Julie Laufer: Most of us know exactly what we want and what we want to do. We've just gotten really good at talking ourselves out of it. I'm Julie and welcome to Be Cringe, the podcast that explores what happens when you start living for yourself and stop worrying about the opinions of others. This might be cringe, but we are doing it anyway. Happy to have you here. Let's go. Hello and welcome to Be Cringe. I am so excited to introduce today's guest, Lia Zneimer Lia is a former marketer, current author She has this ⁓ robust career that I wait to dive into of being in-house at a couple of well-known and maybe not so well-known startups, ⁓ has gone out on own for two years and is sort of returning and starting to see her ⁓ as a portfolio career in a way that I find really inspiring. So I'm gonna let the conversation speak for itself, but Lia, welcome. I am so excited to have you.
Lia Zneimer: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be cringe. That's honestly like the highest praise. I love what you're doing.
Julie Laufer: I can't wait. I am glad you feel that way and thank you. It's so funny whenever I reach out to somebody for this podcast, even if I do feel like I have the messaging down and there's someone that really resonates, there is this truth that I am essentially saying, hey, I have a podcast about people who do cringey things and I think you would be the perfect guest. So I always appreciate that. So far it hasn't seemed to offend anyone and I appreciate that you were so willing to jump in.
Lia Zneimer: I love it. No, I feel like there's so much, oh my gosh, of course I'm honored. I think there's so much conversation these days too around climbing Cringe Mountain and doing it together, especially on Substack, I think. That's where all the gems are, in my very non-biased opinion. But I think there's something really wonderful about everyone collectively just embracing it. Like what other choice do we have? Life is short. No one's saying, you're the only one. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: Yeah. What other choice do we have? We all feel it to different degrees. I mean, I some people really don't totally feel it. And I to have that level of, ⁓ don't know, whatever. But most of us feel it. ⁓ Lia, I would love if ⁓ could introduce yourself in the way you typically do, whether that's on a work call or at a dinner party or...
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, most of us do.
Julie Laufer: If you meet someone walking your dog, whatever feels right today.
Lia Zneimer: I love that. Well, one of the things I actually really struggled with in prepping for this episode was how to introduce myself. It's funny. I feel like I've undergone this. journey, transformation of sorts in the last couple of years where I did not know how to introduce myself without starting with what I do for work and who I am through work and through that lens. And candidly I don't know that I know how to do that. And this is another... there's a podcast I recorded recently and she asked me how I would introduce myself without work and I was like, I should know this, I should know the answer. I like panicked because I ask people this in my newsletter all the time like, what's your... pitch these days and then I look at myself in the mirror I'm like I don't have one. My sort of today's elevator pitch that feels right is I'm a writer who's exploring various elements of a portfolio career and thinking about what a nine to five-ish role can look like as part of a broader career ecosystem. I'm also a dog mom to waffles and wife. I live in the East Bay right outside of San Francisco with my husband and I have always been a storyteller. I think that's really like the through of my career. That said, I would never introduce myself to someone at a dinner party with like, hi I'm Lia, I'm a storyteller. ⁓ ⁓ my short answer.
Julie Laufer: I love it. One, I love that you have been grappling with that and just sort of came out and shared that with me and everybody listening. I very much have been feeling that recently. And I think when you and I spoke, I kind of shared really where I'm meeting people these days is at the playground. And I just I say I'm self-employed and I leave it alone. But yeah, it's hard and I love us all. figuring out who we are outside of work, but then also knowing that that's sort of a through line of how people want us to identify, especially, I don't know, in the Bay Area, my experience at least, it was just the first question you asked when you met someone. But I love that. I love the storyteller through line. I think that's perfect. That fits everything from marketing to your sub stack, the recharge, to the book you're writing, to just sort of
Lia Zneimer: Mm-hmm. What do you do? Yeah.
Julie Laufer: the way you share and the way you interview folks. So yeah, I'm a storyteller. I love it.
Lia Zneimer: Thank you. Thank you. It feels like a little bit of a buzzword these days, but. I believe in it. That's okay. Like if we go back to 1987, I've been making up stories and my mom can vouch for me. Hi mom if you're listening to this, thank you. ⁓ But I've been doing this since I was a kid. I mean I would lock myself away and write poems about every color of Crayola in the crayon box and I would write fake penpal letters to my sister and I would make up newsletters just of like our family news and updates but we didn't have a lot going on so I would like spy on the neighbors and report their news.
Julie Laufer: Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah, I...
Lia Zneimer: I've always been really into creating, writing stories. Musical theater was my lifelong love, so telling stories in that capacity. So I have the receipts to back it up. Not just a buzzword.
Julie Laufer: I can't believe the musical theater thing. One, I agree with all of that. I love that it's been with you for so long. I can't believe musical theater hasn't come up as our collective lifelong love. We cannot get into that right now because that will just derail the entire podcast where we talk about, but back burner. Back burner. ⁓ I've been listening to randomly.
Lia Zneimer: Wait, really? Does anyone want to sit through a 45 minute podcast? Okay, stay tuned for episode 2 of... ⁓ Okay, excellent. Can't wait. The theater kids to marketers pipeline is also real. I know you're in product, but still like podcast adjacent.
Julie Laufer: Yeah. Yeah, we're like, you know, cut from the same cloth type thing. Yeah. Yeah. I've been listening to a lot of tick tick boom for some reason. That's been like, yeah, I don't know. I know. I don't know where that's come from. It's just been in my head. Okay. We can't, we can't, we can't do this. We're back. We're back. ⁓ Lifelong storyteller, love of musical theater, found yourself to marketing. I...
Lia Zneimer: It's like a deep cut. Okay, we're back. We're back.
Julie Laufer: know that that is, you sort of call yourself a former marketer in various spaces. And even then, like, I see a grimace and a, well. So I would love if you could touch like lightly on what that career looked like then, how you knew it was time to go freelance or out on your own. And if you want to share, know.
Lia Zneimer: Hmm, yeah.
Julie Laufer: What does that former label mean today?
Lia Zneimer: Great questions all around. So I candidly fell into marketing accidentally, like so many marketers do. I thought when I graduated from college, I studied English in theater and I thought I wanted to be an actor and my parents were really generous in supporting me through a year and a half of auditioning in New York City and I very quickly realized that was not for me. And I pivoted into the much more stable world of book publishing, which was always a dream. ⁓ Also, not stable, but... I loved it. I really really did and so there I actually started in corporate events and productions and then was promoted within the corporate communications team and that's where I first really started on the marketing side was a social media and internal communications role and that was also Dating myself here, but like back in the day when social media was brand new Instagram didn't exist for brands. We were just making the case for Facebook pages to exist I'm trying to prove the business value to the executives So one of my early projects was Pinterest had just come out and I discovered it and was brought it to the VP of Marketing and was like, think we can use this to our advantage. So it was a really interesting time to be in marketing, I think. It felt very front lines in the weeds. You were talking to people through Twitter in a way that like brands just hadn't been able to communicate before. Wendy's was launching their epic brand voice. It was just a really fun, dynamic, interesting time. And if you don't follow Max, Pete, you are actually how I know you through Max, but for anyone who's listening, go check out Max Pete's wonderful piece on tech and how it's changing and on wanting to leave tech because I think it sums up so beautifully all of the feels about like that special time in marketing and then what it sort of evolved into and I think I gravitated toward the community slash organic storytelling part of social and not the sales marketing performance. growth part of social and as social media matured that gap really widened slash came together, looking for the better word, but it's 8am here and I'm still on coffee number one, ⁓ converged maybe? And I think that I just got the ick, like pretty early on, and I was like, I don't want to sell people things, like that's not what I'm here to do. And I had a brief love of social media and then honestly, it fizzled pretty quickly and I was like, this is not for me. And I joke that like, I started looking for an out straight away and then I stayed in it for like another 10 years. So.
Julie Laufer: Thank
Lia Zneimer: I think it's really tempting to stay in the thing you are told you're good at and I saw a great LinkedIn post from this career coach Liza Doob who I follow and adore and she said something about do you like what you do or do you like being good at something? I'm like, ⁓ I really fell into the ladder. Like I'm type A to a T. I love a gold star. I love being told I love like words of affirmation and I was good. It was a natural fit for my skill set and I kept getting promoted.
Julie Laufer: Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: and I kept pivoting so I started at Scholastic. Sorry, this is not the short answer, but I started at Scholastic.
Julie Laufer: I am here for the not short answer.
Lia Zneimer: Thanks. Anyone who's wanting to skip ahead, feel free to fast forward. ⁓ So I started at Scholastic, which was this epic, wonderful brand. Scholastic Book Fair, the book clubs, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Harry Potter, Hunger Games. was like an absolute dream come true. But my sister was actually an early employee at WeWork and they were hiring for a social media manager. She was like, you should come here. I'd been at Scholastic for four years and I knew I loved it, but I wasn't sure social media was for me. I was like, well, what if I try social media, but somewhere else? And so I did. And I was there for a little over five years during like 2015 to 2020. So really saw epic rise and then epic crash. And it was intense and wonderful and terrifying. And I wouldn't have it any other way. It was truly like the best learning experience. But I, the whole time kind of kept grasping something that I could latch on to that wasn't social media that would like keep me engaged. So there were days where I was like, I hate this, but like let me focus on team management and I'll really go deep into being a good manager. Other days where I was like, you know, I'm really really not, this is not it, but let me delve deep into like social media internationally and expansion strategy and how we like pick something to keep me motivated. And I just, it was like playing this game with myself where like I was wearing this sweater that I knew didn't fit but I was like refusing to take it off and I just kept trying to like change the color of the sweater. It's like that's not really the root cause, you know, putting gloss on it. So it took me a while to really... I still was not ready to like leave marketing per se, ⁓ but I did end up taking... I was pretty burnt out after that five-year period. So that was my first experience going freelance and going independent. ⁓ that was such a wonderful learning experience, but I also felt really conflicted because I knew I didn't want to consult in the social media space, but it was all that I felt qualified to do. And there was this like catch-22 of how do I pivot? How do I transition? And I think we don't know what we don't know, and unless you're incredibly self-motivated and you just inherently know that you have to develop the skills you need in order to make a pivot of some kind, it's not just to fall onto your lap. And I felt like I was little paralyzed by the indecision of like, I don't know what else I want, if not this, it's easier to stick with something I know and just keep going than it is to like completely start over. So that was a huge moment of like, okay marketing's not for me and I feel like I took a baby step toward leaving, but then I ended up freelancing and consulting in the social media space. At the time I had a mentor who's turned into a friend who had some wonderful advice where he was like, you don't need to think about freelance and independent work and in-house work is two entirely separate buckets. You can think of them as swim lanes that you can get in and out of at any point. You don't have to choose one. And I loved that and it resonated so deeply for me. So I sort of, it gave me permission in a sense, much as I loved being independent, having control of myself. schedule and my timing, it's not as like rosy as people make it out to be. I mean, you know this, you're an independent and it is stressful. I mean, yes, it's nice to have control over your schedule, but when people say you can work anywhere, they really mean you work everywhere because you are your own boss and you are your oftentimes harshest critic. And I was working hours like crazy hours. I was not my best boss. I was hard on myself. So ⁓ that was...
