But I don’t wait for it to reset on my goals.

I run a reset at the start of H2 (that’s July 1 for my non-corporate girlies). It’s a chance to reset, refine, and set me and my team up to sprint heading into the back half of the year.

Summer makes that easy to forget. It’s the season everyone takes their foot off the gas: vacations, a real pause, time off. All good things!

But there’s no rule that momentum has to go on vacation with you.

Honestly, I love how slow July gets. New client projects cool off, the inbox calms down, and then in September, everything picks back up at once. So I use that quiet time on purpose. July is when I reset and get my head right, so that by the time September hits, I’m already locked in.

Now let’s dive into the how of it all.

Why I set a North Star

A lot of people love a clear, concrete goal. SMART goals, a number on the wall, the whole system. Great if that’s you. Not so great for me.

What I keep instead is a North Star. One thing I measure everything against. I keep one for work and one for my personal life, and that’s it.

For work right now, it’s scaling the business to $1M/year with 30%+ profitability.

For my personal life, it’s balance and happiness.

Here’s why I love a North Star over a checklist. In my business, something unexpected always lands on my desk. A new opportunity, a left-field idea, a yes-or-no I didn’t plan for. With a North Star, I have one clean question to hold it up against: does this move me towards my North Star or away from it? That’s all I need to gut-check against to decide. It keeps me focused without boxing me in.

The Olympic version

Let’s take a detour into my favorite topic (/s): sports.

Going into the Sydney 2000 Olympics, the British men’s eight rowing crew hadn’t won gold since 1912. They were starving for that win. And they got it.

The way they got there was almost boring. Every decision, big or small, ran through one question: will it make the boat go faster? A second helping at breakfast, an extra session, a night out, a new piece of kit. It didn’t matter what the choice was. It went up against the same question, every time. If it made the boat go faster, yes. If it didn’t, no.

One of the rowers, Ben Hunt-Davis, wrote a book about it years later, called Will It Make the Boat Go Faster?, and that one question is the thing that’s stuck with me ever since.

Is living like that sustainable forever? No. Nobody runs every breakfast through a gold-medal filter for years. But for the stretch that mattered, that single question ran everything. That’s a North Star. One clear thing that every small yes and no gets measured against.

I think about it a lot. Extreme goals require extreme discipline. If you don’t want an extreme goal, totally fine, most of life isn’t lived at that intensity. But if you’re after something genuinely extraordinary, the discipline and the planning aren’t optional. The North Star is what makes the discipline possible, because it tells you what every small yes and no is actually for.

The goal I changed halfway through

Here’s the North Star doing its job.

At the start of 2026 I set a goal: sign one new client a month. On the numbers, we blew past it.

But signing clients was never really the goal. Building the right roster was. And “one a month” had me filling seats instead of choosing carefully, bringing on people who were fine instead of people who were ideal. So I changed it mid-year. For the rest of 2026, we’re pausing on new clients unless someone is an obvious, perfect fit.

We work on a revenue-share model, so when we go deep with a client and genuinely help them level up, we win when they win. Going deeper with the people we already have beats going wider with people I’m lukewarm on. Better business, and honestly a better way to spend my days.

Going deep over going wide. That’s what I’m focused on to make sure we’re properly tracking against that North Star.

And one for me

That’s the work North Star. The other one is personal. I want to get back to actually taking care of myself. I’ve been on and off with it this year, and H2 is when it goes back to the top of the list. I want to feel exceptional all the time, not just on the calm weeks.

So that’s the reset. Summer goals now, end-of-year goals in September, and two North Stars to hold all of it up against.

If you’ve been saving your reset for the fall, this is your nudge to run a small one now.

Cheers,

Audrey

They have it completely backwards.

What people think lucky means

People think lucky means things just happen to you. That you’re a passive participant, and all the good stuff lands in your lap.

