* Listen on the app of your choice

I’ve been trying to understand tarot for years, but every time I tried to learn it, nothing stuck, probably my brain is a combo of Tundra and Aquatic, which means I don’t dislike inherited frameworks.

It’s hard for me to see the framework until I break it down and rebuilt it for my weird brain. So, that’s what I did. I broke it down to first principles and rebuilt it in a language I already understood.

Once I stopped treating the Major Arcana like mystical archetypes floating above reality and started looking at them as stages in a cycle, the whole thing began to make sense.

The same thing happened with the suits. Once I pulled it apart, I started seeing business constraints in each one. Either you don’t have enough infrastructure, you don’t have enough strategic coherence, you don’t have enough connection to the people you’re trying to serve, or you’re simply out of energy.

When I mapped the cards onto those realities, tarot stopped feeling abstract and started feeling diagnostic, like a business tool anyone could use, which got me excited.

So, I built a system, which is what I do, that honors tarot and expands it as a business modality anyone can use.

This is the first time I’ve demoed the methodology live. You can download the whole system, and the digital deck, at: https://www.hapitalist.com/p/tarot

Takeaways

1. If you don’t understand a system, reverse-engineer it. Sometimes the problem isn’t that a framework is wrong. It’s that you’re trying to memorize outcomes instead of understanding mechanics. When you rebuild something in a language you already understand, you stop borrowing authority and start developing your own.

2. Most business problems can be reduced to it’s major constraint. If you can identify which one is actually blocked, you stop throwing effort at the wrong layer.

3. Friction is not failure. Don’t panic just because something feels heavy. You determine whether it’s early, misaligned, or complete. Those are very different states.

4. You cannot integrate what you refuse to release. This is the one most entrepreneurs resist. We will optimize, repackage, and rebuild endlessly to avoid admitting that something has expired. Sometimes the block isn’t effort. It’s attachment.

5. Interruption is underrated. The value of something like tarot isn’t mysticism. It’s disruption. It interrupts your favorite coping mechanism long enough for you to see what you’re avoiding.

* Listen on the app of your choice

This episode is part of the January Joy(ful) Growth Club with Russell and Claire program I’m running with Claire Venus ✨. Join and get access to special challenge and interviews all month.

Join by clicking here.

In this episode, we’re joined by education entrepreneur and writer Michael Simmons to explore a radically different way of thinking about work, learning, and growth.

We start with a deceptively simple question: What if making a living didn’t have to feel miserable? From there, the conversation opens into practical and philosophical territory. We talk about how many people you actually need to support a sustainable life, why fractional work and contracting are often safer than they look, and how entrepreneurship can offer more freedom than traditional employment if you approach it creatively.

Michael shares his own journey through ambition, burnout, and reinvention, including building a seven-figure education company in his twenties, and burning out because he didn’t enjoy the day-to-day work required to sustain it. That experience led to a major shift: choosing curiosity and energy as filters for what he works on, rather than goals alone. When he began writing only what he was genuinely excited about, everything changed—traction, resonance, and sustainability followed.

From there, we dig into deeper ideas about learning and expertise. We talk about why it’s no longer possible, or desirable, to know everything, and why the future belongs to people who understand distributed responsibility: recognizing both the keys you hold and the locks you don’t. Rather than idolizing lone experts or pretending everyone has all the answers, real progress happens when people bring their specific knowledge together.

The conversation moves fluidly between AI, intuition, education, and systems thinking, touching on why the things that feel like “cheating” are often your greatest strengths, how we add by subtraction as we mature, and why so many people are over-armored for battles they’re no longer fighting.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by how much there is to know, pressured to optimize yourself into exhaustion, or stuck believing work has to be hard to be valuable, this episode offers a generous reframe: you don’t need all the answers—you just need to know which ones are yours.

Here are 5 grounded, actionable takeaways from the conversation with Michael Simmons, written to land clearly at the end of the episode:

* Design your income around fewer people, not more. You don’t need thousands of customers to build a sustainable life. Explore models like fractional work, contracting, or high-trust relationships where a small number of people pay for deep value.

