Gabrielle Blair, mother of 6 blogging at Design Mom, co-founded Alt Summit 10 years ago and remains a champion for female entrepreneurship. Her motto could be described as dream big, then execute small. In fact, she admits in this episode that if she had known from the beginning where her dreams would have taken her she probably never would have attempted them.
She opens up about the business “failures” turned important lessons, how she moved her family (of 8!) to France for years despite not even having passports to begin with, and speaks aloud her big personal dreams just like you’ve been encouraged to do this month.
The size of your dreams doesn’t matter to anybody but you, and your ability to accomplish them isn’t up to anybody but you! See a pattern here? Tune in and be inspired to know how small steps take you big places.
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: What do you think of when I say Design Mom?
You might think of the website, the brand, a persona, even the conference leader, you’ll likely know all that just by me saying design mom, but behind all of that is a revolutionary leader for design and parenting and female entrepreneurs. It’s Gabrielle Blair. Gabrielle has been on my top five list of people I have been wanting to interview from the very beginning of podcast.
And for this important reason, she dreams big and executes. Small. Gabrielle is not afraid of getting messy, making mistakes, and starting things without really knowing where it’s going to take her. But I thought she was especially helpful by teaching us that her understanding that in order to accomplish big dreams, you need to do so with small steps.
Today Gabrielle is going to talk us through a few of the big dreams she has accomplished by taking small and messy steps. They include her alt summit, a celebrated conference for women on social media. But Gabrielle shares also about how doing small steps lead to big things within her own family. Our hope here is not that you’ll think your dreams only count if you have them on this massive scale like Gabrielle has, although she tells us in the interview that that was actually never really her intent.
So that was fun to hear about, but that you’ll see and own that getting the dreams you want entails taking one step Small step at a time and you can.
Gabrielle Blair: I’m Gabrielle Blair. I’m one of the founders of alt summit, and I also started design mom 13 years ago. That’s design mom. com. Um, I’m also a mother of six and I live in Oakland, California.
Monica Packer: Gabrielle, I discovered you probably near the beginning of your blog when you had this photo shoot in Central Park with all your six kids, and you were in primary colors, and it was just so, um, mesmerizing and inspiring. And I have followed you all along since then. I finally got to go to ALT this year, and it has been a dream of mine.
For the 10 years you’ve done it and it was phenomenal. So I just want to give you a little applause there because you’ve accomplished so many amazing things. And that’s why you’re here today, because we’re going to be talking about dreams and how to make huge dreams happen and how it’s not easy. It’s not straightforward, not cut and dry.
I’m sure you’ve had a lot of people see this. of sorts and just think, wow, it’s so easy for her. She just gets these done and I wish I could be Gabrielle and just get big dreams done really easily. So let’s start first by having you share what are some of the big things you would have on your list of wow, I did that and then we’re going to dive into how it was not so easy and what it actually looks like to make these things happen.
Gabrielle Blair: Oh, I love that. Love the topic. Love the whole thing. Thank you for having me. Um, okay. So I, I feel like I can talk about a few different tracks. I can talk about alt summit and I can talk about design mom. And I can also talk about, um, just Just making goals for my family and where we live and growing my family and all that kind of thing.
So there’s kind of three different tracks where I feel like I’ve had some big dreams. And I think I’ll start with alt summit if that’s okay, because I know you just brought it up. Yes. Um, so ultimate started 10 years ago. I started it with my sister, Sarah Urquhart, and the whole thing was to create a place where I could bring together The design bloggers who I read and admired and remember back at the time.
This is again 10 years ago. This is pre Instagram and pre pinterest and pre really any of the visual stuff twitter barely existed and certainly didn’t have Visuals yet and facebook at the time was really just on a few campuses. So this is a very different world and blogging Was the thing and I loved reading blogs And I read a ton of design blogs and I had been to a couple of blogging conferences and, um, they didn’t, they didn’t really have tracks for design bloggers. It was like a, you know, kind of a different world. There was a lot of mommy blogging going on and that was also my world.
