#31

Your Company Culture May Be Toxic

Bureaucratic, disrespectful, chaotic, complacent. Sound familiar? If you would use these words to describe the culture at your organization, you and your colleagues may be working in a toxic environment. This episode is part one of two: First, we get into the top nine traits causing toxicity in company culture, based on the book “Culture Renovation” by Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp. In the next episode, we get into the blueprint for building a healthier culture at your organization. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Aubrey Bergauer: Hey everyone, welcome to season four of the Offstage Mic. I am like jazz hands over here because it has truly been so awesome to see the growth of this podcast. I just want to say I am blown away by how many of you are listening. Arts managers, arts administrators, artists, board members, educators. We see it in the numbers.

And so here we are doing it again, season four, doing it more, giving you more. This season, we have some fun new things planned for you. I'll say it that way. Some fun new things that we have not done before. So I am the excited to share all that with you eventually. But for now, know that some cool things are coming in just a few weeks.

The theme of this season is really about you, about us, our careers, our role as leaders. [00:01:00] And when I say leaders, I want to be clear. I do not just mean executive directors or CEOs or senior titled people. I mean all of us, all of our leadership, because This field, the field of arts and culture, needs leaders, no matter your role, no matter your title, no matter your level of seniority.

So that's the overarching theme for these next eight or so episodes. And as we get into it, I hope you had a great summer, by the way, if you were listening to this in real time, it's just after Labor Day when this episode drops. My summer was a continuation of the book tour. Plus, we started a renovation of Changing the Narrative Headquarters, AKA my home.

So we've been doing this big kitchen remodel. And I'm even squeezing in a beach vacation. I'll have just gotten home when this airs. So I will be back and refreshed and ready for the season ahead. So many of you are gearing up for your own seasons just ahead [00:02:00] too. So I hope you're also feeling ready for it, refreshed.

But no matter where you are, no matter how you're feeling, no matter where you're listening or when you're listening in your season fiscal year, you're This topic today we're hitting is pretty evergreen, I would say, pretty timeless, and that is because the topic we are talking about to get this season going is company culture.

And specifically today, we are talking about the traits of toxic cultures. This is a topic I have come to. care a lot about over the years and maybe I'm stating the obvious here, but there is a lot of toxicity in arts and culture. And we, all of us as people working in this sector are not immune to some of the consequences of that.

So we're going to start to unpack all of that in this episode to get the season going. If by chance [00:03:00] you were at an organization that has a perfectly wonderful and healthy culture. This episode is not going to be the most helpful for you, but if that's you, please take us to your magical fantasy land because it sounds very nice, the culture there.

But for everyone else, if you live on planet earth and you have ever felt frustrated or demoralized or even hurt or anything like that on the spectrum at your organization. This episode might shed some light on those issues. So welcome to season four of the Offstage Mike. Thank you all again just so much for being here.

We are not messing around folks and season four starts right now. I'm Aubrey Bergauer and welcome to my podcast. I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric, data obsessed, and for growing revenue. The arts are my vehicle to make the change I want to see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gender and racial [00:04:00] equality, developing high performing teams and leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work.

I've been called the Steve Jobs of classical music and the Sheryl Sandberg of the symphony. I've held off stage roles managing millions of dollars in revenue at major institutions Been chief executive of an orchestra where we doubled the size of the audience and nearly quadrupled the donor base. And now I'm here to help you achieve that same kind of success.

In this podcast, we are sorting through data and research inside and outside the arts, applying those findings to our work in arts management. And bringing in some extra voices along the way, all to build the vibrant future we know is possible for our institutions and for ourselves as Offstage administrators and leaders.

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The organizations that utilize Lewis advice and assistance are coming out ahead. If you are ready to take your fundraising to the next level, visit AnnualFundToolkit. com. That's www. AnnualFundToolkit. com. Trust me, your donors and your mission will thank you. Now let's dive into today's episode. All right.

So as I mentioned today, we are talking about company culture and specifically today, traits of toxic cultures. And a lot of what I'm sharing today comes from the Institute for Corporate Productivity, I4CP is what they're known as. And I4CP is the leading authority on next practices and human capital. [00:07:00] So not just best practices, but next practices, looking ahead and what their data and research is telling us in terms of.

Human capital, human resources, they do a lot of research on the workplace and what's working to drive productivity, what's working to attract the best talent. And so much of their work comes down to this topic, strong company culture, and it's probably no surprise to any of us here, any of you listening, that stronger cultures are what's driving productivity, are one of the top attractors of best talent.

