Estimated read time: 5 mins

I really don’t care about posturing that I have it all figured out anymore. NO ONE DOES.

I can say that with confidence. Even the people you think have all their perfect muscovy ducks in a row, do not. 

🦆🦆🪿🦆🦆🦆🦆🪿 

If you’re building a business in 2026, you’re likely playing a game of duck duck GOOSE (or more astutely f*ck f*ck goose.) 

We have never lived through these times. Everyone from all directions on all platforms “X is dead!” as you saturate your sweet noggin’ that hasn’t evolved past tribal mechanics (because no one’s has) with more information than any human being is designed to take in. 

Much of it created by a robot. 

It’s v. confusing. So instead of pretending certainty, today’s issue will simply share what I’m confused about too, plus a little bit of what I’m doing about it.

The tea: Please stop gaslighting your way into my good graces

People buy certainty. Every good marketer knows this. But no one is certain right now no matter how much they pretend to be. 

Every coach, creator, and service provider I know is scratching their head. 

I hope you like spaghetti, because we be surviving on it for the next while.   

Okay, I’m feeling silly today, but much of the last few weeks I’ve been confused, annoyed, frustrated because I got too attached to the outcome *I* wanted. 

Is there any way around this? 

My human design coach tells me my most important practice in this life is to make decisions from a place of turn on and excitement, and detach from the outcome. 

So in the name of detachment, perseverance, and real talk, here are a few things I’m confused about these days: 

1. Why memberships are so hard to sell 

You might know I have a pretty stellar membership (if I do say so myself 💅) but you might not know that despite getting over 400 business owners registered for my last live training, I got 12 new members. 

^^GRATEFUL, for these 12 wonderful ambitious supastars AND I *expected* more. 

But I also get it. We are a species of oversubscribed, commitment averse, immediate result craving, been burned before business owners who are more hesitant than ever to say yes to something we’re not certain about and someone we don’t really know. 

Going into this I knew memberships are one of the hardest sells right now. Despite what everyone tells you… 

“Your offers need a human element!” 

“Community is the differentiator and more important than ever!”

“You need to bake in components that clearly differentiate you from AI!” 

I mean, as a mentor I’ve said all these things too. They aren’t untrue. They just don’t mean that selling a membership will be easy.

Antidote to this confusion: Here’s when I’ve seen memberships work best… as a retention offer on the backend of a time-bound program.

A LARGE percentage of my members in KNOWN have done other programs with me. So the solution is likely building something like that with subject matter that’s aligned with building a social-optional business.

AND building out sequences on the backend of existing programs that invite people in.

2. Is accessible pricing working against me? Is pricing psychology really as simple as “when you pay you pay attention”?

I’ve sold a lot of offers at a lot of different price points. From $17 to $90,000. 

And let me tell you right now, %FIRSTNAME%. I am feeling the high-ticket gap I’ve created. 

I leaned all the way into low-ticket offers in the last year — the pendulum swings — and I’m realizing the hard way the importance of VOLUME. 

A 3% conversion is cool if you’re working with thousands of leads vs. a few hundred. The latter is unsustainable though. 

I want accessible pricing, but not so much that it cheapens the value of the work or makes it ignorable, simply because it’s easy to ignore a $77/mo commitment whereas a $1000/mo one is not. 

In that same vein, it’s hard to justify tons of time and follow-up and CHASING of someone who’s paying you $77/mo vs. $1000 or more. 

That sounds bratty, but it’s really just what most won’t say out loud.

Antidote to this confusion: I’ve spent the last 6 months largely selling very financially accessible to anyone who wants it type offers. I’m moving into selling my high-ticket growth partner offer. More on that later, but I think it will be a good experiment.

3. Is it completely crazy that I’ve come full circle and don’t care anymore if everything I do is “SCALABLE”?

Yes, I want some of it to be, but I also recognize that my best work is done from a place of deep intimacy.

