Creator's Block

Many of you have probably figured out by now that the goings on inside my head are generally utter chaos. This is part of what makes me the complete organizational/neat freak (read: control freak) that I am. Growing up (especially through my college years) I started to become acutely aware of how much I was being distracted by my own thoughts. It wasn’t Facebook, TV, or video games that was drawing me away from my responsibilities. In fact, it was fears, thoughts, and anxieties about my other responsibilities. Once I figured this out, one of the first things that helped me tremendously was taking notes and especially making lists. If I was trying to focus on something and another thought invaded my head, instead of giving it its day in court right then and there I would quickly jot it down. Knowing that it was written down, to be reviewed later my brain would let me get back to the task at hand. Over the years my different practices to control my thoughts have evolved and changed, each of them helping me i

I’ve heard it over and over again that 2019 is the year of self care, which I honestly think is great. More people need to make their own well being a priority. I’ll say it again for the people in the back: more people need to make their own well being a priority.   To some people (read: me) self care means face masks, bubble baths, and a glass of malbec. To others it means spending more quality time with your family, friends, or pets. But one thing seems universal: the need to spend less time grinding and more time enjoying.   How do we do this when we are told to idolize the hustle? Told to follow the grind wherever it leads us? Told that we are only successful if we put everything we have into our work?   Over the last few years we have fallen victim to what is now being called “hustle culture”. Hustle culture is the societal standard that you can only succeed by exerting yourself at max capacity professionally. Everyday. Hustle culture does not sleep. Hustle culture does not take lunch breaks. Hustle cult

Last week our VP of Sales, Brie Rangel wrote an awesome article called “The Toxic Myth of "Fearless" Leadership”. (Which, if you haven’t read it yet, you totally should. In it she talks about the pressure to appear “fearless” in the face of stress, change, and adversity, particularly in a role of leadership. Brie writes, “...leaders are often expected to present an air of fearlessness. We’re supposed to show no signs of weakness or worry. Basically, we’re supposed to be robots. But that's not real life. If we continue embrace fearless leadership as an ideal, we're setting ourselves up for failure. Fearless leadership doesn’t exist.” But this got me thinking. The pressure to be fearless isn’t just found in leadership. It’s literally everywhere. Many of us face the pressure to put on a brave face and tackle our problems head on daily. But Brie is totally right, we’re not robots it’s unrealistic. If I know anything about myself, it’s that in times of stress or struggle, if i’m not being mindful about how I rea

Here at IMPACT, we work in an agile system -- inspired pretty heavily on Spotify's model -- and have gone through some cross-team restructuring over the past year. Because of this, a lot of IMPACT employees have questioned exactly how their performance is being judged and measured. IMPACT Founder and CEO Bob Ruffolo provided context to help give a little more guidance: "My advice: Be the person on your team that your teammates say 'don’t take them off my team, we don’t want to lose them! They’re too valuable to the team!' That’s the ultimate judge of performance, and that’s ultimately your job description, to be a valuable member of the team." Though I really appreciated his response, it led to some additional questions on how do we define "valuable." Defining what "valuable" means is pretty subjective per person and per team.  In today's 100th episode of Creator's Block Marcella and I discuss exactly what makes an invaluable team member and provide tips to improve on those skillsets and traits so your teamma

Last week, I enjoyed a couple days in the Connecticut office to immerse myself in an all-day training about World-Class Communication -- led by the one and only Marcus Sheridan.  Every concept covered was so enlightening to me but one that particularly stood out was all about feedback. Marcus referenced one of my favorite books I read in 2018, Radical Candor, and challenged me by asking whether or not I ask for feedback from my team. I sat a little more upright and proudly responded "yes, I ask almost every week." When he followed up his question with "and how often do they give you challenging feedback," I realized it was not very often. On a surface level, you may think that's great! My team doesn't have any issues with the way I coach so I must be the most perfect manager ever. Right? Wrong. The reality is, I don't ask them effective enough questions to warrant them giving me direct feedback. Marcus went on to say that it was not only important for me to receive feedback so I can continue to grow, but that

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s no surprise at this point that I have been doing a boatload of work on myself over the last year and I intend to keep going with this. I’ve been building out a library of books and workbooks all designed to get to the best version of myself. I have never been huge on new year’s resolutions, but this year it feels different. I have a different skill set now and am better equipped to figure out how to forge a path and manifest my goals. So, for the first time since maybe I was a young adolescent, I sat my butt down on New Years Eve with a bunch of markers and a notepad and wrote. I actually wrote a list of resolutions. Yes, it’s kind of dorky and old fashioned, but I truly feel this is the best way to keep myself accountable. Once things are out of my head and into the universe in a tangible way then I’m forced to face them head on. Today, I thought it would be fun for Justine and I to chat about our 2019 resolutions and how we intend to achieve them. Justine’s 2019 Resolutions I

