On Wednesday night, I hosted a Choice Table gathering from my home office.

It was a Zoom call. Technically. But Zoom is what we used, not what we built. We sent the cocktail recipes, the mocktails, the snacks and the apps ahead, so by the time we logged on, the women in attendance had already decided what they were drinking and what was on the cutting board. We opened with breakout rooms, small ones, because that is what you would do at a real dinner when you first arrive. You get to know each other. We had giveaways. We had a real Substack creator answering questions in real time, transparent about what has worked and what has cost her sleep. The whole Choice Chicas team was there. Our virtual Table was not a webinar and it was never going to be. It is one of the things I am proudest of in this season of building.

And then the questions started coming.

Should I name my Substack the same thing as my book title?

Should I have a personal Substack and a business Substack?

Should I launch for free? When should I turn on paid?

How do I decide what to give away and what to put behind a paywall?

How much time does this actually take?

What are authors doing to promote their books on Substack right now?

I’m so burned out on creating content. Is this just one more place I have to add to my list?

Same room. Same hour. A different woman every time. The questions kept coming.

Here is what I want to tell you. Every one of those questions is the same question wearing a different outfit. It is not really about the name, or the paywall, or the schedule, or the launch. It is one question, asked seven different ways, by women who already know they are sitting on something valuable and are tired of giving it away to a feed that disappears to the majority of their audience. The question, when you listen for it, is this:

One of the most quietly stunning moments of the night came when our client who is already on Substack shared very plainly that she has made more money in a single Substack post than she has across eleven years and more than 65,000 pieces of content on Instagram. Sit with that for a second. Eleven years. 65,000 pieces. One post on a platform she actually owns.

That is not a fluke. That is not a viral moment. That is a structural truth about what happens when an expert woman stops renting her audience.

This season, the women in my world are realizing they have been giving away expert content for free, on platforms designed to keep them performing forever, and they have been doing it on land they do not own. Substack is not just one more place to create content. It is the platform where the rules of value finally start working in their favor. Subscribers belong to her. Archive belongs to her. Monetization is built in from day one, free, paid or both. There is no algorithm sitting between her and the woman who said yes to her voice. She writes. Her reader reads.

That is what I heard underneath every question last night. And it is exactly what The Substack Strategy Workshop is designed to answer.

On Wednesday, June 3, from 9am to 5pm Central, our Choice team and I are hosting one full day, virtual (with recordings if you cannot attend live). We are walking you through the exact strategy I used to launch The Red Lip Life into the #12 spot in Business on all of Substack in its very first week and the strategy we use behind the scenes with our Choice clients. Step by step. Not theory. Real, finished work in your hands by the end of the day. Your messaging. Your content pillars. Your monetization decision. Your launch roadmap.

There are two paths.

The Workshop Only is for the woman who wants the strategy day and is ready to build the site herself.

The Workshop + Build Bundle is the most chosen path. You get the strategy day, and then our Choice team builds your Substack site for you after. Custom banner, bio, about section, welcome email, one round of edits, on a 30 to 90 day build timeline.

We are intentionally only selling 20 seats.

Last night proved to me again that you can build a virtual room that feels like a real one, but only if you keep the room small enough to actually see each woman in it. The Workshop is going to feel that way too. By design.

Sweet friends, so many of you keep hearing you should be on Substack and are not sure how to do it right for yourself. That is the honest sentence sitting underneath every question I got last night. If that is the sentence you have been carrying too, June 3 is the day we hand you the answer.

You were made to create. Not to perform.

Reserve your seat for The Substack Strategy Workshop here.

I will see you Wednesday, June 3!

Always your fan,
Heather

PS: If you have questions about Substack or our workshop, I’m happy to help. You can drop them in the comments or reach out to us at hello@choicemediacommunications.com

I have walked onto the Emory University campus with President Jimmy Carter to promote his book Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President. I have flown back and forth across the country, orchestrating every detail of Robin McGraw’s two-book tours for Inside My Heart and What’s Age Got to Do with It?: Living Your Healthiest and Happiest Life. (Both times I was pregnant with my two boys!) I have toured Marcus Buckingham through the top MBA programs in the country for The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success. I have stood in the back of a chapel at West Point watching Max Lucado address the cadets. I have taken Ernie Johnson through the coveted “car wash” on the ESPN campus in Bristol, Connecticut. And for the last twelve years, I have traveled with Jen Hatmaker on every single book she has launched in that timeframe.

23 years. More airports than I can count. Hundreds of green rooms. 150+ New York Times bestsellers in our company portfolio.

I know what it takes to launch a book.

So when I tell you that the most beautifully executed book tour I have watched in recent memory happened almost entirely from a bed, I want you to lean in.

Going Where It Is Warm

A few weeks ago, Lena Dunham released her new memoir, Famesick. And instead of chasing the traditional press circuit (the morning shows, the magazine covers, the late-night couches that used to define a launch like this), Lena and her social strategist, Dolly Meckler, did something far more interesting.

They built a Substack book tour.

Lena was everywhere on the platform in the days leading up to her pub date. A ‘90s fashion nostalgia trip for Emilia Petrarca. A Q&A on body image and rehab for Health Gossip. A meditation on moviegoing for 11 am Saturday. Live AMA chats. Column takeovers. Notes posts that drove follower spikes she could text her strategist about in real time.

When the writer Casey Lewis at After School watched it unfold, she said:

“I can’t recall a single book launch that has utilized the Substack platform so handily.”

Lena’s own description of the strategy?

“Going where it’s warm.”

That is the line that has been ringing in my ears all week.

Because that, sweet friends, is exactly what we have been quietly doing at Choice on behalf of our clients for the better part of the last year.

