Last July, my family said goodbye to New England and boarded a flight to the OG England, where we've spent the last year living the Oxford academia dream while my husband completes his sabbatical research.
Setting aside the perks of a year of gluttinous travel, I got two things very, very wrong about life abroad.
1️⃣ I grossly underestimated the exhaustion of working across time zones. (At one point, I was stretched across 13 of them.)
2️⃣ This would not be a slower year in my business.
Silly me thought that taking the summer off to get acclimated (and drink a lot of French wine camp-side) would mean my fall pipeline would be as dry as a fine Bordeaux.
What I did not realize was that the actions I took in JUNE, prior to moving, would stoke my OCTOBER pipeline…and then my November pipeline.
And then, by Christmas, I’d wake up to realize I was fully booked for five months and had taken on two new retainer clients, generating some delicious recurring monthly revenue.
Even though I barely laid a finger on my business all summer.
What did I do, you ask?
It’s so simple it hurts.
While everyone else was obsessing over Instagram aspect ratios and crafting the perfect LinkedIn posts, I was doing something completely different.
I was building relationships. Real ones. Not the "let's connect and immediately pitch each other" kind. The actual human kind where you care about how someone's launch went, and help with a support request.
Entering this new season of life, I knew I wanted to change how I marketed Big Picture. I pulled back from Instagram (it was making me feel 15 years old), stopped blogging (I don’t have that kind of time right now), and put my Copywriting Cohort on the back burner.
Instead, I focused on one thing → nurturing the relationships I already had and intentionally building new ones.
No fancy funnels. No new lead magnets. No content hamster wheel.
Just person-to-person connections, done consistently over time.
But here's where it gets interesting—I was doing this completely haphazardly. A message here, a coffee chat there, remembering to follow up on someone's project launch when I saw their email three weeks later.
If my scattered, whenever-I-remembered approach could book me out for five months, what would happen with an actual system?
I’m planning to step back again this summer as we prepare for our move home—here’s how I plan to return, booked out until 2026.
CONFESSION: The person who advised me to focus on building relationships, instead of content, was none other than no-nonsense, BS-free business and systems strategist, Jessica Lackey.
(Bc, of course it was.)
In two weeks, I’m implementing her Relationship Rhythms program.
It’s everything service-based business owners need right now.
Because currently, in this economy, people are hiring and collaborating with folks they already know and trust. Relationships are everything.
If you’re like me and are thinking, "Another networking program? Hard pass."
This isn't networking. And it isn’t sales either. This is relationship archaeology—digging up the connections you already have and turning them into a sustainable business development system.
Jessica breaks it down into bite-sized weekly actions that take about an hour to complete. One hour. That's less time than you probably spent doom-scrolling this week.
Jessica is about to launch the program next week, and I'm first in line to join—wanna do it with me?
(NOTE: I have no affiliate skin in the game. I did write the sales page and sales emails, though, because I saw such huge results and believe to my core that no one teaches you how to implement like Jessica!)
The program kicks off in two weeks (June 16th), and I'm seriously considering hosting a co-working session alongside my newsletter subscribers! I can share the outreach I’ve batched to send out while I’m taking one final holiday, and discuss how we’re managing replies and admin in under 1 hour per week.
It will be like a little pipeline-building summer camp, except this one actually pays the bills.
Over the low-touch, easy-to-build-around-your-vacation nine weeks, you'll learn how to:
- 🗺️ 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.
ANNNNNND Jessica includes templates for what to actually say, because we've all stared at that blank email wondering how to reconnect without sounding positively desperate. (Even, ahem, your favorite copywriter...)
The bottom line? The relationships you nurture this summer will pay you in the fall. Trust me on this one. 💵
If you're tired of the content creation hamster wheel, sick of algorithm anxiety, and ready to build your business the human way, this might be exactly what you need.
Check out the program deets here and let me know if you join the waitlist!!!!
(You’ll get a front-row seat to read what my sales emails sound like when I’m writing in someone else’s voice. Yes, I understand how nerdy I just made myself sound. Copywriter to my core.)
Here’s to strategically planning a summer slow-down, without having to eat crackers and water come September,
P.S. If you doom-scrolled the news for an hour this week and didn’t get a client inquiry in that time, click here.