Release.

It came to me again during a run this past Sunday. Five miles in and I’m thinking of all the ways in which release moves us forward. From the big, big to the small, small.

And how there is an element of surrender that’s anti-instinctual. Counter-intuitive. Not one of the choices in fight or flight.

A week before that, it had hit me as I was driving downtown to run the Cincinnati Flying Pig Half-Marathon. I was so, so tired (5 a.m. tired and worn-out tired). I didn’t feel well: sinus infection, cramps, headache. I hadn’t been sleeping. It had been an emotional week and my whole system felt out of whack. And on top of all of that, it started to rain. “Okay,” I said, to no one in particular. “I give up. You win. But I am still running this mother.”

I got my best half-marathon time ever.

 Agents of Release

Recently, I spent a few days learning about a company that is growing like crazy, against odds anyone would have ever bet on. In fact, it doesn’t make any sense at all—except when you see it firsthand, it all makes total sense. I wish I could share more. But for now, I’ll just say that all of the things I’ve been writing about for the past two years, like living your story, starting with why, understanding your people, and creating your brand voice: they embody.

I got the chance to hear story after story from the executives who came to this organization. They were all framed as stories of belief and leaps of faith. But what I really kept hearing over and over again were stories of release. People throwing up their hands and saying, “I mean, okay, I don’t know why I’m drawn to this opportunity, but I’m doing it.”

On one hand, it looks reckless, because there is so little logic. But on the other hand, we are agents of release every day. This is especially true if you are working with other people, pretty much in any capacity, from personal trainer to tax advisor to therapist to brand strategist to parent.

On the practical level, we are constantly working to get clients to release ideas. No, you don’t need that on your web site. No, you can’t take that tax deduction. Yes, you need to let go of that idea for your logo. Yes, you actually have to get on the floor and do pushups to build muscle. You know exactly what I’m talking about, right?

But then there is the ooey-gooey life stuff. It’s bigger and it’s personal, but not different. In fact, it’s really easy to forget that it’s actually the same process when it’s your own mind. I’m talking about the things in your head. The dialogs between you and yourself. The ideas you’ve been carrying around forever or just for a morning that keep you mired in something. Like how sorry I was feeling for myself the morning of that race, until I just released it to the ether.

And then there is the real reason I know that I’m exploring this idea of release, in this particular moment. The real reason the word won’t leave my head. A thing I can barely write about right now: that I now have to see my once-vibrant dad in a nursing home. He is receiving the best care possible—I’m so grateful for that. But I see that Alzheimer’s has spared nothing; nothing is left of who he was. And I just want his body to be released.

Release.

Except it’s just not my call.

Some things are your call to release. You’re heading up the conversation. You have the power to release. To throw your hands up, or to guide someone else to do it. What I’m hoping right now is that living life by this philosophy of releasing and being a release-enabler has some impact on the terrible stuff that isn’t my call. That my surrendering puts something into the world that makes other things happen. That letting go of an idea helps someone somewhere release something much bigger. That Aimee Mann is right when she sings, “So just . . . give up.”

It’s really quite kooky. But so was that company. So was how great I felt when I started that race.

Release.

Because right now, everyone is touting storytelling (stories, stories, stories!). Countless articles and books have told us the benefits of stories. Storytelling as a leadership tactic. Storytelling as a sales tactic. Storytelling to build your tribe. Storytelling to command attention. On one hand, it’s a victory for the storytellers! But it also feels like a potential “uh-oh” moment. A this-isn’t-special-enough-anymore moment.

I’ve noticed, however, that many of the conversations about storytelling are failing to address something pretty important: that your story has to be about something. And that you should really understand what it is you’re about before you try to tell a story about it.

I never would have thought this was a thing to struggle with—until I started working with businesses to tell their stories.

Pass the Soda and Let’s Talk

The people and organizations I’ve worked with fall into one of three positions on the “we get what we’re about” scale.

1.  We know exactly what we’re about: just help us say it in this speech, book, web site, video, or other cool project.

2.  We have a paper trail, full of statements and formal-sound rhetoric—mostly full of words that the industry demands, but that have very little life or meaning. What we’re about is somewhere close. It’s here in the building somewhere. We just need help getting back to it and saying it in this speech, book, web site, video, other cool project.

3.  We have lost our way and really have no idea. But we are going to keep making speeches, books, web sites, videos, and projects that should be cool but aren’t.

Number one is easy, because it’s just execution.

Number three I usually don’t work with—but instead, leave for the coaches and consultants who love the challenge of turning a business around.

But number two is where it’s at. Literally, it’s where I most often find people and organizations. It’s the trickiest place to be, because with all of that rhetoric and industry-conforming jargon (we are saying all of the right stuff!), it’s often quite hard to see that you might have a problem. It takes companies a while to come around to the idea that in this story economy—this economy of connection and person-to-person selling—you might be losing ground if you are no longer talking to people in real ways.