How We Have Been Doing This At Choice (Quietly, On Purpose)

For months now, well before Lena’s launch put a spotlight on this strategy, we have been weaving Substack into our clients’ book launches as a deliberate, holistic part of the rollout. Not as the splashy headline. As the steady, quiet engine.

Here is exactly how we approach it.

For every client, we begin by researching the top-performing Substacks in their niche. And not just by subscriber count. We are looking at engagement, the real signal: how many likes, how many comments, how active is the conversation in the threads. A 50,000-subscriber newsletter with a dozen likes per post is not nearly as valuable as a 10,000-subscriber newsletter with hundreds of replies and a robust comment section.

Then we study how those publications actually create. Do they host a podcast through Substack? Do they go live with Substack Live conversations? Are they open to a written Q&A, or would a co-authored piece be the right fit? Every newsletter has its own personality, its own rhythm, its own way of inviting collaboration. So we shape the pitch around what they actually publish, not around what we wish they would.

And then we pitch. Email. DM. Personal note. Just as we would pitch “Today” or People or The New York Times. Same craft. Same care. Same strategic intentionality. Different gatekeeper.

A few examples of where we have placed our authors on Substack to bolster their book launches recently:

• Jen Hatmaker on Gretchen Rubin’s Secrets of Adulthood

• Michelle “Mace” Curran “What Being a Fighter Pilot Taught Me” on The Female Lead

• Jenn Donahue “The Enemy in the War Zone Was Nothing” on Kathy Wu Brady’s newsletter

This is not theory. This is the playbook. And it has been quietly doing some of the most effective work we do for our authors, long before the rest of the industry started paying attention.

Substack Is the New Podcast

In February, I wrote to you about how the media landscape is not what it was. How outrage is outperforming optimism. How the gatekeepers have changed. How smart PR today is no longer about chasing headlines, it is about understanding where attention is going and meeting it there with intention. This is what I meant.

Substack is the new podcast.

By that I mean Substack is the new platform every serious founder, author, and thought leader needs to be paying attention to right now. The way podcasting was the answer five years ago, when we collectively realized people wanted long-form, intimate, in-their-ears storytelling instead of cable news soundbites, Substack is that answer for this season.

Only this time, the medium is the written word. The pace is slower. The relationship is deeper. And the audience is loyal in a way I have not seen on any other platform in more than twenty years of doing this work.

The Math Nobody Is Talking About Loudly Enough

Here is what Lena and Dolly understood, and what I want you to understand too. If you want to build a brand on deep, meaningful, long-form content, Substack is your home. If you are more relationally driven than transactional, Substack is your home. If you want to engage with a smart, well-read, loyal audience that is exhausted by the performative nature of social media (the kind where a fraction of your followers ever actually sees what you poured hours into creating), Substack is your home.

Because here is the math:

100% of your Substack subscribers receive 100% of the content you publish.

Read that again.

No algorithm. No shadow ban. No “the platform decided you do not get to be seen this week.” Every single person who has raised their hand and said yes, I want to hear from you actually hears from you. In their inbox. Where they read with their morning coffee.

Compare that to what is happening on Instagram, where you are lucky if 5% of your followers ever see a given post. Compare that to the chaos and noise of X. Compare that to the diminishing returns of pitching the same shrinking pool of producers and editors at media outlets that are quietly laying off staff every single month.

Then look at what Dolly told Substack directly about the data: “every single Substack follower is the equivalent of many more Instagram or X followers because Substackers are way more likely to follow through and buy a book.”

That is not a fun anecdote. That is a strategy.

Lena herself put it beautifully: “There’s an appreciation of the written word that suffuses this whole place. Most of your readers are also going to be writers themselves, who know just what writing a book takes.”

This is a community of readers. Buyers. Sharers. People who finish the article. People who hit reply. People who pre-order.

Why I Am Not Theorizing About This

I am not pointing you toward something I am observing from the outside.

Not in my niche. Not in my corner of the internet. The Business category. Period.

I am telling you that not to brag, but because I want you to know that as a CEO, brand strategist, and communications professional with nearly thirty years in this work, I am pointing you toward something I am building in real time, alongside the women I serve. I am living the data I am writing about.

I have spent 23 years figuring out how to launch authors and ideas into the world. I have sat in boardrooms with publishers, in green rooms with morning show producers, in airports with very famous people clutching very fresh galleys.

And I am telling you, with every ounce of strategic clarity I have, that this platform is the most exciting development I have seen in long-form publishing and brand building since podcasting found its footing.

If you are an author with a book on the horizon, you need a Substack strategy. If you are a founder building a brand around your name, voice, and point of view, you need a Substack strategy. If you are a thought leader who has been pouring your best thinking into Instagram captions and watching it disappear into a void, you really, truly need a Substack strategy.

What This Season Is Asking of Us

Lena said her father always told her,

“Go where it’s warm.”

In a media landscape that has grown louder, colder, and more transactional by the day, that is the most strategic piece of advice I have heard all year. Substack is warm.

Your readers are there. The writers you admire are there. The conversations that actually change minds, sell books, and build durable brands are quietly happening there, one letter at a time, while everyone else is shouting on platforms that do not even deliver their work to the people who asked for it.

We are not chasing headlines. We are building legacy. And legacy, sweet friends, is built one trusted letter at a time.

Always your fan,
Heather

P.S. Your Personal Invite to Join Me Next Week

The Table by Choice has always been an intimate, invite-only gathering in Nashville. A room full of high-capacity women having the honest conversations that do not happen anywhere else.

For the first time, we are going virtual.

The Table: Substack 101

📆 Wednesday, May 6, 2026 | 6 to 8pm CT
💻 Virtual, join from wherever you are
🎟️ $49 per seat

We will cover what Substack actually is, how it is different from every other platform you have tried, whether it makes sense for your business right now, and what a realistic launch path looks like. No jargon. No overwhelm. Just an honest conversation with women who have done this and can show you exactly what is possible.