Julie Laufer: Hmm.
Lia Zneimer: really challenging, so I kind of loved the permission to be able to go back in-house. That meant a lot to me. So I ended up, I kind of looked at it as like, okay, this is gonna be my lily pad career move. And I love this concept of thinking of it as lily pads where you don't need to have it all figured out, you just pick the next best thing, you hop to that pad for as long as you need to be there, and then you can figure out what pad is next. And in hindsight, you look back and it like makes a beautiful pattern, but you don't have to have it all figured out. at the onset. so I reached out, actually the CEO of an early stage startup is a former WeWork ⁓ executive. He reached out to see if I was available for some freelance work. And I was like, actually I'm looking to come back in house full time. Is there any chance you would consider it? And he did. So another great learning of like, don't ask, don't get. And I think as women, especially we're so conditioned to like look at a job description and assume we're not qualified because we don't meet every single criteria perfectly. Every bullet. Or, you know, scared to ask for things or don't want to rock the boat. And I was like, you know what? What the worst that's going to happen is he's going to say no. And then he said yes. And that was like an amazing in-house chapter for two years. It was also really challenging in a lot of ways and led to a severe bout of burnout. And that was the moment that really like led me to take a beat and be able to
Julie Laufer: Every single bullet, yeah.
Lia Zneimer: to step back and like actually say the words out loud in therapy of like, don't think marketing is serving me anymore. And that was like a 15 year sentence in the making, but the moment it was out, it felt so right. It felt so good. So that was a very long-winded answer. Apologies. But it's hard to like separate the parts, you know?
Julie Laufer: That was a perfect answer. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's all part of that same story, that same journey that you've been on. It's what has allowed you to get to where you are today. There's so much that I love there. The sweater analogy is so perfect. It's like there's something wrong with the sweater. You know what's wrong with it. But it's like, well, if it were orange instead of green, maybe it would look better. Maybe the red dye is stretchier, or whatever it may be.
Lia Zneimer: Exactly.
Julie Laufer: I have very much felt that at various stages. letting yourself retire the or place it in the back of the closet, perhaps donate it, I think is so powerful. I love are you good at it or do you like it? I think that's something that so many people fall into. Especially it's funny, I talked to a lot of engineers in my world who are like,
Lia Zneimer: 100 % donate it.
Julie Laufer: I was good at math and I'm a certain age, so software engineering is the thing that I did. like, you know, it's so interesting that bit. And then of course, like the swim lane analogy ⁓ is also something that really resonated with me, especially when you announced a couple of, what was it, a month and a half ago, or maybe you announced it two months ago, that you were accepting a role in house. And the way you position that just like,
Lia Zneimer: Yep. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: totally took me aback. think I read that as just as I was going off on my own. And I'd been saying, I'm gonna try ⁓ to the self-employed thing. ⁓ It not work. I can always go back to full-time work. And in my mind, it was like, and then that'll be it, right? But you have such a fresh perspective ⁓ of, this idea of I can go in-house now and it's part of something bigger. So I would love to hear from you what it was like making that decision. I think you had a couple of things you were choosing between, which is such a powerful place to be. But how sort of, yeah, that pass that you walked us through helped make this decision and where you're at today.
Lia Zneimer: I feel really fortunate, yeah. Yeah. Thanks. I think I feel really fortunate that things unfolded how they did. I don't mean to just chalk it up to luck. Like it was also lot of hard work over the years, but I also think I got extremely lucky with the way things presented themselves. But essentially for the past two years or so, my husband's been really supportive about me writing this book that I started in 2013 and taking a beat from the corporate world to really make this dream come true. And I feel so grateful for that opportunity ⁓ as we think you touched on. earlier in the episode, it's a young adult novel about theater camp, actually, so you can come back to that. But it, I started it in 2013 and I put it on the back burner and it's just been like, nickling at the edges of my mind for, what, almost like a long time. I'm not gonna do the math. But I think through that, I went through a whole career identity crisis, a little bit of like, struggling to embrace the fact that I'm a writer and answering, what do you do? With like, I'm a writer. felt so uncomfortable. anyway, ⁓ this came at an interesting time where I feel like I'd settled into that groove. I loved it, but also financially I wanted to be able to support or contribute ⁓ a bit more and we were at a place where it made sense for me to probably have a more... I was doing some freelance work, but it made sense to have a more stable source of income and so I actually started my job search quietly, putting some feelers out, networking with people. I went through their traditional like, it feels productive to apply on LinkedIn for things because you feel like you're taking action, but like actually, especially in 2026, it's really not the best way to get a job, unfortunately. ⁓ So I ended up applying for a few full-time things, a few fractional freelance opportunities. I kind of like, I'm gonna cast a wide net in that sense, and one of my favorite kind of hacks. for anyone who's listening who is job searching who doesn't know what they want to do. I like to read job descriptions on LinkedIn and cover up the title and the name of the company and just see what of the actual work itself sounds not miserable, if you will, or appealing even if you're lucky enough. just get a sense of like what types of work am I interested in and ⁓ actually this time around I used AI. I used Claude. I like copy-pasted
Julie Laufer: ⁓
Lia Zneimer: pasted job descriptions in and I was like can you please help me spot the through lines, come up with a narrative about what I'm looking for. It was really one use case for AI where I was like oh this is actually pretty spot on. So anyway, I ended up... getting an interview for a full-time in-house role the same week that I reconnected with an old freelance client who was looking for some support on a project and the current freelance client that I was working with reached out to see if I would be interested in covering her maternity leave. So I had sort of like three stars aligned all at once where it was like okay do we want to be in-house full-time maternity leave cover for six months or fully, you know, freelance and lean into the being independent. And I think again, it comes back to, I love the idea of being independent, but I don't know, like what I want to do professionally is write my book. Like I don't really want to consult, definitely not on the social media front. I've worked so hard to get out of that. I don't want to like, view that as going back, even though I know it's all part of an evolving journey. So there were some communications things that I could consult. on but quite frankly the idea of like pitching myself and marketing myself and I know it's what so many folks are going through right now and it's exhausting. I just was like I don't want to sell my time. I don't know, I just I couldn't, it just didn't feel right. I think one of the things I was really focused on is like how can I do interesting work with interesting people and like of these opportunities all three were, they fit that criteria. So I ended up deciding the mat-leaf cover was going to be the right fit for me and I already was familiar with the team structure and the work and the content because I've been working with this person for about a year and there was a lot of like... I know, back and forth about whether I was making the right decision. There was a lot of... I wrote about it in this Substack PC you mentioned, which maybe we can link to in the show notes or something, but there was a lot of anxiety about, like, am I going back to old habits, old patterns, old rhythms and routines of all of these things that I just worked for two years to move away from? Like, is this just giving up? Is this giving in? Is this like, here I am preaching
Julie Laufer: Hmm.
Lia Zneimer: Go do your thing. You don't need a You don't need a nine to five and then I'm like, okay, but take me back nine to five Like I just felt a little bit I don't know, hypocritical I guess? But at the same time, I had to like keep actively reminding myself that I'm in a different place now than I was two years ago. Like yes, I was extremely burnt out, but this was a completely different set of circumstances where different boss, different team, different stage and size company, different structure, different everything. It's like kind of transferring your old trauma from a past relationship onto your new partner and being like, well, Joe didn't like it that I did X, Y, and Z, so. John's really not gonna like it and it's like well Joe and John are two totally separate humans, you know. So yeah it just it really worked out in the sense that I was like okay instead of thinking of this as my next...
Julie Laufer: Mm-hmm.
Lia Zneimer: thing, like what if it's part of my current thing? And like let me think about the shape of a life pie and Mary Janch on Substack has this fantastic pie chart that I love that I refuse to stop quoting. She's probably so sick of me tagging her in every post. ⁓ But it is really just like the recalibration of... your pie chart. And for me, work was always, always, always like 90 % of the pie. My life was the 10 % and I think over the past two years I've really worked to rebalance those slices and now I want this nine to five to be like a source of income that can help fuel the other parts of the pie and that also it's really lovely humans and they're working on like interesting things together. They're collaborative, they're curious, they're kind, and I'm like, okay, that's great. Like honestly, what more can I ask for? I don't want to be in a job where I'm obsessed with the product or I'm tied to my laptop from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. because I'm so obsessed with our growth metrics. Like this is perfect. I'm on the brand team. Brand is like PR, not the ER, which is wonderful. An old boss told me that and I loved it. But there's just like not the same level of pressure that there was.
Julie Laufer: Mm-hmm.
Lia Zneimer: VP of Marketing role and I'm like that is so good for this stage of my life. I feel really really lucky and I'm getting to learn and I'm getting to like leverage my skill set without driving myself crazy. I'm like these are all... I don't know, I feel very very fortunate as to how it's panned out. So there's a piece coming soon on that as well but I can safely say that like...
Julie Laufer: can't wait.
Lia Zneimer: I don't know, there are people I look up to who've incorporated a 9 to 5 as part of their portfolio and I really aspire to do the same in this chapter.
Julie Laufer: I love that so much. already said that it resonated before, but it really did give me the Saha moment. I look at myself and some other folks that I know and the idea of going back to corporate was in my mind, this like, okay, it's going back. I hadn't even really started and I was already thinking of that. But it's like, what if we get to define what success looks like for us and not what it looks like for everyone else?
Lia Zneimer: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Julie Laufer: even like you spent two years in New York acting and then you decided it's not for you and people are like, ⁓ well she couldn't make it. I'm like, well, no, it's like, it wasn't worth it. That hustle wasn't worth it. I think in this moment, that freelance hustle of pitching and like that's not worth it for you. And I love that you had this like option that very much was in-house full-time where you were, this option of like totally freelance where you are. And then this sort of hybrid of...
