Creative Play meets Serious Business in the Ohio Woods.
Five Days of Deep Work, Nourishing Meals, Afternoon Naps & Outdoor Adventure.
Open
August 10-15, Hocking Hills, Ohio
YOU WANT YOUR WORK TO
Become easier to create.
Stand out from the crowd.
Pull the right people toward you.
Be something that you’re really proud of.
(For the entrepreneurs coming, this all helps in making more money.)
FROM CONFUSION TO CLARITY
What stands in the way of great work that supports your life is confusion– and the myriad of emotions that pile up when today’s confusion becomes tomorrow’s, next week’s and next’s years.
Work that can become something you’re really proud of never really sees the light of day. Work that you know is important gets trivialized or watered down because good, valuable, highly sought after work requires risk. And risk requires vulnerability. And vulnerability feels like too much when we already live in a world that is too much. OPEN is an experience that not only solves creative block, but helps you create the assets required to get you work out in the world making real money for you. Work that increases value. Work that shapes abstract ideas into words that mean something to people who are looking for what you create. Work that teaches you how to access your creative truth rather than put up with creative block day after day after day.
Spend five days with us
fueling yourself with good food, good sleep, thoughtful conversations, walks in nature, open space to think deeply about your work and structured sessions to make powerful decisions.
It’s like summer camp for women founders but with Michelin-quality cuisine, high-level business planning and soft cotton sheets.
IMAGINE THISYou arrive to our cabin in the woods.
You’re a little nervous, a lot excited and ready to create.
Your love your business, and you’re ready for it to grow.
Too often when you show up to create marketing, you’re met with creative block.
You spend far too much time scrolling, searching for inspiration and strategy that offer temporary relief but chronic confusion.
You know you have a goldmine living inside you, but tapping into it feels like fumbling around in a too-messy purse for that one lipstick you actually like.
You’re here to build work that lasts, work that nourishes, work that sets your creative heart on fire.
You know you’re close, if only you could find the map.
Five days later…
You know exactly who you are.
You know exactly what you offer and why it’s different than anyone else.
You know exactly who it's for.
You've written foundational sentences that will become months of marketing and a body of work that sustains your business for years to come.
You've made key business decisions.
You have photos that feel like you that accompany all those words.
You leave with more than a notebook full of ideas.
You leave with a business that feels like home.
The words to communicate it. The photographs to bring it to life. The decisions that will guide your next season. And a practice you'll return to whenever old stories, fear, or doubt begin pulling you off course.
The Vision
Monday afternoon, you arrive.
You arrive carrying more than your suitcase.
Questions. Half-finished ideas. A business that feels heavier than it used to. An offer you're still trying to explain. Words that never seem to come out quite right. The quiet hope that maybe this week will help you find your way back to yourself.
You unpack.
Take a deep breath.
Choose your mug.
Wonder who you'll be when you leave.
Friday Morning, you depart.
Your notebook rides shotgun.
Its pages are full of the words you've been looking for. The conversations you'll have. The offers you'll build. The decisions you've finally made. The stories you've chosen to stop believing—and the one you're ready to live into.
The windows are down.
There's a stop for local soft serve on the GPS.
Home is waiting.
So is your business.
Only this time, you're bringing back someone it has been waiting for, too.
The new stories of you.
MEET THE TEAM
ALLIE | TRUTHTELLER
Allie found herself living a life that wasn’t fully her. Married to the man of her dreams. Three beautiful kids. A small business that allowed her to leave her corporate job and be the kind of present mom she wished she’d had. But something had been nagging her entire life and she decided to finally stop pretending. It required her to tell a truth that might ruin it all– about her identity, her desires, and the kind of life she really wanted to have. So, over the course of the last 4 years, she did just that– without destroying it all an instead building a new business that supports her family, a community of humans who have become a village, and core relationships that have made space for her true self. She brings her innate ability to help you locate an claim your deepest truth in the form of her 30-minute TruthTeller Sessions.
STEPH | BIZ ARCHITECT
i’m Steph. I built this site, this brand, and most of the methods you’ll find in OPEN. I study creative risk by taking it. I understand creative block by moving through it. I know that great work isn’t always easy but it’s a hell of a lot easier when we learn not to nitpick our own ideas, rely heavily on AI or outsource our truth and opinions to what feels safest. By nature I’m a pretty structured person with a very messy side. These two worlds colliding is how I somehow make space for my own magic to happen. My work with our five days together is to make sure the experience delivers big. From food to coaching to our modules and methods, every single detail is in service of your creativity. I’m equal parts hospitality as I am business and equal parts wild and weird as I a practical and structured.
