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Topic

Mental Health

A collection of 10 issues

Reflections on 24 years from freelancer through building one of the first Shopify studios in the world through burnout and back to soloist

I’ve been reflecting on how ultimately none of this matters—how good we are at our craft, who we can serve and help, the processes we develop, or the results—if we can’t master sales and marketing and storytelling.

#UnderdogChallenge—my 23-year journey from soloist to agency principal and back in under 500 words

After nearly 23 years, I’m back on the tools, working directly with amazing clients—designing and building beautiful, elegant, highly functional Shopify stores—learning and growing and achieving things I’d forgotten I was capable of.

“Kablooie!”

It feels like, almost overnight, the social web has fragmented into an infinite number of pieces. Is there hope for our preciouse, time, energy, and headspace?

Simple work/life balance hack: multiple email apps

Use different email apps for work and home to avoid checking work emails in your downtime.

Should I hire an internal Shopify developer for my ecommerce site instead of paying an agency on retainer?

While agencies might seem more expensive at face value, even if you work mostly with one person, you are typically getting the benefit of a team’s breadth and depth of knowledge, perspective, and expertise.

The journey isn’t just lonely at the top

In our effort to build lean teams, we tend to underinvest in team-building. We overload our teams with too much complexity and too many areas of responsibility without the frameworks or systems to support them or enable them to have sounding boards and forums for healthy discussion.

Are you wearing too many hats in your organization?

How many of you wear the hat of “ecommerce manager” on top of your official title—such as COO, CMO, CTO, Marketing Manager, Designer, Founder, CEO…? You are not alone.

“Before we begin, is there anything on your mind?”

It’s easy to forget that the people we are interacting with each day have their own stresses and anxieties and challenges that they bring to the table (or the Zoom call!).

How can we foster a culture of mutual empathy, integrity, and respect?

One thing is clear to me, though: rather than establishing rules for how employees should relate to one another or what they can discuss, surely the best approach is to encourage a culture of mutual empathy and integrity and respect.

What does work/life balance really mean?

A tough challenge of leadership is how does one determine where the lines blur between anxiety and simply caring a lot! When does thinking about work and work-related problems after work and on weekends morph from being inspired and committed, to being preoccupied and not being able to switch off?