The Consistency Corner: Lightening the Mental Load of Marketing
A marketing strategy podcast for mom founders who are done feeling overwhelmed by content, social media, and the pressure to “show up online” everywhere, all the time.
Hosted by Ruthie Sterrett, marketing strategist, agency owner, and founder of The Consistency Corner, this show is for the mom entrepreneur who already knows the basics of marketing but is too busy, too stretched, or too mentally maxed out to carry it all alone.
This isn’t a tactics podcast. It’s a marketing thinking partner in your earbuds.
Inside each episode, you’ll get:
Honest conversations about the mental load of marketing and motherhood
Strategic clarity on social media, content planning, and visibility without burnout
Real talk about capacity, consistency, and what it looks like to market your business without losing yourself in the process
Founder-to-founder perspective from someone who implements daily, not someone teaching theory
If marketing has started to feel like another full-time job you never applied for, this podcast will feel like a deep breath.
New episodes drop weekly. Find Ruthie at theconsistencycorner.com or @theconsistencycorner on Instagram.
The Consistency Corner: Lightening the Mental Load of Marketing
My Messy, Honest Summer Business Debrief (Ads, AI FOMO, and All)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This is the summer debrief episode. Not a highlight reel, not a confession booth, just an honest look at what actually happened behind the scenes at The Consistency Corner this summer.
Ruthie walks through five things from her season: the real cost of the camp commute and the mental mode switching that came with it, what happened when she took her own business through the Cornerstone Strategy process as her own client, her honest and unresolved feelings about AI FOMO, a golf content experiment that surprised her, and a transparent look at her ad spend numbers, including some she has never shared before.
The thread running through all five stories is the same. Whether or not your thinking makes it out of your head and onto paper. By the end, Ruthie gives you a simple 20 minute exercise to do your own summer debrief before school starts back up, so next year's version of you gets the same gift this year's notes gave her.
Join the next Marketing Mixer, a virtual networking event for mom founders.
Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and follow along over on Instagram!
@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner
Ruthie (00:00.94)
You know the show The Summer I Turned Pretty? First of all, I I watched like two episodes. I couldn't really get into it. But you know what I'm talking about. The summer I turned pretty. This was the summer that I wrote a 118-page strategy document for my own business. Now, why did I write a 118-page strategy document? We're gonna talk about that and we're gonna talk about what's in it. But I also, it was the summer that I lost the fight about getting out the door to camp on time more mornings than I want to admit.
And both of those things are true. And honestly, that's the whole episode. Today on the consistency corner. Today on the consistency my God, why can't I talk? Today, on the Consistency Corner podcast, we are doing a behind the scenes debrief on of what I'm calling the both and season. Which, to be honest, as a business owner and a mom, like you're both and all the time. But what I mean by that is both things can be true.
Or this can happen and this other thing can also be happening behind the scenes. You can be a successful business owner and a great mom. Both things can be true. So we're gonna talk about the summer where the business grew up a little and the days were both messy, where I did some of the most important strategic work I've ever done for my own brand, and I spent a ridiculous amount of time negotiating with a 10-year-old about getting out the door.
And fair warning, by the time you're hearing this, I'm actually on vacation. I'm batching this, and we've got an episode coming up for you all about batching. I'm batching this episode before I head out of town. And I promised myself that I would not work on vacation, which TVD on if that holds true or not. I also convinced my husband that we are taking our golf clubs and we're gonna play golf on vacation. So I'm very excited about that.
But that felt like a very both and way to end the summer. And this episode felt like the right time to share with you kind of that behind the scenes what's really been going on at the Consistency Corner. So I'm walking you through five things from my summer: the camp commute reality and what it cost me, what happened when I became my own client and took my business through our cornerstone strategy process, my very honest feelings about AI right now.
