Chickbook Creative

Chickbook Creative Jamie Chapman
Creative | Consultant [Business | Life]
Brain Bases Business Strategy for Creative Entrepreneurs

📕 What I'm Reading: Chopin In Kentucky by Liz Heichelbech A published novel about a girl who was too big for the room sh...
06/03/2026

📕 What I'm Reading: Chopin In Kentucky by Liz Heichelbech

A published novel about a girl who was too big for the room she was born into. And the visibility question that lives inside every creative entrepreneur who has ever asked: what if someone actually sees me?

Roanville, Kentucky. 1977. A girl named Marie Higginbottom wants to dance. The problem isn't talent. It isn't drive. It's that the world she was born into has no room for her hugeness.

Marie navigates poverty, a religiously rigid father, and the particular ache of being a creative soul in a place that doesn't know what to do with one. Guided by the ghost of Chopin and Misty, the world's first female Elvis impersonator, she finds her way toward the thing she was always meant to do.

It is funny and heartbreaking and completely disarming.

What stayed with me after reading it:
Visibility is the oldest creative problem there is.

It's about what it costs to be seen as exactly who you are in a world that hasn't asked for you yet. That decision — made quietly, repeatedly, in small moments — to show up as your full self anyway.

That decision doesn't get easier just because you grow up or build a business. I've watched brilliant creative entrepreneurs do exactly what Marie does — find the costume that fits the room, soften the edges, stay just busy enough that no one gets a clear look.

This is our June read for Curated Conversation Evolution. We spent May inside uncertainty and found something underneath it.

June is where the costume comes off.
🔗 https://www.creativeincites.com/shop/p/chopin-in-kentucky.
🔗 Learn more about Liz Heichelbech at https://www.creativeincites.com/

06/02/2026

Most of us were handed a version of visibility that looked like performance.

Show up consistently. Post more. Be everywhere. Project confidence even when you don't feel it — especially in business.

That's not visibility. That's a costume.

Real visibility is quieter and much more demanding.

It's the space between your true self and the version you've shown to others. The distance between the offer you keep softening and the one you actually want to make. Between the price you quote and the one you know you're worth. Between the version of yourself you've been rearranging all year — and whether you're willing to let anyone see her yet.

For creative entrepreneurs that gap can feel enormous.

For ADHD and neurodivergent entrepreneurs the cost feels even higher. When your nervous system is already managing uncertainty, resistance, and the relentless hum of tolerance — adding the threat of being truly seen can feel like one ask too many.

Underneath all of it, the same question keeps surfacing:
💜 What happens if I show up fully, and someone actually sees me?

That question is the heart of visibility. This week's Weekly MindSweep is live. It's time to unpack the suitcase of costumes together.

🔗 Read the full issue: https://chickbookcreative.com/weekly-mind-sweep

There's a document on my desktop I haven't opened in six months.It's not unfinished. It's complete. And that's exactly t...
06/01/2026

There's a document on my desktop I haven't opened in six months.

It's not unfinished. It's complete. And that's exactly the point.

This Tuesday, the Weekly MindSweep lands in inboxes — and June is our month on Visibility.

I wrote myself into this one. Because it felt dishonest to open a conversation about visibility from behind the consultant lens while quietly doing the exact thing I've watched clients do for years.

👀 Keeping the offer in the folder.
👀 Staying just busy enough that no one gets a clear look.
👀 Waiting to be the person who's ready before letting anyone see the work.

Visibility isn't a marketing problem. It's a nervous system one.

And shrinking wasn't a choice you made. It was a response you learned.

This week's issue explores where visibility is already showing up in your business — in your offers, your pricing, your content, your body, and yes, the document on your desktop — and offers one brave step to take before next Monday.

It's personal. It's practical. And it's the beginning of a conversation this community has been circling for months.

Want it in your inbox Tuesday morning?

👉 Subscribe at https://mailchi.mp/chickbookcreative/chickbook-creative-weekly-mind-sweep

05/31/2026

Real people. Real work. Real Monday mornings.

Join Curated Conversation, a space for creative heart-centered, ADHD-friendly entrepreneurs to connect and grow together. Sign up today and work through VISIBILITY with the support of like-hearted entrepreneurs like you.

The visibility costume comes off in June.

🧠 Mondays at 8am EST
💜 First month is free
✨ Stay for the Belonging

If you’re already a member, see you Monday at 8am.
If you’re new, your first month is free. To get the Zoom link, just subscribe to the Weekly MindSweep: https://bit.ly/MindSweep
If you’re a returning participant and find these conversations valuable, become an official subscriber here: https://chickbookcreative.com/facebook-group

Here's What I Dare You To ConsiderWe are all living on a moving rock hurtling through space.That is our reality. And tod...
05/30/2026

Here's What I Dare You To Consider

We are all living on a moving rock hurtling through space.

That is our reality. And today, right now, we have gifts, ideas, and offerings that others need.

🧠 What if you created something that brings you so much joy that it fills your cup daily?

🧠 What if it also generated the revenue that supports the life you actually want to live?

🧠 What if the thing you keep almost launching, almost finishing, or almost saying out loud is exactly what someone is waiting for?

Heart-centered creative entrepreneurs are change makers.

We are a gift to those around us. They need what we have to offer. When we hide our light because uncertainty makes us afraid of what it might cost, when we hold back and keep adding things to the list before we feel ready, I want to say:

How dare we?

💜 How dare we not share our offerings?

💜 How dare we not communicate the gifts we bring?

