, basically keep me alive in a time when I wasn't sure I wanted to be.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:52.034)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (16:58.529)

When I moved from that to adding in the, and we can call it a spiritual component, it is for me, but it's calling it a mental component of the meditation piece every day as a practice. There is a stillness that comes from that where we can start to observe ourselves and understand that we do not have to be at the effect of our thoughts all the time.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:21.528)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (17:21.718)

We can see them as not coming from, they're not attached to us all the time. They are just part of what we do and we can do differently if we want. So that's one. And if someone's here that's like, here's that and goes, no, not meditation again. Like, look, I get it. It's so hard to start. It's so hard to keep going. For me, because I am a little neuro spicy, I really appreciate having an app or something that walks me through it. So if it's, you know, five minute, 10 minute guided meditation, that's really helpful for me because I just need that sort of something to anchor me. Other people don't like it, but that's what I do. Okay. So there's that.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:58.19)

And there's free, on YouTube, there's a million free lovely five minute meditations with like forest scenes if you want to look at them.

Master of One (18:01.544)

A million.

Yeah, exactly. Or I mean, I use a candle sometimes, or I just close my eyes and put my headphones on, check out for 10 minutes and do the thing. So there's that. Another thing which sounds very trite, but I tell you from a neuroscience perspective and a practice perspective, it really can make a difference if you stick with it. It doesn't change in a week or two. It changes over weeks and months. It's a gratitude practice. And what I mean by that is writing it down.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:27.512)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Master of One (18:31.551)

We know that we cannot hold gratitude and resentment at the same time in our brain. It's one or the other. yeah. if you are, if we write down five things, if we're in a rut where we realize everything's a mess and life is terrible and we're gonna never get out of this, and I'm not talking about clinical depression, by the way. That's different. That's a therapy realm. We're talking about...

Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:36.3)

Hmm. I did not know that.

Master of One (18:55.264)

We have a situational thing that's happening and we notice a pattern and we're like, oh, that doesn't feel like I want to do that. I have the wherewithal that I know I can change it, you know, with a little help. Then it's, you know, five or 10 items every day. It could be as simple as, oh, I'm so grateful that the grass is green today. I'm so grateful that I have a, I mean, it sounds silly, but you know, food in my fridge, which also could sound silly, but really.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:19.566)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (19:22.729)

I mean, how fortunate are we in the grand scheme of the world to be able to have food in our fridge every day? I'm so grateful that I have a roof over my head. And when we are, especially the people that I work with, right, we're working in, I'm sure you work with people who are in high level executive seats, like, well, of course I have a roof over my head.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:27.256)

Right, right.

Master of One (19:40.615)

Sure, that's been the reality of your life, maybe most of your life, but it isn't the reality for so many others. And that gives perspective. What's most important? When it comes down to it, when people have these transformative experiences like I had, near-death experiences, or they get really, really sick, or they lose a loved one, or they lose everything in their life, what do they come out with? What do they always say? I have people in my life who love me, and who I love.

I've got my health, I've got a safe place to be, that's all that matters. That's what we say all the time. I have community, I have safety, I have health.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:15.202)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (20:21.002)

Like that's it. So if we can get down to the basics and remember, like through all the other stuff that we process through and all the other stresses that we have, sure, they're real stresses, I'm not saying they're not, but it's a matter of gaining that perspective, again, observing ourselves a little bit. Perspective helps us gain that distance from whatever it is that we're contending with so we can say, what really matters? Okay, and then once I feel regulated, because I had gratitude for the basics and I had a little bit of wonder about the world, that I'm regulated enough so I can attend to the thing that is causing me stress in a different mindset. So those are two very basic but very practical approaches.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:01.922)

Those are great.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:06.232)

Yeah, it's so interesting because I'm finding as I talk to people as well as I meet with more folks and the answers aren't complicated and we know them. We know that slowing down and being mindful and possibly journaling and having a gratitude practice and moving our bodies in a way that feels good. We know the ingredients. I'm sure anyone, especially middle-aged women could tell you, here's what it takes.

You know, yeah, I could do this lecture myself, and yet we don't do it. And so one of the things I'm pulling at right now is why? Why don't we do it? Why don't we do the things that we know could help us? I don't know if I have the answer yet, other than we're letting the world dictate what's important and not sort of arresting that. And the world thinks that making money is important and being busy is important and doing all the right things is important. But I don't know, what do you think?

