You want it to be too perfect Reader.
You want the timing to be right, the rest of your schedule to be clear enough, your office set up a certain way.
You’ll make any excuse there is.
It’s the same as me moving my calendar around for the third time this week, looking at the week ahead—because every time I look at it with fresh eyes, I think to myself, “Excuse me—but this is never going to happen.”
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever learn—get it right the first time—so I can stop optimizing and start getting into the flow of it.
But what if part of the flow is the optimizing bit (for lack of a better term, because I don’t love that one)?
What if the always learning, always evolving is something different?
Not something to feel ashamed of.
Not something you feel like other people just don’t get.
Not just something that makes you multi-hyphenate.
But it’s how you think—and how you think differently.
From a branding perspective, we would call that your differentiator—your brand’s positioning.
But from a neuroscience perspective, you would just call it “being creative.”
Last week, my friend and past client Ash Burnside and I had a very informal catch-up via Zoom on the topic of creativity—our own histories with it, our creative process (much of this was prompted by Ash, not me). But it was the conversation I really needed in that moment to bring a lot of ideas full circle—ideas that had been looping around my brain over the last couple of weeks as I’ve been talking more and more about CCO Week (and its latest evolution, because every time I re-launch it, I give it a little sprucing).
Some of those loops were personal—like how I’m finally able to own that I don’t know (or think) I’ll be doing Cedar June forever (don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon!), or at least not in the same capacity I am now.
But that, because of my creativity, I 100% know I’ll be able to figure out whatever life has next for me.
We attended not one but two high school graduation parties this weekend for my fiancé’s little cousins, both of whom graduated from the same high school as me. As I stared up at Drew’s artwork yesterday (she had the same amazing teacher as me), I couldn’t help reminiscing.
About the girl who was in the most creatively free space they have ever been in, so far in this life—creating just for the sake of creating.
Not needing to produce something so much as explore it.
I’m not saying art school ruined me—but maybe the reason I’ve always told people I don’t want to paint professionally is true.
Because it would ruin it for me.
Instead, Cedar June is its own little sweet spot that I love dearly. It gives me the wiggle room I need to explore, but still feels separate from my identity (more thoughts on that here on Substack).
What if the reason content feels so hard—getting things done for your brand feels so hard—is because you don’t have the room you need? You don’t have the mental space for creativity?
Whether it’s because life is really fucking hard right now.
Personally.
Financially.
Mentally.
Maybe it’s because life is really full right now.
Socially.
Work-wise.
With your family.
It’s probably a mix of the two all at once—and throw in a phone and social media and it’s no wonder that getting work for your own brand done feels so much harder.
So what do we do?
We throw money at it.
Buy a course.
Hire someone to consult. Create the strategy.
Just effing do it for me so I don’t have to think about it.
Or wait, “Shouldn’t AI be able to do this for me?”
But the problem is:
No one else can give you clarity.
You can certainly pay someone to help you find it (that is exactly what I do inside The Studio Session).
But you still have to go looking.
You have to do the work. Make the time.
And that, my friend, is the hardest part of running a brand.
Not just the endless quest for balance, but carving out time that is separate—time that is for just you, your thoughts, your projects, your brand, your ideas. The most fulfilling parts of entrepreneurship.
The parts that people with 9–5s look at you and think you get to do 24/7, when in reality you really want to do it 24/7, but there are exactly 247 other things that have deadlines and paychecks attached to them and feel more important.
Next thing you know, it’s July and you haven’t made much time for your brand yet.
It’s the whole reason I created the CCO Week for myself and am sharing it for free with my audience.
Because I don’t think one day a week is enough to make progress and get deep work done on your brand. Just when you get the gears turning in one direction, you have to leave it and switch directions.
It was the real reason that getting my own brand repositioning and website took so long—because I was only ever chipping away at it.
What my brain—my creativity—really needed was more time, more focus, a longer stretch to get into it.
And sure, I wanted that stretch that I named The Chief Creative Officer Week to be perfect.
No client work. No meetings. No other commitments.
It never is.
This week sure isn’t.
I’m not going to get to everything I wanted to, and as much as that sucks, it just can’t be perfect.
The CCO Week is based on the idea that we can get more done behind the scenes of our brands if we can create focus by working on one big project vs. a bunch of unrelated tasks.
That project you’re working on for the week is linked to one or more of the missions or goals you have for your brand.
If you can kill two birds with one stone, even better.
Here’s a breakdown of how that looks for my own CCO Week this week.
I have three missions for my brand this year:
- A Revenue-based goal.
- The amount of organic traffic I want to get on my website.
- Grow my email list to 1,000 subscribers.
There are hundreds (if not more) ways I could reach those goals—it’s up to me to figure out what makes sense for myself and my brand (which is all covered in my annual brand planner—the Brand Roadmap).
Each quarter, I do a reset (which I’ve been detailing in recent newsletters—you can get pt. 1 of the process here and pt. 2 here) and decide on three strategies I am going to execute that are going to help me get closer to those goals.
And each quarter I have a CCO Week—a chunk of time where I can work on the stuff for my brand and those goals.
- During 2025’s Fall CCO Week, I thought I would get work done hanging at my sister’s house with my two nephews, wake up early, and have a little part-time staycation CCO Week. I was very wrong and only got work done on the plane.
- During 2026’s Winer CCO Week, I finished and launched my website.
- During 2026’s Spring CCO Week, I don’t even remember what ended up happening because I was so busy with client work. I think all my own stuff just got pushed off, and I didn’t plan or prep well enough.
I’ve been doing this for over a year now (this reel series marked my first CCO Week), and no matter how much I want to appear as an expert on all the things, my own CCO Weeks are far from perfect.
But that conversation I had with Ash last week helped me realize that’s part of the process. None of us can stop life from happening and interfering with our creativity—it is all of our realities.
It’s just that we, as creatives, as the founders of our brand, have to deal with that reality so much more intentionally—because without making the time we need for our own ideas to unfold, we can’t find clarity or grow our brands.
For this Summer CCO Week, my mission is all things SEO on my site (re: that organic traffic goal).
That mission is broken down into smaller daily missions or focuses.
- Today and tomorrow are for prep and research—to get all my ducks in a row before I even open Showit or WordPress.
- Wednesday is a Showit day—where I’ll be installing SEO and building my blog page (it’s already been designed in XD for 6 months waiting for me… how did that happen 😵💫). Then Thursday, I’ll upload and publish the 4–5 blogs I’ve been editing… also for 6 months.
- The goal by the end of the week is to launch my blog on my site and have updated on-page SEO on all of the existing site pages.
Then, when I do my quarterly reset at the end of Q3, I can analyze the data and see how the work I did during my CCO Week got me closer to my goals for the year—what worked and what didn’t.
This is the part of a brand strategy that makes the biggest difference.
We all think of brand strategy as our brand’s mission statement and values, but that is just the foundation of it.
The impact comes from the execution of it—and executing it in a way that leaves room for experimentation and creativity.
You get to decide what that looks like for your brand.
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