Last weekend I rested.

On purpose. All weekend. Knowing full well no paycheck was coming and approximately a thousand things I could have been doing instead.

Here's what was sitting underneath all of it: my colleague Tiffany Flaming and I had launched something together. A real offering. A 12-week executive AI cohort called Anxiety to Authority. Big price point. Public commitment. My name on it.

The site had been live for nearly a week.

Silence.

Not the peaceful kind. The kind where you start quietly questioning every decision you've made for the last six months. Maybe longer.

That was the backdrop for everything that followed.

Monday I had a presentation interview with a large HRIS company. Remote role, real travel, pulling on every skill I've spent 25 years building. On paper? Pretty great. In my body? Nothing. The hiring manager had been watching my LinkedIn. They said, gently, that what I was building there and the demands of this role probably weren't going to coexist.

We parted ways. I closed the door on full-time employment for what I'm pretty sure is the last time.

Walked away with a slick presentation deck and zero regrets.

Then the week filled up fast. Nicole gave me a course-design training as a birthday gift - a genuine, structured methodology course, not just vibes and chatbots. My first HackingHR panel happened. I maybe should've prepped more, but I made friends and several people messaged afterward to say they appreciated my practical approach, so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Two coaching conversations landed… differently.

Shannon Hernandez of Joyful Business Revolution told me the thing I did not want to hear: email is actually how you reach potential clients. I hate email with the passion of a thousand burning suns. I had assumed everyone else did too. Reader, they do not.

Then Moe Choice - a LinkedIn social selling guru - identified every place I was dropping the ball on the selling side of this business in exactly 20 minutes. I've been doing this for months.

The rest of the week was a blur of building. Claude Code, MindStudio agents, meetings that were somehow actually productive.

Friday morning I showed up to a Future Skills Academy global town hall and felt something I haven't felt in a while. Like I belonged in the room. Not auditioning. Not grateful to be included. Just equal. When the founder mentioned they'd been trying to build a way to connect their independent consultants, I built him a working HTML prototype. Had it in his inbox within two hours. He's based in the Netherlands. He wants to meet Monday.

That afternoon I got pizza and Crumbl cookies (my father-in-law is a saint), sang Beautiful Day by Joshua Radin at full volume in my car, and then Tiffany messaged.

We'd sold our first seat.

I did a seat jig. I'm not sorry.

Saturday I recorded an episode of The AI Sisterhood Podcast with a young woman from India who's just getting started and asked me to be her first guest. She let me talk for 90 minutes. Obviously I loved it. She posted this afterward:

"You don't need to know how the internal combustion engine works to drive your car. So why are we making women sit through hours of technical AI training before they're allowed to use it?"

That's my line. Still gets me.

And today - International Women's Day - Lovable is offering free builds for 24 hours. My ICP is midlife women, so honestly every day has that energy. But I'm not passing up free. I'm building an AI Learner Archetype Quiz and I'll tell you more about that soon.

It was a week. The kind where you can't quite believe it all fit into seven days.

Here's what I keep forgetting:

Trust isn't something you feel first and act on second.

It works the other way around.

You act. Scared, uncertain, maybe a little underprepared. And then - if you're paying attention - the universe sends you a signal. A message. A meeting request from the Netherlands. A seat jig in your car on a Friday afternoon.

That's not luck. That's you, moving anyway, and the world meeting you there.

I spent a week sitting with silence after a launch and telling myself it meant something bad. It didn't mean anything. It was just the gap between jumping and landing.

You know that gap. You've lived in it.

The fear is real. So is what's on the other side of it.

I don’t remember much of this past week (the gift and curse of having ADHD) but here are some links to things that either made me laugh, made me cry, or basically made me feel something other than stress.

