Building a Successful Design Consultancy

Arlene Birt, a visual storyteller and educator, discusses the intersection of motherhood and running her own company with employees.

Arlene and host, Kaila Sachse, discuss practical parenting hacks, the challenges of balancing work and family life, and the importance of creating a supportive community. 

Arlene also shares her journey from freelancing to running a successful design consultancy, emphasizing the need for financial health and effective communication in both parenting and business. 

The conversation highlights the evolving nature of priorities and the significance of understanding complex topics in a relatable way.

More About Arlene Birt

Arlene Birt is a mom, and she creates visuals to help individuals connect emotionally to seemingly distant environmental topics. 

A visual storyteller, information designer, and educator, her visuals explain the complexities of science and social topics to non-expert audiences. As graphics officer with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she co-created figures with 60+ climate scientists – including one that landed on the front page of global news media. Birt is a professor in Creative Entrepreneurship at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), and founder and creative director of design consultancy, Background Stories.

Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Financial Times, Le Monde, Creative Review, U.S. News and World Report, and numerous other global media. She has published chapters in several books, including New Challenges for Data Design.

Birt was visiting fellow at Seoul National University (2023-’24), adjunct faculty of Wuhan University of Technology, Fulbright fellow in the Netherlands, and has held several artist residencies. Birt holds a master’s degree from Design Academy Eindhoven (the Netherlands) and runs workshops internationally.

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After Bedtime, “Why Doesn’t My Kid Listen? (And What To Do Instead of Yelling)”

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Transcript

Kaila Sachse (00:00)
Welcome to the bringing up business podcast where we talk about business and parenting. I am your host, Kaila Sashay. I am a toddler mom and owner and founder of a creative and marketing agency called Yumari Digital. Yumari Digital specializes in websites, email campaigns, other digital marketing and branding for small businesses. Before we start the show, I want to share a really cool parenting hack that

totally blew my mind yesterday. It's really, it's fun. It's great for parents with smaller kids. Maybe even teenagers. I don't know, Arlene, you can tell me here. But I had heard on the After Bedtime podcast that if you tell your kid to do something and then wait eight to 10 seconds, it feels like forever, but if you wait without intervening or saying anything,

the chances of your kid cooperating go up by 60%. So of course, having a toddler, I had an opportunity to try it almost immediately. He had dropped his empty bowl from the table and I very calmly asked him to please pick it up. He, for some reason, he immediately responded by asking for protein milk, which is his cute little way of asking for some of my protein shake.

I dodged the question, ignored it because that's irrelevant. I had asked him to do something. So I repeated my request and asked him again, please pick up your bowl. That is when the timer started in my head and I waited, I counted an excruciatingly long eight seconds. And sure enough, a miracle happened. He got down from the table and actually picked up his bowl.

It was amazing. I don't know how it works. It's magical. But yeah, I'm definitely adding that to my parenting arsenal. And I hope that that can continue to provide help and relief So yeah, anyway, that's my latest hack. I just wanted to share it. Let's introduce today's super impressive guest, Arlene Birt. Arlene has a 12 year old daughter.

and she creates visuals to help emotionally connect people to seemingly distant environmental topics. A visual storyteller, information designer, and educator, her visuals explain the complexities of science and social topics to non-expert audiences. As a graphics officer with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also known as the IPCC,

She co-created figures with over 60 climate scientists, including one that landed on the front page of global news media. Birt is founder and creative director of her design consultancy called Background Stories.

And of course, because there's more, I'm telling you, she's super impressive.

Birt also holds a master's degree from Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands and runs workshops internationally. Arlene, I so look forward to hearing more of your story and thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.

Arlene Birt (03:19)
Thank you for having me.

Kaila Sachse (03:21)
Yes. So first, let's talk about your journey with Background Stories and motherhood, which came first for you.

Arlene Birt (03:29)
Yeah, great question. They're both kind of my babies. Background Stories started off as just my own freelance freelance business. So as a an independent information designer. you know, freelance is of course doing everything yourself. So that takes a lot of time, you have to wear a lot of different hats. My daughter was born

Kaila Sachse (03:46)
Mm-hmm.