* Let curiosity be a filter, not a reward. If you consistently dread the daily actions required by your goals, something is misaligned. Prioritize work you’re genuinely curious about and energized by—momentum follows engagement.

* Trust the things that feel like “cheating.” The actions that feel easiest to you are often your highest leverage skills. If they work, double down instead of abandoning them for something harder.

* Stop trying to know everything and build relational intelligence instead. Expertise now lives in networks, not individuals. Focus on knowing what you know, knowing what you don’t, and knowing who to turn to when you need the missing pieces.

* Add by subtraction as you mature. Regularly audit the armor you’re still carrying from earlier seasons of your life or business. Keep what protects you now and consciously shed what no longer serves you.

* Listen on the app of your choice

This episode is part of the January Joy(ful) Growth Club with Russell and Claire program I’m running with Claire Venus ✨. Join and get access to special challenge and interviews all month.

Join by clicking here.

In this conversation, we’re joined by artist and writer Elin Petronella from Follow Your Gut to talk about intuition, energy, and what it really takes to build a joyful creative life over the long term.

Elin shares what it looks like to stay in business as an artist for more than a decade, across countries, life seasons, motherhood, burnout, and reinvention, without forcing herself into rigid systems that slowly drain the joy out of the work. At the center of the conversation is the idea that if you want to keep creating, you have to become ruthless about what works for you and what doesn’t.

We talk about why creators often cling to strategies that are hard but ineffective, while abandoning the things that feel easy and work. We unpack return on energy investment, how to balance “guaranteed” work with space for delusional experiments, and why knowing when something isn’t likely to work is just as important as optimism.

The conversation also explores shame around slowing down, pivoting, disappearing, or changing direction, and how external expectations can quietly push artists into building golden cages of their own design. Elin reflects on learning to trust her intuition again after burnout, recognizing when misalignment shows up as over-explaining, and why creating, privately or publicly, is often the fastest way back to clarity.

We dive into ecosystems, creative operating systems, and why some paths look chaotic from the outside but make perfect sense internally. We talk about building your own arbitrage instead of chasing trends, why originality isn’t something you find but something that emerges over time, and how everything you make eventually connects, even if it only makes sense in hindsight.

If you’re an artist or creator wrestling with consistency, visibility, pivots, or the fear that stepping off the hamster wheel will make everything collapse, this episode is a powerful reminder that alignment isn’t indulgent, it’s how you stay in the game.

Here are 5 clear, grounded, actionable takeaways that match the tone and substance of the conversation with Elin Petronella:

* Get ruthless about return on energy, not just money. Regularly name which activities drain you and which ones give energy back, even if they aren’t immediately profitable. Long-term sustainability depends on keeping energy-generating work in the mix.

* Balance guaranteed work with delusional experiments. Make sure part of your workload reliably pays the bills, then intentionally reserve space to try things that might not work. Creativity dies when either side crowds out the other.

* Treat over-explaining as a misalignment signal. If you find yourself constantly justifying a pivot or decision, pause. That urge often means you’re acting from conditioning instead of intuition.

* Stop forcing consistency across seasons. You’re allowed to disappear, slow down, or change mediums as your life changes. What looks chaotic from the outside often creates coherence over time.

* Keep creating, even when it’s private. Creation is how you stay connected to your intuition. If you stop making things altogether, clarity gets harder, not easier, to find.

* Listen on the app of your choice

This episode is part of the January Joy(ful) Growth Club with Russell and Claire program I’m running with Claire Venus ✨. Join and get access to special challenge and interviews all month.

Join by clicking here.

In this conversation, we’re joined by artist and illustrator Adam Ming from Ten Minute Artist to talk about what it actually means to build a creative life that fits how you work, not how you think you should work.

Together, we explore the quiet tension many artists feel between joy, sustainability, growth, and why forcing yourself into someone else’s model is often the fastest path to burnout.

Using Adam’s experience as a working illustrator and creator, we unpack the myth that artists are fundamentally “different” from everyone else, and how that belief can quietly keep people stuck. Making art is creative, but sharing it, selling it, and building a life around it is still entrepreneurship. Once you radically accept that, everything gets clearer.

