Inside the Heroine’s Lab — Systems, Shifts, and Slowdowns

Sharing the Elixirs: Dispatches from The Lab

This is one of the members-only dispatches from inside The Lab, but this one’s on the house. Most dispatches stay behind the curtain, alongside live coaching calls, exclusive quests, and early access to everything I build. If this feels like your rhythm, join us inside.

This is Sharing the Elixirs: Dispatches from The Lab, your backstage pass to everything unfolding inside The Heroine’s Adventure.

Whether you’re here to chart your own Heroine’s path (and only want the Heroine’s Adventure content), or you're watching how I build this narrative-fueled business from the inside, or both, there’s something in here for you. Think of this as a dispatch from the Lab: part story, part strategy, part behind-the-curtain.

Skim what calls to you. Skip what doesn’t. It’s your adventure.

What's the Story

Hello, from a dreary, gloomy, Italian early summer day. I am cuddled up on the couch in the living room of our Italian home. We have no heat in this house (it's strictly a summer home) and these old walls love to suck up and hold onto the cold and the damp. I'm looking out the window before me at the mountains and their forests, which, although as green as the most winning hothouse broccoli, are capped by foreboding, angry clouds that are making their presence known through grumbles of thunder. Mark is sitting on the other side of the couch watching his football, and we have our legs tangled together under a blanket.

Although the weather refuses to cooperate with our early escape from Scotland, we are still enjoying our early arrival in Italia. Our days in Italy are mostly marked by meals. I'm up around seven to work out and do a few hours of writing and business. When Mark gets up, we are off downtown for a coffee and a wander. We will usually pick up bits and pieces for lunch. We head back up to the house for lunch, have a wee nap (pisolino), and then I spend the afternoon and early evening writing and businessing (product development, emails, etc.) until dinner. If it's nice enough, we might eat at home on the mountain-view patio, but we are often off downtown again for dinner in one of our local restaurants.

Creating is my happy place, so I love all the thinking and writing time.

I should be working on my Italian, but...

Anyway... turning the page

Heroine's Adventure Updates

What’s In Motion

I’m very pleased with the new format of a bi-weekly Pocket Quest and a bi-weekly travel post for the free audience. The thinking behind this change went as follows:

I am committed to making a portion of this work available to everyone who wants it. That means that I need to have a healthy offering in front of the paywall. However, I was starting to spend all my time on the weekly journal prompts as they transitioned more into quests. This meant less time on the content that would eventually make money, and a business can't run on fumes (or my cash infusions that are starting to annoy Mark). Moving to bi-weekly means that I can still release high-value Pocket Quests and have time for the other work.

I am a shiny new thing kinda Gal, and my head was recently turned by the idea for a new publication called Midlife Elsewhere. I have spent fifteen years as a digital nomad, living a global life, and I have much of value to share about this topic. But...who am I kidding? I have no time to start another publication on top of everything else. The new bi-weekly travel posts were a great solution to my distraction, and a good fit for the Call for Heroine's readers. What do you think?

OOOOH BOY - Have I got something good coming up! You’ll get sneak peeks into what’s happening in The Lab over the next week or two, but the bottom line is…

…I’ve created 8 fictional midlife heroines. I’m leaning into my fiction background here. These heroines reflect all of us, and will show up in every Quest, living out the kinds of messy, thrilling, liberating shifts we’re all navigating. Think of them as your story doubles: sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, always wildly relatable. You’ll meet them (and their stories) soon.

What's Working

Notes. Notes. Notes.

If there is one thing you could do to increase your visibility without starting a new social media channel (oh, the horror), Notes is the place to be. Over the last few months, I have continued to develop my notes process and strategy.

I always used to worry about not having enough to say. I worried about repeating myself with the same ideas. I thought that every time I needed to write something, I'd need to start with a blank page. But systems and processes work, and the more you hang out with me in The Lab, the more you will discover that for yourself. I’m currently reaping the benefits of "sticking with it" and rejoicing in the abundance of the compound interest of habits within a good system.

Here's my process for Substack Notes in case a version of this would work for you. I use a note-taking tool called Tana. It's a bit nerdy and complicated to learn and set up, but you could easily replicate this in Notion. In fact, this could be a Notion template that my daughter could easily mock up and make available to you (although it might take a while—see below). Let me know if a template would be useful.

Challenges

My daughter is my partner in The Heroine's Adventure and wants to stay my partner. She takes care of the graphics, the website, the workbooks, etc. I love this arrangement because I want to create a legacy for her, and we love working together. However, she is discovering her best life in Brooklyn and working her little bum off as a pastry chef in a major restaurant group, while still working on the side for clients she has remaining from her virtual assistant business. Because she must focus on the paid jobs first (Brooklyn is expensive, people!) and we are still building up our revenue generators here, often our work goes a little slower than I'm used to. Luckily, it doesn't stop the good stuff from flowing into The Lab (to you!) because all The Lab content comes directly from my brain, and we don't need to add fancy graphics, covers, or formatting. It turns out that patience is its own kind of productivity. All I can do while waiting for her to catch up is keep writing.

