Anja Taylor, president of Kinesis, joins Kim Allchurch Flick for a discussion about her journey from international studies and work in Berlin to focusing on local community impact through owner-operated businesses. Taylor explains Kinesis’s long-term approach to helping companies thrive through strategy, creativity, leadership development, employee engagement, and relationship-based marketing, often partnering with clients for years and building peer networks to reduce owner isolation. She critiques an overemphasis on optimization and “growth for growth’s sake,” describing strategy as a theory of winning tested through assumptions and experiments anchored by mission, values, and vision. The conversation covers Portland’s fragmented efforts, the role of local businesses in community resilience, lessons from and beyond B Corp certification, and optimism drawn from values-driven leaders and initiatives like Albina Vision Trust.
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Time Stamps
00:00 Welcome and Intro
00:54 Anja Journey and Purpose
03:00 Local Business Fabric
05:02 How Kinesis Helps Owners
07:39 Long Term Partnership Model
10:35 Community Building for Owners
13:45 Beyond Optimization to Purpose
16:11 Strategy as a Theory
18:54 Winning in Uncertainty
19:40 Businesses as Community Anchors
21:02 Purpose And Mastery
21:44 Beyond B Corp Labels
22:54 Building Local Fabric
23:56 Business As Partner
25:18 Inclusive Community Shift
27:49 Innovation From Within
30:07 Breaking Silos Together
33:02 Challenges And Vision
34:37 Albina Vision Example
36:39 What Makes Us Optimistic
39:02 Connect And Get Involved
40:07 Dinner Guest Reflections
41:53 Closing Thanks And Farewell
Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. This is Kim Allchurch Flick with the Mighty Measure Podcast and I’m delighted to be here with Anja Taylor as president of Kinesis. Anja Taylor combines her leadership and operational experience with her passion for building thriving teams and businesses. Since joining Kinesis as director of Operations in 2017, Anja has played a role, a pivotal role in shaping the company’s approach to growth and collaboration.
Anja is a natural galvanizer, that’s a word that I really love. Her passion for building strong cultures that foster employee engagement, fueling small business success, makes her an engaging speaker and trusted advisor to many business owners. Today we’re gonna talk about Kinesis local business and the importance of socioeconomic fabric an you welcome.
Anja Taylor: Yeah. Thank you so much, Kim. I’m very excited to be here.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, I’m excited as well. What has been your journey and the inspirations that have led you to this point?
Anja Taylor: Yeah, it’s, that’s such a good question. I love that. A lot of times I feel like our journeys only make sense in retrospect. We don’t necessarily set out on a path that, has us end up where we are in this current moment.
So that’s very much true for me. I came to the United States as an undergrad student in, oh, the late nineties. I was at Portland State. I got a bachelor’s in communication and then went on to get my master’s in international Policy studies. At the Monterey Institute of International Studies and I was really motivated by wanting to contribute to making the world a better place.
And so I went from a very broad global perspective and studied that and was really motivated on that level. Worked in that field a little bit. After my master’s, I moved to Berlin and worked at the US Embassy there, but ultimately came back to Portland. And had my kids here. So that focus shifted a lot more into the local and community level and even the interpersonal level from that global perspective.
But there’s a lot of skills that I still. Used today that are acquired during those times. And I am very fortunate that I have this global perspective and a little bit more broader input, I think, into my work today. So I very much benefit from that, and I still wanna make the world a better place. I think my aspirations are the same.
I’m also much more of a realist these days. So for me, the question is really where can I have impact? And the number one. For me is really on a personal level. I think that’s why I am so passionate about employee engagement, about the interpersonal things. I recently got certified as a coach. I got a certification as a coach.
And I am not that. I use that a lot. I use it in my work at Kinesis working with business owners. It’s just more of a skill building for me, but it’s really my motivation to help people get better at whatever they want to do. And I truly believe that for us at this juncture where we are strengthening local communities.
Through local businesses is a really important part of getting into the next economy, whatever shape that might be, but really moving away from just looking at corporations or so entrepreneurs as viable options. This whole idea about building up a business, scaling it, and then selling it and that gets celebrated is something that’s very foreign to me.