We talk through ideas like:

* why ease is often mistaken for cheating,

* how identifying your personal “magic trick” can stabilize both income and energy,

* the difference between how you operate day-to-day and how you actually grow,

* and why repeating what works isn’t selling out, it’s refinement.

The conversation also dives into scale paths, ecosystems, positive feedback loops, and why copying someone else’s strategy almost never works unless you share their temperament, constraints, and incentives. Growth isn’t about doing everything—it’s about doing the right few things, consistently, in a way that nourishes you.

If you’re an artist, writer, or creator who feels like you’re working hard but still swimming upstream, this episode offers a grounded reframe: build the way you’re built and let joy do the heavy lifting.

Here are 5 clear, actionable takeaways tailored to this conversation and suitable to drop at the end of the episode:

* Identify your “magic trick” and keep using it. Pay attention to the thing that consistently works for you—the action that feels easier and produces results. Don’t abandon it just because it feels repetitive or unglamorous.

* Separate how you operate from how you grow. How you like to work day-to-day isn’t always the same as how your work spreads. Figure out both, then design your strategy around that intersection.

* Stop copying people with different temperaments. If a strategy drains you, it’s probably not yours—even if it works for someone you admire. Growth models only work when they match your energy, constraints, and incentives.

* Cut the work that isn’t working. If something hasn’t produced a positive feedback loop after sustained effort, it’s not “discipline”—it’s drag. Let it go and reinvest that time into higher-leverage actions.

* Trust ease when it’s backed by results. Ease isn’t cheating. When something feels natural and moves the needle, that’s your signal to double down, not look for something harder.

* Listen on the app of your choice

This episode is part of the January Joy(ful) Growth Club with Russell and Claire program I’m running with Claire Venus ✨. Join and get access to special challenge and interviews all month.

Join by clicking here.

In it, I sat down with Seth Werkheiser from SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB to talk about why social media is making people miserable, and how it’s not actually helping most of us build sustainable creative careers.

We talked a lot about:

* Why creators keep chasing scale before they’re ready for it

* Why people want the audience now without putting in the reps.

* Why “nobody cares” is actually one of the best places you can start.

* And why building something small, slow, and human often beats trying to impress strangers on the internet.

One of my favorite threads in this conversation was that musicians don’t build careers by going viral once. They build them by playing to five people on a Tuesday night, learning what works, getting better, and slowly expanding outward. That model works for authors, artists, and entrepreneurs too, but social media keeps convincing us to skip the middle.

We also dug into why email lists matter, why platforms always get worse over time, and why you should never confuse attention with access. At the end of the day, a thousand followers you can’t reach is worth far less than a hundred people who actually opted in.

At its core, this episode is about choosing work that compounds instead of work that drains you. It’s about trading performative growth for durable growth. And it’s about remembering that success is a trailing indicator, you only see it after the work has already been done.

If you’ve been feeling burned out, behind, or like you’re doing everything “right” but nothing is clicking, this conversation might help you recalibrate what actually matters—and where your energy is best spent.

Key takeaways

* “Nobody cares” is a gift. When the stakes are low, you get to practice, experiment, and make mistakes without pressure. That’s how you build skill and confidence before scale.

* Reps beat reach. Playing to five people, hosting a small Zoom call, or writing for a tiny list builds muscles that going viral never will.

* Success comes after the work, not before it. People don’t blow up out of nowhere—they just make the invisible work look sudden in hindsight.

* Attention isn’t the same as access. If you can’t reach your audience directly, you don’t actually have one.

* Energy exchange matters. If a platform consistently gives you less back than you put in, it will eventually drain your joy—no matter how “important” it seems.

* Build where you can leave without it damaging you. Platforms change. Owned channels travel with you.

If you want growth that actually feels good, start by asking a different question—not “How do I get bigger?” but “Where does my energy come back to me?”

That question changes everything.

* Listen/subscribe on Apple

* Listen/subscribe on Spotify

* Listen/subscribe on Pocketcasts

* Listen/subscribe on Youtube

In this episode, we kick off the new year by slowing down on purpose.

