Latasha Doyle on Building a Team and Owning a Business with a Disability

Audrey Saccone: Latasha Doyle is the owner of Uncanny Content, a full-service content and copy agency serving women, queer, BIPOC, and disabled-owned businesses. Latasha built her agency after changing careers due to her own disability, and her mission is to see more people build and scale businesses that serve others and themselves. Latasha, welcome to the show!

Latasha Doyle: Thank you for having me. I am so excited.

Audrey Saccone: Okay, so I've known you since I started my business a couple of years ago, and you are one of the first service providers I hired to help me with the Launch BFF blog, and we worked together for a long time. You've since become a good friend. We're at a peer mastermind together, and I just love getting to do entrepreneurship alongside you.

Latasha Doyle: I am also thrilled to be here with you. It's so nice for me to know that I can just go to our Peer Mastermind or you and just be like, you know what? I just need to vent. I need a minute. This is hard. And you have definitely been that space for me. Solution-oriented, but also, just like, I get it.

Audrey Saccone: Well, thank you. Here on Tough Stuff, we talked about all the things we don't hear about on regular podcasts, and today that includes not being able to do it all. And not because we shouldn't do it all, but because we're in a place where we literally can't do it all. So you work with a disability and you're a primary provider within your family. I'd love for you to tell that story.

Latasha Doyle: Yeah. So I have Marfan syndrome… M-A-R-F-A-N, and it's a connective tissue disorder. So essentially, it affects every piece of connective tissue in my body, top to toe, and my family, unfortunately, also has it. We are one of the lucky people in the Marfan community who has a very high rate of Marfan within our family. Sometimes it's only one person has it, sometimes everybody has it. Sometimes two people have it, but my mom, my sister, and I all have it. And that makes for some really interesting morning chats about what our body is doing on any given day.

But as a business owner, it's definitely changed the way that I have approached my services, the way that I have scaled my business, and the clients that I work with, because we've all had those moments, right, of, oh, my God, I don't have the energy for this. As women, we have hormonal fluctuations. As people, we just have bad days, ya know, war is going on, things like that, you just have bad days. But outside of that, I have days where I literally can't sit at my computer because my pain is so bad, or the main risk with my condition is an aortic dissection and palpitations are a very real thing when you have a heart condition. So it's hard to sit at your computer and be like, I might actually be dying right now... I'm not sure. So it has changed a lot about my business and kind of the way that I operate in what I do.

Audrey Saccone: You're very open about the fact that you're living with a disability, but in a really normalized way, not in a victimhood type of way. And how do you communicate that with your clients and with your team so that they can be aware and supportive of your life?

Latasha Doyle: Yeah, so I'll say I wasn't always out and proud about this because I didn't realize that I had a disability ‘til I was about 25, and I didn't realize the experiences I was having were like, totally abnormal from how normal people operate. Like, what do you mean your feet don't break when you walk too far? That's so weird to me, but it is very much foreign to me to think of a normal, healthy life. So I've kind of always operated from this place of sometimes my body just doesn't work, right? But as soon as I started doing more deep diving into my condition, into the effects that it has on other people in my community and how other people within my community were saying, this is a disability, I was like, oh, shit, that changes my whole worldview. Not because it opens accommodations or people want to say, like, oh, well, you're saying that because you want to apply for disability. I don't know if you've ever tried to apply for disability, but it's impossible. So that's not it. It's more of the, oh, my God, there's a reason that I can't do these things and it's no longer my fault.

