I was a website copywriter, brand voice strategist, and business partner to incredible designers for nearly a decade. If I learned anything during that time, it's that one of the things we business owners want is a business that looks amazing. We want our businesses to be sexy. We want people to want them. That's us being really typically human. Humans like beautiful things. And - when I asked you if your business is...

Have you ever been in the position where you want to do renovations on your house or apartment and you start planning it out but then realize that there are cracks in that load-bearing wall...or the corner isn't square...or if you attempt to do the thing you want to, you'd be opening a Pandora's Box of renovations until you die?  I hate to break it to you, but your business is like that too. As...

  Last week I sat down for a date with my monthly calendar to pencil in changes, client scheduling, and to generally take a peek at my capacity for this month. We talk about planning quite a bit in the Motorcycle Club and the nuances of figuring out a system that works for you and your brain. This is what works for me: Plan the big goals for the quarter then every month. Go through...

  We love Halloween in this house. Since moving to the country, the way we do Halloween has changed. We put up decorations and we carve a pumpkin but since we don't receive trick-or-treaters, we get our costumes on and drive up to our closest town. Yesterday, we were zombies. We let our kid stay up late, eat a bunch of candy, then get up in time this morning for school. In telling you this,...

  Up here in the northern hemisphere, the days are getting darker and colder. Of course, on the farm we experience this in many ways: we've harvested the remains of the garden before they get nipped by frost, the chickens are laying fewer eggs, dog walks are a bit faster and brisker, we're spending less time on outside projects and more time inside. These are seasonal ebbs and flows. We can lament the coming winter....

  You don't need to stay the same. You don't need to keep doing what is no longer serving you simply because that's what people expect. You don't need to be what you've always been. You don't need to hide yourself in costumes that aren't yours. You don't need to mask (or unmask) simply because people have made assumptions about you. You are allowed to grow. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to...

  One of the things I love about being an entrepreneur is that I'm able to bring my big ideas to life. I've always been an ideas person. I think you can probably relate. In fact, I was saying just over the weekend that there are kids who have a tendency to ask "What's that?", there are kids who have a tendency to ask "Why?", and there are also kids who have a tendency to...

  Let's face it. Running a business can be hard on the heart. Especially if you're neurodiverse, HSP, emotional, or empathic. It can seem so easy for others to shrug off a failed launch, a challenging client experience, or a mean social media comment. So often, we see other entrepreneurs sharing a Behind The Scenes story that's supposed to be honest and vulnerable but it really comes off more as "but look at me now"...

  A little while back I threw on some gumboots and slunked my way out the backdoor. It was already 3pm and I felt like I had doomscrolled my day away. Perhaps you've felt like this too. It was Monday. I had PLANS! But instead, I found myself at the end of a day feeling like the most I could account for was the break I took with my kid to learn about turtles in...

  "Don't you dare get a tougher skin!"That's what my partner, Michael, said to me yesterday when I was worrying over a project that went sideways on me. Okay, it was expected. I'd had red flags right from the start and even 10 years into this gig, I still sometimes ignore those red flags.Yesterday, I was feeling all the feelings: angry at myself for not trusting my intuition, angry at the client for being human,...

    A long time ago, I was walking through the forest at this hippie festival in Eastern Ontario. It was night and the forest was quiet. I could hear the offbeat coalescing of different bands from stages set around the forest. I felt safe and happy...and for the sake of your understanding of the story, quite sober.A woman I didn't know walked past me and smiled. She said, "hi Pisces". WHAT?!Everything stopped in that moment. How...

    In a recent podcast interview, I was speaking about authenticity, coming back to who you are, and building trust to make waves in your business. I said something in this interview that has become the very foundation of all my work:In a word where the status quo expects you to toe the line, the most badass, rebellious, awesome thing you can do in the world is be you.  You have always been you. It's your...

    Before I got into the office this morning, I saw a Gloria Steinem quote on my IG feed: "To have a democracy, you have to want one".  She was saying, if you want a change in leadership, you must vote. Of course this applies to so many things in life.If you want the laundry done, you need to put your clothes in the washing machine. If you want an email written, you need to open your inbox. If...

  Many years ago, I was living in Toronto. I shared an apartment in a Victorian walk-up with 3 others after answering a Craigslist ad. We were strangers. Some of us became friends. And for a while, it was perfect.On the corner of our street was a multiplex. Like many landlords in the area, this one didn't spend a lot of time on landscaping and the tenants, like most of us, didn't have enough time...

THIS SHIT IS UNCOMFORTABLE And that’s okay. It’s okay that you’re learning. It’s okay that you’re taking steps into new territory. It’s okay that you don’t feel like the confident, courageous, badass self like you do when you’re in your comfort zone. It’s okay that you don’t know what to say or when. It’s okay that you’ll probably make mistakes. You’re learning. Just like me. Just like many of us.

One of my post-school-bus rituals is to walk the dog around my property and let my thoughts gather themselves into coherence. ICYMI we live on a 3-acre permaculture education centre. We host workshops. We raise birds and skills and community. It’s quite dreamy and the morning walk has animal tracks and barn cats and the occasional deer spotting but that isn’t the point of this email. The point is, the other morning I was wandering...

Fuck The Hustle. There. I said it. When you start your business, there is a lot of pressure to grow quickly, scale fast, and hustle until you drop. So much of our community is about the hustle. We wear the t-shirts. We drink out of the coffee mugs. We celebrate it in the messages from sun-tanned millionaires on yachts who say, “You too can earn eleventy-gajillion dollars; just do as I did”. This hustle plays...

Fellow white women. Hi.I feel uncomfortable. I was brought up probably in a similar way to you: don’t talk back, don’t raise your voice, be nice. And yet as a parent to a little girl, I have a lot of uncomfortable conversations about the difference between nice and good. Good people aren’t always nice. Good people speak up. Good people stand up for others when there is no benefit to them or even at risk...

Go, team sports! You probably already know this but I’ve never been a particularly sporty person. I played t-ball for one season and spent a lot of time in the outfield happily picking dandelions. There were the few years where I did competitive swimming which arguably, is one of the most introverted sports out there (“just swim in that direction and don’t talk to anyone” got it). So when I saw my first roller derby...

  I need to talk to you about your perfectionism.   How do I know you’re a perfectionist? I don’t...and yet I have an inkling I might be right about it. From the conversations I’ve had with clients, acquaintances, and business friends over the years, I know that I am not alone in my perfectionism. In fact, without a formal survey, I’d say at least 90% of the people who come through my door identify...