Out Loud October: A Recap From Someone Who Just Got Off a Cruise Ship

I'm writing this from a lounge chair at a hotel pool in Orlando. I just got off the Disney Dream. We sailed to the Caribbean, and I'm not ready to be done yet — so I'm not. Tad and I extended. We're at the pool, and the ferry boats are still blowing their horns across the water, and I have a coffee, and apparently one of my favorite PBKers might also be at Disney right now without either of us knowing it.

This is the context in which I am writing this October recap. This is the life.

Most entrepreneurs do end-of-month recaps in numbers. Here's what I made. Here's what I sold. Here's the opt-in rate. I'll be honest: those numbers exist, and they're not what I want to talk about right now. Because October wasn't about the numbers. October was about something that comes before the numbers: volume.

I had turned mine down. Not on purpose. Not because I was hiding. Life does what life does — kids, cases, the rhythm of things — and somewhere in there, I'd stopped publishing in any kind of consistent way. Especially on YouTube. It had been too long. So long that YouTube had no reason to serve up my videos to anyone, because I had given them nothing to work with.

Out Loud October was my own answer to that.

The rule was simple: publish. Every day. Not because publishing every day is some content marketing strategy I believe in, but because I needed to prove something to myself. I needed to hear my own voice back. I needed to find out what I actually wanted to say — about Business Fire Drills, about smoke detectors and fire alarms in your business, about The Scenic Route, about all of it. You don't discover your messaging by thinking about it. You discover it by saying it out loud, over and over, until you hear what lands.

Here is what I actually made in October.

Business Fire Drills: 22 posts published.

That's not a typo. Twenty-two. I know what I want to say now. I know what a smoke detector is in your business, and I know what a fire alarm is, and I know that no one is saying it the way I'm saying it. The cease-and-desist drill. The misclassified contractor drill. The payment processor freeze, the locked-out website, the suspended email account, the contractor who still has your passwords. Twenty-two drills, written in October, published in October, and I'm still going.

The CNKRTE (Scenic Route): 9 posts published, 2 more scheduled.

I got these back into the world. Season 1 episodes that existed and needed a home. And then — and this is the part I'm proud of — Season 2 started. You Can't Have a Second Edition Without a First. That one is for anyone who has been waiting to feel ready before they go again. It's for me too.

Tamsefikation: 20 episodes scheduled.

Every single one created in October. Season 1, episodes 1 through 20, loaded and scheduled weekly from November through March. I am not exaggerating when I say I did not expect this. I went into October wanting to find my rhythm and walked out with an entire season of a podcast scheduled out for the next five months. That's what happens when you stop performing and start talking.

Tamsefikation is a private podcast, started in 2021, sharing how to design, hire, and enjoying living with your ideal team - team human and team tech. Boy did I catch some grief from people that how dare I call a "team" - team tech and team human ... fast forward to 2026 and who isn't calling it this?

PBK: 2 posts published.

One Email. $45,000 Back. And The Container Comes First. These two are for my people — the ones inside PBK who are building something serious — and they went out quietly but they went out.

NP2NYC (North Pole to New York City): 3 posts (1 published, 2 scheduled).

You're Not Scattered Spaghetti. You're a Venn Diagram. That one published on Halloween. Because why not.

NP2NYC Straight Line Sales, a private podcast, was ready to grow into Season 2 and off she goes!

The total: 34 posts published in October. 24 more created and scheduled. Fifty-eight pieces of content, most of it written, recorded, produced, and built during a month when my kid had a hockey tournament, when I was prepping to go on a cruise, when life was full.

There were days I didn't publish. I want to name that because the alternative is letting it sit in the dark, and I don't do that. I didn't publish because Kip's tournament mattered more. Because sometimes the day was full in a different way. Not hiding. Not retreating. Just living. And you know what I noticed? The days I didn't publish didn't feel like failure. They felt like permission. I had given myself the goal of intention — I will publish every day — not the demand of obligation — you must publish every day. The difference is enormous.

Here's what I told myself in October that I want to pass along to you: I will not look at my YouTube analytics for 90 days.

Not because analytics don't matter. They do. But I hadn't published consistently in years. YouTube had no rhythm to serve up. My audience had no rhythm to expect me. You do not get to judge the results of a system that doesn't exist yet. You build the system first. You show up for 90 days. And then — after 90 days, once there's something to actually measure — you open the dashboard and ask: where is watch time dropping? What do people replay? What should become a Reel?

Right now, the job is to turn the volume on.

I turned the volume on.

I'm sitting at this pool, and I'm watching families come and go, and Tad is somewhere nearby, and we just spent a week on a ship in the Caribbean, and next week I'll be back at my desk doing PBK calls and responding to member questions and building out December content. This is not separate from the work. This is the proof of concept of the work.

The whole point — the whole reason I do what I do — is to build a business that doesn't require me to be somewhere I don't want to be. A business that fits inside the life I actually want. And the irony of Out Loud October is that some of the best content I created happened because I was sitting at the Polynesian with my feet in the sand, with the castle in view, completely at peace, thinking: I already know what I love. I don't need anyone to tell me.

That peace is a pre-decision. That's Settled November material, actually. But that's another post.

For now: October was loud. I am proud of it. And I'm not done.

If you're watching from YouTube and this is your first time here — welcome. I'm Tamsen. I'm an attorney and a Kajabi nerd and a business infrastructure obsessive, and I have been building in this space for over a decade. Stick around. I'm just getting started again.