Master of One (22:09.15)

Well, I have a theory on this, which is that in a system that relies on productivity, the economy relies on us being productive. That's changing a little bit, but that's what it relies on. So every dollar we make is directly connected to our sense of survival. And when a sense of survival is under threat, where do we go? We go to the flight or freeze or please.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:20.174)

Right.

Master of One (22:35.601)

We are in a constant lower medium level responsive fight or flight pretty much perpetually.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:43.042)

Right.

Master of One (22:43.647)

And that's exhausting on our system. It taxes our adrenals, it sends adrenaline and cortisol through our system. And then what do we do? We caffeinate and we self-medicate with booze or whatever else, right? So now we're like, dysregulating our system further and it's already taxed and exhausted. So we're making ourselves even more exhausted by doing that, even though we get short bursts of, you know, the caffeine or the, or the down, with the uppers or the downers, whatever we're doing. So now our system is like, doesn't know which way is up and it has no chance to recover.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:11.596)

Yeah.

Master of One (23:13.553)

And so, is, conscious capitalism in large part is about that. It's about, I mean, it doesn't address that directly all the time, but it really is. we're looking at conscious capitalism or conscious entrepreneurship or conscious business mindset. We're looking at how do we take care of the people first? Because ultimately though it takes longer to see profits and benefits in that kind of way of thinking, they are exponentially greater.

I mean, just bottom line profits are greater. Sometimes it takes a little longer, but they're more solid and they are exponentially bigger. And that's because people can show up feeling like they can make better decisions because their systems aren't like totally on haywire all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And profits aren't a bad thing, by the way. I'm pro-profit. Like, but...

Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:59.362)

Yep, we're human-centric instead of profit-centric. no, yeah. I do like to pay my bills, you

Master of One (24:09.808)

Yeah, right, pay my bills. I like to have nice things, those fancy things. And I like to be able to send my kid to college and all those things, right? So I'm pro pro, yeah. And somewhere along the way we got this idea that all the things are what give us meaning. When the meaning comes from us and we know this from acting, right? The creative background, we infuse the meaning into the thing. The thing doesn't have the meaning by itself.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:18.126)

All the things, yeah.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:37.122)

Yeah.

Yeah, oof. I'm just sitting with that for a second. Conscious capitalism, you said, and you talk about conscious entrepreneurship, right? so tell me a little bit more how you get that to, like, how do you get executives who just don't know how to hear that or who have never heard that?

How do you help them understand? Because it can be really hard when, especially for Gen Xers, like our whole life has been, you know, we have to go forward and be quiet and not feel and do the thing, you know?

Master of One (25:20.357)

And not have any boundaries and yeah, right, like blood, sweat and tears, which is why we get so upset when the kids coming up behind us have boundaries and we're like, what do you mean you have boundaries? We don't have boundaries. Yeah.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:30.978)

I know. I talk about it all the time. I'm like, it's actually a good thing, everyone, even though it feels very strange. It's very good.

Master of One (25:39.323)

I mean, can't tell you how many executives I talk about, like all these kids, they have so many needs. I'm like, really? Do they? I mean, now, of course, there are people who abuse that too, but that's not what saying they're not. But are they just saying that they don't want to work 12 hours a day and we're resentful because we never said that? Is that what happened? Yeah. We thought they couldn't, right? Yeah.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:57.056)

Yes, exactly, because we felt like we couldn't say that. And so we just did it. And so everyone has to pay their dues, right? Yeah, it's an interesting thing to confront in yourself.

Master of One (26:04.497)

Right, right, yeah, yeah.

Yes, yeah. And also, mean, yes, we want people to go through the experience and the training and the knowledge gathering and the wisdom, right, that you get with age and experience that you can't get, like we can't, if you just give yourself a VP title when you're 24, you know, that's fine if you want to do that, but you're not, you can't expect someone else to do that for you if you don't have what it takes to actually fill the role, right? So there is that piece of it. But anyway, I'm off on a tangent a little bit, but yeah.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:34.338)

No, it's okay, I love tangents.

