💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

Challenge Accepted: I've broken a big promise I made after leaving corporate: no off-hours video calls. So far, I’ve broken this promise 6 times.

After silently resigning from marketing my own offer after 2.5 LinkedIn posts about it, I gave myself the month of June to clear my head, expecting (as it often does!) that a calm mind would produce some more creative ideas for my business angle. By the end of long-June (after July 4th weekend), no brilliant new target or offer was emerging. So, as one does, I removed my social media timers and told myself I was inspo-scrolling Instagram and Substack, the most likely places for new business ideas to be born.

One workish-thing I tried in June was to build some workflows & routines in Claude to help me treat more of my business ideas as experiments. The concept of proving or disproving a hypothesis has always been helpful for me, and the visual of a one-page handout from 8th grade science class with a template to track your experiment using the scientific method kept popping into my brain. Despite the clear vision, I struggled to bring this to life, and most certainly spent more time fussing with the workflow than actually putting it to the test. And buying a lot of things on Instagram. And now it was July.

While scouring my inbox for return links for the shocking amount of new clothing I’d purchased (thanks for nothing, Meta algorithm!), I opened one of ’s newsletters, introducing a shiny new platform designed to 1) excavate your past experience to find new connections and new offers, and 2) structure those new offers as income experiments you could test in a few weeks’ time. Oh, and a community of women starting their own first income experiments to journey together along the way. I honestly got a little chill when I finished reading the message. Was this designed in a lab for me? What voodoo/cookie-technology allowed this to find me at that exact moment? How could I not hit Buy Now?!

So after printing mailing labels & packing up a pile of new bags and four unnecessary workout sets, I signed up and dug in. Six weeks later, we just wrapped our first income-stream challenge on a live call with a delightful, insightful group of women (who I adored getting to know and joining for the optional group check-ins during EST evenings!). Through the process, I’ve had more than a dozen super-clarifying curiosity chats, found a new audience I couldn’t be more excited to support, an offer I’ve actually already been doing for low/no cost that’s now priced & packaged, and I happily scrubbed my old offer from my website and replaced it with v1 of the latest & greatest new focus.

My biggest takeaways from the experience:

• Everything is temporary. The most powerful perspective across the entire challenge, in both the macro (YOLO) & micro (just ship it) sense. And it’s now the Post-It note mantra tacked to my monitor. As a recovering perfectionist, seeing so many others in the community treating the income experiments like new accessories they were (excitedly!) wearing out on the town made doing something big and bold and new all start to feel a little lighter. Hearing how others reacted to their ideas and having reactions to my own in real time moved me to faster, lighter action, like redoing my LinkedIn ‘About’ and website in one short sitting or sharing my very-messy-first-draft framework with some trusted testers. We don’t have to know how something fits into some master plan to just do it. And frankly, we can’t really know how it will work IRL as long as something lives in our heads. And what’s life if we don’t take a shot at chasing down some dreams?!

• Track energy just as closely as output. This tactic felt like the antithesis of everything we learn from capitalist dogma, and for that reason alone, I was very keen to try it. Early in the process, I was prompted to note how I’d felt in the process of achieving each of the accolades copy/pasted from my resume. This shocked me into new revelations like a gas station energy drink. Suddenly, the things that had led to misalignment (hierarchy! artificial urgency! admin!) came clear, all while new paths started percolating. Picking what to explore next became as easy to spot as a strobe light. These energetic-orientation-checks continued throughout the experiment, where a quick note of my activities during a working session along with rating my energy, began to give me more insights to sharpen my experiment than any other metric. While I had a dozen super energizing and aligned curiosity chats that showed me new paths to follow, I also had four that were super draining, clarifying what doors to leave closed. Tracking energy honed my focus and propelled me confidently forward. This practice is an absolute gem of insight, with the added bonus that doing it feels like indulgent rebellion against all-things-tech-bro.

• Break to build momentum. Breaks big and small are something we’ve got to start expecting, and stop beating ourselves up about (and yes I’m speaking to myself in the third person). Even though I’d taken a conscious break from my first big offer in June, I felt guilty AF after a week for not being able to see the next step and get something going. But stepping away from the offer made space for other stuff (exploring a conference, saying yes to a coaching client, informally advising a friend’s startup) that unexpectedly unlocked new learnings, and led to uncovering a much more aligned experiment. This showed up again in the six-week experiment itself, when part-way through, our activity prompts dropped from three-a-week to one… only to be followed by an unprecedented flurry of aha-moments and big wins the following week across the WhatsApp group! What felt like speedbumps turned out to be pitstops that refueled my focus, ignited my enthusiasm, and accelerated my momentum.

So, will I be logging on for more late-night-EST calls? For this kind of clarity & community, gladly!

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

• Hot Squirrel Summer: My brain and body have been all over the place this summer. And not often in the same, focused place.

  

  I may still be deep in shedding any and all reminders of the decade and a half of being in intense annual planning mode from June - January, or just regressing to my teenage memories (sans the 3+ part time jobs), but whatever the cause, I have zero regrets about doing a little bit of a lot of things this season. YOLO, yes?!

  

  At the same time, something about 1) comfortably wearing a sleeve for a few glorious, cool morning hours this week and 2) having an offering for an audience I’m so GD amped up to spend more time with and support has got me craving a routine reset and getting down to a lil bit more business.
  → Action Plan: Re-commit to 3 posts a month across either Substack or LinkedIn. (Given these options, the odds for new content are very good for you, Substack reader!)

  

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• A beautiful reflection on how our experiences all stack up and powerful tools to build what's next from Fiona Liang

  “There is so much that is sitting underneath us already, in all the parts of our life and the stories we have accumulated, waiting to be recognised for what they actually gave us.”

• Obsessed with Melissa’s new Feral Founders Club newsletter & community is never-take-yourself-too-seriously, relatable, and insightful all at the same time. vibes are 👌🏻

• and also, in the midst of a lot of energy and momentum and building some new stuff…

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

• Sales Toolkit Tidy - refreshing the sales discovery framework, call prep, note, and email templates for another round of testing/feedback.

• Booking Fall Vaca - Now that the end-of-year shot clock is blaring, we are FINALLY booking some travel to use up the rest of my partner’s annual PTO.

  Can you help?! 🙏 If anyone has 1) recommendations on where to stay in Asheville, 2) tips on what to do in Atlanta for a long weekend (or how to decide between Atlanta for a sporting event or Scottsdale for a long weekend in early December) please hit me up!

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💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

A year and some weeks after walking away from no-longer-aligned work that was slowly crushing my soul, I’ve vacillated between awe at how far I’ve come in feeling like a human again, and frustration at how far I’ve yet to go. The tension persists, though the frustration is mostly on the learning-to-earn-money-my-way front (old news if this isn’t your first TWC).

But this week I realized I’ve completely discounted a major transformation: I’m a strong-as-an-ox strength girly now. From kickboxing so hard I’d come home and nap, to half-marathoner, to 5-a-week-barre-diva, I morphed into a squishy couch potato as I struggled to fix my unfixable, misaligned work-life. When I had my calendar back to myself again (and the wake-up of caring for my mom through her spinal surgery recovery the prior summer), I realized there was no time like the present to take better care of the body carrying me through life.

Importantly, I didn’t just daydream about making a chance (note to self… this doesn’t change much). I took action and got accountable (reminder to self… this annoyingly works.) I paid my deposit and monthly fee for a personal training and nutrition program. They offered the steps, and I followed. Bit by bit, that compounded and compacted into a new foundation.

My goal was simply to stop up-sizing pants (expensive!) and learn some tricks to give my body better odds of lasting. A year later, I have met or exceeded both goals (yay, aiming low?!) and happily donated or sold both oversized and undersized clothes that don’t fit comfortably. But I stuck to it, getting sucked into the science behind the recommendations, learned I don’t have to pick the ‘best’ choice all the time, and made tiny tweaks to what was on my plate and the weight of the plates I used to load my workouts, day by day, week by week.

Has anyone noticed I’m 10 lbs lighter? Only my mammogram technician, inquiring with concern if I’d had a significant weight loss event when the images from last year didn’t line up.

This does not deter me. I trust this can only mean I’ve lost the 10 lbs purely in fat, albeit all from the one place I’d really liked to have kept it. But it’s a winning trade for all the things I’ve noticed: no longer having a hitch in my hip after a long walk or car ride, being able to deadlift more than my high school body weight, and learning exactly what to put on my plate to keep me from (or cause me to) getting hangry. I can walk and talk five miles with my neighborhood friend and get the tea without ever getting winded. Lately, I realize I now take for granted the ease of things that once caused real pain, struggle, and frustration.

Foundational shifts are painstakingly slow, the realignment too deep to see taking shape in real time. I finally see and appreciate my body for what it’s been trying to do all along: help me survive everything I’ve thrown at it so far. I’m proud to have learned and practiced a thing or two that might actually help it thrive. I may not have control over the outcome, but I can see looking back how every small step added up: to a deeper understanding, a healthier perspective, and in this case, even a few shiny new capabilities.

In the last few weeks, I’ve found a platform and a challenge that feels reminiscent of the personal training, but for building new income streams as a solopreneur. While it’s re-engaged me in something I’m excited to crack, I know better now than to expect overnight gains. But at least I no longer feel stuck. Instead, I sense some small, meaningful forward momentum, and trust it’s putting the right things back in motion. Can’t wait to see what shifts reveal themselves here down the line.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• Thinking a lot lately about the underrated power produced when two distinct fields/concepts/worlds intersect

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

• Advancing The New Experiment: Price & share a new offer for founders & freelancers who want to stop burning time & energy on sales calls that stall out.

• Exploring/Exploiting Pilates Studio Boom: Taking advantage of the unexpected spike in fitness studio openings in my neighborhood and getting all the new-member deals while they’re fresh!

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

I was 41 years old when I learned the distinct and intense pain of a black fly bite. I learned this 20 times in just a few minutes.

