Youβre reading The Messy Middle: weekly deep dives on leadership, startups, identity, politics, and how to make high stakes decisions that are intentional and in-line with your values.
π§ What Summer Slump?!
In my business, August has historically been a bit of a slow month for me. To be fair, last year I was getting married in August (!!!), and the year before that was year one. Nonetheless, I'm absolutely surprised by how busy this month has been!
I've had my hands in a bunch of different client projects at once, across leadership, business strategy, storytelling, growth, and a few problems that don't fit neatly into any of those categories.
It's a little chaotic, but it's also one of my favorite parts of the work: each day and week feels a little different, and you never quite know when a busy season might strike. And I've realized there's another upside: when you get to sit inside a lot of different problems at once, you start noticing the patterns between them. β
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So, here are a few things I've been noticing lately:
πͺ‘ 1. Finding a manufacturer you can actually grow with is really, really hard.
My <$100K physical product founder clients are facing supply chain issues across the board, and I'm reminded of something I learned the hard way when I was building my clothing company: finding a manufacturing partner you can actually build a business around is the hardest problem to solve for in your first years of business.
You're looking for quality, reliability, communication, reasonable minimums, margins that make sense, and ideally a partner who won't completely fall apart when you start to grow. And those things rarely come neatly packaged together.
We talk a lot about the visible parts of building a brand: the marketing, the website, the content, the beautiful packaging. But sometimes the thing standing between you and the next stage of your business is much less glamorous: whether the infrastructure underneath the brand can actually support where you want it to go. And by that I mean...can you efficiently produce the thing you want to sell?
As my client said to me this morning: 'I didn't know I'd be my manufacturing team's personal therapist.' <<< This is half the battle.
βοΈ 2. Seventeen-year-olds have really good stories.
For the past few weeks, I've been helping my 17-year-old niece and a few of her friends with their college essays, and it has unexpectedly become one of the most fun things I've done this summer!
There's something incredibly refreshing about helping someone that age find the story underneath what they think they're supposed to say. They come in thinking their essay needs to sound impressive, or that they haven't done anything interesting enough to write about, or worse...they think they have to use AI to come up with ideas.
And then you start asking them questions about their life, and suddenly we're talking about a tiny interaction with their grandmother, the weird thing they've been obsessed with since they were eight, or the moment they realized something about themselves that they hadn't had language for before.
I keep thinking about how useful it is to learn storytelling at such a young age: to be able to look at your own life, recognize which experiences have shaped you, and communicate why they matter.
We tend to teach storytelling as something you learn later, when you need to pitch a company, give a keynote, interview for a job, or lead a team. But maybe learning how to tell your own story before you've figured out exactly who you're supposed to be is even more valuable. And for a generation that has had no choice but to grow up surrounded by screens, there's something especially meaningful about asking them to look inward instead of outward for the story.
Anyway, I think I might want to do more of this!
If you know a high schooler who could use some help finding and telling their story, especially as college applications ramp up, hit reply. I'd love to hear from you.
π€ 3. In this job market, a referral might not be an advantage. It might be the entry ticket.
I had a conversation with a VC this week about hiring, and he said something that confirms what I've been hearing from a lot of people lately: applying cold to jobs at big tech companies is becoming increasingly....useless.
When hundreds or thousands of qualified people are applying for the same role, being qualified doesn't necessarily mean anyone will ever see that you're qualified.
It made me think about how much of career-building still comes down to something we tend to treat as secondary: relationships.
Not networking for the sake of collecting people, but actually building a body of people who understand what you're good at, trust you, and are willing to say your name when you're not in the room.
We tend to think relationships become important once we get into the right role. But increasingly, relationships are how we get there in the first place.
π Where You Can Find Me
Speaking of building relationships and meeting people...I'm in super-connector mode! I'll be in San Francisco Aug 14 - Aug 18th. If you're a founder or leader in the Bay Area and have been reading along for a while, I'd love to meet IRL. Hit reply if you want to grab coffee while I'm in town.
A few other places you can find me this month:
π€ Wed, Aug 19 | ACE NextGen SoCal β Turning Your Business Story Into Your Best Sales Tool
β I'm leading a hands-on workshop for business owners on how to find the stories already hiding inside their businesses and turn them into better pitches, content, and sales conversations. We'll actually workshop stories together, so everyone leaves with something they can use.[Join me in LA β]β
β Thu, Aug 20 | Kismet Coffee Hour β How to Build Trust In An Uncertain Job Marketβ β
We're bringing senior leaders together for a conversation about one of the harder parts of leadership right now: how do you create trust and stability for your team when you might not know how it's going to shake out?[Join us virtually β]β
πΈ Wed, Aug 26 | PurposeBuilt100 β Capital As Activismβ β
I'll be speaking to a global community of purpose-driven founders and investors about an idea I've been thinking about for a long time: where we put our money is one of the clearest expressions of the future we want to build. We'll explore capital not just as a financial tool, but as a way of deciding which founders, communities, companies, and ideas actually get the resources to grow. [Tune in virtually β]β
π§Ά This Fall | Woven Business Academy
β Last but definitely not least, I'm joining the one and only Woven Business Academyas one of the experts for their three-month entrepreneurship program starting September 8th. I especially love that this program is built for people who don't necessarily fit into the neat pick one thing and build a business around it model. This cohort will be working through everything from business models and pricing to marketing, brand identity, and how all the seemingly unrelated things you do might actually fit together.
I'll be teaching at least one session this fall, and applications close August 15th. [Learn more + apply β]β
π₯¨ Snacks
π€ Interviewing Tip: How to answer the most dreaded question in all of interviewing history: Tell Me About Yourself.β
π§ Recently Watched: Fell for the hype of The Odyssey...and unfortunately, it was quite the disappointment. Outside of the absolutely stacked cast, the best part of this movie might be the IG memes about Zendaya.I'd say save your $25 and tune into Margo's Got Money Troublesinstead, for a very different take on a struggling single mom making her way through OnlyFans content.
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