Building a Thriving People-Centric Workplace: In Practice with Karina Patel (part 2)
Karina Patel
Can a high-trust, people-first company culture actually drive real-world productivity and business profitability? In Part 2 of this two-part conversation, host Ellen Whitlock Baker continues her discussion with Karina Patel, Chief Operating Officer at Her First 100K (HFK). Together, they dismantle the myth that sustainable workplace culture requires sacrificing performance, demonstrating how empathy and operational rigor can coexist to build a thriving, profitable business.
Karina breaks down how HFK achieves high productivity without coercive tracking metrics. She explains the architecture of their annual roadmaps, clear KPIs, risk contingencies, and mid-quarter check-ins that align every team member and contractor with overarching business goals. Beyond traditional revenue targets, Karina shares how HFK tracks "health scores"—such as member health, retention rates, and community impact—to measure meaningful success across non-financial outcomes.
Ellen and Karina also explore the intentional creation of a sustainable workplace. From normalizing vulnerability and unlearning the shame around workplace emotion to maintaining fluid, living employee handbooks, Karina offers a realistic roadmap for modern leadership. Discover how HFK integrates flexibility, clear scope-of-work reviews, and community-centric Slack channels (like "Nice Things" and "Squat Squad") to keep a remote team connected, engaged, and empowered.
Show Notes
Find Karina Patel onLinkedIn
Learn more aboutHer First 100K
Listen to theFinancial Feminist podcast or get the NY Times Bestsellingbook
Learn more about HFK's100K Club
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Sustainable Productivity Without Surveillance: How to measure performance using clear roadmaps, KPIs, and risk contingencies instead of invasive productivity metrics.
Building Psychological Safety & Empathy: Why normalizing vulnerability—including emotional expression and personal health needs—builds genuine trust and team cohesion.
Non-Revenue Success Metrics: How to measure organizational impact through health scores, member retention, renewal rates, and user success milestones.
Dynamic Scope-of-Work Management: Why job descriptions and service agreements must evolve annually to keep employees and contractors aligned with long-term goals.
Living Handbooks & Policy Iteration: The importance of regularly updating company handbooks (e.g., AI policies) rather than treating workplace rules as fixed in stone.
Connecting Behind-the-Scenes Work to Mission: How sharing community feedback (e.g., a "Nice Things" Slack channel) connects operational roles directly to client and audience outcomes.
Transcript
Karina Patel (00:00)
one thing that we have done really well is we don't have productivity metrics but there's
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:05)
Mm-hmm. That's just good, because I wanted to get into the results, because a lot of people don't believe that this kind of workplace can be productive and amazing. In fact, it's more. But please go on. Tell us about it.
Karina Patel (00:18)
Yes. So if I were to just summarize it in like, why are we doing this? Like, what's the purpose and how do we see, how do we know this is working? I always say sustainable productivity, but we
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:32)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (00:33)
don't have metrics that we're tracking in the sense of like, you know, we do have performance metrics. every year, but as part of our annual planning, we build out a roadmap. And on the roadmap, we have very clear KPIs of the things that we want to get done in that quarter, what success looks like, and then what contingencies are. What are we at risk for? if we're in that area of risk, what are our backup plans? And
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:56)
Hmm.
Karina Patel (00:57)
we all know any good plan is going to change. And so, we, especially when you're planning out annually, but it's a really good, we call it a roadmap. It's kind of helping us stay true to the goals that we've set and seeing what success looks like. But going back to, how do we measure, how do know that this is working? How do we stay productive? How do we, how do we remain a profitable company? And that goes back to the team culture and the policies we've designed. We have high levels of trust. Now,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:35)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (01:37)
psychological safety doesn't just happen. We had to build it. And it
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:41)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (01:43)
comes from how we communicate with the team, how we allow the team to communicate amongst themselves. People, they don't second guess when someone needs to tell us when their capacity is stretched. People feel really comfortable sharing personal circumstances. Hey, I'm having an off day today. Or, hey, I just need to be offline for an hour, literally go touch grass and I'll be back.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (02:13)
Hey, I'm having an emotional morning. I have really bad cramps, like things
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:18)
ZZ
Karina Patel (02:19)
come up. And I think that we had to normalize vulnerability and it came from the top.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:25)
Hmm. But make it as safe as possible. I mean, I use the word safe very carefully at work,
Karina Patel (02:31)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:31)
but as safe as possible to
Karina Patel (02:34)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:34)
be vulnerable.
