Speaking Success into Existence

Some founders know exactly what they’re building. They just don’t yet have the words for it. When the language doesn’t match the vision, everything becomes harder — from attracting the right members to making decisions about what to build next. That gap between what something truly is and how it’s being communicated is exactly where this work lives.

Underneath that: the relief of being fully seen. Of having someone help you say, clearly and without apology, what you’ve always believed — even the parts that felt too big to say out loud.

As Abby Covert, founder of The Sensemakers Club, put it:

“Jasmine’s ability to see both the immediate opportunities and long-term vision is exactly why this ongoing conversation with her is so valuable.”

A Case Study: The Sensemakers Club

The Sensemakers Club (SMC) is a community founded by information architect, writer, and community-builder, Abby Covert. What started as a space for curious people to think out loud has grown, over the course of our ongoing work together, into something more intentional: a community-powered education platform with a defined audience, a clear identity, and an infrastructure built to match its founder’s deepest values.

SMC didn’t need a total overhaul. It needed the right words in the right places — and the courage to mean them.

This is the story of how we got there.

Defining the Audience

SMC’s early messaging was broad — centered on the process of sensemaking itself. Six months in, the club was already thriving — but behind the scenes, Abby was juggling too much. Membership tiers, content, communication — all of it needed definition. She was building something great but struggling to articulate it in a way that could support its growth. Broad positioning wasn’t serving anyone well.

Through our conversations, we narrowed Abby’s core audience to: Curious professionals in transition — people navigating career shifts, creative pivots, or personal reinvention — needing a portable support system.

Identifying this clarified what programming made sense, how to structure content, how to describe the club so the right people immediately saw themselves in it. We developed messaging anchors that positioned her and kept all decisions aligned.

Building a Narrative

One thing I’ve learned working with founders is that the most meaningful mission statements don’t get written — they get uncovered. Leaders often hold back their truest convictions because they worry they’ll sound too idealistic, too sentimental, too “fluffy.” Part of my role is creating enough safety and structure that those convictions can actually surface. That’s what happened here. 

The outcome of this work is a Narrative Statement that acts as a communication map that reaches from a founder’s authentic voice — something Abby could return to anytime she talked about the club, whether on the website, in an interview, or in a casual conversation. 

We began with a structured framework I call Money Grows On Trees, uniquely adapted to each client — a method for helping leaders synthesize purpose, strategy, and direction. Through this process, Abby articulated her core intentions as a leader, her beliefs about growth and success, the values she wanted SMC to embody, and the audience she felt most drawn to serve.

The insights pulled directly from her own words. I listened carefully and reflected back what was already there.

As SMC grew, Abby asked, How do I explain what this is? and How do I articulate what I actually believe this could become? Her mission was evolving, and the existing language wasn’t keeping pace.

We looked outward at what was actually happening inside the community. Working alongside a UX researcher, a business development director, and a social media coordinator, we ran structured surveys, facilitated community feedback sessions, and cross-referenced the organic patterns in how members were describing the club to each other.

What we found: members weren’t just there for discussions. They were there to learn, to be held accountable, to grow alongside people who were serious about their output. The residency program — which had emerged as a way to support members who wanted more than conversation — was pointing toward something bigger.

Through that process, a new north star emerged: community-powered education — now, this guides every decision, from programming to partnerships. A mission that surfaced gradually, through dialogue and deep listening, until it was undeniably true. It reframed everything: what the club was, who it was for, and what it could grow into.

The first phase gave the club structure and language. The second phase gave it a soul. 

We saw nearly 50% increase in new members within the first few weeks of refining SMC’s communication and campaigning.

Redesigning the Experience

A mission this clear deserved a home that could hold it. We redesigned the SMC website — the second full evolution of the site we’ve built together — this time starting from the new identity and working outward.

The previous version had reflected the community well enough. But this one needed to do more than reflect — it needed to invite. We rearchitected the information structure, rewrote the copy to match the evolved narrative, and added the kind of content that makes someone on the outside feel what it’s like to be on the inside: member videos, rich residency descriptions, and membership tiers that help people see themselves before they commit.

We also built in a feedback loop — designing sessions and community check-ins to measure whether it was working, and iterating from there. The result is a site that feels alive. One that sounds like Abby, reflects what members actually experience, and communicates the club’s direction with confidence.