This lesson drifted in on the south wind, swirling around my ankles, battling through a thick layer of bug repellant lotion and wool hiking socks soaked in DEET as I climbed up to admire the view atop a 30 story sand dune soaring above Lake Superior.

This was the second but most aggressive fly swarm we encountered on what was meant to be our first big day of long hikes to legendary waterfalls. Before the flies, we’d found hikes #1 and #2 closed indefinitely due to trail washouts from a sudden, unexpected storm the night before. We had two more short walk/hikes to attempt and hours before the nearest spot would be open for lunch. As we pulled into the next lot to find flies already attaching themselves to our windshield before we parked, we took the cosmic hint, conceding to the wisdom of T-Boz; it was time to stop chasing waterfalls.

We re-routed and took an extra-slow drive to a tiny beach town where we enjoyed a fresh-caught whitefish sandwich served with a view of an ethereal and empty bay, topped off with a generous tip from our waitress to check out a waterfall closer to town, hidden just off the main road. What we found tucked just off the highway back was a stunning, cool, heavily shaded waterfall, completely free of people and flying insects.

I awoke the next morning to a sparkling view over Munising Bay to Pictured Rocks lakeshore, and it was then I also learned that those goddam fly bites itch in a distinct and intense way. This reminder was consistent and persistent for many, many days to come.

Slathered with hydrocortisone (which barely helped) and learning to lean into the adventure a bit more, we stopped at nearly every scenic overlook, now experts at scanning for flies before exiting the car. We let ourselves make two meandering passes around a local artist’s mile-long drive-through sculpture park. We wandered into a local festival and enjoyed a one-of-a-kind cover of Pink Pony Club by an experimental ska band. We exhaled and explored.

As we watched fireworks set off at the ore dock at our next stop, I remembered the circumstances that led to us going on this roadtrip in the first place: 1) we missed our window to book flights for a Paris & London holiday after sweating the details of the perfect itinerary and 2) after my father-in-law received duplicate gifts of The Gales of November, I tucked into a copy over the holidays and dreamed of seeing the recovered bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald as much as even more than The Mona Lisa.

As I solemnly stared at the memorial bell centered in the Great Lakes Shipwreck museum, I already knew seeing it would not be the highlight of the trip. (Insert another ‘the book was better at bringing it’s story alive’ comment here) But I was grateful it drew us here, and also touched to see how many other (though mostly 70+ year old men) were there to pay homage, too.

How did that highway-side waterfall we happened upon compare to the others we didn’t get a chance to see? I may never know! But when we reflected on our favorite moments on our (long) drive back towards home, stumbling upon that waterfall was high on the list.

And black flies may very well have saved us from heat stroke or Lyme disease that day. All while driving us deeper into appreciating the unexpected.

It was a lesson in trusting the path in front of you. Or getting off of it as fast as you can if you’re being attacked by black flies. You may end up somewhere you never imagined, and wasn’t that true adventure?

I woke up this morning unusually calm. It dawned on me that the itching at my ankles hadn’t woken me up for the first time in weeks. As the welts from the summer black fly swarms fade, I hope the other lessons from this trip won’t.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• If only I’d learned this lesson a leeettle sooner,

• PSA that you only have a week left to get an Enchirito. And in extra good news, it is not made with any fresh produce in the recipe so it may be the safest thing to eat right now!

  

• Proactive excuse in case I skip another week because I got caught up in reading outside (yet) again.

  

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

• QUICK ASK & New Experiment: If you’re a founder or freelancer whose pitches aren’t getting the response or decision you’d hoped for, can we chat?!

  I’m looking to learn where you are getting stuck and offer some support!

  This info will help me finalize a new workshop on getting to a clear yes, no, or not yet, in a style that feels natural to you.

  The call will (ironically) not be a sales pitch, but you will leave with something you can try on your next qualification or pitch.

  Please reply or DM and I’ll share a booking link!

  

• Needs Assessments & New Connections: four calls with women founders to learn about where their sales conversations may be getting stuck ☕️💡🪎

• (Continue to) Have A Summa: finally hit the neighborhood(ish) pool 😎🧴⛱️

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

Serendipity Favors The Bold: Perched on a rampart high above the Hudson, resting after a muggy meander through a thicket of quince trees, as a comfortable pause in conversation stretched out on the breeze, I couldn’t help but think: ‘damn, I’m really glad I listened to that podcast.’

Either there’s something in the air we’re collectively facing about being stuck overthinking, or my algorithm is really hell-bent on getting me to let off the search bar. I can’t seem to open an app or turn on a pod without hearing (resonate!) stories and tips about how ‘action drives clarity’ and ‘we only learn from doing’ and other things that make total sense logically but feel like an advancing attack on my recovering-perfectionist/tendency-toward-people-pleasing/research-loving brain.

When I’ve gotten stuck or stalled on something I want or need to do, I’ve had some luck moving forward the last few weeks by asking myself what I can get curious to learn from the activity. This tunes me into more intrinsic motivations tied to my values (learning! curiosity! pretending to be a detective!) and puts a damper on my perfectionistic procrastination pattern. But sometimes, I can’t find a thing to get curious about or just slam the laptop shut like a rebel, excusing myself from the task at hand by remembering I’m the only one making me do this and I have free will and I can just continue ignoring stuff that is uncomfy. For the moment, at least.

I was sinking deeper into this self-indulgency until a blitz of IRL events left me energized, and made me realize how much I craved the kind of new ideas and energy that only comes from being out and about in the world. It was clear my petulant ‘I don’t want to’ tendency was not going to help me grow my connections and community and expand my brain in the way I’ve been increasingly hungry to this season. So I booked more (non-virtual) coffee chats and a ticket to see some friends in NY even though I didn’t yet have (or really want) prospect meetings I’d been waiting to pull together to justify the travel.

In the never-ending cab ride from JFK to SoHo, my pop culture pods ran out, and an episode of WorkLife I’d downloaded but forgotten about started playing. It shared stories of what happened after regular practice doing things that felt risky or uncomfortable, and left me refreshed at the idea I could save a lot of energy by, yes, just doing the uncomfortable (but aligned!) thing. More of the message I’d been wading through, but it struck me differently… as an approach to ‘get risk off your desk’ as a way to create more capacity for yourself, if you will. (Ah, that special kind of sense-making magic only an un-ending and overheated cab ride can offer.)

And last Thursday, when my virtual freelancing work-wife and I had a free afternoon to play hooky from real work, I went ahead and applied the principle:

After the (spooky!) coincidence cemented our plans, we traveled to the edge of uptown, into the riverfront hills of Washington Heights and onto the (even spookier than in the story!) Cloisters property. It was at least 10 degrees cooler than where we’d started and 20x creepier than expected but in all the best ways. We wandered and yapped and learned about poisonous plants and had a true adventure of an afternoon. All from just putting (what felt like an awkward) ask out there.

Have I applied this to my business in any way shape or form? No! Or at least, not yet in any big way. But the memories and magical sense of serendipity that came from applying this for fun last week have left me inspired to build my risk-taking muscle in more facets of my life.

As the streets and sights of NYC reminded me: no one’s paying attention to you. So ask for what you’re excited about. Do what you want. Take a slice out of life.

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

• Reduce, Reuse, Rewear The Same Black Dress: Packing for a few nights in the big apple during weather that rivaled the Knicks hot-streak presented a fun puzzle: pack as few things as possible to save room for shopping finds, or stuff enough things to be able to change twice a day after inevitably sweating through everything I wore outside? Sorting through countless black tank tops and a dozen different linen bottoms, I opted for the latter to avoid a closet re-cleaning make-work project when I returned home. I picked a color scheme (black/brown/military green) and options for two different outfits per day with no re-wear, plus a workout set and a red linen dress that I just liked the concept of wearing and happened to fold easily into my modest carry-on. I felt like a fashion editor on my way to becoming a fashion icon.

  And what did I actually wear? Two black maxi dresses. All day, every day.

  

  While it can be exhilarating and I often find myself fighting to have as many options as possible - for outfits, for job opportunities, for notebooks, for growing my stack of emotional support non-fiction books I may never read - at some point, we’ve got to make a call and get on with it. Just when I thought I’d limited my options enough, I could limit further. Or could have gone off and picked up a bigger purse to cram more purchases in. But I’m glad I saved my energy for meandering adventures, real catch-ups, and the aha-moments those produced, because those moments were the purpose of the trip. Plus, I was also grateful not to meaningfully grow the laundry pile once I’d unpacked, hanging the red linen dress, and stashing the brown and green bottoms for now.

  
  → Action Plan: Welcome constraints (heck, even make some up!) to help move to quicker action. Create/collect limits → add more constraints → reduce time overthinking → live más.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• & ’s conversation on making a practice of facing risk and discomfort hit at exactly the right time (on my cab ride to the city!) last week.

• Inspired as always by ’s ta-da list of joyful things to try this summer. I’m one a one-week streak for #3 (morning garden check), luxuriated in #2 (a time-free day or two) last week, and am just realizing I’m about 12 months into real progress and commitment on #7. 💪🏻

• If you haven’t already accepted Taco Bell into your heart as the fast food chain for good, check out the latest Feed the Beat class and see if a few of these jams and stories don’t move you.

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

• Close An Experiment: wrap-up with first paid coaching client 🎀💝🎁

• Explore New Options: three brainstorm sessions (one IRL, two virtual) on collective/collab offerings ☕️💡🪎

• Have A Summa: hit the neighborhood(ish) pool 😎🧴⛱️

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

🎂 Año Uno: HBD to TWC! A year ago, pleasantly disoriented and slightly stunned stepping into my first week starting life on my own clock, there was only one thing I’d been plotting, planning, dreaming of: a weekly rhythm of reflection. Shared with anyone who wants to follow along and share their thoughts and stories, too. That week, after ’s encouragement to house the musings on Substack, making the (absolutely perfect) logo with ChatGPT, the first volume of The Weekly Crunchwrap dropped after an afternoon of cold brew and flow.