And ultimately, we're going to talk about this a fair amount, but ultimately improving the financial performance of organizations. This is true across all kinds of sectors. So, I love this so much. I talk about growing revenue a lot. You know this if you listen. And this is another area that really has a big, sizable impact on our bottom line.

Stronger cultures, healthier workplaces, [00:08:00] attract better talent, and it shows in the results. That's what I'm trying to say. So, so good. I came across the work of Eye of 4CP a few years ago now. I had heard their CEO Kevin Oakes on Brene Brown's podcast talking about his book that had just come out at the time.

It's called Culture Renovation. We'll link to it in the show notes. And then I reached out and got invited him here on this podcast on the exact same topic, company culture, how do we improve it? So we'll link to that episode as well in the show notes. And then I included some of his work as I was researching and writing my own book.

I just think Kevin Oakes and the company I4CP is just a real wealth of information on this topic. So first we are going to talk about traits of toxic cultures. That's today, as I said, and then in the next episode, We're going to get into the flip side of all of that, the traits of healthy company cultures.

And there's just so much in their research that is so good and are actionable things that we can all be doing to build stronger [00:09:00] cultures, healthier cultures. But first we got to talk about what's bad, what's not working before we can talk about how to make it better. So let's get into it.

Nine traits of toxic cultures. This list comes from a research project that I4CP conducted and they found a few things if I was going to share like top line findings in their research. The first is that people who work in toxic organizations described their environments in very similar ways. So they conducted this survey of a pretty big data set of employees at all kinds of companies, across all kinds of industries, all kinds of budget sizes, and yet they found that across that wide data set that people who work in toxic organizations were describing their environments quite similarly.

The second thing they [00:10:00] found is that these, as they call them, debilitating traits, Tend to feed on each other and tend to multiply rapidly, if not corrected. Okay, that probably like tracks for all of us listening, makes a lot of sense. We talk about a bad apple or something like that, yeah, this stuff doesn't just go away, it manifests and spreads.

And the third top line finding is that the presence of any one of these nine characteristics we're going to talk about. Any one of these nine explains Between 15 and 22 percent of an organization's core cultural health, regardless of market performance or size of the institution. So let me repeat that.

Regardless of market or size or. The performance of the institution, no matter who they are, basically, no matter who the organization is, any one of these nine traits explains between 15 and 22 percent of their poor cultural health. [00:11:00] So this is all so important because it means that these things we're talking about are not specific to a certain sector, and it's not somehow Just different for us in the arts because we work in the arts, right?

These characteristics are prevalent kind of everywhere when they go unchecked. That's what these top line findings are saying. Okay, so let's play a little game as we get into the list here. Do this on your own and just think to yourself. If you had to guess, what are some of these traits, these top nine most prevalent, most common, Characteristics of toxic cultures that people reported according to this big data set.

What would you guess? Just take a moment right now. I think this is kind of, um, I was going to say kind of fun, but that's not the right word. Just an interesting exercise to think, like, what would you put on the list if you were surveyed right now?

So we talked about this a few weeks ago in the Changing the Narrative [00:12:00] community and they got the discussion based version of this. This where we could really talk through their predictions of what would be on the list, but right here you can do it in your head. No problem. And you can have multiple that you think of.

That's fine. If you're like, no, this exercise is no problem, Aubrey, I'm really brainstorming the list here. Yeah, that's great. Do that too. But if you had to pick one, what do you think is the number one toxic trait or at least one of these top nine? Okay. Got it. As I'm going over these nine, you can see which ones you just kind of went through in your mental exercise here match what the research says.

So, all right, I'm going to read these in reverse order. So starting with number nine, meaning this is the frequency these traits were mentioned versus the traits we'll talk about next episode in healthy cultures. Okay, so number nine, most toxic trait among humans. This survey data set was that toxic organizations are conflict avoidant.

So just to describe how they're measuring this, that means that this [00:13:00] trait, conflict avoidance, showed up, according to their research, eight times more frequently Then the people who were at self identified healthy cultures. So what's extra interesting about this to get into their methodology a little bit is that toxic organizations were directly correlated with low performance and low performance was measured by financial performance.

So organizations that were performing more poorly financially directly correlated with their company culture. Okay. All right. And those folks at those lower financial performing organization said their organizations were conflict avoidant eight times more than the people who were at high financial performing companies.