Members now have a felt sense of what the community is about:

• “... the new labels showcase the overall vibes and intentions of the club in a broadly appealing way. Can't wait to see the impact of the change over time!”

• “A lot more clear than before. It provides clear intros and logical grouping, serving both discovery and navigation.”

• “This new website finally helped me understand what this is, and I am part of the club!”

Content & Delegation

A brand style guide followed, creating enough consistency that content creation could be fully delegated. What had been a daily drain became a system that ran without her. We built a content calendar structured around daily, weekly, and monthly themes, then trained an AI model on SMC’s brand voice so Abby could generate on-brand content without starting from scratch.

Content engagement surged, with a +108% increase in organic social traffic and a +63% increase in referrals. But most importantly, Abby no longer creates content herself — a process that once took hours a week now takes an hour or two a month.

A Sigh of Relief

Beyond strategy and growth, this engagement is always about relief — the relief of not having to sacrifice long-term vision because of day-to-day operational pressure. The relief of having words that do the work for you — making you look good, sound good, and feel good.

An Easy Way for Entrepreneurs to Create Content

Entrepreneurs have a low tolerance for “just doing the job.” They have the strategic risk-taker energy. The get sh*t done energy.

As I reflect on my 8 year run as a freelancer, I realize that people who hire freelancers are entrepreneurs. Whether they’re directors of organizations, founders of startups, or individuals working on passion projects, they’re often the ones trying something new, willing to and capable of experimentation.

By nature of my graphic and content services, the ppl I’ve worked with all wanted to communicate an idea. But they also had one other commonality…they didn’t have a narrative.

My discovery process always included a simple question, “Is there a big idea or theme you want me to portray or keep in mind?” Their answer across the board would be something a long the lines of, “we’d love to see what you can do on this project, you have creative freedom.” To the point that I started calling one of my packages “creative freedom.” It basically meant that that they didn’t have a guidepost for content.

But they DID have mission statements. And while a mission statement is an internal and external piece that gives *an idea* of what the organization is about, it does nothing for content.

That’s why I started writing a “narrative statement.” (It didn’t have a name at first bc it was just for me.) But now, it’s a fully loaded, compact statement for internal alignment; A navigation tool for conversations, content, and strategies.

A narrative statement is very different from a mission statement. For a narrative statement, function is essential. It shapes meaning like walls shape space. It considers the weight of the word in each phrase, its capacity to hold people, its durability in its environment. It forms edges around an idea and defines relationships between themes.

Like an acronym encases words, a narrative statement encases definition and unfolds into every piece of content an organization needs to reinforce its purpose.

A mission statement is a few sentences with interchangeable words. A narrative statement is a framework. It provides restriction while offering the flexibility and freedom to fully explore within the bounds.

There’s a key difference here that I hope entrepreneurs acknowledge and adapt, before getting too wrapped up in the weeds of operations, that enables sustainable communication and heavily impacts (or even defines) the longevity of their business.

Should I Tell a Story or a Narrative?

When I heard Michael Margolis talk about the difference between Narrative and Story, my mind was blown. He defined narrative as a framework that someone else can see themselves in, whereas a story is about a specific situation in a certain time and place. A story has an end; a narrative scales. An example he gave was the American Dream - an idea people align with.

This distinction explains why some ideas, brands, and movements outlast their creators. A story captures a moment; a narrative builds a shared reality. Stories evoke emotion, narratives invite participation.

I started looking closely at the stories that outlived others in my life, trying to evaluate which ones were narratives. It's true, there are two kinds. Some that bring up feelings and some that I saw myself in like, "this is the kind of person I am." The narratives were mostly religious...about supporting others, confronting deception, etc. or shaped by my parents overcoming a challenge or making pivotal decisions.

I'm fascinated by a narrative's capacity to invite millions and billions of ppl, whether across time generationally, or across space, uniting people in mass. This is exactly why narrative is something I strive to master in my work. It looks like a brand and communication strategy, but it's more powerful than that for me. It's about ppl aligning around truth. And THAT exploration is super exciting!

Intention: A Compass and Magnet

Foundation as a universal concept is something that has fascinated me lately. 

I wasn’t totally satisfied with Google’s definition, “the lowest load-bearing part of a building; an underlying basis or principle.” It differentiated between physical and nonphysical in a way that lost meaning. That’s why I love to look at etymologies. They  get at the crux of the word, the root from which all the evolutions and distributions of the word take direction. 

