Okay. I’ve been to the beach. I’ve clocked hours staring at the ocean, eaten an heirloom tomato like an apple, let my hair go full wannabe surfer girl, driven down a country road blasting an epic song with one arm out the window, cooked dinner for friends in my bathing suit, gone sailing with my…
My friend Maggie dropped her daughter Emmy off at college this week. They met the roommate, helped her set up her dorm room, did whatever last-minute fussing parents are still allowed to do, and eventually there was nothing left to do but leave. Maggie and her husband got into the car, and he looked at…
When I was in my twenties, a therapist told me that if I got to the end of my life with five friends I could truly bare my soul to, I should consider myself lucky. I remember thinking that sounded incredibly bleak. At the time, I took friendship VERY seriously. I didn’t really know how…
Growing up, my mother had a friend named Olga. As far as I was concerned, she knew everyone. If you needed a car, you called Olga. If you were looking for a rescue dog, you called Olga. If your teenager needed a therapist, you called Olga. If you needed an architect, a contractor, a restaurant…
We’ve all heard the saying, Character is what you do when no one is watching. I’ve been wondering if August asks us a different question. What do you do when no one is asking? Every year around this time, the pace changes. Calendars suddenly have white space. Half your clients are in Europe or the…
The other day, I looked out at my deck and saw my unmistakably unfinished DIY furniture project still sitting upside down exactly where I had left it. The wrong screws were scattered across the seat alongside the rest of the hardware, as though I’d been interrupted in the middle of assembling it and fully intended…
A blank sheet of paper can be surprisingly revealing. One of the first exercises I do with nearly every coaching client begins the same way. I hand them a blank sheet of paper and ask them to draw a circle in the middle. Inside the circle, they write their own name. Then I ask them…
Last week, I was sitting with one of my coaching clients reviewing his business. He has several closings scheduled for July, has had a strong year financially, and already has a healthy pipeline heading into the fall. By every reasonable measure, things are going well. So I asked him what his next goal was. He…
For most of my career, an open hour on my calendar felt like a problem to solve. I’d schedule the meeting. Take the client. Start the project. Say yes to the opportunity. An empty afternoon wasn’t possibility. It was unused capacity. That mindset has served me well for a long time. It helped me build…
Every year around the Fourth of July, the business world seems to collectively exhale. Calendars suddenly open up. Email response times double. Half your clients are away this week. The other half will disappear next week. It feels like everyone has silently agreed that nothing much is going to happen until the middle of July.…
“Get out of the Upper East Side.” Those were the parting words of my favorite high school English teacher as she hugged me at graduation. She whispered it in my ear like a warning. At the time, I rolled my eyes. I was born and raised on the Upper East Side. I loved the Upper…
A funny thing happens when you get good at helping people figure things out. The categories start to disappear. Last week alone, I talked one person through a hiring decision, another through a career crossroads, and a third through a family situation that technically had nothing to do with me. A coaching client calls about…