Your Marketing Email = A Sweaty Note Passed in Junior High

This is how a lot of marketing emails look. What’s the problem with this?

Remember 8th grade? It was awkward for me. (I would include an image of my school picture here but I burned them.)

ANYWAY, in 8th grade my best friend was Cecilia, we both loved The X-Files and I had a huge crush on David Duchovny. And we wrote each other letters.

Long letters—I know some of them were about The X-Files but otherwise I really don’t remember what they were about.  We passed them to each other at lunch and after school. (Even though we sat together at lunch.) 

Did you write letters in junior high? Maybe you wrote long emails to friends in college. Or have had long, flirty text exchanges with people you’ve dated. 

What do those communications have in common?

They are one-to-one. 

But a marketing email is not one-to-one. It goes out to a list - an audience.

Obviously, you can’t address marketing email to each individual personally. You send to a list. But the person receiving your email is managing an inbox full of emails that are one-to-one messages. If you send something that doesn’t sound like it’s one-to-one, it reads as spam.

So when I write emails to my list, I ask myself, “Does it sound like I wrote it to just one person?”

When you’re emailing your list, you’re managing two seemingly competing interests: crafting a note that feels like it came from you to me vs. creating a piece of marketing that serves a purpose in our business. Y

You can see them as competing or you can merge them together.

Step 1. Start by sending an email that has a purpose for your business, but resist the urge to think that means your email must contain 10 images, loads of !!!! and BOLD ITALICIZED CAPS. 

Step 2. Here’s how I make my marketing email sound like I wrote it to someone in particular: I… write it to someone in particular.  I always have a particular person in mind when I write an email. Not a particular type of person. It’s an actual person.

When I do that, that means that some people are not going to resonate with what I write. I get that. But the benefits of doing this outweigh that negative, (if that even is negative). 

…

When clients start working with me, they are writing posters. It’s not font or the images; It’s the headspace they’re in when they write. “This  single piece of writing needs to capture everyone’s attention!”

Not only is that not possible, it requires you, the writer, to sacrifice the exact element you need in order to capture attention: SPECIFICITY.

With email, you have the opportunity to make each member of your list feel like I did when Cecilia handed me a carefully folded up letter freshly torn from her 3-ring notebook. Excited! Intrigued. Interested.

I could list so many other reasons why you should keep one person in mind when you write marketing email. But I want to share one important reason that I don’t hear a lot of people talk about: it saves you time. Stop GUESSING at what people want to hear and start asking yourself, “How would I explain this to Cecilia?” 

Giving Yourself Permission... with Denise Duffield-Thomas

I was talking with a friend about the wide-ranging 60-minute conversation I had with Denise, and she said, “Maggie, you didn’t ask her a single question about email.”

Well, that’s true. BUT. I did ask her a lot of questions about the things having an email marketing strategy allows mothers who are business owners like her to do, like:

• Quit juggling everything at once and free up time

• Exercise your right to get help, say no, and ask for more

• Build a business that is a separate entity from you, even if you’re the face of it

• Embrace entrepreneurship to build something that is just for you

But let’s back up. Who is Denise? Denise Duffield-Thomas is an online entrepreneur, author, and mother of 3 in Newcastle, Australia. She helps women create wealth through her mindset courses and practical wisdom on releasing money blocks. She also shares a lot online about how she runs her business, including her$750,000 product launch, and how she earned over$1 million in profit in 2018,(the same year she had her third baby).

I interviewed Denise for my mom entrepreneur interview series (past interviews available here), and she was so generous with her time.

I’d known of Denise as “The Lucky Bitch” for a while, but over the past few months her advice and example, shared on her blog, social media, and through her manifesting course, have offered practical ways for me to get out of my own way. She understands that it’s scary to fail, but it can feel even scarier for some personalities (hello!) to succeed.

She’s been at this online entrepreneurship thing for a while, and she shared so much wisdom! Enjoy these excerpts from our conversation.

Quit overcomplicating. Success without struggling every moment doesn’t mean you’re cheating.

My husband asked me to record an audio of me saying, “2019!” for a voiceover on a video. He was just going to edit that “2019” into an existing audio, and I was just like, “It’s so much easier just to re-record the whole thing than to record snippets and try to splice them in. It’s a 2-minute audio. ... In fact, let’s just not say 2019 so I can use the same audio every year!”