This episode is all about our new January Joy initiative we’ll be talking about all month as part of our Joyful Growth Club. Join at:

https://www.joyfulgrowthclub.substack.com/

Rather than jumping straight back into optimization, output, and “doing it right,” we talk about what it actually means to grow with joy—and why joy isn’t the opposite of ambition, discipline, or sustainability. It’s often the prerequisite for all three.

We explore the idea that a rich creative life isn’t just about happiness or meaning, but also psychological richness: the kind that comes from doing hard, stretching, sometimes uncomfortable things that still move us forward. That tension between ease and challenge, rest and momentum runs through the entire conversation.

From there, we dig into practical realities creators are quietly wrestling with:

* Why ads can feel exposing (and how to approach them without betraying your nervous system),

* How audience growth can become destabilizing if it isn’t tethered to boundaries,

* And why “return on energy investment” matters just as much as return on money.

We talk candidly about burnout, visibility, paid work, boundaries, and the invisible labor of holding space for other people—especially online. We unpack why sustainability isn’t about forcing the thing you love to carry everything, and how building systems that support you creates room for rest, depth, and long-term creative freedom.

This episode also introduces Joyful Growth Club, our shared January-long experiment in community, collaboration, and conscious growth—daily posts, live conversations, challenges, and a final masterclass designed to help creators find momentum without self-erasure.

If you’ve ever felt torn between wanting more and wanting peace, worried that slowing down meant giving up or whether joy can coexist with real growth…

This conversation is for you.

Here are 5 actionable takeaways you can take away from this one:

* Audit your return on energy, not just results. For the next week, notice which activities give you energy back (ideas, clarity, momentum) and which quietly drain you, even if they “work.” Start shifting time toward the former.

* Choose one boundary to enforce this month. Pick a single boundary and make it explicit. Boundaries aren’t about controlling others; they’re about protecting your capacity to keep showing up.

* Stop forcing the thing you love to carry everything. Identify one way your creative work could be buttressed, repurposed, systematized, or supported, so it doesn’t have to perform nonstop to justify its existence.

* Design growth that fits your nervous system. If a tactic makes you freeze, avoid, or spiral, don’t push harder. Break it into lower-stakes steps (e.g., awareness before conversion, presence before pressure) until it feels workable.

* Reconnect with the people who are already there.Instead of chasing numbers, spend time learning who your current audience, their names, patterns, and reasons they stay. Depth builds stability faster than scale.

* Listen/subscribe on Apple

* Listen/subscribe on Spotify

* Listen/subscribe on Pocketcasts

* Listen/subscribe on Youtube

This is the recording from December’s Path of Least Friction presentation. While I didn’t record the breakthrough sessions, I took a video of the presentation bit for you.

It breaks down your path of least friction, the place where your natural strengths, joy, and effort align to produce disproportionate results with less unnecessary struggle.

After working with authors, creators, entrepreneurs, tech companies, and even street performers, I’ve found that everyone essentially faces the same challenge: they keep hitting blocks and have no idea how to move through them or where to start.

PDF slide download

Download

Individual slides

Animated GIF: 10 second timer

* Listen/subscribe on Apple

* Listen/subscribe on Spotify

* Listen/subscribe on Pocketcasts

* Listen/subscribe on Youtube

This week, I’m bringing you sneak peek into Craft Con, a free two-day virtual summit I’m hosting with my friends at Plotdrive happening Thursday, Nov. 20 and Friday, Nov. 21.

Craft Con is all about helping authors break through their biggest creative blocks whether you’re stuck in the middle of your novel, struggling to start a story you’ve been dreaming about, or just feeling totally burnt out as the year winds down.

I interviewed 12 of my most amazing friends about the blocks they face, how they got through them, and most importantly, how they would train you to get through them as well.

We’ll be talking to amazing, superstar writers Ines Johnson, Johnny Truant, Melissa Storm, Joe Nassise, Kevin McLaughlin, Jennifer Hilt, Heather Hildenbrand, Mal Cooper, Lee Savino, Jennifer Probst, Alex Dobrenko, and Kern Carter.