What were we, we were asking, so how do you, yeah, how do you, how do you get someone who lives in that rat race all the time, maybe even a boomer, Gen X or whatever, don't necessarily need to be generational here, but people who might have a harder time understanding that term of conscious capitalism and human centric work and might think it's a little woo woo, even though it's not, how do you help them understand it? Or if someone is listening to this and wants to explain it to their boss.

What would you have them say?

Master of One (27:08.143)

Mm-hmm I will start by saying that I have learned in my life that I don't do well with people who don't get this already. if I have, if I come into contact with it, that I tend to go, okay, well can either talk about it or we can, and we can talk about infusing people, you know, the ideas into it, or we can, or maybe we're not a good fit, right? Oftentimes though, what I find though, is that there are actually, people are really longing for a sense of meaning in their life and in their leadership. They really are, I mean, especially after COVID with all the things that COVID did to us and gave us, that people are really longing for this sense of meaning and purpose. And I'm seeing so many people reach out and go, I'm not sure what my purpose is, but I know that there must be one here somewhere. So when we come back to values, right? And the values thing, mean, you know, we see like people will throw up their values on their website or on their wall. These are our values and then we never hear from them again. But really conscious business is really about thinking, here are our values, which are having to do with purpose, which having to do with people, which having to do with the leadership and what have to do with culture. And culture meaning environment, the culture, the physical place, how we behave together, right? All those things, how we value each other.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (28:42.776)

Mm-hmm

Master of One (29:04.228)

that when those values are actually practiced and used as the filters through which we make decisions, then that is conscious business right there. So people aren't as far away as they think they are most of the time. Now, I will tell you that I deal with people in various, my clients come to me and they're seeking that purpose and they go, I know I'm at odds with the agency or the organization that I'm in because they say they're practicing when they are not. And oftentimes that means that person in front wants to make a change, right? That they're not gonna stick around that very long. Because it's really hard to change a system if the system doesn't wanna change. Yeah.

I'm going to give it a slightly different framework, which is the core principles on the Capitalist Conscious Capitalism website, which are higher purpose stakeholder orientation, meaning the needs and interests of all the stakeholders, not just shareholders, right? People who work there, the people they're serving conscious leadership, meaning leaders are driven by purpose. They inspire others and foster culture, trust and collaboration. I'm reading this for the website and the positive empowering work environment and this does not mean just like offering yoga class on a Tuesday, it really is how are we behaving with each other along the lines of our values? Are we honoring our environment which means could be the work environment, could means it could mean you know the environment that we have around us, the nature, our community, our neighborhood, that kind of thing.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (30:16.12)

Right.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (30:34.69)

I love that. I hadn't really heard that term before I talked to you and I've been looking at it. It's interesting because there's a parallel between community focused giving or community based giving in the sort philanthropic society, society in the philanthropic community, which is very much, yeah, this is society, I don't know, which is very much that like what

Master of One (30:50.97)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, Society's interesting word.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (31:03.906)

you were reading about shareholders, it's like this work is for a community and the community is involved and should be involved in where the funding goes to support that community. And it's really, this community centric work is really bringing this new lens to a lot of the work that we do in philanthropy, which is, you know, it's not just let's.

Master of One (31:15.604)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (31:28.962)

find some old rich white person and ask them for money and have them tell us exactly where to put it and put it there. It's more of like, OK, what are the needs? And let's ask the community where the money needs to go. And let's have some education of the older donor to help them understand that it doesn't work that way anymore. So I think there's a parallel, even though nonprofits aren't necessarily capitalist, think there's a parallel between that kind of work and this consciousness.

Master of One (31:55.241)

I might challenge that the nonprofits aren't capitalist.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (31:59.202)

Yeah, guess, you probably should. They're about making something happen and making, yeah, no, I think you're right.

Master of One (32:07.161)

Nonprofits have to make a profit too. They just reinvest the profit differently. all. Yeah. So, right, we always need, but that's also capitalist, right? We always need more. That's kind of the crux of capitalism is that there always needs to be more.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (32:11.982)

Yeah, 100%. 100%. And it's always more.