This has been a crucial space for finding the glimmers, unpacking the challenges, and sense-making throughout this year in the in-between. In lieu of a long rambling essay, here is a long rambling list of lessons & learnings by the numbers to attempt to sum up some highlights of the last year:

• 90% fewer hours/week worked v. Stripe 😎

• 2x more books read last year than a typical year 📚

• 10 strokes off my golf game & can finally play a par-three course with just irons 🏌️‍♀️

• 1 lunch/week with my mom & brother

• 2 of 3 problematic closets cleaned and basement could now be confused for a Container Store

• 5-star Poshmark seller rating, actually getting to take a write-off for clothing donations this year, and almost no apparel purchased from traditional retail

• 0 great European adventures, backpacking trips through Southeast Asia, or safaris (did have a blast at a wedding in Cabo, though!)

• 3x more 💰 spent on the business than made in the business (but have not exhausted my start-up savings, yet!)

• 1 year of Carrd web templates paid upfront a day before I realized how easy (and kind of fun) it is to build a website in Claude

• 1 contract signed (technically two with the same NGO for team vision sessions & fundraising coaching) ✍🏻

• 3 mistimed or misaligned job/contract opportunities declined

• 2 luxuriously paced work trips chock full of energizing time with friends, sightseeing… and almost no slides to prepare in advance ‼️

• 50 hours of coaching training completed (adding up to 100 total and my Co-Active Practitioner Credential, though yet to figure out quite what that means)

• 36 hours being coached myself

• 30 or so weekly neighborhood walks with my also semi-retired friend

• 20x more dinners and happy hours and spontaneous hangs than the last few years combined 🍹🕺🏼🥂

• 32 virtual coffee catch-ups ☕️

• 21 IRL coffee catch-ups (but many many more percolating for this summer!)

• 2 notebooks filled 📓

• 1 barely-baked concept for a book that I just remembered

• countless ‘should’ to-do tasks deleted and forgotten from my task list 🙅🏼‍♀️

• 40 posts of The Weekly Crunchwrap (so much for living up to the name…) 🌮

• 90 Substack followers, 48 humans subscribed to the chaos of TWC (up 24x from launch), and 3 kind and generous people who pay to support this mayhem (and 0% paid churn, wow!)

• 135 strength training workouts 💪🏻

• 50 miles run 🏃🏼‍♀️

• 166 slow, long morning walks with my dog 🐕

• 88% average sleep score, up 20% YoY (shoutout to no more alarm clocks for making this possible! 🙏)

• 0 regrets

• 32 Taco Bell mobile orders placed 📲 🌯

Thank ✨ you✨ for being here for this adventure! I hope it’s brought you some sense of connection, resonance, a laugh, or at least one meme/gif you enjoyed seeing again 😎

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

• Substack Sabbatical: AHHH! Unintentionally created a month-long cliff-hanger with the last post! 🙈 Guess there’s a first for everything, but I certainly intend for that to be the first and last big break here.

  The most important learnings from the posting break? Just how much I wanted to come back to *this* space, and how much TWC has really mattered in feeling connected, writing without filters, and getting comfortable being ‘seen’ trying and online and not knowing. The holy (queso-filled) grail!

  What was I doing while I abandoned my my (literal) post(s)? First, I was having an existential crisis at the thought of posting anything on LinkedIn. Then I did it. Three times. And I survived. Actually, even got a potential coaching client out of it. But, to get those first few pieces out took all of the in-front-of-computer energy I had in the tank. (Only about 4.5 hours of actual writing/editing time for 3 posts… but a lot more time wrestling inner demons and stuff). I wrote a little mix on what work I'm up to now, an emoji-filled framework on how orgs should (not) implement AI, and a case for simpler strategic shifts. Now that that’s less scary after getting a few reps in, I’ll be back there sharing some inspired ideas 1-2 a month. I also went to a local a tech conference, a city commission meeting, and a Xoogler happy hour, but that was all in a 48-hour span so not really an excuse. Okay, that’s enough of the rationalization, on to the gameplan!
  

• → Action Plan: Get back where I belong! (here! consistently!)

  

• → 👩🏼‍🔬Experiment a bit with content and format here the next few weeks. Some weeks, different sections flow faster than others, and there are a lot of sub-sections to scroll through here. Will be playing around with a few format refinements….

  → And ✨ YOU✨ are a crucial part of what’s to come! Help shape what’s next

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• Celebrating 365 days without an alarm along with @

  Everyday life and its ordinariness became richer in colour and taste, and I couldn’t get enough of it. It felt like I was drunk on life in a way I never was before.

  -

• The molecular physics of why career reinvention takes so. damn. long!

  At exactly 0°C, ice and water coexist, neither fully solid nor fully liquid, with molecules actively crossing the boundary in both directions.

  Engineers call this a “two-phase region,” and it is a real, sustained state with its own physics.

  In slush, individual molecules don’t simply turn from ice to water. They oscillate.

  A molecule locked in the ice lattice breaks free into the liquid, drifts, gets captured back into a different ice crystal, escapes again, refreezes. This is happening gazillions of times per second, in both directions.

  The overall ratio of ice to water looks stable from the outside, but at the molecular level nothing is really settled. Every molecule is negotiating its state continuously.

  I am the slush.

  -

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Back to New York for a few days, just for fun 😎 Shout if you’re in town and want to say hey!

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Intentionally building a learning agenda in lieu of business goals for the summer. Structuring work stuff as experiments (true/false hypotheses, meaningful sample sizes, test conditions, like a real [mad] scientists). More here soon!

🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯💖🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮

🥳 Want to help celebrate this milestone? Reply or comment a favorite things from last year, even if especially if it’s just your go-to fast food order!

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

Work chat, May 2015.

Boss: have a few minutes to chat?

Me: <instantly filled with dread> sure thing!

Boss: cool, spotted quite the opportunity… no time to waste!

My boss cut right to the chase once we hopped on the video call. They were going to need to find a new country manager for Brazil, and quickly.

Confused, I asked how I could help with finding a backfill.

“Well, obviously, this is an ideal opportunity for you!”

I listened to the list of reasons. I couldn’t become a global leader without global experience. Brazil had massive growth potential. Promotions to my next level weren’t scoped beyond my current role. Sao Paulo would be an amazing change of pace for me.

I listened, and asked just how quickly they were trying to fill the role, which it turned out was within the month. A batch of new hires were joining soon and several big in-market events were already on the calendar.

“So, can you make that timing work? Amazing opportunity, right?!”

Still stunned, I pointed out that I should probably have a chat with my partner. And also that I’d never actually left the North American continent.

Visibly a bit disappointed this was taking any convincing, my boss brought out their best point: “When I was your age, I moved to a new continent, sight unseen. It was the start of a huge adventure! The best decision in my career.”

I asked for a week to give a clearer answer. Frustrated, they asked for an answer as soon as the weekend was up, adding “if you were really playing chess with your career, you’d know the answer without notice.”

As their frustration triggered a flash of my own, suddenly, something clicked: this golden opportunity was their plan and story. That didn’t mean it had to fit mine.

I came back on Monday with an answer for that opportunity (not this time, thanks), and a counter of the things I’d be able to say yes to at the drop of a hat. A rotation or a fixed-term assignment. And now that I was getting picky, I added that APAC felt like the spot to expand my perspective and see what high-growth really looked like.

Work Chat, March 2016

Boss’s Boss: Hi, Ana. Do you have a few moments to chat today?

Me: <instantly filled again with dread, but slightly wiser> Of course! Anything I should come prepared to chat about?

Boss’ Boss: Actually yes, we have a new director onboarding in APAC next month and we thought this might be a great opportunity for you to see a new region, share what you’ve learned, and help ramp up the new leader. Wanted to check if you’re interested and if so, talk logistics so you could get out there for April!

Me: Honored to help, let’s make a plan!

Love it when opportunity knocks at a door you can’t bring yourself to answer, a more aligned one pops open. Especially one with a blank check to visit as many countries as you can on the other side of the world for four weeks.

Join me next week for what happened on that April adventure across Asia, and how a 20 hour flight with broken headphones 10 years ago put me on my current entrepreneurial path.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• a wonderful piece on ‘the lies that keep us from an aligned life’ from

  Exploring the texture of what it is to be you. Pushing yourself to the limits of your experience. Growing. Learning. Expanding. Sometimes that pursuit will come with financial abundance. Sometimes that abundance will come in a different form. -

• fun way to use NASA’s satellites

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.
Nos are the only way to make more space for a yes.

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Actually posting something on LinkedIn instead of building silently in the shadows.

🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯💖🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮

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💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

Pop-aficionado that I am, there was no world in which I wasn’t going to tune in and rock out to Bieberchella last weekend. But watching JB do YouTube karaoke along to lo-fi YouTube videos of his teeny-bop-pop, I was not at all prepared for how much I related.

A year ago, as I was belaying down off the corporate mountain, I had a lot of anticipation, excitement, and also anxiety about what I’d do once I had my days, nights, and more of my weekends back to myself. One thing seemed certain: I would not be on another call or spin up another strategy brief to align C-level executives on profitability tradeoffs. And I intended to plug my ears and skip away happily without ever learning what vibecoding meant or how much time /money it might save. That much felt clear.

Fast forward to February, when I launched an offering helping senior revenue leaders decide what sales motions should stay internal, and which should be outsourced or automated.

So how did this happen? I kept taking calls from friends of friends seeking guidance on sales team structure in the headspinningly-fast-changing space of automation and extremely intensified economic pressure. And I realized something that surprised me. Having conversations about these topics I’d filed in the ‘do not open’ folder of my brain didn’t feel totally wrong. In fact, it felt a little more right than I ever expected.

