Do you know when to call a spade a spade?

Plus: The next pitching power hour will be here before you know it.

The Clothesline is a weekly newsletter from Vanessa Chiasson offering cozy business content for writers who love to plan, read, and travel.

Upcoming Events

Will I see you at the mid-year planning workshop on June 28th? This three hour workshop isn’t just about planning for Q3 (though we will do lots of that!) It’s also about reaffirming our goals and action steps for 2024 so we can all write more and worry less.

Here’s what one participant thought about a recent planning workshop.

Pitch Club Is Coming Up…

The pitching power hour takes place on the first Tuesday of the month at 9:00 AM EST. Our next session is Tuesday, June 4th and it will be here before you know it! 

This virtual co-working accountability session makes it easier to tackle tough pitches! We say hello and share what we’ll be working on. Then we have about an hour of quiet working time (cameras on or off - your choice) before a quick check in to share how things went. You don’t play around on social media. You don’t get distracted researching another project. You SEND. THOSE. PITCHES. 

At our May session, one participant got a personalized “no” from National Geographic WITHIN THE HOUR. Okay, it’s not a “yes” but that’s a pretty huge thing to get feedback from an outlet like that! 

The pitching power hour is just for paid subscribers. If you want to upgrade, you can sign up for an annual subscription and save 38% compared to the month-by-month option (but just till the end of June!)

Food For Thought

Today’s email is coming to you from my sunny home office. Any other week, this would be unremarkable but for this week only, it represents a change in plans. I was originally scheduled to be away at a retreat for self-employed folks. However, the timing was tricky for a lot of interested parties and the organizer made the difficult but correct decision to cancel for now. It’s a sensible choice as the value of the retreat comes from the participants and when it’s a smaller group, you don’t have quite the same dynamic for break out groups, etc…

Still, I found myself wondering what I would have done if I was in her shoes. I’m not sure I would have the moxie to adjust things. Would I have realized that the most successful outcome would be to postpone things so there would be more participants? Sometimes I’m not great at knowing when to call a spade a spade.

This year, another friend made the open-minded choice to reexamine a yearly conference that she always participated in. She didn’t dislike the annual gathering. In fact, she had a lot of good things to say about it. But was it the right thing for her this year? Was this the best spot to focus her time, energy, money, and resources? Ultimately, she detoured into another opportunity, an educational experience that was unconventional yet richly rewarding.

I loved seeing her joyful pictures but I found myself wondering what I would have done if I was in her shoes. Would the powerful pull of FOMO keep me on autopilot? Would I be strong enough to realize that my brand and business doesn’t hinge on one single event? Knowing when to pivot, reevaluate, and reexamine your business is the trickiest thing about being self-employed. What do you do when you hit the fork in the road that makes you choose between carrying on and calling it a day?