Karina Patel (02:36)
Yes. we often go back and forth on the term vulnerability and
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:39)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (02:40)
whether it's OK to use within the workspace. And do we make it
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:43)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (02:43)
to people? at one point we included as part of our our values and then we were like what we actually mean is empathy. But
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (02:53)
how do you get people to feel like this is a place of no judgment, like this is a place of safety? And so we had to be those examples. I'll
Ellen Whitlock Baker (03:05)
Yeah, you live it. Yeah.
Karina Patel (03:06)
give you a great example we've worked in workspaces that were crying in front of your.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (03:14)
Mmm
Karina Patel (03:14)
in front of others, in front of your team members, in front of your superiors or your direct reports as unprofessional. I
Ellen Whitlock Baker (03:25)
BLEH! I hate that.
Karina Patel (03:28)
we do quarterly lunch and learns and team training. There are times when you know, we have to train team members on, like, how do we efficiently use this tool? And then sometimes lunch and learns could be something that's finance related. Tori will host a finance, like a Q and A or questions that the, our community is asking, or it might just be a specific financial topic. But one year in January, she hosted a journaling session and it was a very intentional, it was like a goal setting session.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:03)
that's Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (04:05)
But I remember it, for lack of a better word, it forced us or, you know, to, or it was the catalyst to like digging deep, to really sitting
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:17)
Yeah.
Karina Patel (04:18)
and thinking about being kind to ourselves. You know, there were some prompts that were like, think, think, think back, like reflect what happened last year. What are your goals this year? But in a really beautiful way and there was a question of like, say, like, what are three things that you are grateful for about somebody else? What are some things that you're grateful for about yourself? What are your own strengths? If you were to compliment yourself,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:40)
Mmm.
Karina Patel (04:41)
what would you say? And people, we all had difficulty with that because we are our own worst critics, right? Like we
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:48)
100%.
Karina Patel (04:49)
can be so kind and loving towards others, but you know,
to ourselves and that's a whole separate conversation. But
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:00)
It is, yeah.
Karina Patel (05:01)
at the end of the session, Tori asked, we went through each prompt and people were able to share. If they wanted to, they could share. But you could see during the session, there were some tears.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:13)
Yeah.
Karina Patel (05:13)
And I remember one of the prompts and it was like, who is someone you're really grateful for right now in your life? And Tori mentioned me, she shared and she said me
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:21)
No.
Karina Patel (05:22)
about that specific time in her life with something that things were happening and she was like, I'm really grateful for the team calls me KP. She's like, I'm really grateful for KP and the things that we're doing right now and what we're building. And somebody else mentioned, my goodness, I'm really grateful for, for Karina. And I am, I am terrible with compliments. I'm like, thank you. I accept them, but also
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:44)
Thank
Karina Patel (05:46)
like, my goodness. And,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:48)
Stop talking.
Karina Patel (05:50)
and so I felt that, you know what, like, this was a great exercise, but also it it was proof that like, you could see it in the way the team dynamic had developed and the culture that was present. And,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (06:03)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (06:04)
you know, and so of course, like I started crying, but I just remember at
Ellen Whitlock Baker (06:07)
Bye.
Karina Patel (06:08)
the, you know, after the session later that day on Slack, somebody mentioned, my goodness, like, so many tears this morning, I can't believe I did that. And I was like, I can't believe I did that. And then I was like, no, no, no, no, wait. You know what? I used to think that crying was unprofessional. In fact, it's an emotional release and it felt really good. so somebody then said, oh my goodness, at my previous job, I used to like go cry in the bathroom. And
Ellen Whitlock Baker (06:35)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (06:36)
someone else said, oh my goodness, there were times when I wanted to cry at work and I didn't because I thought that my boss would see me differently and you know, and these stories started flooding out and it was, it was that moment that we all thought, who said crying is unprofessional. And the majority of the day, we work with our team members. So you
Ellen Whitlock Baker (06:55)
Yes, yes.
