"Every business could be a social enterprise if they wanted it badly enough." – Lauren Edwards

Lauren Edwards has spent her career helping businesses stop treating "doing good" as an afterthought, and start building it into the core of how they operate.

As Executive Director of SeaChange and owner of NextStep Business Consulting, Lauren works with entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and corporations to prove that profit and purpose don’t have to be in tension.

In this conversation, we dig into what social enterprise actually means (and why the label matters less than the intention), why nonprofits and for-profits are both constrained by broken systems, and how trust (and the lack of it) shapes everything from wage gaps to public policy.

We also cover:

• What defines a social enterprise (and what doesn’t)

• How profit and impact collide, and how to navigate those moments honestly

• Practical models for values-led businesses (B Corps, benefit corporations, worker ownership, revenue sharing, and more)

• Why "shop social" can matter as much as shop local

• What it looks like to show up ethically when no one is watching

This episode was a beautiful reminder to us that how we structure our business is one of the loudest ways we can show up in the world.

--

Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a messaging co-op that gives a flying duck. From websites to onboarding flows, launches to long-term strategy: if you want your brand, offers, and experience to tell the same story, we can help.

Find us at ⁠http://strangebirds.land

• (00:00:00) - Flying The Coop: Lauren Edwards
• (00:01:03) - What's a Social Enterprise?
• (00:03:25) - Double-Bottom Line
• (00:05:26) - Social Entrepreneurs: Profit and Purpose
• (00:08:13) - The Case for Social Enterprise
• (00:11:47) - The Fight for Higher Taxes
• (00:17:35) - Shop Social: How to Support Social Enterprise Companies
• (00:20:18) - The Importance of Choosing Your Own Money
• (00:23:08) - The role of individuals in fighting climate change
• (00:26:31) - Give More to Nonprofits: We Need a Business Model
• (00:30:30) - Five Ways to Do Good While Starting a Business
• (00:36:44) - Local Businesses to Support
• (00:37:19) - The role of trust in our society
• (00:42:15) - The Value of Communication
• (00:44:43) - SeaChange: Celebrating Social Enterprise's 10th Anniversary
• (00:46:25) - Flipping The Coop

“Capitalism is all about squeezing every last bit of value you can… and what we are trying to do is explore a model that allows us to exist within a capitalist hellscape, but takes care of us as a fundamental driving mechanism instead.” - Janel Torkington

In this end-of-year episode of Flying the Coop, we’re looking back on what it’s actually been like building Strange Birds (and the podcast!) in 2025.

We talk about:

• What it really means to move toward becoming a worker-owned co-op

• How open books and shared decision-making have reshaped our relationship to business

• Why we define full-time work as 25 hours

• The systems and “containers” we’ve built to handle big feelings, hard conversations, and real life

• Our “Bird Brain Summit,” where we mapped how our very different brains, speeds, and working styles actually complement each other (curious? here are the question prompts we used for this)

• Why showing up consistently sometimes means showing up for ourselves before the business

This episode is part retrospective, part behind-the-scenes, and part planting our flag for building a business that’s for-real human first... especially in a year that basically tried to eat us alive.

---

Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a messaging co-op that gives a flying duck. From websites to onboarding flows, launches to long-term strategy: if you want your brand, offers, and experience to tell the same story, we can help.

Find us at ⁠http://strangebirds.land

• (00:00:00) - Flipping the Coop: Year One
• (00:03:17) - Janel on Going Co-op
• (00:05:04) - Taking a Step Back: Becoming a Co-op
• (00:06:37) - Dear Strange Birds: When Will I Be an Employee?
• (00:08:15) - Drinking Vermouth
• (00:09:01) - What Makes a Coop So Fun?
• (00:12:45) - Show Up Consistently For Your Job
• (00:17:00) - The Bird Brain Summit
• (00:22:46) - The Way We Approach Time
• (00:27:22) - A Year in the Life of the Podcast
• (00:28:29) - What Have You Learned From The Co-op Podcast?
• (00:30:09) - What Are You Hoping For In 2019?
• (00:32:12) - Flying the Coop: Brand Marketing

“What’s the ROI of creativity? That's like asking, what’s the ROI of electricity?” - Noah Scalin

Noah Scalin is a multidisciplinary artist, author, and co-founder of Another Limited Rebellion, where he helps individuals and organizations unlock their creative capacity through practice, play, and a wildly approachable philosophy: that creativity is a universal human skill you can train.