Arlene Birt (03:54)
And I can't remember the exact timeframe. I was freelancing for a couple years. She was born. I was trying to juggle her as a small infant, as well as the business. She was also very, very attached to me as an infant, one of those infants that you just can't put down. They have to be like on you. So I remember a number of meetings and like,

Kaila Sachse (04:13)
Yeah, that was my kid too. ⁓

Arlene Birt (04:17)
where I'm there with her just out of the frame of the video or working one handed on the laptop so that she's in my other arm, ⁓ those types of juggling maneuvers. But she's now 12, so that feels like a long way away. ⁓ Yes, but it's been a really fun adventure.

Kaila Sachse (04:39)
Yeah, I can completely relate to having a newborn who's very attached and eventually an infant who's really attached. My kid was the exact same way. He was also very colicky, so that didn't help things. It's funny too, I have a cousin who she now has three kids. Her first was a girl, super easy. Her second was a boy, super easy. So when she had her third, also a boy,

she was expecting that same simplicity, being able to hold her kid while she's working and really not have any issues, right? But her third is wild. And he's just all over the place and she's having this really hard time juggling the two. So for you, it sounds like you had to either go off camera or like try to balance the two.

Do you have any advice for somebody with a kid who is attached like that?

Arlene Birt (05:40)
Yeah, I mean, I think going through that, I always tried to remind myself of the longer term, like, well, maybe maybe her tantrums now and, and the attachment is, is an indicator of a strong relationship down the road. And maybe she's getting out her, her angst now as an infant. And, and maybe it'll make it easier when I'm going through teenage years, that kind of thing. But

I also feel like every child is so different, that it's hard to give advice because, yeah, they're each their own independent people. But things move so quickly. I mean, I look at the past 12 years and I think, wow, really, it's been 12 years. And it's really fun to see them grow and evolve. And just when you think, it's going to be like this forever, they shift. And I think that's especially true with

the really young ones that you just have this feeling of this is my life now. And, and then things change, then they drop a nap or start teething or begin talking or whatever the next step is. And it evolves. They're the same people, but they're evolving and they evolve a lot quicker than we adults do.

Kaila Sachse (06:50)
That is such a cool reminder because when we are in the thick of parenting, feels like it feels all encompassing. feels like that is indicative of the rest of our life and we're just going to be in the funk forever. So it's really refreshing to hear that advice of shifting mindset and just saying, look, this is temporary. Things will change.

And also maybe this issue that we are facing right now is a good thing. Maybe there's it's indicative of growth. It's indicative of positive attachment. Maybe there's something more here that can actually be positive and a good thing. So I like that idea of shifting mindset. I can also see how shifting mindset can be helpful in business too, because we do go through moments in business where they're, they're hard.

You mentioned having to wear many hats as a freelancer. At what point did that change for you? Where you went from wearing many hats to delegating and hiring out or have you delegated and hire out? What does your business look like now?

Arlene Birt (08:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we have grown as a business. We're now four full time of us and we have several core collaborators that kind of support us as needed. The main driver of that was I wanted to do more teaching. think something I've learned about myself is that I always want to be doing multiple things. So I teach as well as run Background Stories.

And when I started taking a more of an intensive teaching role is when I realized, OK, I need somebody else to support throughout this. So that was a really that was one of the hardest moments of the business was finding like just all the extra pressure you take on of having another salary to pay and benefits and and covering that just going from one person you're essentially doubling in size if you hire a full time.

person. I mean, it all worked out wonderfully. But it was one of the most stressful moments, I think, of running my business. The second hire after that, when we went to three full time, was less, difficult because I already knew some of the processes and it wasn't as large of a percentage jump through the business.

Kaila Sachse (09:23)
interesting. It's almost like going from one kid to two kids to three kids. I heard that after I wouldn't, I don't know, I only have one. but it sounds like after you get past the two kid mark, that's when it's just like, okay, I'm just, I'm outnumbered at this point. I'm just, you've got like your systems down. What kind of systems have you implemented in your business that have helped you

Arlene Birt (09:29)
Thank you.