You’ll hear from bestselling authors who’ve been in the trenches, facing every kind of writing block, from losing momentum and getting tangled in the messy middle to doubting their own talent, and the strategies they used to break through and become successful.

​All registrants will also receive the Blockbreaker Digital Bundle for free, packed with tools and ebooks from our speakers to crush your own writing blocks!

​The Blockbreaker Bundle includes ​The Zero to Sixty Author: One Road to Writing Success (ebook) by Kevin McLaughlin, ​The Write Naked Affirmation Deck by Jennifer Probst, ​Book Launch Checklist and Marketing Quickstart Guide by Lee Savino, Manifest Your HEA (ebook) by Heather Hildenbrand, and ​How to Write Irresistible Books That Readers Devour (ebook) by me.

In today’s episode, I’ve pulled together some highlight moments—golden nuggets from those interviews that’ll light a fire under you and remind you: you’re not alone in this.

✅ And the best part? You can join us live at Craft Con for free.

Register now and you’ll also get the Blockbreaker Digital Bundle—ebooks, checklists, and tools from our speakers designed to help you crush your own creative blocks.

Register here:

👉 https://luma.com/obukrp1h

Whether you’re stuck, stalled, or just creatively scattered, this event will help you reset, refocus, and finally get that book done.

🎙 Now, let’s jump into the highlight reel.

* Listen/subscribe on Apple

* Listen/subscribe on Spotify

* Listen/subscribe on Pocketcasts

* Listen/subscribe on Youtube

I ran a live breakthrough session at Author Nation, which meant I needed to introduce the whole Hapitalist system to people who’d never heard of it before. If you want to download that presentation, including a framework for running your own breakthrough session, you can do so here.

Otherwise, here is the vibe of what’s in the video if you just want to read it.

I’ve been writing about and studying creative businesses for 15+ years, and this is everything I’ve learned about building a successful creative career, condensed into one digestible system.

Most authors feel stuck not because writing is hard, but because they’re solving the wrong problem with the wrong strategies.

You’re pouring energy into building an audience when your real bottleneck is clarity about what you’re writing. Or you’re agonizing over your next book idea when what you actually need is a monetization strategy that doesn’t make you feel like a sellout.

Hapitalist is how we break that cycle.

* What we really mean when we say “why is this so hard?” isn’t “why can’t this be easy?” Easy is a measure of difficulty, and if we wanted something easy, we wouldn’t become authors. What we actually mean is “why is there so much friction?” Easy measures difficulty, but ease measures friction.

* Easeful work removes unnecessary struggle, aligns with your natural strengths, and makes your effort matter. It’s still work, but it’s the right work, moving you forward instead of spinning your wheels in place. Most “this is hard” moments are actually “why am I stuck?” moments. The difficulty isn’t the problem. The friction is. When you’re stuck, more effort just digs the rut deeper.

* Getting unstuck means finding the path of least friction that increases meaningful progress without eliminating effort entirely. Imagine yourself as a Jenga tower. Frictionless growth is when you find that block that slides out with barely a touch.

* There are five paths we’ve watched authors repeatedly use to achieve frictionless, easeful growth: Virality (writing to market/social media), Thought Leadership (blogs/podcasts.speaking), Big Spectacle Launches (Kickstarter/virtual summits), Evangelism (ARC teams, Influncer marketing, referrals), and Partnerships (shared worlds, anthologies, publishing deals).

* At least one of those paths will very likely give you frictionless growth. You can succeed with any of these, but spending 100% of your time in the most frictionless path will lead to the most growth in the least time. You might get growth from several strategies, but one will give you the most growth, which is where you should focus.

* This is almost certainly the one that’s also the most fun for you and the one you enjoy most, because you’ll be getting a positive feedback loop, possibly for the first time in your entire career. Once you have one flowing beautifully, the other paths amplify and augment your growth.

* It’s not that you can do anything, but that there’s something inside that you already love, which can lead to frictionless growth, and we just have to find it. Think of it a bit like Anton Ego’s famous line from Ratatouille “Not everything inside you can lead to frictionless growth; but frictionless growth could come from anywhere.”

