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?

I finally gave in and bought another pair of sunglasses.  Earlier this year I had invested in my first pair of Chanel’s. I thought the price was ridiculous at first, until I prorated the daily cost based on my usage living in Southern California, which turned out to be less than $1/day. They came numbered, with […]

Allegedly the female brain is hard-wired to be better at multi-tasking than a man’s because we have better connections between the left and right sides. While it’s interesting that we’re more likely to remember faces—because several sub-networks can simultaneously connect—I think we have to consider the context where this whole multi-tasking concept was born. Multi-tasking […]

As 2013 comes to a close I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a leader in creative business.  If you feel like you’ve been on the cusp for a long time, you might start to wonder if magic is required to lift you out of obscurity.  But the truth is, the […]

So let me cut straight to the chase. Here’s what you’re doing when you procrastinate: delaying your own good. Say it with me, I am delaying my own good. Forget what Freud said about the pleasure principle and humans preferring to avoid negative emotions or to delay stressful tasks. Because the reality is that breaking […]

I was scheduled to go to Fall Market at the LDC yesterday but my cousins, who are on a cross-country road trip, arrived a day earlier so I made the executive decision to play hooky (family is important to me). Of course we ended up on Rodeo Drive and because my cousin’s husband is a […]

Wouldn’t it be nice if every decision you made, every change you experienced and absolutely everything else you ever did, was right? In other words, perfect, high-five, fantastic, ideal.Life would be a whole lot easier wouldn’t it?I’m not going to lie, the moment you realize you made a mistake, a bad choice, went in the […]

Join me at the Laguna Design Center on October 30, 2013 for my 1-hr CEU Image 360°: Branding, Visibility And Money For The Design Industry. Ideal clients, consistent income and seemingly miraculous opportunities show up when you get the story of your business right.  But it’s not just what you say, it’s who you tell that […]

It was a packed day of clients yesterday and during the course of my google+ chats, one theme became abundantly clear. What you do in your business and your life ultimately boils down to two choices. Yup, just two. You can focus on what you want or, you can focus on what you don’t want. […]

Some people won’t get the value of what you do no matter how well or often you explain it. You don’t have to worry about those one-off conversations; sometimes it’s not about you. But if you find yourself having the same conversation — sales, employee, spouse or otherwise — over and over again, guess what? […]