But it’s also a great place to be, because once a company does see it, they are eager to throw themselves into the process.

So, what does it look like when a company starts investigating what they are truly about? The processes I’ve been part of are all remarkably similar, no matter if it’s the American Heart Association or a solopreneur.

It’s not a creative brief that gets passed down the ladder, until it’s 16 people removed from anyone who gets to make a decision. It’s not a memo. In fact, it barely feels official at all—which is sort of the point.

It’s people in a room (the decision-makers and/or the people who have the ear of the decision-makers), with coffee and soda and trail mix, talking about what matters. It’s hashing it out through one-on-one and group conversations. It’s taking the time to answer really, really basic questions. Earlier this year, I was working with one of my clients—a non-conventional auto financing company—having exactly these conversations. They had done the work of the brainstorming and defining who their people were and what they cared about.

But they needed that essence. That one thing they were about that permeated everything else. Through talking it out, we realized that their thing was simply opportunity: we are about opening up opportunity to people. It means making the car buying experience better. It means having people’s backs. It means any number of specific things that they can talk about in more detail. But it all flows from one idea: cracking open opportunity. That’s what the stories they tell in various places (videos, web site, brochures) need to be about at their core. Without that core, they might still tell great stories. But the stories wouldn’t lead clients and potential clients where they needed them to go.

So absolutely tell stories. All of the time and everywhere. Frame your “About Us” page as a story. Start off your presentations and speeches and client pitches with stories. And craft your story into a video.

But make sure every story is rooted in the same basic thing your company is about. Don’t write one more word until you hash that out. Make it your next conversation. Because there’s a Fonzie and a shark around every corner. And only a story about something real will keep you on course.

By the time I was 16 and on the verge of getting my driver’s license, I hated it. But up until that time, I sort of loved it. Because the city bus is an interesting place to observe people. It sounds all scary now: a young girl alone on the bus! But it actually wasn’t. At all.

I would sit in my favorite spot (the seat right behind the door in the middle of the bus), put my feet up on the metal frame, and just watch and listen. The evening was usually way more interesting: It’s when the race track people got on, since there was a fairly large horse track around the corner from my stop. (I look back now and I realize sadly that a lot of these people had serious gambling problems.)

My fellow passengers were a mixed bunch overall. Boyfriends and girlfriends. Sometimes kids with their parents. But mostly people coming from or going to work. It was probably my first up close experience with what I guess we now call the service class or the working poor: adult minimum wage workers trying to make it.

I was shy and in my own world, so I rarely talked to other passengers. But I listened to people’s conversations. Constantly. Sometimes their stories were about growing up in another city (which always intrigued me: you mean you weren’t born here?). Sometimes the stories were about food or dogs or vacations. Sometimes it was just a bunch of complaining about people. Mostly, I was just amused at how weird many of the people seemed. Which was very cool.  (Keep in mind that “weird” still had a pretty broad definition for me at 11, living fairly sheltered as I did.)

In fact, it was probably the first time in my young life that I was unsupervised, and around people who weren’t like me. People who had different ideas and experiences than what floated around in my homogenous Northern Kentucky suburb.

It wasn’t scary. It was exhilarating. I felt like I was seeing the world.

And every day, I’d come home with a story. “Yay, Judi has another ‘bus story!’” my mom and sisters would say. We’d sit around the table after my sisters came home from their evening aerobics class and giggle about my bus stories.

I soaked in those bus stories primarily because in the world before mobile devices, it was a way to pass the time. But also because I couldn’t not observe the people around me and take in their stories. How else would I come to understand the world and my place in it?

My bus stories were preparing me for a lifetime of working the storytelling trade. They taught me to hear different voices. And to see that the stories that made up varied people’s lives actually mattered. They mattered.

More than 25 years later, I see just how much.

Welcome to The Story Economy

If you received this post via email, you probably noticed that it looked a little different (blog changes are coming soon!). That’s because I have rebranded my newsletter (which gets posted to this blog) to better own what it is I write about: the story economy.

So, welcome! Although it’s not a new space. We’ve actually all been here for a while. I’m just claiming it. Which means that it’s the perfect time to start noticing.

Because the story economy is on city buses and in churches and boardrooms. It’s in supermarket aisles and in the App Store. It’s at the farmer’s market, around the dinner table, and all over the glorious world wide web.

The story economy is simply the idea that we live and work in an economy that’s fed by storytelling. And by storytelling, I mean shaping an idea or experience into a narrative that people relate to and can easily retell. In the story economy, person-to-person is the new base from which to build our businesses and our influence.