I’m always thinking, “How can we make this one-and-done?” I’m super lazy. It’s tricky working with him because I think sometimes he feels like that’s cheating.

He wants to overcomplicate, almost to prove that we did work. It’s like it’s not OK for us to make money using the same video we used last year. We have to put some effort into it.

That’s kind of the subject of my next book, Chillpreneur. There’s so much story ingrained in our culture around hard work. “You don’t get something for nothing.” “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

I really struggled with this at the start of my business because I had my e-book for sale for $10. Every time someone bought it, I was like, “Should I call them and read it to them over the phone? I already wrote that—how am I still getting paid for this?”  But it’s OK to make money out of something you already did.

Exercise your right to ask for (and pay for) help

(In November, Denise wrote a post about exactly how much help she has at home so she can run her business smoothly. It went viral. I asked her what she hoped would happen as a result.)

I think simple permission. I know many people can’t afford help. But a lot of people can afford some help, and they don’t get it. I want women to honor their experiences. It’s OK for them to want to be a businesswoman and not take care of the home. And for those who want to take care of the home, that’s totally cool, too.

Here’s an example. In the first episode of that Marie Kondo show on Netflix, it’s a cute couple. But the husband’s really on his wife about the fact that she has someone come to do the laundry. He’s says, ‘but WE should do the laundry. WE should set an example.’ It’s so maddening because in the next sentence he says he’s never home because he works so much. So ‘WE should do the laundry’ means ‘YOU’ should do it. It pissed me off so much. Who cares if someone’s doing her laundry for her? She’s created a job for someone!

That’s the kind of woman that I wanted to read that article. I want her to know it’s OK to want to do her business and not have to come home and do the laundry.

I think the thing that comes up is if not every woman can afford to have it, then nobody can have it. Or people think that hiring someone to clean is exploitative. But sometimes people just need a job, even a cleaning job. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve done it myself. I had to clean toilets because I didn’t have money and I didn’t have a degree.

Yes, there are many mums who can’t afford help. So what do mums do who can’t afford it? Focus on your business as much as you can, so then you can afford it. It’s sounds harsh saying that because it sounds like I don’t understand. And I don’t anymore. There are people who teach frugality and who have systems for getting cleaning done faster. I don’t speak for all women in that piece, and I know that. When I wrote the article, I really tried to rein in the impulse to come up with all the different potentialities for every woman in every situation.

Build a business that is a separate entity from you, even if you’re the face of it

My work is its own entity now. Hiro Boga, a business coach, really helped me with this. A couple of years ago I felt, “I can’t do this work anymore because all my own energy is in it.” And she said, No, it’s not, Denise. It’s its own entity. If it’s connected to your veins, it will feel too hard. You’re going to stunt the growth of the business. It’s really draining. You can’t be attached to your business like that.”

So, I’ve improved at thinking to myself, “If people don’t like ‘Lucky Bitch Denise,’ that’s OK because that’s not me. That’s not me, the real person. That’s a construct in a lot of ways.

So sometimes I’ll see a friend, for example, who is not a business person, who will comment on a social media post or something, and I’ll say, “You know that this is my business. This isn’t just me and you talking over lunch!” It’s authentic but it’s also curated.

“So, for the recent post I wrote that went viral, I haven’t read any of the comments. It’s not my job. I gave it to Medium, in a way.”

Embrace entrepreneurship to build something that is just for you

I see a lot of people trying to start their businesses after kids. I don’t have all the answers around that. But I hope they recognize that that’s just really fucking hard, and it’s OK for them to not “do all the things” in this season of life.

I’m always of two minds about it because on the one hand it is a season. But I see people use this “season” as an excuse. They don’t do anything until their kid is 20. Then they have no job skills, no economic power in their relationship. There’s a balance to be struck. Yes, it’s a season. But time marches on, and no one is going to build your business for you. Making your own money is crucial; you need that skill.

My nan got married at 18 because she was pregnant, and they didn’t have a great relationship. My nan would tell me, “I hope your granddad dies this year.” I just think, what she would have done with some economic independence! They would have split up.

So every time I think about fear. I imagine sitting and saying to my nan, “I’ve got all these opportunities in front of me, but I’m really scared someone’s gonna disagree with me on Twitter.” She would just go, “What the fuck? Use the opportunity in front of you and don’t squander it!”