Ruthie (02:24.793)
And a little golf experiment that surprised me along with where I'm at with running ads, including some numbers that I have not shared before and something that I'm like really pulling back the curtain here on. At the end, I'm going to give you one thing to do before school starts. It takes 20 minutes and it might be the most valuable 20 minutes of your fall planet. So stay with me. Okay, before I get into
any of this, let me tell you why I am doing this debrief episode at all. Because this isn't like a highlight reel and this isn't a confession booth. It's a planning tool. Last August I wrote down how the summer went, what worked, what didn't, where my capacity fell apart, and how I would do it differently. And I want to be clear that at the time that felt like no big deal. Like just make some notes, jot it down. But those notes
were the reason that this summer became possible and planable. When I sat down to map this June and July, I didn't have to rely on my memory of last summer, which can get foggy. And with the highlight re and all the hard parts conveniently being blurred out, or sometimes you know, we have the opposite where we only remember the hard parts, I had notes. So past Ruthie handed present Ruthie the input. And that's what this episode is, is it's me doing this year's version.
out loud with you. And at the end, I'm gonna ask you to do your summer reflection. So, number one, the camp commute and what it really costs. So if you've been listening this summer, you know that the camp commute has been a defining logistical feature of my season. Drop off, pick up every day, and it breaks my day into pieces. And it's something that I don't deal with during the school year because Noah walks to school.
So I want to be little bit more precise about what this cost, not just time in my car. Because when I planned for it, I planned for that time. 30 minutes there, 30 minutes home, do it again in the afternoon. Sometimes that commutes even longer on the weeks we went to golf. Fine. What I underestimated, even with last year's notes, is the transitions, the shifts. Because it isn't only that I lose those minutes in the car.
Ruthie (04:44.169)
It's that I have to switch modes. I switch from mom mode to business owner mode in the morning. And then I have to stop again in the afternoon and switch from strategic marketer back to mom mode. And then come home with a to-do list that isn't done yet and try to then wear both hats of mom while kiddo is at home and trying to minimize the amount of screen time, which to be honest, I think I failed at.
but also to get work done, client work, my own strategic business strategy or my own strategic business to-dos. And every single time my brain has to make those switches, it has a cost. I can't snap from a client strategy document into snack negotiations and back without losing something in the handoff, whether that's momentum, whether that's my train of thought, whatever it is.
And it it happens. It there's a cost. And it's a cost that's like not tangible, right? And that's on the days that drop off went smoothly. Because if I'm being honest, there were days that we argued about getting out the door. The days that we got out the door but it was late, then I had guilt about showing up to camp late because we spent so long arguing about getting out the door.
And listen, Noah's not a morning person. I'm not either. Like, I get it, buddy. You don't want to get up early on this in the summer. But there were days when like that morning negotiation just took it out of me. And after getting home from rolling into camp late and dropping him off, I would start my work block like already drained. And I'm telling you this for a couple of reasons. First, because
I planned for it. I wanted you to know that like there was planning involved. Last year's reflection told me that my summer capacity is different. So this year I planned my days, my weeks, my whole quarter with that smaller container. I really considered the client load, my own content calendar, the projects that I was saying yes to. All of that was sized for summer, Ruthie, not the imaginary version of me with eight uninterrupted hours.
Ruthie (07:00.235)
Now, my Claude might tell you differently and that I was being overly ambitious every single day, which I probably was, but that that's part of this reflection.
But even with all that planning, it was still hard. And that's the part that I want you to hear. Planning for reduced capacity doesn't make the season easier. It makes it survivable. And those are two completely different promises. But I also wanted to share with you that because the summer
Ruthie (07:33.464)
Second, if your summer looked like this, I want you to know the mode switching is a real cost and you're allowed to count it. When you do your own debrief, really think about that like context switching and if you had to do a lot of that in this season and what that meant for you in terms of capacity. Don't only write down what you did with your time, write down how you felt because that's data too, right? All right.
