When you start any creative project or enterprise, your peeps will have favorites. They’ll write you notes or make comments about stuff and you’ll be all, “Yah? THAT was helpful? Really?”
These are the That’s What She Said podcast episodes deemed most interesting, informative, helpful, witty, and/or useful by virtue of their having garnered the most listens.
Also I’ve share my top choices, because (IT’S MY SHOW DAMMIT) and there are a few episodes that deserve a listen even if they don’t have the spiffiest, bullet-point-iest titles.
Depression and running your business
This episode is far and away the most popular episode of That’s What She Said, as it handles my ins and outs of fumbling through depression while also earning a full-time, no-backup income from my business. The Depression Chronicles include the rest of my notes, battles with, and tips about struggling through depression over the years.
Pay Me, Dammit!
When it comes to getting paid, most of us aren’t as tough and alpha and in charge as we’d like. Most of us need a few words of encouragement to get people to pay us, reimburse us, buy from us, or otherwise give us the dollars. Pay Me, Dammit! includes seven straightforward strategies for bringing money you’re owed (as well as new money) into your business.
How to give fear the finger
If creative peeps and business owners didn’t face fear, we’d all be making endless projects and launching the shit out of them all the time. Instead, we get scared. We delay the books, we don’t finish the projects, we put off making the phone call to that person who offered to promote us, we hide in our homes and pretend our houses need a deep cleaning and our hard drives need to be more organized and our books need to be sorted by color, no author, no subject…you get the idea.
When your fear isn’t trying to get you home at 4 a.m. on the subway by guiding you through the streets — when it’s just sabotaging your creative life with the fire of a thousand suns as you try to do something simple like make a poem or a painting or a photograph or a lesson or an object — it’s okay to give it the finger. Here’s how.
Input, output, and getting way more done
Have you ever felt tired in ways that sleep couldn’t touch? Not physically tired, but bone weary. Depleted. Absolutely out of fucks.
In those moments when you’re most exhausted, you’re not facing an “I need to sleep in” issue. You’re facing an input issue. This episode of That’s What She Said dives deep into what you need most when you’re functioning at something like 3% capacity.
When you feel like a fraud
…self-explanatory. 😉
Moving through fear and all the other feels
It seems that our default as humans is to shut down our emotions when they’re anything but happy skipping lalala joy and rainbows. We stuff them down, cover them with food, drown them in alcohol, smoke them away, tuck them out of sight, or otherwise do some version of OH SWEET LORD I’LL DO ANYTHING TO NOT FEEL THE FEELS.
What if we stopped doing that? One feel at a time. Starting now.
…and now, my favorites. If you’re new to me or to the podcast, this is where I recommend you start.
Stop drinking the unicorn blood (and put down that horcrux)
You guys! This is, hands down, my favorite episode of That’s What She Said. It’s Harry Potter meets podcasting meets business in a way that you’re guaranteed to enjoy. I’m not saying anymore than that — just go and listen.
Magic often feels like broken
If someone had scooped me up at age 7 and whispered, “Don’t worry, it’s just that you’re magic,” I would have saved myself the following 27 years of freaking out and feeling like no part of me was normal. I would have realized that yes, I still have a body and have to sleep and eat and be human, but the rest of me is basically pure magic.
I’ve been shamed for it, others have tried to scream it out of me, I’ve been told I’m a terrible employee and that I would never be able to work for anyone ever again. I’ve had lovers make fun of my hair and my outfits and my work. I’ve had accountants and bosses and old white men laugh in my face when I told them my ideas.
…and I’ve survived, magic intact.
This is for you, friend, because magic often feels like broken.
The 3 types of business time
When I figured this out, my daily schedule changed. I tend to put most of my daily emphasis on making. You might put your daily business emphasis on getting shit done — e-mailing, accounting, invoicing, shipping, editing — but both of us ignore moguling. Find out what it is, how it works, and why it’s so damn important in this episode.
Find Your Spirit Animal
…because why not? It would appear that in a past life I was some sort of wise woman and in this life, that means I can help you find your spirit animal in under ten minutes. My own spirit animal, Momo, has helped me to face my fears on many occasions, and makes me laugh when I least expect it. I know you think it’s weird. I don’t care. Go find it.
P.S. Here’s where you can listen to every That’s What She Said episode.