Did you love that? I loved it. If you want to hear more including:

• the pros and cons of working with your husband on the business

• what our children learn as they watch build our businesses

• some stuff about poop. Why do kids produce so much of it?

… then you can get the full audio by clicking here:

2 Ingredients to Write Emails that Don’t Suck: "Proximity and a Reason"

Renee was talking about selling before the Internet. No Facebook ads, no funnels, no Zoom. She told me that she taught her teams that if they wanted to set up a meeting with a potential client, they needed “proximity and a reason to reach out.” So they needed to be in a place where their potential client would be, and they needed a reason to strike up a conversation.

It made me think of The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, which I was reading at the time. The book was written about 100 years ago and it's set in 1890. So like, waaaay before the internet.

A few of the male characters are members of a club. A literal “old boys’ club.” It dawned on me: these clubs existed not just to make their fancy members feel even fancier, but so that a man with something to sell could legit run into another man who might want to buy, and that potential buyer wouldn’t be a total stranger. "We are both members of the same old boy’s club! What a coincidence, my good man!"the chap with something to sell could say.

Proximity and a reason to reach out.

So what does this have to do with email?

These days, many more of us have proximity, which is nice because now you don’t have to be a rich white man to make a living as a businessperson.

But what is our reason to reach out? In the old boys' club, you could reach out because you had something in common—the same club. Renee might focus on the fact that you both grew up in California, or you both have dogs or kids or just came back from vacation.

But when you're emailing your list, you don't know those particular personal details, and anyway you're sending one email to many people. But! You do know one thing about all of them: they joined your list. The question you need to ask yourself (and answer!) is why? What was their reason for joining your list?

And when you send email to them, are you sending a note that has anything to do with their reason for opting in? Their reason for opting in has to inform every email you send. What did they hope to get from you? Do your emails connect to that initial reason? Or are you off the rails and talking to yourself?

Start thinking about sending emails because the people on the other end need this message, and you want to start a conversation.

Don't really know why they joined? I have a couple of tips for you on how to figure it out. If you're interested in finding out more about how to send emails that really matter to the people you want to work with, sign up for my list.

I send all my best tips there every week.

What does 'nurture your list' mean?

“Nurture” is one of those business-speak marketing words that means nothing because it means different things to different people.

Does “nurturing” your contacts mean, “email them regularly even though 80% or more of them never open your emails”?

I think it means something else:

Want to know more about how to talk to your list? Sign up for my list!

I'm So Off-Brand Right Now

What do we think about having a "personal brand"? Have we "basically been seduced into objectifying and dehumanizing ourselves," as my friend Jason put it? 

Yikes.

In 2018, one thing I was really proud of was identifying a mission. I've thought of it as this:

I am a person who is committed to helping women give themselves permission to create space and have an identity that belongs to them and them alone.

Now -- is that my personal brand? If it is my personal brand, then what do I do with days like yesterday?

Yesterday massive guilt consumed me as I carried my 1-year-old in to daycare after a week off. Morgan LOVES to stay at home. He loves napping in his bedroom. He likes the living room and the backyard. He sits next to the dog in the kitchen and gazes up at my husband or me while we cook. Our home is his world. He seems happy enough at daycare, but he is delighted (and delightful) at home.

So, I felt the all-consuming guilt as I took him to daycare. Besides adjusting after a week off, he also switching classrooms and teachers, and I knew there would be crankiness and grumpiness. I leaped to assigning myself the blame for ... everything. Because I have no inclination to stay home with him. Not even for one day a week. Which makes me a bad mom. Right? Doesn't this mean that nannies are raising him?

Yes, I have those thoughts, for real. I had them yesterday. Super-authentic-personal-brand Maggie would never have those thoughts. I thought.

So I joked to another friend, Margo, that my guilt and my doubts were "off-brand."

"HOW IS THIS NOT ON-BRAND?" (She shouts because she cares.) "Your brand is about the collective contradictions women hold in our mind, half from what we genuinely feel, half from those that are societally and culturally imposed on us, and the whole conversation is trying to negotiate the difference between the two."

Oh.

I'm driven to help women give themselves permission. Period. Permission to have their own identity. To do what they want. AND to find a way to doubt themselves without letting the doubt consume their drive.

That's why I started an interview series where I talk to other mothers who are entrepreneurs (although I didn't know that was why I was starting it). I have done a few "Moms Who Are Entrepreneurs Who Hate Being Called Mompreneurs" episodes. I'm doing it because I need to talk to and to showcase other women who have claimed an identity outside of who they take care of.