Lia Zneimer: Yes.
Julie Laufer: It feels like you're getting the best of both worlds. It feels like you're able to say, is a six month thing. I have this level of disconnection. It could be more if I feel that way and they feel that way and it's this mutual whatever or not. it really feels like, yeah, this feels like a stepping stone. And one thing I realized is our careers are so much more than they are in the moment. And sometimes it really is about putting in, I don't want to say putting in the hard work, but
Lia Zneimer: Totally.
Julie Laufer: doing something temporary that will then set us up for the future ⁓ means to an end, or even just this experience is something that I want now and it'll be part of this bigger picture. And I don't know what the picture is yet, but it'll fill in as I do more and more. So I think that that is such a inspiring arc. And I also love that you started the story with talking about money. I think that-
Lia Zneimer: Absolutely, like a means to an end. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: When we think about freelance and self-employed and money, it's hard to not go there. There's a lot of, you we hear about the successes. We hear about folks who, you know, okay, in three months, I 10x my income or even made my corporate income. Like even that is a stretch to a lot of us. And ⁓ really real that you were like, I got to work on my book and we'll talk about your book.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah.
Julie Laufer: And now the math doesn't make as much sense as the math once did. And so we're figuring out the math right now. it's, I don't know, I used to look at people and like, how can they afford to go out on their own? And it's like, well, you make it work until you either can't or don't want to anymore. ⁓ so, yeah.
Lia Zneimer: it's also such a privilege that like I don't take lightly like I in my case, you know, I know it's a
Julie Laufer: Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: such a gift to like have a partner who's supportive and who's able to financially support. Also, my mom was really financially supportive, candidly, and that was a whole awkward set of, I don't even need to go there in this podcast, but like accepting help from a parent when I'm nearing 40. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm horrified that I'm like, I've been financially independent since I was 23, 24-ish, and to then go back to be like, can I borrow? Like it just was so uncomfortable. So it was not all like, oh my gosh, I quit my job.
Julie Laufer: Mm.
Lia Zneimer: and I'm, you know, kicking my feet up and retiring early. It very much was like a mental health break that was so needed and I'm really fortunate that I was in a position where my family was able and willing and could support. And I know a lot of folks, that's just not an option. Like, you have to keep the lights on somehow and there's no shame. And I think for me these days, success looks like a balanced nervous system and a more diverse life pie and like title just I don't I don't want to be a VP like I just don't want a senior title I don't want the pressure that comes with it sure I'd love the salary that comes with it but like I don't want the intensity right now for this like chapter of my life and I think there's no shame in that I think it's okay to be like look I am a great individual contributor like I don't need a team of 500 people like I'm good
Julie Laufer: Yeah, I think that's huge.
Lia Zneimer: think it's so tempting to like, especially Millennials and the you know great career crisis, like we were raised to believe that like this career ladder was the thing and it was gonna reach this point where we felt fulfillment and alignment and satisfaction and all this stuff and it's like the ladder's broken. The ladder's actually not even laddering anymore. It's really more of like a jungle gym slash a web and like we're all just navigating this new shape together. you know much as promotions are wonderful, I don't mean to like poo poo them for anyone who wants that right now, but I think a lot of us are like really tired and corporate America is not delivering on the promises that we thought it was going to and like that's okay. We have to kind of like free ourselves up to burn it all down and start over in some ways and that's scary.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, it really is. And it really is to know I've had that similar thought of, I loved that salary, and yet I just can't right now. ⁓ And I'm very driven by money. think money is one of those things that we all have our stuff with. ⁓ And for me, prior to this year, the thought of not generating my own money and that being my choice was like, really like so unheard of, right? I've been laid off three times. And so I think that's absolutely part of it. But it is, yeah, it is like also very empowering to have gotten the title, right? Have gotten the salary, be like, yeah, that was great for that reason. But all of this other, having my pie being more diversified, being able to log off when I hit a certain number of hours, like that in and of itself is really beautiful. I haven't had that since I...
Lia Zneimer: us. Yeah. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: worked in retail and it was like, my shift is nine to six and I'm clocking out and I will not think about any of you until I'm back in the store. Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, it's hard and I think so often too we are rewarded for hard work and effort and extra hours and it's so, you're on that treadmill and it's so like tempting to just want to work harder. But then you have to like pull yourself back a little bit and be like, that's how society is. designed. Like they're telling us we need to be productive, but like says who? That's not a measure of our worth. Also, thank you to Years of Therapy for helping me through that. I still sometimes feel like productivity is the measure of my my worth, but I think that's like a broader societal challenge and not like a me problem, and that's also hard to like reckon with a little bit. There's this great book actually I just finished a couple weeks ago, Can't Even, How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, yeah, it like doesn't come. I've seen this cover. Yes, she's great.
Lia Zneimer: by Anne Helen Peterson. She wrote a piece for Buzzfeed in 2019 about this and then it expanded to be a full book and I just like devoured it. I wanted to highlight every passage. I was just like so heard, so seen, so it just it's if you're interested in like the psychology of the societal portion of burnout, I'd say highly recommend.
Julie Laufer: Nice. Yeah, she's great. ⁓ I've seen this book and it's been on my list. So I will check that out. I'll leave it in the show notes as with everything else. ⁓ Yeah, I think the productivity bit is such a challenge. We all, I think, go through it. Some of us may be more than others, but even now, I measure my day on, okay, what did I get done? And if it's not even work related, like what? areas of the house that I cleaned, did I take a walk? Did I, like, right? It's, yeah, I feel like we're sort of wired to work on this perpetual to-do list. So it's nice that sort of all these moments have allowed you to, as much as possible, or as much in this moment, decouple from that. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, I mean don't get me wrong, I still fall into that trap quite often and I still feel the desire but I also think I have some tools in place and some coping mechanisms that are just... really helpful in a way that two years ago they weren't. It sort of reached this point where the analogy I keep using is if someone came to you and said you've been doing high impact exercise for 15 years and you have to switch to low impact or else you're to hurt yourself. I mean I would probably switch because I want to preserve my body but if someone came to me and said the same thing about my career and they've know high impact for 15 years and you need to do low impact I'd be like no I don't like let me prove you wrong watch me.
Julie Laufer: Mm-hmm.
Lia Zneimer: going to do even higher impact and prove myself and it's like well or you could just like give yourself some grace for a hot sec and let it be. So I just I reached a point where like my body knew before I knew that my previous situation wasn't working for me and that was so interesting to pay attention to and listen to and I mean the body knows. I think allegedly it keeps the score but you know it really does.
Julie Laufer: body knows. Allegedly.
Lia Zneimer: it was like you're losing. No, it just, it was, it like really manifested. My anxiety was terrible. My, you know, it just was not a sustainable way to live. So in that sense, like switching gears wasn't even a choice so much as it was like a necessity.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, yeah, I went through that too. Very much know what that feels like when you're pushing ⁓ realities in front of you, but it's like ⁓ to ignore I started to feel like I was a shell of a person. And ⁓ it was not until I had this moment of like, ⁓ it was day where I just remember like looking at myself and like, ⁓ I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like that. ⁓ So yeah, I that's all. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Yeah. 100%. Hmm.
Julie Laufer: So important and even to our earlier points of productivity, I love this idea that ⁓ productivity can be swim lanes of just like, I'm going to, you know, high achieve here. I'm going to dial it back and ⁓ a way to find that rhythm. think for me is the key to ⁓ happy career. Yeah. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Mm. Yeah, and the hard part too is like you can't think your way out of it. Like you have to just keep trying things and experimenting and moving and like sitting around thinking about the what-ifs isn't gonna get you anywhere, unfortunately, because that's the easier part. I know. Ugh, truly. Manifest. Yeah, exactly. But I will say, I don't know that I've like actually manifested.
Julie Laufer: I know, I wish it would. I wish I could just think my way into, ruminate my way into a career. I know it's...
Lia Zneimer: career situation, but every step of my career in some way has like shown up in my life previously before it's become official on paper. I don't know if that makes sense. So it wasn't like a conscious manifestation, but I feel like I've at least known of the company or had someone who was there or I had thoughts about what if I reach out to this person about joining this company and then it kind of comes my way eventually. So
Julie Laufer: That sense.
Lia Zneimer: even though it's not like a moon board, still... power of thought is pretty strong.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, absolutely. And not to get too deep into this, but there are different ways of manifestation. And I really do believe that different people, depending on our person, manifest in different ways. And that just might be your power of thinking and be like, ⁓ yeah, I know this, or that could work. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Well, we could just really think our way into things. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, gotta be careful what I think.
Julie Laufer: our world might look much different. But I think there is something to be said about like, I sort of feel that way when I look at my career. There were certain jobs where I would write lists of like income, ⁓ perks, things like that. And like that would all come true. And that, you know, feels very specific and tangible. But then there are also things where I would see something on LinkedIn and just like apply. And it was only when I looked back on it in hindsight, I'm like, ⁓ that's what that was. That's how that fit in. Of course I, you know, pivoted into that. so it's almost like.
Lia Zneimer: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Julie Laufer: It's almost like there's something else out there helping with those manifestations, if you will. Not to get too far down that path. ⁓ But yeah. Yeah. I love it. I would love to harshly pivot because I want to talk about your book and I want to make sure we have time for that. yeah, ⁓ I would love to hear more. You've been writing it for I did do the math 13 years. It's easy math for me because that was my graduation year. So it's like.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah. No, I think I believe in it. I'm there with you. Yeah. Thank you. ⁓ perfect.
Julie Laufer: cemented and I just talked to someone that I graduated with and we did that math together. But your book started, you started writing in 2013. Yeah, I would love to.
Lia Zneimer: I did, and there's like a lot of weird shame around not being done yet. Yeah, but it's definitely...
