I took this photo in October on a layover in Taipei.
A glowing sign above the C4 gate read “The Metaverse Waiting Lounge.”
It felt like a fever dream (Well really the entire C and D concourses at Taipei airport did) full of jet-lagged travelers, neon lights, and a name that perfectly captured how this year felt.
Stuck between worlds, building something real in a space that doesn’t fully exist yet.
That image (and moment) stuck with me.
I had a few conversations this year with freelancers and small agency owners who are 10–20 years older than me. Many of who have been in business longer than I’ve been in the workforce. All are people who are good at what they do and have been doing it a long time.
The conversations clarified something for me.
I love executing, the actual fixing, the positioning, the art of crafting compelling messaging. But I also want to build assets that compound. The things that make the execution sharper and give clients more than just my time.
From the outside, my business probably looks the same as it did a year ago. From the inside, almost nothing is.
The quiet build
Here’s what I built this year that most people can’t see yet.
70+ Clarity Jams
I got tired of positioning being a black box that takes months, costs 10k+, and is outdated within weeks of launching the new positioning. When in reality, your positioning is always evolving, especially now when someone can spin up software in a weekend. So, I thought what if you could look over the shoulder of someone adapting their positioning. Just me and a founder vibin’ over Zoom talking about positioning and hearing their pitch but thru the lens of an actual product or service page on the screen.
And that’s how I accidentally launched a 2nd podcast, one on positioning and messaging, where I get on a call with a founder, hear their pitch, and workshop what’s working and what could be improved.
But somewhere around Jam 30 or 40, something shifted. I stopped thinking about each conversation as a one-off and started seeing the patterns underneath.
At 70+ Jams, I’ve built a library of what works and what doesn’t that I couldn’t have bought or learned any other way. It doesn’t show up on a services page, but it’s underneath everything I do now.
Internal tools
I started building my own tools this year. Nothing fancy. Just scrappy internal stuff that automates the parts of my workflow I used to do manually or pay someone else to figure out so I can execute more efficiently.
I didn’t set out to learn to code. I just got tired of waiting for the right tool to exist, waiting for a developer to have time, and waiting for someone else to solve a problem I could see clearly but couldn’t fix myself.
So, I started fixing them. It’s not a product. It’s not even something I talk about much. But it changed how I think about leverage and what I’m capable of building.
100+ episodes of The Remote Work Tribe
I passed 100 episodes this year and landed some of the biggest guests I’ve ever had on the show, like:
When I started the podcast a few years ago, I had no idea if it would go anywhere. Now it’s a growing body of work of how remote-first and hybrid founders, operators and marketing leaders lead their teams that anyone can point to and learn from. The compound interest is starting to show.
Roundtables
As an introverted leader, I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could host 5 in-person marketing roundtables this year across 5 different cities. Small, hand-curated groups of agency owners, marketing leaders, and founders sitting in a room talking through real growth challenges.
Just having actual conversations about the stuff people don’t post about online.
Every room was different. One was mostly agency owners grinding through the same client problems. Another was founders trying to figure out positioning in markets that were shifting under them. Another was marketing leaders venting about things they couldn’t say at work. The mix varied, but the energy was the same. People who wanted to talk about what’s actually hard, not perform expertise for an audience.
I learned a lot. More than I expected, honestly:
- About what’s actually working right now across different business types.
- About how the same challenges show up differently depending on whether you’re running an agency, leading a team, or building a company.
- About what people will say out loud when no one is recording.
I’m going to keep doing these intimate roundtables. The format works. Getting people in a room, in person with no agenda other than “let’s talk about what’s real” is rarer than it should be. And it’s one of the few things that actually cuts through the noise.
But I’m not doing 5 in 4 months again. That pace nearly killed me. Next year I’ll be more deliberate with fewer, but better.
Who the business works best with
One thing I got clearer on this year: the kinds of clients where I do my best work.
It’s less about title and more about how someone operates.
The best projects we had this year shared a pattern. The person who hired me was competent, busy, and didn’t want to babysit the work. They had something that needed to get done—a homepage, a positioning problem, a launch or just needed a bunch of content written—and they wanted it handled. Not workshopped. Not run through endless rounds. Just handled, quietly, by someone they trusted.
That’s when I’m at my best. When there’s trust, when there’s room to move, and when the goal is “make this work” rather than “make this safe.”
I’m not drawing hard lines. I still work with marketing teams of all sizes. But I’ve gotten better at recognizing the conditions where I can actually do good work—and more protective of those conditions than I used to be.
Where I showed up
I logged a lot of miles this year including Japan, Phoenix, Taiwan, Thailand, Burlington, Boise, Tampa and Austin.
I don’t talk about this much because it can come off the wrong way. But the reality is that some of my best client relationships and projects this year started with showing up somewhere in person thru a conference, a dinner, or a conversation that wouldn’t have happened over Zoom.
Seven years in, I’ve built a business that travels with me when I need it to. That’s not an accident.
***
Seven years in, I’m still a strategist. Still a writer. Still the person who fixes the homepage and makes the messaging land.
But, I’m also becoming a true builder and fixer.
Plus, I’ve also got 70+ clarity jams under my belt, tools I built myself, and a much clearer sense of who I do my best work with.
That’s the update. On to year 8.
