October is Women’s Small Business Month—a time to celebrate women who’ve built something from the ground up. But if I’m honest, celebration isn’t always what this month feels like. Some days it feels like survival.

Running a small business while raising a family is hard. Not “busy” hard. Not “stressful” hard. The kind of hard that lives in the quiet spaces between client calls and bedtime routines. The kind that keeps you awake at night, wondering if you gave enough—to your work, to your family, to yourself.

When I started Grounded Growth Studio, I wasn’t chasing freedom in the cliché sense. I wanted to build something sustainable that fit my life, not the other way around. I wanted to be present for my kids and create work that mattered. But I quickly learned that entrepreneurship doesn’t automatically equal flexibility. It can easily become the opposite if you don’t draw hard lines.

At Grounded Growth Studio, I’ve always believed in a balanced approach to marketing. Paid, earned, shared, and owned channels each bring unique value, and when they work together, they can create powerful momentum. But working with one of my clients, Fit Minded, has given me a renewed appreciation for something marketers often overlook: the sheer power of organic channels and well-crafted cold outreach, when the message truly resonates.

This is a story about Fit Minded’s growth over the past few months, what made it successful, and the lessons I’ve taken away that might be useful for other founders and marketers.

Authenticity is one of the most overused words in leadership—but when it’s real, people can feel it.

That’s the theme of my latest Forbes feature, “17 Methods To Balance Personal Authenticity With Corporate Positioning,” where I joined other communications leaders to discuss how executives can share their true voice while still representing their organizations with clarity and credibility.

Conversations about well-being at work aren’t just nice to have—they’re essential to building teams that last.

That’s the focus of my latest Forbes feature, “17 Ways Internal Comms Can Normalize Conversations Around Well-Being,” where I joined other leaders to share how communication teams can help make wellness a visible, ongoing part of company culture.

Here’s what I contributed:

Weave well-being into regular updates.
Normalize well-being by weaving it into regular updates, not just crisis moments. Internal comms pros can share leadership messages that openly acknowledge stress, spotlight resources, and model balance. Consistency signals that well-being is part of the culture, not a side note.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I am a very data-driven person. Data is one of the pillars of how I built Grounded Growth Studio, and it’s how I help founders make smarter marketing decisions. Numbers matter. They give us insight, accountability, and direction.

But here’s the nuance: being data-driven isn’t the same as being data-overloaded.

I’ve advised plenty of super-analytical founders who believed the answer to their marketing challenges was “track more.” They built dashboards filled with CTRs, bounce rates, follower counts, time-on-site—convinced that if they just measured everything, clarity would emerge.

But instead of clarity, they got chaos. Every metric seemed to point in a different direction, leading to second-guessing, delays, and paralysis. It’s like standing in front of a firehose: there’s no shortage of water, but it’s impossible to drink.

The best presentations don’t just inform—they stick.

That’s the focus of my latest Forbes feature, “19 Expert Tips To Make Your Presentation Unforgettable,” where I joined other thought leaders to share how we turn ideas into moments people actually remember.

Here’s what I contributed:

Anchor your talk around a single big idea.
People forget data points, but they remember stories. When you frame insights through a simple, human story tied to your core message, the content sticks emotionally and intellectually. That clarity makes your presentation memorable and actionable.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit down with Brian Lofrumento for his Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur Podcast. What struck me right away is how intentional Brian is about drawing out the real stories behind the work, not just the highlight reel.

If you’ve ever wondered how to cut through the noise, focus on what really moves the needle, and build marketing that actually drives revenue, I think you’ll enjoy this episode.

The best marketing campaigns aren’t the ones with the most moving parts, they’re the ones with the clearest message.

That’s the perspective I shared in my latest Forbes feature, where I joined other communications leaders to reflect on what really makes a campaign resonate.

One of the biggest fears leaders have when they hand off writing is that their brand’s authenticity will get lost in translation. And I get it. Now that I’m a founder, I know firsthand how personal your brand can feel. You’ve poured yourself into it. Your voice isn’t just about tone, it’s about trust. Every word shapes how customers perceive you, and if something suddenly feels “off,” your audience notices.

I remember the first time I asked someone else to draft content for my brand. I opened the doc with my heart in my throat. Would it sound like me? Would it capture the balance I wanted between being approachable and authoritative? That nervousness is real, and it’s why so many leaders hold on too tightly to the writing.

But here’s the truth: you don’t have to write every email, post, or article yourself to protect your voice. What you do need are systems that preserve consistency without bottlenecking your growth.

When you’re building something new, it’s natural to want to keep your hands on everything. I’ve been there — trying to manage messaging, campaigns, the website, even ad accounts, all while leading the business itself. At first, it feels like the scrappy thing to do. But over time, it drains your energy and keeps you from focusing on the parts of growth only you can drive.

What I’ve learned, both in my own career and in working with founders, is that the fastest way to make progress is not by doing more yourself, but by delegating in the right order. If you outsource too early or in the wrong places, you risk losing your voice or burning money. But when you get the sequence right, you build momentum that compounds.

Here are the first three tasks I recommend founders hand off, and the tactics that make each stage work.