I hope that makes sense. So eight times, just to like put this in perspective. Is the difference between 80% and 10%, right? So that's a big deal. I'm not saying it was [00:14:00] 80% of low performing companies, and those employees said their organizations were conflict avoidant. It could have been 30%, for example. I don't know, but I'm just saying like 80% versus 10%, that would be an eight x difference.

Okay? So that's their methodology on all of this. Okay, number nine, conflict avoidant. Number eight, most toxic trait according to their survey and reporting is. Organizations that are insensitive. And actually this is a tie. I should say the bottom three are tied. They were all eight times more prevalent than the high financial performing, high company culture organizations.

So insensitive, number eight, number seven, also tied here for the bottom three. Hierarchical. Raise your hand if hierarchical was on your bingo card. Okay, so eight times also more prevalent in the low financial performing organizations. Moving up, number six is cutthroat. Organizations that are cutthroat, they were reported as nine times more [00:15:00] frequent, this trait, than the strong culture, high financial performance organizations.

Number five, complacent. For anybody, I hear this a lot, I gotta say, people who work with people who are complacent. I feel like I hear a version of that quite often among clients I work with. So no, you're not alone. That number, organizations that are complacent or have complacency, that appeared eleven and a half times.

More frequently than the healthy culture organizations. So complacency, a real, a real toxic trait. So it's not just lazy. It's not just not getting things done. Somebody I was talking to recently was like, wow, it's nice to be with people who give a shit. Like it's not just that. It actually makes a difference to the bottom line is what their data shows.

Okay. Number four, most toxic trait, chaotic. You can tell me if that resonates with you. I think there definitely is. It's a lot of chaos in some of our organizations. It's just, you [00:16:00] know, a lot of like a hamster in a wheel or who's talking to who or is the right hand talking to the left hand. I hear versions of that sometimes from people.

I've experienced versions of that myself in different organizations. So chaotic 11 and a half times as well, just as complacent 11 and a half times more frequently mentioned. Number three, moving right up the list here, disrespectful, disrespectful is the number three toxic trait. of unhealthy company cultures that was reported as 12 times more frequent than the healthy cultures, the strong financial performance organizations.

I think I'll just leave that there. Everybody knows what it's like to feel disrespected in the workplace. Number two, right on the heels, I would say of disrespectful, non inclusive. This one, this is where we start to see a bigger jump in how often this was reported in the survey results. Non inclusive. is reported in the unhealthy, lower financial performance organizations 14 times [00:17:00] more than the healthy, strong organizations.

Non inclusive. It's not just a DEI thing, it's not just a check the box kind of thing, like it actually really matters and it's coming through in their survey across this massive data set of people. And number one, okay, you have to tell me who got this right. Number one, toxic trait of unhealthy company cultures is they are bureaucratic.

And bureaucratic showed up in the data 16 and a half times more frequently among the poor cultures, unhealthy, toxic cultures, lower financial performance companies than their strong, healthy counterparts. The bigger the organization, the more likely there's bureaucracy. And I don't think bureaucracy has to be a dirty word.

I just want to say that I think bureaucracy can be bad, obviously can be a real hindrance, can slow you down, can. Just really demoralize, like all of those things can be true. I think a version of bureaucracy [00:18:00] sometimes just comes with a bigger organization. Sometimes things have to move slower, but I also think there's a way to handle that where you kind of process and expectations that are clear and things like that.

All to say, I don't think bureaucracy has to be a dirty word, even though it really can be, and here definitely is coming across that way in terms of how employees described their own organizations. So, okay, back to our little game or exercise here. Which of those resonated with you? Which of those did you think would be on the list?

What'd you get right? Were there any surprises? I'm really curious. Send me a DM online or tag me in a post at Aubrey Bergauer or something. I'm really curious. Like, did these match what you thought is really the question? And you know, I'll say when we went over this research in the Changing the Narrative community, we talked through this question, you know, were there any surprises?

Was there anything not on the list that people expected would be? And something that came up that I thought was interesting was lack of information sharing. And I [00:19:00] totally agree that lack of information sharing is, I know I can speak from experience and say I've certainly seen it at different organizations I've worked with, and it's a real toxic trade, it's a real hindrance to I just progress in getting things done and moving things ahead and people feeling like they have the information they need to be empowered to do their jobs, all those things.