I was design mom. So I was both design and kind of design bloggers, but also mom and parenting bloggers. I, I overlapped both anyway. I was, uh, uh, on a family trip with, um, my siblings and our spouses. And it just so happens that one of my siblings is Jordan Fernie, who started Oh Happy Day blog and the color factory. A sister in law is, um, Liz Stanley of Say Yes. And we’re all these design bloggers there and my family’s all into it.
And it’s a very entrepreneurial family. And we’re all just kind of talking about new projects or things we’d like to do. And I was saying, what if we did like a design conference, a design bloggers conference, something like that.
We wanted to get together all these bloggers that we admired and we were kind of part of their world. Um. And so everyone liked that idea, but no one really had the energy for it, except me and my sister, Sarah. Now, Sarah wasn’t a design blogger at all, but she, um, has always done like a lot of big events, um, often for politicians.
She’s worked in political fields, and so had a lot of experience with event planning. So that was a great match, she could do the event planning, and I could do the, um, You know this who the speaker should be and what the content should be and what the topic should be And so we paired up and we put on our first conference and it was so good.
I mean it was Exactly everything I had dreamed of it was all these. Amazing people who I respected, you know maxwell from apartment therapy and Grace, bonnie was there from design sponge and all these just women and men that I really really respected and I had wanted to connect you in person and And so the conference ended and I realized oh People want us to do it again.
Like I just really had not thought past conference number one. And in fact was you know, um design mom had been around for uh, A few years by then and so I was really deep into building design mom And was going, Oh, did I just accidentally start another company?
Like not really had, you know, I had really hadn’t thought past that first event. Cause I didn’t know if it would be successful. Like I guess in my head could have been a big bomb and we just got it done and it was over, you know, forget about it, but it was successful. It was great. People loved it. And the same thing that I was craving that in real life connection, it turns out hundreds of people were craving and I’m sure thousands, but the hundreds of people at the, at the, at the conference, you know, Definitely felt like this was something they wanted and needed and our feedback was really fantastic.
So all of a sudden I found myself uh growing two businesses and it wasn’t what I expected. Anyway, I had a lot of little projects going but realized oh i’ve I’m committed to grow these like if I if I don’t post on design mom that only affects me if I don’t work on alt summit that not only affects my sister who i’m in business with but All the people that want to come to alt summit.
So it was definitely this, different world. And I had to really think seriously about like, okay, what do I want out of this? What do I want it to be? Anyway, so 10 years later, I have been able to refine those goals and dreams and really make them bigger after a few years, my sister, Sarah was ready to retire.
Her husband was also retiring from his political career and So I bought the business from her. And, at this point in my life and career, I had been able to do enough introspection that I felt like I really understood what my personal mission was. And it is to amplify women’s voices. And I do that on design mom and I do that through alt summit and I do it in Other ways as well, but those are the main two ways So I once I really understood that is my purpose and that is what i’m going to use alt summit for um I really started dreaming bigger like who are other voices that we want who are the Who’s my number one speaker who I’d want there, you know, really thinking about that kind of thing And how can I make this bigger and how can I grow this because we were You Uh, kind of stuck on how big we could go based on where we were having the conference, but the, that’s where the 2019 event came from.
And, um, I believe you said that was your first one. Yes. I’m so glad you got to see it. I was super proud of it. Really incredible. It was a huge growth year for us. So, what I had been trying to solve, as I said, my, my dreams were, how do I, um, be able to accommodate more people, you know, bring in more people without it feeling.
Uh, like we lost some of the alt magic and a lot of what the alt magic is is It’s really inspiring, really beautiful places and spaces, lots of places where you can create your own content. If you’re a content creator and also, um, where you really get to connect with the people that you want to connect with.