Come live, and you will get networking time with other business owners, plus all your Substack questions answered in real time. Cannot make it live? You will receive the recording.

Space is limited. Reserve your seat here.

Have a book coming out later this year or next year?
We’d love to talk about how we can support you with a Substack strategy. You can book a complimentary strategy call with our team here.

I had convinced myself there were too many reasons not to. I already had Instagram. I already had an email list. I already had Choice, a nearly eight-figure business I had built from the ground up, and that should have been enough.

Who had the bandwidth to build another platform?

Who had the mental real estate to become another kind of creator?

That was the story I told myself.

Then I sat down with Suzie (our Chief Revenue Officer) and after her urging me for quite literally two solid years, I started asking a different question. Not “do I have time for this?” but,

What happens if I keep waiting?

Here is what had been sitting with me quietly for longer than I’d admitted.

I was tired of performing for platforms that didn’t perform for me.

I’d watch my Instagram numbers shift with the algorithm the way you watch a storm roll in. No control. No warning. Just the results. I’d pour real thought and real love into writing a caption or recording a video, and it would reach thirty percent of the people who actually wanted to see it. I’d do the work: research, voice, strategy, story. And then hand it over to a platform that owned the distribution entirely.

That had always bothered me. But I’d made peace with it the way a lot of us make peace with things that quietly cost us more than we realize.

Until Substack.

What changed my mind was not one dramatic moment. It was a collection of small ones.

It was watching writers and creators I respected build something real on a platform that actually rewards depth. It was recognizing that what I was already doing, writing long-form, thinking out loud, curating what I love, teaching what I know, was exactly what Substack was built for. It was the slow realization that the audience I had spent fifteen years building deserved a home that was not subject to an algorithm’s mood.

And here is the part that mattered most to me as a CEO: when I stop posting on Instagram, I stop existing there. My audience is rented. My reach is conditional. My content lives on a platform that could change the rules tomorrow. And has, more than once. Does anyone remember those times when Instagram went down for the day and you had no way to talk to you people? Um…yes.

Substack changes that equation entirely. On Substack, your list is yours. Your words live there. The readers who find you came looking for you. They opted in because they actually want to hear what you think. That changes the energy of everything you write.

I started writing differently. Deeper. Slower. More like myself. So I pulled the trigger.

The Red Lip Life launched on Substack (on my 50th birthday no less), and I want to tell you what happened because I think it matters.

We debuted at #12 in the Business category.

Not number twelve-hundred. Number twelve.

In the first week.

And as I’m writing this letter to you, we are approaching nine thousand subscribers. That does not happen by accident. It happens because of strategy.

Here is what we did, and I want to be clear about this because I see a lot of people launch things and simply hope for the best. We treated this launch the way we treat every media campaign we run for a client. We built the brand before we published a single word. The name. The three sections. The content pillars. The aesthetic and the tone. The welcome email that every new subscriber receives. We mapped the full content architecture first so that every post had a home, a purpose, and a promise it was keeping.

We were not winging it.

We understood that the first impression of a publication sets the entire trajectory. So we built something we were proud of before we ever asked anyone to show up for it. And then we worked the strategy consistently.

Substack rewards that. The platform rewards consistency, genuine connection, and depth in a way that social media rarely does anymore. When your readers are there because they want to be there, every post lands differently.

The numbers surprised even us. But the strategy behind them did not.

Now I want to tell you why this matters for Choice, and why I’m sharing all of it with you here. The Red Lip Life is not a hobby. It is not a vanity project. It is a business asset.

It deepens my relationship with clients who have followed me for years. It creates a direct, unfiltered line to women who are considering working with us. It establishes my own voice and authority in a way that has always been harder to do through social media alone. And it gives us a proof of concept that I believe in completely.

Because here is what I know: the women in our world—authors, business owners, coaches, platform builders—are exhausted by social media in the same way I was. They have something real to say, a depth of knowledge worth publishing, an audience that wants to hear from them. And many of them have been quietly asking us:

“Can you help me do what you did?”

Y’all, the answer is yes.

We have the strategy. We have the proof. We have the team that built it from scratch and watched it debut at number twelve in a competitive, crowded category.

Because of the interest we’ve been hearing from clients about Substack, what it is, how it works, whether it’s right for them, we are making our next The Table by Choice event all about Substack.

The Table is usually an intimate, invite-only experience that we host locally in Nashville for female business owners and thought leaders. However, for the first time ever, we’re hosting it virtually to make it more accessible for those of you who do not live locally.

It will still be a high touch, relational evening. Beginner friendly. All your Substack questions answered.

If that sounds like something you want to know more about, you can click here to reserve your spot now. Please don’t wait as space is limited.

Learn More About The Table

Here is what I want to leave you with, sweet friends: The best business decisions I have made in the last decade have not been the loud ones. They have been the quiet, considered ones. The ones where I sat with an idea long enough to understand it before I moved.

The ones where I showed up as me. Think of what Justin Bieber did this past weekend at Coachella. Raw, unvarnished. Just a laptop and a pink hoodie. Totally himself.

Substack is that for me. Ownership always beats reach. Depth always outlasts volume. And the platform you build with intention will always outperform the one you are just trying to keep up with.

That is The Red Lip Life in business form.

And I could not be more grateful we pulled the trigger when we did.

Always your fan,
Heather

PS: Don’t forget to reserve your seat at our Substack 101 Virtual Table Event. You can do that by clicking here now. I’ll see you there.

We were in the middle of explosive growth. More than doubling the business year over year. By every metric that matters, things were working.

Really working.

And right in the middle of that call, I heard myself say,

Should I just sell Choice and go get a job somewhere?

I was riding a rocket ship.

And I wanted off.