We talk about why creativity is a muscle, how limitations can actually expand what’s possible (get back in the box!), and what happens to organizations when they treat creativity as infrastructure instead of decoration. We also get into the age of AI, the difference between human expression and machine output, and why doing creative work for yourself might be the secret to showing up better everywhere else.

Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a messaging co-op that gives a flying duck. From websites to onboarding flows, launches to long-term strategy: if you want your brand, offers, and experience to tell the same story, we can help.

Find us at ⁠http://strangebirds.land

• (00:00:13) - Flying the Coop: Noah Scalin
• (00:01:23) - How Do You Define Creativity?
• (00:02:47) - How Creativity Affects Your Work
• (00:04:37) - In the Elevator: Creativity and Innovation
• (00:06:54) - On the Future of Creativity
• (00:12:01) - The ROI of Creativity
• (00:15:16) - Is AI Bad for Creativity?
• (00:19:03) - AI and the Question of Creativity
• (00:24:07) - Unlock the Creative Capacity of Your Employees
• (00:29:42) - Honorizing the Hustle
• (00:29:59) - Skull A Day
• (00:30:37) - How to Get Out of the Box
• (00:35:57) - Oh, We Need Some Skulls
• (00:36:48) - Leagues of Space Pirates Are Back
• (00:41:06) - Strategic Messaging

“If you’re forgetting the basic fundamentals of how we can be here together, that’s not optimization — it’s an illusion.” - Elijah Zimmerman

Elijah Zimmerman is an interfaith minister, nonprofit leader, and PhD in communication whose work lives right at the intersection of compassion, transformation, and leadership. As executive director of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, he helps people and organizations use compassion as a real, practical tool for meeting change, whether that means leading through uncertainty, making space for discomfort, or calling a pause when things get tense.

We talk about why compassion is more than a feeling, how it can act as a quiet form of resistance to the culture of optimization, and what it looks like to bring a little more breath, pause, and presence into how we work together.

Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a messaging co-op that gives a flying duck. From websites to onboarding flows, launches to long-term strategy: if you want your brand, offers, and experience to tell the same story, we can help.

Find us at ⁠http://strangebirds.land

• (00:00:06) - Flying the Coop: Exploring Compassion
• (00:01:12) - What is the Difference Between Compassion and Empathy?
• (00:08:09) - Blue Jays' Captain on the World Series
• (00:09:29) - The Need for Self-Compassion in Work
• (00:13:00) - Ideas for a More Just World
• (00:18:00) - Self-Compassion and Its Myths
• (00:18:47) - Self-Compassion and Common Humanity
• (00:20:50) - Compassion as a Catalyst
• (00:24:03) - What Does Compassion Look Like in a Team?
• (00:30:00) - Non-Binary Business Structures
• (00:35:13) - Queer perspectives on the business
• (00:38:57) - Flying The Coop: The Need for Compassion in Work

“Collaborative ownership and collaborative governance is a vessel to make our mission happen.” - Brandon Reid

Brandon Reid and Andrew Jacob are longtime friends turned co-founders of Heirloom, a platform for collaborative ownership that helps builders find their team, share equity, and actually get passion projects off the ground. We talk about why the future of work should feel more like weaving than hustling, what it takes to create something worth passing down, and their best mushroom foraging hauls.

Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a messaging co-op that gives a flying duck. From websites to onboarding flows, launches to long-term strategy: if you want your brand, offers, and experience to tell the same story, we can help.

