Toombs Creative

09/02/2026

I have a 1,031 day Duolingo streak. Portuguese, French, Spanish. If I lose it I will simply pass away.

So when I got the notification that a friend was about to lose his, I opened the app and saved it for him. Obv.

He messaged me the next day and told me to turn it into a case study. Make up some ROI numbers, build a whole thing around it. His reasoning: me saving his streak made him want me to be the marketing person for every organization he knows.

I'm not making up numbers. I don't need to. His reaction is the case study.

A few weeks earlier I'd told him I was opening consulting capacity for the fall. He wrote back that he'd send me any organization he came across that needed a strategist. That happened because we're friends. Not because I ran a campaign at him.

That's how most of my work shows up. A workshop. A capstone project. Someone who remembered me two years later.

Business development at my size isn't a funnel. It's knowing a lot of people and actually liking each other.

I love Duolingo for a reason that isn't a joke. Four minutes a day, one clear step, and I've kept three languages going for almost three years. Marketing never feels like that. It sits there like homework people will get to when things calm down. Things do not calm down.

I have room for a few four-month partnerships September through December, for organizations and nonprofits running marketing without a strategist on staff.

Hire me as your in-house strategist. Or follow me on Duolingo.

08/21/2026

I’m talkin to you, Port Townsend, Quilcene, Port Hadlock, Brinnon, and Sequim!!

Strategy Sessions on the Water
Boat cruise w/ Dabob ‘n Around
FRI 8/21 • 1PM
$75 - DM to book

08/15/2026

Quick thing I made this week.

I run an EA setup that saves me hours, and the whole reason it works is one page of written instructions. What she decides alone. What she always asks me about. How I want to be told when something goes wrong.

Almost nobody writes this down. That is why so much assistant help stays stuck at "send me a task and I'll do it."

I turned mine into a fill in the blank template. Person or AI, either one.

Works whether your assistant is a person or an AI project. Fill in the brackets, paste it in, done in 20 min

08/15/2026

Olympic Peninsula business owners! Join me on FRI 8/21 🛥️

DM to save your spot

08/11/2026

I’m taking strategy sessions out on the water — because that’s way more fun 🌊

On Friday, August 21, I’ll be on Dabob Bay running a two-hour session— just you, four other business owners, and me, somewhere a lot better than a conference room.

We’ll look at your marketing, get clear on what actually matters, and map out your next move. You leave with a clear plan ahead and an afternoon on the water behind you.

There are only four spots left! If one of them is yours, you can DM me to save your spot.

Friday, August 21 · 1PM · Dabob Bay, Quilcene WA

08/11/2026

I’m taking strategy sessions out on the water — because that’s way more fun 🌊

On Friday, August 21, I’ll be on Dabob Bay running a two-hour session— just you, four other business owners, and me, somewhere a lot better than a conference room.

We’ll look at your marketing, get clear on what actually matters, and map out your next move. You leave with a clear plan ahead and an afternoon on the water behind you.

There are only four spots left! If one of them is yours, DM me for the link.

Friday, August 21 · 1PM · Dabob Bay, Quilcene WA

07/30/2026

LinkedIn added a button that says “Seems like AI slop.”

It sits right there in the post menu, next to Save and Not interested. See a post that reads like it came straight out of ChatGPT and you can tell the platform so with one tap. Enough taps and that post stops traveling. Your connections still see it. Nobody else does.

LinkedIn even named the tells they’re watching for. The cadence. The rhythm. The “it’s not X, it’s Y” construction that shows up in every third post on that feed.
Other platforms will follow. They always do.

Here’s what that means if you use AI in your content, and I hope you do. The tool is only as good as what you feed it. Blank prompt, blank copy. Train it on your voice, your customer, your brand, your actual point of view, and you get something that sounds like you on a good day.

People could tell the difference before LinkedIn built a button for it.

I’m fully in support of using AI. I’m also in support of you making yours work a lot harder.

DM me if you want to talk through how to train yours.

07/28/2026

Brick-and-mortar owners are some of the bravest entrepreneurs I know.

The overhead is high. The margins are thin. You sign a lease, stock the shelves, unlock the door, and show up for customers every single day -- whether twelve people walk in or none do.

That takes a specific kind of person. Someone willing to bet on a storefront on main street when the safer move is to stay small and stay online. Someone who keeps the lights on through slow seasons and still greets the next person who walks in like they're the first one.

If that's you, give yourself more credit. The grind you've normalized is not normal. It's brave.

You built something people can walk into. That's rare. Don't let the daily-ness of it convince you otherwise.

You're one of the bravest ones out there. 👏

07/28/2026

Two business owners can offer the exact same service and one of them books out while the other struggles to explain what she does in a way that clicks.

The difference is rarely skill. It’s clarity.

A client I worked with recently could tell me everything about her business except who it was actually for. She was talking to everyone, which meant she wasn’t really talking to anyone. Once we named her actual person, the language, the offers, even her Instagram bio got easier to write. Not because she got better at marketing overnight. Because she finally knew what she was aiming at.

Positioning isn’t a tagline. It’s knowing exactly who you serve, what makes you different, and how to say that in a way your person immediately recognizes as being about them.

Get that part right and everything downstream gets lighter. The captions. The sales calls. The way you talk about your own business at a dinner party.

What would change for you if you could explain what you do in one clear sentence?

04/30/2026

True story from my neck of the woods 📍 A local public entity recently announced they're leaving a major social media platform, citing mental health research as its reason.

Here's my take: public entities are already among the hardest organizations to communicate with. There are layers, processes, and limited windows to actually reach the people making decisions that affect your community.

Facebook, for all its flaws, is where this community actually shows up. It's where conversations happen, questions get asked, and information spreads.

Leaving that space doesn't solve a mental health problem. It widens the gap between a public entity and the people it serves. And a wider gap means a weaker relationship, less transparency, and more frustration for the community trying to stay informed and engaged.

You can have concerns about social media platforms and still recognize your responsibility to be where your community is.

How are other organizations navigating this? I'd love to hear your perspective.