Not because the profit-first-decision-making or capitalist constructs give me any less ick. But I realized I had some practical perspective I couldn’t pretend away: that when companies face these decisions under pressure, they almost always make them in a way that centers the bottom line and leaves the customer and the employees still carrying the actual work out of the equation. And I got the (delusional?) idea that I might be able to help change that math a little.

So… that’s how I built an offer remixing a whole bunch of skills I thought were in the distant past.

A bit like no one* expected Biebs to headline Coachella, I did not expect to find myself here. I’m unlikely to make $10m in my return to the sales strategy stage, but I’m down to replay what I’ve learned and help the inevitable wheels of industry crush a few fewer souls as part of my first solo track.

The hits hit for a reason. And maybe revisiting them is exactly what brings the peace and clarity needed to get inspired for the next track.

Never say never, indeed.

💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

A friend two years into his post-corp entrepreneurial chapter mentioned he’s found himself surfing LinkedIn, exploring a few roles back in big tech. Not with dread or out of necessity, but with genuine (and unforseen) excitement.

What created the excitement was the clarity he’s gotten from taking time to try something else. His conviction about what he wants and what he no longer will accept is laser-sharp. The time away stripped away enough of the nagging shoulds that he could recognize the resonant yeses. And one of those yeses, unexpectedly, was pointing him back to some places he thought he’d left behind for good.

Since we haven’t talked about Taco Bell here in far too long: let us not forget that even reheated leftovers are nourishing… and delicious if you’re thoughtful about what you keep (✅ 🧀) and what you leave behind (❌ 🥬).

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• *okay, one of my favorite pop-culture-watchers did very much see this coming for Justin. or rather, incepted the idea way back in 2024. where’s this pop-culture Nostradamus’ cut of the booking fee?!

Instead of cobbling together a big audience out of smaller artists, or God forbid calling John Legend who is not only affordable but is already on his way, shouldn’t Coachella opt for a headliner that is both young and nostalgic, ultra-famous but enigmatic? What if Coachella’s comeback could dovetail with its headliner’s? I mean hello: Justin Bieber should headline Coachella.

- , October 2024

• on the neuroscience of musical nostalgia with a cool video on consciousness of change from

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Another week of full coffee catch-ups with old colleagues & new introductions.

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Actually drafting some overdue businessy thought pieces (not for here) & talk ideas.

🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯💖🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

Neither Here Nor There: Spring sprung this week in my neighborhood, and I finally laced up my shoes and logged a few miles jogging town. Shortly after one run, I logged in for an overdue virtual meet-up with our women-gone-wild-post-corporate-life group chat.

As we each took turns sharing our stories of what led us to leave and where we stood now, it struck me that everyone had hit and new and unfamiliar feeling that something they’d loved just didn’t seem to fit anymore. We weren’t being chased. The energy of a fresh finish line wasn’t filling our dreams. They next mile-marker wasn’t even clear.

Instead, there was a calm, quiet, persistent sense that this just wasn’t the place.

I’m really starting to question the old adage that you’re either running toward or running away from something. Sometimes, it’s just time to stop running for a sec, check your shoelaces. Take a breath. Maybe get a snack or something.

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

Sticker Shock: I made a big, overdue upgrade and finally bought an proper personal computer. For the first time since I ordered my custom sage-green Dell laptop for college, I’ve bought a device that’s not a tablet or Chromebook. The excitement of picking up my new refurbed, starlight-hued Macbook Air was quickly tempered with the realization that all the stickers I’d lovingly collected on my soon-to-be-shelved Chromebook would be going away, too.

I frantically consulted a trusted laptop sticker enthusiast and YouTube while I waited in queue at the Apple Store. After learning about the pros/cons of the alcohol solvent v. hair dryer sticker removal methods, my friend sent the pep talk I needed: leaving them where they were would serve as a record of the last year, not a loss. Maybe those stickers served their purpose and should be honored and immortalized just where they are, commemorating the simpler times when I could operate on good vibes and Chrome OS. She wisely reminded me leaving them in place would leave space to mark the next adventures on my new device, too.
→ Action Plan: Both laptops now have my favorite sticker in plain site to the left of my touchpad. And I’ll remember to buy any future stickers I really love in multi-packs.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• An enlightening and freeing mid-life biology lesson on why our filters fail around midlife from

  Your brain is essentially Marie Kondo-ing itself, keeping what serves you and discarding what doesn’t. -

• A classic that's too relevant not to reshare from on navigating necessary uncertainty

  what if the hardest and most necessary thing you can do right now is to give yourself time to not know? -

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor / ❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce / 🌯 Taste Test

Enjoying a first-ever spring break overlap at the beach with our nearly-tween nieces. Looking forward to enjoying a familiar space with fresh energy. And also enjoying a lot of seafood. 🍤

🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯💖🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮

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💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

Cloudy With A Chance of Contracts: I read a LinkedIn post where someone was talking about how their sales leader would fire managers who were off by more than 5% (above or below) in their quarterly forecasting. I learned a lot under a similar leadership… except that we were rewarded for the highest accuracy. Yes, gold stars/gift cards. Very millennial, I know. But my teams and I frequently topped the star-chart in forecast accuracy, so I’ll die on the hill that this is really important and also really possible to do well.

That was, until my accountant called this week with an innocent ask for my 2026 business earnings forecast. 🫠

What I had done was set a challenge for myself to get two signed contracts before the summer. ✌

And how did I arrive at two contracts before the summer? I made it up. 🪄

Okay, in reality, I made it up and I had also done some target setting. Like in the old days! It started with a ‘bottoms-up’ forecast, totaling up what I’d like to earn as a minimum to cover some specific costs I could foresee but hadn’t previously factored into my semi-retirement budget. Then I set a ‘top-down’ forecast looking at how much I’d need to earn to cover all of our annual costs if my partner’s job evaporated unexpectedly. Then I picked a ‘happy medium’ that would allow me to cover minimum costs and keep contributing meaningfully to household expenses. For this first year, I chose to treat the ‘happy medium’ as a stretch, and ‘bottoms-up’ forecast as the goal. And then I worked for like four months to find the right mix of meaningful & marketable offers (many!), possible pricing (high!), and target work hours (few!). But back to this week.

What I hadn’t done? Anything measurable or material to make that goal a reality.

If past me or anyone on my team had a goal but only had a few ‘irons in the fire’ without a follow-up plan, no weekly cadence of outreach, or any idea if someone will pay what they’re actually asking… we’d have had a whiteboard session, a serious pep talk, and I’d have a performance plan ready in my back pocket.

But, after 20 years on target, one thing I know is how to break down the steps to make and measure progress to goal. So time to do that.

Time to be my own sales manager.

→ Action Plan: Treat the target like I would have in the later years of my quota-carrying sales years:

• as a challenge to make reality 💪

• something to celebrate if when it happens 🌟

• (probably most importantly) as a hypothesis to generate learnings 🧪

  

  ---

  💡 Bright Bites

  Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

  Indulge Me: The energy from last week’s adventures in NY left me focused and fresh, ready to tackle this week. But different than other times I’ve felt myself ‘lock-in,’ this week I followed through on some need-to-dos, but really made progress on a bunch of want-to-dos that have been getting stale. I made sure we got out to celebrate release day for a local beer (Oberon Day is my highest holy holiday). I took an early morning trip to Costco (yes, this is fun for me.) I organized some shelves. I finally wandered in to our newly remodeled library and tucked away for the afternoon in a thick leather arm chair under a glistening chandelier in front of a fireplace on a moody hunter-green parlor dedicated to a benefactor named Bessie and finished Workhorse and started Project Hail Mary.

  As I write this, I realize last week’s trip was really just a want-to-do, too.

  Maybe this is a dangerous step into a vicious cycle of self-indulgence. But maybe, it’s a step towards listening to and trusting myself.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• Pretending We Are in a Mockumentary is the Only Way Forward by

  I am dragging you into this mess for one reason: your life is a comedy, too.

  -

• A pretty comprehensive approach to breaking down big goals into small pieces so you can become the person who will reach the goal

  My bet is that the Harada Method also acts as a filter for desire. If you don't truly, deeply want the thing at the center, you probably won't be willing to show up on a daily basis to execute against the pillars and actions that surround it. Seeing it represented visually will give you an immediate gut check on the level of energy you have for the main thing.

  -

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.

First full week with my Virtual Coffee Chat slots fully booked. ☕

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.

Building a quick, cute, custom CRM for myself with 🤖s

🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯💖🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮🌯🌮

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

A year ago, clearing my bloated post-onsite inbox at the airport lounge, I was surprised, sad (and a little jealous!) to see a farewell note from a colleague who I didn’t know closely, but had genuinely enjoyed working with. I replied and said as much, sharing my number with an ask to keep me posted on her next adventures.

This week, after a summer sprinkling of voice notes and fall flurry of draft business plans, we met in New York for a few days of celebrating our works-in-progress, problem solving, and sharing introductions to and time with other favorite colleagues and connections.

Waiting for today’s flight home, I’m appreciating how loose connections can transform into some of the most trusted partnerships.

One of the greatest gifts of this unstructured time has been rebuilding and reestablishing the community and connections I'd nearly severed during my season of retreat & overwhelm these past few years. I certainly didn't expect anyone to be sitting around waiting for an invite to coffee or reply to my out-of-the-blue message, but I'm grateful for those who welcomed me back to society.

Especially when a few years pass, you come to see everyone’s had their own ups, downs and often unexpected adventures. It's been an honor to get to hear so many stories, lessons, and learnings. And - maybe the bigger surprise - is to see how many folks genuinely want to hear it all and find a way to be of support.

Emboldened the last few weeks, on my blitz of (often unsolicited) LinkedIn and WhatsApp outreach, I caught up with another loose connection about his 3 years in business for himself. When I asked what his most unexpected learning had been, he reflected ‘that often our weakest connections become the richest.’

Those super close connections - our friendships, family, and working relationships forged in fun and tested in fire - are a deep well of support, encouragement, and often uniquely talented in knowing when and where you need a push. But at times, I’ve also found it almost too easy to discount if I’m not careful.