Find us at ⁠http://strangebirds.land

• (00:00:00) - Flying The Coop
• (00:01:24) - Heirloom: Best Friends Foraging Together
• (00:04:09) - The Secret to Collaboration
• (00:04:26) - Co-op: Explained on The Podcast
• (00:05:52) - Collaborative Ownership at Heirloom
• (00:06:58) - Heirloom's Collaborative Loom
• (00:09:41) - Heirloom: A Place for Personal Growth
• (00:13:18) - When You Pitch the Collaborative Organization
• (00:14:32) - What's an Elevator Success Story?
• (00:16:35) - In the Elevator: The Small Business Model
• (00:19:18) - Heirloom: The Startup Where Talent Can Find Work
• (00:21:44) - What kind of people would join the Heirloom team?
• (00:24:32) - Heirloom's Commitment to a Community
• (00:25:07) - Ideas on Heirloom: Open to the World

In two weeks, on 26 November, we’re going to delist our podcast Flying the Coop from Spotify.
​

It'll still be available on just about every other podcast platform, plus streaming on our own website.

If you’re one of the 20% of Flying the Coop listeners who prefer to listen on Spotify, we are truly sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll continue distributing the podcast everywhere else: Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Pandora – basically everywhere our publishing platform Castos connects us to, plus video versions on YouTube as well. We encourage you to give one of these a go.

BUT.

​

We also understand if that won’t fly with you.

We’re in a place where we feel we have privilege of choice; not everyone is in such a place.

We choose to hold these powerful corporations responsible for their choices.

With you, we choose to share what’s on our minds and open a conversation.

---

CORRECTION: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek actually has donated $700 million to AI defense company Helsing (not $60 million as we say in this recording).

“The way that my brain didn’t fit was also the reason for my success.” - Nancy Disbrow

Nancy Disbrow is the sharp and deeply empathetic brain behind Neuro-osity, where she helps high-achieving professionals (especially those with ADHD or dyslexia) stop forcing themselves into broken systems and instead build ones that actually work for their minds. We talk about what it means to put the right brain in the right seat, how teams can support neurodivergent folks without falling back on stereotypes, and why curiosity might be the most powerful workplace tool of all.

Flying the Coop is brought to you by Strange Birds, a messaging co-op that gives a flying duck. From websites to onboarding flows, launches to long-term strategy: if you want your brand, offers, and experience to tell the same story, we can help.

Find us at ⁠http://strangebirds.land

• (00:00:06) - Flying the Coop: Neuro-osity Coach Nancy Disbrow
• (00:01:54) - Nancy on Not Fitting The Mould
• (00:03:18) - How Dyslexics Changed the Way You See the World
• (00:06:38) - The Feelings of Not Fitting Into a Corporate Structure
• (00:07:02) - Dyslexic leaders on the workplace
• (00:12:58) - How to Talk to a "Lazy" Employee
• (00:17:50) - Challenging Dress Codes
• (00:21:59) - What Does Your Work Get Done?
• (00:25:37) - How to advocate for yourself with ADHD

“The goal is to reach mutual understanding and agreement, not to win.” - Janel Torkington

Oh hey, a mini-episode on how we do business differently at Strange Birds!

This decision-making framework works magic because:

• It invites you to rep the viewpoint of the other person
• It transforms the conflict from you vs me to us vs the problem
• It clarifies the difference between a principled objection and a preference
• It kicks things off and wraps things up with [brief] feelings

It's inspired by the Quaker model of consensus. We met at a Quaker uni (Earlham College) way back in the day. Despite neither of us being Quaker, the way we structure our co-op is heavily influenced by the (very smart) way they make group decisions.

Get yerself a ready-to-roll version of this decision-making framework here: https://strangebirds.kit.com/decision-making-framework

If you take it for a spin, please please please let us know how it goes!! We're super curious if it helps you make your way through tricky biz conversations.

• (00:00:06) - How We Decided to Publish Our Podcast on Spotify
• (00:05:05) - A Real Talk About Feelings
• (00:09:58) - How to Have a Difficult Conversation About a Business Decision