Every year for our anniversary, my husband and I like to splurge on a fancy meal. We love to explore new places, but I was reminded this November that the Old Hickory Steakhouse is one of our favorites for a reason!

Lately, I’ve been listening to The Anxious Achiever podcast, hosted by Morra Aarons-Mele. Its mission is to reframe how we think about mental health and neurodivergence at work.

Today’s world has highlighted the need for our firms to consider how societal issues affect our most valuable assets – our people. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are more important than ever as we work to ensure our organizations are places where every individual is seen, heard, and celebrated for their unique strengths, values, and perspectives.

My fiancé and I moved to Colorado from Southeast Kansas in the summer of 2018. It didn’t take long for us to realize, and fall in love with, the Denver social norm that is “Brunch”. To be honest, you Coloradoans had me at “Bottomless Mimosas” and “Breakfast for Lunch.”    

Fast forward three years to 2021, and we found ourselves experienced brunch connoisseurs living in the small touristy town of Idaho Springs, which is roughly a 30-minute drive west on I-70 from Denver and has a population of just over 1,800 residents. With it being on the way to ski towns like Silverthorne and Vail, traffic is often the worst part of living here, at least during the summer and ski season. One of the best things is that downtown, home to so many amazing local shops, bars, and restaurants, is less than a mile from my front porch. Choosing which restaurant to write about from all of these amazing local places wasn’t easy, but it’s Main Street Restaurant that has taken the cake, or pancake, I should say.

Get a sponsor: How to find the person who can help you get ahead at work.

This powerful talk from Carla Harris, business executive and author, explores how to identify and develop a productive sponsor relationship with someone who will speak on your behalf in situations such as closed-door meetings that you are not yet a part of.

Asymptomatic Spread of Racism

If you’re like me, you’ve been around the block a few times with self-help audiobooks, seminars, workshops, and probably even podcasts. As marketers and business developers, we are constantly looking for new ways to connect with each other to build meaningful, and hopefully profitable, relationships. Many of you have probably seen, or at the very least heard, the name Jay Shetty.

When you become a member of SMPS Colorado, you get two separate logins – one for SMPS Colorado and the other for SMPS National. When I began my membership in 2017, I was very new to the industry and my role while working as a sole marketer. I took the opportunity to search MySMPS and SMPS.org for any resources that could help me succeed in my new role. 

Whether the Community Boards, Directory, or the Education Webinars, there is so much to go through and take advantage of. One resource from SMPS National that I found the most helpful, even now after five years, is the Bookstore (https://www.smps.org/resources/store/). The Bookstore contains various publications including some well-known, popular ones such as the Marketer magazine, Blueprints, and Markendium, as well as lesser-known publications like the A/E/C Marketing Fundamentals, Domains of Practice, and Marketer Must-Reads e-books. Some of the publications are available at no cost to current members while others must be paid for in order to receive via mail or digital copies.

The most recent (free) publication that I downloaded was the Marketer Must-Read e-book: Digital Marketing. The e-book is a great option for Marketing and BD professionals looking to up their game in the digital world. It has tips galore provided by other professionals in the industry.

As marketers, we know that creating a winning proposal requires significant time, thought, and resources. We also know that “spinning our wheels” on projects we have no chance of winning, don’t make good business sense, or don’t fit our firm’s strategic goals keeps us from investing in opportunities that are right for our business. Not to mention, these instances lead to lower win rates, poor team morale, and burnout. Losing repeatedly isn’t fun for anyone.

“If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t YOU. The problem is your system.” Sound too good to be true? Well, in Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, James Clear explains that we repeat bad habits not because we don’t want to change badly enough, but because we don’t have the right system for change in place. He offers a practical framework: don’t focus on the outcome; focus on the process. Changing your focus to your system means creating tiny, “atomic habits,” which compound over time and naturally lead to remarkable results. Think a 1% change, compounded over time (365 days), leading to exponential change (37x better in a year)!