“Late Middle English: from Old French fondation, from Latin fundatio(n- ), from fundare ‘to lay a base for’.”

I thought about some of the contexts in which the word is used in my life: Buildings—foundation is critical, a matter of life or death. Raising kids—critical, my mom would tell me to set a solid foundation for my kids so they can stay grounded without my micromanaging. Though in very different contexts, the fact that the same word exists in these separate places necessarily means that there’s a parallel to be explored. 

With physical structures, we understand, by witnessing an immediate undeniable truth, the consequence of a lack of foundation–the building falls. With intangible structures, we often copy-cat what is working for others and realize later (usually after the fall) that we didn’t lay a proper base. Whether we are building tangible or intangible structures, we are acting as architects—intentional about our foundation or not.  

Realizing that intention is the common place from which foundation-setters start creating any structure, tangible or intangible, has been awe-inspiring. Shocking in its simplicity: The basis of creation is intention–a creator walks firmly from it, or walks defeated back to it.

I think about how our communities and our businesses start off by way of intention too. How some outlive others and some don’t get to a tangible point past ideation. How, without intention, there's no process of creation at all. 

A clear intention acts as both a compass and a magnet. It guides decisions while attracting opportunities and resources that line up with it. As if we’re on an invisible highway, this GPS tracker keeps us oriented towards our destination. A GPS but better, because every now and then intention activates an acceleration booster where clarity of purpose meets opportunity. As if clarity removes friction and encourages speed. Intention, a GPS but better, because when there are detours or the weather changes, you’re not lost or tossed around between one idea and the other debating what next step makes sense. The clearer the intention, the easier it is to recognize what belongs on your path and what doesn’t.

A GPS but better, because intention sends a message into the future and still leaves you with the element of surprise. You actually have no idea where you’ll end up because the boosters make your growth unpredictable. 

This highway of intention is invisible and the traveler is you, not in a car, but someone trying to run a business, start a project, or a family. As the founder of whatever structure it is, defining your intention releases the code for all the opportunities and resources, the ones peculiarly aligned with what you’re building, to turn your way. Your intention is the application that runs this living, breathing, pulsing organis(m)ation, or structure. 

The only challenge is time. What makes a founder’s message resonate across time? 

Their truth. 

The impact of a clear intention isn’t time-bound when it’s grounded in truth. We see this in books and ideas that have lived for centuries, left behind by people whose message was tied to something universal, something that aligned with the human experience at its core.

Truth has a piercing quality. It cuts through the noise. It’s what connects us, aligns communities, and creates shared purpose. When a founder trusts their own experience, believes their re/action is deeply human, and has the courage to express it, their message will resonate. 

Intention has a subtle yet expansive nature. By understanding it as foundational and crafting it as carefully in intangible structures as we do tangible ones, we unlock its utility and plant resources into our future that offer us boosts… If we trust it.

Story Makes Place

In ‘The Moment’ in a Designer’s Mind, I talked about some basic design considerations for an architect. I broke down the anatomy of a moment based on Abby Covert’s definitions of data, content, and information. I also defined moment as a single potential (from the endless possibilities of “thing” arrangements) in a designer’s mind, occurring in time and space that influences their user’s state of being and leads them into the next potential seamlessly.

In this post, I want to explore what happens when we attach moments to other moments.

The Story 

The Story /n./:  a thoughtfully arranged sequence of moments that model the visitor’s state of being holistically (physical and emotional) when experiencing your Thing.

We use stories to organize moments and to easily refocus our intention for the lives of our visitors. So, really, a story is a structural cue that needs someone with knowledge of sequencing, in the context of that particular design, to arrange the moments; Someone with a unique skill set that sees peculiarities and nuances within the moments that can be connected to form an experience that the visitor will perceive. 

Here’s an example:

My daughters’ room was cluttered. I had placed their dresser behind the door where it was hard to open because their toy chest took up so much space. After getting rid of some toys, I replaced the big toy chest with a smaller one and made room to move the dresser. Voila! They no longer had to squeeze behind the door to get their clothes.

I redesigned the space for the single potential of my daughters opening their drawers hassle-free – this was The Moment. 

The Story I had in mind was that they would come home from school, and after my dramatic reveal: Guess what I did?! they’d go into their bedroom and jump for joy. They’d attempt a cartwheel or take the stickers and paste them on the extra wall space. The next morning, they would open up their drawers hassle-free, get dressed, and go about their day. I’d rest assured that I have no fingers near the door to worry about nor will I hear, Mama, I need helppppp, in the morning.