I really believe that businesses are part of. Like you said in the introduction, like the socioeconomic fabric. So I want to contribute to that and I wanna make my community better through that.
Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s so exciting to hear about. And I concur with you that some people are very content having a successful business and not scaling. ’cause there’s so much pressure and angst that can come with that as well. And I know that Oregon. Has, there’s something from Oregon Statistics that. Consumer goods are the engine of Oregon, and a lot of those consumer goods are small companies, and it’s the collective aspect.
So the stronger those companies are, the better. Another thing I discovered in your opening is that we actually have some things in common. I’m also a PSU grad. I lived overseas, born in the us, but I lived overseas and I really see business even though they’re local, so many businesses still have overseas.
Tentacles, overseas aspects for consumer goods often are manufacturing. There’s imports for supply, so that, but beyond that, there are other things as well. So it’s really great to talk to you. Mike. I graduated PSU with a Master’s of International Management, which no longer exists. Good.
Now it’s in, now it’s an MBI, but it’s good to have this discussion about local can be global as well. There, there are touch points that matter. So what is your view of the community that you’re in and how does Kinesis serve problem solve? What are you learning from local?
Anja Taylor: Yeah, thank you. At Kinesis, we really focus on owner operated businesses, anywhere from a couple million dollars in revenue to like lower mid market companies, and we help the owners.
Grow their businesses and that can mean many different ways. That doesn’t necessarily mean revenue growth or like scaling in which we typically understand that to be. It can be, I want my leadership team to function better. It can be I want my employees to have career paths so that they can actually thrive here.
I want build a thriving company, and for me, that means that my employees are fulfilled here. Not only. In their economic needs, but also in their needs to grow and their needs to learn new things. Purpose, mastery, all those types of things are really important for, yeah, for the business owners that we work with.
So at Kinesis, we do that work in many different ways. We’re first and foremost coming from a perspective of strategy and creativity. We help owners galvanize that. We help them identify where are we remarkable and. Amplifying that to their communities. So then with that we need to make sure that that’s true.
Whatever we are saying is remarkable about them. So we help them shore that up, manifest that within their employees within their structures. I always think it’s three things. It’s the processes, it’s the tools you build, and then it’s the people part. And often the people part is.
What people are struggling most with, what leaders are struggling most with, because it’s something that’s very un intangible. And so helping them, seeing the opportunities there, helping them craft better policies, helping them become better leaders, all of that as part of what we do, as well as marketing and the sense of, not digital marketing, but human to human marketing.
So we’re helping companies build better connections, better networks, better referral partners. Talking to them about how can you bring something to your market that your customers see as valuable that nobody else does, and that is truly authentic to who you are. So those are really interesting conversations that come about because we’re tapping into.
What the owner is passionate about, what they’re good at, what the company already has as strengths, and we helping them amplify that and we helping them building that into a system that really creates a flywheel and helps them grow. Now this is a process that takes two or three years. So we are long term horizon company and for the right client.
It’s a magical relationship. We bring a lot of fun and creativity to our work, so they are excited to meet with us. We usually meet with them every week or every two weeks. So we get really close relationships with these owners and these leadership teams, and often end up on their org charts as a strategic partner.
And that’s where we like to be. Often these engagements are six to seven years or even longer. So we have very, very strong longevity with our clients and they’re very proud of that and become really enmeshed in their business through the work that we do. And that’s very gratifying for us.
Kim Allchurch Flick: I think it’s beautiful as well, the long term.
It’s almost like a family relationship in the business sense that becoming a part Absolutely. Of that and not a cold type of consultant who comes in and looks at the charts and gives off a checklist and leaves and comes back. This is really
Anja Taylor: not at all
Kim Allchurch Flick: touch point.
Anja Taylor: We are. We are sitting in it with them and I think that’s the value that we provide.