* Each of those paths has five stages. In Stage 1, you’re too overwhelmed/paralyzed with fear to do anything. In Stage 2, you are doing things, but none of them work particularly well. In Stage 3, you’ve found one thing that works really well, but you’re weighed down with a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work. In Stage 4, you’re honed in on what works, but capped out on how much you can grow. In Stage 5, you’re expanding and thriving.

* If you’re in Stage 1, then your goal is to do anything. If you’re in Stage 2, then your goal is testing all the thing to find something that works. If you’re in Stage 3, then your goal is to shed things that don’t work. If you’re in Stage 4, then your goal is to start expanding into new paths. If you’re in Stage 5, then your goal is to build your team.

* It is nearly impossible to grow your audience and monetize your work at the same time. The growth side means investing to reach more people and lower friction. The monetization side means maximizing revenue now through paywalls, premium pricing, and exclusive access, which inherently raises friction and limits reach. Both are valid, but they directly contradict each other. To grow, you need to reduce friction. To monetize, you need to increase friction. Pinpoint where you are on this spectrum, choose your path, and do it completely. Are you in a growth era or a monetization era?

* Author business challenges usually show up in four buckets, which we call the HAPI Compass. (H)eart challenges come from the ideas, projects, and creative work that light you up and resonate deeply with who you are. (A)udience challenges come from the people ready to champion, amplify, and ultimately buy your work. (P)rioritization challenges form around choosing (or failing to choose) one high-leverage move at a time, letting wins compound, and buying yourself runway for the next right thing. (I)ncome challenges revolve around the revenue that funds your life and fuels your creative work.

* Your biggest challenge will almost certainly form around one of those buckets, but we’re horrible at recognizing which one is really blocking us. We constantly misdiagnose them in ourselves. Misdiagnosis leads to solutions that make things worse. You double down on marketing when you need to clarify your message. If you have a challenge growing your audience, you can’t fix it with solutions designed to make you more money. They’re at odds with each other.

* You can only solve challenges by using solutions designed to fix them. (A)udience solutions won’t fix (H)eart challenges, (I)ncome solutions won’t fix (P)rioritization challenges, etc. If you want to solve your biggest challenges, you need to use the right solutions, which means you need to know what your biggest challenge is right now, and almost nobody does, especially about themselves.

The Hapitalist approach helps you pinpoint the most easeful path forward, narrow your place on the growth-monetization spectrum, identify your true bottleneck, and match the right solution to the right problem.

Do this well, and you solve the vast majority of author business challenges without expending any additional effort. In fact, you’ll probably save effort by cutting back on things that don’t work for you.

Yet it’s impossible to see this in ourselves, and to keep ourselves on track, which is why you need a community, preferably one trained on the same methodology as you and run by somebody who knows what they are doing.

* Hence the bi-monthly breakthrough sessions to make sure you’re on track and to course correct.

* Hence the digital brain to give you feedback between sessions and show you what to do next in real time.

* Hence the collection of world-class resources to help you make the most of the path you choose to achieve the most frictionless growth possible.

Every author joins us with something holding them back, whether that’s a mindset block, a marketing problem, a confidence issue, or a missing skill.

That’s your lock. But everyone also shows up with keys from things they’ve already solved, overcome, or mastered.

You might not have the key for your own lock, but you absolutely have one that can open someone else’s. And in doing so, you often find the clarity to open your own. The real magic happens when we use our keys and start unlocking each other’s locks.

Why is community strategically important, instead of just feel good vibes? Because if you’re in stages 1-3, then you’re lock will probably be opened by somebody in the same success path but further along on their journey. If you’re in stages 4-5, then your lock will probably be opened by somebody in a different ecosystem doing something completely different than you.

You are one human, going through one lived experience, consuming one person’s media, with one person’s brain. You’re gonna miss things, discount important things you don’t understand, and have questions that make perfect sense to somebody else.

Sure, you could study things and maybe figure it out, or you could ask a group of people trained on the same methodologies as you, who know what to look for, and they can give you the right answer in a few minutes.