There’s probably something safer for the less-familiar-face to tell you what they think, unfiltered. But, I’m also noticing my ability to hear out a fresh perspective is sometimes greater when there’s a little bit of distance. And deciding what to do with inputs and feedback from these conversations feels easier, like I can hear it all and sort out what to do with it more quickly. Lower stakes, higher candor, and lower defenses can make it easier to get the signal and avoid the noise.

All that is to say, I’m sure grateful and in need of all the help and human connection I can get! Having new adventures this week with the colleague whose farewell note really spurred all of this, who went from friendly face to trusted confidant and friend, and meeting up with folks from almost every stage and stop in my adult life was more energizing than the flash-frozen coffee one of them convinced me to try.

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

The Bot-World Silver Lining? You may have seen or heard the buzz around Anthorpic’s latest forecasting on the labor market impacts of AI. There’s a lot of talk about sweeping changes to entry-level white collar jobs coming quickly, and a shift in ways of working to everyone ‘becoming managers’ of problem solving and process management through the next few years.

One area I’m not hearing much about is the bottom-line of who is most likely to be impacted:

‘Workers in the most exposed professions are more likely to be older, female, more educated, and higher-paid.’

Dear (most!) readers - that’s us.

After a very visceral reaction to this, a realization dawned on me: today’s ways of working were never built for us, anyway.

Maybe this is all the more reason to pave a new, untraditional, unexpected path.

Let the machines run the road-to-nowhere.

Let us wander back to the dusty trails to our dreams.

→ Action Plan: Keep reading ’s perspectives on AI through a humanistic lens and to try to spot more ideas for how to embrace this change.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• Really enjoying ’s perspectives on how some very human skills like clear communication, effective questioning, and leading with curiosity can actually help us get something bigger (and maybe even beautiful?) out of collaborating with AI.

• A weedsy economic outlook debate - punctuated with transcontinental railroad/Gilded Age allusions - on whether we’re in an AI bubble, or an unprecedented age of fundamental transformation.

  

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Catching up with a few former colleagues & classmates across a big mix of different businesses - from somatic coaching to real estate investment to bringing theatre principals to the boardroom.

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Recirculating my refreshed business offering with some prospects & partners.

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

There’s change in the air. The first true sign of spring arrived: Shamrock Shakes. The sun warms everything a little more, a little longer. And mornings have felt especially different. Sounded different, actually. Full of birds back (a bit early?) from their winter travels. I also read somewhere that birdsong soothes us for a very evolutionary reason: birds go quiet when they sense danger.

Whatever the reason, I’ll take it over the growl of a snowblower any day.

This week, I caught myself asking someone what their plans were “for the rest of the spring,” as if we were deep into the season (We are not. It snowed less than a week ago.) But the thing in spring might actually just be me. (Sorry to project all over everyone!)

’s Career Ecology series, Seasons of Work, has a great frame for this: spring as the season of curiosity returning before clarity does.

Spring is full of possibility before anything else. It brings reminders of brighter days even when the sky is still grey and heavy. It’s muddy, revealing remnants of seasons past that never quite got cleared away. And it’s when people start coming out of their dens with an earnest desire to reconnect, chittering happily… a bit like the birds.

Listening and sharing in the chitter-chats seems to be what’s solidified this season for me. Catching up with former colleagues who left corporate without a plan and lived to tell the tale. Others weighing big moves. Getting fresh perspective from potential clients. Connecting with some other post-corp women figuring it out in real time. Hearing the songs of others and getting to share your own feels like its own little signal. We’re not alone. We’re safe. Something’s blooming.

Seems that coming out of your den is half the work. Tuning in to the songs around you does the rest.

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

• AO+AI: I’ll admit I’ve kept my distance from really catching up on the latest for how to leverage AI. But after a blitz of registering for free SMB tools and certifications this week, one training challenged me to test using AI on something I’d been avoiding. Conveniently, tax week had arrived. Turns out all we needed was a (virtual) shoebox full of receipts to become fast friends. AI made quick, clean work of organizing everything into an expense summary I’d been dreading for months.

  → Action Plan: Finish the certification I started, and keep challenging myself to think harder about the questions I’m bringing than the solutions I’m looking for.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• A lovely piece on the power of an ‘off-season’ for all of us.

  ‘In sports, an off-season isn’t a vacation. Athletes don’t stop training; they reassess their approach. They study their performance, rebuild their strength, and adjust their game plan for what’s next.

  Creativity deserves the same kind of discipline.' -

• My favorite coach Emma provides a powerful overview of how to leverage the season you’re in her recent podcast.

• Also, AI is here. On Substack. In . Writing and sharing about being retired from his corporate gig. Just like us?!

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Having the chance to connect old colleagues across companies and feeling like a little job-related matchmaker. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Finishing a Google AI certification in an effort to feel less like a dinosaur. 🧑‍💻

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

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Share Ana Lisa

💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

A few weeks ago, my partner let out an unusually long and loud exhale as he grabbed his keys and coffee. ‘Annual review today.’ Ah, that’ll do it.

It’s that magical, mystical season of annual reviews for many. And my first time without one in decades.

I’ve had an odd relationship with annual reviews over the years. At several, I left frustrated for lack of constructive feedback, feeling like a bigger imposter because I could list two dozen things I was sure I could be doing better and they listed one. Showing up to one fully prepared to be put on a performance plan, only to learn I’d been promoted. And that time I interrupted my boss mid-sentence as he was painting a beautiful picture of my next phase of growth, suggesting to redirect the resources as I was giving my notice.

So, you might say I have some issues. High-standards for myself. Questionable timing.

Maybe that is because I have (possibly been brainwashed to) believe that feedback is a gift. Not always a welcome one or a useful one. Not always what we asked for. But once given, it’s ours to determine what to do with it next.

Like one of those fancy new vacuum cleaners with a black light attached, it often shines a light on things we’d rather not face.

Comfortable or (mostly) not, it can be incredibly clarifying. Here are three of the toughest pieces of feedback I’ve received from a supervisor and what they taught me are still teaching me today.

• “You are incredibly neurotic.” Said in a half-joking tone in front of all my peers and direct reports (a half dozen of which I’d met for the first time that morning) at an offsite I’d 1) been volunteered to run by that same boss and 2) I’d been asked to thoughtfully organize to make sure it was an effective use of time, also by the same boss.

  • The gift? Clarity. The same practices that had made me successful - preparing thoroughly, keeping organized, care and consideration for teammates - were suddenly too much. I also wouldn’t argue with the label, but it’d never felt so sour to hear. And that they’d say it in front of an audience told me something equally important about what could be said when I wasn’t around (which, I learned much later, was quite a lot). It told me more about where I stood than about how I could do better work.

• “Do you realize how often you say ‘me’ instead of ‘we?” Said a few weeks after my previously high-performing team started turning tense and competitive with one another.

  • The gift? Accountability. As my brain ran through interactions and emails and could finally recognize my own pattern of distancing myself just like several teammates were doing from one another, likely making the rift I was trying to mend worse. It allowed me to see and reset my own actions and start to get clear on how and what to do to get us back on track.

• “How naive.” Said in response to my opting to inform a peer of my boss on a big sales model change I’d made so it did not catch the other leader’s team totally off guard and further strain the relationship. And then said a lot of other times after that when I consulted or informed someone my supervisor didn’t particularly like or respect.

  • The gift? (Mis)Alignment. This was the wake-up call I needed to recognize my values and my supervisors did not match when it came to collaboration. A reminder that feedback can reveal as much about the giver as the receiver. It didn’t mean I couldn’t continue to work and learn with this boss, but it did put me on an (overdue) path to find some examples and mentors that could help me find my way of working with others that was productive but also something I could be proud of. And, bonus! Spreading out my mentorship/sponsorship/coaching across a bigger span of people also rocket-launched me into my biggest (and most aligned) corporate pivot from a regional sales leadership to founding a global innovation program.

These were three of the hardest things to hear from a supervisor because I found the truth in each.

It’s always up to us what we make of that truth. If we allow it to overwrite our own, expand our own, or acknowledge it for conflicting with our own.

Turns out, the toughest feedback I’ve received actually aged the best.

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

Top Tier: I received an alert from Google Reviews this week that my review was in the Top 10% for one of my local Taco Bell locations. I immediately spiraled and couldn’t believe I wasn’t in the top 5% or 1%. I still don’t actually even know what this % thing is about nor have I actually tried to find the stat again.
→ Action Plan: Deep breaths.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• inspired this week’s post with her article ‘Naivety is your greatest strength’

they just understood that readiness is a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the embarrassment of being bad at something new. -

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.
‘Naivety is your greatest strength’

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
First week reaching my goal of three scheduled prospect calls - unleash the learnings!

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Organizing for business taxes. More a test of my organizational skills and patience.

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share Ana Lisa

💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

Chill Wins: The Olympics have once again swept me up into their spell. A week into watching and (just barely) over the death-defiance of these sports, I am now happy to play a sports commentator again on the ‘stack.

The Olympic moments that I’d put atop the podium this week are:

🥇Alysa Liu’s light, loose, joyful, and totally glorious return to figure skating on her terms. Holy inspiration-on-ice! I know jack all about figure skating, but it’d be impossible to miss how loose, how happy, how untethered she was during her skate. It wasn’t forced. It wasn’t intense. No strain. No striving. Just a Donna Summer’s soundtrack, encouragement to the audience to get into the music, and a huge smile on her face. And what you could not miss from her interviews and interactions with her fellow skaters? She was wholly and purely just happy to be there and get to skate. She’s seemed more excited that she gets to skate in the non-competitive Olympic showcase next week and humbly shocked that she won her event.