And usually people don’t buy that initially from us. But they really appreciate just us holding the space. Yeah. That every week they come. To our meeting, and that’s the place where they can think higher level. That’s the place where they can have honest conversations. That’s the place where there’s a thought partner that truly understands their business, but still has a lot of outside perspective and helps them crystallize, galvanize ideas, figure out, okay, let’s try this.
We are big on, running experiments, so to speak. So really taking some bets, having some business innovation that we wanna act upon without. Risking too much. So we have a lot of experience because we work with so many clients on what works, what doesn’t work, what might we try here, what is a small experiment that we can draft that will give us something to learn from, but doesn’t take a lot of resources.
So all of those things are incredibly, yeah. Fruitful in the relationship and our clients really appreciate our perspective. And then we also, we get down into the work with ’em. We have a team that then helps to, create, maybe it’s a job descriptions or recruiting program or it’s a leadership offsite that we facilitate, right?
Whatever it might be, whatever the need is. We also do that work when we sit. In that with them. And we come to their companies and we roll out things and we help their employees get through it. So we are very, very much on the pulse of what’s going on, and I think that that is something that a lot of smaller businesses.
In this kind of revenue range from, I don’t know, 3 million to maybe up to a hundred million, don’t really have, but when they experience it, they really appreciate it and they are willing to put resources, time, energy, money behind that because it’s so valuable to them. Because often they feel very isolated.
And so I think for me. This is part of our community building. We do events for our clients. We bring them together. We introduce people to each other. We really wanna build a network where they can rely on their peers, on other business owners. I think a lot of times when you’re an entrepreneur, when you run a small business, it feels very isolating and it feels very much like you have a bunch of problems or challenges or things you need to do that you know other people have too.
But you don’t even have. The opportunity to reach out in a, in an organized manner. You often don’t even know who to talk to. Sometimes our clients have like peer networks. But not on a regular basis where you can really choose, do something and look at something from different perspectives and really sit down and continuously work on something.
And I think in this time where we have so much change and so much uncertainty and so many things that are constantly thrown at us, where we need to be nimble and react and position ourselves and our companies in a way that is, is. Yeah. Not just successful, but it’s also adaptive, right? It’s this mix between responding to what’s incoming, but also being firm in our values and our vision and our strategy to some extent, to really know what to say no to, what to act upon, where to pivot, where not to pivot.
All of these things and a lot of times we don’t know, as business owners, we just have hunches, we have ideas, and we really need somebody to help us figure out what am I gonna do with this? Is this wild hair or is this something that we can try out over here and what would that look like?
Kim Allchurch Flick: I love this and things I’m hearing from you, purpose, mastery and galvanizing, remarkable, and you have so many action words, Kinesis, action word, but I’m also thinking that these are dynamic entities. That the companies are really something and people often go to work and are so embroiled in operations.
And there’s so much work to do, and yet it’s so important to step back and realize the reasons why. And you have to focus on the good. But there’s also some other quotes that have come out of this podcast, like good business, strong business is a form of resistance, but also rest is a form of resistance.
And it’s almost like what you’re giving people is a way to step back from the day-to-day operations to yeah, see how they function. Into the purpose, the process, the people, the human marketing network, all of that, and take a breath. To remind themselves of the bigger picture and why, which could be a form of resistance that also brings forward better work and better productivity and better joy in actually being though.
’cause work can be hard.
Anja Taylor: Yes.
Kim Allchurch Flick: But when you know why and everybody’s seeing the why. Seeing responses to it that can be super galvanizing to use one of your words.
Anja Taylor: Yeah. You are so right. I think especially in the last 15, 20 years. The pervading knowledge about what it means to run a good business has been in the form of optimizing.
You’re taking what you have and you’re making incremental improvements and you just chip away at it. And I think a lot of people who lead businesses now are focusing on only that. Optimizing, optimizing, optimizing. How do I make this better? How do I create a process around this? How do I gain efficiencies?
What’s like productivity? All of that becomes. The benchmark, the goal that everything is serving, and I think that is really, really dangerous. We see this in the realm of strategy. A lot of business owners think they have a strategy, and when we talk to them about their strategy is essentially a plan they have.
