January 14, 2025 | Tina Flint-Huffman

My birthday falls just after the holidays - Jan 7 (or exactly on the holiday for my Greek Orthodox next-door neighbors) and I had a fun day with friends and family.

I finally got on the phone with my sister at about 8:30 pm. She lives in South Pasadena, CA and they'd had power outages with high winds.

There was a fire in the Palisades and one had just started near South Pasadena up in the hills against Altadena. She was inside her house but coughing a lot - very smokey even indoors, and she speculated if they should sleep with masks on.

By the next day, it was clear that the Altadena Eaton fire, like Palisades, was much more than "just another California wildfire."

They escaped to Palm Springs the following day because the air quality was so poor. On the way, the freeway was littered with abandoned semi trucks that had been blown over by the high winds.

*2 overturned semi trucks on the 210 freeway - Jennifer Flint*

My heart breaks for everyone affected by these devastating fires. Altadena especially hits home because it was home almost 20 years ago. We lived in Pasadena (directly south).

My twins were born at St. Lukes, a beautiful 1930s Spanish style hospital across from Eaton Canyon. It was damaged but somehow still standing when most around it is gone.

I used to take my twins to play in Eaton Canyon wilderness area when we needed a break from 2 year old twin energy inside a small condo.

In the Palisades, cowboy movie star Will Roger's ranch burned. It's a state historic park and we visited for a grad school field trip.

Numerous historic and significant Los Angeles landmarks have been lost, characterized as "a mass erasure of heritage.”

*Turkish room of Altadena's now destroyed 1880s era* *McNally Estate* *(of Rand-McNally Publishing)*

As a designer and former Angelino still in love with the architecture of early LA, this hurts, but it doesn't compare to the loss of homes, businesses, and most importantly, the lives lost and lives devasted by these fires.

I donated to World Central Kitchen, an organization that provides meals to victims and first responders in disaster areas after seeing celeb Jennifer Garner working with WCK founder and chef José Andrés to feed firefighters and those who'd lost their homes in Pacific Palisades.

Lifting Hands International is a woman-founded aid organization recommended by Calm Business founder Kerstin Martin.

My accountability pod got on our weekly Zoom and first talked about how it felt strange to keep plowing on, especially since one of our (absent) members could see the Palisades flames from her home.

But plow on we did, and so now I'll update you with business news:

I've been full force revamping Website Leads Lab, my leads-generating website template + course for service providers. It sounds silly but it's amazing to me how much work it is to redo a course.

I mean - I've already done it once, right?

It will be done by early next month, but I don't plan to relaunch it immediately since I need to develop many of the new marketing assets around it.

I shouldn't be too hard on myself about how long this has taken. In the process, I ended up creating and launching an entirely new course, Words That Sell.

I originally just wanted to enhance the website copy section of the course, but it took on a life of it's own. (I'm not good at doing things half way.)

In it's final form, my gut said it would be overwhelming to include inside of what's already the most robust website template + course on the market.

After consulting with my accountability pod, they advised me to break it out as a stand alone course, so that's what I did, launching it end of November.

BTW - if you're new around here and wondering why I was considering including writing (aka "copy") in a website course, it's because I don't do the "sell them a pretty template that's all show, no go" thing.

My templates are paired with my Website Leads Lab course which is designed to get you traffic and leads.

You get copy, SEO, and email marketing instruction in addition to complete instruction on how to build out and launch your Squarespace template.

This means your end result is a website that's a leads generating machine instead of a pretty digital doorstop.

In fact, there's copious research indicating that overly pretty websites convert worse than simpler ones.

Pure coincidence that backs this idea: I was listening to fav YT podcaster Jay Clouse a few days ago when his interviewee discussed how his beautiful new site wasn't converting - see timestamp 42:37 - Beautiful Design Doesn’t Improve Conversion Rates

I've written about it here without categorizing it directly, but a research-backed post on this subject will be coming out soon.

So circling back, I'll offer my email list early access to the relaunch of Website Leads Lab with a subscriber discount.

If that's of interest to you, keep an eye out next month. Check out WLL here.

That's what I have for this week. Stay safe and if you have any questions or comments, hit reply and let me know what's on your mind. I love hearing from you.