Now, everyone has their idea about what’s feeding the economy and making businesses grow (or tank) today. There are all kinds of camps and approaches; some I respect, and some I don’t. There is the science of SEO and conversion and A/B testing. There are brands that specialize in telling you how to build an empire through affiliate marketing. There is amazing work in customer insights (including one of my own wonderful clients!). And then there are companies and individuals that spend the majority of their words convincing you they have a secret that will make all the difference: a process that will finally make it happen for you. Just enter your name here and we’ll tell you the one simple thing you’re not doing that will show you how to make multiple six figures overnight!

Honestly, I don’t really care much about any of that. I mean, of course I care about the tactical stuff to the level I need to care to be helpful to my clients. But secret marketing tactics and SEO science don’t grab my imagination.

The tactics I care about most and need to talk about most are those related to storytelling. Because I believe that storytelling as a way of life is available to anyone, anytime . . . whether you’re on a bus or running a Fortune 500 company.

I’m writing The Story Economy blog for small business owners and solopreneurs, because I am one. But I also write for dads in Virginia and moms in Nebraska. For development directors in Washington, D.C., and ad agencies on Madison Avenue. For college counselors and therapists and dancers. For lawyers and doctors and accountants. For surf shop owners and pastry chefs. For people without direction and type A achievers. For people who understand string theory and people who don’t.

Mostly, I’m writing for people who want to connect and spread a message about something they believe in, whether it’s through their business or their influence as a friend, parent, relative, citizen, co-worker, or leader.

If this isn’t you, I release you: you’re not obligated.

But if you’ve been reading my stuff regularly and it resonates with you (maybe for reasons you don’t even understand), then by all means, claim your spot in the story economy. And spread the word!

Because there are a lot of stories that need to be told.

Which one will you tell today? Share it below.

And stay tuned, as I work to carve out a stronger blog space on my site, where I can really explore the story economy and create a community around it. (If you want to sign up for my email list so you’ll be the first to know, just use the sign up feature at the very top of the page.)

1. Every business, brand, freelancer, consultant, job candidate, or presenter needs to bring a voice to their message.

2. The best brand voices evolve: they’re not just randomly plucked out of the pile. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be a moment of sudden clarity around how your voice sounds and the way it engages people (“Oh, here it is! I recognize this as my voice!”)

3. If you are having a hard time grasping voice, read a bunch of children’s books. Kids won’t accept voiceless stories. I’m not sure why adults will.

4. If your web site sounds one way, your emails sound another, and your manner on the phone is unlike either, people will notice the misalignment and be more than a little freaked out about it. You should start being freaked out about it, too.

5. You can use all the adjectives you want (passionate, empowered, sophisticated, enthusiastic, bold . . .). But your voice can’t just be a collection of words. It has to breathe this stuff—not just say it over and over again.

6. Not all voices need to be bold. A quiet voice can have as much power as a loud one (more, sometimes).

7. There are two big things you need to be stunningly clear on before you think about voice: why you do what you do (i.e., what your business really cares about) and who your people are. Because a voice with no soul and no intended target is just a bunch of noise.

8. Jargon is just a bully. Stand up to it, and it will back down and leave your voice alone.

9. There is no default professional voice for bios, web sites, memos, or speeches. There is only the lack of voice. Which is boring. And not memorable. And not helping your brand or bottom line in any way.

10. If you haven’t created a document that defines your brand voice yet, do it now. Talk about how the voice moves through a paragraph. What kinds of words it uses. What tone it takes. What traits it has. Who it sounds like. What it channels. What it avoids. Give it a descriptive name. And then make sure everyone in your company understands it.

11. A well-developed brand voice is like the distinct gait of someone you love. You spot it right away.

12. Too much is too much. When you’re solid in your brand voice, you know this. You know when to relinquish metaphors that aren’t working. And you know when to say less instead of saying more.

13. You always want verbal and visual working together. The sound of your brand voice should match the way it looks.

What does voice mean to your brand? What is your guiding principle? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

We are searching for our dad’s military discharge form. Apparently, it is a piece of gold that no veteran is ever supposed to lose. And we’re sure it’s not lost. We just don’t know where it is. (But if we want to apply for veteran’s benefits for our dad’s care, we need to find it.)

We have found the file of Very Important Papers. Not there. The box of military pins and dog tags and European currency from the 1950s. Not there. Sigh.

Of course we want to find it so we can get this red tape rolling. But truthfully, I’ve had a ball searching, because every drawer has some sort of treasure. It’s an abundance of stories. A few days ago, I found all of his college notes, organized meticulously in file folders by subject. Naturally, I flipped to the literature ones. Instead of brilliant musings on John Donne, I found drawings of hot rod cars. Doodles of cars all over the page. Nice, dad. Way to appreciate 17^th century poetry.