That’s not the case. Truly lucky people are active participants in their own luck. They put themselves in scenarios where luck can find them. They make themselves available. They do the work. And when the opportunities show up, they actually take them.

It’s a little like nepo babies. The kids of celebrities and founders are often very talented, which makes sense... they’re the product of two people who were very talented or very smart. And I don’t fault them for the success they have, because they took the advantages they were born into and used them.

If you have an opportunity, why would you not take it? What you do with it is the lucky part. Being born into a certain circumstance or being in a certain room isn’t something to apologize for. Taking advantage of it is the cheat code. You should 100% do that. And that is maximizing your luck.

What it actually means to me

Take me as an example.

I was born in upstate New York to a typical middle-class suburban family. My parents had normal jobs. My dad worked for a Ford dealership, running the service department. My mom was a nurse. Neither of them had advanced degrees when I was growing up, though my mom went back to school and got her master’s when I was older.

College wasn’t a family tradition. Wealth wasn’t a conversation. None of it was accessible to me in the way it is for some people.

What I did have was proximity to ambition. My friends’ parents, my parents’ friends — I saw what hard work could build, even if I didn’t see it as a path for me yet. That’s one instance of luck.

Then I went to college for music. I was going to be a music teacher. And I had a mentor who saw my potential and said, “Hey, I don’t think being a teacher is the right fit for you. You should consider this other path in music business.” That conversation got me to New York, which connected me to the right people.

When I started working for Marie Forleo, I was lucky that I happened to be on my phone the day her team posted the job. I happened to have read something online that week that gave me the right thing to bring up in the interview.

A little luck. A little circumstance. A lot of hard work. I took every piece I’d accumulated and used it to get to the next thing.

I wanted greatness, whatever that looked like. I didn’t know exactly what that meant — I’m still figuring it out. But I always knew I wanted something more. So I was willing to take the risk. To put myself in the right places.

Have I been lucky that it worked out? Yes. But that’s also a product of hard work layered on top of the circumstance.

I have a friend who’s an immigrant, and he often reminds me — you have no idea how lucky you are that you were born here, and what that gives you. He’s right. That is a form of luck. But the success I’ve had is much more a product of hard work and taking every opportunity in front of me.

What a lucky girl actually does

We have a whole internal manifesto for what a “lucky girl” means to us. Here are some of my favorite lines.

A lucky girl doesn’t wait. She creates the life she wants.

I didn’t always know what that life looked like for me. Part of that was self-protective — I didn’t want to fail, so I didn’t want to dream big enough to disappoint myself. Now I’m specific about what I want, by when, and what steps it’ll take to get there. Missing the target is still better than not having one. Dreaming and writing it down is the work.

A lucky girl isn’t defined by the circumstances she was born into.

I understand there’s privilege in even being able to say that. But it’s something Emma Grede talked about on her book tour — don’t fall victim to your circumstance. It doesn’t matter where you started or what has happened to you. What matters is where you want to go next.

Not everyone is going to put in the work to get there, and that’s okay. That kind of life, that kind of discipline, it isn’t for everybody and it doesn’t need to be. But for those of us who do want it, we can’t be scared off by how hard it is. We can’t stay stuck in the mindset of I can’t have X because of Y. A lucky girl doesn’t believe that. She believes she’s capable of anything she puts her mind to.

A lucky girl is a consummate cheerleader.

This one matters to me because I really believe there’s room for all of us to succeed. What success looks like is different for everyone. When you surround yourself with big dreamers and big thinkers, you push each other to do well and you celebrate each other along the way.

Find people who lift you up no matter where you are, even when they’re having a shitty day. We’re here to lift each other up. If that’s not your vibe, that’s fine — but a lucky girl believes in good karma. So spread it around.

And — a lucky girl loves an indulgence, but never to excess.

Have the fun. Enjoy your life. Otherwise, what are we doing all of this for?