Julie Laufer: I could imagine. don't think you should feel that way, but I know how Yeah,
Lia Zneimer: No, it's there. I will say, so I started writing it in 2013 as part of National Novel Writing Month, which no longer exists, but it was a month-long challenge where you were meant to write 50,000 words. And I got about 30,000 and change in. And then we had some family emergency stuff and I put the book on hold and I honestly didn't, I thought about it, but I wasn't like actively working on it. And then I think maybe 2021 or so I revisited it. it and was like, oh this is actually like not bad, and then kind of put it away again. So really like 2024 right after I left Teal. That was like really when I picked it up again and we were living at the time in LA. We were renting a guest house in our family friend's yard and she happens to be a screenwriter and then my husband mentioned to her that I was writing this book and she was like, oh I'd love to read it. I was like, like horrified, I'm embarrassed, she's a professional, like what do you mean? Sent her copy and she was so supportive and so kind and was like this is me hitting the golden buzzer on one of those singing shows for your writing. Like what are you talking about going back to marketing? Do you have to? Do you have to be in like you should be doing this? And I was like this is, I love words of affirmation, this is such and that honestly was such a motivator to like keep going so I ended up not totally gutting but like really redoing the first 30,000 words or so and have like 50 pages of outtakes. Like I saved everything in a document that I call killed starlings because I can't bear to part with them. ⁓ it's just like ⁓ much outtakes. ⁓ So many outtakes. Wow. Good job Lia here writing a book. ⁓
Julie Laufer: Still before 9 a.m. for you, you're good.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, true, true. But there's a lot there that didn't make the cut. So I really reworked that and then I started on new material and I... there were a bunch of chapters that I wrote that then was like, absolutely not. This is garbage. Like, we're not doing this. There are some stuff that I was like, actually I think this is really interesting. This could work. I took a virtual writing... it was like a weekend long workshop that I was obsessed with through the shit no one tells you about writing podcast and substack. amazing that lit a fire to really keep going. It just, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time with the right people. It just clicked in a way that felt so aligned. ⁓ And so I then, I mean I've still been writing. I did take another online course through a literary agency in the UK that I loved that was so helpful in terms of restructuring some things, getting some blockers out of the way. I think I had Writers Block because I was plot wise like little bit lost and I kept being like I don't know what to write next because I don't know where the story is going and I would just sit there with like a blank cursor blinking at me. ⁓ But I think it's in a place now where I admittedly have not worked on it in a few weeks because I've been settling into the new role and trying to give myself a little grace, but I'm really excited about where it's going. It's just so much slower than I thought, which is okay. I'm also reminding myself like I can't treat the book like a deliverable that I did it work, I can't you know take the same set of expectations around an early stage startup and just apply them to a book. Like creativity doesn't just manifest. it doesn't just happen overnight in that way. So yeah, it's kind of like a mixture of giving myself grace, but also wanting to be hard on myself and push myself to finish. So that blend of like self-discipline and self-compassion are... it's a tricky combo, but it's been
Julie Laufer: Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: so much fun to like get into these characters' heads, think about the why behind what they're doing, thread together like a couple different plot lines. It's really cathartic in a lot of ways, like sort of semi-autobiographical, but set at a theater camp where this girl goes for the first time ⁓ to escape her parents messy divorce. And she is very talented, but when she's not sure how she'll stack up against like all the big city kids.
Julie Laufer: Mm.
Lia Zneimer: When she gets to camp and finds out there's been a rooming glitch and she is now being roomed with the most popular like talented returning girls at camp who quickly find out she's talented and try to sabotage her. There's some love triangles. There's some drama on stage and off. There's a little bit of a hopeful, hopefully it'll be mysterious, but like a little bit of a plot twist with one of the characters. So I'm excited. My goal long term would for it to be a series where Every novel is a different session of camp told from a different point of view of different person So like three sessions for I'm in summer 2003 right now so it'll be like three sessions of 2003 and then you go to 2004 and then the Protagonist has a younger sister very like babysitters club little sister for anyone who read BSC back in the day about so that there's like a next-gen in case it could keep going and then my dream dream if we're actually out loud manifesting would be for it to be
Julie Laufer: Ugh. Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: get to be part of the team that makes it into an actual musical.
Julie Laufer: Incredible.
Lia Zneimer: ⁓ if we're gonna take it one step further ⁓ one of my camp roommates ⁓ is an incredible i mean she's like literally tony award-winning musician author not author she's a tony award-winning lyricist and composer and i would love for her to be the one who does music and lyrics but you know let's pipe dream someday we'll see
Julie Laufer: amazing. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love the concept. So fun. I get like The Clique vibes. Did you read the Clique Oh, it kind of, it's a YA series. It came out at the same time as Gossip Girl or similar to Gossip Girl and it was about these girls in like a private school. And I devoured them when I was in middle school. And I have not revisited them in...
Lia Zneimer: No, but I think I need to. Writing this down. Love. Okay. Okay, this is officially on my list.
Julie Laufer: 20 years, so take my memory with a grain of salt, but I remember there being this seasonal aspect to it or whatever. ⁓ Or I don't know, the girl drama reminds me of The Click. So, yeah.
Lia Zneimer: ⁓ I love. Yeah I keep kind of pitching it as High School Musical meets Mean Girls. ⁓ But yeah.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, that's also, I also thought of being girls in my head when you said that. I like to think like the click walk so pretty little liars could fly type of thing, which I really never got into. But I love, I love the concept. I love that you have these goals, these goals for it and that you are like, I want it to be musical and I know who I want to write the music and it's like a series. it just, I think that having that, that
Lia Zneimer: Mmm, love. We love a clique Hahaha
Julie Laufer: and vision is so, I think it can be really rare. It can be really like daunting. And I think it's so great that you have that all figured out. You sort of built these worlds. And I'm always really inspired by anybody that can write a novel. I really struggle with doing work that doesn't see the light of day. And I went on a writer's retreat last November, kind of stayed in touch with some of the women there and like.
Lia Zneimer: Same. Mmm.
Julie Laufer: The amount of writing that they do that does not make it to their books, the character profiles, the scenes, the like, you know, I'm just gonna have these two have a fight and write it out. so it's for my context, like that blows my mind. So I love your killed darlings document so you can still appreciate those words you wrote and maybe turn into it someday, I don't know. ⁓ You never know.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, you never know. I wrote a scene for this class where I was like, this is not going in the actual book, everyone. Don't worry. This is just for like, we were assigned to write about backstory for something and everyone was like, but wait, this should go in. Like, why would you not? And I was like, ⁓ now I need to rethink, not to make it sound like everything I do, people are like, I write my fair share of garbage where people are like, this doesn't need. I read.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, it could. Yeah. Yeah. But that one went in, needed to go in.
Lia Zneimer: I read a draft of a LinkedIn post to my husband this morning and he goes, mmm, I don't like that. You shouldn't start with that. was like, cool, cool, thanks. So, you know.
Julie Laufer: Love it. I love it. ⁓ Yes. So, no, I love that you call yourself an author. It's like an author writing my book. Like think that is so powerful and I know it's hard to do, but I just, think it's really important because I am the type of person that even like saying that I'm self-employed with my one seven and a half hour a week client, I'm like, that feels like a big farce. So I need more of that. I think I need more of that energy. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Thanks. You know what? I was scared to say it. I was scared to say it, but I was like, no one's stopping me. Like a lot of people too in this bootcamp weekend that I did, a lot of people were, one of the ⁓ editors who's doing the session was talking about how...
Julie Laufer: Because you are a do-it-get, you are an author. I
Lia Zneimer: People think the difference between being a writer and being an author is that an author is published and a writer is not. She's like, that's actually not how I see it. I see it as a writer being someone who writes and an author being someone who writes and understands the business side and knows what it takes to like market and sell a book and strategically get it to market. And I was like, you know what? Maybe that's why I spent so long in marketing. Like maybe that was in service of this bigger...
Julie Laufer: Hmm. Done. Check.
Lia Zneimer: goal and like okay how many... sorry for any listeners who fall into this bucket but I doubt it's many of you but like how many mediocre white men add like adjectives to their LinkedIn headlines that are like global executive leader of... it's like sir like you're an account exec like it's fine it's just I don't know I think sometimes if I were a man
Julie Laufer: like a manager.
Lia Zneimer: I just would not think twice about some of these things. Not all men, but you know, like it's just, it's like why not? Life's short. We're gonna just put it out there and someone wants to call me out on it, cool. But honestly, so far I've heard like lovely feedback from folks about being like, that encouraged me to lean into XY and Z and like, great, then it's doing its job. Even if I never get a book published. Well, I may. There's self-publishing, true.
Julie Laufer: Not all men. which you also can always do on your own if not, yeah. Yeah, I'm a big self-publishing advocate if that is what you want to do. Yeah, yeah. ⁓ well, I'm so excited to hear more about the journey, see where it all goes, read it one day, regardless of how it gets into my hands. But I'm going to say it's going to be through a major, major Google Doc in the Bath. That is how I read one.
Lia Zneimer: I'm not opposed to it at all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Google Doc.
Julie Laufer: yeah, it's going to, it's going to be through a book deal with, I don't know, whoever. And I'm going to be waiting on this long line at my bookstore and just to get a glimpse of you in the window. So that's my, my manifestation for you. Lia, yes, take it. This has flown by and I feel like could keep talking to you for your entire work, but you have a job, so I have to let you get to work.
Lia Zneimer: ⁓ thank you. You're so sweet. Thank you. I'll take it. flown by. likewise. Yes, but this is part of the pie, Julie.
Julie Laufer: ⁓ This is part of the pie. I know I'm so happy to have filled in your pie already this morning. ⁓ For everyone listening, ⁓ my gosh, thank you for being here. Let us know where we can find you. All of the things that we can share online for everyone who I know is itching to get more time with you.
Lia Zneimer: I love it. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, you're so kind. I'd say the best place these days is honestly Substack. You can search for my name. ⁓ My Substack is called The Recharge, but it's getrecharged.substack.com. And then I'm also, I used to be active on LinkedIn once upon a time, so feel free to connect with me there. I may post there more regularly, I may not, but you know, there are two. So I'd say those are the two best places.
Julie Laufer: Awesome, awesome. We didn't even talk about your newsletter.
Lia Zneimer: And you can always slide into my DMs if anyone has questions or I don't know. I love cheering people on being Sidelined's cheerleader. if I can be of help, my DMs are very much open.
Julie Laufer: Love that. Open DMs, Substack, LinkedIn. I'll put links to everything. And then all the things that we talked about, cause you shared a lot of great gems. Highly recommend checking out Lia's newsletter, the recharge. love the series that you do, where you just interview people and find out how they recharge and you know, all of that. So I know we didn't talk about that, but definitely something to check out. That's online though. So everyone can take a look at that on their own. Thank you all for being here. This was such a great conversation. I am.
