March wordy round-up

Stuff I think you'll love

Sue Moore

Mar 24, 2025

A taste of what’s caught my attention lately. Full post has all the juicy details, including -

Lifestyle content double standards
The brilliantly simple way to prioritise decisions
70000 followers ≠ income

📺 Watching lately

Shows that didn’t make me want to throw the remote at the screen.

Running Point

In Running Point on Netflix, Kate Hudson stars as nepo baby and unexpected president of her family-owned sports empire, a major league basketball team.

With her knowledge previously overlooked by her family, Kate/Isla brings her particular brand of privileged chaos to skewer the male-dominated sports industry and girlboss tropes. One of the show’s creators is midlifer Mindy Kaling (Kelly from The Office). Fun.

Amandaland

Hardly under the radar, everyone’s probably watched this already. If not, do catch up on newly divorced Amanda in this spin-off from Motherland. Created by three magnificent midlifers. See if you can spot Sister Michael from Derry Girls.

Below Deck

There's something vaguely shameful about my addiction to the superyacht reality show, Below Deck (series 8 just dropped on Netflix). In a nutshell - hot yachties juggle their duties and personal relationships, while catering to the whims of their often-tantruming guests, in expectation of a tip that usually runs into five figures.

I’m struggling to find a midlife link to Below Deck, but maybe you could look out for Delores the disrupter? Clue: she really goes overboard, and not just metaphorically.

After a day of adulting, there's something delicious about witnessing extreme entitlement at sea. Judge me if you must.

Do you indulge?

What else would you recommend?

✍🏻 Reading & learning

The decision-making hierarchy that helps me tackle overthinking

Ever watched someone agonise over a decision as if she's about to tattoo it across her forehead, when really it's more like a hat she can take off at the end of the day? James Clear's advice on decision-making hierarchy is the jolt of perspective I didn't know I needed.

He suggests approaching choices based on their permanence. Some decisions are hats (easily changeable), others are haircuts (give it a few months) and a precious few are tattoos (better be sure). As midlife women, we've accumulated enough experience to know the difference, yet somehow we still waste time on what ultimately amounts to a hat choice. And maybe sometimes we make tattoo-level decisions during our lunch break because "how hard could it be to completely reinvent my business model?" If you ever find yourself in decision limbo, I’ve found his framework useful: is it a hat, a haircut or a tattoo? Then allocate your emotional energy accordingly. Your cortisol levels will thank you.

Skip the awkward mingling

If you've ever sat through a networking event wondering why you're trading business cards with people you'll never see again, I recommend Priya Parker's The Art of Gathering. Parker dismantles everything wrong with how we come together. Instead of defaulting to pointless icebreakers and awkward mingling, she argues for business and social gatherings with actual purpose, meaningful structure and controversial conversations.

For midlife women who've survived enough bland events to last several lifetimes, this book offers freedom to host gatherings that reflect what you actually care about, rather than what tradition dictates.

I plan to use her principles when

Sarah Knight

and I host the wrap party for The Plot Twist Awards this spring.

Lifestyle content: where men escape and women curate

Marina Hyde’s astute takedown of the threadbare platitudes masquerading as life wisdom convinced me that, as suspected, I don’t need to waste time watching With Love, Meghan.

“I won’t labour the 1% of the 1% mood, though someone driving through one of America’s most rarefied billionaires’ communities to buy a few hundred dollars’ worth of flowers while telling you, “It’s the little things that count” is obviously ridiculous.”

For men, success invariably means freedom from domestic minutiae. For women, success often demands becoming expert at it, then packaging it beautifully for public consumption. The double standard is exhausting, performative and absurd. No wonder we're feeling cynical when, as Marina Hyde points out “Zuckerberg and Sarandos presumably decided a very long time ago that part of the goal is to not even know where your kitchen is”.

When 70,000 followers nets you a tenner a month

Remember when Instagram wasn’t a scrollable shopping centre? I certainly do. That's when I first followed

Bella Foxwell

, who built an impressive 70,000-strong following on her Doors of London account.

In this recent post, she reveals that audience translated to a grand total of £1000 in her pocket. Not monthly. Not yearly. Total.

Bella deliberately pulls back the curtain on social media economics with clear-eyed precision. What makes her post so valuable is how she parlayed those followers into her positioning as a social media expert, opening doors for her consultancy that algorithm-pleasing alone never could. She shrewdly illustrates the difference between accumulating followers and actual business strategy, which separates the truly smart from the merely visible.

The question her astute post raises for any of us still using social media is this: if even the smartest creators with significant followings don’t profit directly from their work, who does? (Hint: companies whose names rhyme with feta).

Will Ozempic come for your marketing strategy?

This thought-provoking post by Kim Doyal connects GLP-1 medications to an impending marketing meltdown. While celebrities shed pounds on Ozempic, should marketers break into a cold sweat? Maybe these drugs won't just curb the appetite for biscuits, but also dampen impulsivity across the board?

Imagine millions of people suddenly immune to marketing’s most cynical psychological triggers. No more doom scrolling. No more spontaneous splurges. Could the dopamine hit that drives conversion rates be chemically neutralised?

Such delicious irony if the weight-loss industry inadvertently inhibits the psychological vulnerabilities that marketing exploits. Pass the popcorn (if you still want it) and let’s watch with interest.

Email marketing to midlifers: a masterclass in missing the point

I recently wrote this about how brands trip over themselves to reach midlife women for the wonderful Willow Paule’s website. In it I show how the demographic holding substantial purchasing power is regularly treated to some of the most tone-deaf email marketing imaginable.

Want us to work together?

🐦‍⬛ I help midlife women just like us talk about our businesses and position our skills so that other people want to pay for them. I do it with messaging/positioning strategy and copywriting. And I work with midlife women because I'm convinced we should take over the world and all would be well. Not even half-joking 😂

If you want to talk about positioning your work, messaging strategy, web copy or email marketing, we can have a zero-pressure chat. You can reach me (Sue Moore) at inktank@substack.com

I’m Sue Moore, The Midlife Messaging Strategist & Copywriter. I share smart stuff for writers, plus musings on midlife marketing and copy psychology.