Sensible Woo is the mind. Sasquatch Media Grounds is the muscle.
Hey Reader,
When the Golden Globes announced their first-ever Best Podcast category, the headline read like a cultural milestone. But once the eligibility list dropped, the real story emerged… and it wasn’t innovation, inclusion, or the rise of independent creators.
It was consolidation.
The original 25 eligible podcasts spanned true crime, politics, celebrity interviews, and news, but nearly every one of them was tied to a major network: ABC, CBS, NPR, Wondery (Amazon), Spotify, Barstool, iHeart, SiriusXM. Not a single indie show made the list.
Then the nominations narrowed to six:
- Armchair Expert (Wondery/Amazon)
- Call Her Daddy (SiriusXM)
- Good Hang (Spotify)
- SmartLess (SiriusXM)
- The Mel Robbins Podcast (SiriusXM)
- Up First (NPR)
SiriusXM alone swept half the category.
And here’s what else didn’t make the cut:
💩 No BIPOC-led shows.
💩 No queer-led shows.
💩 No independent creators.
💩 No political voices on either side of the aisle (including Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, or Pod Save America).
💩 No true-crime giants like Morbid or Rotten Mango.
💩 No rising creator-economy titles at all.
The eligibility list was assembled by Luminate, an analytics company owned by Penske Media… which also owns the Golden Globes, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter. Corporate media selected the pool, corporate media platformed the finalists, and corporate media benefits from the resulting prestige cycle.
This wasn’t an awards category. It was a content oligarchy flexing its influence. And that’s where things get interesting...
What This Means for You, Your Content, and the Creator Economy
This move wasn’t about celebrating excellence in podcasting. It was about defining what “good” means before audiences get to decide for themselves. It’s an attempt to recenter institutional authority in a medium that no longer belongs to institutions.
The Globes are signaling three shifts… and they’re worth reading like operators, not spectators.
First, institutional media is trying to reclaim narrative control. By nominating “safe” shows (no sharp political edges, no controversy, no unpredictable personalities), they’re attempting to standardize a medium that’s rapidly evolving beyond their grasp.
Second, corporate dollars are betting on celebrity audio as the safest blueprint. Celebrities feel easier to monetize than everyday creators, but here’s the quiet problem with that strategy: audiences are tuning out hyper-polished content faster than ever. AI has flattened production quality, and machine-smooth sameness has become boring. Human voice, human point of view, and human texture are now worth more precisely because they can’t be replicated.
Third, the creator economy is gearing up for another growth spike. Every time institutions gatekeep, creators explode.
🔥 When old media dismissed YouTube, creators built empires.
🔥 When publishers ignored bloggers, digital-first authors reshaped the industry.
🔥 When studios tried to control short-form video, TikTok rewired global culture.
🔥 When early podcast networks consolidated, indie creators quietly built million-dollar shows.
We’re entering that era again.
The Globes chose stability over innovation, predictability over originality, and corporate comfort over cultural reality… which means the space for creators just widened.
Why Sasquatch Media Grounds Is Built for This Moment
You’re not building content to fit into a six-slot corporate mold. You’re building content that makes people feel something. That’s what institutions can’t engineer… and what audiences are hungry for.
Sasquatch creators tend to be:
🌶️ Too original for corporate PR.
🌶️ Too values-driven for algorithmic beige.
🌶️ Too culturally awake for institution-safe storytelling.
🌶️ Too human for AI-smoothed sameness.
You don’t need a network to validate your voice. You need craft (clean audio, strong structure, clear positioning), clarity (what you stand for and who you stand with), consistency (a cadence your audience can feel), conversation (the one machines can’t automate), and systems that let you produce like a pro even if you’re a team of one.
👣 That’s the Sasquatch advantage.
👣 That’s the next era of podcasting.
👣 That’s where the creator economy is headed.
The Globes can crown the shows that keep advertisers comfortable.
We’ll build the shows that keep audiences awake.
And in a world run by algorithms, the most subversive thing you can be… is unmistakably human.
Don’t be boring. Start by training your creative brain in the CEO Winter Rebellion. This isn’t a productivity sprint… it’s a humanity reset.