Check out my latest episode with Susan Boles, founder of ScaleSpark.

Happy New Year. You have my permission :-) to start slow or hit the ground running.

PS: Want to read more posts like this? Sign up for my list to get a mix of tips and support for mothers who are entrepreneurs.

Talking about your “second shift” doesn’t just make you relatable. It makes you a revolutionary.

A friend sent me a passage from Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. She quotes Melinda Gates:

“I also started talking a little bit more about my children in these meetings. I’d always shied away from the subject just because it felt so personal. But it’s turned out to resonate with a lot of employees who are also trying to balance work and home life — and who are also living their values every day at the foundation and through their parenting. I feel more connected to the individuals and the collective culture of the foundation because Ive taken steps to let myself be vulnerable”

“This is what you’ve been saying!!” said my friend.

I’d like to take it a step farther. I don’t think you should talk about your kids at work just because it makes you more relatable. Although that’s nice.

One of the stickiest lies that patriarchy has propagated is the idea that the work that we do educating young children is dismissible and should be hidden from site, when it’s actually the most important work on Earth.

The most important work on Earth. That’s not my opinion. It’s verifiable fact. Our children know nothing of the world or the universe when they’re born. They didn’t ask to be born. We completely mold their reality and what they think is possible.

When I say “we,” I mean all adults, but particularly early childhood caregivers — parents and whoever else is caring for our children during the day. Because 0–3 is when you lay the pipes into your brain and encase them in cement. (It’s ironic that that’s the same period of your life when you don’t form long-term memories.) If you want to make a change to the way you relate, to mindset, to your very perception of reality after 3 years old, you have to break through that cement. But before then, the cement is still being poured. Our children don’t know a thing, and that means they can be or do anything.

If we accept all that I’ve written above, then the idea that we shouldn’t talk about our kids in work settings is bonkers. The work we’re doing raising young children is the most important thing that we do collectively, as a society, to create change.

All the evil in the world is passed down through generations.

Here’s an example:

The number of things women are allowed to do has expanded. But the frame is the same. Our society allows women to do and to be certain things and not to do and to be other things.

That’s in Jane Austen. And it’s in our culture today. So how does that frame get passed down over 300 years? Everyone from Jane Austen’s era is dead. Everyone from the next generation, and the generation after that is also dead.

But before they died, they passed it down to very young children, who then grew up and passed it down to very young children… and so on. Until it got to us.

…

The idea that you’re supposed to hide your home life because it’s domestic, or be embarrassed that you’re being interrupted by your job molding the people who are going to take care of — not just the entire planet, but our view of what reality is and what is possible — is just an idea that was passed down. And it’s ludicrous. Why is that work subordinate to anything else? Why is it silent and hidden?

Stay at home mothers have been saying what I’m saying for a long time. But sometimes — because they live in the paradigm that women are allowed to do certain things and not others and must justify all their actions so that they fit in the “allowed” category — they are insecure about their choice to stay home. So they present this idea in terms of being superior to those women who choose to or have to work. “I recognize that educating your children is the most important thing you can do and therefore I’m better than you because I’ve decided to exert control over what that means by being present for it 24/7.”

That presentation of this idea makes me defensive. But the idea itself is not different.

The question is not, “How can you leave your baby with someone else when taking care of your child is the most important thing you can do?”

The question is, “Why do we live in a society where we present women who stay home with their kids as the ones on one side of this work, and women who don’t stay home with their kids as if they’re on a separate side?

How to Get People to Respond to Your Emails

It’s harder than it looks! Here are a couple of mistakes I see over and over again.

What I Learned About Entrepreneurship From 'Clipless Pedals'

Last weekend I taught myself how to ride my bike with clip pedals (or “clipless” pedals… which are clip pedals?)

I have not been so proud of anything I’ve done since I birthed my baby in October. Seriously. I have been active in cycling and triathlon since 2016, and I could never bring myself to go for clipping in It just too scary. But I finally COMMITTED. 

And I realized: achieving a goal is not about trying and getting it right the first time. Or the fifth time. It’s about marshaling all your resources, all your experience, and… leaping. If you’re in business for yourself, this may sound familiar. 

So let me take you through how I went from paralyzed with fear to competent in a weekend.