  The end of the year always tends to be a time for some self reflection; a time when we look at what we’ve accomplished or learned over the last year. So, Justine and I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of the 18 lessons we learned in 2018! Join us for our final episode of the year as we count down the hard (and not so hard) lessons we've learned through the last 525,600 minutes.  Justine’s Lessons Learned in 2018 Communicating effectively with colleagues and clients The need to say no Having a pet at home really DOES help with stress Managing people is hard but when they succeed, it’s the best Growing a business is tough Close down apps to help yourself focus Therapy isn’t scary My passion… is helping people! Connecting with people in person cannot be replaced Marcella’s Lessons Learned in 2018 How to give up control Meditation really does something You don’t need to have a perfect picture of your future Know when you can actually multi-task vs. not I actually

The holiday season is in full swing, full of cheerful music, delicious food, shopping adventures and of course... chaotic schedules. Over the past several years, I've deemed the few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas as the "Christmas Chaos." I love this season but also struggle to keep a level head as my days seem to get more and more busy leading up to the Christmas holiday.  As much as I'm looking forward to taking two weeks off and enjoying several days in Cancun, I can't help but be a bit overwhelmed in trying to wrap up all of our clients' quarter's plans and prep and roadmap out next quarter's strategies.  I know I can burn out when I push myself like this but I also feel incredibly guilty when I say no to people. Marcella and I used today's episode as a little bit of a therapy session to help coach me on how to say no without feeling so guilty and why it's so important I follow through in doing so. Note - To help combat the Christmas Chaos, Creator's Block will be moving to bi-weekly publication

The conversation of creativity vs. function is not a new one in the design world, but today as I was browsing medium I stumbled across an article on the subject that really ruffled my feathers (to put it lightly). Boris Müller, a Professor of Interaction Design at FH Potsdam, published a BOLD article that poses the question “Why Do All Websites Look the Same?” and even suggests that “The internet suffers from a lack of imagination”. Which, WOW… fatalist outlook much? Müller postures that the internet has become a desolate wasteland of boring design (okay maybe he didn’t say it quite so dramatically) based in part largely CMS and blogging platforms.  As a counter argument he highlights some examples of his students’ work that he thinks demonstrates truly “creative” design. I have a big issue with this. The designs he highlights completely disregard function and audience and seem to solely be driven by designing for the sake of design. Which, to me, is not web design. In our industry we MUST be aware of au

This morning I read an article from Jason Zimdars, a designer at basecamp, about why he actually works from home. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t about productivity at all, but rather about the practical reasons that we can sometimes take for granted. Jason talks about the ways it allows him to spend more time with his kids and how those moments can be looked at as happy distractions and it got me thinking about the real reasons I’ve been working from home as well.  Most of you know that I work full time remote, despite only being about 35 minutes from our office. Why work remote you say? Lots of reasons.  For me working from home means: I get a little bit more sleep in the morning… and I LOVE my sleep. 

With IMPACT growing and changing so quickly comes many new roles and opportunities for advancements, changes, and promotions. Which of course makes many of us here wonder are we ready for a new role? Is this the career path I want? If I don’t put myself up for consideration will it reflect poorly on me? I have personally struggled with this as a designer. I know that moving up in the ranks as a designer means you may not be as hands on as you would like. You may be spending less time physically designing and more time taking care of the administrative side. Is the trade-off worth it? Will this fulfill my creative passions? And the most important question... will I still be HAPPY in my job? When you’re up for consideration it can stir up a lot of feelings and internal monologues that you may not necessarily have the answers to. Join us this week, as Justine and I try to tackle that inner monologue and discuss how to make the best decision for a career move.

I'm sure we've all been there before -- you presented an amazing idea to your client, agreed on next steps and then while in the midst of the project, get news that something needs to change or an item wasn't approved by the right person, sending your project into a tailspin. How do you communicate they don't have the budget to redo the work? Will the account be at risk if the client doesn't take the news well? Tough conversations like these can be the most stressful part your job. After 8 years managing projects and working for various agencies, I can confidently say following this five-step process will guarantee effective communication to help get you through these harder conversations. Listen in and Marcella and I discuss how to have tough but effective conversations with clients and clearly outline our five-step process to follow during your call.

The designers have been having lots of brainstorm meetings lately where we basically all hop on a call and look at a ton of different websites. The purpose of this being to find things we like or think are cool and new to incorporate into our own designs. I know what you’re thinking, “You just STEAL from other website designs?!”. Not quite, we take these things and try to improve them in some way. This is a common practice among designers and creatives alike. We’re always on the hunt for inspiration for an original idea. A simple search for the term “originality” on medium shows that about half the articles seem to be focused on the death of of originality or how it no longer truly exists. Michael Riley writes - “The way you become original is through imitation to some degree. When starting out as a creator, your work is likely going to largely reflect the ideas of your influences. That’s how you find your voice. The more you make things, the more your voice will become a collection of those influences and st