Kaila Sachse (09:48)
go from that one employee to multiple employees more smoothly. What was that like?

Arlene Birt (09:53)
Yeah, I mean, I think just on the front end of when it was the right time to hire, really taking a close look at finances and understanding what cash flow did we need to have coming in in order to support another salary and the benefits and taxes that come with that.

How many clients does that mean and where we add in our stability of clients and who is going to be bringing in those clients? Was that going to sit with me or was that going to be part of this other person's role? So really thinking through all the details because I think initially, the first thought when you're ready to hire another person, it's like I just have too much. I need help. And but that's not specific enough.

So you have to really get very detailed about, what actually is this person going to do? What percentage of their time is going to be, you know, billable client work? What percentage is general business management? And acknowledging that it takes time for people to ramp up and understand my preferences and my way of doing things while also adapting and inviting the ideas that they have

So we do, like that's at the beginning of things, Now with our team, of course we have, we've developed over the years more standards. ⁓

Kaila Sachse (11:04)
Yeah.

Arlene Birt (11:16)
I'm someone who really likes to experiment. And that can be good, I think, but it can also mean that every project is like brand new. And it can be very helpful to have some standards in place of like, well, this is the process that we typically go through. And it took a surprising long time for me to...

realize that, just like we're developing an infographic and even though the content and subject matter is totally different every time and the process, you it's different people involved, but I can guide it toward a standardized process that supports what I need as well as gets us to that end result in a relatively efficient manner. So I think standardizing some steps has been really helpful. And of course, project management tools when the projects are

Kaila Sachse (11:56)
sense.

Arlene Birt (12:03)
are live and active.

Kaila Sachse (12:05)
That makes sense. Yeah, developing an SOP or the standard operating procedure for whatever task can help with duplication. So instead of now it's just you doing the task or one specific employee doing the task. Now you can offload that work to pretty much anybody as long as they have access to that SOP that's written or spelled out very, very clearly. Did you develop your SOPs or did somebody else?

on your team do that with you or how did that look like?

Arlene Birt (12:39)
Yeah, so actually I had never heard of the term SOP before one of my team members brought it up. so I had developed some processes related to creative processes. So a lot of what our team does is information design. So we do a lot of infographics and data visualization, visually communicating complex topics.

So part of that is like researching and understanding the context before we get into the actual design itself. So I think I was focused on those aspects of like the design process for information design, which is relatively more new in the creative world.

And then my team members were like, well, we can have processes across everything for billing and invoicing and bringing on clients and onboarding team members as well as specific processes that clients are interested in. So that was, yeah, that's amazing. And that's, I think, really one of the benefits to having multiple people because it doesn't all have to be on me. The others bring really great ideas into the team.

Kaila Sachse (13:44)
Say that again, sister. When we have more brains helping us out, it just helps in general. And that's both with business and in parenting too. Tell us a bit about the village who's supporting you with parenting, or do you have a village? What does that support look like for you in your family life?

Arlene Birt (14:06)
Yeah, well, my partner, my husband is really supportive. so the first three years of my daughter's life, she was born in Belgium, my husband is Belgians, and we lived there for about seven years total. And the first three years of my daughter's life. There's great social support systems there for like childcare and

At the same time, they really respect the European work schedules are very much like, you end your day at five or before. ⁓ So it's a very different kind of approach to work than I think the standard American daily life. That said, I've always been a little bit of a workaholic and maybe that's just because I really enjoy the work that I do. So

here in America, it is quite different. We live in a city that's away from immediate family members, both on my husband's side as well as my side. But somehow managed to make it work. My husband's very helpful and accommodating. His schedule is able to be quite flexible on times when needed.

Kaila Sachse (15:08)
Beautiful. So it sounds like it's just you and your husband and you're essentially switching off parental duties, maybe.

