This is all you get
Hey friends,
The last time I wrote, I told you I had just been diagnosed with cancer.
Six months of aggressive chemotherapy (and a lost head of hair) later, it’s time to slowly re-enter the world of work. While I’m far from through this, the hibernation served me well and, well, life must go on.
As you can imagine, a sudden stage four diagnosis is terrifying. It’s also a gift. Nothing will rattle your perspective and recalibrate your priorities so quickly; health, family, work, none of it looks the same.
I’ve changed in many categories, but two are particularly relevant here.
Personal
From a personal perspective, two very important things have become clear to me:
- I no longer believe in goals
- I have been prioritizing poorly most of my adult life.
Quite simply, goals no longer make sense. A goal is an “end point”, but I’m not interested in endpoints. I’m interested in process. In priorities.
For example, I could set a goal to lose 20lb by february. Or I could say “health is my priority, and here’s the small steps I will take every day to honor that”. If I walk my talk, the 20 pounds won’t matter. The elimination of processed food, daily walks, strength training…all of this will add up to a state of physical wellbeing that far exceeds some dropped pounds.
Goals are proxies for success, and I’m no interested in proxies anymore, only in clear, intentional upholding of my priorities.
Which is why I know I’ve been scheduling like a chump for years. I used to schedule my work stuff and hope to squeeze a workout in. Or hope I could get away from my laptop long enough to get in the sun and take a walk.
No I realize that everything has to fit around my health. If buying and prepping food, working out, and walking my dog takes most of the day, then everything else will have to shift. I’ve never seen someone in a hospital room wishing they’d worked more. And as someone who’s been in and out of a cancer center a bazillion times this year, surrounded my illness and sorrow, I ain’t going back.
I recently read this line in a book:
My near death experience took me by my shoulders and shook me out of the daze of ordinary life. It shouted “this is all you get, so why aren’t you living like it?
I don’t believe in “living like there is no tomorrow”. It’s a silly quest. (Do you realize how intense every day would be if you really did this?), but getting cancer was like having someone come and deep clean my mind, removing the cobwebs and years of stored junk thoughts.
Professional
I’ve also changed my mind about community, and subsequently, my work.
For a dozen reasons, I no longer believe that most businesses should build community. I’ve been preaching this from the mountaintops for so long, but I’ve now come to believe almost the opposite: very few companies should build community.
Community is the final stage of the customer experience for most. It's something to be earned, and most companies simply don't build the scaffolding to supportit.
Turns out, becoming a professional patient is quite the masterclass in customer experience. Between countless hospital visits, insurance calls, and medical portals that seem designed by sadists, I've had a lot of time to think about how businesses interact with humans.
Here's the thing that keeps hitting me: We're all carrying around so much unspoken feedback. Every confusing form, every contradictory policy, every moment that makes us question whether anyone actually tested this experience before inflicting it on real humans.
Most of us don't even bother giving feedback anymore. We just... leave.
I've always been that person who notices everything. The awkward flows, the broken processes, the tiny frustrations that add up to customers deciding "this isn't worth it." It's like having a sixth sense that you can't turn off - I spot every detail that makes people question their decision to stick around.
And now, after months of being on the receiving end of some truly questionable customer experiences (from hospital parking to my Oura ring), I realize something:
Most businesses have forgotten how to human.
Which means its time for a change.
For years, I've helped brands build communities, operating under the belief that community was the ultimate strategy for customer loyalty. But I've had an uncomfortable realization:
Most companies aren't ready for community because they haven't mastered the basics of treating customers like actual humans. They want to build a mansion on top of that broken scaffolding.
I've spent years watching companies chase complex strategies while missing all the tiny moments that make customers quietly decide to leave. The confusing emails. The broken automations. The support processes that feel like solving a murder mystery.
So while community will remain a part of what I do— it will no longer be the primary focus.
I'm becoming something different: Let’s call it a customer experience detective.
Every week, I'll share some variation of:
- Real-world examples of wins and fails
- The tiny details most people miss
- How to fix the broken bits
- What actually good 'people-ing' looks like
Same mission, sharper focus: helping businesses remember how to human.
Some of you might be wondering why this matters so much to me right now.
Here's the truth: When you spend months being a customer of the healthcare system, you develop a fierce appreciation for experiences that make you feel seen, valued, and cared for. Life's too short for crappy customer experiences.
I'll admit that it's hard to come back. While work is necessary and matters, my biggest fear is that I'll get sucked back into the vortex of upside down priotities and misaligned values and loose the script all over again.
But by turning one of my personality bugs into a feature isn't the worst way to start.
I encourage you to hit reply and say hello. I've been on this island for a while, it would be nice to hear from people.
Onward,
April
PS: I've moved to a new platform and am no longer using Beehiiv to send this newsletter. I hope this doesn't land in spam, but if it does, please do tell your inbox that I'm allowed?
