My creative tank is on E. I've worked as a full-time creative for long enough to know that creativity ebbs and flows. But there is a difference between a creative lull and a creative burnout. And I can feel a bit of the latter right now. I blame: The online world My period And unchecked doom scrolls for the last week or so. All of which have resulted in an information overload. Information overload kills creativity, clarity — and can be frustrating as hell. Have you ever just wanted an answer...
9 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #130 Despite all my yammering on about goals & planning this year - I didn’t meet my first goal of the year - to register 10 people for my latest workshop, The Snowed In Strategy Sesh. But I pride myself on being solution-oriented, and I believe there is so much to learn, even from our perceived failures—so even though I didn't reach my goal, I set out to understand why after the fact. If I’m being honest, I was already aware of some flaws in the January planning workshop model. Like...
16 days ago • 6 min read
ISSUE #128 The coffee was buzzing through my veins as I unfolded my NEW for 2023 dry-erase calendar on my office floor. With a dozen different translucent tabs and dry-erase markers in hand. I mapped out a year's worth of launches, milestones, off time, flex days, and client spots. IT WAS A LOT. Some of it was good. And all of it was good-hearted. I’ve always been a BIG dreamer - the tendency to bite off a little more then I can chew, with the coffee, runs through my veins. But making...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
ISSUE #127 I was half-checked out in a pre-Christmas break IG story scroll when another creator's voice cut through the almost OOO haze... She candidly shared that she didn’t think setting goals in January was effective. As someone who is quite literally hosting an annual brand planning & goal-setting workshop in January (which you can still get for $60 until the ball drops), I perked up. I turned on my audience listening ears (if nothing else, for research purposes). She didn’t elaborate...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
ISSUE #126 I was double blanket tucked on the couch watching season 3 of Gilmore Girls, half conscious that my partner Kyle was sweeping the floors and…. there was something about wrapping paper. And then I was out. That information alone doesn’t read “poignant moment” in flashing red letters. But I was able to rest, guilt-free, for that matter - while someone else did something on my mental to-do list… is huge. And it’s not something I could have done a year ago (I’m stressed just thinking...
about 1 month ago • 10 min read
ISSUE #125 We all know that one person who never seems to drop the ball despite being one of the busiest people you know. For Lauren Conrad, Emily Weiss, the then-teen Vogue NY (and Chanel) intern, started one of my favorite brands, Glossier. But for me - it was Derek. By the time Derek was 34, he was running his third successful business—the most popular restaurant in my hometown—owned 50 rental units, and within the two years that I worked for him, he opened a coffee shop and another...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
ISSUE #124 When I was 16 years old, I got the coolest job in town (or at least I thought so Reader). I can still remember what I was wearing (a cyan blue zip-up hoodie and jean shorts) when the owner, Deb, handed me three white T-shirts with an ice cream cone on the chest and hired me on the spot. We stood in front of the big white paper calendar on the back wall, and she put my name on the first month of shifts. I was officially a Dave's girl (which, to me, was the equivalent of being a...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #123 LAST DAY TO GET 50% OFF THE SNOWED-IN STRATEGY SESH I gotta tell you ReaderIt is more than a little hard to believe that I am currently sitting on a couch in my almost finished living room - with the sun just starting to dip behind the snowy hills across the road as I write this newsletter. Which is a weird sentence, I know.. But if you understand where we/me and this room have been - you would get it… 3 years (almost to the day) ago, we walked into this house for the first time 2...
2 months ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #122 It is a little crazy that after over 120 issues of The Weekly Drop In, I’ve yet to get to this story, which is truly one of my best. A story that I will tell to my grandchildren and, if I am lucky enough, their children. If only we had a campfire, I could tell it around. Now, there are 3 things you need to understand before the story can fully land: My mom has MS, so she walks with a cane. I grew up with a Jack Russel Terrier who we would jokingly call a Jack Russel Terrorist (ah,...
2 months ago • 7 min read