Why Lucky No. 12

12 has always been my lucky number. I was born in December. It’s a number I’ve always resonated with, a number I see everywhere, a number that’s always felt like mine.

Building this lucky universe was always part of the plan. Everyone we work with is lucky in their own way — and I want Lucky No. 12 to be a brand, a business, and a universe where luck is something we create on purpose, not something we wait for.

How this shows up

Work. One thing we’ve always been praised for is persistence. If there’s an opportunity I want, I follow up. I pitch different ideas. I check in six weeks later. I check in six months later. Because sometimes they’re not ready right away — and I want them to know we’re here when they are.

That persistence carries through into the actual work. We’re always on top of it. Our clients. Our goals. The small details. I want working with us to feel easy, joyful, fun, expansive, exciting — and I want clients to feel that from the first conversation forward.

The flip side: if I’m feeling real resistance about writing a proposal, doing the research, or finding a way in with a client, that’s usually a sign they’re not the right fit. Lucky girls trust their intuition.

Life. Every single time I say no to something I know isn’t good for me, something ten times better comes along. I have to remind myself of that constantly. Life is abundant. I should never, ever settle.

Settling is the worst thing you can do.

Wrapping it up

A lucky girl doesn’t wait. She creates.

If this resonated, forward it to the friend you’d call lucky. 🍀

Cheers,

Audrey

1. ClickUp

The project management system that has run my entire business since the day I became an entrepreneur. Every task, every client project, every launch — it all lives here. Single source of truth.

My take on PM tools: any tool is great as long as you actually use it. The best tool for you is the one you’ll open every day.

For me, that’s always been ClickUp. Flexible. Powerful. Somehow fits the way my brain works, which is not a small thing.

Why I feel lucky: Because I’ve watched people spend six months evaluating project management tools and never actually doing the work. I picked one years ago and never looked back.

2. Monologue

A dictation tool from the team at Every. I’m using it right now to write this newsletter.

I use it to send messages to my team. To brainstorm. To talk to Claude Code all day long. I can dictate three times faster than I can type, and as a verbal processor, I move through ideas more cleanly when I’m talking than typing.

The downside: my sister and my assistant are permanently confused about whether I’m talking to a real person or to my computer. Turns out, 90% of the time, it’s the computer.

A great alternative is Wispr Flow. I just prefer Monologue because it’s bundled with my Every subscription.

Why I feel lucky: Because the fastest writer in the room is the one who isn’t typing.

3. Claude Code

Regular Claude is great. I love the whole ecosystem. But Claude Code is that girl for me right now.

Every piece of client documentation, every plan, every content brainstorm, every launch doc — it all lives inside Claude Code. It’s an active thinking partner. It audits our work. It concepts new projects, executes on plans, reviews data, drafts launch strategy.

It’s an extension of our team. It’s the reason we can operate as a small, nimble crew with the output of a team three times our size.

Why I feel lucky: Because I get to work with the smartest junior employee in the world, and she never needs a nap.

4. Dia

My browser of choice lately. I’m already hyper-organized with how I separate client accounts and documents, and Dia’s tab organizing features make the whole setup feel effortless.

If you’re somebody who lives with 40 tabs open across 5 client projects, you owe it to yourself to try it.

Why I feel lucky: Because staying organized shouldn’t require willpower.

5. Granola

My note-taking tool of choice. Always open on my computer. I use it for meetings, for brainstorming, for any moment I need to think out loud.

It’s the best note-taker I’ve tried, and I’ve tried them all. Accurate transcription. Fast processing. Summaries I actually read. I keep every client’s meetings in a dedicated folder and can query the whole folder for follow-ups or questions later.

Here’s the move: Granola is connected through Zapier to the Claude Code repo that holds all our client content. After every meeting, the notes flow in automatically. The meeting is cataloged under that client. Action items immediately create tasks in ClickUp.

Nobody is doing data entry on meeting notes. Ever.