So we've talked about the capacity and my insights on the fact that transitions are capacity, more capacity draining than I had given them credit for. But now we're gonna move on to me becoming my own client. So at the beginning of June, as I was sitting down with my plan for the summer, I was like, wouldn't it be interesting? I think maybe even thought about this at the end of May. Wouldn't it be interesting if I took the consistency corner?
through the cornerstone framework and create the strategy that we create for our clients. And I thought, I'll do this in a day. Yeah, okay, Ruthie. Then I went, I went through like what are all the steps that I take when I do this with a client. And I'm like, duh, you're not doing this in a day. There's a reason that this is a four to six week engagement with a client. And what do you know?
it was about an eight eight week engagement. No, it was probably about six. It was about a six week engagement with doing it for myself.
And the reason that it was time to do this is earlier in the spring, I was really waffling. I I've got some episodes about that, if you listen to those, but I was really waffling and kind of unclear about my messaging, my offers, who exactly I serve, how I show up, my how my personal brand fits into the business. And I don't say I was waffling like to make you feel sorry for me. I like I was spiraling, y'all. And over the spring,
Ruthie (09:35.246)
In the spiral, I finally made some decisions. I had some data to guide me. I had conversations with friends. I sat with myself and made some real decisions and some shifts and some evolutions of the brand and the offers and the positioning. But here's what I didn't see at the time. I made those decisions and they lived in one place my brain. They weren't documented for my team.
They weren't documented for the AI tools I use. So all through the spring and like late spring, early summer, everyone and everything helping me was working from an old version of the business, of the strategy. And I was paying what I've started calling the correction tax. Someone would draft something and I'd have to change it and say, no, no, no, that's not the offer anymore. No, no, no, we changed the pricing. No, no, no, the idle client is different, remember? And every single correction took time.
Work that should have moved fast moved slower because the current truth of my business existed nowhere except my brain. And that probably sounds familiar because I would bet money that some version of this is happening for you or has happened for you. You've evolved, your price has changed, your positioning sharpened, your best fit fit client got clearer. And some of that evolution was never has never made it out of your head and on paper.
So this summer I decided I was gonna take my business through the cornerstone strategy, the same process we take our clients through. And that brand capture and clarify. It's it's only one of the five steps that we take it through, but clarify and capture was so critical for me. And doing it then helped me get even clearer on our campaign calendar, on my channel strategy, on the content plan.
On the capacity and consistency that I actually had to execute all of this to achieve the business goals that we set out. I got all of that out of my brain and onto a 118-page document. I mean, it's like several documents, right? It's it's several different Google Docs, but all in all, I counted, it's 118 pages. And I have to tell you what made this
Ruthie (11:53.834)
Exercise actually even better. I was running my own strategy at the same time that I was building one for a client. So I got to be the client while being the strategist and being on the receiving end of my own questions, it was illuminating. And there were moments that I felt the exact same uncertainty that I know my clients feel. The this is hard. Do I really have to articulate this? How do I make this stronger? How do I make it better?
I would feel where a question was confusing or the output needed more support to get to the right thing. And I'd fix it in my own documentation of the process so that I could give her an even sharper cornerstone strategy. She got a better strategy because I took myself through the process. And there was all on my end, like I said, 118 pages. My entire brand marketing and content strategy.
documented with an outline for the next 12 months. The messaging, the offers, the positioning, the voice, the nuance, all the stuff that was living in my brain for both my brand and how we're showing up out in the market was captured where other people and Claude can use it. And I want to tell you what that unlocked immediately because this is the point. This summer
I was able to bring on a team member to support my LinkedIn content for the business because of some decisions I made going through the cornerstone strategy. And she's isn't guessing my voice or my positioning. She's working from the document. Our podcast is the anchor, so it gets my live voice right here. The newsletter is my second, like in my voice piece. But then social gets repurposed from those things by team members and AI.
using source material and the strategy and content direction we've already mapped out. So that's the machine. And the machine only runs because the thinking made it out of my head. Now, I will be transparent about the cost because it wasn't nothing. It was a lot of decision making. It was a lot of introspection, a lot of nuance and precision and pulling things out of my own brain.