What an absolute inspiration to see these athletes challenging the cutthroat, winning-is-everything mentality and showing us a happier, healthier path is possible from the highest levels of sport. Alysa’s teammate Amber Glenn, after looking understandably devastated after missing a crucial spin-y move in her short program that took her out of likely medal contention, came back the next day to say what she was most disappointed about was letting that take away from her enjoying her Olympic experience. And then proceeded to cheer and celebrate whole-heartedly for every one of the women who outscored her lead. I love it here.

If you haven’t heard her story or just can’t get enough, here’s a three-minute chat with cool-as-a-cucumber Alysa after her win, great deep dive on the US women’s figure skating team takeaways here from former figure skater Chris Schleicher @ Slate, ’s piece here on the power of opting-in, or her 60 minutes interview here.

🥈Eileen Gu shutting down a reporter asking if she was upset to have won silvers, not gold. She’s been one of many fantastic examples of folks who are putting the focus back on their body of work and that the level of dedication, skill, talent, and circumstances to even qualify is achievement enough. Reframing the focus to excellence over achievement feels like an incredibly healthy (though unexpected!) lesson from these games.

🥉 Tara Lipinski being the first Faithful to suspect Rob as a Traitor. My jaw hit the floor when she said his name. Simply DID NOT see that coming!

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• Studies repeatedly show bronze medalists end up happier than silver medalists.

• For anyone admiring Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu’s incredibly free-spirited, chill-as-hell, totally stunning skating this week, here are some related outcome-detachment revelations from a barely-atheltic non-Olympian

  I used to think the trick was not caring about the outcome. But it turns out the trick is in caring differently. - me from ‘The Inner Game of Chilling TF Out’

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Kicked off a group chat with a bunch of post-corp pals & working on a mini-coworking-retreat.

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Running a virtual team alignment session - testing those Zoom breakout room skillz, wish me luck! 🤞

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

• Community FTW: Of the first six weeks of the year, I’ve spent two back in long Zoom days. And maybe most shockingly, I’ve paid to do it. And will pay to do it again one more week in March. After debating if it was worth the investment, it’s been more than worthwhile to hop back in to complete the coaching workshops I started way back in 2020. The skills we practice are useful in everyday listening, discussion, and relationships anyway. Plus, the kicker with the current group is that all 15 students are stepping into the unknown of starting their own businesses right now. It made for really rich discussions, and a lot of friendly faces and new perspectives for follow-ups the next few weeks. Taking this as a reminder to keep ‘getting out there’ (though I need to start doing more IRL) as there’s a special kind of calm and inspiration that comes from meeting others at the same stage of ‘WTF have I done’ in their careers and lives.

  

• Career Alignment IRL: Do you remember the last time you met someone and immediately thought ‘YES, of COURSE!"‘ when you learned what they did for a living? Damn, is that energizing to see in action! Our plant’s new hero wears overalls and earned a sick early-season contract today. 90 seconds into the chat with the fourth and final designer we’d asked to quote a re-landscaping plan, we knew this was our guy. I’m certain there is no one on the planet more enthusiastic and committed to making any yard he could healthy and fit with the nature around it. He is living his absolute best life finding the absolute best plants and plans for every different space he encounters, and I’m inspired AF. ✨Wishing this kind of alignment for all of us!

  

• Loading Income Streams: This is probably not what you’re here for, but I successfully filled in a lil’ webpage template and turned some work I’ve been doing ad hoc into an official business offer last week. Proud to have put something together, curious to see if there’s material interest (I’ve helped with this kind of work in my full-time job and then as a favor a few times since, but realized it’s not exactly something I want to treat as a ‘hobby’), and starting to roll-up my sleeves and get back to a little bit of warm/cold outreach.

  

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

The not-so-weekly Crunchwrapper: As you may have noticed, my consistency here has been about as good as a poorly run fast-food franchise. I’m building some new weekly rhythms while keeping the pressure on for myself for this note to include a huge reflection or deep dive each week. My updated schedule and rhythms are feeling right, so I’m going to plan to peel back the density of this update as needed to help this live up to it’s name.
→ Action Plan: May be making some adjustments to lighter weekly updates and separate, more periodic long-form reflections. This week’s post is a sampling of what that might be like. If you love/hate - please LMK with a reply/comment/DM 🙏

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• An old teammate and I were joking this week that ‘everything comes back to new business sales’ and then I saw this like-minded reflection from

  [seeing selling as fundamental] is going to feel like looking at your bank account, or weeding your lawn. It feels much easier to just ignore it, but the upside of staring it straight in the eyeballs and doing something about it is very high. -

• Absolutely adored hearing my own business coach and one of my favorite voices on Substack talk career reinvention. Appreciate so much their stories, example, and encouragement that we’re allowed to design a career around our individual wants, needs, and ways of working! 💖

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.
As much time outside as possible in next week’s fleeting winter warm-up.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Catch-ups with some old colleagues for life updates & real-talk on my business offer.

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Finally tried the new salted caramel churros - I’d score it a mild snack. If you miss them, rest easy knowing the cinnabon delights are 3x better. The avacado ranch chicken stacker slaps, though.

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share Ana Lisa

💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

I don’t know if it’s being stuck inside while my neighborhood temporarily turned into a glacier, some other magic of the galactic cycles, or maybe just distracting myself from the horrors at large, but I have not been able to stop mucking around with business ideas and offers this month. So much so, I’ve been absent from one of my favorite spots (here!), worked quite a few eight hour days, and finally had to move the humidifiers into my office from the living room.

It’s felt rejuvenating to start to sketch out all the things I’ve wanted to do, run some proof-of-concepts, chat with more people about what they actually need, and find the intersections. Saying ‘yes’ to the flow of new ideas and trying on some options I wasn’t sure about and some ad hoc conversations is making me feel like I’m making the most of this tsunami of fresh start energy I suddenly awoke with on January 4th.

What’s felt just as good, if not better? Crossing things off what felt like an almost infinite list of possibilities. Having a Now / Not Yets / No Thanks list feels refreshing and focusing and freeing. Luxurious, even. My little 'Ana’s Heirarchy of Needs’ continues to guide what I say Now / Not Yet / No to in my day to day life, but having this shortlist for what I work on when those base needs are met is making it really invigorating to jump in. It also reminds me what a strong start (to a fiscal year, a quarter, a new role, or maybe just a restart after an intense stretch) should look like for healthy teams and employees, too.

What we say no to is what actually protects space for the things we say yes to. Some say what you say no to is the cornerstone of strategy (HBR among them). Saying not yet isn’t always avoiding something or not being ambitious enough - it’s acknowledging that time and capacity are very real constraints on everyone on the planet, and that some things may need to wait or bake a little longer before it’s time to dig in.

But, boy, can it be hard. In my friend’s team where he’s actively invited the team to take their annual priorities down from 1-2, many folks are frozen. Another feels like their team is starting to drag and face a paralyzing amount of options for their next step. Even I fought the idea to narrow down my offerings and target audience for several weeks. It can really trigger FOMO or feeling like you’re letting someone down. There can be real risk. And sometimes, it really shocks the system (good trouble!) or is met with intolerance (which I truly hope is the exception, but also a red flag to run!) Because, really… how can anyone actually be their best when they are spreading their waking hours across <waves hands> all the things?!

I’m still swept up in what’s now been a month-long storm of creativity and unanticipated excitement about getting to work. But I’m also clearer than ever about preserving my time and capacity not to miss the chance to pause and enjoy today. It takes reminding, focus, and intention, like any practice, but what better reward could you ask for than more headspace?!

If you’ve haven’t had a chance yet to make a list of ‘Things Not To Do’ for your day/week/year, hope you’ll try it! If that feels too big, grab your To-Do list or calendar, and find a ‘need’ or a ‘should’ and get it off your desk. If you have a list of projects, pick one to archive. And if you happen to lead/raise/care for others and want to give them a powerful gift… consider inviting them to pick something to say ‘no’ to, too.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• So inspired by the story of figure skater Deanna Stellato-Dudek for going back to make her Olympic dreams come true 16 years after a series of injuries forced her to take a break in her prime, making her the oldest (and arguably, most intentional!) figure skater to qualify at 42. Shocked this story isn’t out in more places and can’t wait to cheer her on! 🍁

  “You have a different mindset when you're younger, because you can get away with so much - the world gives you an inch and you take a mile,” she said. “Now, being older, I have more soreness than I did when I was younger, but I have less random aches and pains, because my body is settled - it's been this size now for 20 plus years, and I know how to take care of myself.”

• One bright spot I’m very much here for in this economy/messed up world.

  

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Moved from text/email/scheduled catch ups to voice notes with a few old friends & colleagues - so much more human than text and much easier than booking video calls!

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Public launch of a business offer and mini-site. 🤑

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share Ana Lisa

🌊🔊🎶 Baja-Blasting This Bop

💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

You know that feeling when you just need to get in your car and drive? No destination, no to-do list, no clear reason. You just know for certain that it’s time for a change of scenery.

This gripped me last summer as I started my sabbatical. I didn’t really have a destination. Certainly didn’t have a map. I was pulled to go find what would clear my head and then, see what I was drawn back to.

New music set the tone with bright, fresh energy. Old favorites fell into repeat, looping and lulling me back through my feels. Free Fallin’ and Wrecking Ball and Opalite became anthems sung with windows open and always at full volume.

I got rich in fast food loyalty rewards, regularly choosing to rot and indulge. The drive time went faster as I dialed old friends, appreciating who still picked up and just wonderful it felt to hear their voice and perspectives again.

I drove past a lot of places that were once-favorite haunts (well, Target) realizing I was now free of their gravitational pull. A few reminded me of who I’d been the last time I visited. And as I scoped out new spots, a few felt full of promise and potential. Others seemed very much not for me. And, as always since training on financial crimes, I couldn’t not wonder which were really just money laundering fronts.

When the school buses hit the road sometime in September, I turned back toward my neighborhood. Driving past familiar spots, I couldn’t help but notice they looked the same, but I felt different. Lighter. Easier. Ready to come home.