Actually, these car sketches are all over everything of his from his early years—in the margins of other stuff, and on pieces of torn scrap paper. There are even detailed hand-drawn schematics for ideas he had about building cars. I always knew my dad loved cars. But this outpouring . . . this doodling when he should have been paying attention to lectures . . . this focus here when logic dictated it should have been there: this feels familiar.

Perhaps because it’s my struggle, just with a different name.

A Doodling Soul

Logically, there are a dozens of things I should be writing about in this newsletter instead of what I discovered in my quest to find a missing DD-214 form. I should write more straightforward “service” posts about the things people hire me to do, like building your brand story, coming up with tag lines, writing your “about us” page, creating a voice for your web site copy, crafting your elevator pitch, and using stories in your presentations. After all, I pour all of the knowledge and skill I have regarding these things into my client work. I love doing it. And I’m pretty sure I’m good at it. So I should write about it.

Except I don’t want to. Not in this moment at least.

Some weeks, I open a Word doc, intending to write one thing, and these stories about my family and my experiences and my observations just come out instead. Like doodles of cars during the lecture.

I definitely believe that what you focus on grows. So, to grow your customer base, you need to focus on your customer needs. To get your story to spread, you need to focus on telling it. To bring people into your tribe, you need to focus on making connections. We can all see that, right?

So what do you do with a soul that wants to doodle?

I think the answer is actually simple: you give it a pencil and relieve it of the burden of should.

What looking at those drawings made me see is that there is difference between between diverting your focus because you’re not committed to something (or you hate it), and indulging a thing bubbling inside of you because you suspect is has everything to do with the thing you’re committed to and love. My dad loved learning. He knew how lucky he was to be able to go to college. Should he have paid more attention in lectures? Maybe. I don’t know. But I think doing those doodles of fast cars was just his way of articulating ideas like freedom and possibility. Things not unrelated to getting an education and growing up.

When I let my soul doodle and be free to explore ideas, it makes me so much better at my job. Painting pictures and telling stories keeps my work on a human scale—and without a space to dig into the nitty-gritty of storytelling, I might forget that it’s all about making connections with people.

So, in this business you love (because I am assuming you love your business: if you don’t, that’s a whole other discussion), between the list of what you should do and the list of what you’re pulled to do, what if you just let yourself be pulled? For an hour or a week or 10 minutes? What if you just indulged your doodling? Not because you’re lazy or procrastinating or looking for an escape, but because it will make you better and your company stronger.

The idea that I’m taking away this week—the idea that will make my business stronger—is the concept of abundance. I didn’t see junk in those file cabinets. I saw abundance. Abundance of story matter. Abundance of history. Abundance of life. That’s definitely an idea worth following.

What idea is waiting for you? You won’t know until you doodle.

But as with our disagreement about Tess of the d’Urbervilles, I think he’s wrong on this one, too.

Because how can I write about everything else in my life and my business, and not write about the fact that I’m, you know, a girl?

But I’m probably not going to say what you think I’m going to say. So hang with me a second.

First of all, what inspired me to write this post is the backlash against Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In. I’ll just say clearly: I have read the book and I like it. Even though I have no desire to climb the corporate ladder myself (I’m a do-my-own-thing kind of person), I agree with her viewpoint that women hold themselves back for a whole constellation of reasons (none of which are they are stupid, weak, or inept) and that the more female leaders we have at the top, the more opportunity will filter down.

My problem isn’t that people disagree with her—because there are other kinds of arguments to be made about the gender gap. My problem is that people are attacking her and the book without reading it or having much of an idea of what it’s about. I’ve watched this happen over and over on blogs and through eavesdropping on conversations.

People are making assumptions. And let me tell you, boys and girls, it’s not getting anyone anywhere.

Which brings me around to what I want to write about—which does have to do with you, even if you’re sure it doesn’t.

The House of Cards is Falling

Last year on my birthday, lots of people wished me happy birthday on Facebook. It’s lovely to hear those little bing-bong Facebook alerts all day, and read the nice things people say. But one comment stuck with me, in a not-so-great-way. A woman I don’t really know posted something like, “Make your husband do the dishes today!”

The problem is that, as our culture stands right now, this is still a normal thing to say.

Except my husband does the dishes every day. And he cooks. And grocery shops. And cleans. And takes care of the kids. And makes their doctor’s appointments. He’s a stay-at-home-dad, and I work full-time to provide for the family. I don’t feel guilty that I’m not doing all the typical things women do, and he doesn’t feel guilty that he isn’t a man with an ulcer, a drinking problem, and an asshole boss. We’ve released each other from it.

Trust me, neither one of us is a martyr. We’re not any smarter or better than any other couple. And lest you think he is some sort of new age hipster sensitive guy, let me tell you, he has a temper like a firecracker, and there is nothing in his background to suggest this path. I mean, in his earlier years, he started a club among his friends called “Bachelors for Life” and swore he would never have kids. He only changed his mind at the age of 40.