Ruthie (14:17.441)
That I'd never said out loud before and finding language to put it on a page so that someone who isn't me would get it. There were sessions where I was fried afterward because this is real work. And doing it for myself reinforced in my bones the value of what we do for clients. I've always believed in it, but now that I've lived it from the other side of the chair.
I know that having a guide help you through this and again get all that stuff out of your brain and get it on paper is incredibly valuable. And having a guide makes it easier. I mean, my guide was like me and Claude, but you get the point. So going into the fall, I'm fired up to do this for more founders. And I think it really matters to go through this process. It's valuable whether or not you are.
Gonna hire an internal team member, whether you're gonna bring on external support like the Consistency Corner, or you've already got a VA who's helping you, but like it's not quite getting what you wanted, or your own AI tools. Getting all of that out of your head and documented is it's the whole point because it's a win, no matter how you get support. That document is what really helps lighten the mental load of marketing. So.
Let's talk a little bit more about AI.
And I promised you, honest, and this is probably the most honest section of the episode. As I was working with Claude on my cornerstone strategy and building skills and building projects for my team and playing around with Claude co-work, I have AI FOMO bad. Every time I open Instagram, it's someone telling me that Claude runs their entire business. It's someone with seven-figure business being held together by agents and automations.
Ruthie (16:16.157)
It's Claude Code this and co-work that. And I'm sitting here like, I don't actually know anything about Claude Code. I want to learn. I want to dive in. And I'm not using half of what these tools can do. I haven't built a single agent. And I have collected and counted this in my head so that I have 87 freebies sitting in my inbox. I have
Screenshots of posts with ideas. And I have to remind myself that most of those people are selling me something. They are marketers being good at marketing. Okay, so that's like the self-talk I have to do to remind myself. But here's the thing: I even invested in AI education. I invested in a membership for business owners, which
I spent like maybe two hours working through the content and then I've never gone back to in three months. And then I feel like, my gosh, I want to learn, I want to know, I want to play around, but like I just don't feel like I have time to keep up with it all. And it's so loud right now, at least in my algorithm it is. And so the FOMO is real.
And I don't have a tiny answer, a tidy answer for you on this. I'm not gonna pretend I do. I use these tools every single day. And do I think that I use AI more efficiently, more effectively than 90% of the population? Yeah, probably. But man, it's that 10% that knows more than me that is giving me FOMO big time. So
Ruthie (18:02.475)
Those are both true at the same time, right? Like I can be really good at using these tools and still feel like I am behind. Very on theme for our episode over here, right? But what I've decided for myself, at least for this season, is that the documentation work that we talked about, that's my AI strategy tool too. Because a tool with my full strategy behind it is a useful AI tool.
And it's gonna keep producing things that I don't have to correct the way I was having to correct it when it didn't have that context. So before I chased the next automation, I had to really make sure that the foundation that those tools were running on is was solid. And that's a piece that I could control while the landscape whatever does whatever it's doing and while the new AI influencers try to sell me all the prompts and packs and whatever.
If you're in the same boat and you're like whether you're curious, you're overwhelmed, you're collecting f AI prompts like p Pokemon, come find me. Like generally, s send me a voice note, DM on Instagram. Because I'm not the expert walking ahead of you. I'm not the person trying to sell you an AI tool. I'm learning right alongside with you. And it's funny because I had a potential client,
And this is through a white label relationship. So there's an account manager involved and she came to the account manager came to me and said, you know, hey, the client has built a bunch of stuff in Claude and they want to know if you want to use it. And I DM'd her back and I was like, yes, absolutely. If the client has invested in building tools with their AI for continuity, absolutely I want to use what they've already built.