And that was so empowering for me. So as I built my business, I started this business a year after I figured out, like, “oh shit”, what I'm experiencing is a disabling event. I was actually a nanny. I was a nanny for a decade. And I was going up the stairs one day with a toddler in my arms, and I almost passed out because having a heart condition and lifting weights is bad for you. And I had that moment of like, I actually cannot do this work anymore. And thankfully, I had already been writing. I had my degree. I had been writing for a professor, editing for a professor; I had been writing for Care.com as a provider/subject matter expert. And I realized, like, okay, I can actually do this side of things, and it supports my physical limitations without spiraling too hard about what this means about my identity. But as I built my business, I didn't lead with my disability. I was very much accommodating to the wrong sorts of people to the point where I got sick. I don't get sick like most people, where it's like, I have a virus, I need to sleep. I have debilitating pain and fatigue and anxiety and all these things. And I realized I can't keep working for assholes for one and two if I'm going to make this thing work as the provider for myself and my husband, and as somebody who also wants to support her mom and her sister should they get sick, this cannot be solely reliant on my energy levels. And from there, I sought out working specifically with women, with queer people, with BIPOC, people, with people who have disabilities, people who had other limitations on their time and their energy and their capacity. And since I've started doing that, it has totally changed how my business works and also the impact I'm able to have.

Audrey Saccone: I think that's so… I don't even know what to say. You've left me speechless, Latasha.

Latasha Doyle: Yes!!

Audrey Saccone: For two people who really stories, that's impressive. But I think that's really important, what you said, even about women. And listen, at the end of the day, can a case be made that we all have limitations on our time? Sure. But I think it's also the people who have the least amount of privilege in this world at varying degrees. And because of those varying degrees of lack of privilege comes a deeper empathy and understanding and willingness to partner with others versus being demanding or rude or just unaccommodating.

Latasha Doyle: Yeah. And you want to talk about innovation? It's not the fucking white dudes cush in their 75th-story office. Right? It's the women, and it's the queer people, and it's the people of color, and it's the disabled people who are like, we're going to do this shit differently. And that fires me up. And I've had people come to me as clients and say, hey, we just had a client say, I got to go take care of my mom. I'm going to be delayed on reviews. And it's like, okay, we're shifting your content plan. This is a human-centered business. This is not… I don't give a fuck what's happening in your life. I don't care what your body's doing today. It's human-focused always.

Audrey Saccone: Absolutely. So speaking of the support that you have, you've scaled your team a lot in the past year. What has that experience been like for you?

Latasha Doyle: I will give you the unfiltered version, and then I will give you the positive version. It is Hell to build a team; not because of the people. The people that I have been lucky enough to attract and recruit and hire have been fucking phenomenal. I am the eldest daughter. I am the oldest of five. I am the one who does all the things. I am the one who solves the problems. Asking for help and rewiring your brain to let other people help you is like, the biggest therapy problem I've ever encountered in my life. And within your business, that means that you’re outsourcing things. And then you're saying, well, you didn't do it my way, so I'm taking it back. And I want to ask you for help, but I know that you're going through stuff right now, so I'm just going to take it on even though I'm literally dying over here. There's all these things that as you build a team, you build the structures, you have people who are like, you're paying me to do the job. Let me do my fucking job. And I'm over here just like, I don't want to burden you, I can do it. Or in all honesty, I feel like I can do it better, because I think in my worldview, I'm the only one who can do this. And that's just not true. And I have proven myself wrong again and again and again. And by proving myself wrong, I've been able to grow a really phenomenal team who actually help me, who actually show up and do the work they're paid to do. Like, what? That's amazing. And it's meant that our clients get consistent care in a way that I never could have provided. It takes me two days to answer an email. I have somebody in my inbox every day who can answer it in, like, a couple of hours. And that kind of care for our clients is huge. But building a team is a lot of work, and it's a lot of work for you as the CEO to shift how you operate. It just is… 

Audrey Saccone: A million percent. And I'm really glad you said that. It's hard, because I agree. It's really hard. I mean, it's one of the most rewarding things I've done in my business. Absolutely. Seeing the team grow and just watching them thrive and seeing, like you said, how it benefits the clients is like, that's why I'm doing this. But yeah. Does it also keep me up at night a lot? Hell, yeah. Hell, yes. Is that like, 80% of the conversations we have in our Voxer with our other friends?

Latasha Doyle: Absolutely.

Audrey Saccone: It's all like, what do you do about this HR issue? What do you do if this person's underperforming? Should I hire this person or that person? And it's just… people are hard, but in a good way, they should be hard.

