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Two weeks ago, I rewrote four lines of text. Not a new offer. Not a rebrand. Just my Instagram bio — the one piece of digital real estate I probably think about the least, because I'm too busy writing it for everyone else. I stopped describing what I do. I started saying who I am underneath it — which piece of my own story actually belonged on that platform, in front of that audience, in that exact 150-character space. Fifty-one new followers later, organically, in two weeks,

This isn't traditional SEO anymore. It's AEO — answer engine optimization — and GEO — generative engine optimization. The practice of making sure that when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity a question your business can answer, your business is the one that gets named on stage.

Lights up. For years now, a real chunk of my calendar has gone to rooms that have nothing to do with marketing on paper. I sit on the board of the North Shore Schools Foundation. I hold a board of trustees seat at Evergreen Health Foundation. I served on the executive board of the Kenmore Business Alliance. I've stood at the podium for Woodinville Wine Country, the Bothell-Kenmore Chamber, and the Mercer Island Chamber of Commerce. I didn't say yes to any of it as a marketing

Okay, I need to rant for a second. Every founder I talk to is exhausted by the same advice: post on Instagram every day, be active on Facebook, write a newsletter, start a blog, get on LinkedIn, don't forget Substack — as if any human running an actual business has the bandwidth for six full-time content jobs on top of, you know, doing the actual work. And here's the part that makes me a little unhinged about it: half of that advice is outdated anyway. Instagram doesn't work

Community event sponsorship works. Marketers who invest in event marketing see roughly a 3:1 return, and 44% report it as one of their most effective channels. But that return isn't automatic. It comes from having three things dialed in before you ever show up: who you're there for, what you're going to activate, and how you're going to follow up once the event ends.

The Rule of Thirds isn't about doing less. It's about doing the right things fully — rather than doing everything halfway and burning out before any of it lands. It protects your energy. It protects the quality of your work. And it protects something that is harder to recover than a missed deadline: your confidence in your own ability to follow through.

MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE UNBELIEVABLE THING CLAUDE SAID TO ME AS I WAS WRTING THIS ON THE PLATFORM- AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST. Every time I re-tell this story my body goes in to full PTSD mode, I start shaking, my whole body gets tight and clammy and my jaw clenches- so I thought I would write my story out about my negative experience with AI during launch week - For seven months, I quietly built a brand. Not just a logo or a website. A studio. A new identity for almost a

Show Your Work: How to Collect Client Feedback and Turn It Into Marketing That Builds Trust Scroll long enough through any small business's social feed and a pattern will emerge. There are posts about services. Posts about offerings. Posts about the founder's journey, branded quotes, motivational reminders, the occasional behind-the-scenes glimpse. What's almost always missing? Proof. The work itself. The receipts. The story of the client who walked in unsure and walked out t

For most of modern business history, a local brand was something you knew because you walked past it. You saw the sign. You smelled the bread. You waved to the owner through the window. The shop was on the corner you passed every morning, and your relationship with it was built one in-person interaction at a time, over years. That model is no longer enough. Today, local brands compete for attention in two places at once: the physical street and the digital scroll. A customer

A founder story shaped by a pandemic, a community, and the quiet courage to begin again. I have always believed that the most powerful brands are not manufactured. They are revealed. Portia & Cleo was revealed slowly — through pandemic Zoom calls, hand-built graphics for community fundraisers, late-night client emails, in-person introductions to people I had only ever known through a screen, and one very persistent realization: that what I was building had outgrown the name o