Well, I have my yearly plan and here the activities that I’m doing. And when we ask the why question, why are you doing this? Well, because we want to grow. We wanna grow to this number. Okay. That’s interesting. Why? Why do you wanna grow to that number? Silence, right? It’s usually I don’t know, like I’m, I just wanna get bigger because bigger is better.
Like that idea. And I know you, you mentioned this before, I think now we’re seeing people who are more aware and saying, I don’t necessarily want to grow. There’s often. It’s like this panacea of everything and thinking that, if we just get over the hump and over the hump, right?
This kind of culture where we constantly are thriving towards the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and we’re optimizing our way there, we lose sight of the overall picture. And so what we do is pulling people out of that on a regular basis. To provide them the overall view, to your point, what is our purpose here?
What are we really trying to do? So I think that is a very fundamental question that get ans that gets answered in your mission, that gets answered in your values, and that also gets answered in the vision, like the vision of the painted picture. Where do you wanna take this? Where is this gonna be in five years?
In a way that’s not only satisfactory to you as the owner, but also. To your employees and to the community as a whole, what is the impact you’re making? So I think those questions are just so important. And we don’t need to spend endless hours on that, but we need to really articulate it and we need to touch base with that once in a while to see is this still where we want to go?
And the other part I would say that people often get wrong about strategy, that’s not a plan strategy is your theory of how are we getting there? Your theory of how are we going to realize our vision now? It’s a theory. It’s not, oh, we are gonna get better by 10% at what we are already doing. No.
It’s something where you take a bet on your market, on your customers, maybe on your employees, maybe on making the world a better place. And you’re saying, this is the idea that we have. Here’s the theory. If this is our theory for winning at this thing that we wanna win at, and that can be whatever it might be that’s in your vision, and that is really lies with the owner of what they wanna accomplish, the legacy they wanna leave.
And so that theory becomes something that you need to figure out how to make real and how to prove or disprove. So with that, you wanna have certain assumptions. About yourself, about your capabilities, about your employees, about the market, all of those things. And then you test those assumptions and that then gives you action items and gives you a plan to work from every year.
But that plan is a function of that theory of winning. That is a hypothesis. So I think I find that incredibly fascinating because it gets into the realm of aspiration and unknowing and is not in optimization and. Incremental improvements here and there that you know, get us 10% better because of that.
We gonna grow by, I don’t know, 15%. And that’s gonna be exciting to no one because there is no bigger why behind it. And that’s what we need. I think we need more of that. And I think once you have that work, and you said this already, work can be hard, but it’s still fun because you are going after something that you truly believe in, that you truly wanna accomplish.
That you think is gonna change something, might be changing something for you. It might be changing something for your employees, but you really wanna ask yourself the question, what is gonna be different after we’ve accomplished this? Because if it’s just more of the same, then why are we doing it?
Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. You said strategy is the theory of how are we going to get there, and then aspiration and unknowing, and I think sometimes some of the best three words are. I don’t know. I’m sure Gonna try and find out and, yeah, because that opens up so much possibility. And it also goes back to that being dynamic and the forward motion of things.
Yes. Yes. And the future is unknown. It
Anja Taylor: always is, right? Yes. But I think we’ve forgotten that. We’ve forgotten that because in so many ways for years we could look back. At what used to work, right? Best practices are an example of that. We use vec. We used to look back, figured out, okay, this is what people did.
This is what companies did, this is how it worked. If I follow these same principles, I have a very good probability of what I’m doing right now is gonna get the same results that works in a stable environment, but we are not in a stable environment anymore. So this the strategy, this theory of how are we gonna get there, becomes even more important because we need something that we can anchor on no matter what the environment is.
Is throwing at us. And I think, coming back to this idea about communities and businesses being part of the community, I think that’s really important for us as a community to have as well. Especially when I think about Portland and the community we’re in here, what is our strategy? What is our theory of winning?
What do we wanna win at? What does this gonna look like? And then businesses, I really believe this, these local businesses, not the big corporations. But the businesses that get their employees from our communities that sell into our communities or that have vendors here or that yeah, use resources here.