Master of One (32:25.369)

I attended a workshop on legacy giving a couple weeks ago that was led by a local community foundation we have here. And they're talking about a longitudinal study they did about generational giving and the ways in which different generations are engaging in the idea of philanthropy. And they were saying that, know, the Gen Xers really see ourselves as a bridge for between the I'm going to write a check and the

Ellen Whitlock Baker (32:30.498)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Master of One (32:52.312)

younger people coming up behind us who are saying, I want to get involved and I want to see where the money goes and I might even want to roll my sleeves up and get, you know, put my hands in it a little bit. And I was telling this to a colleague of mine who is maybe has, you know, a few years on me and, and she was saying, gosh, I think that's a terrible trend.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (32:57.688)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (33:12.077)

And I thought, that's so interesting. Why? And so it was an interesting take she had when she said, that's because as the executive director of an arts organization, I'm the expert in my craft and in the craft of the people that I serve. I don't need somebody who is coming from with an MBA and stars in their eyes who thought they might want to be a movie star one day to tell me how to spend the money. I just need them to write a check.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (33:25.897)

Hmm.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (33:38.656)

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.

Master of One (33:40.897)

And so I feel like they don't trust me to be a steward of that money. And so that was an interesting take too. And I'm like, well, so there's gotta be some sort of agreement that we can come to around that, right? Because she's absolutely right. She spent her life and career fine tuning her expertise in, right, where she can express this in this leadership role in this arts organization and training other artists who are coming up into the workforce. And also she needs people to write checks and inspiration.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (33:47.214)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (34:10.763)

Money follows inspiration. So they have to be inspired enough to give. But also do we want them involved? Well, yes, but we also don't want you involved. So that's like a mis-message to a boarder or a giver or a founder, right? Anyway, that's an interesting conversation.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (34:24.672)

No, I totally agree. And OK, I'll put in one more plug about nonprofits because you and I know them well. What they really need is unrestricted funding. And donors don't love doing that. But that's what's really keeping, I think, a lot of us who work in those sectors. We leave because without unrestricted funding, we're not getting enough staff. We're not getting enough support. We have email systems that are

Master of One (34:34.316)

They're operational funding, right?

Master of One (34:47.884)

We can't pay salaries.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (34:49.294)

30 years old, we can't actually reach the younger generation because our email system doesn't function in the way it needs to. So it's like, it's just such an interesting thing. And I don't know, have you read Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva?

Master of One (35:02.648)

No, I know a little bit about it, but I haven't.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (35:05.758)

It's amazing. I'll put a link in the show notes. But it is kind of a good point, which is, it's not kind of good point. It's a good point, which is if we expect, you know, if we are in a society where we expect people to donate a large portion of the social service needs, you know, like for the businesses or the companies or the nonprofits that run social services and education and all of the things that a people need, a whole population needs, then we're just giving them the reins to decide and they don't have any idea what people might need or want on a broad level. Obviously there are donors who are very engaged and we know that. But I think that goes back to what we were talking about, which is like, we are still in these systems where we're functioning with people thinking they can make decisions for other people based on old premises. And those are not true anymore. And yet we still, for the most part, operate in systems that perpetuate that. So if I'm in an organization, I'm in a business, and I see that happening, but I'm not necessarily an executive, I might be a mid-level manager, what are some things I can do? Because we talk about that a lot on here, but I'd love to hear your perspective because you're never one to stay quiet as well. And how do you make change from that middle place when you're not quite ready or where you're not quite have all the power that an executive does?

Master of One (36:45.944)

Well, you know, to be frank, it's really hard. It's really hard to do it. The middle tier, the middle management is such a tough place to be because the influence you have is only as wide as the people who will respect and listen to you. And that comes with building relationships because it's not a given in your role, right? The people who are reporting to you might be told they have to, but they may not see the need to it. They might go around you or they might say, well, this person doesn't have power and so who cares, right? So it really is about do I have respect for that person and do they have respect for me and then the people above you in that role.

Like they only will listen to you if they respect you, but there's no command from that seat necessarily that comes with influence automatically. And so I think the way to do that is to build relationships where you strategic, and I don't mean this in a disingenuous way, but strategic relationships and alliances with people who share some of what your values care in the same way that you might or similarly about the people around you and understand the connection between the productivity, the bottom line, profit, and the well-being of the people.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:01.954)

Mm-hmm.

Master of One (38:02.303)

and then start creating some strategies internally bit by bit. This is not something that's going to change overnight. It certainly hasn't changed overnight. I mean, we've seen waves and waves of civil rights movements happen, right, gosh, mean, centuries. So things don't change overnight.