And she was like, my gosh, I definitely thought that you were gonna say, like, ew, no. And I'm like, no, let's use what we have. Let's work together. You know, when I build a Claude project for a client, my team can all access it. I invested in the team version of Claude. So again, like I'm learning right alongside you. I wish I was learning faster. I've got FOMO, but we're gonna get through this.
Ruthie (20:21.175)
Together because Lord knows it's not gonna stop if we stop learning. all right, so number four, we're gonna talk about golf for a second. I told you this episode was gonna be all over the place, or maybe I didn't tell you, but now you know we're gonna all over the place. Golf was supposed to be a bigger part of my summer. And the honest report is it has been the surface of the sun outside, and maybe it's like that every summer in Florida, and I just forgot, but we have not played nearly as much as I had hoped. I've gotten out to practice a little bit.
And I'm holding out hope that for the end of this summer and our clubs are coming on vacation and we're gonna play while we're there. But
I like didn't golf as much as I had hoped. And then I'm like beating myself up over that. And I also have like an on a nervous mom note, Noah has his first golf tournament in August, and it's 18 holes in the middle of the day. In the August heat, it's his first full 18 hole tournament. And if you think of us on August 8th, stin shade and no, August 9th, it's August 9th. Either way.
Send shade, send good vibes for a cold front in Florida. I don't know. I'll report back. I just hope nobody dies of heat stroke. But the real the real reason I want to talk about golf for a second is about a content experiment. If you follow my personal account, you may have seen some golf content. I've started blending golf into my content strategy. Because let me tell you, there was a part of me that wanted to go start a side hustle as a golf content creator. We're not doing that.
I have enough on my plate. But I thought, how can I make golf part of the content I create? Well, if you've ever talked to me for very long, you know I love a good analogy. And so I am trying to teach marketing strategy, share my point of view through golf analogies. And the first post I made in that direction got more reach than any real I'd posted in like the last two months.
Ruthie (22:27.615)
Now, with that data, two reactions in me kind of popped into my brain at the same time. And I want to walk you through both because this is a masterclass on how to read data. Reaction number one was like pure validation. I am, and I'll own this on the record, a person who unfortunately craves external validation. I know this about myself.
So watching that number climb, it was like, yes, okay, it works working. The algorithm likes it. The people like it. Reaction two from the strategist, Ruthie, is like, hey, this is one post. One post is a signal. It's not a strategy. It's not a signal that says, hey, go be a golf content creator. Remember, I told you I was thinking about doing that. it's a signal that says keep experimenting.
This format has some promise. The audience and the algorithm responded. The signal does not say pivot your entire content plan to become a golf content creator. The discipline is holding that gap because reach is one metric and it's actually the shallowest metric. And because if that reach doesn't turn into clients or mixer attendees or a true community, it doesn't do any good. Who cares? and I don't know yet.
How this experiment is gonna go. I gotta give this experiment at least 90 days. I have got to create golf content, golf related content, as part of my overall content strategy for at least 90 days before we decide is this a piece of the content strategy that should continue. And I'm telling you this because you should have your own version of these little experiments. Something you post will pop and the validation will feel like.
Instruction, but let it be information instead. One data point earns more experiments. It doesn't earn an entire pivot and new strategy. But speaking of pivots and new strategy and data, we're going to talk about ads. I save this for last on purpose because it is the rawest one and because I think it's the most useful thing that I can actually give you today. So let me start with why I'm running ads at all, because that context matters.
Ruthie (24:48.299)
Relationships and referrals have landed every single client I have ever had. And I am grateful for that. It's real, but it is also incredibly unpredictable. I can't schedule a referral. So the reason I am gung-ho on figuring out ads is that I want more predictable tools and ways to drive sales calls. Some something that I can like turn on and turn off, a dial that I can crank up. At least.