Arlene Birt (15:16)
Yeah, and certainly as you know, my daughter has gotten older, she is developing her own interests. So it's I think it's very different scenario than having a toddler running around. During COVID, I think was one of the, you know, that first and I'm sure many, those who were parents during COVID had that just really immediate reaction of like, okay, how do I juggle having everyone at home and still needing to do work and

So I think that was the biggest shift and shock to our family system. But we have an office room where we can close the door. It has glass windows on it. So we can indicate when my daughter's home and I have meetings, can just, we've set the boundaries relatively early about meetings are my time for work.

Kaila Sachse (16:09)
Yeah.

Arlene Birt (16:09)
And sometimes I have to prepare for meetings, but I'll let her know when I'm available to come help her with whatever she needs.

Kaila Sachse (16:16)
Yeah, sounds like, so you're working from home, you have boundaries in place to communicate to your daughter, like, hey, this is my work time. My parenting time is different from my work time, so those are two different worlds for her to be able to differentiate. What kind of boundaries do you have in place and how have you implemented those?

Arlene Birt (16:35)
Yeah, good question. I think her understanding what meetings mean, that I'm not available during those times. Sometimes she'll kind of come into my peripheral vision and like bring a note about like, can I spend

Kaila Sachse (16:41)
Mmm, yeah.

Arlene Birt (16:52)
20 more minutes on Minecraft or whatever the question is. So I try to indicate to her whether that's welcomed, if it's an internal meeting that I'm on, or if it's something where I really need to focus and maybe I'm with clients and I'm not able to respond. But I think in general, keeping the communication really going and letting her know that, yes, I'm there, I love being a parent.

and I also enjoy the work that I'm doing and I'm trying to juggle both of these and sometimes for me that's stressful and I hope that she can understand and be flexible and acknowledging I need to be flexible sometimes too.

Kaila Sachse (17:34)
Yeah, there's definitely a pressure there as a working parent and more specifically an entrepreneurial mother where we were carrying so much, right? We're carrying our businesses for you. You're carrying four employees. So you're feeding those four employees. And then also you have your daughter who you want to communicate to her. You love her. You're there for her.

do you balance those two worlds? It's challenging. So I just want to acknowledge that really quickly. That is very normal to feel that pressure and to try to balance the two. I don't know if there is a balance. mean, do you think balance is this mythological thing? Or is it attainable? What do you think?

Arlene Birt (18:23)
Yeah, I mean, think it is what are what are your priorities as an individual? What does that balance mean for you? For me, I know that I really enjoy my business, I enjoy my family, and I enjoy teaching and I always need something something else besides the business and the family. And that, I think supports me as a whole person. And I know that that's what I need. So

for me finding my balance probably doesn't look like your balance or someone else's balance.

Kaila Sachse (20:09)
So earlier you mentioned having to create a stability within your business in order to be able to grow and continue to hire and support your existing hires. How have you been able to obtain that stability? What do you do to support it? How do you get it?

If somebody is looking to grow their own business and go from zero to one employee to multiple employees, how do they do that?

Arlene Birt (20:38)
I think at the end of the day, it all comes down to the financial health of your business and your own capacity to to support people.

As I've had more team members, it does mean more of my time is spent on some of the administrative tasks of making decisions on health insurance plans and some of the things that the business owner has to do, which is not always my favorite side of things because I really enjoy the design side and the creative side. And the administrative stuff is important for the business, but it's where I would...

not necessarily prefer to spend my time.

Kaila Sachse (21:16)
How do you support the financial growth of your business? What does a business owner need to do?

Arlene Birt (21:21)
Yeah.

I'm also very focused on data. So for me, really tracking things is an important part of my process. And I think it is really helpful to see, well, what is the financial flow? can I support another team member salary without causing me extra stress and stress about like, do we have enough to sustain this person long term?

And also, do I have enough capacity to meet with this person to make sure they get the coaching they need to review that many more projects? it's a lot of different things, but looking at how is my time being spent? How are the businesses resources coming in and being spent? those are really important parts of the equation.