And how do we accomplish that magic? growing. So, um, so I got this idea. I had been to South by Southwest a few times. I don’t know if you’ve ever been. No, I haven’t. The massive conference goes on for two weeks. It’s in Austin, Texas in February. And it started as a tiny conference. Well, you know, like 500 people, but now it’s not like, I think they said 74, 000 attendees.
I mean, just massive. And those classes are all over the city. If there’s a meeting space, like at a hotel with AV and it’s in Austin. There are South by Southwest classes happening there. And I don’t think I’m exaggerating much at all when I say that, that like it’s pretty much every meeting space in town gets taken over.
And so ultimately isn’t the exact same model, but I was thinking of that, thinking, well, I can at least learn from how they use spaces. What happened is when I bought the conference for my sister, we moved to Palm Springs and we moved to from a big, huge hotel to a very small hotel. The Saguaro hotel, which is, if you’ve ever seen pictures of hotels in Palm Springs, it’s the rainbow one as an awesome attendee, I’m sure you’ve been there, but, um, it was great. It was so great for us. Our social shares went up by 30%. Attendees were so happy but we’ve maxed out the space. Instantly, like we took over every inch of it and we sold out tickets in an hour and we were just at this waiting list that were 3, 000 people long and they were so frustrated at us that they couldn’t get tickets. There was, you know, we were maxed out.
There was nowhere else to go. We were, we were holding, keynotes at the pool cause there wasn’t a big enough space for everybody. We were having lunches out in the parking lot. I mean like it was just like weird maxed out every, every inch. And so we were stuck and we’re going well, what do we do?
We know we need this kind of interesting space. We know attendees want that. We know it’s important to them a place We were thinking of places like the ace and we were thinking of places like the park or palm springs and So we just felt kind of stuck like, okay, do we just become this boutique conference and max out, at, 700 people and that’s, that’s how it’s going to be.
And then again, I thought about South by Southwest and thought, well, we could copy that model a little bit, but focus on these really cool hotels. So I went to the Riviera. Now the Riviera is a big hotel with a huge ballroom and the resources of a big hotel, but also very resort. Very Palm Springs, beautiful grounds, amazing outdoor spaces and pool spaces.
And I said, okay, if we center the keynotes at the Riviera in the ballroom, ’cause if I’m gonna bring a big keynote like Joanna Gaines, everyone wants to be there. Of course. And we didn’t know if it would work, but that was the goal. The goal was, okay, we’ll use kinda the best of both worlds.
We’ll use the big hotel. With the ballroom and we’ll use the smaller hotels for additional classes And that’s where everyone can get that um, gorgeous palm springs content that they want It worked. We tried it. It allowed us to basically max out the ballroom at the Riviera, so that’s 2, 000 people, and we added these other locations in, but fabulous classes going all day long there as well, if you want to learn podcasting or attend a panel, and if you didn’t want to get on a shuttle and, you know, weren’t in the mood to, to shuffle around, there’s You can certainly stay all day in one location and have tons of content there as well.
Um, so it worked even better than I had hoped or dreamt. And it meant we’re scalable because what it means is all we need to do is add additional hotels. And there’s a lot of other amazing hotels in Palm Springs
Monica Packer: so I feel like you’re kind of telling me if you want to dream big, you also have to be willing to make mistakes to not go terribly well.
Can you give us an example though of when it didn’t go so well? Yeah. And maybe this was near the beginning or the middle or you just recently in terms of fault and how you deal with failure in general. And then I’d love to talk about other things too, like your family, but let’s start with that.
Gabrielle Blair: Absolutely. So, um, for sure, for sure, you’d have to be willing to make mistakes. And really, I feel like that translates into, you have to be willing to take risks and they might pay off, they might not. Yeah. Um, and ultimately have really tried to take risks. Every year we’ve tried to take new risks and you know, some have paid off and some haven’t.
Um, we have tried, in addition to our core conference every year, we’ve tried a ton of other formats. So for example, we’ve tried online conferences. So the 2018 year, we did something called Altogether, which was like a digital ticket to our main conference. And we filmed all the sessions.