The truth is, I was burnt out and exhausted. And I was something I had never been before, something I would not have recognized in myself even a few years earlier:

FRAGILE.

That word has almost no place in the entrepreneurial vocabulary.

We don’t do fragile. Heather Adams doesn’t do fragile, for sure. We do solutions and grit and early mornings and hard calls and forward motion. Fragile is for people who haven’t decided yet.

But there I was.

And here is what I have learned in the years since that call: you can have an excellent executive coach, a therapist you trust, an attorney on speed dial, and a CFO you believe in, and still carry some of the most important questions of your career completely alone.

I had all of those things. I was seeking input and counsel from smart, trusted people in all the right places.

And there were still questions I could not say out loud.

Am I still building the right thing?

Is this still what I want?

What does the next chapter actually look like for me?

You cannot ask your team. They need you certain. Your steadiness is part of what holds the whole operation together, and the moment you waver out loud, the room shifts in ways that are very hard to recover from.

You cannot always ask your spouse. Matt loves me fiercely and completely. But he does not live inside the world of running a business, specifically in my industry. There are things he simply cannot understand, not for lack of love, but for lack of the lived experience of carrying that particular kind of weight.

You cannot ask your audience. Bringing your real questions to a public platform is not vulnerability. It is performing it.

So you carry the questions.

You sleep with them and wake up with them. You smile through them in meetings and on calls and at the dinner table. And somewhere in all that carrying, you start to wonder if something is wrong with you for not being able to sort it out on your own.

There isn’t.

But you do need the right room.

The Circle was not the first community I stepped into. It was the first one where I actually put the questions down.

This week, one of our women sent a voice message to the group. She had navigated a long, difficult stretch and finally made the decision to let two members of her team go. She shared how hard the season had been, asked the honest questions sitting on her heart, and let the women of The Circle hold it with her.

Another woman shared just this morning that she was having a tender, teary day. The dumbest little thing, she said, was sending her completely over the edge. She was not looking for a pep talk. She could get that from a dozen people in her life. What she needed was calm, steady, knowing words from women who understand what it actually feels like to carry this much at once.

They could say all of it because of what we have built inside that room.

We talk about business, absolutely. We workshop decisions, launches, hiring, strategy, and the questions that keep you up at two in the morning. But we also talk about everything that is influencing all of it. The season your body is in. The tension at home. The quiet questions about identity and direction that do not belong in a board meeting and do not quite fit anywhere else either.

Because you cannot separate the woman from the work. And I stopped trying to a long time ago.

Ahead of our next gathering, a Circle retreat that begins in Nashville on April 26, there are two spaces opening inside The Circle.

I am looking for two specific women.

Women who have built something real. Women who have ten oars in the water and are working to figure out which one to row and in what direction. Women who are smart, savvy, accomplished, driven, and hard working. Not just starting out. Not about to hang it all up. On the climb. Scaling. But wanting more than just a business.

Wanting a rich, full, intentional life and carrying the quiet weight of knowing they are more than what they have built, even when the world mostly sees the work.

If that is you, I would love to talk.

The application is short. Our team will follow up, and then we will find time to connect, just the two of us, to make sure it is the right fit for both sides.

Click Here to Learn More

You have carried your questions long enough on your own.

The right room can hold them with you.

I’m inviting you into that room right now.

Always your fan,
Heather

Early in my career, it was the corner office. The title. The six-figure salary.

I chased those things hard. I was ambitious and driven, and I worked relentlessly.

And when those milestones started to happen, I remember realizing something quietly surprising…

They were never the thing I actually needed.

What I needed was a room. A room where I could tell the truth.

A room where I could say a launch didn’t go the way I hoped. A room where I could admit I was overwhelmed and unsure what the right decision was. A room where I could celebrate something wonderful without feeling like I had to shrink it or soften it for the sake of other people’s comfort.

If you’ve ever built something meaningful, you know this feeling.

Deeply.

Success brings opportunity, but it can also bring isolation.

People assume you have it all together. They assume you know exactly what you’re doing. They assume you no longer need support. But the truth is that the higher you climb in leadership and business, the more important it becomes to have women around you who understand the weight you carry. Women with skin in the game.

Women who know what it means to write the payroll check. Women who understand the vulnerability of putting their work into the world. Women who can celebrate your wins without jealousy and hold you steady when something hard shows up at home.

For more than fifteen years as an entrepreneur, and now more than a decade leading Choice, I kept noticing something about the spaces available to women.

The world encourages us to build big communities.

Big audiences.
Big launches.
Big events with hundreds of people in the room.

But the rooms that actually change your life are rarely the loudest ones.

They are the smallest.
The most thoughtful.
The ones where you can show up fully as yourself.

That realization is what led me to build The Circle.

Not a traditional mastermind. Not a networking group. Not another business program. The Circle was created to be something much more personal than that. It is an intentionally curated community of women who are building meaningful businesses while also navigating full lives.

Inside this room, we absolutely talk about business. We get into the weeds. We workshop launches, talk through hiring decisions, and help each other see around corners.

One woman recently launched a book club that welcomed more than 8,000 women in its first weeks. Another crossed 5 million podcast downloads. One of our members is writing her first book, and the women of The Circle are helping her shape the proposal, refine her brand positioning, and expand the visibility she deserves.

When something is working, we celebrate it. And when something is hard, we hold space for that, too.

Because what I have learned over decades of leadership is this.

You cannot separate the woman from the work.

Your business is influenced by what is happening in your home. Your leadership is influenced by what is happening in your body. Your decisions are influenced by your mental and emotional capacity.

Inside The Circle, we care about all of it. About you.

We talk about midlife bodies and the changes we didn’t see coming. We talk about parenting littles, teenagers, and young adults. We talk about marriage, health, burnout, reinvention, and the quiet questions many women carry in this season of life.

It is not therapy.
It is not coaching.
It is something I wish I had much earlier in my own journey.

