Hi there,
​
How was your morning? Because Lord, mine did not start off the way I anticipated. This is a bit on the longer side but sorry can’t do the concise thing today.
​
Anyone else sob in the car on the way to school drop-off over HALLOWEEN??! 🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴. Allow me to explain.
​
1. My perimenopause hormones are on fire and it turns out that HRT patch DOES make a difference. I stopped using them because IDK thought, “do I REALLY need this??” ****yes. Yes you do Patrice.

2. I hate crafts but you bet I stayed up until 2AM making these remedial DJ Booth costumes for my middle and youngest (“Old” kids don’t dress up here at school… I can’t even talk about it.)

3. And my kids could BARELY be bothered to take a photo this morning and I seriously lost it.

Like yelling outside in front of my house choking back sobs, “MOM was up until 2AM!! I CUT OUT GLITTER THINGS. LOOK AT MY BAGS.”
​
It reads like a bad sitcom but the lack of enthusiasm by my kids brought up all sorts of weird stuff (and has nothing to do with them and everything to do with me.)
​​
Lisbon Halloween genuinely depresses me and it ends up highlighting the nostalgia of my own past that I have left behind in my home country.
​
I feel insane writing this but life is random like that when something out of nowhere will trigger you deep and you find yourself acting like an unhinged toddler shrieking among the dog walkers at 730AM (so so sorry to Zeba’s dad!)

If anyone else had a less than ideal end to your week, I see you, I am you.

A reminder we are whole ass humans and whatever breed we are force fed on the social apps of a “cooler than human” corporate/entrepreneur baddie is just FALSE ADVERTISEMENT.

We’re all juggling so much.

But lest I take you along a journey of my Halloween Ennui, I’d like to chat about a morning this week during drop-off that did not end with me crying and might be more valuable to you.

I put on a “shuffle” podcast and almost caused multiple accidents because the guest was saying so many amazing things I was frantically trying to voice note what he said to myself. **I do not recommend this tactic but OH MY GOOD LORD was this podcast good.

Natalie from Boss Babe had a guest who I had never heard of before but was talking about the state of Marketing in 2026 and beyond. Ryan Lavesque draws on his own experience after a $70 million deal to sell his company collapsed, so he moved his family to a farm in Vermont.

That experience changed his understanding of success, technology, and what people actually crave.

​You really must listen to it but top line he said the next decade of our professional lives is going to be a push toward what is real.

As AI makes it easier for everyone to produce content and appear polished, something interesting happens: the more artificial the world becomes, the more real human connection is worth.
​​
I nearly drove on a loop in the roundabout (btw still have no idea REALLY how a roundabout works).

In addition to this being what I’ve been teaching for about 6 years now in my storytelling programs, it’s EXACTLY the premise on which My StoryPro is built on. ​

So like the true unhinged person I am (I mean so many examples at this point) I decided that I MUST KNOW HIM.
​
-So I went to LinkedIn. (no connections I know of.)​
-I subscribed to his newsletter (he has a GREAT newsletter story in the podcast)​
-Bought his book (may as well give it a plug here) ​
–Followed him on IG.
-Messaged my VT friend

-Replied to his first newsletter he sent.

When none of that elicited anything, I decided to up the stalker energy and tag him in a story.

And a few hours later… he was in my DMs.

We started to chat… and before I knew it he was asking for my calendar link.

I don’t know where this goes and I have no agenda other than I FELT like I needed to speak to him.

Another human who so deeply cares about the work that gets me out of bed day after day and wrote a book that so far I am like “YOU ARE IN MY BRAIN.”

So I am not sure if your takeaway is, “STALK LIKE CRAZY!” until you corner someone into a reply.. Or if you take this as a reminder that no one cares more about what you do than YOU.

And this is important.

When you care about something you need to put yourself out there, even at the expense of being rejected, feeling a little like a loser and being OK with having no idea what the outcome is.

Even at the expense of your kids being like “MEH” when you show them the GLORIOUS PICASSO work you did all night long on their costumes.

One more just because I’m a masochist…
​**ok that one really stung.

You have to keep finding the people who believe in what you’re building or who light up when you talk about it. **does this mean I need new kids for next Halloween!?

And sometimes that means tagging a stranger on Instagram at 9PM on a Tuesday or staying up until 2AM for something that only matters to you.

That’s not unhinged…I think that’s just caring, and we should all strive to be doing things that we care about.
​
And one more passage (I feel like I write these newsletters in passages like a frontier woman with a quill pen)

I’ve written about my friend Kar Brulhart before. ​

Kar cold DM’d me in Brooklyn back in 2021 after seeing a reel that spoke to her (I was her Ryan at that point!)
​​
She’d just been laid off while on maternity leave and instead of going back to corporate, she decided to build a business and she was very early days.

We found out we lived blocks apart so she showed up to our first coffee with an actual spreadsheet of every call she was having and what she was charging (way too little).

She bought me lunch and asked every question she could think of about building a service-based business.

I knew immediately she had that psychotic entrepreneur “it” factor.😆

A few months later she asked if she could do a new social media training she was developing for my storytelling mastermind students…and I said, “Come on over girl!!”
​
She actually did and she taught this training alongside me when I was 3 months postpartum with my future “Gives no Fs about Halloween Child.”

Before she was laid off, Kar ran social media for the UN.
Launched social impact programs.
She speaks 3..4? languages.
She cares deeply about the world and was always exceptional at what she did.

Fast forward to 2026, she has a multi multi six-figure business and her husband Max (a Meta ads genius) , who spent 10 years at Google, now works for her business.

She has helped coaches, founders, and service providers (many who I know and have referred to her) generate close to a million dollars in tracked sales through her mastermind: The Revenue Studio.​

And she’s coming to teach inside My StoryPro next Wednesday, October 28th at 12:30PM ET. (she is an avid user of our tool for her launches)

This is free for all My StoryPro members by the way.

But if you need some hand holding in getting momentum on sales, obtaining more clients and you don’t have a large following, she is your WOMAN.

If you’ve ever thought: “I post. People like it. Nobody buys.” you might want to schedule time to chat if her program is for you.​

Ok so that’s it from me this week. I’m off to work on my FIRST EVER Lisbon-based summit where I’m speaking and leading a storytelling training for a bunch of startups.

I thought it was the Tuesday after next but NOPE!
So full panic mode is activated.

My kids are off for fall break next week (for real didn’t we JUST start school) so trying to get a lot of stuff done this weekend.

But before I go….

Tag the stranger. Stay up until 2AM for the stuff you care about. Show up with the spreadsheet. Don’t hide the parts that make you you.

May you go forth and be a little unhinged about it naturally.

There, I fixed it!

XO
Patrice