Out there in the world, if I’m around people who don’t really know me, and I engage in any kind of conversation about working full-time and having two kids under the age of five, they tilt their head to the side in that sympathetic way, and say, “Oh, you must be so busy!” I feel the weight of their assumptions cascade around me. I know it doesn’t come from a bad place in their minds. But I’ve checked around, and my male colleagues don’t get the sympathetic head tilt. They also don’t get called “working fathers.”

For my husband’s part, he’s already been told by another stay-at-home-dad he knows in our neighborhood not to bother with the local mom’s group: they weren’t interested in a guy joining. (Not to mention that I have to make these bizarre third-party introductions between my husband and the moms at the preschool regarding playdates, because my husband is always afraid they’ll think he’s hitting on them. Which turns out to be a valid fear.)

We’re definitely not the only people redefining the roles according to what we want to do, versus according to how it’s always been. It’s just not normal yet. Which means that strangers can post comments on Facebook that hardly anyone would call out as weird. And TV commercials and TV shows can keep portraying men as incompetent around the house and with the kids (but A+ for trying, dads!), while the superwoman wife swoops in and fixes everything with her knowing smile. (I now hate most family sitcoms all TV commercials that sell household products.)

My husband and I have an amazing and blessed life. So this is not complaining. Far from it. I only point these things out because reversing the roles has been such a gift. It’s allowed me to see how everything to do with roles for men and women cracks open and shows itself. And that it’s all just a house of cards, built solely on assumptions.

But it’s a deceptively strong house of cards, because a society long ago had the foresight to reinforce it with industrial-strength glue. And it’s glue that’s now reached its expiration date. So it’s peeling and cracking. And like all toxic stuff, it’s off-gassing like crazy, pitting all kinds of people against each other in one last attempt to distract from the crumbling: stay-at-home moms against work-outside-the-home moms against have-it-all-moms against childless women against single moms—and all of it against men, many of whom are either getting scolded for not spending enough time with families, getting scolded for not being committed enough to their career, or getting suspicious looks from the moms on the playground.

I can’t think of a single group of people for whom maintaining this structure and then not noticing it is good. I can’t quite put all the pieces together, but I don’t think gay couples escape it either (and if they do, they don’t escape a bunch of other crap). Because that expiring, off-gassing glue is melting off that crumbling house of cards, running down all over the floor. And we’re all stepping in it. Losing our best shoes to it.

Of course you can sidestep it. I mean, of course. We’re not a bunch of victims.

But you can’t unstick yourself unless you first notice that it’s there to begin with.

So my fight isn’t about more female leaders as heads of companies and heads of state. I’m aligned with that idea. But I don’t know it firsthand. The same way I don’t know what it’s like to be a single mother. No one woman represents every experience, the same way that we’d never expect men as different as David Sedaris and Jack Welch to represent the same experience.

My fight is to get you to notice the ways in which you’ve been part of constructing things. Not because you’re bad or stupid or a victim or an ass or have made the wrong decisions. But because not enough people are even noticing. If men and women don’t notice in equal amounts, we can’t change anything. Not our households. Not institutionalized policies. Not the subtle messages to kids. Not the looks women get from other women. Not pay inequity. And not the leadership gap.

Maybe you’re tired of hearing about gender. “Geez, let’s just focus on talent!” you say. I’ve heard that before. It sounds great: sign me up!

Except for one thing: we still have this mess of gooey glue everywhere, and collectively, our feet are stuck in it. That will be the case as long as it’s still normal to say, “It’s your birthday: make your husband do the dishes.”

The conversation on gender is about to break wide open, people. I can smell it, the way you can smell rain in the air before a big thunderstorm. And there will be a lot of different arguments. I, for one, welcome a loud public debate. Let’s get rowdy and have smart debates about stuff—because there is no one right answer. I definitely want my daughter and my son to hear this debate. I want them to grow up noticing stuff.

Now, if you’re living by yourself in the woods, or in some idyllic commune, you probably don’t need to listen. But if you are a man or a woman actively in the world—whether that means working in the home, outside of the home, splitting the chores, doing all the chores—and/or you are raising children, and/or you just want to be relevant for the future, you should probably listen.

Because it definitely has something to do with you.

At some point, he realized that they were going to be assigning a new instructor for the class. So, he figured that if he could learn to transmit and interpret Morse code faster than anyone else in his class, he would get chosen to be the instructor (and not get sent to the front to die). He worked harder than anyone else, and was by far the best at Morse code in his class. The short taps, the long taps, the dots, the dashes: he was straight-up awesome at it. Surely, he’d be the one they’d pick. Right?