I’ll let you spend the afternoon breaking those moments down into information, content, and data but, for now, the point is that The Story offers a structure that’ll guide design moves for a holistic experience. Maybe I’ll also turn the rug so it covers more floor area, maybe I’ll put corner padding on the edges of the dresser to avoid accidents, etc. 

The Story is the guiding structure. No structure = no story. Test it out yourself. Shuffle the moments in the story above and see if you still have a story. 

Now, let’s scale up.

The Place 

Architecture is the space between information – the space between intention and perception. It is the form that gives way to intention and perception. It encapsulates moments and stories. It’s a progressional overlay of information, content, and data that indicates/implies/captures/eludes to a bigger picture and allows for observed moments to exist. Key word, observed.

Architecture isn’t architecture until it has an observer (be it a visitor, a user, or an inhabitant), someone to read and interpret The Place. But the invitation can only exist after someone has communicated, aka revealed their intention. Revealing invites the observer. Without the reveal, there is no longer any potential for The Moments to come to life.

Let’s scale up in the next post.

‘The Moment’ in a Designer’s Mind

In the previous article, I mentioned, “As designers, we’ve all learned to pay attention, identify the grid, break the grid, and make navigating the new grid intuitive.” So, what is it exactly that we’re doing in this generic “pay attention” step? We’re looking for potential. The potential to inspire curiosity, raise awareness, spark pleasure, bring clarity in the lives of the people around us and the list goes on. 

If you went to architecture school, you may remember when you were told to design moments? We were told to be sensitive to the moment-by-moment experience of our inhabitants while walking through our space. The moment someone on the ground floor locked eyes with a passerby on the mezzanine. The moment they exited from the low-ceiling corridor into the vast high-ceiling space. The moment they looked up or down, or walked this way or that way, or brushed along this person or that thing. Such tiny little considerations had the potential to make them present in their surroundings, aware of their scale, pleased by the view, etc.

The same principle applies across all design ventures, whether graphic design, product design, instructional design, etc. Across different design industries, we use stories to organize moments within the lives of our users/inhabitants/visitors where they interact with our Thing. We create avatars/personas/profiles that act as embodiments of that story to help us focus and refocus our intention when designing.

But, the moment is so much broader than its relation to designers. It’s the thing we, as laypeople, often take for granted when experiencing it but are intentional when making it that way. This can include rearranging home furniture to avoid kids getting hurt, putting clothes back in the right spot that had fallen from a rack at the store, walking the shopping cart back to its designated spot in the grocery’s parking lot, and so much more. 

So, in the endless sea of possibilities, designers pay attention and choose well the moments that will make an individual at ease and pleasantly experience their environment or thing.

Anatomy of The Moment

The Moment /n./: a single potential (from the endless possibilities of “thing” arrangements) in a designer’s mind, occurring in time and space that influences their user’s state of being and leads them into the next potential seamlessly. 

Having realized that all I’ve been doing for 15 years was designing moments, regardless of what I called myself, I wondered, “What are the common pieces (underneath all the terminology and attached meanings) that give birth to The Moment?” Location, time, things, intention, and people seem to sum it up. 

In her book, How To Make Sense of Any Mess, Abby Covert helped me tidy up what I thought was the crux of The Moment with a vocabulary that aligns all of my thought process. She distinguishes between data, content, and information. Data is facts (like location and time), content is things (like…things), and information she says, is “whatever is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things” (like intention and perception). 

So, why do I say this, my dear colleague?

It’s to say that at the core of architecture training is this very thing. By way of feasibility studies to figure out the data, by programming to narrow down the content, by intentionally choosing moments and expressing them through walls and floors, trained architects have come face to face the basics of User Experience design. 

Think of UX as an abstraction of what you already know. You switch out the kind of data, content, and information, and the outcome looks different. It may look like an item on a store shelf, maybe it looks like a Google Doc, or it could be food on someone’s plate. We’re all starting on The Moment.

Join in the next post if you’re ready to scale up.

Your Suuuper Basic Guide to Transition from Architecture to UX (and elsewhere)

I assumed the transition into Information Architecture (IA) would be effortless being that I’ve been doing Information Design for a while now AND my background is in Architecture (buildings). A natural progression for my career, I thought. 

