I was flying back from an event my coach hosted in Arizona when I noticed. Among the people sitting in the nine, first-class seats, I was the only woman.

It’s not the first time I’ve noticed the disparity between men and women in the front half of the plane but today it was particularly meaningful. I had just seen Cindy Eckert speak about founding a pharmaceutical company, selling that company for one billion dollars and then suing the buyer to get it back when they failed to bring the product she fought so hard to create to market, Addyi.

You know the type. Those people who stomp on the seed of the vision rooted in your heart, or who water it with a “well-meaning” dose of reality.

Here’s the thing, realistic is really only someone else’s take on their experience. What they have decided emotionally, intellectually, and usually not spiritually, has nothing to do with you. That is unless you accept their reality as your own.

That vision you see in your head, the one you keep holding off while you stubbornly insist that you’re the only one who can handle it, is where your life and business get really good.

But that vision is asking you to let go of what isn’t working now, the struggle. That vision is asking you to grow (and trust me when I say you’re not interested in the opposite) and growth requires that you master a skill you’re not comfortable with: receiving.

Happy International Women’s Day!

On this day that celebrates the working woman, I’d like to offer some blunt advice.
 
Don’t let people pick your brain.
 
Don’t barter in unequal measure.
 
Don’t work for free.

If you’ve been on Facebook the last couple of days you’ve probably seen the post gone viral about yanny and laurel. I’m not going to go into the logistics of how all of this went viral, you can read that story here. However, what you need to know for the purposes of branding your interior design firm, is that scientists have an explanation for why each of us hears something different. The audio clip is known as an “ambiguous figure”. Like Rubin’s Vase, it’s an optical illusion.

I booked a reservation at the Mezzanine, inside the new Los Angeles outpost of the popular, New York, hotel The Nomad, and was greeted by a recorded message in a British accent. Apparently a 2015 poll of 11,000 people in 24 cities around the world, showed that a British accent is the most attractive in the world. Sociolinguists say that our perception of accents has to do more with social and cultural associations than it does with the actual sound.

They’re not new, these conversations we’ve been having about Houzz and online design services and fees. Nor is it new that some trade vendors, on the defensive, have undercut designer pricing because they can’t figure out their place in the market and because they’re afraid. Everyone deserves to earn a living. But there is definitely a new kind of undercurrent in the ether. Can you feel it? A tipping point that has a lot of designers saying, enough.

The marketing trend train moves quickly. Whether it’s Facebook live or podcasts, affiliate marketing, e-books or Instagram, I notice too many designers spinning their wheels and trying to catch up to promises made about how these tools will deliver business results fast, or my personal favorite, create passive income. Aside from the fact that passive income is usually linked to very active online infrastructure setup and content creation now, you have to ask yourself, is this fun for me?

A designer recently told me that she wasn’t interested in more business; that she had enough business and that she didn’t need to build a list to market to her ideal client. She knew where her ideal client was. Some designers are determined to get in their own way. But here’s what I’d like to remind you.

Customization is not a new trend. Research shows that millennials expect to be treated as individuals and are looking for brands that offer personalized products and experiences. As the marketplace shifts to cater to them, manufacturers are shifting too. At least some of them are and depending on your audience, that’s a good thing.