Karina Patel (06:57)
cannot hide how you're feeling. we have to be able to speak freely without feeling like what I said is going to come back to me. There's going to be some kind of retaliation
Ellen Whitlock Baker (07:07)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (07:08)
or I'm going to be seen as unprofessional. Psychological safety has been something that I take real pride in. every
Ellen Whitlock Baker (07:13)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (07:16)
time someone's like, what's one thing that you love that you've done? I am really proud of how we were intentional with the policies we designed, it's all great to just draft a policy, but then you have
Ellen Whitlock Baker (07:26)
Yeah.
Karina Patel (07:26)
to exemplify what that means. And then you have to,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (07:29)
Yes, yeah.
Karina Patel (07:30)
make sure that it's showing up in how you do your work. And it isn't hard. if someone's like, I need to work from home, great. Earlier this week we had a call and our, one of our team members were, she was in the airport lounge and she was like, I can be on this call before I take, I'm hopping on a flight. we have a team member who, our brand director, her name is Amanda and she is a mom of two boys and she had her second son last January. And when she came back in at the end, I think she came back at the end of May last year, her son was on all of our calls. He was there.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (08:08)
I love it.
Karina Patel (08:09)
He was there. we got used to seeing him. If he wasn't on a call, we'd be like, how is he? Where is he? We
Ellen Whitlock Baker (08:15)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (08:16)
had leadership retreat in September. She brought him.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (08:19)
amazing.
Karina Patel (08:20)
It all worked. We made it work where she was able to do her job fully while being a parent at the same time. And it didn't
Ellen Whitlock Baker (08:26)
Yeah, what? It's totally possible.
Karina Patel (08:28)
take away from what we were doing. It wasn't unprofessional that he was in the boardroom with us, we make it clear to everybody that yes, there are deliverables that you have to meet. there are deadlines. We talk about, what's the strategy, what's the tactical here are the project goals and everyone is responsible for delivering their part. But, there are times when things come up and we're like, Hey, I need to shift this around because this has come up, but don't worry. This won't impact this. I'm going to do this instead.
And again, that's communication. we're able to go to somebody and talk about it. We're majority women team. If somebody has cramps, it is a bad day for them. Hey guys, I'm having a bad day. I've got cramps. I'm going to be offline for the morning. Great. Everyone's like, great. I couldn't either.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (09:11)
What a revelation. I've never once felt like I could do that. know? Yeah.
Karina Patel (09:19)
within our team and the culture that we have, it is, people feel it's natural, it's going to happen at least, I mean, with the number of women on our team, it's pretty much happening like every week. And so
Ellen Whitlock Baker (09:35)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (09:36)
it is that, hey, you just need to be offline. Last year, was the first time I took three weeks off. But, my family's in England. my cousin was getting married. It was a family reunion. And I also wanted to just take, a vacation out of that as well. And so I was like three weeks, like everything's going to be fine. And I had a coverage plan. I had a prep meeting before I went offline I walked through it, here's what's happening. Great, everything worked just fine. Because everyone's capable of doing their jobs. Like we hired them for a reason.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (10:00)
No, it's amazing. And yes, yes. And like what I'm hearing is the things that we've talked about on this podcast with all these amazing guests, like they're all coming together into this conversation to show that it works. We're talking about modeling good, healthy work habits. We're talking
Karina Patel (10:20)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (10:21)
about taking time off and having a coverage plan so you don't feel like you need to be around for your team during that time off
Karina Patel (10:31)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (10:31)
and you don't feel like you have to come back to a ton of work. We're talking about working from home, being just fine. like if you're in a place where you're like, we couldn't possibly do our job because it's so relational and we need to see each other. We couldn't possibly do it from home. Look at what Karina and the team have built at HFK.