After joining The Sensemaker’s Club, I realized how different IA is from Information Design and regular ole Architecture. I learned that IA falls within the realm of User Experience (UX) and that I needed a complete shift in vocabulary to understand its concepts. 

Initially, I took comfort in the term “user experience” because I’m all about the “human experience” … Isn’t the User just another word for Human? No (I learned weeks later, although some may argue it should be). The user is someone who uses a product – AHA, this is a product design field. I know you have a snarky look on your face if you come from UX. Whelp! This is the roundabout way that I’ve frequently found myself on the self-taught journey. You don’t just jump into buying a course or taking part in a workshop. You get to some “basic” understanding on your own first, which is usually a process of deconstructing before it’s a construction process. Being self-taught usually means that you're following your curiosities instinctually. The words “information” and “architecture” resonate deeply with me and so, I followed the instinct.

Basic Questions

Confident-me asked, Isn’t shelter the first and most essential product that we develop as a species? So, doesn’t that make building-architects the OG UX designers? (I see you, you snarky UXer.) 

I kept questioning my knowledge of “the basics.” Shouldn’t I know some things about UX? I mean, I am a trained architect. Do I know anything about IA? Was I sleeping in college? My insecurities were tapered when I revisited my 2009 Construction Principles book that’s been collecting dust waiting to be donated to the library. And, phew, my memory was easily refreshed on the basics. Somewhat relieved after translating some of the concepts in my book to UX terms, still, it wasn’t enough to get me to understand what the user experience is.

Did I really think I’d gloss over the IA processes and become a natural? Yes. Yes, I did. Turns out UX delves deep into the behavioral patterns of humans and the psychology of choice. And turns out, taking architecture into the digital space is COMPLICATED.

Nonetheless, I love where I am. I love having followed my passion all the way to this messy place. The hills I’m climbing are necessary to help me actualize optimal pleasure in my work life. 

I wondered how many of my colleagues who thought that architecture school would turn them into building-designers faced the stark reality that that’s not happening for them. How many of them realized that their values lay in the human or user experience? 

I think I speak for a lot of us when I say a piece of our hearts and minds lives on a different timeline where we went on to design buildings. But, we are here and now and have to let go.

Basic Questions 2: The Ego’s Query & Saying Goodbye

Usually, I’m more interested in the truth of who I am and where my desire to express burns rather than where I “ought” to be given my history/circumstances. But, there was a daunting question that found itself tangled in my training and some adolescent daydreams. 

A hard admittance, but: Can I still call myself an architect? 

It seems to have been written between the lines of our Architecture curriculum, that the ultimate goal was to be an icon or at the very least, noteworthy. The next Frank Lloyd Wright? Zaha Hadid? This ego’s quarry took me lots of self-work and identity-shedding.

And, drumroll – Yes. The answer is yes. You can call yourself whatever you want outside the world of licensure and stamping. Although, I would try to let go if it’s coming from a place of glamor. Outside of our built environment, architects are behind the scenes. Like, ghostly behind the scenes. (Maybe that’s why we didn’t learn about them. Do they even exist?)

If you bravely admit and actually get over this hump, know that those who are good at architecting aren’t always called Architects. Sometimes they’re called managers, writers, teachers, marketers, and the list goes on. The difference is in the parameters that they’re working within (you may call this the context or the grid). Sometimes these parameters are made out of iron in the ground, sometimes they’re digital rulers on a screen, sometimes they’re social beliefs and habits. The architect is paving the way for others to navigate the issues they are facing intuitively.

Basic Questions 3: Me Different, how?

The value that underlies both Architecture and UX, and any design venture, is the human experience. That’s what design is – the manifestation of our desire to solve a problem for another. A local expression of service. It just so happens that building-architects refer to that human as an inhabitant and not a “user.” Nonetheless, after saying goodbye comes some grief and you might find yourself moving into the next phase of your ego’s quarry like I did:

Ok, so maybe I’m not an Architect – with a capital A – but the architect in me wants to express herself. How does my training differentiate me from other designers?

As designers, we’ve all learned to pay attention, identify the grid, break the grid, and make navigating the new grid intuitive. Sounds pretty holistic, so what’s the architect’s role? Scale. (Full-fledged response in the next article.)

An architect creates a place for people to gather in. Be it a building, an organization, an event, a website, an understanding, etc. That architect is only as good as her attentiveness to the context at large.