Antidote to this confusion: I’m finally going to properly launch my Growth Partner offer. It is entirely UN-scalable. I can only take 2-3 clients for this. I will be deeply embedded in your business. In the trenches with you in all of the ways. 

And I am so excited about it. Because I know how lonely and confusing it is to build a business when you’re the only leader in the room. Even with AI. Especially with AI. 

AI has no taste. It has all the experience and none of the experience. It is designed to stroke your ego and doesn’t give 2 shits about the outcome. 

As a Growth Partner I am invested in your results. So yes, there’s a revenue share option. There’s also the option to have me directly build key “close to the conversion” deliverables. 

Because the problem I’ve encountered with traditional coaching is that you get a slew of great ideas but the execution is still entirely up to you. There’s no real pressure relief and momentum is still dependent on your ability to hustle. 

Expect more on this soon, but if you’re curious what it could look like, reply to this email with the word GROW and we can chat through it!

4. “Focus on one thing”

As you can tell, I’m focused on way more than one thing. I love the idea of solving the main problem or bottleneck until it’s not anymore and then moving onto the next thing, but in practice this is really hard when you’re just one person or have a small team.

Antidote to this confusion: My kids new principle has this quote in his email signature “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” and I think that’s the thing… the main thing might have multiple moving parts, but there’s still an element of focus inherent in this approach vs. truly just jumping from thing to thing and project to project.

5. How coaches with fugly sales pages and offers that sound like everyone else are making so much fucking money

I confess that I love to stalk those loudly proclaiming about the $1M months. I shouldn’t do this. It’s quite unproductive. It usually comes from a place of “what have they figured out that I haven’t?” the answer to which I will never know from the outside looking in. 

Often what I see in my stalking makes no sense to me. Fugly sales pages, SO MUCH PINK, not even mobile optimized, like come on… it can’t only be the private jet photoshoot. HOW?!

Antidote to this confusion: Stop stalking other people.

6. How people are actually succeeding with AI content when it’s clearly slop

More comparison, eeeeeek. This one builds on the last, because often the fugly sales pages are also paired with horrendously obvious AI copy slop. It pains my copywriter heart. Who buys from this?! I actually don’t get it.

Antidote to this confusion: Become a full-blown sloperator. JK. Once again, stop stalking other people.

7. Whether I should post on social if I teach how to build a social optional business

STUBBORN. A key personality trait I’ve carried since the age of 2. I haven’t posted anything business related on my feed in like 5 months or something. Which is kinda silly, because I worked v. hard for my 4,000 IG followers. 

But the reason being, I’ve been so focused on teaching how to build a social-optional business that it’s felt a bit like I have something to prove. 

I created an invisible rule for myself that I shouldn’t promote it on social media because it’s counter to what I teach. Even though it isn’t really. I never said DON’T EVER POST ON SOCIAL. I said don’t rely on it. Build off-platform systems with staying power.

Antidote to this confusion: Be less stubborn and just use the resources available to you. There are people on IG who don’t want to build a business tethered to IG. 

(LinkedIn is another story though, you won’t catch me on there 😅)

Might have to do a part ✌️ for this one guys, because the list goes on. 

One thing I’m certain about is my gratitude for YOU, dear reader, thanks for being here 💚 Hit reply with your own biggest current confusions if you feel like sharing!

Sip on this…  

🧋 Did you know the classic jam Ring My Bell by Anita Ward is apparently so high-frequency that it’s banned in casinos because too many people win when it plays? 

Gimme some of that, right? I really like this remix of it. 

🧋New Substack up 🔥 If you’re curious about my crazy move from Canada to Vietnam with 3 kids, read all about it here. 

🧋Favorite meme this week: 

What’d you think of this issue of Spill the Tea?

• Finally, someone admitting we’re all confused 
  
• Interesting… still trying to figure this all out
  
• I prefer my tea with a splash of certainty