I recently took Friday off for a personal mental health day to reset and recharge. The past few months have been some of the most rewarding and challenging I've experienced in my career so far as I adjusted to my new role as Account Supervisor. I entered a new world of management that I wasn't previously familiar with. Though I've accomplished a lot over these months, it certainly hasn't been easy and over the past few weeks I started to feel like I wasn't doing my job well enough. Self-doubt is something I've struggled with over the years so I knew when Marcella recommended me to read You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, it was exactly what I needed. Author Jen Sincero provides a witty approach to learning how to love yourself and attracting the people and energy you need in life in order to embrace your inner badass. The book starts off with some high-level, feel-good advice but eventually taps into actionable takeaways you can incorporate into your every d

As many of you may know, Marcella and I love to talk about our varying yet similar personalities -- how can we both be Aries and yet so different?! -- so it should come as no surprise that I wanted to dive in deeper with her to see where she felt she fell on the personality spectrum. Were we introverts, extroverts or ambiverts? What do the personality types even mean? And how do they relate to our work productivity? After doing research and taking way too many online personality tests, we both confirmed that we were indeed ambiverts -- along with 68% of the population. The more I researched, the more fascinated I became with how our personality types influence our work. For example: Ambiverts make really great sales people because of their ability to adapt and relate to both the boisterous extroverts and thoughtful introverts. Open office floor plans can be a detriment for introverts but perfect for extroverts. Extroverts excel in being able to jump back and forth between different meetings or tasks but can

So we’ve talked about how to balance your personal life and your professional life and make them work like yin and yang, but it wasn’t until earlier this week that I really started to think about one of the most important parts of making that work… my work family. Not to get into great detail here, but I have been feeling not quite right lately. I’ve been having trouble focusing and getting my head right, beyond the usual 3pm blues. From the get go I immediately went to a couple of my closest coworkers for support. These people not only helped me logistically but rearranging my schedule and work, but also emotionally. Just like family would. This really got me thinking about how lucky I am to have coworkers and managers that I trust enough to share these parts of my life. Lucky not only that they are understanding as my team, but that they genuinely care about me as a person. ...and I’m not alone! 83% of U.S. employees say their work family makes them feel happier and a survey  of 1,000 full time workers ages

We discussed some of our favorite (and not so favorite) productivity hacks in a previous episode, but one thing we didn't expound on is why being productive and time management is so important. Of course the obvious answer is to be able to accomplish your week's tasks, but it can actually run much deeper and effects more than just yourself. Are you managing your time effectively enough for your team's and client's success? What happens if your management falls short? To help us dive into the topic, we asked Karisa Egan -- an Account Executive with crazy good time management skills -- to join us this week. Here are her initial thoughts on the topic in her own words:  "Organization is a skill set that can really be a struggle for some people, for me it comes naturally, which can be a good thing, but also results in some obsessive tendencies. One way I’ve made this work for the job I do every day is make sure I organize my time efficiently and effectively. I use a variety of tactics to make sure I’m not letting

Recently, I’ve been dealing with some personal matters that have taken up more time in my professional life. It's weeks like these that make me appreciative of the fact that I work remote. Knowing I can flex my work schedule -- to a certain degree -- in order to best fit what's happening in my life is something I don't take for granted.  I'll be honest though, I was hesitant and nervous when IMPACT first approached me about working remotely full time. I loved working in an office, brainstorming with colleagues and having friends to grab lunch or happy hour with. What would it be like to be alone, in my home, every day? Could I be productive? Would I be lonely? Would I get bored or lose my creativity? A recent study shows there's been a 115% increase in people telecommuting in the US over the last 10 years. Was I ready to become part of that statistic?  In time, I weighed my odds and decided to take the risk and see if remote work was a fit for me -- And boy, am I glad I did. Overall, I love working remotely,

As some of you may already know, I'm a struggling perfectionist when it comes to work. I always want to do tasks perfectly, the first time, every time -- but, as we all know, that's not realistic. Failing, whether at work or in my personal life, used to be something that crippled me.  Over time, though, I learned to appreciate my failures -- every single one of them. Whether I messed up with a small task or failed on a larger scale, I gained more insight and direction from those mistakes than I ever will reading a book or attending a webinar. So, why are we so afraid to admit our failures? There was a recent post in IMPACT Elite where a member detailed a mistake she made at work and felt she let her team down because of it. She asked other members for "some encouragement and a quick pat on the back saying, 'its ok, it happens, it's not the end of the world, everything is ok.'" I was actually humbled by the number of responses people shared, explaining how we are all in the same boat. It was encouraging to he

I’ve actually been struggling through this week after getting back from vacation. I returned with a glowing tan and equally glowing optimism, but I quickly found myself in a productivity slump. I was easily distracted and it seemed like every day I had more and more external forces pulling me away from the work that I really, really needed to get done. Feeling fully over-extended and realizing I couldn’t keep going at the rate that I was going, I turned to the internet to fill me with it’s endless wisdom. As always I was not disappointed by the results. Now, it’s been a while since we’ve found a really juicy list to tear to shreds (and I know this is really the only reason you guys keep listening to us). So this week I’ve found a couple articles about the highly sought after “Productivity Hacks”, but here’s a plot twist… I don’t actually hate all of them. Join me and Justine, as we break down some of the best and worst productivity hacks the internet has to offer.