But they didn’t pick my dad. They picked one of the worst students in the class instead. Typical Army move, my dad always used to say with a sigh. It was merely the first of many things he would experience that didn’t make sense about the Army, he would add.

Now, I’m not sure the Army is really that much like life.

But what is like life is this: watching other people get chosen, especially when you believe that you’re better. And the frustration that follows.

The Joy and the Trouncing

This desire to be chosen: it’s at the base of our free market system. People essentially compete to sell stuff to other people. I think it’s amazing, and I don’t want to live in any other system.

The way I see it, there are basically two pieces to this “choose me!” business.

First, there is the desire to beat out the competition and rise to the top. It’s a little bit of a zero sum situation: for one person/organization to win, another needs to lose. A choice is being made, and you want to be the thing someone chooses. Don’t listen to her; listen to me. Don’t take that approach; take my approach. Don’t hire him; hire me. Don’t buy that brand; buy our brand. For consumer brands, it’s about gaining market share. For agencies, it’s about being the agency of record. For charities, it’s about being the one who gets the donation. For sole proprietors and small companies like me, it’s about securing the contract before another person who does exactly what you do swoops in with a more compelling package. (Or worse, a lower price.)

You have passion and skills, and you choose yourself to be in business. Absolutely. But then, you have to get chosen to survive. And the getting chosen part often requires a completely different set of skills than the skills it takes to make the product or provide the service. Hence, the frustration. Because suddenly, it can feel like it’s just a game of who can talk the loudest.

And then there is the second piece—which is just the joy of getting to do more of what you’re doing on a bigger scale and for other people. It’s not so much the desire to create; rather, it’s the desire to share what you’ve created and see it have a life in the world. It’s the part where you get to share your gift. Where everything is abundant and no one has to lose.

I don’t know about you, but I really want to tuck myself into that blanket of joy, and just hibernate there. It’s such better energy. But I keep getting tangled in the sticky webbing that coats the desire to rise to the top—and feeling frustrated that I can’t get my voice heard on the scale I want. Because if I don’t have an audience, the scale is only me. And that doesn’t feel very abundant.

When I look around at the marketing out there, I know big and small companies are constantly toggling between these two desires: the joy and the trouncing. Maybe you are toggling at this very moment.

So I thought I’d share what I’m trying to do right now—as in, this day, this week (because the last two weeks of toggling have worn me out completely).

It’s three things really: Pulling back, right-siding it, and noticing the opportunity of being unchosen.

First, pulling back. I’m trying to narrow and close channels that aren’t serving me. Unsubscribing from the lists of people I don’t resonate with and unsubscribing from Facebook feeds of people with whom I’m not actually friends. This whittling down isn’t because I’m too busy. It’s because I want to do a better job at being influenced on purpose instead of by mistake. There is a big difference between the energy you get from positive influence (“What a cool idea! I am going to let myself be influenced by that thinking”) and draining influence (which always leads me to bouts second-guessing and sad pity parties).

Second, right-siding it. Which is another way of saying focusing on the things going right. Instead of spending energy being irritated that the people I perceive to have louder voices—but weaker ideas—are getting chosen more than me, I am trying focus my energy on the people who have heard my voice, and have chosen me. And then chosen me again. Because working for them is where that joy comes from. They will help me grow and scale. Irritation won’t.

And third, looking for the opportunity that comes with not being chosen. So, my dad didn’t get chosen for the Morse code job. But he also didn’t get to sent to the Korean front. Instead, he was one of the very few draftees who got sent to post-war Germany as part of a peacekeeping troop. I don’t subscribe to the idea that there is some grand puppeteer in the sky who has things in mind for us we can’t know, but should just trust. I think it’s up to each person to actively look around and notice the new thing that’s now possible because the other thing didn’t work.

I imagine that my dad got off the boat across the Atlantic and said, “Well, here I am in Europe, in a space that’s once in a lifetime, watching a country get rebuilt. I will have stories and experiences that I couldn’t possible have had in my tiny Kentucky town and without the utter bad decision-making of the U.S. Army.”

I don’t even know most of the time when I’m not chosen. So the times when I am privy, I need to pay attention. These times must be a gift. Like Germany in 1952, they just must be.

Trounce a little. Find your joy. But let’s just keep working.

I had no clear idea of what I was going to do; I just grabbed all of the prints in my color palette that spoke to me (typical of how I approach projects).

But I figured it would be something sort of off-the-wall. Wacky. Un-babylike.

So when I sat down and started making a nine-patch quilt, I was surprised. Because nothing about it was wacky. Or unexpected. But something about the evenness of the squares and the white space just grabbed me. So I went with it.

Looking back, I think I choose that pattern because it felt very ordered. And I knew that having a baby was going to do some serious re-ordering of my life. So, a structure with set rules and definite order was comforting in that space of the unknown.