You’re not stuck because this business is “hard.” You’re stuck because you’re solving the wrong problem, or solving the right problem with the wrong strategy, or solving the right problem at the wrong time.

You’re stuck because you’re trying to do it alone.

The path forward isn’t about working harder. It’s about working in alignment with your strengths, your season, your actual bottleneck, and the ecosystem where your particular gifts thrive.

That’s what easeful means.

And yes, it still takes effort, but it’s effort that compounds into momentum instead of friction that grinds you down.

* Listen/subscribe on Apple

* Listen/subscribe on Spotify

* Listen/subscribe on Pocketcasts

* Listen/subscribe on Youtube

I’ve known (Wheeler Dealer) Maggie Beeler for years. I took her out to breakfast the first year we met and she was incredibly charming, if a little naive. Still, I wish I had an ounce of her ambition and direction at her age.

Since then, she’s shed the naivete and evolved into a true creative force

We’ve both been in the trenches of this author life long enough to know that success doesn’t come from a single launch or viral post.

It comes from relentless iteration, big ideas, and the willingness to make weird shit that lights us up. So when Maggie and I caught up at Author Nation this year, and she told me she was getting into consumables, I had to ask:

“WTF is a consumable, Maggie?”

So, I had her on the podcast to figure it out, and realized that I had been in consumables for years before even Maggie thought it was cool.

We absolutely talked about that, but the real lesson I took away was that creative brands don’t have to grow by force. They can grow by opening doors that already want to open.

That’s what Maggie did, and it’s what I kept circling back to on the call. Before we get into the takeaways, make sure to check out her new consumables brand on Kickstarter

1. Expansion happens when you stop telling yourself “it has to look like X.”

Most authors think brand expansion means:

* merch

* character art

* special editions

* pins

* whatever the last successful author did

Maggie didn’t do any of that. TropeTails didn’t come from a marketing plan. It came from something she genuinely does for fun: mixing drinks and hanging out with authors.

The joy came first. The business came second. That’s the part most creators skip.

2. Follow the path of least resistance, which is probably where your enthusiasm already is.

TropeTails didn’t require Maggie to become someone else.

She didn’t reinvent her brand. She didn’t contort her author identity. She didn’t “rebrand” to fit a niche.

She just expanded outward from something she already loved. That’s the direction creative expansion is supposed to go.

If you’re dragging your feet, that’s not expansion. That’s punishment.

This is the whole point of Hapitalist, and our new Frictionless Growth Challenge. We’ll be hosting the first one on December 1st. Sign up for free at frictionlessgrowth.com

3. The best expansions are the ones you don’t overthink.

Maggie didn’t sit down and say “Time to build a parallel CPG ecosystem and leverage adjacent markets.”

No. She made TropeTails because it sounded fun. She made the drink mixes because readers asked for an easier version than going to buy a bunch of ingredients.

Expansion isn’t about being clever. It’s about recognizing when something wants to grow.

4. You don’t need permission to expand. You need curiosity.

I kept saying during the interview how impressed I was that she just… did it.

No drama. No fear. No branding consultant. No committee vote. She followed a thread of curiosity, and that’s the permission slip we ALL forget we have:

If it delights you, you’re allowed to make it. If your audience responds, you’re allowed to expand it.

5. Expansion doesn’t betray your brand. It reveals more of it.

Maggie didn’t “leave” YA fantasy to make TropeTails. She didn’t abandon her books. She didn’t pivot away from fiction. She just added another dimension of herself into the brand.

Your brand is not your genre. Your brand is you.

Maggie simply widened the circle.

And it still feels like her.Actually, it feels more like her.

The whole time we were talking, I kept thinking: “This is what creative expansion is supposed to feel like.”

Not obligation. Not pressure. Not algorithm-chasing. Not “I guess I should make merch because everyone else is.”

Instead, it should be filled with joy, curiosity, play, and alignment.

Expansion that comes from joy is sustainable. Expansion that comes from pressure burns you out.

That’s the real lesson from the interview.

Not the recipes. Not the launches. Not the mixes. Not even TropeTails itself.

The lesson is that your brand grows wherever you feel most alive.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.