When you have a community with that much trust and that much empathy, and I agree vulnerability is a tough word because there's a lot of people who just feel like they can never be vulnerable at work because it's dangerous, know, especially women of color.
Karina Patel (11:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:07)
And I love that you all like acknowledge that and like shifted that. So that's another thing. You're also like, if you make something, I don't know if that, I wouldn't classify something like that as a mistake, but if you do something that you realize later is like, maybe that's not what we want to do. You go back and change it. No big deal.
Karina Patel (11:25)
Absolutely.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:25)
It doesn't have to be horrible. every single thing you're talking about is exactly how we can do this, everyone. We can create healthy, people-centric workplaces that
Karina Patel (11:39)
Okay.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:39)
are still really profitable. Y'all are doing just fine. In fact, very well.
Karina Patel (11:47)
To wrap us, I want to just add
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:49)
Yeah
Karina Patel (11:50)
to that. There is no playbook. When you decide to do things differently,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Karina Patel (11:55)
there's no clear model on what is going to work. So what you just
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:58)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (11:59)
said, we are learning as we go. We're making judgment calls. We're course correcting. I can't tell you the number of times we've reiterated. And even as a business every year, you grow, you evolve. But I think that you know, when, you're thinking of like unlimited PTO being a scary thing and you know, often people are like, well, how are you doing that? But you're not tracking. It's, is about accountability, but it is not about the surveillance. It's not micromanaging, right? it is trust and it's clarity. You're communicating that I am going to be offline and, hey, I've either already talked to this person, they're going to do this, or your manager is going to help you figure out, hey, all right, while you're
Ellen Whitlock Baker (12:42)
Bye.
Karina Patel (12:42)
gone, your manager is going to figure out who else can do these things, or it just gets paused, and when you come back, you move on.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (12:51)
world still runs. I wanted to say really quickly, because what you said made me think of something I missed. You have a clear working roadmap with KPIs, you have performance metrics, you have, I'm sure check-ins frequently
Karina Patel (13:07)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:07)
that aren't just like, how you doing, but are also here's how my projects are going. Here's
Karina Patel (13:13)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:13)
where I could see you do this a little differently, whatever it is. When you have that foundation, which is what I think we're often missing When you have that foundation then you can go and take unlimited PTO and work when you want to work and work from home and all of that Because it doesn't matter where or how the work is getting done You know and have an accountability system
Karina Patel (13:35)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:36)
To make sure the work is getting done. So neither of us are saying because I've heard this from people neither of us are saying, like, this means you can't work hard or it's all about feelings or blah, you know, it's not that you're still having a very successful, hardworking group of people who are doing
Karina Patel (13:52)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:53)
a lot, but they're doing it in a way that is sustainable because they know exactly what to do and how to do it and where to do it. And they're, they're able to take care of themselves while getting there. And that's what it takes.
Karina Patel (14:07)
Yes, we have employees in multiple states. I'm consistently having conversations with our legal team to make sure that the specifics are being considered, in our policies. Like I said, like
Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:19)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (14:20)
it isn't just about writing a policy, We're modeling it, reinforcing it. We revisit it. If it's not working. We are going to change it. Every year I update the handbook, probably every quarter. There are policies that, especially our
Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:31)
my gosh, amazing.
Karina Patel (14:33)
AI policy, for example, right? There are things that I am learning that I'm like, you know what? I didn't consider this and now this is happening. I need to go back and change this. Your handbook isn't something that you carve into stone. You should go back and
Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:45)
No.
Karina Patel (14:46)
look at that and also you do need to ask yourself if something isn't working, how do we make it better? these small changes make a difference and you can have a productive
Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:54)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (14:55)
team. We communicate. So like I said, we start annual planning in September of the year before in, you know, by October, November, we're building out that roadmap. We have our all hands in December. We go through the entire annual here's, here's the roadmap, here are the goals. Here's what we want to get done next year. This is the vision. This is how we're going to get it done. But then monthly, we have monthly meetings. We look at the data. We talk about what's working, what's not working. We call it stop, starts. And
Ellen Whitlock Baker (15:24)
I love that.