Latasha Doyle: Yeah, it is like you said, it's rewarding. It is worth the effort. Like, every bad day that I've ever had, we just had this chat in our group. I was like, instead of burning it down, I asked for help from my team. And then guess what? Everything is better now. And it's because of all of those blocks that we put in place, all of those steps we've taken that has built us up to this place where it's no longer reliant on me, where I am managing my own reactions and my own expectations. And clients know what to do and what to expect. And it's so much better. But that does not mean that it was ever easy. I think there's so much glitz and glamour. I'm like, oh, my God, look at how big my team is. And then it's like, I know for a fact that you cry at night just like I do because this shit's hard.

Audrey Saccone: Yes.Yes. Absolutely. You hold a lot of space for your team, and you really do take the time to lead and nurture their growth and respect their needs. And I'm curious, how do you take care of you or who takes care of you while you're constantly taking care of others?

Latasha Doyle: Oh, this is a therapy session. Okay. So one of my biggest things that I feel differentiates me as a person is I have never had a traditional job. I worked at Target for, like, two weeks when I was 18, and the manager tried to tell me to go fold clothes in another section. And I was like, that's not my section. I quit. And that, I feel like, says a lot about who I am as a person, and it also tells my team a lot about, like, I actually don't know a lot of what I'm doing in terms of leadership. I've never had a manager. I've never had a direct report. Like, I am coming into this really not knowing your experiences. And most of my team have what I would call corporate trauma. They come from very traditional corporate backgrounds, and they have been yelled at by managers, they have been laid off when they just bought a house or just invested in something really big for themselves, they have been not listened to, they have been talked over, their ideas have been disrespected. And one of the things that going into this, I was saying, I'm always focused on you as a person first, because I know that I can't do my work if I'm not a person first. So I don't understand how companies can expect you to just be a delivery machine kind of thing. But that also means that I kind of overcorrect. I hold a little too much space, some would say. So I'm worried. Oh, your energy felt off on that Zoom call. Are you doing okay? What do you need? When really, I still have to manage my own impulses to care a little too hard. They call me work dad, and I want to take care of them.  And then it's like, I kind of forget, like, oh, shit, we're running a business you guys. Buck up. But then for me, I kind of have the opposite problem, where it's like, don't worry about what you need right now. You need to deliver this thing. So, honestly, what I've told my team is, for everything that I give to you, I need you to remind me that I need that too. And I have my junior copywriter texting me and saying, I can tell that you're really overwhelmed right now. Please take care of yourself. Here's a Ziggy's gift card. There's these little moments of them actually caring back, and it's really powerful because it tells them, as much as I pour into you, you can pour that back into other people on the team. And I've been very honest about my own workaholic tendencies. I have anxiety. I have people to provide for so I'm going to be the one hustling at the end of the day to make sure that we're all provided for. And I have an account manager who actually looks through our tasks and is like, Latasha, you don't need to be doing this. And she'll take it off my plate because if it's on my plate, I'll do it. But I've had to be really honest with them. Like, y’all, I need you to hold me accountable just like I would hold you accountable if you were not doing great.

Audrey Saccone: Yeah, I really resonated with something you said about how you'll work late; you'll hustle so that nobody else has to, which is something I've really worked on in the past year because if I'm always burning the candle at both ends, I can't be a good leader for my team or for my clients. And I'm curious as you're recognizing that behavior in yourself, what else besides asking the team to help you correct, how are you correcting yourself?

Latasha Doyle: Yeah, well, therapy first and foremost, I have also built in time into my weeks that is just for me. And I put it in a sauna because if it's in a sauna, I got to do it. So I literally have Wednesday Pilates with my virtual Pilates instructor. And I spent an hour on that come hell or high water. I had the worst Wednesday morning. And I was like, I need to cancel Pilates. And I was like, no, you said you were going to do this and you're going to do it. And then after that session, I was like, I might actually not murder everybody today. That was a good choice. And my husband has every other Friday off. He works for the government. He's an asshole. Just kidding. But because he has every other Friday off, I know that most every other Friday afternoon, I'm pretty much MIA because a grown man in the house is like having a toddler loose… so, I'm going to be offline. And so I built that into where my team knows, like, Latasha has half capacity on Friday. You know, this is a tool that I've learned in therapy. But asking myself, do I actually have to be the one doing this right now? Because it doesn't matter what it is. It's not just work. It's life, too. Like, do I have to be the one making this grocery list right now? Do I have to be the one writing this blog right now? Do I have to be the one to reply to this email right now? And if the answer is no, who else can do it? Or who do I loop in to problem-solve with me because I'm not the most trustworthy party at this moment. 