A personal advisory board of women who understand.

Women who can say, “I’ve been there.”
Women who can say, “You’re not crazy for feeling this way.”
Women who can say, “Let’s figure this out together.”

And perhaps most importantly, women who will tell you the truth with kindness and wisdom.

The Circle is intentionally small.

We keep it that way on purpose. This is not a group where we are trying to get as many women in the room as possible. It is curated carefully because chemistry matters. Trust matters. Alignment matters. Every woman who joins applies first, and then we take time to talk and make sure it is the right fit for both sides.

That level of care is what allows the room to feel safe.

And when a room is safe, transformation happens.

In April, the women of The Circle will gather together in Nashville for our spring retreat.

These retreats are some of my favorite moments of the year. I personally curate the entire experience. We step away from the noise of daily business and life and spend intentional time thinking about where each woman is going next.

We work on strategy, solve problems, and dream bigger than we often allow ourselves to dream on our own. But we also laugh. We share meals (really yummy ones!). We tell stories. And we remind each other that the life we are building is meant to be lived, not just managed. We also spend time in deep, rich community with each other.

Ahead of our April gathering, we have two spaces opening inside The Circle.

Rather than quietly filling them behind the scenes, I wanted to share this here with the Red Lip Life community. Because there may be a woman reading this who recognizes herself in these words. A woman who is successful by every outside measure, and yet quietly craving something deeper.

A room where she does not have to perform.
A room where she can be both strong and supported.
A room where the women around her understand what it means to carry ambition, responsibility, and heart all at the same time.

If you are reading this and something in you is nodding quietly yes, I would love to meet you.

→ Just click here to fill out this brief application and learn more. Then our team will schedule some time for us to connect.

The right room can change everything. And sometimes the bravest thing a woman can do is simply decide she does not have to build the next season alone.

Always your fan,
Heather

They didn’t happen on a stage.
They weren’t said in the boardroom.
They weren’t posted on Instagram.

They happened at home. Quietly. Honestly. In moments when I was unsure of myself.

And while these conversations were with my husband, Matt, I want to be very clear about something before we go any further. I do not believe a woman needs a partner or a man to lead well. You can build an extraordinary life on your own strength, vision, and conviction.

This is simply my story.

And in it, I’ve learned something powerful. Sometimes the people closest to us hold up the clearest mirror. They help us see what fear is distorting. They help us celebrate growth we’re too busy to notice. They help us remember who we are.

“Don’t Take Your Next Step Out of Fear.”

I was laid off.

Dixon was three. Thackston was one. We had a mortgage. Real bills. Real responsibility. And I felt the kind of fear that tightens your chest and keeps you awake at night.

My instinct was simple: go get another job. Fast. Any job. Something stable. Something predictable. Something that would make the fear quiet down.

Matt looked at me and said, calmly and clearly:

“Don’t take your next step out of fear. Fear we can’t pay our mortgage. Fear we can’t feed our children. Go dream. Build your career around the quality of life you want — instead of building your life around whatever is leftover in the margins.”

I didn’t know it then, but that was the moment the seed for Choice was planted.

Up until that point, I had built my career the way many high-achieving women do. Take the opportunity in front of you, perform well, prove yourself, climb, repeat. There’s nothing wrong with that path — but it wasn’t intentional. It was reactive.

That conversation forced me to ask a new question:

What if I built my professional life around my values?

What if I designed my days to support the kind of mother, wife, and woman I wanted to be?

What if I stopped accepting what was handed to me — and started advocating for what I was worth?

That was the first time I truly championed myself professionally. The first time I said, “No, I don’t just want a job. I want a beautiful life.”

That shift — from fear-based decision making to values-based leadership — changed everything.

“We’re Betting on You.”

Fast forward.

Choice was growing. And growth is glamorous from the outside, but on the inside, it can feel terrifying.

Scaling a business requires investment. Investment requires risk. And at one particular point, that risk wasn’t abstract. It was personal. Financial strain was real. The numbers were bigger. The pressure was heavier. The stakes felt higher.

I went to Matt and laid it all out.

His response?

“We’re going to bet on Choice. We’re going to bet on you. This business has provided for our family in beautiful ways. We have this life, in large part, because of what you’ve built. I’m willing to take this risk. I’m betting on you.”

Let me tell you something: there is nothing more clarifying than someone looking at you and saying, “I believe in you enough to risk something.”

We did take personal financial risk as a family in order to scale and invest long-term in Choice.

It wasn’t reckless. It was intentional. Strategic. Calculated. But it was still a risk.

And that moment strengthened my leadership in a new way. It required me to lead not just creatively, but financially. Not just visionarily, but responsibly. Not just as a founder, but as a steward.

Betting on myself required me to show up differently.

More disciplined.
More decisive.
More grounded in what I knew to be true.

And here’s what I want you to hear as your trusted girlfriend and also as a CEO:

Sometimes growth requires courage that feels uncomfortable. Sometimes leadership means carrying weight quietly. But when the foundation is solid — when your values are clear — betting on yourself isn’t arrogance. It’s alignment.

The $50,000 Lesson

Now let’s talk about the one that stung.

I made a $50,000 marketing decision.

And it did not pan out.

If you’ve ever made a big business decision that didn’t deliver, you know the feeling. The second-guessing. The internal narrative. The “How could I have missed that?”

It felt, in the moment, like lighting money on fire.

I was disappointed. Frustrated. Embarrassed.

And Matt said something I will never forget:

“Remember when you didn’t have $50,000 to spend? Look at the growth. You built a business strong enough that you can learn a $50,000 lesson and keep going. That’s worth celebrating.”

That reframed everything.

Yes, it was an expensive lesson. But it was also evidence of scale. Evidence of stability. Evidence of maturity.