Why I feel lucky: Because I can’t remember what I said in a Tuesday meeting three weeks ago — but Granola can, and that’s enough.

The pattern

One thing worth noticing — I use AI as an operational efficiency machine more than a creative partner. Probably 70% of my AI usage is ops and admin. The other 30% is creative sparring.

That’s intentional. AI handles the boring work so my team and I can stay in our zone of genius — marketing and creative — at a level of scale and speed I couldn’t hit otherwise.

A good stack isn’t about more tools. It’s about the right ones doing the boring work so you can do the lucky work.

What’s the one tool you’d add to my list? I love a good rec.

Cheers,
Audrey

P.S. Most of the links above are affiliate links, meaning you get some bonus credit/access for nearly all of them if you sign up using my link (and I do, too!).

Why I write these down

There’s a study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University of California that I find really interesting. She took nearly 300 people and split them into groups. Some thought about their goals. Others wrote them down. Another group wrote them down and sent weekly progress notes to a friend.

The group that wrote their goals down was 42% more likely to actually achieve them than the group that just thought about them. That’s a huge jump for something that takes 10 minutes.

I think there’s a reason for that. When you write a goal down, you’re committing to it. When you just think about it, it lives in the abstract. No timeline, no pressure... no real need to succeed. Writing creates the pressure, and pressure is the whole point.

On scripting

In the manifestation world, there’s a practice called scripting. The idea is simple — you write about a future day as if it’s already happened. In vivid detail.

So you don’t say “I want a $100k month.”

You say: “It’s the last day of June. I just closed the books. We officially crossed $100k. I’m sitting at my desk, popping open a bottle of champagne for a goal I’ve been working toward for five years. I sent the team each a $500 bonus so they can go out to a fancy dinner on the business tonight. We all worked so hard for this, and it’s important to celebrate these milestones. I’m so glad we did it.”

You trick your mind into living inside a world where the thing already happened. Which makes it easier to take the actions that create the reality. Our brains are plastic and susceptible to manipulation. Use the manipulation for good.

The science

Dr. Laura King at the University of Missouri ran a study where people wrote about their “best possible self” (what their life looked like in the future, in detail) for 20 minutes a day, four days in a row.

That’s it. Just writing.

She measured increases in wellbeing, mood, and even physical health. Same mechanism as scripting, just in a lab coat.

Your brain has a filter called the reticular activating system. It decides what you notice and what you ignore. When you write down what you want in real detail, you’re literally training that filter to scan your environment for it. You start seeing opportunities that were always there. You start moving toward them without thinking about it.

The pen isn’t what’s magical here. Your brain is.

So, here’s my list...

The big one for Q2

A $100k month.

By June 30, I want us to have had one calendar month with $100,000 in revenue between client commissions, content work, and the products we’ve got queued up. We’re closer than we’ve ever been.

This isn’t a stretch goal. It’s a math problem I need to solve.

And the reason it matters isn’t the number. It’s what the number lets us do. Pay my team the way I want to pay them. Reward them with bonuses for the work they’ve been putting in. Invest in the Q3 projects we have planned without squeezing resources or putting pressure on the team.

Business manifestations

Three micro goals — all of which require the $100k month above.

1. A physical space in New York. I want us to put in an offer on one this quarter. I’ve got a lot of ideas for what I want to do with it. I’m not going to share more yet, just know it’s a top priority for Q2 going into Q3.

2. Another full-time team member in New York. We do a lot of events, shoots, and in-person activations that need me on site. I want to train someone who can eventually be my proxy on those.

3. 10,000 followers on the new Lucky Girl account. Not because the number itself does anything, but because hitting it tells me the content is landing. I have big plans for this content engine. Getting there puts us on the path to actually running them.

Personal manifestations

Something I’ve been working on: putting myself first. Not as a guilty pleasure, as a business decision.