And that’s pretty much everybody who is here. They are part of that fabric and they’re gonna be part of lifting us up out of the situation that we’re currently in and really. Have the symbiosis with the community business have a lot of responsibility, and I think that’s why this B Corp movement was so important because it really tied us back to that there’s externalities to business that the businesses need to be accountable for, and we need to minimize the negative externalities and maximize the positive externalities.
We are not just a place that is transactional, where people get a paycheck and we sell something. We are relational. We are embedded in the social fabric of our communities. People are working not just for a paycheck, but they’re working. We know this from research, right? They’re working to be part of a bigger purpose.
They’re working to be part of a bigger goal to accomplish something together with others. That’s a very innate human. Desire to do that. People are using work to gain mastery over something. They want to perfect their craft, they wanna be good at something. They wanna learn, they wanna grow. I really believe that the majority of people want that, and they wanna be in an environment where that gets nurtured and not squashed.
And they also have a really. I think valid expectation at those companies that they’re taking care of them as humans in that sense and not just see them as cogs in the wheel and workers. So I think in that sense, B Corp was really important to establish that and have.
That legalized like the responsibilities that we have as businesses to our communities, to the environment, to, to everything around us. But I think at the same time I think we got a little bit too. Focused on what are the certifications, how are we doing that? Again, it’s like the optimizing we’re getting into this optimizing framework.
So for us, we’ve been at B Corp for a long time and we chose not to renew because we really felt it wasn’t worth our effort and resources to, to go through this. Optimization process again and again every two years, I wanna be part of bringing a community together to reach out to people beyond B Corp certifications, to reach out to people beyond.
You know this group that is already pretty solidified and is doing certain things, I wanna understand what do other local businesses do? I know that there’s a lot of businesses there here in Portland who want to be part of the community, who really value our city, who value Oregon, who value the employees, who value everything that’s around them and wanna be part of that.
And I think that is the future of the economy at large, these localized. Socioeconomic fabrics. And for me it’s really a fabric because it’s a mesh of very different interests of different entities. So you have business, you have community organizations, you have nonprofits, you have faith organizations, you have all kinds of different people with different ideas that come together.
And what we’re missing right now I think is like, what are we trying to work towards together? Yes, we wanna be in a better place. We wanna not have to struggle so hard. In terms of funding, in terms of resources that are there, but what does that look like? What are we trying to be? Who are we trying to attract?
Who are we trying to benefit? All of those questions. I think once we have something like that, it’s much easier for us to come together under that umbrella and say, what can we do? What are the trade-offs that we’re willing to make? That’s another really important part of strategy. Where do we.
Maybe let something go, but we’re gonna focus on this other thing. I think all of those things are really important conversations that we need to have, and I am a little discouraged sometimes by especially the view on the business community in the city where it’s seen as the enemy or it’s seen as something that is.
Only extractive, which I think is really coming from a perspective of bigger corporations and especially what we’re seeing right now with the whole economy around AI and all of those things that feels very violating and very extractive to all of us. And so drawing these lines between different types of businesses and really seeing an understanding how businesses are part of our local.
Fabric and we need to nurture that. They have responsibilities towards us, but also we need to nurture business and help them do the best job they can so they can hold up their end of the bargain and provide. Mostly, the support that, is it financial? Is it, in terms of jobs or is it any type of other community support that they’re very well equipped to give back?
And so it’s a back and forth and I think that’s a really important conversation that we need to have.
Kim Allchurch Flick: I love everything that you’re bringing up too. And it’s been an evolution in a way. I see evolution in funding. From venture capital to angels that used to, so many companies felt left out of that and in even seed money to where now there are more impact investors or investors that are interested in supporting mission-driven companies.
And it’s starting to evolve. And the other thing is the B Corp community and the B locals, in my opinion, looking back, having been in them for over a decade, is there was some. I won’t say exclusion as much as, but only inclusion for B Corps companies and now through time and part of it being COVID and learning.