I love the quilt (pictured here), and the kids and I have spent plenty of time wrapped up in it. But I look at now and think: how naïve. It makes a nice picture of order. But in reality, nothing about personal experience or business feels that ordered.

Especially not right now, when I feel just a little bit stuck and out of order.

Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me . . .

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my nine-patch quilt is the most re-pinned out of all of the images on my Pinterest board full of stuff I’ve made.

People like straightforward stuff.

In fact, the marketing world seems to be trying to make nine-patch quilts of everything. That is, if you replace “nine patch” with “bulleted lists of a bunch of stuff you need to do.” I come across so many blog posts and articles that are just recaps of marketing ideas, neatly organized. Big to-do lists about social media and SEO and authenticity and list-building. A bunch of “follow this process” lists.

Now, I do find some of this stuff helpful. I like tips as much as the next person. I even create my own lists from time to time, and make attempts to share processes that I think work. (Not to mention the entire lifetime I spent before this one where I was a women’s magazine writer, boiling everything down into bullet points and tips.)

Here is my stuckness though: if we’re all just spinning around these tips on how to market to other people who market how to market, are we making anyone’s life better? Sometimes I feel like everyone on Twitter is just talking at everyone else, and no one is actually listening, because they are all saying shades of the same thing.

People seem to be making whole careers of selling a process for how to sell a process. The cycle doesn’t seem sustainable.

My stuckness is that I’m feeling like in all of this content creation about how to create content, it’s possible that nothing tangible is actually getting delivered. I want to find my place in it, without getting stuck in an endless nine-patch cycle, where things are ordered quite nicely, but nothing feels new or surprising.

For example, earlier this week, I bought a $15 “surprise” gift from Modcloth (you pick your size and they send you some piece of clothing that might be worth pretty much what you paid, or a lot more). Some random thing is actually going to get delivered to my door this week. And it will be a complete surprise. I might hate it. But I will get to hold a thing in my hands that will be brand new to my little world.

I feel like there aren’t enough real surprises. And, at the same time, I’m craving some kind of order. I don’t know how these things are true at once. But they absolutely are.

Maybe this is just the reality of marketing today: a lot of voices talking over each other. Maybe I think too much. Maybe I’m just jealous that other people seem to have figured out things that I haven’t figured out yet. Maybe I’m just tired of winter.

Or maybe I just need a short break from the noise of the digital world to find the order that is inside my own head somewhere. That is why I’m taking next week off from the newsletter. It’s my version of a spring break (not to be confused with an actual spring break).

I’ll see you back here in a couple of weeks, definitely with another story.

I will wait until my allotted time in May, when I have a scheduled appointment, she says. “You don’t understand. It’s whole a system. They don’t want to make time for stuff like this,” she says.

To which we say: what are you talking about, crazy lady?

“Listen, they don’t really care about us. No one really care about seniors,” she says. “We old people are just in the way.”

Obviously my siblings and I care tremendously about our parents. But I hear her. Now, I don’t think she’s quite right. There are companies and individuals who very much value her generation. In fact, I think there are people out there right now who are on a mission to make life better for older adults (I know some of them personally).

But systemically or institutionally (or whatever catch-all word you like), she is sort of right. At least about America. From a generational standpoint, we’re onto other things. We’re innovating for a different group of people. It’s not a generation that the generations now running things understand how to connect with—other than to feel sorry for (“oh, you’re old; wow, that sucks”) or to wish they would stop driving so slowly.

As a daughter, this breaks my heart. But as a marketer, it really makes me wonder: why, exactly, are we so in love with Mad Men then?

We Want Them to be Who We Want Them to Be

Mad Men is a show about my parents’ generation. And if the most captivating characters, like Don Draper or Joan Harris, were real people alive today, they would be in their late 70s and early 80s: my parents’ exact demographic. They’d be enmeshed in the Medicare system, going to allotted doctor’s appointments, where they would be given their 6.2 minutes to barely talk.

They would feel like they were in the way.

Listen, I love Mad Men in a big, big way. I love it for the set design, the lighting, the clothes, and the perspective it gives me of how necessary the civil rights and women’s movements were.

But it does make me wonder: why we are so taken with this snapshot of life for a generation, yet we’ve lost interest in the reality of how they are now? Why do we crave the stories of these fictionalized lives, not the stories of the real people alive today?

I don’t know exactly why, but I suspect it has to do with romanticizing an idea. Listen, I’ve built my business around romanticizing ideas. Painting pictures is what I do. So I get it. But the danger is . . . well, let’s just let Don Draper say it, as he does so well in one of his most famous quotes:

 “People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.”

I would extend that sentiment beyond just people (or generations), and also to situations.