We did some summer conferences. We did like, one day events. Well, it was more like two day events, but in New York and San Francisco. Then we held like, full conferences. It was intense. So we’ve done a lot of different formats. And really ended up losing money on a lot of the different experiments, or at best breaking even, or just making a tiny bit of money, which, it’s not like making money was ever the number one goal, but you do want to get paid for your work, you know, you do want to be able to pay your employees well, and things like that, and so it’s super frustrating to do a big event and feel like, Well, we made payroll, but that’s about it, you know, um, so, so right now, um, you’ve been to the 2008 event and you have probably seen that there’s nothing else on the calendar for alt summit until the 2020 event.
And that’s because we’ve taken a dozen risks and really, I don’t know, fail is the right word because the actual event, if you went was awesome and successful and amazing speakers and all those things. But ultimately not the best business decision and we have to say goodbye to them. So I don’t know how you can do those things without just taking a risk and trying it And I felt the same way going into this flagship.
We had this great Thing going at the saguaro again, we would sell out in an hour and the sponsors loved it Everyone was happy and I messed with it. I said well No, we’re going to try something totally different and it freaked a lot of sponsors out It freaked a lot of attendees out that had come before and this was so different There were definitely people that were not happy about this change I took this risk and in this case it really did pay off You And, um, it was a ton of work, but we all came away from it. Steaming, really happy and great spirits and feeling like that we had accomplished something beautiful and wonderful. And that we were on the right track. So you take those risks and, and not take it personally, take it personally. And even if it was successful, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to repeat it.
It’s like, yeah, that made sense in that context. Maybe it doesn’t make, you know, maybe it doesn’t make as much sense in the new context, um, and it’s
Monica Packer: like you can’t take even the success personally, meaning you can’t, right, you can’t let it go to your head in so many ways and just think it’s going to automatically do well again, or that you could even learn from there without, it’s like you can’t take those little things for granted and the big things for granted too.
So let’s talk about within your own family. So let’s say you have a big dream as a family, and I’m sure you have many examples that you can share, um, about what this looks like. What is the process that goes behind this? Like, do you break it down step by step?
Do you break into quarters or do you just have to go for things and start taking those risks, even small? Oh, that’s a great question. And yes, I absolutely have to break things down or I get really overwhelmed. So I’m going to use an example with my family, where we moved to France, we got it in our head that we wanted to move to France and.
Gabrielle Blair: Just for context, I have six kids at the time. The youngest is a brand new baby. It’s about three months old. We get into our head like, we should move to France sometime this year. But like, how do you do that? How do you get permission to live in France? How will we earn money? Do get different jobs? How does that work?
Um, we have six kids and none of them have a passport. You know, my husband and I had passports, but okay, we’ve got to figure that out. Where are we going to live? Are we going to ship our stuff over there for a year? That doesn’t make sense. You know, like all those things, right? And what, you know, do we pull them out of school?
How does that work? You know, just, just what, where will they go to school in France? Do we need an international school? Thousands of decisions, right? That you have to make and it’s super overwhelming. So I had to just keep breaking it down and um the first The very first thing I did was just look up the hours of the place where I was going to take the kids to get their passport photos.
Like the task wasn’t even like, go get passport photos. The task was look up the hours of the place, you know, like I had to break it down into like that small of a task I have again, I’m running these businesses. I have tiny kids, I have a new baby, you know, like have so much going on. And the idea of just even putting down on the list.
Get passport photos was too overwhelming. That was like too many steps in there. And so I had to keep breaking it down and I literally, you know, broke it down to okay, well let’s just say it’s go to the appointment or make an appointment or you know, that kind of thing or decide if the kids need something to wear or whatever.
Like, nope. That was too big. I had to keep breaking it down until I didn’t feel like an overwhelming step. And then what I’ve found, and everyone has to kind of find their own work style, but if I can break things down into small enough steps and then I can knock off a few of those steps pretty quickly.
