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How to spot If a client or fellow agent is lying to you, and get the truth out
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Zillow hit with another lawsuit after iBuying collapse, claiming they misled investors
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The psychological reasons why people share their lives online
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Your fancy-pants website is making people violently ill (literally)
Simple growth hacks that startups have used to garner success
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Keep the pride of Pride Month year-round (without rainbow washing)
A career break doesn’t mean a closed door, but a window of opportunity
Leaving the entrepreneurial life: What I learned from start to finish
To the unsung entrepreneur: We believe in you!
4 solutions to lessening stress in your work day
(EDITORIAL) When pride month is over, companies tend to delete their rainbow website adornments. How can your company can keep these efforts going?
Pride month is being celebrated in the US right now and soon, the rainbows will fade from mega-corporate logos and branding. Making a constant commitment to inclusivity and anti-discrimination isn’t always easy and marketing has minefields aplenty.
So how does a small business navigate this? We’re starting from a deficit of trust and there are a few reasons why.
The large-scale, mega-corporate marketing and PR targeted at the LGBTQIA+ community that goes on in June for Pride month, collectively referred to as “rainbow washing” (or sometimes even less flattering pandering accusations), has come under fire for being largely lip service and sometimes downright harmful by community advocates.
For example, one independent journalist penned an editorial, putting AT&T on blast for publicly supporting LGBTQIA+ causes while funding political initiatives that negatively impact the community. I’d consider this a prime example of what not to do.
Businesses that want to be genuine in their commitment to pride have plenty of options that don’t require vast marketing or PR budgets.
Pride is ultimately about celebrating progress and obstacles surmounted by the community and highlighting the work needed to promote equality for everyone, regardless of identity or orientation.
The first thing any business can do is reflect internally. Address any dirty laundry that might be kicked behind the couch in the corner.
The other thing businesses can do, even if you are a business of just one person, is be an active member of your community.
Below are a few accessible, actionable suggestions on how to promote a welcoming and inclusive world:
At the end of the day, every day, everyone just wants to be treated equally, with kindness and compassion.
Last I checked, those are two things we haven’t put a commercial price tag on yet. So, above all else, be kind. It’s amazing how far that can get you.
This editorial was originally published on July 14, 2021.
A career break doesn’t mean a closed door, but a window of opportunity
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(EDITORIAL) A job pause can be maddeningly frustrating, but they can also open new opportunities to grow or start anew.
What’s worse than stand-still traffic?
In a standstill, you know where you stand… still. In stop n’ go n’ stop again traffic, you have no clue. You go from 5 to 50 again for all of three feet, then back to 5. Eventually, you don’t even care about getting to your destination anymore, just so long as the tedium ceases.
My jobs went almost exactly the same way.
Retail work, career work. Retail work, career work. Retail work, career work. And each time I had to take a pause, I didn’t have enough time, money, or interest to keep up with the rising trend of ‘content creators’ who can film, edit, script, photograph, edit THOSE, AND do blogs and emails replacing copywriter positions. So I just stayed scrambling until I could ‘relax’ into a career gig that ended shortly for one reason or another.
Even though I left each advertising job under different circumstances, in late 2019, I realized, ‘Okay, maybe it’s ME. Maybe if I’m this frustrated with the traffic, I need to pull off the road.’
The last shift saw me go from copywriter, to house cleaner, to heavy metal head shop gal, to moderating freight brokerage in the span of two months. Hell of a detour…
Of course now that I’m out of full-time work in the field I sold my credit score to break into, the guilt of having left a career I soured on to break into a field I didn’t need to go to college at all for is… crushing. And new beginnings, with wages to match, are hard no matter who you are.
However, this shame and heaviness is all coming from the inside. My parents are proud, my friends are happy for me, and I have yet to hear anyone actively dumping on my decision to purposely exit the salaried copywriting field. And even if everyone sucked about my choice, it wouldn’t change the fact that so far it’s the best one. At some point, you gotta shake yourself by the shoulders, borrow from Mrs. Knowles-Carter, and scream: Suck on my job cause, I’ve had enough.
Why deal with a stigma when you could deal with stigmata, right? Those are way cooler. And I’m pretty done with wounding myself either way.
Multiple small, panicked hiatuses taught me something. Some things. First thing: truly powerful screaming comes from the belly, not the throat. Most relevant thing: I don’t want to write for other people, nor for brands that can’t use some variant of my own voice.
I thought I was a copywriting mimic octopus who could change colors, shapes, and textures to suit an environment, but this whole time I’ve been a chameleon— always keeping my funky fresh shape, and only changing colors to suit how I feel, or to attract mates.
I’m not going to act like career pauses are some great thing in which to discover yourself and do some eat, pray, love BS. I quite literally almost died of a bad infection during a time I was on a pause with no heath insurance. The pauses were financially and mentally draining, and if it weren’t for extreme strokes of good fortune in several places, I wouldn’t be in a position to write this piece.