Kaila Sachse (22:08)
Absolutely. So it sounds like you can't just start a business and then it'll function itself. You actually have to be an admin, take care of all the background tasks, watch your finances. For somebody who's afraid of numbers and finances, mean, what do you do to prepare yourself for a business? Because you do need to watch your finances. That is absolutely 100 % true. How does one go from

afraid of numbers and money to having to manage it.

Arlene Birt (22:42)
Yeah, don't be afraid, I guess is the first thing I would say, like, I think, especially creative people, we have this tendency to say, like, well, I'm creative. So I'm bad at math, or like, we kind of tend to take this, duality, and it doesn't have to be that way. Numbers are just an indication. And,

Kaila Sachse (22:44)
Yeah

Arlene Birt (23:04)
having some basic understanding of how much do I have coming in each month? Where is that money going to each month? What are some trends I'm seeing over time? Do my summers tend to be more slow? You know, like picking up those patterns.

because, of course, our world capitalist society tends to work based on financial flows. But it's also you can count time, like what's important to you? it the money? Is it time? Is it how much, time you're able to spend outside of work with your family or with what other priorities you might have? And

using that as an indicator. So maybe I measure financial flows, but also my time, where is my time going to end? Does that make me excited and happy at the end of the day? Or is it draining? And if I'm looking to hire another person, what percentage of my time is going toward the activities that I enjoy doing? And what maybe can I have someone else support and take on some of those?

time-consuming activities that I get less enjoyment.

Kaila Sachse (24:11)
Yeah, it sounds like there's there's an importance in personal development and understanding yourself. What makes me tick? What do I get excited about? What am I less excited about for the things that I'm less excited about? Can I offload it completely? can I delegate it to somebody? Or is it something that just doesn't even need to exist? Maybe I don't need to be doing the task at all, but I'm placing this weird importance on it.

for no reason. Or flip side, what are the things that light me up? What do I want to spend more time, energy, money, whatever on? Understanding those two is important as a business owner and as a parent as well, I could speak for myself as a mom. I can get drained very quickly. I can go from 100 to zero.

in almost no time if I'm not watching and being mindful of how I'm feeling and what I need. And sometimes it's as simple as like going to go eat, right? Sometimes I just forget to eat and then all of sudden I find myself yelling. I'm like, why am I acting like this? This is silly. It's because my cup is empty. So what are some things that you do to make sure that your cup is full?

Arlene Birt (25:28)
Yeah, well, before I go there, ⁓ I want to

Kaila Sachse (25:30)
Mmm.

Arlene Birt (25:33)
Because I think sometimes when people hear, ⁓ I need to understand my priorities and how that fits in, and that can feel really heavy. so I would like to encourage people to think it's okay if your priorities shift. It's okay that you don't have everything figured out at the beginning. Like, I'm not gonna sit down and make a list of all the things that I like and dislike and then have it be done with. Like, that's an evolving process. And my list may look different.

Kaila Sachse (25:40)
Yeah.

Arlene Birt (26:00)
you know, next month than it did today or last year. So I think beginning and being attentive and it's okay that you change your mind. It's okay that things shift. And to do that in a way that is calmly acknowledging and.

Kaila Sachse (26:04)
Yeah.

Arlene Birt (26:19)
everything's okay. You don't have to figure it all out before you jump in. I really embrace the idea of experimenting as you go. But your actual question was about what I do to make sure I'm like feeling fulfilled. And I think that's also something you know, an evolving idea. I know there are some ideas that I have already and think some things that I've experimented with.

Kaila Sachse (26:27)
glad you said that.

Arlene Birt (26:42)
And sometimes those work really well and other times I realize, okay, I just need to take an afternoon off and get outside or force myself to go outside or go for a walk or do something totally different. And, it's the patterns.

though I would love to say like, this is my day to day pattern. And this is what works for me. And it's always the same. And now that I found the solution, it's all golden. But that's not the truth. I mean, I think I'll get into a little bit of a rhythm and then something will shift. And that's part of life and part of me and part of me evolving as well.