Like looking up hours only has to take, you know, 60 seconds or something. Um, and I can mark it off my list. If I do that, it gives me momentum. And I’m like, Hey, I am accomplishing things. I am marking things off the list. Good job. Of course, you know, my mind doesn’t care that it’s like dumb things that were easy to do.
It just knows
Monica Packer: it’s momentum.
Gabrielle Blair: It’s just knows it’s momentum. And so, um, it’s something that I know about myself and I’ve, you know, kind of learned over the years that I can trick myself that way. And so if I can again, break things down into like, I am getting things done, um, I get things done. And. And it really was step by step.
Um, we just kept breaking it down into small tasks and we got it done and And we moved to france And we loved it and we ended up saying Years, it’s not enough. Let’s extend another six months and then we extend it again and we extend it again And we ended up buying a place there and we just loved it and it really affected our family in a massive massive way and um for good for good and It was worth it doing all those little steps is it was worth it and just stuff We couldn’t have predicted our our school schedule.
There was still different than the United States It was they would they do six weeks on and then a two week break Then six weeks and a two week break and those two week breaks They were just magical for our family because both my husband I worked at home And we could travel and we could drive to all these countries.
We’d go to Pile in our van and drive to Switzerland and drive to Belgium and drive to Ireland. You’d drive right onto a ferry and it would take you to Ireland and then you’d, you know, anyway, we drove all over to Barcelona. We drove all over the place and who knew what France would turn into. We certainly didn’t, but all those little steps were worth it.
And even though they were hard and challenging, um, You know, 100 percent worth it.
Monica Packer: You know, what is another thought I just had is with all of these big dreams you just described, you still couldn’t have predicted where they were taking you. And so a lot of people get caught up in this, how, you know, even when they’re trying to think about how do I break this down, they’re only thinking about the end and how they’re going to get there.
And what I’m hearing you saying is, you know, taking those little risks one small step at a time, you can’t even begin to imagine where even that dream. Is going to take you to the next one.
Gabrielle Blair: You uh, it’s absolutely true. You could you could certainly When I was starting all some if you told me what it was going to turn into and that it’s still growing and all there’s no way I would have understood what that meant or been able to comprehend that or even Known, I would like that.
I might have said. Oh, well, I don’t have time. So no I can’t do that You know like that that sounds too hard or too big I I just wouldn’t have known and this The same thing with france if they had If someone had told me at the beginning, well, you’re actually not going to save for a year. You’re going to stay a lot longer and you’re going to end up having to figure out how to buy property there.
And you’re going to end up having to. You know figure out how to buy a car, you know do all this kind of red tape stuff It’s gonna be complicated and you have to renew those visas and blah blah blah blah I would have said but that’s that’s just sounds way too hard. Like I can’t do it. Yes, you know Um, I didn’t know it was coming and but then when it did come I was in a position that I could do those things Even though I hadn’t been able to a year before, now I was in a place where I could accomplish them.
And, um, it’s the same with Alt Summit. Now I’m in a place where I have time to work on it and I can do it. And it’s
Monica Packer: awesome. Well, I’m, I’m, I know there’s going to be some listeners who feel so overwhelmed. You know, just thinking about it. And what, what, what I want to break it down for them is by a, what I learned from you here is that every dream matters.
So if they’re just even learning how to dream, period. They don’t maybe have to think about, you know, planning a conference on that level or moving abroad But a dream matters period.
Gabrielle Blair: Yeah, whatever it is that Gets you excited that gets you up in the morning um that Say that’s your dream. What it can be very small.
I mean I did I truly did not start alt summit with a vision of what it is now in mind. Not even close. I truly did not look past the first event. Um, and I, I don’t even know that I looked past, you know, the first moment of the first event. It was like, I just need to like get it started. You know what I mean?
