Summer of Substance!
being smart is the bare minimum. a lot of you are boring.
Hey stars,
I had a genuinely terrible time in Los Angeles last month, to the point that I couldn’t even enjoy my fresh Sugarfish! Let’s unpack:
Having lived and worked in West Hollywood for awhile, I’d popped in expecting to hit my usual spots before heading to interview the CEO of LinkedIn in Newport Beach. Despite my outstanding productivity on the 6h flight, I landed in my old neighborhood only to be smacked in the face by — what I can now see — was grief.
Grief for the life I wanted the last time I lived there, grief for the things that ended while I was there and since, grief I didn’t even know I was still carrying around. As you know from this piece about my late grandmother, grief is my least favorite emotion, but has somehow become one of the most familiar, which you’ll understand if you’re also a high achiever.
My frustration with LA truly startled me as it was so much bigger than the trip deserved. My Runyon hike wasn’t producing enough endorphins to forget about it, so when I got back to Brooklyn, I itched for an internal resolution beyond a TikTok tarot reading journaling session.
The books on your shelf are always there for the exact moment you need them, and paradoxically, I reached for Black Swans by Eve Babitz, probably the most LA writer there ever was. On a blanket in Fort Greene Park I read her tales from start to finish, the tango lessons that melt into love affairs, the rendezvous with beautiful strangers who turn into whole chapters of her life, the way she loves her friends like they are the great romances of her life.
God, I want to be a woman with that much substance, I thought.
How did she get all these stories? It hit me that I already have a few of my own (IRL friends know), and what’s more, is that they are much more precious than the Image that I’d made so important.
I laughed at myself for ever being upset about the mistakes, because every one of them had formulated into something greater, a woman who can love deeper, learn faster, and walk away from almost anything with at least a great story. Even my wild moments are nothing next to Eve’s, but they are the whole reason I’m me. I started to feel better about them. Then I started to revel in them, and wonder, where is that aliveness today? Where is the substance?
I keep reaching for that word lately, substance, because it’s truer to me than smart. Anyone can be smart! (Smart is everywhere, it’s the bare minimum now that we have Claude, duh!)
But to be a woman that can carry around a worldview, an informed one — the kind that’s contradictory, messy, crazy, and interesting precisely because it is so completely hers. She has an essence and she spends her whole life cultivating it, and that is the woman I have always wanted to be. Honestly, it’s the woman I am growing into, and I’m not gonna get there by following somebody else’s ‘safe’ path.
The problem is you cannot rush There, but GOD, did I want to.
I remember being 21 and desperate to already be on the other side of adulting, to skip straight to the part where I was accomplished, respected, the smart one, the woman who had it all figured out (OK Jenna Rink!). I wanted the authority without the years.
But every single lesson so far, every failed thing, every win, every move that looked like a detour, all of it is what turned me into the woman (and businesswoman) I am now, and they are all equally valuable.
Even the ones that felt like getting stabbed in the chest.
Even the ones that felt like jumping up and down for joy.
You don’t get to keep only the wins. You have to go through all of it, process it, alchemize every messy thing that ever happened to you into something that is finally, unmistakably yours.
So you cannot follow a stranger’s list of wellness hacks and expect to come out the other side Perfectly Well (except mine, because theyre good!), and you certainly cannot build a fun, meaningful, story-worthy life if you are never once willing to be a little chaotic. The chaos can be embarrassing; I get embarrassed by my mistakes all the time!
That makes me HUMAN — I’m not a cold, perfect, Barbie doll with all the boxes checked who never goes through anything, and you aren’t either. You hate the people who are, so why do you pedestalize them while punishing yourself for having growing pains?
We talk constantly about how cringe it feels to post, to be perceived, to put ourselves online for strangers to clock every detail, but the cringe we actually run from is messing up in real life, getting it wrong in front of the right people, being bad at something new while everyone watches. I am laughing because, well, that’s the tax, the tuition, in fact, for taking off. And for having fun. And for a great story.
If you don’t take risks in your real life, you will not take them in your business, and if you won’t take them in your business, you will never grow into the authority you are actually meant to be. Authority is earned, and the only way to get your reps in is to go out and accumulate the experiences that give you something real to say. The worldview comes from the living. There’s no world where you get the standing without the stories.
Black Swans reminded me that I’d stopped being vulnerable for a while.
I let the grief that surfaced in LA talk me into staying controlled, staying legible, keeping every corner of my life tidy and on-strategy and safe to be looked at, away from getting hurt, and a controlled life is a limited life. I realize that it wasn’t about being able to explain every move to everybody; it was about being excited to make them, because they’re mine.
I never once got anywhere good by being too careful. I got here by wanting things out loud and being bold and impatient enough to ask for them, curious enough to ask the stranger about themselves, excited enough to spend time on my stupid little hobbies, and watch the seeds sprout.
So this is what I want for you this summer, and I want it badly!
Go collect substance. A LOT of people are boring these days because they want to be “put together.” I challenge you to collect Real stories, the kind you’ll still be telling in twenty years, and not the kind you take for Instagram dot com!
Go somewhere with no agenda, say yes to the person that makes no strategic sense, take the risk you’ve been filing under ‘not right now.’ Fall in love, or at least stay open enough that it could happen to you (hard!) Get vulnerable with someone who actually has the power to disappoint you (harder!) Be bad at something in public. Let it get a little chaotic on purpose, because how else will you know where to direct your intention?
And if you’ve already built something real and you’re ready to turn this experience into actual authority, to make Q3 the quarter you stop hiding behind the building and start being known for it, that is exactly what I made the Authority Edit for. It’s for the woman who has the traction and is ready to be positioned for what’s next. The next cohort is happening, and I would genuinely love to build alongside you.
You are too smart to spend the longest, brightest season of the year optimizing a life you keep forgetting to enjoy. Report back with a good story, please!
xx Alexis
Sent to you from the pool at the Villa I just arrived at in the south of France for Cannes Lions — if you’re around, come to my panel tomorrow! Steven Bartlett comes out right after me…but I think I’m more fun ;)
Such a wonderful read. I’m always so timid to begin something new due to messing up loudly. But what if doing so will allow me to grow in real time?? 🫣
Alexis, “the worldview comes from the living” feels like the sentence that carries the whole piece. You take what began as grief in an old neighborhood and turn it into a larger challenge about substance, authority, risk, fun, and the stories that make a person interesting enough to trust. I especially appreciate the way you name the temptation to stay controlled, legible, tidy, and safe after disappointment, then remind readers that authority is earned through experience, vulnerability, mistakes, desire, and the courage to keep choosing aliveness. Grateful for the wit, honesty, and force with which you are inviting ambitious women to stop optimizing themselves out of a life worth telling stories about.