As I climb the stairs, I notice the maximalist wallpaper that you won't find in your grandma's living room, telling a story of flowers, inverted angels, bulls, and birds, on a blinding bright orange background.

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When I get to the floor, the exhibition is "The Future is Female," and when you see the neon uterus with boxing gloves as ovaries, you know for sure that you are not at your grandma's house.

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But I was not there for the art (shocker). I was there for a business network event. I did it once, and it was enough for nine years.

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I don't have the introvert excuse for not attending more of these events (I'm an ambivert). But I had the belief that the room is a giant snooze, overrun by over-hyped humans spouting passive-aggressive elevator pitches. But there I was in a room full of women who build things and have businesses, just like you and me.

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After a boring coffee and a bone-dry bagel, Maxine Clark, the founder of the very own St. Louis Build-A-Bear, started her keynote.

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Well, that she is a four-foot-ten-inch-tall woman (even shorter than my mom, who was also a warrior) in a male-dominant world and invented an experiential retail model that grew to 400 stores and 5 billion in sales is impressive.

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But what made me sink in my chair was not that. It was what she doesn’t have: the old imposter syndrome that we carry on our backs. All because every Friday, her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Grace, gave a sharpened red pencil to the kid who had made the most mistakes that week. "I learned early that it was OK to make mistakes," Maxine said. "And it's OK to try."

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I was not the only one nodding; we could hear the nodding in the room.

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You see, most of us never had Mrs. Grace and walk around being overly polite, with red marks that we got from the usual English teacher, crossing everything that makes us different.

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Then, no wonder that, after 1000 rewrites, your personality still isn't translated into the about page. And, you know that you are fun, intelligent, and doing good work.

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Or, your color palette is neutral beige, your voice becomes stiff, generic, even boring, especially to yourself.

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And, the worst of the worst, you feel that nobody cares about what you put out there. You are invisible. Thinking, what is wrong with me????

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I know, fixing it all feels like you're putting hot sauce on top of Botox, no matter how spicy, moves nothing. It is paralyzing because you know what is good, and what you've been creating doesn't match your standards of excellence. And then the impostor syndrome and perfectionism take over, and you do nothing. Or maybe keep putting more hot sauce on top.

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Ahh, but the internet is cruel. It determines your ability to connect with the right people from a beige square and three stiff sentences in milliseconds. And if you're feeling uninspired or shipping content but it doesn't land the way you hoped, you might have to cancel the vacation you've been planning since last year (maybe Lisbon this time?).

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The current world pays for the real current human, not the old polished version.

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You can shift any of that in less than an hour with The Public Edit, which is Mrs. Grace's magical red pencil.

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It runs through your brand presence, finds the place you've been trying to keep your paper clean, and marks it. It shows you where you've been editing yourself out, the goodness that's been silenced, and gives you the right next moves.

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And then it hands you the repair, written in your own voice. 40+ paste-ready assets. The version of you that earned the red pencil. And, you'll have it in your inbox before bedtime.

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You'll know it when you read it. Your stomach flips. It's you becoming alive again, sounding and looking like yourself, getting past the paralysis and perfectionism. Then the inbox moves again, calls stop feeling ice-cold, people get you, and stop treating your work like a maybe. You finally book the trip.

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So, pick up the boxing gloves that have been hiding under your bio, and make your presence originally yours: real and paid.

Talk soon,

X, O.

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