Estimated read time: 4 mins

In a season of destruction? SAME. Should I kill the tea?

What an opening line, am I right?! 

*screams DESTRUCTIONNNNN in my best WWF voice* 

Let me tone down the tension by saying I believe destruction is a critical aspect of creation. 

Like the rosebush growing through the planks on my deck, you’ve gotta prune if you want the bloom 🌹
So, chop chop — I’m spilling what I’m killing in today’s edition of a newsletter that might cease to exist by next week…

The tea: The Great Law of Peace, AI-everything, and sense making in an increasingly crazy world

The Great Law of Peace (or Kaianere’kó:wa in Mohawk) is the foundational constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which includes the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations. 

It’s a sophisticated system of governance, law, diplomacy, and ethics — passed down orally for generations — that predates European colonization.

The Great Law represents one of the oldest living participatory democracies and holistic systems of social organization in the world.

It emerged after a time of great violence and represents a system that prioritizes peace, unity, and forward thinking. 

One aspect of The Great Law you may have heard of is the role of the 7th generation. 

When making decisions, the impact on the 7th generation is always taken into consideration. 

“Look behind you. See your sons and your daughters, your children and your children’s children, and remember that you do not own the land — you hold it in trust for them.” — Chief Lyons Big Bear 

The wisdom in this has never been more needed if you ask me. 
Unbeknownst to the originators of The Great Law, this approach is the balm for many many biases humans hold (and have always held) that limit long-term thinking.

The seven generations principle challenges us to expand our mental time horizon dramatically — not just to our future self, but to people we’ll never meet whose lives we still impact.

I don’t know about you but thinking that far out sends me into a bit of a spiral. 

What if we scale this back to even 7 years. 

Will your business still exist then? 

Will your role still be needed or will it have been replaced like every major media outlet is ramming the imminence of down our throats? 

What can you start doing NOW that will support that reality you want to be living in 2032? 

^^These are just some of the many questions I’ve been asking myself. 

Because frankly friend, these are some confronting times for anyone who has made a living through their creative labor (+ many other fields of work!) 

I’m not here to demonize AI by any means but I don’t think we’ve considered its impact even one generation into the future let alone 7. 

(If you haven’t seen the report predicting where AI will be by 2027 — brace yourself.) 

Our biases paired with just how novel AI is inhibit us from thinking too far out, but if you’re like me you’re already seeing DRAMATIC shifts in every corner of the online world. 

It’s making me reassess absolutely everything. 

Because from this forward thinking lens, what is worth building? What has staying power? What’s worth doing?

I wish I had all the answers.

My current thought process:

→ The offer I am MOST excited about that I see the most potential for in the future is my Fertile Ground community. 

We can’t build in isolation in more ways than one. 

We can’t be navigating these crazy times alone right now AND… 

We can’t expect isolated solutions and strategies to work anymore. 

Resiliency in these times demands systems thinking and frameworks that take the internal and external environment — not to mention the future we face — into consideration. 

This is what I’m aiming to build and I am justtttt getting started 🌱

→ Critical thinking, creative capacity, and attention spans are going to continue to erode in anyone who becomes overly reliant on outsourcing to AI. 

This puts you at an advantage if you’re mindful of not being lAIzy but comes with a warning to find a balance between leveraging AI and doing your own creative thought work. 

→ I’m considering completely shifting how I work with clients 1:1. 

From service provider to growth partner. What does that mean? It means… 

Long-term collaboration with clients I fully believe in ONLY. 

I’m literally invested in my client’s success and payment is partial revenue share. 

I envision a hybrid coaching and done-for-you model. 

A big gap in the business coaching industry IMO is that it’s dandy to have strategy and mindset support but implementing that strategy? 

It’s a challenge for a lot more business owners than most coaches want to admit. 

→ I’m also looking at creating an agency separate from my personal brand but that my personal brand sends leads to. 

This agency would specialize in email first marketing (quizzes, assessments, email sequences, etc.) for personal brands but be way less ‘me’ focused than the current service side of my business. 

→ I’m questioning whether to continue putting energy toward Spill the Tea in its current iteration. 

I’m still all in on email but I don’t know about the format. I got such great feedback at first but it’s slowed down and left me wondering if this is something people want. 

I’d love to hear what you think, %FIRSTNAME% — should I keep the tea or is it time for something new?

Sip on this…  

🧋 Speaking of ability to concentrate, this assessment on how the internet has impaired our attention had such solid insights. 

🧋 I’m going to this class The Recipe this week with Shosanna Raven on how she had a 1.3 million dollar month with a teeny email list and IG following and very small team. 

It’s freeeee and sounds fascinating, wanna come? 

🧋 Cat, I farted…