Lia Zneimer: Thank
Julie Laufer: So excited to get this into all of your hands I hope you all have a great day doing whatever you're doing ⁓ ⁓ yourself the thing that you're already doing, but you're afraid to. So Lia is an author. I am a successful self-employed business woman at this exact stage in my life. We'll see how I feel about that in a few months, but go ahead and give yourself that title. Thank you all.
Lia Zneimer: Amen. Thank you.
Lia Zneimer: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be cringe. That's honestly like the highest praise. I love what you're doing.
Julie Laufer: I can't wait. I am glad you feel that way and thank you. It's so funny whenever I reach out to somebody for this podcast, even if I do feel like I have the messaging down and there's someone that really resonates, there is this truth that I am essentially saying, hey, I have a podcast about people who do cringey things and I think you would be the perfect guest. So I always appreciate that. So far it hasn't seemed to offend anyone and I appreciate that you were so willing to jump in.
Lia Zneimer: I love it. No, I feel like there's so much, oh my gosh, of course I'm honored. I think there's so much conversation these days too around climbing Cringe Mountain and doing it together, especially on Substack, I think. That's where all the gems are, in my very non-biased opinion. But I think there's something really wonderful about everyone collectively just embracing it. Like what other choice do we have? Life is short. No one's saying, you're the only one. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: Yeah. What other choice do we have? We all feel it to different degrees. I mean, I some people really don't totally feel it. And I to have that level of, ⁓ don't know, whatever. But most of us feel it. ⁓ Lia, I would love if ⁓ could introduce yourself in the way you typically do, whether that's on a work call or at a dinner party or...
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, most of us do.
Julie Laufer: If you meet someone walking your dog, whatever feels right today.
Lia Zneimer: I love that. Well, one of the things I actually really struggled with in prepping for this episode was how to introduce myself. It's funny. I feel like I've undergone this. journey, transformation of sorts in the last couple of years where I did not know how to introduce myself without starting with what I do for work and who I am through work and through that lens. And candidly I don't know that I know how to do that. And this is another... there's a podcast I recorded recently and she asked me how I would introduce myself without work and I was like, I should know this, I should know the answer. I like panicked because I ask people this in my newsletter all the time like, what's your... pitch these days and then I look at myself in the mirror I'm like I don't have one. My sort of today's elevator pitch that feels right is I'm a writer who's exploring various elements of a portfolio career and thinking about what a nine to five-ish role can look like as part of a broader career ecosystem. I'm also a dog mom to waffles and wife. I live in the East Bay right outside of San Francisco with my husband and I have always been a storyteller. I think that's really like the through of my career. That said, I would never introduce myself to someone at a dinner party with like, hi I'm Lia, I'm a storyteller. ⁓ ⁓ my short answer.
Julie Laufer: I love it. One, I love that you have been grappling with that and just sort of came out and shared that with me and everybody listening. I very much have been feeling that recently. And I think when you and I spoke, I kind of shared really where I'm meeting people these days is at the playground. And I just I say I'm self-employed and I leave it alone. But yeah, it's hard and I love us all. figuring out who we are outside of work, but then also knowing that that's sort of a through line of how people want us to identify, especially, I don't know, in the Bay Area, my experience at least, it was just the first question you asked when you met someone. But I love that. I love the storyteller through line. I think that's perfect. That fits everything from marketing to your sub stack, the recharge, to the book you're writing, to just sort of
Lia Zneimer: Mm-hmm. What do you do? Yeah.
Julie Laufer: the way you share and the way you interview folks. So yeah, I'm a storyteller. I love it.
Lia Zneimer: Thank you. Thank you. It feels like a little bit of a buzzword these days, but. I believe in it. That's okay. Like if we go back to 1987, I've been making up stories and my mom can vouch for me. Hi mom if you're listening to this, thank you. ⁓ But I've been doing this since I was a kid. I mean I would lock myself away and write poems about every color of Crayola in the crayon box and I would write fake penpal letters to my sister and I would make up newsletters just of like our family news and updates but we didn't have a lot going on so I would like spy on the neighbors and report their news.
Julie Laufer: Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah, I...
Lia Zneimer: I've always been really into creating, writing stories. Musical theater was my lifelong love, so telling stories in that capacity. So I have the receipts to back it up. Not just a buzzword.
Julie Laufer: I can't believe the musical theater thing. One, I agree with all of that. I love that it's been with you for so long. I can't believe musical theater hasn't come up as our collective lifelong love. We cannot get into that right now because that will just derail the entire podcast where we talk about, but back burner. Back burner. ⁓ I've been listening to randomly.
Lia Zneimer: Wait, really? Does anyone want to sit through a 45 minute podcast? Okay, stay tuned for episode 2 of... ⁓ Okay, excellent. Can't wait. The theater kids to marketers pipeline is also real. I know you're in product, but still like podcast adjacent.
Julie Laufer: Yeah. Yeah, we're like, you know, cut from the same cloth type thing. Yeah. Yeah. I've been listening to a lot of tick tick boom for some reason. That's been like, yeah, I don't know. I know. I don't know where that's come from. It's just been in my head. Okay. We can't, we can't, we can't do this. We're back. We're back. ⁓ Lifelong storyteller, love of musical theater, found yourself to marketing. I...
Lia Zneimer: It's like a deep cut. Okay, we're back. We're back.
Julie Laufer: know that that is, you sort of call yourself a former marketer in various spaces. And even then, like, I see a grimace and a, well. So I would love if you could touch like lightly on what that career looked like then, how you knew it was time to go freelance or out on your own. And if you want to share, know.
Lia Zneimer: Hmm, yeah.
Julie Laufer: What does that former label mean today?
Lia Zneimer: Great questions all around. So I candidly fell into marketing accidentally, like so many marketers do. I thought when I graduated from college, I studied English in theater and I thought I wanted to be an actor and my parents were really generous in supporting me through a year and a half of auditioning in New York City and I very quickly realized that was not for me. And I pivoted into the much more stable world of book publishing, which was always a dream. ⁓ Also, not stable, but... I loved it. I really really did and so there I actually started in corporate events and productions and then was promoted within the corporate communications team and that's where I first really started on the marketing side was a social media and internal communications role and that was also Dating myself here, but like back in the day when social media was brand new Instagram didn't exist for brands. We were just making the case for Facebook pages to exist I'm trying to prove the business value to the executives So one of my early projects was Pinterest had just come out and I discovered it and was brought it to the VP of Marketing and was like, think we can use this to our advantage. So it was a really interesting time to be in marketing, I think. It felt very front lines in the weeds. You were talking to people through Twitter in a way that like brands just hadn't been able to communicate before. Wendy's was launching their epic brand voice. It was just a really fun, dynamic, interesting time. And if you don't follow Max, Pete, you are actually how I know you through Max, but for anyone who's listening, go check out Max Pete's wonderful piece on tech and how it's changing and on wanting to leave tech because I think it sums up so beautifully all of the feels about like that special time in marketing and then what it sort of evolved into and I think I gravitated toward the community slash organic storytelling part of social and not the sales marketing performance. growth part of social and as social media matured that gap really widened slash came together, looking for the better word, but it's 8am here and I'm still on coffee number one, ⁓ converged maybe? And I think that I just got the ick, like pretty early on, and I was like, I don't want to sell people things, like that's not what I'm here to do. And I had a brief love of social media and then honestly, it fizzled pretty quickly and I was like, this is not for me. And I joke that like, I started looking for an out straight away and then I stayed in it for like another 10 years. So.
Julie Laufer: Thank
Lia Zneimer: I think it's really tempting to stay in the thing you are told you're good at and I saw a great LinkedIn post from this career coach Liza Doob who I follow and adore and she said something about do you like what you do or do you like being good at something? I'm like, ⁓ I really fell into the ladder. Like I'm type A to a T. I love a gold star. I love being told I love like words of affirmation and I was good. It was a natural fit for my skill set and I kept getting promoted.
Julie Laufer: Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: and I kept pivoting so I started at Scholastic. Sorry, this is not the short answer, but I started at Scholastic.
Julie Laufer: I am here for the not short answer.
Lia Zneimer: Thanks. Anyone who's wanting to skip ahead, feel free to fast forward. ⁓ So I started at Scholastic, which was this epic, wonderful brand. Scholastic Book Fair, the book clubs, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Harry Potter, Hunger Games. was like an absolute dream come true. But my sister was actually an early employee at WeWork and they were hiring for a social media manager. She was like, you should come here. I'd been at Scholastic for four years and I knew I loved it, but I wasn't sure social media was for me. I was like, well, what if I try social media, but somewhere else? And so I did. And I was there for a little over five years during like 2015 to 2020. So really saw epic rise and then epic crash. And it was intense and wonderful and terrifying. And I wouldn't have it any other way. It was truly like the best learning experience. But I, the whole time kind of kept grasping something that I could latch on to that wasn't social media that would like keep me engaged. So there were days where I was like, I hate this, but like let me focus on team management and I'll really go deep into being a good manager. Other days where I was like, you know, I'm really really not, this is not it, but let me delve deep into like social media internationally and expansion strategy and how we like pick something to keep me motivated. And I just, it was like playing this game with myself where like I was wearing this sweater that I knew didn't fit but I was like refusing to take it off and I just kept trying to like change the color of the sweater. It's like that's not really the root cause, you know, putting gloss on it. So it took me a while to really... I still was not ready to like leave marketing per se, ⁓ but I did end up taking... I was pretty burnt out after that five-year period. So that was my first experience going freelance and going independent. ⁓ that was such a wonderful learning experience, but I also felt really conflicted because I knew I didn't want to consult in the social media space, but it was all that I felt qualified to do. And there was this like catch-22 of how do I pivot? How do I transition? And I think we don't know what we don't know, and unless you're incredibly self-motivated and you just inherently know that you have to develop the skills you need in order to make a pivot of some kind, it's not just to fall onto your lap. And I felt like I was little paralyzed by the indecision of like, I don't know what else I want, if not this, it's easier to stick with something I know and just keep going than it is to like completely start over. So that was a huge moment of like, okay marketing's not for me and I feel like I took a baby step toward leaving, but then I ended up freelancing and consulting in the social media space. At the time I had a mentor who's turned into a friend who had some wonderful advice where he was like, you don't need to think about freelance and independent work and in-house work is two entirely separate buckets. You can think of them as swim lanes that you can get in and out of at any point. You don't have to choose one. And I loved that and it resonated so deeply for me. So I sort of, it gave me permission in a sense, much as I loved being independent, having control of myself. schedule and my timing, it's not as like rosy as people make it out to be. I mean, you know this, you're an independent and it is stressful. I mean, yes, it's nice to have control over your schedule, but when people say you can work anywhere, they really mean you work everywhere because you are your own boss and you are your oftentimes harshest critic. And I was working hours like crazy hours. I was not my best boss. I was hard on myself. So ⁓ that was...