COURTNEY | PHOTOGRAPHER
Courtney is a photographer based outside of Lisbon, Portugal and Fort Wayne, Indiana. She’s obsessed with telling love stories, seeing every tiny detail, and bringing out the beauty of each of her clients. Courtney began her photography career in weddings and has expanded to include portraits, family sessions, styled product shoots, lifestyle and boudoir. What sets Courtney apart and why she was chosen for OPEN is her ability to tell a story through photography, to bring out your true nature, to help you see what the world sees instead of what your inner critic offers you. Courtney sees what so many of us miss. She’s naturally drawn to how shadow and light bring emotion and depth to a photo and makes her clients feel not only seen but safe– a crucial element in capturing what makes us special.
THE OPEN METHOD
1/ LOCATE THE TRUTH
What are you here to create? What is asking to move through you? What’s standing in the way? Our first order of business is opening the portal to your ability to see what’s been trying to get your attention.
2/ OPEN THE CHANNEL
Coffee on the balcony. Walking through the woods. Tasting the sweet corn ice cream. Watching the table be set for the field dinner. Baguette sandwiches by the waterfall. This morning’s prompt sitting softly in your mind. Truths finding you quicker than you can scribble them down.
3/ CAPTURE WHAT’S REAL
No sterile studio. You in a field. Picking a flower. Lost in a thought. Headshots that actually feel like you. That yellow sweater that you’ve been dying to wear. These are photos that reveal you, where your smile isn’t forced, where your posture is relaxed, and when you see them at home you’re transported back to the moment you took it. To the thoughts that matter and the work that’s always just below the surface waiting to be seen.
4/ MAKE SHAPE
Once you’re home, we’ll turn scribbles, sketches and directions into love letters to clients, products you’re thrilled to sell, a brand that’s getting more and more cohesive and legible by the day. We’ll support you through tech challenges (setting up your newsletter, building a sales page, document your process) as the business and brand architects we are.
5/ PROTECT THE STORY
You will learn how
to protect the story you want to
shape your life and business.
Not just from the world, but also from your own internal programming. The memo of that time you told your truth and were shamed for it will come rushing in when all you’re trying to do is build a sales page. The memory will arrive with the intensity of a fire truck, sirens blazing telling you that you will simply not survive what comes next. It has lived on because it has attached itself to story. It has likely only gotten stronger each time it flashes before you. A cautionary tale that you’ve seen play in your mind every time you got close to really risking something big. And maybe even those times when there was really no risk at all, if you’d actually just paused to look around and see. No fire. Just four walls, a laptop and an open Canva screen.
The root of Creative Block is fear in the face of risk. And the work is only good when it’s risking something. You will write a story for yourself that you’ll return to again and again in the months after OPEN.
Everyday, your business asks,
“Which story do we listen to today?”
The future story that says,
"Keep building. This matters. This work is going somewhere."
It is fueled by courage. Joy. Desire. Commitment.
The present story says,
"Look around. People aren't responding. This isn't working. Adjust. Retreat. Protect yourself."
It is fueled by fear. Emotional exhaustion.
The past story says,
"See? This is what happens when you try. You were never the kind of person who could do this."
It is fueled by the shame of every single time you let the fear win.
The work compounds the longer you do it. Here’s what’s happening post OPEN.
MORE OF THE RIGHT PEOPLE FINDING YOU
You’ve grown a list of humans who have signed up to hear what you have to say. They open your emails. They purchase what you create for them. They look forward to hearing from you and you look forward to creating for them.
YOU’RE KNOCKING OUT CREATIVE WORK WITH MORE EASE
You sit down and easily write a sales page, an email, an offer, or an Instagram story that feels effortless AND highly skilled. Your words land so deeply that your people wonder if you've somehow been inside their heads.
YOU’RE BETTER AT SALES + YOU FEEL REALLY GOOD ABOUT IT
You haven’t suddenly become a master of persuasion. You’re not following trends, scripts or strategies about maximizing and converting.
YOUR BODY OF WORK IS GROWING
You’re just profoundly connected to yourself. You are so open to your truths, desires and originality that whoever encounters your work cannot miss it.
Your work is an extension of you.
Your offers are highly valuable and full of belief.
You push publish consistently. And you see results from that.
CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING IS A JOY, NOT A CHORE
You stop viewing your business as something to solve and instead it’s a process and partner you love.