Audrey Saccone: Yes, agree. I ask myself the same thing. Like sometimes I'll be looking at my lists and the things I do, and I'm like, these are not the best use of my time and anybody else can do this. Therefore, I shouldn't be doing this. And that's hard because I, as an achiever, and I know you are as well, it feels good to cross ten things off the list. And a lot of the things that. We are doing, it's like one or two big things, not ten little things. And we are using well, not to speak for you, but I and I thank you are using those ten little things as a distraction so you can get that dopamine hit and just be like, yes, I did the thing and you're like, but I didn't do the real thing.

Latasha Doyle: Well, and for me, I don't have time to do the real thing. So I'm going to do these little things so that I feel like a productive not piece of shit. And what's happening, and this is something that we talked about in our group chat, is that I wasn't having time for marketing. I'm not having time to actually go out and do the thing that I love. I love connecting with new people, talking to them about their pain points. Andlike,  yes, if you want to come work with us, come work with us. But I'm not even out. I'm not doing the things because I'm literally hunched over a keyboard. I, like, had to do PT about it… hunched over a keyboard, just trying to knock stuff out for the people that I have brought in. And I was like, I have two choices here… either I let some clients go because I don't have the bandwidth to write for them because my team is out of bandwidth as well, or I hire somebody else to come in and help so I can go out and do the things that I need to do as the owner. Am I generating revenue by doing these things? Not immediately, right? It's not like an exact deliverable for an exact dollar amount. But I know the more that I'm out, the more that I'm connecting with people, the more TikToks I'm fucking creating, the more leads that we get, which then helps everybody. It provides for me and my family. It provides for my eight employees' families. Like this business relies on me doing those things, and I don't have the bandwidth for them.

Audrey Saccone: Speaking of bandwidth, one thing you do, we also do this, is you have dedicated time when the whole team is out of office. So why were you inspired to do that? And how do you manage that expectation with your client? And I'm asking because as your former client, you do it really well.