Last week, after navigating the (very real and very intense) snow and ice storms at the turn of the year, I parked the car, tidied up my takeaway wrappers, and willing walked myself back to my desk.

The step away reminded me the importance and the power of perspective. Of intentional choice. Of remembering that even when there’s not work work, I’m responsible for leading myself. And I’m also really enjoying cashing in all of the fast food reward.

I share this because 1) that’s kind of what I do here and 2) this may spark some shifts in this newsletter over the next few weeks. I’ll likely experiment a bit with format, frequency, and topics as this new phase of work comes into soft focus for me. What’s not going anywhere: love notes to Taco Bell, pop culture detours, and dinosaur discoveries. I hope this will bring fresher takes and broader perspective to all of us here.

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

Marketing Me 🤮: I’ve never been good at marketing myself inside a company. So I shouldn’t be shocked at the total dread and deep overwhelm of marketing a business that is made up of just me. I’d like to pretend this is hard because it took so long to untangle my identity from my work, and it feels risky to go back. But I think that’d be a cop out. I’ve really stayed true to building out and only really working out offers to do work that I’m super fucking excited about. I’m proud of that, but that also means I’m laying bare the things I love most, and tieing my name and a dollar amount to them. But, I am more frustrated right now not to be doing the work than I am freaked out putting it out there. The real fun can’t start until I stop bellyaching about this and get some real-world feedback and experience, already.
→ Action Plan: Rip off the BandAid. Publish offers and updated LinkedIn by Feb 1.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• Read & re-read this Pathless piece on acting in an experimental mode from a new perspective (or, what he calls ‘Wise Agency’), and can’t shake this reframe:

  If you knew it would fail, how would you approach it?

  -

• Pretending I’m a T-rex now to make myself feel better that I’m 40 and don’t feel like I’ve actually grown up yet.

  

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.
’Nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm.’ - Ralph Waldo Emerson

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Resumed Co-Active Coaching & Leadership training to see if this still feels like a fit.

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Created an updated leadership offer set, and shared for quick, targeted feedback with people in my target audience.

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share Ana Lisa

💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

I’ve been absent here to be as present as possible IRL these past weeks. To say yes to impromptu outings with friends, unhurried visits with family, and many cozy moments reading The Gales of November or catching up on Bake Off from beneath a pile of blankets. And to catch up on a lot of laundry from DC, LA, and all the lovely family visits. Hope you’ve had a heaping dose of whatever you needed to close out this year in a style that suits you, as well! 🌟

This week, we’ve had proper blizzard conditions in my neck of the woods. Great than 40 mile-per-hour winds, ice under several feet of snow, everything frozen into place.

This morning, you could just start to tell the clouds from the fog from the flurries for the first time in days, though everything remains a barely-differentiable grayscale shade (so basically still a whiteout for those of us with astigmatism).

Days without the sun (just like days without any sense of structure) would usually send me into a funk, but today feels soft and stunningly beautiful.

Isn’t it wild how a storm can give way to such clarity and calm?

How a little time and finally asking for help can start to shift our perspective?

How trust and appreciation can start to take the place of anxiety and fear?

A year ago, most days felt grey and heavy, weather notwithstanding. With a lot of support and holding tight to a flicker of hope that brighter days were ahead, I’m so grateful to have ventured out into the unknown.

There have been a lot of days where I can’t quite make out the path ahead, but there are also just as many where that feels like an invigorating step into a new adventure.

Thank you so much for being here to share in the start of it this year. 🙌🏼

And cheers to this next year being our best one yet. 🥂

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.
Embrace the refreshing feelings of this season outdoors☃️ (made possible in large part to my insane outerwear collection).

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Stay as cuddled up with books and blankets as needed until I know everything possible about Captain McSorley. 🚢

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
No new year’s resolutions. 🤸🏼‍♀️ Just carry forward what’s been working with a word or a theme.

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share Ana Lisa

💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

Work That Feeds Us: Taking a deep breath of the fast, frigid DC wind before entering the half-block office building, I thought I felt refreshed, alive, and ready for the day’s adventure.

A few hours later, after being welcomed to the team’s special coffee bar, into several planning brainstorms, and a speedy lunch & conference room set-up for our array of post-its and worksheets, we dove into the vision & strategy workshop I’d designed to try to help this small but mighty ambitious NGO team find a path to increase their already impressive impact* on reducing global food loss & waste without burning themselves out.

Two hours later, the team was reading their refreshed ambitions and action plans with confident smiles, clarity, and an even bolder level of ambition than they’d arrived with. They were sharing thoughtful questions and helping one another refine their plans more candidly than they had in their QBRs a few weeks earlier. And maybe most surprisingly, they were wide awake and engaged three hours post-lunch on their first day in the office after long travel. I exhaled.

They kindly invited me for a welcome happy hour & pizza with their larger food systems teams. The Food Loss & Waste crew was buzzing, sharing with their teammates new ideas and decisions they’d been workout out through the day. As a parting gesture, one of the leaders shared grains and legumes from their heritage crop work on several Caribbean islands that are impacted heavily by rising sea levels. I learned these foods have roots in the African diaspora and the transatlantic slave routes and are now part of efforts to build more sustainable, lasting low-waste food systems.

I headed back to my hotel with a brain buzzing with things to adjust for a next workshop, a notebook full of follow-ups from activities we had to cut for time, and a heavy brown biodegradable bag of dried heirloom red peas.

Recognizing the adrenaline of the day was waning, I opted to finish my notes in the hotel lounge to prevent myself from going straight to sleep. The jovial bartender and I got to talking as I wrapped up my reflections. I learned she had moved to DC twenty years earlier from Ethopia, and one of her personal dreams was to open a coffee shop in her neighborhood. We got to talking about some of the food sustainability initiatives I’d just learned about, and how I’d come out to DC because a friend’s great passion for coffee had led him to leave tech and start a new career in sustainability work before his planned third chapter running an organic, self-contained coffee farm where his wife’s family lived in Colombia.

As I got up to go and went over to thank her for sharing her story (along with phenomenal service and drink recommendation), I remembered my brown bag of red peas and shared the story of where the pack had come from. She recognized these as staple of her favorite dishes in Ethopia, and as she started offering recipe ideas, I offered her the bag. She tore the top open, smelled the peas, and started to sob happy tears.

‘This smells like home.’

The next morning, I enjoyed a slow breakfast with my friend, a debrief from the prior day, and started getting the early feedback from the workshop. I also took myself on a whirlwind afternoon tour of DC, complete with mini DC landmarks decorated for the season and spread around the National Botanical Gardens, the Hope Diamond, dinosaur fossils, a hot crepe at a cool Christmas market, and crying in front of Obama’s presidential portrait. But nothing could top the moments from the days before.

Seeing peoples’ eyes start to light up with the possibility of making the change they dream of come true.

Seeing trusted colleagues turned friends thriving, leading, and charting new, beautiful paths. And the enormous honor to be welcomed back to problem solve together again.

Seeing the impact of happy coincidences from sharing stories with strangers.

It’s amazing to get a taste again of how work can feed the soul. How it can wake us up and fuel us to keep moving forward.

I trust this sense of refresh, aliveness, and readiness as a sign I’m on a good path. Most of all, I hope that the team also left this week with this same sense in their work, too.

*40% of all food produced is wasted, and ultimately responsible for 4x more greenhouse gas than the airline industry! And recovering even half the food wasted globally is estimated to be enough to solve world hunger. Talk about a crucial problem to solve!

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

Just-In-Time by Design: Brick by brick, following the crumbs, just-in-time development, emergent strategy. Whatever you call it, I’ve taken a very different approach to building out my business plans an an entrepreneur than I ever have for my teams or organizations before. I don’t have a three year plan with a vision, mission, quarterly milestones and team operating values. I have a list of how I’d like my days and weeks to look, what I want them to protect space for, and a range of financial goals with reminders of what those would really make possible. My business coach (very wisely!) encouraged this as a way to combat my tendency toward perfectionism and daydreaming at the starting line as a way to keep moving forward and make sure I’m getting comfortable learning and adapting, which I expect to be a continuous and necessary process to make this business sustainable.

The build-as-its-needed practice has been pretty freeing so far, but after all of the fresh ideas and opportunities this week… the list of what’s next got a lot longer! This is a great big gift but also means I need to get rolling on a big list of next steps.

It feels a little like the massive Oh Penny Superset and Shopping Center toy gifted by my larger-than-life Aunt Myra that took the entire winter break to actually unbox and assemble, with two million tiny stickers and each piece of tiny furniture custom designed specially for each room or building. But this time, I get to pick when winter break ends & (hopefully!) have the wisdom to try to prioritize what parts to set up and play with first.

→ Action Plan: Revisit my list of offering ideas. Add. Refine. Research some pricing options in the market. Put it in a Google Doc, take a deep breath, and share.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• Another powerful podcast on redefining success from my coach, Emma & her coach and mentor, Alexi, including this nugget of wisdom…

  ‘…it’s why we get trapped in the cycle, because you can never get enough of what you don’t actually need, right? Said another way, it’s like eating junk food all day and going, I’m still hungry. It’s because we’re not getting the actual nutrients and nourishment that our body needs to thrive. So it’s just surviving on fumes.’

  - Alexi Panos

• There are massive systemic issues that cause food loss & waste, but there’s also plenty we can do as consumers to help. Here are two:

  • find a compost removal service & simply keep food waste in your home out of the trash

  • use apps like Too Good To Go, Imperfect Produce, and Flash Food that allow grocery & restaurant carry-out savings and prevent food waste

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.
The power of people inspired anew by the courage of their own dreams. ✨

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Traveling with my partner to a city we’ve each visited before, but never together. 🌄

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
Expanding my offerings into some additional intensives and 1:1 coaching based on the asks and feedback from last week’s workshop & a few other chats. 📈

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

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💡 Bright Bites

Tasty truths + tiny triumphs worth a shout.