In theory, that's how I want it to work. In practice, I have spent about $2,500 so far. And that spend has booked five sales calls. $500 per call is high. We knew that already, but I thought like, okay, we're gonna refine this and we're gonna get better. But of those five people, four never showed up. So I never even got to have a conversation with a real human to understand if my messaging is landing.
If my offer is something people want. So I keep iterating, I keep changing things, I keep trying. And again, like one no-show, two no-shows, three no-shows, we get up to four no-shows with five booked calls. So as we're recording this, I have just turned on a third, maybe even a fourth iteration of this ad campaign. Right now I'm doing some A-B testing with messaging, testing the entry point, like the ad to a landing page.
And I'm at the very beginning of the test and I'm getting some good click rates. I'm getting some good cost per clicks. But I don't have real results yet. I don't have a booked call yet. And that's not like because I wanted to give you a big reveal and tell you to stay tuned and find out more. I'm telling you because I think you deserve to hear that what it looks like in the messy middle of figuring it out. And
The next part that I'm gonna say out loud because I say it in my brain all the time, when I look at that number of how much I've already spent, I'm like, God damn it, I have got to make these eyes, these ads work because I've already spent that money and I want a return on investment. I do not want to shrug and say, well, ads didn't work for me and walk away. I wanna figure it out. I want it to work so badly. So
Ruthie (27:11.509)
I can hear what you might be thinking because I've thought it too. Like, is that determination or is that the sunk cost talking? And to be honest with you, it's both. But I gotta keep an eye on which one is driving the decisions. What makes it a real experiment or a true data test instead of stubborn money mindset that I'm trying to win an argument with myself?
And I don't know yet. I don't know the answer yet. I don't know what's the limit, what's the amount of money that I'm willing to spend before I would say, okay, this is not working for me. But I have changed my ad strategy and layered in another ad strategy around nurture, around retargeting. We're not gonna go into all of that, but it's happening behind the scenes. And also I know that in addition to the ads, which are running to a cold audience.
I've got to work on nurturing the relationships with my warm audience, reaching out to the people who could connect me to my ideal client. And again, pouring into those relationships. So, and both. And I can, you know, I can run my business on referrals and I can test ads. And hopefully someday both of those will be a true top of funnel entry point for people to work with me.
Ruthie (28:41.985)
So the thing about the no-shows with the ads and why this like stings and why the relationship piece almost I think gets difficult for me is when people don't show up, like I have spent time preparing for that conversation.
You know, I start strategizing, I research their business, I'm sketching out like how what I want to ask them and what clarity I need to determine if I'm a good fit to work with them. Right. Like I'm spending actual time. But then there's this big emotional cost of I thought someone was going to show up and like a blind date, you're sitting in a coffee shop with like your red shirt on.
waiting for so and so to walk in and look for you because you said you were gonna wear a red shirt. I've never been on a blind date. I don't know how how this works, but you know what they say in books or whatever. But then I'm sitting in a Zoom room and and the person never shows up. And it feels like the worst rejection ever. Which then to me compounds into well, don't reach out to your audience, don't reach out to your network, don't talk to people, don't bother people, nobody wants to hear from you. And it just spirals. And so what I want to normalize
Here is that marketing is hard. It's vulnerable to put yourself out there. Sales and marketing, it's not easy. And there's there's a reason that we crave external validation because it tells us that like you're doing it right. You're doing it right. You're on the right track. Because putting yourself out there is difficult.
Ruthie (30:24.577)
I mean, ultimately we were watching we were watching the new season of quarterback on Netflix this week. And I I I paused after, I don't know, three or four episodes and I looked at my husband, I said, these guys, these elite athletes, like they have this belief that it doesn't matter if they're down four touchdowns, they haven't won a game in four weeks. Like these elite quarterbacks, they believe you give me the ball, I'm gonna go make it happen.