Karina Patel (15:25)
quarterly with each department, we do these check-ins. We have a mid-quarter check-in of like, hey, where are we at? Let's look at performance. Let's look at these metrics, these KPIs that we've set. And if we're not at somewhere, we look at that risk and contingency and say, okay, if we're only at like 70 % of our revenue, here are five other things that we could be doing that we had mapped out. And so
Ellen Whitlock Baker (15:51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (15:52)
you do have to have that structure of communicating with your team members and letting them know like, hey, where are we at? What's not working, they're also responsible for sharing and this is what I'm doing, this is what's not working or this is what I've changed or this is what I have planned. we are profitable because we have the system in place and then we're just, it's rinse and repeat, right?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:21)
Yeah, amazing. Yeah, and they know what to expect.
Karina Patel (16:26)
yes. And everyone has what we call at the end of the year, because we have a lot of contractors, we have six employees and then eight contractors. We don't do performance reviews with contractors, but contractors still need, for renewing their services for the next year, especially if they're on retainer, we're gonna have an end of year call and it's called the prep for 2028 or 2027. Wow, I'm a year ahead. And so we quickly go through and just say,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:56)
That's because you're the COO.
Karina Patel (16:59)
we quickly, you know, we, you know, I have them, I'm like, okay, what wasn't working this year in your scope of work? every year, job descriptions and scope of works need to change. They cannot remain the same. So
Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:09)
my God, music to my ears.
Karina Patel (17:12)
we have that call, we started in September, and we, you know, it's a couple of months and we work workshop it. And we were like, all right, based on the goals that are on our roadmap, your scope of work now is going to be X, Y, Z. And this is what success will look like. And then we update the service agreement and they go into the new year with a clear plan of what they need to do. Because if you become
Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:35)
amazing.
Karina Patel (17:36)
complacent and you just let, if things are just like, they have a service agreement, they're contracted for this particular scope of work, but they don't have clear success, if they don't know what success looks like.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:49)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (17:50)
They can't do successful work. And then
Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:53)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (17:54)
you're going to start having problems of, well, we're not productive. it is something that we've had to really enforce and, and, there's a lot of learning for the team to learn like how we do things, but it does work. You just got to step back a little bit, you know, and kind of figure out like, what does success look like? And then you translate that into the departments. And that's why you have managers. they are then able to reinforce that and then bring it up in their one-on-ones and address that. And if there is a performance issue, you address it. You come up with corrective steps.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:27)
Yeah. Yeah.
Karina Patel (18:29)
And so someone has the opportunity to correct what's not working.
And then also there's development. Like I said, we do lunch and learns, we do trainings, we do one-on-one development with team members if they're needing it. Or,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:40)
That's awesome.
Karina Patel (18:41)
you know, I, had a team member that wanted to move into a manager role. So I started doing, I put her on a management track and we did development every week. And, so it, it is possible, you know, yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:54)
It totally is. Yeah. So you were just talking about what success looks like. And
Karina Patel (19:00)
yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:00)
I know for a lot of people and, we talked to, and I work with a lot of people in the nonprofit and public sector where the outcome can be harder to define because it's not necessarily about profit. And I know that in your world, there are outcomes that aren't only about profit. So could you give an example or two of a success metric that isn't just sell more X or, you know, whatever it is
Karina Patel (19:28)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:28)
on that sort of quantitative side that has really worked for you?
Karina Patel (19:30)
Yes.
So we have a community of over five and a half million people. Majority of them are women. And so,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:40)
That's amazing. That's huge.
