This One Luscious Life
I didn’t know how to use my college degree to find a job. But I figured out how to follow an intention to make my living by being my best self.
START ME UP
Post college, and after leaving McMenamins, I went to work as a smiling-faced slinger of snacks at Trader Joes in Beaverton, Oregon. I was happily employed with this people-centric company when I had my first child. My intention to begin this child’s one luscious life through healthy practices meant that I just said no to disposables. (I said an even bigger to no to using the term “sposies”, which still makes me cringe.) We were a cloth diaper family. Then I saw a new product that intrigued me. They were a hybrid diaper, a colorful cloth outer with a fully compostable, and flushable (what?!) inner. And they worked really beautifully on my baby’s bum. The company was called gDiapers, and I looked them up. They were local! Get outta town, they were IN town. I commenced to writing an email, an absolute love letter, to their general mailbox. It was a work of art, that email. The president and co-founder, Kim Graham-Nye, invited me into their office in NW Portland, just two blocks away from my first studio apartment in the city. The Graham-Nyes were about to be interviewed for The Today Show. They were a teeny tiny family company that was about to go big. The HQ was also the Graham-Nyes’ home, and there was onsite childcare for the small staff’s families. Kim and her husband, Jason, who was the CEO, invited me to work for gDiapers as their Customer Service Manager. And what happened after my enthusiastic acceptance was an eight year whirlwind that changed the course of my life.
For anyone who has not worked in a start up, imagine an empty board game. The earlier you arrive in the creation of a start up, the more empty is the game. Which means the few people tasked with creating the game — the first employees — are figuring out everything from what the game looks like, who the players are and what they do, and most importantly, what’s the point of it all? And how does that point get communicated to others so that they care and want to play, too? I could write an entire book on that eight year adventure, but for the purpose of what is failing to be an abbreviated account of my work history, here are the highlights of lessons learned, opportunities leaned into, and teachers to whom I’m forever grateful:
I was hired to interact with customers, who were mostly parents and grandparents of brand new babies, just like I was. We were all very tired.
I worked alongside a small but mighty creative marketing team, who welcomed my curiosity. They shared their knowledge in their areas of expertise: traditional marketing tactics, digital advertising and SEO, email marketing, and grassroots, community programs.
I offered suggestions to the marketing team and to leadership that I’d gleaned from my interactions with customers. There were ways we could better communicate with them, solve problems before they happened, and leverage their passion in order to reach other parents.
I began to write website content, and then took on the emails too. As Facebook came online I grabbed the reigns, ultimately cultivating a community so strong it would be recognized later as exemplary in Social Media for Dummies and other articles and case studies. Facebook’s frenemies, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, came online and I put those to use to connect with and inspire other parents. As mommy and daddy bloggers owned the internet, I made friends with them, I even became one of them. And I learned how to form authentic partnerships so that our respective platforms could go farther, together.
Always a Team Spirit Commissioner at heart, I organized the company’s team-building activities, like the g Olympics, coordinated our staff off-site retreats, and planned and ran our on-site events. I also leaned into my love for photography and began to capture photo content for the company, as well as create cheeky culture videos for the company’s YouTube channel.
gDiapers was the first CPG (consumer packaged good) to receive B Corp certification. This is where I learned about and fell in love with B Corps, understanding what it means to use business as a force for good, and why we desperately need it. I learned about commercial production, and the upstream and downstream impacts that are unavoidable, but that can be sustainably softened through thoughtful planning, striving to create relevant products that are Cradle to Cradle, not designed to extract and be discarded.
From Customer Service Manager to Communications Director, I was building out a toolkit in thanks to so many truly remarkable teachers, and building relationships with game-changers and innovators.
LOVE BIGGER, REACH FARTHER
I ended my time with gDiapers in December 2013, and I began the new year in a role that had been custom created for yours truly at a marketing communications agency called Koopman Ostbo. They hired me as the Social Media Strategist for their clients, and I learned a great deal in a short amount of time, most importantly of which was this: I was capable of more. I wanted to do more for these clients, and I couldn’t do that within a narrow role designed only for the socials. So I toyed with the idea of self employment. I reached out to the remarkable teachers, game-changers, and innovators I had grown to know through the years and asked “Should I do this? Could small businesses use someone like me to prioritize their communications, and then put them into action?” I was met with YES. The first YES came from Tracy Puhl, CEO of GladRags, who would go on to be my longest running client in my newly formed marketing business, Mamore Communications. My tag line was Love Bigger, Reach Farther. That meant taking my tendency to always search for the right words, and applying it on behalf of brands and organizations who were using business as a force for good.
From 2014 until 2021, Mamore Communications offered mindful and creative communications solutions. I designed everything from one-off promotional campaigns and long-term ambassador programs, to monthly email newsletters and cornerstone website content. I produced photoshoots, created and upheld brand standards, and provided clients with monthly analytics and the path forward. I grew online communities from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands. I created connections for clients with other brands, nonprofits, and collaboration opportunities. I organized volunteer outings with clients, cleaning up Portland’s parks and sourcing supplies for houseless neighbors.
If there was a name to the proverbial board game it might have been Reciprocity. The players were myself, my family, and my community, and the point of it all being this: We have just this one luscious life. Let’s show up for it by being our best selves, in service to life, right now.
IN CUSTOMER SERVICE TO HUMANITY
The global pandemic shut down a great deal of small businesses. Mine was kept afloat for a time by GladRags, who, thanks to the economical and reusable nature of their much-needed products, experienced a surge in demand, as well as my client, GoCamp, who offered people self-contained getaways with COVID-safe camper van rentals. And then GoCamp got bigger and needed a bigger team. And GladRags was well-equipped to carry on without my services, so I accepted a full time role with GoCamp as Director of CX (Customer Experience). In that role I recruited and hired a fully remote team, dedicated to connecting authentically and communicating clearly with one another and with our greater community of customers. I helped my team build their own toolkits. I demonstrated and shared a personal philosophy on being in customer service to humanity. How an intentional customer experience can be a force for good within a system that wasn’t built to be ethical. Customer experience is the whole package, not just the single transaction at the cart. It’s the words and photos that got them there and the why behind the game, it’s seeing themselves as players who are relevant, represented, and respected, not just as dollar signs. It’s the flow of the website, the thoughtfulness of the FAQs, the genuine About Us story, the follow up emails, the social media representation, and the impact of the game on the players, both current and future.
I was recently asked, “You know you do the work of the devil, don’t you?” Marketers are the liars, the snake oil salespeople, and the villainous thieves of capitalism. I’m no angel. But when marketers stand by a philosophy of being in customer service to humanity, they are instead this: The truthtellers, the protectors of people, the diverters of destructive, extractive practices, and the resourced creators working toward a circular economy, toward sustainability, toward improved human and environmental health.
Customer service and mindful marketing is where the revolution for kindness within capitalism can take root. The real buying power is in our capacity to see each other with eyes wide open, to hear each other with egos shut down, and to navigate the world around us without ultimately trying to make a sale. Instead, to ultimately make the most of this very moment. Because how we spend our moments is how we spend our lives, and success isn't in the future, it's right now, always has been.
Setting a scene for client Life inTents, and setting my own intention to continue cultivating a life lived in the present moment, in service to life itself.