💜 How can we keep ourselves small on this moving planet, with one wild and beautiful life to live?

We have today. We have this moment. That is not nothing; it is everything.

So, with the new awareness we've built this month about where uncertainty lives, what it does to your brain, and why it keeps you looping, I challenge you to play big. Be loud. Be proud. Be the thing you came here to be.

Because what if it all turns out just as beautiful as you?

Read more in the Weekly MindSweep No. 228 | What's On My Mind | Uncertainty
👉 http://chickbookcreative.com/weekly-mind-sweep/week228

A Beautiful ReminderBefore we finish this month, I want to share something that came from inside our Chickbook Creative ...
05/29/2026

A Beautiful Reminder

Before we finish this month, I want to share something that came from inside our Chickbook Creative Curated Conversation community, because it deserves to be held.

Melissa Dorsky of Melissa Dorsky Designs shared a quote by Nicola Jane Hobbs that gives us exactly what we need as we wrap up this series: a way to stop the story your mind creates before it takes over. It was labeled The Uncertainty Pledge, and I cannot think of a better way to end this month than with these words.

"Whenever I feel the anxious, queasy energy of uncertainty and notice myself overplanning, overthinking, and grasping for control, I place my hand on my heart and gently remind myself: Uncertainty is where possibility lives. Uncertainty is where freedom lives. Uncertainty is where hope lives."

— Nicola Jane Hobbs, shared by Melissa Dorsky

Put your hand on your heart. Say it out loud if you need to. Carry these words with you into whatever comes next. Find your place of belonging and support, and practice every day.

05/28/2026

The Thing Underneath the Thing Underneath the Thing

What I didn't expect from this month was where it would take me personally.

I began writing about uncertainty in May and ended up experiencing it in ways I did not expect.

In the hospital hallways, quiet rooms, late-night phone calls, and paperwork I had never faced before, I kept coming back to a statement I now carry like a smooth stone in my pocket.

The stories our minds create are not facts.

They are old stories, learned behaviors, and past experiences. Our biology is doing what it was meant to do: keeping us small, keeping us safe, and holding us back from things that might not work out.

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real threat and an uncertain business decision. It reacts the same way to both. For many of us, especially those with ADHD, big dreams, and full hearts, that reaction is always there in the background of every launch, every proposal, and every moment we think, "maybe I should wait just a little longer."

We have called this caution, or strategy, or simply not the right time.

And, sometimes it is.

But sometimes, it is just uncertainty that keeps us playing small.

Read the Weekly MindSweep No. 228 | What's On My Mind | Uncertainty
👉http://chickbookcreative.com/weekly-mind-sweep/week228

What's Inspiring Me. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.If you create anything — a business, a brand, a body of work — ...
05/27/2026

What's Inspiring Me. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

If you create anything — a business, a brand, a body of work — this book will name something you've been living but couldn't quite articulate.

Pressfield calls it Resistance. And the moment I encountered that word, I felt the particular relief of being understood.

Here's what stayed with me: Resistance rarely shows up as doing nothing.

For creative entrepreneurs, it shows up as doing almost everything. The emails. The brand tweaks. The research rabbit holes that feel like progress but quietly keep us from the real work.

He also says Resistance is proportional to the importance of what you're trying to do. The bigger the dream, the louder the noise.

The book is short, direct, and a little fierce — in the best way. Pressfield doesn't coddle, but he does believe in you.

If you've ever stared at a blank offer, a blank page, or a calendar block you scheduled for yourself and then filled with something safer — this book is your mirror and your permission slip, both at once.



https://chickbookcreative.com/whats-inspiring-me

I want to tell you about my grandmother's hands.Her hands are small, but they have held so much. Babies, grief, Sunday d...
05/26/2026

I want to tell you about my grandmother's hands.

Her hands are small, but they have held so much. Babies, grief, Sunday dinners, and a hundred ordinary mornings. Last week, I held one of those hands in a quiet room in Florida and said, "You can rest now."

I've watched what happens when a life winds down. I've been in the rooms where the decisions are made, where the paperwork piles up, and where resistance shows up in questions that have no easy answers. I have seen what it looks like when someone reaches the end, and the life they built is complete: everything they created, the relationships they cared for, the moments they chose, and the ones they missed.

Here is what I have been thinking about after spending a month exploring uncertainty.

Tomorrow is not promised.

Something I've learned from watching a life coming to a close, especially one lived with so much love and also with so much unfinished, is that we have today. We have this moment, right now.

And what we do with this matters more than we let ourselves believe.

Read the Weekly MindSweep No. 227 | What's On My Mind | Uncertainty
👉 http://chickbookcreative.com/weekly-mind-sweep/week228

My grandmother thought the photo I was taking was a FaceTime call.So she waved.Fully present. Couldn't see clearly. Show...
05/25/2026

My grandmother thought the photo I was taking was a FaceTime call.

So she waved.

Fully present. Couldn't see clearly. Showed up anyway.

I've been sitting with that image as I close out a month of writing about uncertainty. Because I think that's exactly what we're doing every time we hit publish without knowing how it will land, say the number out loud before we feel ready, or build something we've never built before.

We're waving at something we can't quite see clearly yet.

Tomorrow I close out four weeks of uncertainty with the question that's been underneath all of it.

What if it all turns out just as beautiful as you?

Week 228 lands in your inbox tomorrow. Not subscribed yet? Today is a great day to fix that.

👉 Link to sign up: https://mailchi.mp/chickbookcreative/chickbook-creative-weekly-mind-sweep

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