Early in my career, a mistake of that size would have shut everything down. This time, it refined us.

And more importantly, it reminded me of something critical as a CEO. Mistakes are data. They are not identity.

That experience sharpened my instincts. It clarified our core strengths. It brought me back to the foundation of what I know works.

It didn’t break us. It built us.

What These Three Moments Have in Common

Each of these conversations happened at a crossroads:

Fear.
Risk.
Failure.

And each time, I was invited to zoom out.

To see the bigger picture.
To remember my growth.
To anchor back to my values.

That’s leadership.

Not perfection. Not constant wins. Not flawless strategy.

Leadership is the ability to look at your life and say:

I am growing.
I am learning.
I am building something meaningful.

And I want you to hear this clearly. You don’t need someone else to give you permission to lead. But we all need voices of clarity in our lives — mentors, friends, advisors, faith, community — that help us see straight when emotion clouds our vision.

For me, many of those moments have come through my marriage. And I honor that. I celebrate that. I am deeply grateful for that partnership.

But the real transformation didn’t come from Matt.

It came from the decision, each time, to listen and then to lead.

If you’re in a season of fear, risk, or even an expensive lesson, let me just say this:

You are allowed to build your life around your values.
You are allowed to bet on yourself.
You are allowed to learn big lessons and keep going.

And sometimes the very thing that feels like a setback is proof of just how far you’ve already come.

From my desk to yours — keep going, sweet friend.

You’re doing better than you think.

With Love,
Heather

PS: Need help zooming out on your business?

Our flagship offering at Choice is our Collaborative. It’s a brand strategy day where we help you get above the weeds of your business, find clarity, and create a strategy for what’s next — touching on everything from brand messaging, to revenue opportunities, to product launch marketing strategies. The brand breakthroughs are transformative. The conversations are powerful. The insights are highly valuable. And most importantly — you’ll feel so supported and so championed by our brilliant, all-female team of experts as you step into what’s next.

Curious? We’d love to connect.

To determine if this would be a good fit for you, book a complimentary strategy call with our team here.

I have never seen the media landscape this hard. Or this noisy. Or this fragmented.

And if you are a female founder who is the face of your brand, you need to understand what’s happening. Not so you panic. But so you position yourself wisely.

Because PR still matters. Deeply.

But the way it works has changed dramatically.

And pretending it hasn’t will cost you time, money, and momentum.

We Are Living in a Reward System Built on Negativity

Pause for a moment and think about what you’ve consumed this week.

Hard news.
Explosive hearings.
Traumatic storylines.
Polarizing commentary.
Outrage.
Fear.

Traditional media outlets are being rewarded for emotionally charged and divisive content because consumers are engaging with it. Engagement drives advertising revenue. Revenue drives programming decisions.

So the cycle continues.

Meanwhile, your nervous system is absorbing all of it.

You scroll from a recipe to the Olympics to a funny meme to something deeply disturbing in under thirty seconds. We were not designed to metabolize that kind of emotional whiplash.

And it is exhausting.

Now zoom out.

Daytime shows that once shaped culture are quietly ending. Magazine publications are shuttering. Layoffs across media companies are steady and sobering. Television numbers continue to decline.

At the same time, long-form YouTube content is thriving. Podcasts are expanding. Direct-to-consumer platforms are dominating. And newsletters like Substack are growing at a record pace.

Why?

Because consumers are craving depth again. They are craving thoughtfulness. They are craving something that feels almost analog in a digital world. Something they can sit with. Something that feels like a letter instead of a headline.

The gatekeepers have changed.

And that matters for you.

What This Means for Female Founders

If you are building and scaling a business where you are the face and voice, this shift directly affects your visibility strategy.

For years, the goal was the big splash. The national segment. The glossy magazine feature. The impressive logo to add to your website.

And those placements can still matter.

But in many cases today, they are more vanity than velocity.

Right now, positive messaging is not winning in traditional media the way it once did.

We have several clients whose core message is joy. Real joy. The kind that feels like oxygen in a suffocating environment. And while audiences desperately want relief from the barrage of negativity, traditional outlets are giving minimal space to that kind of content.

Not because joy is not valuable.

But because outrage is outperforming optimism.

So we are adapting.

We are identifying alternative channels.
We are leaning heavily into owned platforms.
We are building community directly with consumers.
We are thinking long-term instead of chasing loud.

Because smart PR is not about chasing coverage.

It is about understanding where attention is going and meeting it with intention.

PR Is Still Critical. It Is Just More Nuanced.

Let me be clear about something.

Public relations is not optional if you want to scale.

Visibility builds trust.
Trust builds authority.
Authority builds demand.

But the days of “spray and pray” pitching are over.

Today, you must:

• Know exactly who your audience is
• Understand where they are gathering
• Build a meaningful owned platform
• Partner with a PR strategist who studies the landscape daily, not someone using a 2015 playbook in a 2026 world

Your podcast appearances may drive more qualified leads than a national TV segment.

Your Substack may convert more effectively than a magazine feature because it builds relationship, not just reach.

Your community may become your most powerful amplifier.

The founders who will win in this season are not the loudest.

They are the most intentional.

Why I Am Telling You This

Because I care too much about the women I serve to let you operate on outdated information.

And because I refuse to practice PR reactively.

If you are going to trust someone with your visibility, your message, and the narrative around your name, that person should be ahead of the shifts. Not surprised by them.

This is not a fearful time.

It is a discerning time.

And discernment favors the informed.

If you are building something meaningful, something that matters, something that deserves to be seen, your strategy must reflect today’s reality, not yesterday’s assumptions.

The noise is louder than ever.

But clarity?
Clarity is power.

And I intend to keep you informed.

And part of The Red Lip Life is knowing when to turn down the noise and lean into depth, community, and strategy that actually serves the life and business you are building.