Saturday I get into my driveway, with all the nerdy cycling gear on—the bib, the fun socks the gloves and of course the clip shoes, and I just FREEZE.  I just panicked. 

Like, I just couldn’t even bring myself to clip in and push off for a solid 5 minutes. Somehow I finally willed myself to ride around the cul de sac and I fell 3 times. And i was like, “Oh,  I can’t do this. I give up. I want my old pedals.” But I just couldn’t bring myself to go back inside because the sitter was there! How embarrassing! So, I finally headed off. 

I was out for 2 hours. It was terrible. Like, every single minute. I alternated between 1 hour cycling. 1 hour not cycling and staring at my bike and flipping the eff out.

But here’s where a glimmer of hope came in: everything I do in my business to will myself to take a risk, I did on this bike ride and it helped me ride for that 1 hour. During one of my freakouts on the sidewalk, I set a SMART goal, lol. I said, “I’m gonna do 5 laps on this street and if I still hate it, I will stop and that will be it for the day.” At lap 3, I really wanted to quit, but I was like, “Maggie, you said 5. How are you going to tell this story later if you don’t complete 5?” 

I did the 5 laps, which was about 12 miles, and then I was like, “Ok, no really. I still hate it.” And I “gave myself grace” as the church folks say, and I stopped. I went to Starbucks. I rode shakily home. I got off the bike and I said, “I don’t know if I’m ever going to do that again.” 

Next day (Sunday) I think about trying again all day long. Finally at 4 pm my husband is like, “Didn’t you say you were gonna prac-” I’m like GET OFF MY BACK YOU MONSTER!!!

And then I put those shoes on and got back out there. I was still shaky at first, but no falling. I rode for just about 30 minutes, (same street, no traffic lights.) and at the end I was said to myself, “I’m doing this. It’s just a mind game now bc my body gets how to clip in and out and I’m not wobbly anymore.” 

So, a little better. Monday I set my alarm for 5:30 because I want to practice again. 5:30 comes and the first thing in my head is 

“NO. NONONONONO. N. O.”

Well I may not have much clip pedal experience but I have plenty of practice getting up early. So I swigged the coffee. I got the shoes on.  

I clipped in the driveway and I just. WENT. No hesitation. I started to visualize my first tri race (hoping to do one in August) and how much better my bike time will be because I’m riding with these pedals.)  I visualized actually keeping up with my husband on a  group ride. And then I thought about how my husband told me the night before how he was proud of me. 

How he told me if it hadn’t been for me taking up triathlon a couple of years ago, he’d never have started cycling in the first place (he now regularly bikes 100 miles a week.) How I used to worry he might have a heart attack in 10 years bc he ate like shit and never exercised, and I don’t worry about his health anymore, and it’s actually because HE was inspired by ME. ME! The person who always got picked last! 

At this point I turn right instead of left and I get on a street with traffic lights, you guys! Traffic lights! And I practiced for half an hour, unclipping and clipping with _relative_ ease. I realized, “this was 3 hours, just THREE TINY HOURS OF MY LIFE devoted to practicing over 3 days total and look how much better I am. OMG I’m so glad I didn’t quit!” 

And here’s what I learned in those three hours about how to overcome my fear and take a risk. This is what worked for me: 

• I can look at the big picture (I want to do a triathlon in August!) but what really got me there was setting MICROgoals. Saying to myself, 

“I just have to make it to that stop sign.” 

“I just have to make it to that flower bush.” 

“I just have to make it to the end of the street.” 

That’s what kept me going when I wanted to stop. It’s great to keep your eyes on the big prize, but for me, whenever I wasn't sure it was possible, it helped to have microgoals. 

• It helped to have skin in the game. I spent $150 on the pedals and the shoes and another $60 on the sitter. Yes, I could have quit, but beyond feeling foolish, I would have felt like I had invested that money without really giving it a try. 

• It is OK to slow way the hell down. To almost stop. As long as I was doing something—ANYTHING—to continue. 

• I couldn’t force myself to stop telling myself I couldn’t do it or to stop being scared. But I could pepper in positive self-talk, even if it was stilted. Even if I didn’t believe it. 

• When doing something risky and new, it helped me to draw on all my past experiences of doing crazy, scary new things. I have done more crazy, scary new things in the past 4 years than at any other point in my life and I think it really helped me not to give up. 

So there you have it. Dying to know what you think. Have you tried those "damn clipless clippy pedal things," as my friend David calls them? :D Have you had another experience like this? Brag about it in the comments!