Julie Laufer: Hmm.
Lia Zneimer: really challenging, so I kind of loved the permission to be able to go back in-house. That meant a lot to me. So I ended up, I kind of looked at it as like, okay, this is gonna be my lily pad career move. And I love this concept of thinking of it as lily pads where you don't need to have it all figured out, you just pick the next best thing, you hop to that pad for as long as you need to be there, and then you can figure out what pad is next. And in hindsight, you look back and it like makes a beautiful pattern, but you don't have to have it all figured out. at the onset. so I reached out, actually the CEO of an early stage startup is a former WeWork ⁓ executive. He reached out to see if I was available for some freelance work. And I was like, actually I'm looking to come back in house full time. Is there any chance you would consider it? And he did. So another great learning of like, don't ask, don't get. And I think as women, especially we're so conditioned to like look at a job description and assume we're not qualified because we don't meet every single criteria perfectly. Every bullet. Or, you know, scared to ask for things or don't want to rock the boat. And I was like, you know what? What the worst that's going to happen is he's going to say no. And then he said yes. And that was like an amazing in-house chapter for two years. It was also really challenging in a lot of ways and led to a severe bout of burnout. And that was the moment that really like led me to take a beat and be able to
Julie Laufer: Every single bullet, yeah.
Lia Zneimer: to step back and like actually say the words out loud in therapy of like, don't think marketing is serving me anymore. And that was like a 15 year sentence in the making, but the moment it was out, it felt so right. It felt so good. So that was a very long-winded answer. Apologies. But it's hard to like separate the parts, you know?
Julie Laufer: That was a perfect answer. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's all part of that same story, that same journey that you've been on. It's what has allowed you to get to where you are today. There's so much that I love there. The sweater analogy is so perfect. It's like there's something wrong with the sweater. You know what's wrong with it. But it's like, well, if it were orange instead of green, maybe it would look better. Maybe the red dye is stretchier, or whatever it may be.
Lia Zneimer: Exactly.
Julie Laufer: I have very much felt that at various stages. letting yourself retire the or place it in the back of the closet, perhaps donate it, I think is so powerful. I love are you good at it or do you like it? I think that's something that so many people fall into. Especially it's funny, I talked to a lot of engineers in my world who are like,
Lia Zneimer: 100 % donate it.
Julie Laufer: I was good at math and I'm a certain age, so software engineering is the thing that I did. like, you know, it's so interesting that bit. And then of course, like the swim lane analogy ⁓ is also something that really resonated with me, especially when you announced a couple of, what was it, a month and a half ago, or maybe you announced it two months ago, that you were accepting a role in house. And the way you position that just like,
Lia Zneimer: Yep. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: totally took me aback. think I read that as just as I was going off on my own. And I'd been saying, I'm gonna try ⁓ to the self-employed thing. ⁓ It not work. I can always go back to full-time work. And in my mind, it was like, and then that'll be it, right? But you have such a fresh perspective ⁓ of, this idea of I can go in-house now and it's part of something bigger. So I would love to hear from you what it was like making that decision. I think you had a couple of things you were choosing between, which is such a powerful place to be. But how sort of, yeah, that pass that you walked us through helped make this decision and where you're at today.
Lia Zneimer: I feel really fortunate, yeah. Yeah. Thanks. I think I feel really fortunate that things unfolded how they did. I don't mean to just chalk it up to luck. Like it was also lot of hard work over the years, but I also think I got extremely lucky with the way things presented themselves. But essentially for the past two years or so, my husband's been really supportive about me writing this book that I started in 2013 and taking a beat from the corporate world to really make this dream come true. And I feel so grateful for that opportunity ⁓ as we think you touched on. earlier in the episode, it's a young adult novel about theater camp, actually, so you can come back to that. But it, I started it in 2013 and I put it on the back burner and it's just been like, nickling at the edges of my mind for, what, almost like a long time. I'm not gonna do the math. But I think through that, I went through a whole career identity crisis, a little bit of like, struggling to embrace the fact that I'm a writer and answering, what do you do? With like, I'm a writer. felt so uncomfortable. anyway, ⁓ this came at an interesting time where I feel like I'd settled into that groove. I loved it, but also financially I wanted to be able to support or contribute ⁓ a bit more and we were at a place where it made sense for me to probably have a more... I was doing some freelance work, but it made sense to have a more stable source of income and so I actually started my job search quietly, putting some feelers out, networking with people. I went through their traditional like, it feels productive to apply on LinkedIn for things because you feel like you're taking action, but like actually, especially in 2026, it's really not the best way to get a job, unfortunately. ⁓ So I ended up applying for a few full-time things, a few fractional freelance opportunities. I kind of like, I'm gonna cast a wide net in that sense, and one of my favorite kind of hacks. for anyone who's listening who is job searching who doesn't know what they want to do. I like to read job descriptions on LinkedIn and cover up the title and the name of the company and just see what of the actual work itself sounds not miserable, if you will, or appealing even if you're lucky enough. just get a sense of like what types of work am I interested in and ⁓ actually this time around I used AI. I used Claude. I like copy-pasted
Julie Laufer: ⁓
Lia Zneimer: pasted job descriptions in and I was like can you please help me spot the through lines, come up with a narrative about what I'm looking for. It was really one use case for AI where I was like oh this is actually pretty spot on. So anyway, I ended up... getting an interview for a full-time in-house role the same week that I reconnected with an old freelance client who was looking for some support on a project and the current freelance client that I was working with reached out to see if I would be interested in covering her maternity leave. So I had sort of like three stars aligned all at once where it was like okay do we want to be in-house full-time maternity leave cover for six months or fully, you know, freelance and lean into the being independent. And I think again, it comes back to, I love the idea of being independent, but I don't know, like what I want to do professionally is write my book. Like I don't really want to consult, definitely not on the social media front. I've worked so hard to get out of that. I don't want to like, view that as going back, even though I know it's all part of an evolving journey. So there were some communications things that I could consult. on but quite frankly the idea of like pitching myself and marketing myself and I know it's what so many folks are going through right now and it's exhausting. I just was like I don't want to sell my time. I don't know, I just I couldn't, it just didn't feel right. I think one of the things I was really focused on is like how can I do interesting work with interesting people and like of these opportunities all three were, they fit that criteria. So I ended up deciding the mat-leaf cover was going to be the right fit for me and I already was familiar with the team structure and the work and the content because I've been working with this person for about a year and there was a lot of like... I know, back and forth about whether I was making the right decision. There was a lot of... I wrote about it in this Substack PC you mentioned, which maybe we can link to in the show notes or something, but there was a lot of anxiety about, like, am I going back to old habits, old patterns, old rhythms and routines of all of these things that I just worked for two years to move away from? Like, is this just giving up? Is this giving in? Is this like, here I am preaching
Julie Laufer: Hmm.
Lia Zneimer: Go do your thing. You don't need a You don't need a nine to five and then I'm like, okay, but take me back nine to five Like I just felt a little bit I don't know, hypocritical I guess? But at the same time, I had to like keep actively reminding myself that I'm in a different place now than I was two years ago. Like yes, I was extremely burnt out, but this was a completely different set of circumstances where different boss, different team, different stage and size company, different structure, different everything. It's like kind of transferring your old trauma from a past relationship onto your new partner and being like, well, Joe didn't like it that I did X, Y, and Z, so. John's really not gonna like it and it's like well Joe and John are two totally separate humans, you know. So yeah it just it really worked out in the sense that I was like okay instead of thinking of this as my next...
Julie Laufer: Mm-hmm.
Lia Zneimer: thing, like what if it's part of my current thing? And like let me think about the shape of a life pie and Mary Janch on Substack has this fantastic pie chart that I love that I refuse to stop quoting. She's probably so sick of me tagging her in every post. ⁓ But it is really just like the recalibration of... your pie chart. And for me, work was always, always, always like 90 % of the pie. My life was the 10 % and I think over the past two years I've really worked to rebalance those slices and now I want this nine to five to be like a source of income that can help fuel the other parts of the pie and that also it's really lovely humans and they're working on like interesting things together. They're collaborative, they're curious, they're kind, and I'm like, okay, that's great. Like honestly, what more can I ask for? I don't want to be in a job where I'm obsessed with the product or I'm tied to my laptop from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. because I'm so obsessed with our growth metrics. Like this is perfect. I'm on the brand team. Brand is like PR, not the ER, which is wonderful. An old boss told me that and I loved it. But there's just like not the same level of pressure that there was.
Julie Laufer: Mm-hmm.
Lia Zneimer: VP of Marketing role and I'm like that is so good for this stage of my life. I feel really really lucky and I'm getting to learn and I'm getting to like leverage my skill set without driving myself crazy. I'm like these are all... I don't know, I feel very very fortunate as to how it's panned out. So there's a piece coming soon on that as well but I can safely say that like...
Julie Laufer: can't wait.
Lia Zneimer: I don't know, there are people I look up to who've incorporated a 9 to 5 as part of their portfolio and I really aspire to do the same in this chapter.
Julie Laufer: I love that so much. already said that it resonated before, but it really did give me the Saha moment. I look at myself and some other folks that I know and the idea of going back to corporate was in my mind, this like, okay, it's going back. I hadn't even really started and I was already thinking of that. But it's like, what if we get to define what success looks like for us and not what it looks like for everyone else?
Lia Zneimer: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Julie Laufer: even like you spent two years in New York acting and then you decided it's not for you and people are like, ⁓ well she couldn't make it. I'm like, well, no, it's like, it wasn't worth it. That hustle wasn't worth it. I think in this moment, that freelance hustle of pitching and like that's not worth it for you. And I love that you had this like option that very much was in-house full-time where you were, this option of like totally freelance where you are. And then this sort of hybrid of...
Lia Zneimer: Yes.
Julie Laufer: It feels like you're getting the best of both worlds. It feels like you're able to say, is a six month thing. I have this level of disconnection. It could be more if I feel that way and they feel that way and it's this mutual whatever or not. it really feels like, yeah, this feels like a stepping stone. And one thing I realized is our careers are so much more than they are in the moment. And sometimes it really is about putting in, I don't want to say putting in the hard work, but
Lia Zneimer: Totally.