We are not chasing headlines.

We are building legacy.

With love,
Heather

P.S. If You’re Wondering What to Do With All of This…

I know not everyone reading this is looking to hire a PR team right now. But some of you are. And if that’s you, I want to make this practical. If you are a female founder who is the face of your brand and you’re thinking, I know visibility matters… I just don’t know how to navigate it right now, here’s what I would gently encourage you to look for.

1. Start with strategy. Always.

If a PR firm is willing to jump straight into pitching without first deeply understanding your brand, that’s a red flag. At Choice, we do not begin with pitching. We begin with clarity.

Every client walks through a Brand Strategy Collaborative before we ever talk about booking media. We dig into your mission, your values, your revenue goals (and what’s actually generating it for you), your audience gaps, your positioning, the platforms that actually make sense for you, and yes, your story. Your why. The heart behind the work.

Because visibility without clarity creates noise. Visibility with clarity builds legacy. You deserve a firm that operates with discernment, care, and intentionality from day one.

2. Look for real expertise.

Expertise is where experience and relationships meet. Our industry runs on trust and access. An inexperienced firm that does not have long-standing media relationships may struggle to open the right doors, no matter how polished their pitch deck is. You want someone seasoned. Someone who can show you what they have done. Someone who understands how to navigate a volatile media climate without panicking.

Experience does not eliminate market shifts. But it absolutely helps you move through them wisely.

3. Make sure they understand more than traditional PR.

This is where nuance matters most right now. The results you are looking for may not come from the outlets you think they will.

If your PR team does not deeply understand digital marketing, Substack strategy, the podcast landscape, long-form YouTube, email list optimization, website conversion, and how social platforms interplay with earned media, you are likely leaving opportunity on the table.

Modern visibility is an ecosystem. Not a single placement. And your strategy should reflect that. There are many incredible PR firms out there. Publicity is still powerful. It is still relevant. It is still one of the fastest ways to build authority.

Just be discerning. Focus on legacy over headlines.

At Choice, we have had the privilege of helping launch more than 150 New York Times bestselling books. But more importantly, we have built long-term relationships across the media landscape and paired that with deep digital expertise and brand strategy.

Relationships are our why.
Making you known is our mission.

If you are curious about what this could look like for your brand, we begin with a complimentary Brand Strategy Call. It is thoughtful, strategic, and pressure-free. A real conversation about where you are and where you want to go. If it feels aligned, we explore next steps together.

If it doesn’t, you will still walk away with clarity and recommendations. Either way, you will be better positioned than you were before and that is always the goal.

I blew $50,000 in my business last year. Yep, $50,000.

Basically lit it on fire. 🔥

Not in a dramatic, reckless way. Not because I wasn’t paying attention. And not because I don’t know how to run a profitable company. I do.

I blew it because I was willing to try something new.

And I think that distinction matters.

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This Wasn’t Careless. It Was Intentional.

Let me say this clearly: this wasn’t a late-night decision or a Hail Mary move. This was a thoughtful investment made by a seasoned CEO who has built a nearly eight-figure business over more than a decade.

I saw an opportunity. I believed in the strategy. I assessed the upside. And I decided it was worth the risk.

It just didn’t work.

That’s the part we don’t normalize enough—especially among female leaders. We celebrate wins. We share growth. We talk about success metrics and milestones.

But we rarely talk about the investments that don’t pay off the way we hoped they would.

And yet, those moments shape us just as much, if not more.

The Moment I Knew

There’s usually a moment when you realize something isn’t going to turn the corner.

For me, it wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet.

The data was clear. The energy wasn’t there. The return wasn’t materializing. And instead of forcing it—throwing more money or time at it just to avoid admitting it—I stopped.

That, too, is leadership.

Knowing when to pivot.
Knowing when to pull back.
Knowing when to say, this was a miss, and that’s okay.

What Lindsey Said

As Lindsey (on our leadership team) and I were evaluating our decision and next steps, I was bracing for disappointment—maybe concern, maybe frustration.

Instead, she said something that reframed everything.

She reminded me that this tactic we had taken may be what we saw others doing, but it wasn’t true to Choice. It wasn’t part of our DNA. It was transactional instead of relational. And that, sweet friends, is not how we’ve built this business. The reason I have a career, the reason TIME and The TODAY Show and The View return my calls is because of relationships. The reason we receive referrals and have a nearly eight-figure business is because we lead and do our best work with people we are in deep, meaningful relationships with.

And this marketing tactic wasn’t that.

Growth doesn’t happen without risk. You don’t build something meaningful by playing it safe forever.

And then Lindsey said, essentially: We tried it. We learned. And we’re taking that learning and moving forward.

Matt had great perspective here, too, when he asked, “Remember when you wouldn’t have had $50,000 to spend?”

Here’s the truth: I didn’t lose my confidence. I didn’t lose my footing. And I didn’t lose momentum. Honestly though, I did question if I’m a smart business woman. Would XXX (insert the name of any female leader you admire) have made this mistake? Isn’t that how we always do? That inner critic was trying to make me feel less than. Thankfully I’ve surrounded myself with a circle who immediately helped me shut that down.

What I lost was a line item. What I gained was clarity.

What the $50K Taught Me

That investment sharpened my discernment.

It reminded me that not every good idea is my idea to execute.
That timing matters just as much as strategy.
That expansion without alignment is expensive.

It also reaffirmed something I already knew but needed to relearn at a deeper level: my intuition is one of my greatest leadership tools—but it works best when paired with patience.

I don’t regret the decision. I regret only the moments where I briefly questioned myself afterward.

Because confidence isn’t about never missing—it’s about not unraveling when you do.

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Why I’m Sharing This

I’m sharing this because I know there are women reading this who are:

• considering a big investment

• navigating a decision that feels risky

• replaying a past “mistake” and wondering if it defines them

It doesn’t.