Climbing The Hill You’re On: As my self-imposed workshop material deadline came this Monday, things felt intense.

But not in a heavy or a hard way. I was engaged. I was focused. I felt invigorated.

As I look back at the 30 hours or so spent in preparation, there are dozens of things I’d gotten wrong about framing the offer and tailoring it my friend’s NGO team needs. When the workshop runs on Monday, I trust we’ll flush out dozens more. Some have been simple fixes (misunderstood some acronyms!). Others have been uncomfortable realizations (some of the expectations from the organizers were not aligned - with one another or our original agreements). There have been moments of doubt (who the hell am I to be doing this?)

But none of them have been unrecoverable (so far). At the end of each day, it’s felt enlightening. As if each step and stumble is illuminating a clearer way forward.

Most of the tummy-churning roller coaster dips of this build-a-biz journey have simply been leanings that popped when I thought I’d had the answer. Like a sharp left when the ride’s been going down or right. A quick jump up when you thought you’d hit the bottom. Another tunnel when you thought you were back in open air.

But aren’t those the reasons we ride a roller coaster?

I chose the build-a-biz coaster instead of the corporate carousel to feel invigorated. For more fresh air on my face and greater perspective. To be able to really lean into the centrifugal force of what I want and love. To be able to prove to my mom that spending all those hours playing Roller Coaster Tycoon actually taught me practical skills!

(I’m switching analogies now. If that gives you whiplash, let’s pretend that was for intentional dramatic effect.)

There’s exceptional power in visualizing and naming a big, long-range ambition and great importance in taking steps toward it. In fact, my whole first business offering is helping teams do exactly that! But I’m newly starting to see that we don’t have to try to sketch a map of the entire unwalked path.

Maybe all we really need is to take the step in front of us, bringing a curious mind, a way to log our learnings, and walking with our eyes looking ahead at where we intend to go.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.

- JP Morgan via Ina Garten on GoodHang (actually watch this clip, it’s a fanastic 3 min on redefining our relationship with work & finding a better path forward)

💥 The Crunch Zone

Chewing through tough bites.

• Untraditional Rituals: If you’ve ever done a value identification exercise**, they usually start with a sense of overwhelm at how on earth you could ever whittle 50 of the most meaning nouns in the English language down to your top 3-5. But the first word to go in my discard pile is an easy one every time: tradition.

  We hear about tradition constantly this time of year, and it always makes me wonder why I find the concept so dusty and disconnected. I love routine. I appreciate a rhythm. Habits are great! Your girl adores a cadence. But something about tradition reeks of mold & mildew to me, spreading and persisting unchecked.

  Like tradition and routine, many things are separated by subtle distinctions. There is a fine line between faith and delusion. A wish and a dream. A reason & an excuse.

  And maybe that last one is the thing that bugs me about tradition. There’s some lack of ownership or awareness that feels inherent in it for me. And maybe the things we do and repeat don’t always have to have some bigger meaning or be a hyper-conscious choice (for example, I like to arrange my Thanksgiving charcuterie board into a cute lil turkey design. And I will likely continue to do this for no real reason.) But I do think feeling like we should do something just because it’s happening around us (yes, now I might be talking about opting out of holiday yard inflatables) or because we’ve always done it this way (yes, now I might be talking about visiting extended family) doesn’t always serve us well.

  (**And if you’ve never done one, they are honestly pretty fun & very useful in life and career! Give me a shout and I’ll share some resources!)
  → Action Plan: Not let the way we’ve always done something dictate what we do moving forward.

  

• Simpler Slide-making: There’s a very short list of things that I’ve disliked or dreaded while prepping for this first workshop, but at the top of it is building the activity & content outline I’d created into slides that don’t look like a kindergartner made them. (Sorry, kindergartners.) I’m also far from an AI wiz or super-user, but guessing I was not the only person who’d like to save time on transposing text-to-slides, turned to Gemini for some help. But after trying to get Google Slides little sparkly-AI thing to do this to no avail, I also couldn’t find any extension or solution I was sure could help me with the task.
  → Action Plan: Enlist some help! Dear readers - does anyone know of a reliable solution to turn a text outline into editable (not locked-image) Google Slides? If none of you know, I will try to find a kindergartner since they probably all learned the answer already in pre-school.

🧠 Food for Thought

Interesting reads, links, quotes, or spicy memes worth a chew.

• If you’re staring down the few remaining weeks of the year with dread about how you’ll ever get it all done, start here. My incredible coach, Emma @ Conscious Success’s brand-new, brilliant podcast breaks down the time traps we fall into and the paths out (I’m working on taking imperfect action, hence the frequent typos you may see here 🤪). I also highly recommend her first episode, where she shares her learnings from moving from clinical burnout to a deeply fulfilling, self-aligned career.

• This theme of self-worth as the only real limit on our results just keeps coming up… in health, in career, in choosing our social circles and priorities. But offers the best break-down on why this matters so much I’ve seen yet.

  “You will never outperform your vision for yourself. You will never outpace your vision for yourself.”

  —

  “Where are you telling yourself “I’m not the type of person who...” when you could be saying “I can’t do this yet”?”

  -

• Cynthia Erivo’s passion for & play-by-play analysis of Sisqo’s Thong Song is the best thing to come out of the Wicked press tour.

  

🍽️ Next Week’s Main Menu

Forward-looking focus + light accountability.

🧂 Flavor to Savor

Something to chew on & relish.

❤️‍🔥 Soul Sauce

A move to spark, deepen, or reheat a connection.
Meetups with two friends & their families during next week’s travel.

🌯 Taste Test

One new thing I’m trying—bite-sized, crunchy, bold, or soft-launchy.
First Vision to Velocity team workshop happening on Monday in DC!

Thank you for indulging in this little thought-snack with me! 🙏🏼

Quick FAQ:

• Why is this Taco Bell themed? Because Taco Bell is perfect and I am not.

• Why doesn’t this come out on Tuesday? Because I firmly believe tacos should & cannot not be contained to a single day of the week. Tacos are for everyone and every day.

• What is your go-to order at Taco Bell? Cheesy Gordita Crunch, sub black beans.

• What is your favorite food? Pizza.

Looking forward to your reactions & questions in the comments or DMs, and appreciate any shares or subscribes to grow the crew!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share Ana Lisa

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything. What could be more on brand?! 😆

*None of these are affiliate links, that’s way too much admin. This is simply a collection of stuff that’s brought some joy & wanted to share!

🔊A Quick PSA 🔊

Consider making end-of-year monetary donations first ahead of gift-buying… especially if you have a corporate match!

Check here if you’re looking for places with the most need & that have the maximum impact with donations.

😋 For the person with exceptional taste

• Nothing beats the gift of cheese. 🧀Except really good cheese. Send 12 days of Cheese or sign up for a virtual class (they ship all the cheese & accouterments!) - it’s the most fun you’ll have on a Zoom call!

• Spread comfort & joy with this blue-steel pizza pan & this shockingly easy focaccia recipe that will change lives for good. It’s stress-relieving to make (joy!), and the Detroit-style pan creates the world’s most satisfying crunch & amazing smell (comfort!).

  Dimple focaccia all over with your fingers, like you’re aggressively playing the piano

  

  ✨ For encouraging someone’s creative spark

• Watercolor workbook with a set of simple watercolors & paper from Let’s Make Art. Sarah is the modern-day Bob Ross of watercolors, and offers very simple, low-pressure instructions that make creating truly beautiful stuff accessible & easy. I believe (and am proof!) that her tutorials can connect anyone to their inner artist!

  

• ’s books are their own little works of art chock full of inspiration and encouragement to let your brain go wild. Check out a book or even the journal (I’ve been working through this over the summer instead of doing The Artists Way and have really enjoyed!)

• I'm typically a hard-cover leuchtturm1917 girl, but was gifted a MagicofI journal last year that's rocked my notebook stack. The paper never bleeds through, the vegan leather is (ironically?) softer than butter, and they have unique prints with a subtle holographic shine. Loving the night sky & botanical collection.

🍾For someone you want to make feel extra chic & fancy

• Check out Jessie’s whimsical, hand-beaded statement necklaces here & even more colors and designs on her Etsy shop. She also does custom work if you have something more specific in mind & act early!

  

• Silk pillowcases are legit. What else can offer allergy protection, less bedhead, calmer skin, and more comfortable sleep for ~$40? Mulberry Park Silk is one brand with transparent manufacturing practices and certifications that’s also safe to machine wash. A must-have for frequent travelers, too!

❤‍🔥For the person in their burn-it-down/build-something-better era

• A few copies of & ’s Democracy in Retrograde from your local bookstore/Bookshop.org. One copy for them, one for you, and extras to drop in their local Little Free Libraries.

• my personal favorite t-shirt to telegraph ‘I’m over this shit.’ If they like candles, this could also work.

  

🤗 For someone you want to wrap in comfort & coziness

• The world’s most comfortable set for travel (or sleeping!): Quinn top, Lucca bottoms from Woolx. Smooth and structured merino wool that’s machine wash & dryable, soft-and-cozy-AF, breathable but keeps you magically warm, and never gets funky!

• Want the softest, warmest apparel imaginable that you can still machine wash/dry? Paka is it! Certified B corp with the coziest socks & pullovers around! Wore one of these road tripping and it truly kept me comfortable from 35F - 70F!

• Parks Project has a huge variety of uniquely designed apparel & home goods, each linked to helping fund a specific underfunded parks project. What’s not to feel great about there? No clue why the Red Hot Chili Peppers have partnered with them on a collection, but this fleece is one of a bunch of cool, (good!) funky pieces!

  

🤔 For the person who is the toughest to shop for and/or the one you love most

• a gift card to the ‘Bell, of course! This is admittedly not a small business but it is one that recently broke records with grant & scholarship giving, is (behind on their target, but) committed to making all packaging compostable or recyclable, and doubled down on DEI through program expansion this year. Along with making delicious & delightful food.