Start your week with intentional branding & business editorial delivered straight to your inbox.
Share
the story that earned me the nickname (woodchuck cate) + what it has to do with your brand
Published 2 months ago • 7 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, the War on Terror days of the new millennium). Her name was Clifford. She was known for stealing granola bars and showing up at the back door with a possum playing dead in her mouth.
My Stepdad traveled for work a few times a year, and somehow, something crazy would happen every time it was just me and my mom (like a blizzard blowing our garage door in so we couldn’t get the car out to leave or the hot water heater literally blowing up in our basement). And…. this story.
It was around Midnight on a Sunday, my senior year of high school, and suddenly, I heard my Mom’s voice and crashing sounds from our kitchen across the house. I was instantly awake and on my feet.
The dog is losing it, and I get to my mom and turn the light on in our kitchen just as she lets Clifford out of the crate where she sleeps.
Half awake and unsure of what was happening, we adjusted our eyes to the bright lights. Faster than I could make out their shapes, I realized Clifford was wrestling with a woodchuck in the middle of our kitchen.
Yep, you read that correctly. Clifford. A 10-pound Jack Russel is full-on fighting with a woodchuck... in the middle. of. the kitchen.
Naturally - I jumped on top of our peninsula (did I mention I have a pretty big fear of getting rabies 🤣).
Somehow, my Mom and I devised the following plan:
(Please take your sense of humor with you for the next paragraph; know that we think it is hilarious and, to this day, celebrate the mother-daughter moment that only we will ever truly understand.)
My Mom, literally too tired to walk and now cornered in the kitchen, sat on the floor using the hook of her cane to grab Clifford and slide/whip her to the other side of the room.
From my vantage point standing on the kitchen counter, I retrieved every frying pan (especially the heavy cast iron ones) out of our cabinet, and as soon as Mom whipped the dog away, I would whip them at the woodchuck.
This continued for what felt like an hour but was probably only 5 minutes. With the woodchuck now barely alive, Clifford, exhausted, finally backed off.
My mother and I had killed a woodchuck in our kitchen - one frying pan at a time.
In the morning, we took the dog to the vet to determine that she was completely fine.
My family dubbed me “Woodchuck Cate” that year at Christmas. And the rest was history.
I didn't intend for this to be a dog-themed newsletter, but if I had photographic evidence of the dog and kitchen where this story took place, how could I not include it? Please enjoy this almost 13-year-old piece of vintage Instagram gold. ALSO I STILL HAVE THAT SWEATSHIRT 😳
The dents in our black-and-white checkboard linoleum lived on (at least for a few years until we could afford to cover them up 😂) to remind us of the night I was forced to face my fears head-on (however silly they may be).
Wrestling with your imposter syndrome really ain’t that different from wrestling with a Woodchuck - and if you didn’t already, please go back and read that sentence with a southern redneck accent 🤣.
When it comes to facing your fears - you can beat them’ one frying pan at a time. And learning how to plan and think strategically helps you to do just that.
The #1 skill that can help you build your brand in 2025
beat burnout + bring your back burner ideas to light without turning them into spaghetti for wall-throwing nonsense
As a creative entrepreneur in a capitalist economy - your bottom dollar relies on your skills to find clarity on your goals, create a strategy to achieve them - and then take the actions you need on that strategy over and over again.
It is what sustainable growth looks like.
You might not see the progress day-to-day, but before you know it bam - you got yourself a flower.
The more you understand the strategy behind your brand - the more effectively you can market it.
But, to market it effectively you have to be able to execute that strategy.
It is the bread and butter that your Italian grandma would use to metaphorically clean up the spaghetti you’ve been throwin’ at the wall for the last year.
(This is a loose analogy based on the fact that if you know Italian Americans or were raised in that culture like I was, you always clean the sauce on your plate with bread—but I digress.)
The point is that we all want to be able to take messy action—it was the buzzword this time last year.
But messy action doesn’t convert if it isn’t from a strategic place - or if the strategic foundations for your brand aren’t there.