Like, I just couldn’t picture it all. And even if I had been able to picture it, I think I would have said no. You know, like I, it would have sounded like I have a tiny baby or actually when the alternate started, I was pregnant. I would have been like, I’m never gonna have time for that. Yeah. So it’s totally fine.
If your dream is small, if it’s a modest dream, totally fine. And none of that matters. And it doesn’t mean that it can’t change or morph or grow. And not every dream has to be huge. Like not, not even close. I mean, I can tell you right now, um, that if I’m still running alt summit and alt summit has grown as big as South by Southwest, But that sounds horrible to me.
I do not want to run a conference with 74, 000 people. That sounds like, oh my gosh, I hope I’m not involved, but maybe it will be that, you know, who knows how I’ll feel if it actually got there, you know what I mean? Um, and maybe my dream is really like, no, 2, 000 is great with me. I am gonna sit on this for a while.
I am delighted. And that’s fine. That’s great. I don’t, I don’t have to say I want a 74, 000 person conference. Exactly.
Monica Packer: Well, one of the things I wrote down when you were talking is, and this might sound really harsh, but just, just sit with me for a second. Why do you live this way? But not from a place of like, Why do you do this to yourself?
But why is it all worth it? Because I can hear in your voice, I can see in what you share with us, just how valuable these experiences have been. All the good and all the hard along with it have all been worthwhile. So why, why is it worth the hard?
Gabrielle Blair: Oh, that’s a great question. Um, I also want to go, the hard changes.
So like my youngest is now nine years old. Um, it’s a completely different life than when you have a lot of little kids. Um, you know, so things that were hard then, And compared to things that were hard now, it’s a, you can’t compare. It’s a totally different hard. So while my life might sound hard, um, or I want to say challenging, um, it’s, um, the challenges change and the things that feel overwhelming or, you know, again, would have felt overwhelming to me 10 years ago, don’t feel overwhelming to me now because my kids are at a different age, you know, so there’s some of that happening.
Um, I would also say, I like a challenge, right? I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be someone that’s fulfilled by a lot going on. I’m not gonna be really satisfied if There’s not interesting stuff my schedule. I’m a really curious person. My brain’s always like asking questions. Ooh, what’s that? How did they do that?
Oh, should I do that? You know like stuff like that and I’m I’m always wanting to learn and so these kind of things really help me Um, some of it is important to me just because it’s kind of my core who I am like say as a parent So some of this is worth it to me because it’s just the core of who I am I’m in who I how I want to raise my family and how I want to raise my kids kids.
Some of it’s important to me because it allows me to have my own schedule. I knew going in, I wanted, you know, as I got married, I wanted to have a big family. So did my husband and I knew that I wanted a flexible schedule so that I could be a parent when I need to be a parent and work when I need to work.
And so some of this is important to me because it allows me that. And if I, you know, I’ve had 9 to 5 jobs, I’ve, um, longer really, you know, I’ve worked in New York at advertising agencies. I’ve had desk jobs where I’m there all day long. Um, I know what that means. I know there’s some awesome advantages there.
For example, health insurance And a 401k and all sorts of things that I don’t get as a self employed person But um, I can also say that I chose this and I am working hard to make it work because I really do value that flexible schedule and What it allows me to do with my family. So there’s a lot of reasons why I do it and why it’s worth it to me.
Um, at this point, again, it’s not about childcare. My kids are older, you know, some of this stuff is, it’s very different now, but, I’ve gotten to know my mission much, much better personally. And, and I’ll repeat it. It’s to amplify women’s voices. And so that’s important to me that I’m working on projects and events and ideas.
That really allow women to tell their stories and to get attention and to, you know, be brave and bold and confident and that means a ton to me and it’s a Big reason why I would get up and work on something for sure if I had you know If I know I’m gonna have those opportunities
Monica Packer: well I can attest that you have amplified my voice and I’ve learned so much from you But most especially just your willingness to try.
