I’m sitting at my dining room table Googling campsites in the French Alps, when I feel that familiar panic in the pit of my stomach.
How am I going to manage to take off the entire month of August without risking my financial stability?
I have two kids, a mortgage, bills, and attend between 200-300 kids’ birthday parties a year.*
Also, a lot of fear around money.
But I have an even bigger fear around feeling trapped.
Not being able to make professional decisions. Not being able to learn through experimentation. Not being in charge of when and where I work. Not being able to go take my kids to a freaking doctor’s appointment without running it by someone who will mentally log my “professional commitment”.
My desire for independence and creativity outweighs my money fears.
But that fear is always there, lurking in the background.
By becoming a business owner, you’re agreeing to undergo a certain amount of risk and fear—especially if you’re doing contract work.
Feast and famine cycles become a way of life.
To keep my pipeline full, and my fears at bay, I’ve tried just about everything:
⏳ Spent hours creating Instagram reels that 10 people saw and then promptly forgot.
😖 Created lead-gen opt-ins and funnels that got more lurkers than buyers.
🤡 Burned myself out on the content creation hamster wheel instead of closing my laptop and being present with my kids.
Early last year I had this grand plan to segment and double my newsletter content so I could do a better job nurturing potential partners. Then Jessica Lackey walked into my life and suggested something radical:
Maybe I…don’t.
Mayyyyybe I try tapping into my existing business relationships and intentionally build new ones.
Maybe I skip the roundabout biz dev tactics and just go straight to the source.
What. A. Concept.
So, last JUNE I started a haphazard weekly routine:
- Send a congratulatory note to someone who'd just launched
- Share a resource with a fellow business owner struggling with something I'd solved
- Check in with a past client who'd mentioned a big transition coming up
- Introduce two people in my network who should definitely know each other
Nothing fancy. Nothing strategic. Just human-to-human connection when it felt natural.
The results?
By OCTOBER I was fully booked out for the following 5 months!!!
(Oh, and by the way, I still took off the entire month of August to move to the UK, attended a wedding in Edinburgh, and took a 15-day camping trip around the western coast of France.)
If my haphazard, whenever-I-remembered-to-do-it approach could book me solid for five months, what would happen with an actual system?
It's officially June again, and this time I'm not leaving it to chance.
Jessica took everything she taught me and put it into a program that starts Monday. (And no, I'm not an affiliate or anything.)
And this is what I love about her—she doesn't just spout theory. No one teaches you how to IMPLEMENT like Jessica does.
She'll tell you exactly what to do each week and what to say, so you're never staring at a blank email, wondering how to reconnect without sounding like a 'pick-me' girl.
I'm doing Relationship Rhythms alongside anyone brave enough to join me.
(Think of it as pipeline-building summer camp, except this one actually pays your bills.)
Here's what we'll tackle together over nine weeks:
- 🗺️ Map your strategic relationship ecosystem. (Spoiler: it's not just potential clients.)
- 🏋️♀️ Master the three relationship movements that create revenue.
- 🎶 Build a weekly rhythm that doesn't create another full-time job for you.
- 👁️👄👁️Turn non-cringey, casual conversations into actual opportunities.
The time commitment? One-ish hour per week.
That's less time than you probably spend scrolling social media in a single day. (Be honest.)
Wanna co-work together?
I'm planning a mid-July co-working session for anyone doing the program. We can brainstorm outreach ideas, troubleshoot sticky conversations, and keep each other accountable.
Basically, we can soft-launch building a new relationship with each other, first, so it feels less awkward going forward.
Because building relationships is the most sustainable marketing strategy there is.
They compound over time, don’t give an eff about algorithm changes, and create opportunities you never could have planned for.
⏰⏰⏰ If you’re interested in building your pipeline the human way, join Relationship Rhythms here before enrollment closes this weekend.
Then, hit reply if you're doing the program so we can connect and co-work together!
Here's to freedom (and calendars as booked as we want them to be),