Sensible Woo is the mind. Sasquatch Media Grounds is the muscle.
Hey Reader,
This week landed like a gut punch. I’m not going to sugarcoat it… this is not a cozy newsletter opening. It’s a reality check.
Barely two weeks into the year and we watched a woman get shot in the face in Minneapolis, then watched conservative media try to rewrite reality in real time by painting her as the instigator despite clear video evidence showing otherwise.
Then, as I was scheduling this email so it would land on time in your inbox, my own local metro (PDX) broke a story about two individuals shot and injured by Border Patrol agents. The coverage is already thick with convenient excuses for shooting unarmed civilians, wrapped in vague language and plausible deniability.
If all of this hasn't rattled you this week, I don’t know what to tell you.
And if your instinct right now is to say, “Politics shouldn’t be part of business,” this is your off-ramp. Scroll down. Unsubscribe. Truly. I’m not interested in softening this to keep people comfortable.
Because politics is already inside your business. Anyone insisting otherwise is quietly revealing how much they benefit from pretending neutrality is an option. It isn’t.
Here’s the part that matters for creators, entrepreneurs, and anyone building a public-facing brand in 2026: political power is increasingly shaping where, how, and whether your voice is safe to exist. This isn’t abstract. It’s operational.
A piece of news about ICE expanding surveillance of social media posts slipped past my radar earlier because, frankly, the world has been on fire. But it resurfaced this week, and it deserves your attention. Federal agencies are watching online behavior more closely. Tech companies are bending the knee. Privacy is no longer a default setting. And free speech is being quietly narrowed through platform policies, shadow enforcement, and selective amplification.
So here’s one of my annual predictions, stated plainly: by this time next year, you will be de-prioritizing traditional social media not just because the traffic keeps tanking, but because safety, ownership, and control will matter more than reach. Taking back your ability to speak freely, without an algorithm or authority hovering over your shoulder, is about to become a luxury.
Do we have a clean replacement for old-school social media? No. Not yet. And we may never recreate what it promised us in its early days. But we do have structures that are stable, durable, and much harder to take away.
Which brings us to what actually holds.
• Owned platforms beat rented attention. Your email list, your podcast feed, your YouTube channel, your published writing… these are assets. You control them. No shadow bans. No sudden policy shifts. No disappearing audience.
• Discovery is shifting back to relationships. YouTube remains a search engine, not a social casino. Podcasts grow through trust. Lists grow through referrals. Communities grow through shared values. Audience swaps, guesting, and list sharing are about to look very “new” again, even though they’re old-school as hell.
• Visibility is moving from volume to credibility. The era of shouting into the void is collapsing. What’s rising in its place is depth, collaboration, and reputational momentum. People don’t want more content. They want signals they can rely on.
This is the work I’m actively teaching inside the Creator Economy Dojo at Sasquatch Media Grounds. The early bird round is already underway, and yes, the next doors will open in February. But the point isn’t urgency. The point is readiness. This shift isn’t coming. It’s already here.
When you’re ready, scroll through this week’s digest. Inside you’ll find:
• an open call for guests for Season 3 of The School of Moxie Podcast (with a very intentional filter this year),
• your weekly Tarot + Astrology reading excerpt via the Woo Crew private podcast (this year’s astrology does not reward avoidance), and
• a final note about the AI bot library… pay-what-you-can, lifetime updates included, with a new training and fresh custom GPTs dropping at the end of January.
No noise. No appeasement. Just smarter positioning for the year we’re actually in. Proceed with discernment.
Gossip From the Creator Trenches...
📝 Storytelling Just Got Expensive (In a Good Way)
Plot twist: AI didn’t kill storytelling… it made it wildly more valuable. As automation flattens everything else, the ability to tell a clear, compelling, human story is becoming premium inventory. Translation for entrepreneurs? Your ideas, offers, and lived experience are about to monetize in ways they couldn’t before. If you create content of any kind, consider this your early warning shot: narrative skill is about to pay.
