Our mothers and grandmothers tolerated a whole lot of shit on the road to progress, and there’s no doubt we have come a long way. When my mom was 18, women were given the right to open credit without a male cosigner and had access to safe abortion. My grandmother couldn’t open a bank account or expect equal pay and had no access to medical birth control.

You know that ice breaker exercise where they say "let's go around the room and tell everyone something about ourselves" and you draw an absolute blank? Of course, you are an amazing and interesting person with a thousand things to say, but when you're put on the spot you feel like an absolute dummy? Yeah, me too. So here's the thing: the time will come when you are standing in front of a potential client (or business ally) and you only have a moment to get them on board You, my friend, need to have an "elevator pitch". Your elevator pitch is a quick way to communicate what your business is all about and gets people excited about what you do. Here are some crucial elements:

Have you ever used that old saying, “it’s not you, it’s me” but in reality, it’s 1000% about them? Breaking up is hard to do, but a toxic date is so much easier to kick to the curb than a toxic client. How do we know if a client is actually toxic and not just difficult? Let’s start with some habits that indicate you have a bad apple in the bunch:

It could be a box of old clothes that haven't fit in a decade, a bunch of old paperwork, or a toxic friendship, but we all have things we hang on to long past their expiration date. Sometimes we hold on because we spent a lot of time or money acquiring them, maybe we feel guilty about getting rid of them, maybe we worry we will need it the second we toss it aside. No matter the complicated psychology behind it, letting go of things is tough.

Last week, we talked about WHY you want to be authentic with your customers, and even though you may understand the benefits, you may be wondering how to put that into practice. You knew we wouldn't leave you hanging on that one, right? RIGHT????