What I will say is that I was able to bid the misshapen phoenix cycle that I was on a frantic farewell, at least I think so. Anything’s liable to change, such is life.
For now, there is only to bag up the ashes and try to use them in fertilizing my next steps.
(EDITORIAL) It’s a long and winding road in life as an entrepreneur, from building from the ground up to sustaining success. Joy comes in the journey.
I left the entrepreneurial life.
It started on a whim. I’d grown tired of making other people wealthy while staying in the same place and decided I needed to do this for myself. I was between jobs and had just moved back to the Austin area, so I started a kitchen-table graphic design company with the help of my daughter, who is also a designer. In two years, we were a four-person team, with clients ranging from Travel Texas to TGI Fridays.
We worked remotely, were family-friendly, had a four-day work week, and had the luxury of taking on projects that we loved. It was ideal, but fragile. There were feast or famine moments, and while we officially only worked four days a week, business development and strategy was my round-the-clock obligation.
We hung in there for nearly eight years. When my daughter received an opportunity of a lifetime to work abroad, she grabbed it. Around the same time, my biggest client decided to take their art department in-house, so we lost half of our annual revenue. It was a big loss. I tried a rebrand, a partnership, and a few podcasts, but my little agency was treading water.
Major clients turned into gigs, and money was tight. I had to find a job.
There’s a language you speak with other entrepreneurs, and a certain reverence is reserved for those who have succeeded. They have clout, grit, moxy, and chops. They are brave enough to go toe-to-toe on a job with companies who possess fat bank accounts, strategists, and actual creative departments. It’s an amazing feeling to be at the helm, and to see your work in major media, and to see your clients thrive. To leave that for the safety of a steady paycheck and healthcare is at once a great relief, and terribly heartbreaking.
When searching for a job as a former entrepreneur, you’re seen as a bit of a renegade. You have the skills and experience they’re looking for, but lack the pedigree of a big agency, and the civility of corporate life. You’re too bossy or crafty to be an associate, but too rough around the edges to be a leader. You’re in a bit of a no-man’s land, which sort of only resonates with other entrepreneurs or start-ups. And working for those guys is why you left office life in the first place.
Six months later, we all entered the Covid era, and I was and remain glad to have a good job. I still do one or two gigs a year. I say that it’s to keep my agency’s portfolio active, but I imagine it’s mostly because I still wish I had a piece of that life.
(EDITORIAL) To the unseen entrepreneur, we see you and we know that you work your tails off to do good things in your community.
I recently frequented one of my favorite new restaurants to find it permanently closed after less than a year. This locally sourced brunch place had pinpointed all of the farms that supplied their food on a map of California that hung like gallery art in the center of their restaurant.
They made sandwiches at their shop with donated food for the homeless and wrote inspirational notes to tuck inside their brown bag lunches. Their food was not only nutritious but delicious, and they seemed to always have patrons when we went, not too many that there was a line out the door, but enough that they always seemed busy.
I wish that we had spent more time there, more money, told more of our friends, or left glowing yelp reviews, but we are only two people, two people who took a delicious restaurant for granted because we thought how could this fail?
I’m sure that’s what the entrepreneur owners believed too when they started out.
They probably thought they’d make great food that people want to eat in a location newly dubbed Silicon Beach – amid shiny live/work complexes, surrounded by startups and young people.
They ventured that they could morally source nutritious food, give back to the community, and be excellent.
Part of me imagines that they did so well as a restaurant that they shut their doors just to expand, or open in a better location, or take a much-needed break. But they probably failed, as so many businesses do, and I want to take a moment to say thanks.
Not just to the restaurant that served the best breakfast tater tots that I have ever had the pleasure of eating, but to every entrepreneur who embarks on a journey that tries to make the world better.
I’m not just talking about the tech entrepreneur (though we need you too).
I’m mostly talking about the unseen baker that wakes up at 3am every morning just to bring a handful of baked goods to their city. Or about the small store owner that stocks chotchkies and cookbooks and beautiful things all of which I wish I could buy. I’m talking about the start-up plumber who shows up at your house on a Sunday afternoon and fixes your toilet because you’re at your wit’s end.
You are the unsung entrepreneurs, the heroes that we hurriedly thank on our way out the door.
You are the folks who had a dream and risked everything to bring us delicious food, adorable chotchkies, and functional plumbing.
A mentor of mine once told me that to be successful you must jump in the water, swim as fast as you can, and slowly increase the speed.
To those of you out there swimming as fast as you can – we’re behind you, and we appreciate you.
This is your headline, one you don’t often get — keep doing what you’re doing, we believe in you, and your hard work does not go unnoticed.
And if you decide after everything you’ve been through that it’s time to hang a permanently closed sign on your front door, there are people out there, lots of them maybe, who will mourn the loss of your mini quiches, your adorable iPhone cases, or even the best breakfast tater tots in the world.
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