Strong leaders make informed bets. Some pay off. Some don’t. What matters is how you respond—and whether you’re willing to learn without losing your nerve.

Blowing $50,000 didn’t make me less capable.

It made me more precise.

More grounded.
More discerning.
More committed to leading from alignment, not urgency.

The Real Lesson

The real lesson isn’t about money.

It’s about courage.

About trusting yourself enough to try.
About respecting yourself enough to stop.
About staying in the game long enough to let experience compound.

If you’re building something meaningful—whether it’s a business, a career, or a life you love—there will be seasons where things don’t go as planned.

That doesn’t mean you failed.

It means you’re leading.

And I’ll take that lesson every time.

With love,
Heather

PS: And as always, if you need support launching or build something that matters, my team and I would love to explore working together. You can learn more about what we do and book a Free Brand Strategy Call with our team here.

I’m a list-maker. A vision-setter. A woman who knows how to decide what she wants and go after it with everything she has. I’ve never met a goal I wasn’t willing to work for. Hard. Relentlessly. With clarity and conviction.

And then there was that year.

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I remember it plain as day—the quiet panic of sitting down to plan for the year ahead and realizing… I had nothing. No goals. No excitement. No pull toward “next.” Just a deep, unsettling fog where certainty usually lived.

I wasn’t burned out in the way we casually toss that word around. I wasn’t unmotivated. I wasn’t lost. But I was tired in a way that made goal-setting feel hollow. Heavy. Almost irresponsible.

I didn’t need another to-do list.
I didn’t need a better planner.
And I definitely didn’t need to force clarity that wasn’t there.

What I needed—though I didn’t yet have language for it—was permission to pause and ask a different question.

So I reached out to my spiritual mentor, Jeanne, and told her the truth: I don’t know how to set goals right now. And I don’t want to pretend that I do.

Instead of pushing me forward, she invited me to look back.

We planned a quiet retreat at my house—just the two of us—and spent time doing a year-in-review of the year I had just lived.

What gave me life?
What drained me?
What felt nourishing and true?
What felt heavy or misaligned?
What did I want more of?
What did I never want to repeat?

There was no rush. No performance. No pressure to make it productive.

And in that space, she introduced me to a concept that has quietly transformed the way I curate my life:

Life-giving essentials.

Not goals.
Not resolutions.
Not habits to optimize or achieve.

Essentials.

The few things that are absolutely critical for me to be the best version of myself—the version that feels grounded, generous, creative, and alive. The things that fill my reservoir instead of draining it.

That year, instead of chasing outcomes, I chose to protect what gives me life.

I’ve done this exercise every year since. Three years now. And it has changed everything—TRANSFORMED my life. Seriously.

So as I step into 2026—a year that already feels like a threshold—I want to share my five life-giving essentials. Not as a prescription. Not as a formula. But as an invitation to consider what yours might be.

My Five Life-Giving Essentials for 2026

1. To honor and heal my body so I can feel strong, whole, and fully alive.

This isn’t about shrinking or hustling or “getting back” to anything.
It’s about listening. Nourishing. Strengthening. Resting.
It’s about partnership with my body instead of control over it.

2. To create dedicated, meaningful, and undistracted time with my core four (Matt, Dixon, Thackston and me).

My husband and my boys are not a backdrop to my life—they are my life. This season requires intention, presence, and margin so that time together feels connective, not rushed.

3. To make space for creativity, beauty, and simple pleasures as a regular rhythm—not a reward.

This one has surprised me with how much it gives back. Creativity isn’t something I earn after being productive. It’s something that keeps me human.

4. To cultivate everyday hospitality—gathering, serving, and loving people well in both small moments and special ones.

Hospitality isn’t just dinner parties. It’s warmth. Attention. The way we welcome people into our spaces and lives.

5. To step fully and unapologetically into this new season of leadership, vision, and business with confidence and joy.

No shrinking. No apologizing. No delaying what I’ve been prepared for.

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Why Creativity, Beauty, and Simple Pleasures?

For most of my life, creativity was something I postponed. Something I saved for after the work was done. A reward for productivity. But here’s what I’ve learned: when creativity is treated as optional, it slowly disappears. And when it disappears, so does joy.

This year, creativity doesn’t live on the sidelines of my life. It lives in the margins and the moments. It looks like fresh flowers on the kitchen counter—not because someone’s coming over, but because I’m here. You may remember my trips to the farmers’ market every Saturday last summer.

It looks like reading books purely for pleasure. No highlighter. No agenda. No takeaway other than enjoyment. It looks like lingering at the table after dinner. Lighting a candle on a random Tuesday. Making space for beauty simply because it feeds my spirit.

These are not indulgences. They are nourishment.

When I make room for beauty, I show up better everywhere else. More present. More patient. More generous. More myself. And that’s the thing about life-giving essentials—they don’t add weight to your life. They remove it.

They don’t become another box to check.
They become a lens through which you make decisions.

This Is Not Another Thing to Achieve

I want to be clear about something: life-giving essentials are not another burden.

They are not goals you fail if you don’t perfectly execute.
They are not rules to live up to.
They are not one more thing to manage.

They are what allow you to live from a full reservoir instead of running on fumes.

They help you decide what gets a yes—and what gets a no.
They give you language for alignment.
They offer permission to protect what matters most.

And maybe most importantly, they honor the truth that seasons change—and what gives you life in one season may look different in the next. As you think about the year ahead, maybe the question isn’t What do I want to accomplish? Maybe it’s What do I need in order to feel alive?

That question changed my life.

And it might just change yours, too.

With love,
Heather

PS: If you want to connect with Jeanne to have her walk you through her Life-Giving Essentials Practice or for spiritual mentorship, please let me know. It would be my honor to connect you. She is a treasure and gift in my life!