🔗 Step up to the plate here
📺 Goodbye, Old Friend
Pour one out for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB officially announced it’s shutting down after years of federal funding cuts finally did what privatization loves to do: starve public infrastructure until it collapses. This isn’t just sad — it’s instructive. Large swaths of rural America relied on CPB for timely, accessible information. When distribution disappears, so does democracy’s oxygen. If you’ve ever thought media distribution was boring, this is your reminder that who controls the pipes controls the story.
🔗 Get the details here
🏆 Your Awards Speech Isn’t Delusional
Quick PSA: the Webby Awards extended their deadline into early February. And yes, some of you actually belong in that conversation. Even if you’re not submitting this year, studying how visibility platforms evaluate “excellence” is a masterclass in reverse engineering your 2026 strategy. Maybe this isn’t your year. But if you play it right, 2027 could absolutely be calling your name.
🔗 Throw your hat in the ring here
📸 Tenacity in Action
There has been quite a bit of production coming out of the studio recently. Not all of it is the Instagram kind of content, but a few folks are doing some visible things you might want to celebrate with me. 🥳
All American Why
Congrats on your launch! Check out premiere week.
|
|
Take the Leap
Racking up the seasons like veteran champs! Listen here.
|
🧰 Whoa, Tiger… Build the Toolbox First
If you’ve been paying attention to the weekly Astrology–Tarot readings, you already know this January isn’t about launching shiny new things. It’s a cleanup month. It’s about getting your shit in order before you hit the gas. Which is why I’m pointing you to one of my top free trainings on YouTube… the one that’s been growing steadily, quietly, and without a shred of hype.
Behind the scenes, the data on this pre-production training is fascinating. Entrepreneurs are getting smarter. They’re unsubscribing from the influencer-business nonsense of the last decade and finally noticing the pattern: burnout, stalled momentum, and that miserable “muddling middle” all come from skipping the boring work.
Pre-production isn’t sexy. It’s effective. And right now, effectiveness is winning.
This is the kind of foundation that lets everything else move faster later… without wrecking your nervous system or your business in the process.
👉 Quiet Weeks Do the Heavy Lifting
Need something a little more sunshine-y this week? I know, I know… read the rest of this newsletter and that might sound unhinged. But that’s exactly why the Woo Crew reading matters right now.
This week’s private podcast isn’t here to spike your cortisol or manufacture urgency for clicks. No jump scares. No “everything is happening RIGHT NOW.” No nervous-system whiplash. Instead, it’s a cleanup and acclimation week — the kind most people skip because it doesn’t feel dramatic. Which is precisely why it does the most work.
Here’s the ironic twist: while the world feels objectively heavy, the behind-the-scenes structure of your business is quietly getting stronger. The foundations are settling. The systems are stabilizing. The decisions you’ve already made are starting to hold. Business is… good. Not flashy-good. Grounded-good.
We’re still orienting into 2026. New cycle. New rhythm. Old energy closing out in the background. If you’ve been with me a while, you’ll recognize this cadence immediately. If you’re new, this is what grounded astrology and Tarot look like when they’re built for real life, not performance.
Woo Crew is where urgency gets replaced with clarity, and where your intuition stops yelling because it finally has somewhere safe to land. If you’re done with jump-scare readings and want guidance that actually supports forward motion (especially in weeks like this) you know where to find us.
👉 Sunday Woo Crew is $7/month. Tap to hear this week's excerpt ⤵️
Want the whole thing?
Click here & go ⤵️
Let's Hang Out
I’m casting guests for Season 3 of the School of Moxie podcast (airing summer 2026), and this season is reserved for entrepreneurs who are financially self-responsible through their business. Each guest brings a comfort show or movie, which we’ll use to unpack values, decision-making, and the true foundation of your business. If that’s you, apply here.
|
|
Participate + Join In
The AI landscape is shifting fast, and I’ll be guiding you through Gemini as well. Grab the entire AI library for whatever you want to pay, with lifetime access to all future updates… no re-buys, no surprises. The next drop arrives later this month & goes deeper, including ways to use AI to read charts, work through astrological transits, and make better timing-based decisions.
|