Kaila Sachse (27:02)
You

I'm so glad that you said all of that because it really does lighten the pressure and I can say for me I am recovering perfectionist. I'm somebody who overpreps for things. I can get stuck in over analysis paralysis. That's just my old wiring and my tendency.

working through that and I gotta tell ya, it feels so much nicer to just start something without preparing as much, right? You do wanna prepare a little bit, but just starting something and then as you say, feeling it out. Does this feel correct? Does something feel off? What can I tweak? Let's evolve in this process instead of trying to have it all together before starting. Because there is something about that that feels heavy and almost unbearable.

Like why would you even want to start if you have to get every single T crossed and I dotted before doing the thing? So yeah, I love that you said that. Thank you for sharing that. So let's talk about Background Stories, the work. know, what prompted you to start this work, which originally was freelance work and then eventually grew. You know, what got you excited about it?

Arlene Birt (28:42)
Yeah, I am really interested in helping people better understand the world around them. and for me, this is especially highlighting the importance of social and environmental topics. And I think in our modern lives, we tend to feel very disconnected from the big picture of things and the complexity of things. And because of that, think there's this

often towards like, oh, well, it's simple. It's simple because I don't know the detail behind it. So I'm really interested in how we can communicate without oversimplifying the complexity that exists in our natural environment, in our social systems, in all kinds of systems. So a lot of this, its root is in science communication of how do we communicate this complexity in a way that helps non-expert audiences understand a little bit.

and maybe be interested to dig into more depth. And especially helps audiences understand how this topic relates to them on an individual, on a human level. So myself, my family, my community, my region, ⁓ kind of working from that of how do these complex topics affect humans.

Kaila Sachse (29:59)
Oh, I deeply appreciate that work that you are doing because you are taking something that's, that can feel overwhelming convoluted just too much for, you know, someone like me who's just like going through life and doesn't really understand, there is a bigger picture going on. So you're taking all this information and you're actually making it interesting.

Because once you can peak that interest, you can open up the door to exploration into the subject matter. So I really appreciate you doing that. I can see how our society would be disconnected from the bigger issues because they either feel like too much or maybe they're just over there and we're over here in our own little bubbles. What is something that you can do to pique that interest?

What does that look like?

Arlene Birt (30:48)
You know, one of the things I love about information design is that I get to learn new things all the time about these very specific topics, whether it's kind of an engineering concept or a science concept, or a health system. And so

quite often the people who are experts in those, like they speak with other experts, so they have a particular way of talking that often involves a lot of acronyms or jargon or ways that they understand the world around them. And I find it really interesting as kind of an outsider to those to listen to that, to try to understand what is that and how does it relate to the audience that we're trying to reach.

Kaila Sachse (31:29)
Yeah.

Arlene Birt (31:29)
So often that's bringing the information to a human scale of what does this mean for myself, my family, my community. And that's, one of the first places I look for is what's the connection between this particular science and humans' everyday lives, community members' everyday lives.

Kaila Sachse (31:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's so beautiful. I have a very smart friend, Natalya. She was just on a boat in Norway doing climate science research. And I can imagine how it would be for a scientist like her to study something so deeply and then need to communicate it with the public.

And you know, ultimately, like there's, sounds like there are several channels between the scientist and their research and then that information eventually reaching the public. And what you're doing is you are a sort of conduit in between the two.

So yeah, I really appreciate your work. Where can someone learn more about you? Where can they find you?

Arlene Birt (32:38)
Yeah, our team's website is www.backgroundstories.com. And I also have a website that is for some of my own speaking and presenting that I do, and that's arlenebirt.com. Either of those ways, I'm also on LinkedIn, and through our website, there's a way that you can reach our team.

Kaila Sachse (33:02)
Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us and keep on keeping on with the good work that you're doing.

Arlene Birt (33:09)
you as well. thanks for this forum to talk about parenting as well as work that we do.

Kaila Sachse (33:14)
Thank you. Thank you.