Julie Laufer: doing something temporary that will then set us up for the future ⁓ means to an end, or even just this experience is something that I want now and it'll be part of this bigger picture. And I don't know what the picture is yet, but it'll fill in as I do more and more. So I think that that is such a inspiring arc. And I also love that you started the story with talking about money. I think that-
Lia Zneimer: Absolutely, like a means to an end. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: When we think about freelance and self-employed and money, it's hard to not go there. There's a lot of, you we hear about the successes. We hear about folks who, you know, okay, in three months, I 10x my income or even made my corporate income. Like even that is a stretch to a lot of us. And ⁓ really real that you were like, I got to work on my book and we'll talk about your book.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah.
Julie Laufer: And now the math doesn't make as much sense as the math once did. And so we're figuring out the math right now. it's, I don't know, I used to look at people and like, how can they afford to go out on their own? And it's like, well, you make it work until you either can't or don't want to anymore. ⁓ so, yeah.
Lia Zneimer: it's also such a privilege that like I don't take lightly like I in my case, you know, I know it's a
Julie Laufer: Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: such a gift to like have a partner who's supportive and who's able to financially support. Also, my mom was really financially supportive, candidly, and that was a whole awkward set of, I don't even need to go there in this podcast, but like accepting help from a parent when I'm nearing 40. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm horrified that I'm like, I've been financially independent since I was 23, 24-ish, and to then go back to be like, can I borrow? Like it just was so uncomfortable. So it was not all like, oh my gosh, I quit my job.
Julie Laufer: Mm.
Lia Zneimer: and I'm, you know, kicking my feet up and retiring early. It very much was like a mental health break that was so needed and I'm really fortunate that I was in a position where my family was able and willing and could support. And I know a lot of folks, that's just not an option. Like, you have to keep the lights on somehow and there's no shame. And I think for me these days, success looks like a balanced nervous system and a more diverse life pie and like title just I don't I don't want to be a VP like I just don't want a senior title I don't want the pressure that comes with it sure I'd love the salary that comes with it but like I don't want the intensity right now for this like chapter of my life and I think there's no shame in that I think it's okay to be like look I am a great individual contributor like I don't need a team of 500 people like I'm good
Julie Laufer: Yeah, I think that's huge.
Lia Zneimer: think it's so tempting to like, especially Millennials and the you know great career crisis, like we were raised to believe that like this career ladder was the thing and it was gonna reach this point where we felt fulfillment and alignment and satisfaction and all this stuff and it's like the ladder's broken. The ladder's actually not even laddering anymore. It's really more of like a jungle gym slash a web and like we're all just navigating this new shape together. you know much as promotions are wonderful, I don't mean to like poo poo them for anyone who wants that right now, but I think a lot of us are like really tired and corporate America is not delivering on the promises that we thought it was going to and like that's okay. We have to kind of like free ourselves up to burn it all down and start over in some ways and that's scary.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, it really is. And it really is to know I've had that similar thought of, I loved that salary, and yet I just can't right now. ⁓ And I'm very driven by money. think money is one of those things that we all have our stuff with. ⁓ And for me, prior to this year, the thought of not generating my own money and that being my choice was like, really like so unheard of, right? I've been laid off three times. And so I think that's absolutely part of it. But it is, yeah, it is like also very empowering to have gotten the title, right? Have gotten the salary, be like, yeah, that was great for that reason. But all of this other, having my pie being more diversified, being able to log off when I hit a certain number of hours, like that in and of itself is really beautiful. I haven't had that since I...
Lia Zneimer: us. Yeah. Yeah.
Julie Laufer: worked in retail and it was like, my shift is nine to six and I'm clocking out and I will not think about any of you until I'm back in the store. Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, it's hard and I think so often too we are rewarded for hard work and effort and extra hours and it's so, you're on that treadmill and it's so like tempting to just want to work harder. But then you have to like pull yourself back a little bit and be like, that's how society is. designed. Like they're telling us we need to be productive, but like says who? That's not a measure of our worth. Also, thank you to Years of Therapy for helping me through that. I still sometimes feel like productivity is the measure of my my worth, but I think that's like a broader societal challenge and not like a me problem, and that's also hard to like reckon with a little bit. There's this great book actually I just finished a couple weeks ago, Can't Even, How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, yeah, it like doesn't come. I've seen this cover. Yes, she's great.
Lia Zneimer: by Anne Helen Peterson. She wrote a piece for Buzzfeed in 2019 about this and then it expanded to be a full book and I just like devoured it. I wanted to highlight every passage. I was just like so heard, so seen, so it just it's if you're interested in like the psychology of the societal portion of burnout, I'd say highly recommend.
Julie Laufer: Nice. Yeah, she's great. ⁓ I've seen this book and it's been on my list. So I will check that out. I'll leave it in the show notes as with everything else. ⁓ Yeah, I think the productivity bit is such a challenge. We all, I think, go through it. Some of us may be more than others, but even now, I measure my day on, okay, what did I get done? And if it's not even work related, like what? areas of the house that I cleaned, did I take a walk? Did I, like, right? It's, yeah, I feel like we're sort of wired to work on this perpetual to-do list. So it's nice that sort of all these moments have allowed you to, as much as possible, or as much in this moment, decouple from that. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, I mean don't get me wrong, I still fall into that trap quite often and I still feel the desire but I also think I have some tools in place and some coping mechanisms that are just... really helpful in a way that two years ago they weren't. It sort of reached this point where the analogy I keep using is if someone came to you and said you've been doing high impact exercise for 15 years and you have to switch to low impact or else you're to hurt yourself. I mean I would probably switch because I want to preserve my body but if someone came to me and said the same thing about my career and they've know high impact for 15 years and you need to do low impact I'd be like no I don't like let me prove you wrong watch me.
Julie Laufer: Mm-hmm.
Lia Zneimer: going to do even higher impact and prove myself and it's like well or you could just like give yourself some grace for a hot sec and let it be. So I just I reached a point where like my body knew before I knew that my previous situation wasn't working for me and that was so interesting to pay attention to and listen to and I mean the body knows. I think allegedly it keeps the score but you know it really does.
Julie Laufer: body knows. Allegedly.
Lia Zneimer: it was like you're losing. No, it just, it was, it like really manifested. My anxiety was terrible. My, you know, it just was not a sustainable way to live. So in that sense, like switching gears wasn't even a choice so much as it was like a necessity.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, yeah, I went through that too. Very much know what that feels like when you're pushing ⁓ realities in front of you, but it's like ⁓ to ignore I started to feel like I was a shell of a person. And ⁓ it was not until I had this moment of like, ⁓ it was day where I just remember like looking at myself and like, ⁓ I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like that. ⁓ So yeah, I that's all. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Yeah. 100%. Hmm.
Julie Laufer: So important and even to our earlier points of productivity, I love this idea that ⁓ productivity can be swim lanes of just like, I'm going to, you know, high achieve here. I'm going to dial it back and ⁓ a way to find that rhythm. think for me is the key to ⁓ happy career. Yeah. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Mm. Yeah, and the hard part too is like you can't think your way out of it. Like you have to just keep trying things and experimenting and moving and like sitting around thinking about the what-ifs isn't gonna get you anywhere, unfortunately, because that's the easier part. I know. Ugh, truly. Manifest. Yeah, exactly. But I will say, I don't know that I've like actually manifested.
Julie Laufer: I know, I wish it would. I wish I could just think my way into, ruminate my way into a career. I know it's...
Lia Zneimer: career situation, but every step of my career in some way has like shown up in my life previously before it's become official on paper. I don't know if that makes sense. So it wasn't like a conscious manifestation, but I feel like I've at least known of the company or had someone who was there or I had thoughts about what if I reach out to this person about joining this company and then it kind of comes my way eventually. So
Julie Laufer: That sense.
Lia Zneimer: even though it's not like a moon board, still... power of thought is pretty strong.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, absolutely. And not to get too deep into this, but there are different ways of manifestation. And I really do believe that different people, depending on our person, manifest in different ways. And that just might be your power of thinking and be like, ⁓ yeah, I know this, or that could work. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Well, we could just really think our way into things. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, gotta be careful what I think.
Julie Laufer: our world might look much different. But I think there is something to be said about like, I sort of feel that way when I look at my career. There were certain jobs where I would write lists of like income, ⁓ perks, things like that. And like that would all come true. And that, you know, feels very specific and tangible. But then there are also things where I would see something on LinkedIn and just like apply. And it was only when I looked back on it in hindsight, I'm like, ⁓ that's what that was. That's how that fit in. Of course I, you know, pivoted into that. so it's almost like.
Lia Zneimer: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Julie Laufer: It's almost like there's something else out there helping with those manifestations, if you will. Not to get too far down that path. ⁓ But yeah. Yeah. I love it. I would love to harshly pivot because I want to talk about your book and I want to make sure we have time for that. yeah, ⁓ I would love to hear more. You've been writing it for I did do the math 13 years. It's easy math for me because that was my graduation year. So it's like.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah. No, I think I believe in it. I'm there with you. Yeah. Thank you. ⁓ perfect.
Julie Laufer: cemented and I just talked to someone that I graduated with and we did that math together. But your book started, you started writing in 2013. Yeah, I would love to.
Lia Zneimer: I did, and there's like a lot of weird shame around not being done yet. Yeah, but it's definitely...