Karina Patel (19:42)
yeah, to have the ears of such a large audience, you we have to speak with intention. We
Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:50)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (19:51)
all know that. People consume content in a very short amount of time. So we have to capture their attention
Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:56)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (19:57)
very quickly. So some of the metrics, a non revenue related metric could be, I'll give you a couple of examples. Let's start with podcast, for example. So with podcast, it could be increasing, increasing downloads, increasing confirmed reach, increasing
Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:16)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (20:18)
ad delivery quality. It could be,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:20)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (20:22)
so those are all, yes, they can eventually impact your revenue, right? The more downloads you have, the more you improve
Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (20:31)
your ad quality, the more you increase your confirmed reach, all
Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:38)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (20:38)
of that leads to revenue. But for the specific team member who is not responsible for revenue, something very niche to them is my role in what I'm producing has to do with confirmed reach, add delivery quality. Let's look at programs, for example. We offer free workshops, paid workshops. what we used to be a monthly and annual subscription is now a one time, it's a product it's called the 100K Club. It's a personal finance 101 in one, yes. And so there are videos, there
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:14)
Like a digital course, kind of, yeah, awesome.
Karina Patel (21:19)
are worksheets, there's a template library, and so with programs, sales is such an obvious metric, but also, you know, we look at like a member health score, or I guess it could even be like an NPS, right? But like
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:32)
Mmm, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah.
Karina Patel (21:37)
member health score. how are we, know, like retention is such a big thing. Are we delivering
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:39)
How do you do that? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (21:43)
something that is not just valuable, but also people are enjoying and finding that they're able to navigate this intuitively, they're able to come out of it and hit those success milestones.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:54)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (21:55)
And, in 100K club, when you're going in, people are essentially setting a milestone of hitting their first 100K. And what that could be is paying off debt, saving,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:07)
Mm.
Karina Patel (22:08)
investing, whatever that looks like to them, or all of the above, right? But
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:13)
Amazing.
Karina Patel (22:14)
when someone hits that milestone, Tory has a quick meet and greet with them. It's like a quick, very short call
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:20)
So cool.
Karina Patel (22:21)
of just saying hi and like, you know, we celebrate that win. And it has been...
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:25)
that's so cool. Yeah.
Karina Patel (22:27)
Yeah, and even just being on those calls, it's really powerful listening to those stories. But that's a metric of how many people are hitting those that milestone. So
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:35)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (22:36)
member health is important. We also do that in partnerships, for example. It doesn't necessarily need to be revenue related. It could also be partner health or podcast sponsorship health. We look at that health
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:48)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (22:48)
we look at renewal rate? How many are partners
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Karina Patel (22:52)
are we renewing? Whether it's, you know, whatever the timeframe of that agreement is, but not everything is revenue related. While
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:01)
Mm-mm.
Karina Patel (23:02)
my brain is all of this adds to revenue. And I look at that as our bottom line.
We have to break it down for the departments to then for them to be able to say like, okay, based on the goals that you've now set, these are the projects I'm gonna do. These are the campaigns I'm gonna run.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:19)
Hmm.
Karina Patel (23:19)
These are the things that we could be doing that are going to contribute to this. And team members have to feel like their work is contributing to the bigger goals. Yeah, Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, they need to understand how their participation gets to, and everybody needs success metrics. I've
Karina Patel (23:38)
Yes. Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:40)
seen it so often where it's like, I come from alumni engagement is my background, and it's like,
Karina Patel (23:46)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:46)
we engaged alumni. And
Karina Patel (23:49)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:49)
there's been a lot of where I shouldn't, to be very fair, there are a lot of people doing great work to try to figure that out. But I think something like that health score.
Karina Patel (23:58)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:58)
And those in fundraising, we've used metrics like retention and renewal rate for annual giving for years. Those
Karina Patel (24:06)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:06)
are the metrics that I think we should be using on the programming side too. Because if you're
Karina Patel (24:11)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:11)
trying to engage a population of people, that's
Karina Patel (24:14)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:15)
exactly, you want to make sure they're coming back, that what you're doing is good enough that they really like it. And you know, that it's like you're reaching different people and more people. And so everything you just said is...
Exactly like you can use that kind of metric those
Karina Patel (24:28)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:29)
kinds of metrics if you are in a non-profit or in the public sector It's not it's not you know Just for people who are looking at a profit as their big
Karina Patel (24:39)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:40)
big metric. It's not that
Karina Patel (24:42)
look at it this way, kind of in the simplest form. So with the trust that we've created, you know, how we maintain it, I would say a big part of why we're successful, is our team members are here. They're invested in the work we're doing and the mission, right? So
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:54)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (24:57)
when they have clear, like, this is what success looks like for me and they're invested
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:01)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (25:02)
in the work they're doing, then they're able to keep moving forward. And one way that we reinforce that is we have a Slack channel and it's called Nice Things.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:11)
Hmm.