So this wasn't on the list though. So that would be a surprise is what I'm trying to say. But maybe we talked about maybe that kind of rolls up into hierarchical or maybe it rolls up into non inclusive. I don't know. So anyways, how'd you do? Were there surprises? Curious to know what you think. And how'd your organization do if you were raiding your organization?

That's where the rubber meets the road, right? So I would say this is not about just complaining, but really the idea is that this is meant to just identify a major pervasive challenge permeating our industry. And the best arts leaders will confront these toxic issues head on.[00:20:00] 

Okay, let's take a little break. Coming up, we're going to get into why understanding the shortcomings in the culture at your organization is important. And I'll tell you right now, you may not want to hear this, but it's got a lot to do with your bottom line. That's coming up after this. I'll be right back.

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Hey, Offstagers, I have some exciting news to share with you. I mentioned that I cover in my book this topic of building strong, healthy company cultures. A full chapter is dedicated to it. And the publisher just recently shared with me that they ordered a second print run of the book, Run It Like a Business.

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Okay, so why? Why care about this? Why do we confront these issues head on? Why do successful leaders, successful organizations, strong financial performance organizations, why do they take the time to tackle these issues? and not let it manifest and brew and spread. Okay, because Kevin Oaks, I mentioned [00:24:00] CEO of I4CP, he says it this way.

He says, quote, Despite the enormous influence of an organization's culture on financial performance, culture is often dismissed as too fluffy, esoteric, or abstract to have much of an impact. Surprisingly, though, even the corporate governance process has traditionally overlooked, or at least underestimated, the magnitude

I think that's gold and not just gold, but just so accurately captures what we see even in nonprofit land, even in arts and culture land. And I write about company culture in my book a lot. There's a whole chapter dedicated to this topic and it's for this reason, the reason being what Kevin Oakes just said, what I quoted, it's not fluffy.

It's not. Soft skills. It's work. It's work to build a strong culture. And the way I frame it in my book is that it's a strategy. It's a strategy that directly impacts our bottom line. And arts organizations [00:25:00] need all the help we can get for our bottom lines, right? Here's another reason the best arts leaders will confront these toxic issues head on.

Another quote here, Kevin Oakes says, we've seen countless examples of companies. He's talking about the companies that they worked with and researched. We've seen countless examples of companies that surprised their shareholders with cover ups, ethical missteps, intentional product manipulation, or safety oversight that decimated market capitalization.

So, I hear a quote like that, my mind goes a few places. I first think of Boeing as an example. Boeing's been in the news so much recently and I will say though, you know, surprise of shareholders, cover up missteps, all those kind of things, uh, safety oversight, all of that. Yes, that's true. But if I'm being honest.

Sure, I think about something like a company like Boeing, but I think just as fast of a certain major orchestra who's also been in the headlines for their [00:26:00] culture issues and handling or failure to handle sexual misconduct, right? So they're definitely not the only ones. It's just that That's who happens to be in the news cycle right now.

It just brings me to the next point, which is to say that I have to be honest. Like, I thought about whether even like, what, should I go here, Aubrey? Should you even mention that this happens in our industry? You know, gross misconduct and this terrible toxic traits. And you know, I debated out of fear of retribution.

But I'm not. Part of the whole problem of toxicity in this industry is that there's a culture of silence and complacency that was on the list, culture avoidance that was on the list. They're both, you know, these top toxic traits, and that's what we're dealing with here, or at least part of what we're dealing with here when you talk about a culture of silence.

So we have to name these things when we see them, even when it's at an organization like a major institution in the example I just gave. And I have to say also, if I'm being honest and continuing to be [00:27:00] honest, I have not always been the best at conflict. I was raised in a very conflict avoidant household.

Which for a long, long time carried over into the rest of my adult life. And I've worked on it a lot in recent years, definitely still am working on it. And I share this all just to say again, the best leaders will work on these things. And not being complacent, not being conflict avoided doesn't mean be an ass about it when you do break something up, right?

It simply means we talk about it and we don't avoid the hard things and, you know, We have to talk about them if our institutions are ever going to change. Otherwise, what happens? This is a good segue into the next quote I wanted to share with you. In their report, they say, quote, Toxic cultures are suddenly discovered by the board, the press, and the investors, when of course they've been bubbling under the surface the entire time.

And that sounds like, you know, just what happens in the arts too. So whether it's sexual misconduct at the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra before that, James Levine [00:28:00] at the Met and everywhere else before that, other Me Too scandals, I'm only naming some in our industry that really took the headlines for a while.