What does community mean? What does support mean? Yeah, what does collaboration mean? That the B local PDX just change their name to on purpose, Oregon, expanding out of the name, creating something that’s very mission driven. What are we doing on purpose? What does on purpose mean? Bringing in members that are.
Nonprofits that are not B Corps that may be certified in other things. And in my work, it’s also evolved where I wanna meet a company where they are, help them really bring out their mission, vision, and values, and focus on that. And then be able to choose what is the best fit. Is it to certify or not?
Is it, what does it mean, but how to be the best? Connecting, evolving dynamic entity that can be, that’s building this fabric that you’re talking about. That’s the one of the threads that can be like, something’s only as strong as their weakest thread. So helping that collective I think is a great end goal no matter how a company might go there.
But to be able to see it, but also see the importance of proof sources that because we’re still in an era where making a claim. Is not great to do without some proof source that creates that, that creates the I’m trying to think of the word, but confidence.
And because we still have some companies that have claims that are not, so these things we’re talking about and whether it’s certifying or not, but at least talking about.
Making impacts, talking about mission, vision, values and having some documentation about that to share because it also brings in stronger partnerships. Yeah. That people are connecting together because of that. And I see that in like consumer goods, finding packaging companies that have. A mission and a vision, but they’re also innovating.
Yep. And I really think what you’re talking about is creating more innovation and there’s a book out there by Louis Gump called The Inside Innovator that’s about employees and how to have an entrepreneurial, innovative spirit within a company’s also, yeah, a major gift.
Anja Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah. We know from research that innovation can come from the innovation department or from the visionary leader, but often, more often than not, it is dispersed in the organization because if you’re close to the work, you see things and you can innovate on that.
And that’s where the power is. And that’s often where companies that they can harness that and create. A mindset around it. Create incentives around it, motivate people, or people are intrinsically motivated because they see this is being rewarded. Then you see much more innovation. And I think to your point, I think this is so important.
And again, this is a muscle that has really much. Atrophied at this point. We are not really good innovators anymore. And I think especially as businesses, especially as small businesses, we need to become better at innovating. We need to take some risks. We need to understand that what used to work five years ago or 10 years ago doesn’t work anymore.
And what is the other thing that we’re doing? What I really love about on purpose and this rebrand and everything that’s happening there is that it invites a broader conversation. I think it’s really important that we bring people together. Who are local, and it doesn’t matter if you B Corp or if you’re a benefit corporation or if you’re just curious or if you’re just a business owner who wants to be part of this community who is here, especially for example, manufacturers.
The cost of moving is very big and who’s made a bet on Portland and now is trying to figure out how do I create community here so that we all can. Port each other, and I think that is the important conversation. And that doesn’t mean we agree on everything. That might not even mean we agree on the priorities right now, but the ability to listen to each other and to come together and have.
Have conversations to have discourse. I think all of those things are really important and we need more venues that are structured around that so that we can together come up collectively with better solutions. I think especially here, it always strikes me how many separate things. Are going on at the same time where it’s really hard sometimes to understand who’s doing what and there’s duplicate efforts or there’s like many different things that are seemingly going towards the same goal.
And so I think rather than inventing everything new is bringing people together and just having conversations and not, doing something in a silo. I think that’s where the power is for humans generally. We are good in community. We’re especially. Well suited to come together and help each other, support each other, elevate each other.
And in a town like Portland that is fairly small and very close knit, I think that is the opportunity and that’s where we really have a competitive advantage of. We can overcome the segmentation and the silos and really figuring out how do we lift each other up together. We have so many great things here.
Apart from, the environment, we have the Albina Vision Trust, we have the Frog Ferry Initiative. We have so many cool things that we could throw our energy behind that are important that are. Potentially life changing for the people who live in this community. And so I think we really need to figure out like, what do we have already?
How can we come together? How can we support each other? How can we support these efforts with each other? And really looking past our own little horizon and reaching out to each other.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. And I think this is something visionary that you’re tapping into, but also. With on purpose, Oregon and other cities and states may have their own as well.
