This past Thursday, I was at In-Law Brewery in upstate New York, a small batch brewery that started as a pop-up and recently transitioned into their own building. Every summer when we come up to Hanawa Falls, New York we make the 35-minute drive to Chase Mills to grab a few beers and enjoy the live music. With beer names like East Coast Dad, Grandpa's New Girlfriend, and Brother from Another Mother, I enjoy seeing the witty family-themed names they come up with almost as much as I enjoy the beer. Only open on Thursdays from 6 to 8, driving to In-Law is always a great event and it's been fun to witness their growth year after year.

I spent last night in a hotel room watching garbage television and loving every minute of it. We started off with Storage Wars and then switched to Ancient Aliens. We only watched for about an hour but in that hour, we saw dozens of ads for a variety of products; it was basically a long list of side effects for different drugs and then the occasional movie ad.

This is the type of ad-watching I grew up on. Of course, the shows were longer, and the ads were shorter back in the 90s, but it was all connected to whatever station you were watching. On the flip side, when I woke up this morning I had a very different ad experience on Instagram. As I sipped my coffee and scrolled through, I wanted to have just a few minutes of mindless chuckles - in the same way the garbage television provided last night - but instead I was bombarded with ad after ad targeting my deepest insecurities.

Today I had a very unusual gift: the gift of time. I recently started implementing a 4-day* work week for myself and it has been the best decision I ever made. Of course, I must put an asterisk next to 4-day because I own my own business and I’m a writer, which means I work every day because there are certain parts of my work that don’t feel like work at all. So, what I did was I started limiting my project and client work to Monday through Thursday which leaves Friday Saturday and Sunday open for resting, writing, volunteering, and/or catching up on all my favorite parts of my work. This particular Friday…

This past week I was delivering a custom leadership workshop at the same corporate offsite where UCLA basketball coach Cori Close was delivering the keynote. I was fortunate enough to be able to sit in the audience, soaking up all the great advice she had for achieving great things. She sprinkled in many memorable nuggets that you will probably see surface in some future Sunday Starters, but the one I want to talk about today is what she told us about talent.

I was just scrolling through the news when a headline caught my eye and immediately made me smile.

Target Warns of Lower Sales in 2025 - Blaming Tariffs And DEI Rollback Backlash.

I happen to come across this article right after I spent 2 hours on Etsy trying to find small businesses to order my workshop supplies from. A year ago, this would have been a target run, but ever since they rolled back their DEI initiatives, I have been trying not to shop there.

Most of your day consists of set routines. When you wake up in the morning, you don't have to think about what is coming next. You get up and brush your teeth, or grab your cup of coffee, or whatever it is you do every day. Our work is the same way. The employee who has been sending emails for their weekly updates, doesn't have to think about it. They know where to go, they have their distribution list to send it to, and they know how to attach the PDF. The entire process is on autopilot which means it requires very little mental energy. That is, until the technology changes.

The Tipping Point is a term that's been around since the 1800s but gained popularity in the 1960s as the precursor to the racist white flight, bringing it into the general vocabulary. Later, in the 2000s, it had a resurgence with the publishing of Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point. Now, the term is commonly used to indicate the point of no return. We talk about our own tipping points with our patience - the moment we just can't take it anymore - and we talk about it in organizational change as the moment when enough people are supporting an idea that the desired change is inevitable.

Recently, I found myself chatting with a friend about the more frustrating parts of our jobs. We both agreed that in any job, there are going to be tasks that we look forward to and tasks that we just need to get through. Those of you that are early on in your career, you may not have yet figured out these things because while some are obvious - you try it once and absolutely detest it - there are other tasks that can at first disguise themselves as enjoyable. Over time, though, when you start to get to know yourself better, this is when you can differentiate between the things that give you life, and the things that drain you.

For a while now I've known that I wanted to write a second book, but I had trouble deciding what to focus on. I had several ideas but until earlier this week I had been lacking some inspiration. Then one unexpected morning I had a 45-minute meeting with a prospective client and then got in the car to drive to an engagement in Boston. During that 4-hour car ride I left myself voice memo after voice memo after voice memo; so many ideas came pouring out of me, I could hardly keep up. Not only did I outline the entire book, but I also "wrote" three different Sunday Starters. Writing is in quotes because I wasn't actually writing, with the hands-free voice memos and all that, but I got the ideas down. It’s hard to say what it was about the person I met with that morning, but there was something about our conversation that left me feeling the most inspired I've felt in a long time. 