On the Horizon (updates to The Lab)

As you know, I am breaking down The Heroine's Adventure into smaller Adventure Quests. They will be delivered sequentially (chapter by chapter). This is the entire Adventure Quest bundle, so you know what to expect as the year progresses:

Heroine's Adventure Framework

• Chapter 1: Recognize Yourself as a Heroine #Heroine Chapter

  • Map Your Ordinary World: The First Step to Changing Everything #Adventure Quest

  • Rewrite Your Backstory: Expose the Lies You Believe #Adventure Quest

  • Forge Your Heroine’s Compass: Define Your Core Values & Vision #Adventure Quest

  • Protagonist Mindset: Stop Playing Secondary Roles in Your Own Life #Adventure Quest

• Chapter 2: Encountering a Pivotal Shift #Heroine Chapter

  • The Choice Agent: How to Move from Passive Passenger to Decisive Chooser #Adventure Quest

  • Spotting the Call to Adventure: Seize the Shift #Adventure Quest

  • Overcoming the Inner ‘No’: Breaking Through Fear to Say ‘Yes’ #Adventure Quest

  • Turning Forced Change into Opportunity #Adventure Quest

• Chapter 3: Embarking on an Adventure #Heroine Chapter

  • Aligned Desires: Uncovering Your Ultimate Whys #Adventure Quest

  • Spark the Muse: A 7-Day Reboot for Creative Momentum #Adventure Quest

• Chapter 4: Tests, Allies & Enemies #Heroine Chapter

  • Meeting Your Mentors: Assembling Your Personal Round Table #Adventure Quest

  • Archetypes in Action: Recruiting Your Journey Team #Adventure Quest

  • Your Inner Heroine: Uncovering the Archetypes Within #Adventure Quest

  • Battling the Shadow: How to Manage Difficult Relationships #Adventure Quest

• Chapter 5: Facing Challenges #Heroine Chapter

  • Challenges as Breakthroughs: The Threshold Guardian #Adventure Quest

  • Master the 5 Key Resources—Time, Money, Skills, Energy, Passion #Adventure Quest

  • Rewrite Your Life Story: Overcoming Negative Self-Talk #Adventure Quest

  • B-Story & Subplots: Manage Multiple Life Areas Without Losing Focus #Adventure Quest

• Chapter 6: Undergoing a Personal Transformation #Heroine Chapter

  • The Heroine's Map: Your Blueprint for an Extraordinary Life #Adventure Quest

  • Epilogue: Capture Lessons & Closure to Fuel Forward Movement #Adventure Quest

• Chapter 7: Returning with the Elixir #Heroine Chapter

  • Tracking, Celebrating & Sharing Your Elixirs #Adventure Quest

The titles may change, and as I develop, I may discover that the Quests need to be combined or expanded into new ones, but this gives you a good idea of what's coming.

You already have "Map Your Ordinary World," and I am currently working on "Rewrite Your Backstory," which should be out in the next week or so. I am trying to commit to a quest per week, but that may be insanity. We'll see how it goes.

What I’m Learning/Loving

Reading:

I just finished Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. Its premise was intriguing, but I'm still pondering how I felt about the story in its entirety. What was it supposed to be exactly? Was it a horror? A thriller? I won't spoil it for you in case you read it, but I will say I saw the end coming from a mile away.

Currently reading The Upgrade, by Louann Brizendine. A fascinating investigation into how the female brain gets stronger during menopause. Here are a few highlights from my Tana Flint library (see the above video to explain what the heck that is).

• "The Transition: The developmental phase of a woman’s life in which the brain and body enter unfamiliar territory as the reproductive-phase circuits are finishing their job. This is the phase formerly known as perimenopause."

• "The Upgrade: The wisdom phase that emerges after spending decades in the hormonal war zone. Emerging into the most powerful identity phase of a woman’s life, this is what was formerly known as menopause or postmenopause."

• "Perimenopause” and “menopause” are fossil words created by men at pharmaceutical companies."

• "Who do you want to be today? Who do you want to be in your transition and beyond? You have decades ahead of you following the reproductive phase of life. Who do you want to be as you enter the fullness of your age? Is it a leader, an artist, a visionary, a mentor and sponsor? Is it a life filled with freedom, purpose, and focus unencumbered by the responsibilities of an earlier time?"

• "The dance of youth, of hormones that trapped us in the arena of nonstop acquisition—marriage, children, career, money—ends when the ovaries go deaf to the brain’s demanding signal for estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone."

Watching:

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel.

I am a Tudor freak. I gobbled up the first two books in this series, and Mark bought me this last one for Christmas two years ago, but I just haven't been able to get past the first 50 pages. Watching the series made me want to try again. Sorry if you don't have BBC iPlayer, though, because I'm not sure where this series is showing in the US.

Your Turn

This space is for me as much as it is for you. I want to be sure I'm delivering what you find valuable. Let me know which sections of the Spoiler Alert you like. Want to geek out about process? Want to see more Italy? More mindset shifts? Hit reply or comment. I read every word you send.

Love,

LM xx