Karina Patel (25:12)
any nice thing that has happened, it's just any positive feedback from the community.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:16)
I love that.
Karina Patel (25:17)
One, it's a great place for just testimonials, right? But it's also, it helps to reinforce like, there are many of us that do behind the scenes work. And I'm not customer facing, I'm not client facing, I am not
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:32)
Yeah.
Karina Patel (25:33)
partner facing. And so I sometimes feel when I see a nice thing, when I see somebody and they're like, thank you so much. I participated in this money day and I was able to save X amount of money. And now this that I've already saved, I'm now going to put towards my down payment and being able to actually see that makes an impact because now I'm like, wow,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:54)
Yeah.
Karina Patel (25:55)
it's tangible. it drives me to yes. And I'm
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:57)
Yes, yeah, I see my impact. Yeah.
Karina Patel (26:00)
like, it drives me. And so we always remind people no matter what role you have on the team, your work is contributing to this person's success. I think that is a really great indicator of what success looks like as well, because it is
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:15)
Mm-hmm.
Karina Patel (26:16)
not revenue-based. We're here to help women build their net worth. And so
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:19)
Yeah. Yeah.
Karina Patel (26:21)
to be able to see those, that's really important. When I think of some of the other ways like what success looks like, again, part of building trust, because we're a remote team and we use Slack, yes, we have channels for strategy and brainstorming and project management, we also we have a book club. We have a channel for wellness and travel and we have a channel called Squat Squad. And I think that that also helps when you're just in your day to day and you're like, hey, I'm going to travel here. Has anyone been here? Send me your recommendations. Or randomly someone will
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:58)
Mmm.
Karina Patel (26:58)
be like, 20 squats now. And then when
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:00)
Yes
Karina Patel (27:01)
you're done, you just drop your emoji and you're like, I accomplished this.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:07)
Yeah.
Karina Patel (27:07)
Sometimes if a meeting is like an hour long or sometimes if it's like a sprint session and we're really working on a project, like Tori will say, okay, everyone take a break, stand up, please. Drink water, stand up, move around and we'll come back. Like it's that reminder that
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:20)
Yep, go outside, whatever you need. I love that.
Karina Patel (27:23)
we're human and you can implement this in any industry. You don't have to be in a feminist financial education media platform to be doing this. You could do this
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:35)
You
Karina Patel (27:35)
with any team.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:36)
Thank you so much, Karina. This has been an awesome conversation. It clarified some things for me in a great way. And also, I think it's going to be so helpful to our listeners to hear success in action and have a workplace that has actually built trust.
Karina Patel (27:51)
Thank you. I'm so glad I was able to, you know, share about what we do at HFK because there's so much good stuff that we have built and, you know, I love talking about it.
So thank you.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (28:03)
You're welcome. And you should feel really great about it because I was also going to say, this is not some, you can't get to this workplace if you are in a toxic workplace tomorrow. This takes a lot of work and thought and research and legal research and all of that, which shouldn't make you afraid of it. And there's definitely little things that you could do tomorrow to start making your workplace healthier. But, I hope I want you to get your like, yay jazz hands because
Karina Patel (28:28)
Yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (28:28)
that took a lot of work from you as the COO to implement and develop this amazing workplace. So congratulations to you. I hope you feel great about it.
Karina Patel (28:37)
Thank you. Yeah, I do. I feel really good about it. And for anyone who's listening and is like, I don't know what to do, right? Think about, you don't have to be the COO. You don't even have to be a manager. You could be a team member. Think about what you might have influence over and just start there. Start small. Nothing is going to change overnight. But the more you talk about it, the more you learn, the more you realize it's possible and you can start implementing it.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (28:59)
Well, thanks everybody for listening. We are happy to have shared this time with you and I will see you on the next episode.