For one month, you’re rewarded for exploring again. You listen to podcasts you wouldn’t normally pick. You wander through YouTube creators outside your niche. You practice the sacred art of DNF’ing (did not finish!) anything that doesn’t spark curiosity. You follow your interest like breadcrumbs.
Because when curiosity wakes up, your conversational energy sharpens. You’re funnier, warmer, more magnetic. You walk into 2026 with stories to tell and ideas that didn’t come from a template or someone else’s rigid formula… and probably with a prize in hand, which never hurts.
This challenge isn’t about finishing. It’s about becoming someone people want to talk to again. Machines can automate output, but they can’t make you compelling. They can’t make you magnetic. They can’t make you unforgettable.
Only you can do that by showing up as your imperfect, textured, deeply human self. And that’s what moves your business forward… every single time.
Click to see what prizes you're playing for and to join before December 31st!
Gossip From the Creator Trenches...
🎬 Hostile Takeover Drama
Netflix, you sneaky little dark horse. If you blinked last week, you might have missed them yanking a very shiny toy out of Paramount’s hands, which promptly sent MAGA money into a full Monopoly-board tantrum. Yes, literally Monopoly. The prize everyone’s circling now is Warner Bros., a studio that hasn’t felt this desired since its Harry Potter glow-up era. This is billionaire theater at its finest… loud, strategic, and boasts a secondary story line with the Saudis. Grab the popcorn, take a bathroom break now, and settle in before the final act starts getting unhinged.
🔗 Watch the billionaires bicker here
🐭 Mouse Power Moves
I’m not shocked… if you can’t beat ’em, license the hell out of ’em. Disney is officially teaming up with OpenAI, handing over IP for use with Sora, and somewhere in old Hollywood a bottle of Pepto just went empty. The ripple effects inside legacy studios are already shaking the walls of an industry I know very well, and it’s not calming down anytime soon. What’s fascinating is the leverage OpenAI still holds here, even while losing daily user ground to Google’s genuinely impressive new Gemini rollout. Translation… the AI race is not a straight line, and power doesn’t always sit where the loudest headlines say it does.
🔗 Mouseketeers, blink twice if you're OK
👾 This Is Your Brain On Tetris
If you’ve ever hung out with me in real life, you already know my phone case looks like an OG Gameboy. I was a Mario menace, a Tetris queen, and it turns out I accidentally rewired my brain for adult problem-solving long before anyone was talking about neuroplasticity. Millennials, take your victory lap. Gen Z… grab a controller and take notes. Pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, and stress tolerance were baked right into our after-school snacks. Who knew we were training for capitalism with falling blocks?
🔗 Congrats, you have a smart brain
🐉 The Creator Economy Dojo is coming...
If you’re done half-assing your content and want a space to legitimately train your craft, this is your heads-up.
I’m opening a brand-new media dojo in the new year for creators who want consistency, clarity, and real momentum — not another “accountability group” that dies in week three.
Founding members get the cheapest rate I will EVER offer and first access when doors open in January.
If you want in before the masses:
→ Join the early-access list.
This is where your content gets bold, your message gets paid, and you become the creator people buy from — not just follow.
👏 Standing Ovation, Please
This week I’m giving a full, feet-on-the-floor standing ovation to Rachel Allen and Solveig Petch, who just released the inaugural issue of Thinking Bigger, published through their brand Triple Diamond. And yes… it’s a physical magazine. Real paper. Real ink. Delivered to your actual mailbox like it’s 1997 and we still believed in the future.
I love seeing this return to tactile, human-made media… products you can hold, dog-ear, and leave on your coffee table like a quiet signal that ideas still matter.
A few months back, my Voxer chats lit up when my Dino Club asked if I’d join a panel discussion for the magazine on the wage gap facing women entrepreneurs. Cue the sound of me sprinting to my keyboard to type out some very spicy answers 🏃♂️💨
What made it even better was getting to contribute alongside longtime, deeply trusted friends in entrepreneurship. No performative takes. No surface-level platitudes. Just honest, lived experience.