For the past few years, I’ve made a lot of personal sacrifices for the business. I get sick. I throw out my back (like I did last week). I’m exhausted, so I’m not showing up in meetings the way I want to. All of which affects the business more than taking care of myself would have.

Three things:

1. Seven hours of sleep, every single night. No exceptions. Right now I’m at 6–6.5. Time to it up.

2. The gym four days a week. Physically moving my body is one of the best things I can do for my brain and my work. It has to be in a gym, not at home. I used to be great at this. It fell off in the last six months.

3. A vacation booked for Q3. Not “planning a vacation.” Booked. Flight confirmed, hotel booked, dates blocked.

The energy I’m bringing into Q2

Me first.

I know how that sounds. But the math works: if I take care of me — sleep, gym, time off, all the things above — I’m a better leader. A better strategist. A better friend. A better partner to every client we work with.

Put your own oxygen mask on first. They tell you that on every flight for a reason.

Q2 is the quarter I stop treating “me first” like a guilty pleasure and start treating it like a business decision.

Remember...

A lucky girl doesn’t wait for the universe to deliver. She tells it where to send the package.

Reply with one thing you’re manifesting for Q2. Or hit the heart so the universe knows you’re paying attention.

Cheers,

Audrey

It comes down to three things.

Your digital assets are real assets.

When someone builds a following, starts getting brand deals, and starts making real money - the ones who take off are the ones who realize what they’ve actually built.

Your content library is inventory. Your email list is equity. Your audience data has real, measurable value.

I know it’s harder to see because you can’t hold any of it in your hands. So let me give you another way to think about it.

One of my jobs in my 20’s was working at a fitness studio. We had the physical space, the equipment, the merchandise - all these tangible things that made the business run. You’d never ignore that inventory just because you weren’t standing inside the building every day.

Your digital business has those things too.

Your email list, your social following, your content library, your brand partnership history - that’s your inventory. That’s your equity.

If you had a rental property, you’d maintain it, protect it, and keep track of what’s in it. Your digital assets deserve the exact same attention. They are the most important thing you have. That IS your business.

The creators who get this? They make completely different decisions.

Compensation is bigger than a check.

When a brand deal comes across your desk, the smartest creators I work with don’t start with “how much?” They start with “what kind of compensation makes the most sense here?”

There’s monetary - the check. Obviously. But there’s also experience - access, introductions, visibility. Sometimes the visibility is worth 10x what the check would have been. I had a creator take a lower paid deal because the new access was going to open doors that money couldn’t buy.

And here’s something worth remembering: the people consuming your content has no idea what the terms of your deal are. They’re going to make all the assumptions they want. You can use that. You can use how you talk about the deal to create a bigger perception of value - and use that as leverage for your next deal. Kind of in the same way that a future employer has no idea what your salary is in your current job unless you tell them.

The creators who think about compensation this way build careers that compound. Every deal sets up the next one.

Persistence over perfection.

This is probably the most important one.

I worked with a creator who launched a brand new product. First couple of days - not that many sales. I was disappointed. They were disappointed. But we went back to the drawing board, pivoted strategy a little, and ended up doing a massive launch that blew every expectation out of the water.

If we’d given up after day two, we would have had almost no sales. And their audience would have missed out on something great.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about the creators who win: they don’t expect things to work perfectly the first time. They expect to learn. They marketed it for a week and then they marketed it for a month. They sent one email and then they sent ten. They treated every result as data and kept going.

The most successful businesses you’ve ever seen did not necessarily have the most successful first six months. It takes time and it takes work - and future you will be really happy that you put in the effort.

The bottom line:

Treat your digital assets like real assets.

Think about compensation as a long game, not just a line item.

And when something doesn’t land the first time - that’s just data. Use it.

You’re not just a creator. You’re a business. Start acting like it and everything shifts.

Your turn: Which of these three resonates most - assets, compensation, or persistence? Hit reply and tell me.

And if you know a creator who needs to hear this, send it their way.

xx

Audrey