Latasha Doyle: Well, thank you. We call it dark mode. We go dark. And when I say dark, I mean like, I will fire one of my employees if they try to do anything in our email inbox or Asana. They all know this. It is sacred time off. The reason I draw that hard boundary for them is because it is a hard boundary for me. And I'm setting the stage of like, I am not touching a damn thing, you guys. Somebody could literally email us and be like, my whole business was on fire… and I'd be like, talk to you in two weeks, love you, bye. But we call it dark mode. And the main inspiration for this actually comes from Nicole Yang, who's a brand designer. And when I first started my business, I was working on a team with Nicole, and she took the last two weeks of the year off. And it wasn't like, oh, hey, I'll be offline, but if you need me, go ahead and send this to me. It was, I need all the deliverables by this day because I'm going dark… she said, I'm going offline and I will not be able to be reached. And I was like, oh, damn, we could do that? I had no idea. And so I didn't do it that year because I was like, I have too much going on, but I want to try to do that next year. And I was like, maybe I'll just do like, the week of between Christmas and New Year's, like the 24th to the 1st or whatever. But as I was getting closer, I was like, I think I need the full two weeks. Because at this point, it was just me and one other person. I was like, we need the time we killed it this year, and I just want to be out. I need time to just not do anything except read dirty books. And so we started sending emails to our clients, I think two months early to say, hey, we're doing this thing, we've never done it before, I know we're very responsive, I know that we're always on top of your shit. I am not going to be reachable and this is something that I even recruited my client's help to be like, I really want to make this possible for us. And I also think that it'd be really cool for you to not have to worry about your content for two whole weeks. So I kind of pitched it as like, this is a mutual benefit. And then it was a month before we went dark it was… Don't forget we're going dark. We need your shit by this date. And then it was two weeks before we went dark. And it was like, hey, we don't have this stuff from you. I'm worried that we're not going to get this stuff out in time just to heads-up. And then it was the week of, hey, here are the things that we did for you this week. Here's what we need to just tidy up. If you have any questions, make sure you ask them before Thursday. Because Friday is like Friday is chaos day for us. It's like, what fires do we need to put out before we come back on January 2? And that first year, I was so terrified logging off. I was like, sweating in weird places. And I logged off Friday at 05:00 p.m. And I was like, you guys were doing it. It was just me and my original copywriter, Jess, and we both got rip roaring drunk, and me, being absolutely unable to stay away from my apps I checked the email inbox on Sunday or Monday, and the only emails we had gotten were, like, transactional emails, like notifications or whatever, nothing big. And I was like… well this is suspicious? This is going too well. And then I didn't check it for, like, another week and nothing had happened. Nobody was like, hey, we need this. If anything, there were, hey, when you get back, we'd love to talk to you about this. We did not have a single client disrespect that boundary. If anything, we had clients saying like, thank you so much, because I was finally able to enjoy my holidays with my family because I wasn't worried about my marketing. We came back online and we had more work than ever. I will say the week before and the week after dark mode are like nightmares. We call them Hell Week because you're just trying to get everything ready but having that solid two weeks or a week. So we just did one at the end of September because my whole team asked for like it was like seven out of nine people had asked for this week off. And I was like, I'm not going to be stuck here with me and Josie and just holding down the fort… we're all going offline and that has… one, it gives us something to look forward. Like, we're all so excited to go dark. It's not like a few clients, we're done with you. It's just like, man, it's really cool that we can just log off. I pay the team. Everybody gets paid. It's not like, sorry, you're SOL, sorry if you need to pay your rent this month. And we come back and we're all refreshed and we're ready to face Hell Week again. And then after that, it goes back to normal. But it has been such a life changer for me because of somebody with a disability. I can do sprints and then I crash. So that sprint to mid-December. I'm just like, we can do it, we can do it, we could do it. And then that first week, my body is, like, in recovery mode, and then I get another week off to just do fun shit.

Audrey Saccone: Such a great example, I think, for all of us. And how… I love how you mentioned that you're giving your clients permission to enjoy their holidays as well. Because the reason we take off time between Christmas and New Year is as well. We do about two weeks in that period. Because it's the same thing… all of our clients are also on vacation. Why not just give the whole team the week off?

Latasha Doyle: Yeah, or they feel like, okay, well, I'm on vacation, but I can still reply to you. And that takes you away from really restful activities. So I think it helps to lead by example in that sense, both with my team and with our clients. And now we have clients who do the dark mode, too. And I'm like I love it. Everybody: go dark. 

Audrey Saccone: I just keep seeing, like, a little toggle in my mind of just, like, dark mode. Like what you see on a Mac.

Latasha Doyle: Dark mode. Yeah, exactly. I always see it like the Bravo Six going dark, and then it goes into night vision mode. It's like video games, but yeah, that's what I see. Let's just go dark.

Audrey Saccone: I love it. So you've had a lot of health-related experience within your family in the last year, which I know has taken you away from your business, not just physically, but also emotionally. So what has that been like for you?

