TL;DR - Life-first business strategy, delivered weekly. One strategy you can actually use, a few resources worth your time, and a couple favorites we're loving right now. You in? 🕒 3-minute read.

Hi Reader,

It's officially back-to-school prep week at our house.

Yes, I know we have a few more weeks left. But I like to plan ahead. (Shocking, I know.)

This week's list: Haircuts. New shoes. Backpack organization. Reviewing bus routes. Mapping out calendars.

And here's the twist: in our city, the girls switch schools four times. Four! So this year they're moving again, this time to the 7th and 8th grade building. New building, new bus routes, new lockers, new routines. All of it.

Twin girls heading into junior high. I don't know how we got here either.

So every August, before the first bell ever rings, we do the prep work.

We walk through the schedule. We figure out where the bus stops. We buy the shoes (more on those below, because I have thoughts).

We get our foundation set so that when the chaos of the actual school year hits, we're not scrambling.

And honestly? It's exactly how I run my business.

Inside our community (Anti-Social School™ and The Club), we host a monthly planning party. Every single month. Before the month runs you over, you sit down, map it out, and set your foundation.

Then we layer on a monthly marketing roundtable, where we go deep into ONE topic that's actually working right now. Not ten tactics. Not a firehose. One thing, done well. We go deep and then review it as a community.

Think of it as eating lunch with your friends and sharing what's working and what's not. Kind of like figuring out what to wear on the first day of school, and what definitely not to, in 7th grade terms.

(Don't you just love all these back-to-school analogies? Anyone else want to celebrate with a fresh notebook and a new pen? Just me?)

Here's where it gets good.

This month, we're opening the roundtable to everyone. And the topic is a big one: setting up your SEO and GEO foundation.

Translation: how to get found and recommended when someone asks Google, ChatGPT, or Claude for exactly what you do. It's how over 50 searches a month find and recommend my business in AI. And I'm bringing the whole checklist, the exact one we use.

​Save your seat at the roundtable​

I like to think of it as part of our business foundation. So here's my question for you: what can you do this season to clean up your house, get things organized, and get ready for fall?

Happy prepping,

Holly

P.S. We dropped a bonus podcast episode this week with Cris, founder of Main Street Operator and a Collective Co-Op member. She spent a decade watching how AI actually gets built inside companies like Uber and Instacart, and now she's bringing it to small business owners like us. Her rule: play freely, deploy carefully. Listen here.

✨Your Weekly Strategy Shift

Foundation First

Before every school year, we prep. Before every month, we plan. Not because it's fun (okay, it's a little fun), but because a strong foundation makes everything after it easier.

Your business works the same way. The founders who feel calm in Q4 are the ones who set their foundation in August. Pick one thing this week: your calendar, your offers, or how people find you. Clean it up before fall arrives.