We were having dinner on a Sunday, or maybe it was during the week. All I remember is being 22 and sitting at a kitchen table in Wellington with my then-boyfriend’s parents, who said:

“Enjoy this decade: your twenties are for fun, travel and doing whatever you want. Your thirties are harder — you have young kids, ageing parents, you’re trying to establish yourself in your career, you’ve got a mortgage — there’s pressure from all angles. Even in your forties, things are calmer… the kids are in school, you’re more established in your career, and financially. …

Whenever I hear the phrase ‘change the world’, part of my heart rolls its eyes. After spending my early twenties saturated in this kind of chat, I eventually learned that when people speak solely in vague platitudes, it often comes from a place of vanity and/or moral superiority.

Yet when I hear people talking about a specific issue of the world, it’s a completely different story. When someone is detailed and evidence-based in their approach to fixing a unique challenge, it’s inspiring. It’s the reason why I got into startups in the first place.

Six weeks ago, I launched Copy…

“It sounds like a photocopier company,” Dad said over dim sum one Sunday a couple of weeks back. Thanks, Dad. My parents have never really ‘gotten it’ when it comes to what I do for work (“she works in I.T.”, they tell their friends, which, as my boyfriend points out, makes it sound like I stroll in with a briefcase to fix the email servers).

Anyway, Copy & Co isn’t a photocopier company but a copywriting service for founders and startups. And I’m excited that the first month has gone so well! …

After over a decade working with fast-growing startups where time is short, and the to-do list is long, I’ve learned how to help first-time founders and busy brands articulate what it is they’re really trying to say thoughtfully and quickly.

I’ve worked with all kinds of startups — the crowdfunded, the VC-backed, the lone operators, the startup-within-a-corporate. One thing they’ve all had in common: they’ve needed content that cuts through the noise.

These days, 75% of people don’t trust ads. 74% identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions. It’s never been more important to share…

Sweet freedom is hours away! And I’ve enjoyed quarantine way more than I expected. Over the last week, I’ve become an honorary resident of Stars Hollow, because I have been watching Gilmore Girls, Gilmore Girls… and more Gilmore Girls.

I only recently started watching the show for the first time, decades after everyone else. Yet the benefits of being this late to the party: there is not only a revival already on Netflix but also lots of opinion pieces already in existence, on how Rory became The Worst (‘a monster’) and why Jess mattered.

Anyway, the show has been a…

“It sounds like your idea of heaven,” my boyfriend joked. “You get Thai food delivered to your door whenever you want, no cooking or cleaning up and the trash gets taken out for you every night.” (I am slightly obsessive about trash duty in our London apartment ever since we had a mice issue.)

“Yeah, it’s not so bad,” I’ve been saying. Because it isn’t. In fact, this whole live-in-a-hotel-for-awhile has inspired me. Maybe this is how to carve space for creative inspiration? I have a friend who checks into a hotel whenever she needs hyper-focus for a creative project…

39 hours. Door to door, from my London flat to this Hong Kong hotel room. I’m here. I made it. A hometown that has felt borderline fictional in my head for much of this year — it’s real, it exists, it’s here, and so am I. Barely. When I first landed I felt like a photocopy of myself, I was so tired.

While the HK airport process was rigorous (to say the least), the benefit is that you enter the city feeling a level of security that I haven’t felt all year in the UK. Here, the safety systems seem…

Here in London, we’ve just gone back into Lockdown 2, which feels like the extended, unrequested sequel of a bad movie that’s already gone on for far too long. I know it’s important to stay positive, but sometimes it’s hard to remember why. (I loved this description of lockdown life.)

And then something happens that makes 2020 suddenly feel like a year of hope and change.

“Dream with ambition. Lead with conviction. And see yourselves in a way others have not, simply because they have not seen it before,” Kamala Harris said as she addressed the crowd.

Over the last…