Sidekick COO
Entertaining emails on Growing and Scaling your business for multi 6-figure Online Service Providers. "This is my absolutely most-favourite email I've received this month!!!" ~Elissa
Ever feel like your business is paying everyone but you?
I saw a post the other day (on IG I think) that said something like “From the outside, my business looked successful. We were busy. We had clients and money coming in, but as soon as it hit our account, the money was already gone.” I should have grabbed a screenshot but I didn’t think to (I trusted my brain to remember who the OP was. I really should know better). Anyway, when I read it I immediately went and checked on my cash flow. There have been one too many times in my business when I...
I almost turned the car around
Just got back from Song and Story, Tarzan’s storytelling retreat, and I’m exhausted in the best way. I don’t love networking events, especially when I don’t really know what to expect. So, 20 minutes into the two hour drive I told Caleb I didn’t want to go. And, bless him he gave me an out. “Tell you what,” he said, “if at any point in the next 30 mins you say ‘car trouble’ I’ll turn the car around and we’ll go home.” We talked about it for another 15 minutes before I decided to just do it. 3...
Test mode (so far, so good)
I get, on average, 90+ emails a day hitting my inbox. Newsletters from friends and clients I want to keep up with, software updates that may or may not need action, invoices that need to be paid, receipts that need to be filed, and calendar invites to accept. Not to mention stripe notifications, spam, and cold pitches that don’t even mention my name. Most of it isn't urgent, and plenty of it I'll never read, but tucked in there is stuff I need or want to know, and it gets lost or missed all...
What Google's content guidelines mean for your workload
As you may have heard Google recently updated a help document called "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content." And if you never thought to check Google's help files for content guidance, well, good. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I only found out because of an absolutely fantastic email from my friend Laura Jawad outlining what changed, and what you should do about it (and why). Read it here. And, if you're not on her list yet, you should be (do that here too). There’s lots to...
You might be stronger than you think
In 2017 I bought this stool. I remember it being such a pain to move. It was so heavy I’d have to tilt it and roll it on its base and wiggle it back and forth just to get it where I needed it. Last month, I found it in my basement. Sitting in a corner, forgotten. I reached out to test its weight, wondering if I was going to need Caleb to help me bring it upstairs. To my surprise it was super light. So light that instead of barely being able to tilt it, it was in the air and above my head with...
i hate waiting
I hate waiting*. That doesn’t feel accurate to say though because waiting for the check at a restaurant is fine unless I have somewhere else I need to get to, then it’s torture. But waiting to go, waiting to get picked up, waiting to see how a decision pans out, waiting for a specific date, like a trip or a move. They all cause me some very uncomfortable anxiety. It’s exhausting. Caleb and I are moving house on Monday and I can’t wait. I’m very much looking forward to being in our new place....
I owe my husband three vacations
Caleb and got together in 1996. 22 years later (in 2018), we finally had our first trip together. We went to Vegas. This was three years into my business and it was really hard to get away. I worked at the airport, on the plane, in the hotel room, and from my phone in between taking us-ies on The Strip. I swore that the next trip we took would be “laptop free.” Yet, this was me 👇 two years later, on our 20th wedding anniversary. Standing in the rental car line, laptop out, trying to get “just...
10 minutes ruined an entire year
Back in October of 2019, I ended up at a three-day Mastermind in Toronto with a hundred other business owners. At one point, they broke us up into groups, each led by one of the 10 presenters that were speaking over the three days. My pod leader was Alex Charfen. I hadn't heard of him before that day but his CV was impressive. He had built and sold businesses, built and lost a fortune, then built that fortune again. He was smart, savvy, direct and it was clear that he knew his stuff. We all...
458% growth in 30 days!
Hi Reader! Happy June! I’m just getting back to normal after a ridiculously busy couple of months where I over committed myself to too many things on top of expanding my team. It’s been hard but also so frickin’ fun! I got to participate in some amazing conversations, meet some great people, celebrate amazing wins, and play with some really fun new tools. I’ve lost hours making apps, testing workflows, and building people’s AI Boardrooms and have loved every minute of it. At one point in...
I asked my AI notetaker how it would describe me
Last week I asked my AI notetaker: "How would you describe me?" I expected something diplomatic. A list of skills. Maybe a polite mention of my writing style or how often I say ‘like’ (cuz it’s, like, a lot). What it actually said is I’m "simultaneously strategic and deeply operational. Able to zoom out to design a client management system from scratch, and zoom in to fix a broken Zapier trigger the same afternoon. Pragmatic, precise with language, and allergic to unnecessary complexity."...
Entertaining emails on Growing and Scaling your business for multi 6-figure Online Service Providers. "This is my absolutely most-favourite email I've received this month!!!" ~Elissa