And even scandals not related to sexual misconduct either. I'm even thinking about here in San Francisco, the very highly publicized dissatisfaction between Esa Pekka Salonen and the I'm thinking of museum employees unionizing at many places across the country. Someone even recently sent me a DM on LinkedIn about some real horror stories at the organization they were at where employees were trying to unionize.

So, I'm trying to say in all of this, The arts are not somehow exempt from this topic. If that's not clear, hopefully it is now. We're a business, like any other company, and when we don't address our toxic cultures, the board and media, quote unquote, suddenly find out about it, is, you know, how it played out and what they said in the research.

And, you know, You know, that's not a good look. And often I would venture even worse for the bottom line than the original toxicity in [00:29:00] the first place, right? So the work to combat these traits and all the downstream effects of them, it's just another way to say it's worth it. Okay. So like I said, the next episode is all about healthy trades and solutions.

So we're going to get into it. So if you're hearing all of this and thinking, yes, yes, I'm with you, Aubrey. Now what do I do? Like I've got you, it's coming, but for now. Before we move on, uh, just a couple more quotes I wanted to share with you. If it helps to know that the arts are not the only organizations that wait until it gets really bad, kind of what that quote was just saying, like until it suddenly comes out, headlines and all that kind of stuff.

Here's the next quote for you. Rarely do companies set out to change their cultures when everything is calm and running smoothly, even though that is probably the best time to do it. Okay. So that's straight out of their report on all of this. And again, maybe it sounds obvious, but yeah, when it's smooth sailing, most organizations aren't examining their culture, aren't looking under the hood.

And so, I [00:30:00] don't know, for what it's worth, it tends to brew and fester until it erupts, and then it forces a look sometimes. So if you're in a position where it's not brewing and festering right now or not exploding, you know, good on you for thinking about this, I have to say. Okay, last quote, and then this starts to segue into the solutions where we'll pick up next time.

The report says, quote, companies that effectively changed their cultures were successful because they were renovating what they had. Not starting from scratch and completely rebuilding or transforming. Okay, this is so hugely important and actually quite good news in my opinion. What this quote is saying, the answer for companies who successfully changed their culture was to renovate.

And that's a really big distinction, a really important distinction. And like I said, I think this is actually quite good news for us in the arts. So many people I think have in our Industry, you know, have been hurt or harmed by [00:31:00] toxicity in their company culture. And so I think it's a pretty natural or at least understandable reaction to say, yeah, just burn it all down.

But that's actually not what the data show, what the research shows is the right path to improve the culture. So Kevin Oaks talks about this a lot in his book. His whole book is all these different steps to renovate culture. It's called Culture Renovation. And when I interviewed him for my book, he says that.

That means we get to find the good. So even if you're hearing this whole episode and you're like, you know, feeling doom and gloom or feeling like, wow, this is overwhelming and so bad, like it's not all bad. It's just rarely all bad anywhere. That's why the research doesn't say burn it down. So we have to find the good parts.

And he even uses these words. This is so good for us in the arts. He says, Find the good parts of tradition we want to keep. I mean, gosh, when you talk about keeping good parts of tradition, I just think that's so, so important for arts organizations to know. Tradition is such a part of who we are and what we do and to say and hear from an [00:32:00] expert on this entire topic, that there are some good things about tradition. And part of the work is to uncover the good, the good that we're proud of, the parts of tradition we're proud of at our organizations and celebrate and preserve those parts. Like, wow. I can't think of a better place to end than there.

I hope you agree. Like I said, we are going to pick this up next time, getting into this more. What's the blueprint? What's the solution? How do we renovate? What do we do effectively? to build healthier cultures. So season four of the Offstage Mike has officially begun. I hope you learned something new today and I'll see you next time.

That's all for today, folks. Thanks so much for listening. If you like what you heard here, hit that button to follow and subscribe to this podcast. And if you've learned something or gotten value from this, Please take two seconds to leave a quick one tap rating or review in return. To all of you, one more time, thanks again.

See you next time on the Offstage Mic. The [00:33:00] Offstage Mic is produced by me, Aubrey Bergauer, and Erin Allen. The show is edited by Novo Music, an audio production company of all women audio engineers and musicians. Our theme music is by Alex Grohl. Additional podcast support this season comes from Jeremy Cuebas, Kelle Steadman, other members of the changing the narrative team and social media brand management by classical content.

This is a production of changing the narrative

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