Here’s my full response to the question they posed to the panel, “What do you think needs to happen to close this financial gap between female-owned businesses and male-owned businesses, both on a macro scale, and on the part of individual owners?”
Macro: fund women. Fund women of color. And stop making us dance through flaming hoops for money you’d throw at a guy with a PowerPoint and a dream.
Micro: women need to charge more, sooner, without apologizing. Stop hiding behind ‘I just want to help people.’ Helping people doesn’t mean discounting yourself into the ground. Play bigger. Be bolder. Ship the damn thing before it’s perfect. And for the love of god, learn the tools (AI included) that make your work scalable.
And while we’re here, let’s talk about how many women I’ve seen this past year trying to build their businesses in 15-minute increments. You can’t. Full stop. And I get it — you’ve got kids, caregiving, a million plates spinning. But you have to realign your expectations. The version of entrepreneurship that got sold to us by the last graduating class of online gurus? Total bullshit.
Most of them built their empires with massive unfair advantages: early social media when organic reach was free, entire staffs behind them, or more capital than you could fathom without gagging. Nobody is doing this single-handedly. Everyone has some kind of unfair advantage.
Mine? I have a frankly insane amount of private credit. The story of how I got it is awful — trauma, abuse, survival — but I have it. And I use it. It’s how I built my studio this year. I bypassed loans, skipped external investors, and self-funded overnight because I felt like it. That’s a power play.
And here’s another thing that won’t make me popular: I think the cult of ‘sisterhood’ in business is a scam. It benefits the people at the top who hoard audiences and don’t share the stage. I’ve rebalanced my networks on purpose — equal parts men, women, and queer folks. The men? They’ve never once said, ‘That’s a stupid idea.’ They’ve introduced me to bigger rooms and pushed me to think bolder. The women? They hold emotional space beautifully, but too often I’m fielding free ‘brain-picking’ requests instead of paid collaborations. That has to stop. If you want to play at a high level, you’ve got to act like it. Pay for coaching. Pay for services. Pay for expertise.
It’s not supposed to be easy. You might need a job to fund your dream. You’ll work a lot. You’ll be lonely some days. And yes, you’ll be exhausted. But that’s what big swings look like. And I wish I saw more women taking them instead of burning energy on comparison and competition dressed up as ‘friendship.’
If you want to read the rest of the panel responses and see how my counterparts answered this question, grab your copy of Thinking Bigger. It’s thoughtful, bold, and very much worth the space it takes up in your real, physical world.
Business Tarot + Astrology
December is doing the absolute most… and the private podcast has quietly become mission control.
These aren’t “weekly vibes” or soft reflections you forget by Tuesday. The December readings are more like runway lights for early 2026… highlighting pressure points, green lights, and the moments you’ll want to move on while everyone else is still hesitating.
This week’s episode is the kind that settles your nervous system and says, yes, you’re reading the room correctly… now let’s do something useful with that information.
If you’re not inside the Woo Crew yet, you’ve got two very different paths in front of you:
- You can join now for $7/month and unlock every December reading, including the ones pointing directly at your first Q1 moves.
- Or you can hang out inside the CEO Winter Rebellion in December and start your Woo Crew subscription in January with your gifted free month to kick off 2026.
Cheeky? Completely. 😘 Strategic? Also yes.
If clarity, direction, and a grounded cosmic read that translates into real business momentum sound like what you’ve been craving, waiting is optional… but access is right there.
👉 Tap into the Woo Crew for $7/month.
Your future self is already nodding. Tap to hear the excerpt ⤵️
Want the whole thing?
Click here & go ⤵️
Let's Hang Out
Megan Eckman and I hosted another networking party with the focus this month on movers & shakers in the social good spaces. It's amazing what can happen with some light facilitation, coffee, and snacks! Click here to meet each person pictured and connect with some new faces. See someone who can help you? Connect with them on LinkedIn!
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Participate + Join In
The AI landscape is changing faster than any of us can keep up with. Yes, I'll be helping you with Gemini, which is making ChatGPT look like it's stuck in the 8th grade with braces. Before my new bots land in your hands… get the entire library for whatever you wanna pay. The original training included with a new one on the way. The foundation remains the same: ask better questions, get better answers.
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