Trust is the real currency of marketing. Without it, even the cleverest campaign will struggle to land.

But earning trust has never been harder. We’re all competing in a noisy environment where audiences are overloaded with content and skeptical of claims. Cutting through means more than just volume—it means credibility.

That’s the perspective I shared in my latest Forbes feature, where I joined 18 other communications leaders to explore practical ways to earn and keep audience trust. The article, “19 Communication Strategies To Earn Audience Trust In A Noisy World,” highlights proven approaches to build stronger, more authentic connections.

In 1999, I was in high school, burning mix CDs on the family computer and calling friends on a landline with a cord that barely reached the kitchen counter. Friday nights meant a trip to Blockbuster, praying they hadn’t rented out the last copy of 10 Things I Hate About You. If you wanted to get online, you listened to the screech of dial-up and hoped no one picked up the phone in the middle of it.

The world felt modern then, but looking back, it’s astonishing how much has changed in 26 years.

And yet, according to Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2025 report, it will take another 26 years — until 2051 — before women achieve equal representation in senior leadership.

As a marketing leader and founder, I believe equality in marketing leadership isn’t just a moral issue. It’s a growth issue. And for founders building companies today, it can mean the difference between flatlining and scaling.

Most of the best marketing I’ve ever seen didn’t start out polished.

It usually wasn’t the carefully worded copy that had been revised over and over.
It wasn’t the campaign that stayed in planning mode until every detail felt “just right.”
And it wasn’t the social post that lived in drafts while everyone debated the perfect angle.

It was messy. Imperfect. Sometimes a little rough around the edges.

But it moved.

That’s why I love this graphic: two ladders.

• One is beautifully designed, but it only has one rung.

• The other is crooked and uneven, but it has enough rungs to climb.

The lesson? The ugly ladder gets you somewhere. The perfect ladder doesn’t.

And if you’re an early-stage founder, your marketing often works the same way.

Memorable campaigns are fun to talk about. They get remembered, repeated, even admired.

But memorability on its own is not enough.

For a campaign to truly work, it has to connect with your customer’s needs in a way that prompts them to act. Otherwise, it is just a good story floating around with no real business impact.

That is the perspective I shared in my latest Forbes feature, where I joined 19 other communications leaders to unpack the formula behind campaigns that stick and convert.

Attention has become the most valuable currency in marketing.

We are living in an age where customers are flooded with content from every direction, and every brand is competing for the same limited focus. The challenge is not just getting noticed, but holding attention long enough to build trust and spark action.

That is the context for my latest Forbes feature, where I joined 19 other communications leaders to share how brand storytelling is evolving to meet the demands of the attention economy. The article, “20 Ways Brand Storytelling Is Adapting To The Attention Economy,” is packed with ideas on how to cut through noise and connect with audiences in meaningful ways.

After two decades in marketing, I’ve seen a pattern I can’t ignore.

Marketing leaders aren’t leaving their roles because they’ve lost their edge, or because they’re not capable of delivering results. They’re leaving because the jobs they’re hired for are often set up to fail.

It starts with good intentions: a founder wants a “Head of Marketing” to drive growth, own the go-to-market strategy, and lead the brand forward. But too often, the role they create looks more like 15 disconnected jobs in one—everything from lead gen to PR to event planning—plus full revenue accountability, and little to no structural support to make it all happen.

The result? Burnout. Frustration. High turnover. And a cycle that hurts both the marketing leader and the business.

It’s time to break that cycle.

You’ve already seen the shift.

Your team’s using ChatGPT to research.
Your customers are asking questions that never touch your website.
Your SEO traffic is plateauing even though your content’s solid.

And now the question isn’t whether AI is changing the rules. It’s:

How do we make sure our brand still shows up when it matters?

Internal communication is often treated like a “soft” function, but the truth is, it is measurable.

Too often, leaders rely on broad engagement scores or open rates as a proxy for effectiveness. Those numbers can be helpful, but on their own, they do not reveal whether employees are truly informed, aligned, or equipped to act.

That is why I was excited to contribute to this Forbes feature, where I joined 11 other communications leaders to highlight the KPIs that matter most when measuring internal comms.

Change inside a company rarely stays inside a company.

Whether it is a leadership shift, a merger, a rebrand, or a major strategic pivot, what you communicate internally will almost always find its way outside. And if your internal and external messaging are not aligned, the result is confusion, rumor, and erosion of trust.

That is why I was glad to contribute to this recent Forbes feature, where I joined 18 other communications leaders to share strategies for keeping messaging consistent during big company changes.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen too many smart, capable marketers step into senior roles only to burn out—or quietly opt out. Not because they lacked skill or drive, but because they were handed a title without the support, clarity, or authority to succeed.

I’ve lived it myself. And now, through Grounded Growth Studio, I work with founders who want to break that cycle and build something better.

In my latest article for Forbes, I unpack what’s really going wrong with modern marketing leadership—and how we fix it. From performance marketing’s influence on role design, to the pressure of revenue ownership without control, to the blurred lines between strategy and execution, this piece is a look at the bigger picture.