The Beginning

I like to joke that I made my first millions dollars “from the back seat of my car.”

That’s because I originally hail from a rural Pennsylvania trailer park where I desperately needed to figure out what it meant to live a good life and do work I was proud of. (Let’s face it, eight years at the ice cream stand were glorious, but where does a small-town girl go for more?)

That question led me on a life-long journey traveling the open road, studying career happiness, and experimenting in entrepreneurship, when I discovered that we can ~really~ afford to live better lives than we are.

While many of my peers were resigned to accepting their eternal servitude to the system—complete with a side of boredom, exhaustion, and never enough time to finish a lunchtime hamburger—I decided to start writing about it, instead. Enter: The Middle Finger Project. (And approximately 10,000 awkward introductions to people’s mothers.)

I started The Middle Finger Project in 2009 as a way to have important conversations about what the hell we’re all doing on this globe with the time we’ve got. A decade later, what once began as a small online column has evolved into a company with a book published by the biggest publisher in the world, a new school of confidence & communication, and a killer crew of fans who consistently look to TMF to find their voice and remember who they are.

Suffice to say, I never went back to “work” again and have since been harassing the entire internet for the past decade, during which time I’ve become known for my unconventional approach to careers, my voice-driven writing (which I think is shorthand for “this bitch“), and the belief that the right words can change your life.

(Incidentally I also became known for my uncanny ability to make readers feel exactly as if I’ve been spying on them through their windows, which is really only true if you’re Scottish. I can’t resist a good Scottish accent.)

Today I continue to write full-time as an online columnist, both here at the site as well as other unrespectable places online; insist to strangers having an existential crisis that they should really buy my book, and serve as a creative consultant for select projects that have the personality of a piece of cardboard and need to cut through the noise. I also run several internet start-ups because I am clearly a lunatic, and really wish people would stop trying to convince me to like the taste of fish. 🤷🏻‍♀️

A Mildly Inappropriate List of Facts About Me

1. My biggest fear in life is a greasy keyboard. (Ergo, I wash my hands like I’m strung-out on Dial, and if you shook my hand, you’d think I were AN ACTUAL LUMBERJACK.)
2. I firmly believe that Frank’s Hot Sauce is a vitamin. I take it daily.
3. Favorite smell? Tomato plant.
4. The very first time I ever met with my literary agency in NYC, I thought the Flat Iron Building was a steakhouse. I really regaled them with my intellectual prowess.
5. This is what happens when you grow up in a rural Pennsylvania trailer park.
6. But you also get really, really good at being scrappy. Hence the fact that I now run a global creative company that I created using nothing more than my voice. 😍
7. I’m not married on principle.
8. I don’t want kids. (Even though they’re cute as shit.)
9. I LOVE both of these things about myself.
10. I live part-time in Costa Rica with my darling hunk, C. It is hot as balls.
11. I also recently invested in a property in a historic building in Old City, Philadelphia—YOU SHOULD SEE ME AT NIGHT TALKING TO MARTHA WASHINGTON.
12. I bought that property sight unseen from abroad. That is how I roll.
13. We go to the U.K. every summer, where I often hold writing retreats for women from around the world.
14. I can’t go to bed without washing my feet.
15. I have secret fantasies of learning special effects makeup. Mostly just so I can pretend to be a monster and then walk straight over to the neighbors when they are being too loud and FREAK THEM THE FUCK OUT.
16. My writing voice is my superpower.
17. If you’re talking to me, I am undoubtedly wondering, “Is my lip doing that thing where one side droops?”
18. I instantly fall in love with people who have big, loud, happy laughs.
19. Having hair and makeup come in and make me glam before a photoshoot is probably my favorite guilty pleasure in the world.
20. I will school you at the pool table.
21. Ryan Reynolds is my celebrity crush.
22. My high school friends call me “Zash.”
23. I never need a business card—somehow, people seem to remember “The Middle Finger Project.” 😉 Hope to see you when I email this week! Be sure to subscribe and a Philadelphia pretzel will get its wings.