Julie Laufer: I could imagine. don't think you should feel that way, but I know how Yeah,
Lia Zneimer: No, it's there. I will say, so I started writing it in 2013 as part of National Novel Writing Month, which no longer exists, but it was a month-long challenge where you were meant to write 50,000 words. And I got about 30,000 and change in. And then we had some family emergency stuff and I put the book on hold and I honestly didn't, I thought about it, but I wasn't like actively working on it. And then I think maybe 2021 or so I revisited it. it and was like, oh this is actually like not bad, and then kind of put it away again. So really like 2024 right after I left Teal. That was like really when I picked it up again and we were living at the time in LA. We were renting a guest house in our family friend's yard and she happens to be a screenwriter and then my husband mentioned to her that I was writing this book and she was like, oh I'd love to read it. I was like, like horrified, I'm embarrassed, she's a professional, like what do you mean? Sent her copy and she was so supportive and so kind and was like this is me hitting the golden buzzer on one of those singing shows for your writing. Like what are you talking about going back to marketing? Do you have to? Do you have to be in like you should be doing this? And I was like this is, I love words of affirmation, this is such and that honestly was such a motivator to like keep going so I ended up not totally gutting but like really redoing the first 30,000 words or so and have like 50 pages of outtakes. Like I saved everything in a document that I call killed starlings because I can't bear to part with them. ⁓ it's just like ⁓ much outtakes. ⁓ So many outtakes. Wow. Good job Lia here writing a book. ⁓
Julie Laufer: Still before 9 a.m. for you, you're good.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, true, true. But there's a lot there that didn't make the cut. So I really reworked that and then I started on new material and I... there were a bunch of chapters that I wrote that then was like, absolutely not. This is garbage. Like, we're not doing this. There are some stuff that I was like, actually I think this is really interesting. This could work. I took a virtual writing... it was like a weekend long workshop that I was obsessed with through the shit no one tells you about writing podcast and substack. amazing that lit a fire to really keep going. It just, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time with the right people. It just clicked in a way that felt so aligned. ⁓ And so I then, I mean I've still been writing. I did take another online course through a literary agency in the UK that I loved that was so helpful in terms of restructuring some things, getting some blockers out of the way. I think I had Writers Block because I was plot wise like little bit lost and I kept being like I don't know what to write next because I don't know where the story is going and I would just sit there with like a blank cursor blinking at me. ⁓ But I think it's in a place now where I admittedly have not worked on it in a few weeks because I've been settling into the new role and trying to give myself a little grace, but I'm really excited about where it's going. It's just so much slower than I thought, which is okay. I'm also reminding myself like I can't treat the book like a deliverable that I did it work, I can't you know take the same set of expectations around an early stage startup and just apply them to a book. Like creativity doesn't just manifest. it doesn't just happen overnight in that way. So yeah, it's kind of like a mixture of giving myself grace, but also wanting to be hard on myself and push myself to finish. So that blend of like self-discipline and self-compassion are... it's a tricky combo, but it's been
Julie Laufer: Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: so much fun to like get into these characters' heads, think about the why behind what they're doing, thread together like a couple different plot lines. It's really cathartic in a lot of ways, like sort of semi-autobiographical, but set at a theater camp where this girl goes for the first time ⁓ to escape her parents messy divorce. And she is very talented, but when she's not sure how she'll stack up against like all the big city kids.
Julie Laufer: Mm.
Lia Zneimer: When she gets to camp and finds out there's been a rooming glitch and she is now being roomed with the most popular like talented returning girls at camp who quickly find out she's talented and try to sabotage her. There's some love triangles. There's some drama on stage and off. There's a little bit of a hopeful, hopefully it'll be mysterious, but like a little bit of a plot twist with one of the characters. So I'm excited. My goal long term would for it to be a series where Every novel is a different session of camp told from a different point of view of different person So like three sessions for I'm in summer 2003 right now so it'll be like three sessions of 2003 and then you go to 2004 and then the Protagonist has a younger sister very like babysitters club little sister for anyone who read BSC back in the day about so that there's like a next-gen in case it could keep going and then my dream dream if we're actually out loud manifesting would be for it to be
Julie Laufer: Ugh. Yeah.
Lia Zneimer: get to be part of the team that makes it into an actual musical.
Julie Laufer: Incredible.
Lia Zneimer: ⁓ if we're gonna take it one step further ⁓ one of my camp roommates ⁓ is an incredible i mean she's like literally tony award-winning musician author not author she's a tony award-winning lyricist and composer and i would love for her to be the one who does music and lyrics but you know let's pipe dream someday we'll see
Julie Laufer: amazing. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love the concept. So fun. I get like The Clique vibes. Did you read the Clique Oh, it kind of, it's a YA series. It came out at the same time as Gossip Girl or similar to Gossip Girl and it was about these girls in like a private school. And I devoured them when I was in middle school. And I have not revisited them in...
Lia Zneimer: No, but I think I need to. Writing this down. Love. Okay. Okay, this is officially on my list.
Julie Laufer: 20 years, so take my memory with a grain of salt, but I remember there being this seasonal aspect to it or whatever. ⁓ Or I don't know, the girl drama reminds me of The Click. So, yeah.
Lia Zneimer: ⁓ I love. Yeah I keep kind of pitching it as High School Musical meets Mean Girls. ⁓ But yeah.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, that's also, I also thought of being girls in my head when you said that. I like to think like the click walk so pretty little liars could fly type of thing, which I really never got into. But I love, I love the concept. I love that you have these goals, these goals for it and that you are like, I want it to be musical and I know who I want to write the music and it's like a series. it just, I think that having that, that
Lia Zneimer: Mmm, love. We love a clique Hahaha
Julie Laufer: and vision is so, I think it can be really rare. It can be really like daunting. And I think it's so great that you have that all figured out. You sort of built these worlds. And I'm always really inspired by anybody that can write a novel. I really struggle with doing work that doesn't see the light of day. And I went on a writer's retreat last November, kind of stayed in touch with some of the women there and like.
Lia Zneimer: Same. Mmm.
Julie Laufer: The amount of writing that they do that does not make it to their books, the character profiles, the scenes, the like, you know, I'm just gonna have these two have a fight and write it out. so it's for my context, like that blows my mind. So I love your killed darlings document so you can still appreciate those words you wrote and maybe turn into it someday, I don't know. ⁓ You never know.
Lia Zneimer: Yeah, you never know. I wrote a scene for this class where I was like, this is not going in the actual book, everyone. Don't worry. This is just for like, we were assigned to write about backstory for something and everyone was like, but wait, this should go in. Like, why would you not? And I was like, ⁓ now I need to rethink, not to make it sound like everything I do, people are like, I write my fair share of garbage where people are like, this doesn't need. I read.
Julie Laufer: Yeah, it could. Yeah. Yeah. But that one went in, needed to go in.
Lia Zneimer: I read a draft of a LinkedIn post to my husband this morning and he goes, mmm, I don't like that. You shouldn't start with that. was like, cool, cool, thanks. So, you know.
Julie Laufer: Love it. I love it. ⁓ Yes. So, no, I love that you call yourself an author. It's like an author writing my book. Like think that is so powerful and I know it's hard to do, but I just, think it's really important because I am the type of person that even like saying that I'm self-employed with my one seven and a half hour a week client, I'm like, that feels like a big farce. So I need more of that. I think I need more of that energy. ⁓
Lia Zneimer: Thanks. You know what? I was scared to say it. I was scared to say it, but I was like, no one's stopping me. Like a lot of people too in this bootcamp weekend that I did, a lot of people were, one of the ⁓ editors who's doing the session was talking about how...
Julie Laufer: Because you are a do-it-get, you are an author. I
Lia Zneimer: People think the difference between being a writer and being an author is that an author is published and a writer is not. She's like, that's actually not how I see it. I see it as a writer being someone who writes and an author being someone who writes and understands the business side and knows what it takes to like market and sell a book and strategically get it to market. And I was like, you know what? Maybe that's why I spent so long in marketing. Like maybe that was in service of this bigger...
Julie Laufer: Hmm. Done. Check.
Lia Zneimer: goal and like okay how many... sorry for any listeners who fall into this bucket but I doubt it's many of you but like how many mediocre white men add like adjectives to their LinkedIn headlines that are like global executive leader of... it's like sir like you're an account exec like it's fine it's just I don't know I think sometimes if I were a man
Julie Laufer: like a manager.
Lia Zneimer: I just would not think twice about some of these things. Not all men, but you know, like it's just, it's like why not? Life's short. We're gonna just put it out there and someone wants to call me out on it, cool. But honestly, so far I've heard like lovely feedback from folks about being like, that encouraged me to lean into XY and Z and like, great, then it's doing its job. Even if I never get a book published. Well, I may. There's self-publishing, true.
Julie Laufer: Not all men. which you also can always do on your own if not, yeah. Yeah, I'm a big self-publishing advocate if that is what you want to do. Yeah, yeah. ⁓ well, I'm so excited to hear more about the journey, see where it all goes, read it one day, regardless of how it gets into my hands. But I'm going to say it's going to be through a major, major Google Doc in the Bath. That is how I read one.
Lia Zneimer: I'm not opposed to it at all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Google Doc.
Julie Laufer: yeah, it's going to, it's going to be through a book deal with, I don't know, whoever. And I'm going to be waiting on this long line at my bookstore and just to get a glimpse of you in the window. So that's my, my manifestation for you. Lia, yes, take it. This has flown by and I feel like could keep talking to you for your entire work, but you have a job, so I have to let you get to work.
Lia Zneimer: ⁓ thank you. You're so sweet. Thank you. I'll take it. flown by. likewise. Yes, but this is part of the pie, Julie.
Julie Laufer: ⁓ This is part of the pie. I know I'm so happy to have filled in your pie already this morning. ⁓ For everyone listening, ⁓ my gosh, thank you for being here. Let us know where we can find you. All of the things that we can share online for everyone who I know is itching to get more time with you.
Lia Zneimer: I love it. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, you're so kind. I'd say the best place these days is honestly Substack. You can search for my name. ⁓ My Substack is called The Recharge, but it's getrecharged.substack.com. And then I'm also, I used to be active on LinkedIn once upon a time, so feel free to connect with me there. I may post there more regularly, I may not, but you know, there are two. So I'd say those are the two best places.
Julie Laufer: Awesome, awesome. We didn't even talk about your newsletter.
Lia Zneimer: And you can always slide into my DMs if anyone has questions or I don't know. I love cheering people on being Sidelined's cheerleader. if I can be of help, my DMs are very much open.
Julie Laufer: Love that. Open DMs, Substack, LinkedIn. I'll put links to everything. And then all the things that we talked about, cause you shared a lot of great gems. Highly recommend checking out Lia's newsletter, the recharge. love the series that you do, where you just interview people and find out how they recharge and you know, all of that. So I know we didn't talk about that, but definitely something to check out. That's online though. So everyone can take a look at that on their own. Thank you all for being here. This was such a great conversation. I am.
Lia Zneimer: Thank
Julie Laufer: So excited to get this into all of your hands I hope you all have a great day doing whatever you're doing ⁓ ⁓ yourself the thing that you're already doing, but you're afraid to. So Lia is an author. I am a successful self-employed business woman at this exact stage in my life. We'll see how I feel about that in a few months, but go ahead and give yourself that title. Thank you all.
Lia Zneimer: Amen. Thank you.