Those strategic relationships though are the thing that's gonna sustain that person through the various undulations and iterations of their career and will determine whether they get promoted or kicked out because of what they're saying and what they're doing. I think that's the way to go.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:34.616)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But if you're one of those people, it's okay to fight the power if you need to. There's a place somewhere for you, I promise. But it's hard.

Master of One (38:42.55)

Oh, for sure. for sure. For sure. No, definitely, definitely. And it is very, very hard. Leadership is all about influence. It's not about title or role. It's not about salary. It's not about the corner office. It's about influence. influence comes from relationships and relationships that are strong and have respect and have, you have somebody's ear, they have yours. So that middle management place is really the success, I think, is determined by the quality of their relationships. I mean, that's true for anybody in any life, but specifically in that place where you don't have an automatic, yes, I have power because I have this title.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (39:23.31)

That's beautiful. I love it. And it contributes to that human-centric workplace anyway, which is it's the relationships that matter. that's, yeah, I love that. I love that so much.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (44:03.436)

We are almost out of time, shockingly.

Okay, last question, Merit. If you were going to do a TED Talk on something other than your work, what would it be on and why?

Master of One (46:00.563)

This is so hard because I feel like my work is my life.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:04.566)

I know it's hard.

Master of One (46:08.339)

I'm going to cheat a little bit and say that this theme of coming home to ourselves.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:16.536)

Hmm.

Master of One (46:17.437)

think that that's, I mean, it is a theme in my work right now for sure, but it also is a theme that I think we can all chew on. And what does it mean to come home to yourself? What does it mean? And I recognize again, this sounds very airy-fairy, but go with me here for a second. At the center of that is how do I wanna show up?

Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:26.231)

Yeah.

Master of One (46:42.924)

And I did that work before I started doing it for work. I did it for myself first. So I think if we can approach it from What kind of parent do I want to be? What kind of neighbor do I want to be? What kind of professional do I want to be sure? What kind of, you know, in leadership, in my gig, is leadership.

Again, it's about influence and influence is about integrity and integrity is about being the same person wherever you go in whatever situation you're in. So if you have that structural integrity of yourself, then you can have that influence that you want to have, the impact you want to have in any circumstance. If you know who that is, then it's so much easier.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (47:27.468)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Mm, I'd go to that TED Talk. It's time.

Master of One (47:33.33)

I'm sure people have given other TED Talks about that before, but that's what I would do it on anyway. That's, I know, I know. thank you.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (47:39.406)

Yeah, but not from your perspective. I would watch it. Well, Merritt, thank you so much for being here with us on Hard at Work. Where can people find you?

Master of One (47:50.525)

masterofonecoaching.com For people listening to this podcast. I would love to offer you a complimentary session. If you just come in with something that you want to work on, this is not a sales call, it's something for you to work on that you really want to move in 30 minutes-ish, book a call on my website and we can make that happen for you. And there's no string that's attached, it's just an experiential call and just leave hopefully a little better than when you came in.

Ellen Whitlock Baker (48:17.684)

That is a gift. That is a gift, everyone. Take advantage of it. We'll put a link in the show notes. Thank you for that, Merritt. That's very cool. Well, thank you so much, everyone. Thank you for being here. It was great to be here with you today, and we will see you next time.

Master of One (48:25.508)

My pleasure.

Master of One (48:33.349)

Thank you, Ellen.

Merritt Minnemeyer is on a mission to eradicate executive mediocrity in entertainment, innovation, and the arts.  

As the Founder of Master of One Coaching, LLC she employs 25 years of leadership experience, her background in performance and production, and her entrepreneurial DNA in guiding visionaries to exceed expectations, including their own.

She is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) by the International Coaching Federation, a “recovering” actor, an international speaker, and a passionate catalyst of the conscious business movement. She holds a BFA in Acting from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, a Masters of Professional Studies in the Education Field, and several specialized coaching certifications. 

Having rebuilt her life after being widowed at 35 with 3 young, “neuro-spicy” kids, Merritt believes that conscious, creative leaders are the #1 key to a thriving future, and that anything is possible when inspired people channel their power for good with excellence, integrity, and artistry.

She lives with her darling husband of 10 years, Tom, their now nearly grown kids, and their menagerie of furbabies in the Hudson Valley, NY.