Two Years, Two Earthquakes, and a Thank You Baby Jesus

My friend Annie Landt just hit two years since Accenture laid her off - along with 20,000 of the rest of us. In the same year, her 15-year marriage ended on Christmas Eve. I was there for a lot of this story and I'm telling you: read her post. Not for the resilience narrative (though it's there). For the last line. Mass layoffs aren't a magic fix. Who knew. Annie says it better than I ever could.

Your Brain Heard That

A neurolinguist on TikTok blew my mind in 36 seconds. Everything you say after "I am" is an instruction to your brain. I am tired. I am behind. I am not techy enough. Your brain goes: got it, copy that. Watch it. Then watch what you say next.

Five Tips That Work Even If Your Brain Isn't "Broken"

And this woman on Instagram - I've been following her for months and she has never once wasted my time. Five tips for ADHD that are genuinely useful whether you have ADHD or not. Which, honestly, is how the best advice works.

Partner of the week

Turns out newsletters don't pay for themselves. Who knew?

This week's partner helps keep the lights on:

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

This daily newsletter condenses everything you need to know about the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. Squeeze it into your morning coffee break and before you know it, you’ll be an expert too.

Subscribe right here. It’s totally free, wildly informative, and trusted by 600,000+ readers at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and beyond.

People keep asking me: what's the difference between all these chatbots? Which one should I use?

So I built a mall.

ChatGPT is Target. Claude is Trader Joe's. Grok is Spencer's Gifts. (You'll understand immediately.)

AND… Ta-da! I finished my Lovable build (mentioned above) in time to add it to the newsletter. I built you a quiz. Because before you know what to learn, it helps to know how you learn.

ROCO stands for Role, Objective, Context, Output. It's a way of giving the AI everything it needs to actually help you - instead of giving it nothing and getting nothing back. Think of it as the difference between walking into a store and saying "I need something" versus "I need a birthday gift for my sister who loves cooking and hates clutter, under $50, wrapped and ready to go."

Same store. Very different result.

This week's prompt is called The Confidence Inventory. Use it when you've had a big week and your brain is too tired to know what it means.

Role:

You are a warm, perceptive coach who listens carefully and reflects back what the evidence actually says - not what someone fears it means.

Objective:

Interview me about my week with 5 questions, one at a time. Then tell me what this week actually proves about where I'm headed.

Context:

I've been in a big transition. I second-guess myself more than I should. I need someone to look at the facts of my week and tell me what they add up to - not cheerleading, just honest reflection.

Output:

Ask me your first question. Wait for my answer before asking the next one. After all 5, give me a one-paragraph honest read on what this week proves. Keep it plain. No corporate speak.

Copy it. Paste it. Answer the questions honestly.

Then read what comes back like it's about someone you love.

Because it is.

Wednesday, March 11, 10:00AM - 12:00PM CST.

Part coworking, part body-doubling, part "wait, can AI help with this?" No slides. No performance. Just humans working alongside other humans. The catch: you need to join R GENERATION first. It's free. Worth it.

Friday, March 13 | 10AM CST - 30 Minutes
Friday Jam Session with Joy Prompt Club. 30 minutes. No agenda. Just prompts, play, and people who get it. If you took the quiz and landed on a discount for 3 months - this is what you'd be joining.

Anxiety to Authority - 12 weeks, 10 senior leaders max, Tuesdays starting April 7. Me and Tiffany Flaming. $2,997. Not for everyone. Maybe for someone you know.

The Executive AI Edge - 90 minutes with me and Kate Sargent. $449. For the executive in your life who's nodding along in AI meetings and understanding none of it.

Joy Prompt Club - My favorite little virtual place in all the interwebz. There’s a limited time discount at the end of the quiz above…

You don't need to feel ready.

You just need to move.

The universe tends to meet you there.

💜

Take care of yourself, take care of each other,

Deb

P.S. If you know someone who's been saying "I need to figure out this AI thing" for the last six months - forward this to them. The mall is open. The quiz takes five minutes. And nothing bad will happen.

P.P.S. Hit reply and tell me: what's the thing you've been sitting on? I read every single one.