I'm gonna go figure it out. I'm gonna go win this game. Like they just have this innate belief. And I'm like, where does that come from? How do number one, as a parent, how do you cultivate that in your child? And number two, as an adult, like how do you cultivate that belief for yourself? Because you need that belief. And we we talk about the success equation here and how belief is the multiplier. You need that belief of like, I am good at this.
If you're gonna put yourself out there into the market, because the market's gonna ignore you sometimes. The market is gonna tell you, nope, that was not the right message, and you're gonna flop more than you fail a lot of the times. And business owners don't talk about that. They talk about their seven-figure launch and their, you know, super successful, sold out, whatever. So let's let's normalize talking about the flops along with the successes and both. Like we can have both.
So I have left you the longest voice note ever in this episode. Sometimes when I leave voice notes for my team or friends or my coach, and I I really, really talk in, I'll be like, sorry for the podcast that I left you. Well, I'm not sorry I left you a podcast. You came here to listen to a podcast. But thank you for sticking with me as we unpacked all of that. My summer, the camp commute and the transition tax, becoming my own client and what I learned from that, the AI FOMO.
The golf signal and the ads grind. And I want to name a thread that's running through all five of those because I didn't really even see it until I laid them side by side to plan for this episode. Every single one of those stories hinges on the same thing. Whether or not your thinking makes it out of your brain and on to paper. Last summer's written reflection of why was why this summer was planable.
Ruthie (32:43.765)
The spring was expensive because my decisions lived only in my head. They weren't written down. And the cornerstone document is what ended the correction tax, right? My AI overwhelm gets smaller as my documentation gets better, because my AI tools that I'm already using then work better. The golf experiment stays honest because I'm treating it as recorded data, documentation, not just a gut feeling or a reaction. And the ads.
qualify as an experiment instead of an expensive piece of validation because every single iteration is tracked. Both and summer isn't a personality trait, or but both and as a human isn't a personality trait. It's not me hustling harder or balancing better. It's infrastructure. It's documentation. It's planning, getting things out of my head so that they don't cost me.
So that brings me to your homework, which I promised we were gonna like have a little bit of homework here. Before school starts, I want you to write your summer debrief. I want you to do it now, not at the end of the year, because at the end of the year you'll be like, I can't remember summer. What happened? Just jot some notes down. Notes app in your phone, a blank Google Doc, whatever.
The hard weeks, the wins, the I want to remember this for next year, whether you don't look at it until next year or you look at it in December when you do plan your 2027, you'll thank yourself that you wrote those notes down. Open the document, set a timer for 20 minutes, and answer four questions. Number one, what did this summer look like? Honestly, capacity included. Number two, what worked that I want to repeat on purpose?
Number three, what cost more than I expected? Whether that cost was time, energy, or money. And number four, what does next May or June me need to know? That's it. You don't have to make it pretty. You have to make it true. Do a voice note. Use Whisperflow and dump this into your AI tool and ask it to make you a recap. Ooh, love that. I love Whisperflow if you haven't already tried it. You need it.
Ruthie (35:02.655)
Anyway, this document becomes a gift to yourself in the future. So next week, and next week it's also going to help you with what we're talking about next week. Next week, we're going to pick up where we leave off. And as the summer chapter is closing and back to school is coming, we're going to talk about the rhythm to rebuild going into that new season. We're going to talk about energy management through back to school transitions or any transitions.
How to plan your fall marketing around the energy that you'll have, not just the time and energy that you wish you had. And if summer wore you out, we'll talk about that too. But one more thing. Our next marketing mixer is Thursday, August 20th. It's all about back to school and back to marketing basics. It's our free virtual networking event for mom founders. And we'll be comparing notes on this stuff. We'll be having conversations.
On marketing momentum, real capacity, batching, planning for back to school. The link is in the show notes, or you can go to the consistencycorner.com/slash mixer to save your seat. And after you do your debrief, I want you to DM me, tell me what you wrote down because I genuinely want to know what your summer taught you. And I hope you enjoy what's left of yours. And I'll see you in the next episode.