My friend Mae says it best “that structure creates freedom”.
Having a structure for your year lets you chip away at slightly scary and overwhelming dreams—one frying pan at a time (I’m almost done with that metaphor, I swear).
Obviously, I feel pretty passionate about this, so I'm just going to cut to the chase.
On January 15th, I’m holding a brand planning workshop. In it, I’ll teach you how to create a structure for your year and break down big brand goals into actionable steps.
I know that the holidays are crazy, so I wanted to mention it sooner rather than later. The marketing girlie in me had to take advantage of BFCM, but we’re keeping it super simple.
Step #1. Click the button below to learn more about The Snowed In Strategy Sesh - my brand planning workshop, and join the waitlist.
Step #2. Grab one of the ten waitlist spots starting Black Friday (through Cyber Monday or while they last) and save $60 bucks [aka. The cheapest this workshop will be].
Closeout 2024 with clarity and start 2025 with purpose! This free 5-part email series and interactive Notion dashboard will help you reflect, plan, and create an inspiring, actionable roadmap for the year ahead.
As soon as I saw this post from Hanna & Nicole on Instagram, I knew I had to share it somewhere in this newsletter. Honing in on your personal brand voice is going to be a game-changer in 2025.
I know this email/story has been a little longer than usual so I wanted to keep this piece short and sweet for the day.
A few months back, I polled my audience on Instagram and Threads to learn who had a brand strategy deck, knew what it was, or felt it was valuable.
I learned that if people did have them - they were a PDF living somewhere on their computer collecting digital dust - and they hadn’t touched or thought about it in a while (and honestly, SAME).
As a brand designer and strategist - I know how valuable having a strategy deck for your business can be (and showing my audience more of how valuable it is has been a major aha’ moment in my rebrand)
*Add’s write 101 ways to use your brand strategy deck to my content ideas list.*
Since then - I set out to create a strategy deck that could serve as a resource for your brand vs. something that gets presented to you once, and you go, “Wow, this is amazing,” and never reference or use it to full advantage.
I used myself/Cedar June as the guinea pig for version one. I just completed version 2 in the format for my client, and let me tell you….
She is a beefy notion meat cake of a database…. and the initial feedback has me patting myself on the back for achieving my goals.
I'll be opening up my availability for Q1 of 2025 soon (aka. with the rebrand launch and updated offers,) and I’ll have five spots available to work with brands 1:1 to:
Do a comprehensive brand build/ rebrand (an offer that is probably going to be named the brand build)
Or quicker one-off projects like
A custom brand strategy deck just like the one described above
A custom brand identity & illustration suite that tells your brand’s story
Or A custom website built on Showit or Squarespace
If you want to get your name in the queue ahead of time, you can fill out my contact form and email me with some more details about your brand.
I’m well aware it isn’t the best system, but I pinky promise—we’re working on it!
(and be we, I mean, me, Waylon, and Jessie - obviously)
Phewww
That was a lot, even for a long-winded, fast talker like me—thanks for sticking through it. If I could give you a cookie, it would be my specialty—aka Joanna Gaines' chocolate chip cookie recipe, but with Ghiradelli milk chocolate and dark chocolate chips.
P.S. If you are wondering how in the world the woodchuck got into our house, you should know that—in the summer months, my Mom would often leave the back door to our slider open so that Cliff could go in and out as she pleased. By the time we went to bed, all the doors were closed, so we think that is how it got in. To this day, we have no idea how long it was in our house, for all the while we were blissfully unaware.
Share your thoughts, feedback, or even suggestions for future topics. I value your input and can't wait to hear from you. Please email me at catie@cedarjunestudio.com, and let's keep the conversation going!
It isn’t often that I send my newsletter a day late. And god knows, you probably wouldn’t have noticed I didn’t bring it up. But there is a point to starting my newsletter off, pointing out my late send. And that point is burnout. More specifically, I share my own experiences overcoming cycles of burnout, something I have been working on for the last 5 years. This email list feels like a safe space to admit that the last year has probably been my toughest in business. I am far from the first...
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...
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...