For me, it’s like this: the ability to see something how I want it to be is surely my best quality. As I said, I paint pictures—not just for clients, but also for myself. I’ve been doing it my whole life. It’s what my husband loves about me most, and the reason people hire me. I see the ideal, and it’s enough to drive the demons away. I see potential for myself and for others, and I wrap it all up into motivation.

It’s why I’ve been at storytelling for like 30-some years, and I’m nowhere near tired of it. It’s why I hardly ever get writer’s block.

But it’s my biggest weakness, too. Because when people and situations let me down, the demons come calling for me. How could I have been so wrong, I wonder? I do things like beat the shit out of myself running intervals on the track, slicing into the wind with my open runner’s fists, hissing with each breath: Why is this not the way I saw that it could be?

But . . . the good news is that in the past few years, I’ve started to get much better at seeing the whole continuum: that is, the line that stretches from romance to reality. Which is exactly why I see the romance of Mad Men contrasted against the reality, 50 years later.

Just so I’m clear: There is nothing wrong with getting lost in the world of Mad Men. Or any snapshot. It’s entertainment. We’re allowed to be entertained. But that romance/reality continuum: I know this plagues individuals and it plagues companies.

What I understand now is that the best leaders are able to put themselves at exactly the right place on the continuum, depending on what people need. Because often, we need someone to show us the vision, either of how it was, or what it could be. We need that snapshot.

But just as often, we need solutions for the thing in front of our face. We need to care about the reality of now.

As for my mom, we’re going to make sure she gets what she needs. We’ve got her back because we love her, even if some doctor’s office only sees her as a chart.

But you don’t need any connection to my mom or Mad Men to get this: you just need turn your head all the way, full range of motion, from one side to the other—and know when it’s time to pluck out the romance.

Of course, do all of this.

But then, get out of your head for a while. And just think about what you want your web site experience to feel like. The best way to do that is to stop thinking about web sites, and think about altogether different things.

Here are five things, to get you started.

1.  An Eames Lounge Chair

I mean, it’s gorgeous.

But it’s 100 percent functional. It tells you what to do (sit down!), but in a remarkable, beautiful way. When Ray and Charles Eames designed this in the 1950s, it was a totally new approach to a chair. The way they bent the plywood: no one had ever done that before.

So, I think this chair is one of the coolest pieces on the planet, but I know that it doesn’t call to everyone. It looks the way it looks on purpose. You might think it’s ugly. It’s not for you then.

Ultimately, it still does the thing it was built to do: give you a place to sit down.

Your web site needs to do the thing it was built to do (be a web site), but it can be beautiful. And innovative. And it should definitely be a statement.

2.  Boarding a plane (when air travel was still glamorous, minus the problematic fetishizing of female flight attendants)

Okay, boarding a plane now is a little piece of terrible. So let’s go back to a more sophisticated time in the history of air travel. When boarding a plane was a luxury. You were welcomed onboard. Perhaps with a drink. You sat down, and got comfortable.

Your needs mattered, and all around you, there was evidence that your needs mattered.

Your web site can have one of any number of personalities, from chic to cozy to futuristic. But it should always welcome people, lead through them, help them get seated, and reaffirm that they are in the right place.

3.  A thesis statement

Remember when you had to write papers in high school or college? Remember how you were always supposed to start with a thesis statement?

It turns out, thesis statements sort of rock. Because they make you stay focused and be specific. And (when you write them correctly), they make you take a stand. A thesis statement represents your view. And then everything else you talk about (“the evidence”) just reinforces it.

Your web site is like a thesis statement in that it takes some sort of stand. It represents your brand and your vision for how life should be. And all of your content just reinforces it.

4.  A really good movie

We need an example, so let’s just say Argo, because it’s the best movie I’ve seen recently. And it just won the big award.

So, Argo. It’s a story. It’s got characters with dimension people identify with. It’s a snapshot of something. And you want to keep watching it. Of course, there is some fancy Hollywood storytelling, because it’s important to paint a picture (the same way good copy and strong design do). But there is something very true at the heart. It’s about something. You can summarize it: Oh, it’s about the Iran hostage situation from the 80s, and how they got out the six hostages who escaped the embassy at the last minute.

Your web site is a story that’s about something, too. Something that people can summarize quickly. And hopefully, something they want to keep watching).

5.  A sewing pattern

Even if you’ve never sewn a stitch, you’ve probably seen a sewing pattern (this is a beautiful one by the lovely and talented Amy Butler; you can find it here!). Here is the thing about a pattern: it shows you the thing you want. It shows you what you’re going for. So, it’s got an aspirational quality.

But it’s also full of help to get you there. It just doesn’t show you something and then tease you. It works for you, and tells you the exact steps you need to follow to make the thing.

A web site can be highly aspirational. Lofty—sure. Bring it on. But it shouldn’t promise anything it can’t deliver.

So, what things come to your mind when you think about a great web site?