Latasha Doyle: Yeah, awful, in a word. So somebody in my family that I'm very close to had a very big health scare in 2021. And this was sort of the impetus for me growing Uncanny over the last year, because what happened is, yes, I had a couple of people on my team, but they were contractors, they were part-time, and they didn't have the bandwidth to take on all of the things that I had no longer had capacity for. And so this was one of those fork-in-the-road moments for me... It's like, okay, do I let this go and just do the bare minimum like a couple of clients? Or do I grow this thing so that I don't have to let anybody go? I can still support this family member who needed help with bills, and so I can pay my bills? Like, which way do I go? And I had to sit with that for a couple of days as I'm having panic attacks that my loved one is dying in the hospital. And we had to pay out a good chunk of change to support this person's bills. And I was like, the easy way is to let it go and just do the bare minimum. I'm not a big-picture person. I feel like this needs to be said, not a big-picture person. I have a heart condition. I really don't see myself 5-10 years down the road, even though the reality is, like, I'll probably live that long, I just don't see it. And in my head, as I was thinking through this, I saw all of the impact that we could make if I fucking full-throttled it and went down the path of growth. And I was very realistic about… what does that look like? What is that going to require from me? What kind of hell is this going to unleash as I'm trying to take care of my loved one? And the reality was, this is going to be the hardest year of your life. And if you do it well, it's going to be totally worth it. I decided that in February of 2021. And here we are, two and a half-ish years later, and I can tell you with 100% certainty it was worth it. Is it the hardest thing I've ever done? Absolutely. Do I know how I did it? No… I really don't. I hired a coach. I really got my shit together in terms of I don't know how I'm doing this, as I said, I've never worked corporate; I've never built a business before. So I hired somebody who knew their shit and I listened to everything that they said. I'm a very stubborn person so there were some things that I was like, I'm not doing it… I'm doing this my way. And that has paid off, thank God. And I focused the most on areas of impact. So how do I maintain client communications and client projects if I'm gone? If I am MIA tomorrow, what does that look like? So that looks like SOPs for my team, that looks like having the right people in place who are going to be available, which means I can't have contractors who are only available 5 hours a week. I need a full-time person. And that was like a huge wake-up call for me. And then it looked like, okay, so now we have all the delivery frameworks in place. I can't write… let's just pretend I can no longer write… I am struck deaf, blind, and dumb… I can't do it. What does that look like? That means hiring a full-time writer. And so it was like finding all these pieces, making sure all these pieces were in place. And it was messy. That kind of growth and that sort of trajectory when you've never done this before and you don't have any real support is messy. But I had a really good motivator, like really good… ya know, when it's life or death… when it's somebody's mortgage… or foreclosure…. you got the hustle in you. We all have that in us. And it was trial and error, too, to kind of see what does this role look like? Okay, that's actually not what we need. We need to focus here. And just being really aware that I cannot do all of this myself and I cannot do all of this overnight. And quite honestly, keeping profit margins in mind has been the biggest lifesaver for me because my money is not just my money. It goes to the people that I employ. It goes to the people that I love. And I'll tell you, that motivates you really well, but it's hard when you have those events because it does take you away mentally and physically, but it's how you come back and put those systems in place to make sure that you can leave again if you need to, because I know I'm going to need to, whether it's for me or somebody I love. I have that foresight. One thing about disability is I have the foresight, and I don't have the privilege of assuming I'm going to be fine forever. I think most people go into this saying, like, oh, I'll get sick when I'm in my 60s or 70s I don't have that I very much have. If I die tomorrow, does this business survive without me? And that is hugely motivating, and it changes the way that you approach your decisions and the people you hire and all these things. And today… unfortunately, my loved one had another medical event earlier this year, and I had the people in place to help me so that I could go do what I needed to do in that moment, which was take care of them and not worry about my business. I love my clients, but a blog is not more important than my loved one bleeding to death in the hospital. It was very validating for me to have that experience. Not that I wanted my loved one to go through that, but it was like I did the things that actually support the business that I saw. I can see it and I did it. And for not being a big-picture person, Latasha, you kind of nailed it.

Audrey Saccone: Yes, you really did. Before we sign off, where can people find you?

Latasha Doyle: Uncannycontent.co …And you can also find me on Instagram @uncannycontent.

Audrey Saccone: Thank you so much, Latasha, for your time and for sharing your invaluable insights here on Tuff Stuff. Listeners, don't forget to share your thoughts on this episode on our latest posts @toughstuffpod. And hit that subscribe button to always get the latest episode in your favorite podcast app. I'll see you next time!