Um, not that it all needs to be, I mean, if you were, if you were looking at this from a perfectionist point of view, which, you know, that’s a lot of what my audience is, right. You probably wouldn’t have been able to do any of these things. Um, and that is what has inspired me to try. Even if it doesn’t turn out well, and you know what, Gabrielle, I would actually love to hear, is there a personal dream you’re working on right now that you are willing to share with us?
Gabrielle Blair: Sure. I’ve got a couple I can share. One is another, um, semi fail, but I have hopes I can turn it around. We’ll see. And that is a podcast. Oh, really? Yeah. So my 12th anniversary of my blog was last July, and I announced, To commemorate this 12th anniversary. I’m gonna start a podcast my readers have been asking me and I thought oh, that’s a great idea And I bought the equipment and I got trained and I hired some consultants and I spent a bunch of money All this happened and I even recorded some samples and then was like Yeah, I’m too busy with Altum, and I stopped, and I, you know, and, but I, I really do have hopes of turning that around and turning it into something.
I haven’t given up on it, and um, so that’s one personal thing. Oh, I believe in you. A second one, and I, I think it would be a, I, I’ve gone back and forth. I think it would be a parenting podcast with my husband, but anyway, that would be amazing. Well, thank you and that is definitely something on my mind the The other personal project is I wrote a twitter thread last fall Or I actually wrote it before that but I published it last fall and I was You know really barely on twitter up to this point I had been on twitter before anything else because it was the first one out there, but my audience doesn’t use it a ton So I had just not really been on it but anyway I I wrote this thread for twitter and I and it went viral like hugely viral and in fact You It’s been nine months and it’s still going viral.
Like every right around. And, um, anyway, so I have had a couple of publishers reach out about using the thread as a basis for a book. And, um, and at first I was resistant because this conversation has been happening, you know, They reached out months ago and really when the thread first went live and I again I was very resistant I’ve done a book before they’re huge amount of work.
Yes, and I mean I had a successful book I made the New York Times bestseller bestseller list, but still I I know what it means to do a book and so I was definitely resistant and but then It keeps going viral and there’s keep I keep getting inquiries about it And I finally said I think I’m gonna do it.
So over the last couple weeks. I’ve been interviewing book agent
And I didn’t
use an agent for my first book. I just went directly to the publisher. So this is new for me, but, um, I should be signing with an agent this week and I’m really excited about that. And then they will be sending out this proposal to publishers.
And I already have a couple of publishers that have expressed interest. So that feels really good. And we’ll see what happens from there. But that is definitely on my mind. And something that also feels like a big risk, because the topic is so different than anything else. I’ve written about.
Mm hmm.
Monica Packer: Oh, I can’t wait for that
This has been such an honor for me I’m so grateful that you would spend time with us and um, and just how much you give You give so much and you’re so fair too. I feel like this there’s this willingness to learn Um, which is a big part of what you do. And I just wanted to to tell you that like what I see in you is not you putting yourself As above people and a guru or anything like that But as someone who is willing to learn and is willing to share and you’ve done that today.
So, thank you
Gabrielle Blair: That really does mean a ton. Thank you. And I absolutely do feel that way. Um, you are my peer, everyone I’m talking to, I just assume they’re my peer or someone that I can learn from. And I hope I always feel that way. So thank you for saying that. That means a lot.
Monica Packer: I am so glad you listened to get the hug and kick in the pants you needed to grow.
Thank you so much for being here. And remember life is about progress, not perfection.
Gabrielle Blair: The same size as our, um, our, you know, our, Our main conference, or whatever, I’m sorry, I’m blanking out. The main, sorry, what am I thinking of? Our headline? That’s not the word. Shoot.
Monica Packer: I’m trying to think of a word, too, and I’m coming up blank.
Gabrielle Blair: Uh, anyway, our key, I don’t know why I’m blanking on this, but um, our, so we have like our key conference that has happened through the years, either like January, February, March, the first quarter of the year.
And, or flagship. That’s the word. There we go. Flagship.