3 Things to Try if Your Sales Funnel Is Failing

If you've set up a sales funnel and it's just not working, what do you do? 

First, take a breath. Most people don't get perfect results the first time around. But you might feel paralyzed around where to start tinkering. I have some ideas. Have you tried any of these? 

A Rebuttal to "How stay-at-home moms hurt gender equality"

So, I had problems with this article. 

The first part of this author's argument is the easiest part to unravel.

I get the challenges. I appreciate very much that childcare is prohibitively expensive. 

If she "gets" that childcare is "prohibitively expensive," then why doesn't she "get" that lack of access to affordable childcare prohibits one parent in the home from working? 

That had me going hmmm pretty early on. Still, it's true that in the vaaaaast majority of cases, if a heterosexual couple has children, and decides that one parent should stay home because childcare is too expensive, it's the female parent who stays home. (Not always.)

So what's that about? 

Well, check out this Pew study, that Sarah Lacy cites in her new book, The Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug.  Sixty percent of men and women believe that children are better off when a parent stays home. Bonkers: 

A majority of those surveyed believe that kids are worse off if a kid doesn't have one of their parents at home. Again... what's that about? 

Well, look what I spotted in the sidebar on this Pew study page: 

So where does that leave me in my rebuttal? Well, if we live in a country where 15% of those surveyed think that fathers should take NO paternity leave. And 60% think that it's better if one parent (I wonder which one that is) stays at home, then... 

In a society where these are the norms, how the heck is it the fault of these individual women for deciding to stay at home? What if we were to address the following issues: 

• Why do so many people think children are worse off if both parents work? 

• Why do so few people place a monetary value on the labor associated with taking care of kids and managing the household?

And here's another assumption that crumbles upon examination: if you stay home, that means you're not working.

As a matter of fact, beyond the fact that our society undervalues domestic labor, here's another kicker: a lot of stay-at-home moms do work that earns money. Some of them do it at home; some of them work part-time outside the home on nights and weekends. I even know few who make more revenue than I do, but hey continue to call themselves SAHMs.

This author never mentions this large, and growing group of women. It's as though they don't exist. (There are 25,000 women who are members of the Boss-Moms Facebook group. If you spend more than 5 minutes in this group, you'll see many of these women earn while taking care of their kids as well.)

But I think what Johnson is saying that women shouldn't just work/earn--they should do it the way they did it when they were childless. Otherwise, they're hurting feminism. 

So does the problem lie with women who reject the notion that they have to work the way they worked before? Or does it lie with a society that dismisses any work that doesn't look like:

•  completely leaving the domestic realm to enter a public realm

• staying in that public realm continuously  from 9 to 5

•  and then re-entering a private, domestic realm in the evening? 

Guess what? No one needs to do this anymore. Not only do moms not need to do it, but neither do dads, or childless people. Because of a confluence of technology, the changing nature of white collar jobs, we don't need to go to an office, start work at 9 and be away all day. 

I don't call myself a stay-at-home mom. I work, and while I work, someone else takes care of my children. But I work from home (about half the time).

I quit my 9-to-5 office job for lots of reasons. I actually worked 100% remotely, but my job was 9-to-5. 9-to-5 jobs are predicated on the schedule of a single, childless person. You have to get to work at a certain time, be there for the entire time (even through lunch for the most part) and then leave at a certain time. This is the case whether you have a huge amount of work to do, or very little to do. 

WHY? This schedule has exactly ZERO to do with real life. And it's got less than zero to do with real life after kids. Kids get sick. Kids dress up like Cat Boy and march in Purim parades at 9:30 a.m. 

Kids get sick. (I said that one already.)  

But acknowledging this reality is just so rare. I've heard of one consultancy, August, which is focused on trying to change that, but that's only for the companies who opt in by paying August to help them. 

So, we have to urge on organizations like this, too. If we want to see workplace policies change, we have to point out how workplace realities are already changing, whether or not traditional workplaces want to keep up. 

Not only that, but these categories: "stay home" vs. "work outside the home" have much less meaning than they did even 5 years ago, before 100% remote work became commonplace. 

As women at this moment of technological innovation and renewed commitment to the equal value of women and men, we have an opportunity to create a new vocabulary for a whole spectrum of work that we do.

And isn't that a more fun and energizing blog post to write?