Apologies that I am a little late in getting my Sunday Starter posted this morning. Typically, I write and schedule these in advance, but since starting my own business the task seems to get pushed further and further into the week, leaving me finishing most of them on Saturday morning (or more honestly, often on Saturday night). This Saturday, however, I was speaking at an event in Philly and so my time was prioritized elsewhere. I could view this as a failure- oh no, my post went out 4 hours later than it usually does - gasp! - but right now, I am cozied up with my laptop next to the fire, drinking my coffee, and doing one of the things I love to do most: write. If this is failure, then maybe I should fail more often. No, this is not failure, this is life. While consistency is key, sometimes we need to prioritize other things.

Years ago, Macolm Gladwell gave a Ted Talk raving the work of Howard Moskowitz. Howard is a psychophysicist - someone who studies perception and how it relates to physical stimuli. Howard's specialty was taste and smell and it was his work with Campbell Soup's Spaghetti sauces which made him famous enough to be the sole focus of Gladwell's Ted Talk.

The first time I heard about Affirmative Action, I thought it was bullshit. I remember the moment when I was applying to colleges, and I asked my mother about it. After she explained what it was, I remember saying something like Well that doesn’t' seem fair, the best person should get it, no matter what ethnicity they are. I held that belief firmly until the first real time I experienced bias.

I recently got a text from someone who asked me to do something that night. Technically, I was available. Technically, I could have said yes. But I texted the person back and said that I couldn’t because I had plans. I didn’t really have plans, I just didn’t feel like texting out a whole explanation about how I needed a night to myself. Saying I had plans though, it felt like a lie, and I started to feel guilty. Then I quickly reminded myself that a plan to do nothing is still a plan.

In the writing community it is a shared sentiment that every first draft is embarrassing. No one wants people to ever see their first draft because we all know that it is a painful, yet incredibly important, part of the writing process. When we embrace the idea of the first draft as writers, it allows us to get past perfectionism and just put thoughts to paper.

This week I pulled up to my house after 30 hours of driving and 42 days away from home. When we pulled up, we kept our car outside the garage and loaded everything in. We took off the roof box and rails and put them inside as well. The next day we had the car cleaned and it looks beautiful inside and out. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about my house.

This week I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs and the particular talk I did - Making your Map: Navigating the journey from concept to launch - was my first time giving it. When this happened my insecurities usually run high and so when I ended I was of course hoping it would be to a standing ovation. Well, not really, it was a smaller room and while every seat was full and people were standing in the back, it wasn't as a standing ovation kind of room. But still, I hoped people would follow me on social media, come up to me after the session, buy my book, and tell me how much their words helped them. These are things I always hope for, and it makes me feel so good when some of them happen, but this week someone else's words made me flip the script. This week instead of hoping for people to do that for me, I asked myself this question: when was the last time you did that for someone else?

When I was growing up, my mother's childhood best friend and her husband were like aunt and uncle to us. We spent every Christmas together along with other visits throughout the year. You can imagine then, when I was in 9th grade and we got word that he had suddenly died, it was devastating.

This week I watched Andrew learn how to snowboard for the first time. He took a few lessons at Hoedown Hill - a small learning hill near our air BNB in Windsor - and then we took on Vail Mountain. I am impressed, not by how quickly Andrew picked up snowboarding, but by his willingness to even try. There are many people who reach a certain age and they become set in their ways; they embrace an “old dogs can’t learn new tricks” attitude and then that’s it, they stop learning, they stop changing, and they stop growing.

Dear mindless scrolling,

I am writing to you today because you have become a big part of my life. Every day you have been with me, by my side, ready anytime I needed you. Any moment when I wasn’t sure what to do next, there you were. You have been a steadfast companion, but I’ve come to realize that you are not the companion I want….

This morning, I ran a 4-mile race in Colorado snow. The race started with just some light flurries and then about halfway through the snow really started to come down; serendipitously that’s when the song “one foot” by Walk the Moon came on my playlist. It was the perfect reminder that the best way to make progress is to just focus on putting one foot in front of the other; this is especially true in the middle of a snowstorm running on an ice-covered path.