Is that. Wesley who is the ed is starting to look at it the way I see the world too is ’cause I’m a member of so many different things. Yeah. It’s almost like overlapping concentric circles that there’s, there is a common ground. Even though an organization for instance, better Portland and other cities may have similar things, which is a gathering of businesses to share their voice, to help with changing legislation on issues like homelessness and safety and transportation and.
Prosper Portland, which gives grants and things like that. There’s different ways they do it, but the overlapping focus seems to be very, very similar. It’s how do we help local businesses and how do we help this fabric? And I see on purpose Oregon as being a. A more inclusive part of that over time and coming up with a speaker series called Common Ground, which is just kicking off, and I’m seeing this having come from Champions Retreat a few months ago.
That other communities were talking about the same thing. That it’s not just B Corps, it is community. It is,
Anja Taylor: yeah.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Really what are the nonprofits doing? And everybody has a role, but looking at it as there are overlaps and recognizing that and being a part of it. So with all this and your wonderful quotes what are some obstacles and challenges that you’re seeing for you and the community?
Anja Taylor: Yeah, I think what I alluded to is the fragmentation, and I think a little bit of the sentiment that business tends to be negative or that growth is a bad thing, and I understand where that comes from, but I really would like everybody to consider moving forward in a way that is supportive of all the communities.
And I think. We really need to recognize that we can’t stop the future. We can’t go back to how things may be used to be. And I think we need to adapt to really figuring out how do we get into the next decade in a way that has a focus on what we wanna build here. So we need to identify what that looks like and we need to.
Really put a vision forth on how we are going to manifest that. And so I think those are some of the challenges that I’m seeing right now where we’re insular tackling problems and we’re very focused on those and I think that’s important. But I think it’s also important to have some sort of a vision of Portland and Oregon in 2036 that is.
Really inspiring and broad enough that people can self-select into it and then figure out how can we support it. As a business community, as a nonprofit community, as just citizens living here, all of those things we need to come together and this is really what I love about the Albino Vision Trust, is that they’re really putting that forth.
They’re putting a vision forth and. And I can get excited about this. I, as somebody who you know, has been living in Portland for 20 years, looks at that and it’s like, this is awesome. This is not just awesome for that particular parcel of land that they have, but this is awesome for the whole city because the vision that they have is so.
Comprehensive and is really one where you uplift everybody. Like this is something where people would, I, this is how I see it. Like I wanna go there and walk at the waterfront and go to the shops that are gonna be there and go through that community and spend my money there. That’s the idea.
Like we wanna bring that flourishing. To the city through these developments and it’s a very long-term vision and it’s not there yet. And when you look around it’s like you, you get like the motor center issues and all that going on, but it’s something that is exciting and motivating and so I think we need more of that type of stuff.
Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that you brought that up. And there’s also some other developments, and for listeners, this is about areas where people have been displaced over past decades and rebuilding for inclusivity. And I love reading a quote, I think it was Ru Adams who runs the the ine of Vision Trust. It was also about saying we’re not asking permission.
This is something that is
Anja Taylor: Yes,
Kim Allchurch Flick: that is. Going to happen. I find it so exciting. I love the idea of an inclusive equity based city. We’ll probably never be there wholly, but the advancement toward that in the conversations, it’s super, super important. And with that, what I will put in, I’ll, in the show notes, a link to the Albina Vision, trust, and some other things we’re discussing as well.
With that, what makes you optimistic?
Anja Taylor: I think I’m just an eternal optimist. Like I, I need to be optimistic. I need to be optimistic because I’m doing this work. I wanna be optimistic about the place where I’m living, where I’m raising my kids. I’m optimistic because of. A lot of people that I’m meeting that share those goals that do are doing great things.
Right now I’m working with a business owner who has a company of 600 people who really wants to create another entity that is solely focused on helping people thrive. That is his personal mission. That is what he wants to do. He’s willing to put his energy behind it. He’s willing to put resources behind it.
Those are the things. Those are members of our community that have vision for what could be different. They are. Resource to do something. And there’s a lot of things he could be doing. There’s a lot of things that demand his attention, but he’s a, he has said this is what I’m gonna do.
