A weekly dispatch on the three things every small business has to get right: Operations. Marketing. People. Real stories about the structural breakdowns that keep good businesses stuck — and what it looks like when you finally fix them.
nobody tells you it's the last one
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Hello Reader, Hubby and I were talking this week about lasts. We think a lot about firsts. We barely think about lasts at all. There was a last time somebody carried you up to bed. You have no idea when it was. Same with the last tree you climbed, and the last night you stayed outside playing until the streetlights came on. Nobody stops you on the way out the door and says, well, that's the last one. He brought it up because of his parents, and the last time you drive a car. We're getting ready to live part of our life in San Diego, and it's a pile of firsts. A house we've never lived in. A grocery store where I have no idea where they keep the good olive oil. Firsts always get the recognition. But the in-betweens are where the life actually happens, and those are the ones that turn into lasts without announcing themselves. Some of this comes from my mentor, Kasey Jones. She has you do a future you exercise, where you get very specific about your life ten years out, and then work backward. What does five year you need to do? Three year you? One year? I did it, and somewhere in the middle I stopped and thought, wait. Why am I waiting? A good chunk of that ten year picture isn't ten years away. Some of it I could be doing this month, if I arranged things differently. That's a big part of why we bought in San Diego now instead of at retirement. It's just like this in our business. We put the life we want on a shelf marked later, and meanwhile our weeks fill up with work that doesn't need us specifically. I'm doing this alongside you, not from the other side of it. My own week still has things in it I should have handed off months ago. Here's the piece I'd start with. Most people only use AI for one job, which is writing an email. There are five, and I put all five on one page for you. Grab the QUEEN Method one pager ← the PDF, no opt in, just yours The longer version, including the five day receipt I run before I touch any tool, is here: Future You Doesn't Have to Wait Hit reply and tell me which of the five you'd use first. I read every one. Shell, Yes! Here's to your success, _______________________________________________________________________ “It’s Just Like This in Our Business”A weekly dispatch on the three things every small business has to get right: Operations. Marketing. People. Real stories about the structural breakdowns that keep good businesses stuck and what it looks like when you finally fix them. |
“It’s Just Like This in Our Business”
A weekly dispatch on the three things every small business has to get right: Operations. Marketing. People. Real stories about the structural breakdowns that keep good businesses stuck — and what it looks like when you finally fix them.
Hello Reader, "We're so busy and I'm all by myself and I can't help you now." That's what the woman at the grocery store told me on Saturday. I'd come in to rent a carpet cleaner, with a storm on the way and the whole town of Pacific Beach stocking up. I said I'd wait. (Cue me settling in by the registers like I lived there.) She came back three more times to tell me she still couldn't help. Meanwhile I could see stock people and a couple of cashiers with nobody in their lines. Then the shift...
Hello Reader, An hour after I told myself "just a few laps around the block," I was still walking. Yesterday I hit the 4pm wall. Hubby usually walks with me, but he was away at a conference, so I made myself a little deal. Some steps are better than none. Then I opened the front door. It was sunny and in the low 70s with a soft breeze, one of those early fall days that feels brand new. One lap turned into a longer loop down a street I haven't walked in a while. I didn't put on a podcast or...
Hello Reader, By Saturday night, there were twelve apple pies cooling on my stove. Every fall, we go apple picking. We've done it for as long as hubby and I have been together, and even before that. When he was a little boy, his family built a cute cabin in the Shenandoah Mountains with apple trees right on the property. My mother-in-law even wrote an apple recipe book. These days I bake at least a dozen pies every year, and a few of them are gluten-free. Pie day starts with bowls. I line up...