This is, I’m gonna make this my life’s work. And that gives me a lot of hope, a lot of optimism, and quite frankly is so motivating in the work that I’m doing every day that I feel like if, we can amplify that, wanna put that out there, manifest it more of that place.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, thank you for that. And I also find what makes me optimistic is innovators are still innovating, and yes, we’re making strides and some people are just head down doing something and they pop up with all sorts of ideas that are changing the way we do work and the way we do life, and helping make things cleaner.
And recognizing that science matters, but also just looking at what stresses people and how to reduce that and how to make. Work more productive, but also fun and healthy.
Anja Taylor: Yes.
Kim Allchurch Flick: I think there’s a lot to that.
Anja Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah. No and I think, I’m personally not somebody who shies away from hard things.
I like hard things. I ride my bike every weekend and I go uphill because I love that. I love a challenge. I love something that I can sink my teeth into. So challenges don’t really scare me, but I would like to see more of a community. Effort and a little bit more we all going in the same direction.
I think that is my hope for the future.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, that’s so awesome. So how can people reach you and how can people help you?
Anja Taylor: Yeah. Thank you for that question. You can reach me probably best on LinkedIn. So it’s Anja Taylor, and Anja is spelled A-N-J-A. And then Taylor is T-A-Y-L-O-R. The company is Kinesis, K-I-N-E-S-I-S. Yeah, we help owner operated businesses grow and thrive, and that’s probably the easiest. How can people help? I think people can help by showing up to conversations, by listening first. I think that’s really important. I think I’m always open for a conversation. I’d invite conversations. I love to talk to people, especially business owners.
We have obviously a lot of voices in our community and our clients, and I always love to add to that and bring people together and connect people. So I guess I’m answering the question, how can I help? So that is what I like to do.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Definitely a two way street. And now we’re into the final question.
If you could have dinner with anyone up to a table of four, including you living or deceased, who would they be and why?
Anja Taylor: Yeah. That’s such a hard question. It’s like when you think about all the opportunities. Yeah. Meeting so many wonderful and great people. I would say I take dinner with my kids and my wife any day.
But given this particular question first one has to be Michelle Obama great admirer of her. Just find her incredibly impressive. Yeah, I would just, I would probably be completely starstruck or however that, whatever you say, I know I probably would have to prepare like my question in advance, but I would love to have a conversation with her.
The second person would be Ramdas. Love, love him, not only for his insights and this amazing life that he has lived, but he’s also incredibly funny. Been listening to his podcasts and talks, well, I don’t know, podcasts. He didn’t do podcasts, that they didn’t exist back then, but the talks that he’s been giving over the years, and he’s so witty and just makes me laugh so many times.
And so I really apart from his insights, I really, really love listening to him. I would love to. To have ’em at a table. I think it will be wonderful. And then the last person is a personal family friend. Actually of my parents who died 20 years ago, he had cancer. And so I would love the opportunity to connect with him.
He was in his fifties at the time and he had lived a very adventurous and wonderful life. And I, now I’m 50 and I would love to just reconnect with him and ask him questions and just learn more about his life’s journey.
Kim Allchurch Flick: What a beautiful table. Anja Taylor, you are a delight. So insightful, and this has been a wonderful conversation.
Anja Taylor: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you for giving me the opportunity, Kim. And I always love when we meet and talk, so I’m looking forward to the next time.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Thank you. I love what you’re doing in the community, so I think that’s a part of the joy of being in a room with you.
Thank you everyone. I’m signing off with the Mighty Measure Podcast and wishing you a good week, a good month, and a good year. Take care everyone. Bye-bye.
This Episode’s Guest: Anja Taylor
As President of Kinesis, Anja Taylor combines her leadership and operational experience with her passion for building thriving teams and businesses. Since joining Kinesis as Director of Operations in 2017, Anja has played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s approach to growth and collaboration. Anja is a natural galvanizer. Her passion for building strong cultures that foster employee engagement fueling small business success makes her an engaging speaker and trusted advisor to many business owners.
