Your Hype Doc, Female Comics & Cute Flats
Picture your inbox on a good week. A client writes back, "this is genius, we never would have thought about it this way." 💡 A stranger DMs to say your last post made them tear up (in a good way). 🥹 Someone leaves a five-star review with a whole paragraph in it. 🌟
Now picture the one piece of feedback that lives rent free in your mind. The clipped "per my last email." The review that called your work "fine." The prospect who ghosted after you sent the proposal.
And which one are you still thinking about in quiet moments to yourself? 🙃
It’s not a character flaw. It's wired into our brains. And there's a fix that's a little petty, in the very best of ways.
🧠 Why the bad stuff sticks
Psychologists call it negativity bias, and the foundational paper on it is titled "Bad Is Stronger Than Good" (ok, on the nose). Across relationships, money, and feedback, one bad thing reliably outweighs a whole stack of good ones. Everybody's brain does this. It kept our ancestors from petting the saber-toothed cat.
But womxn get handed a second helping. Researchers Exley and Kessler ran the numbers on more than 4,000 people and found that women consistently describe their own performance less favorably than men who did equally well.
And that gap shows up as early as sixth friggin’ grade.
Womxn are taught to call our wins "luck," to demure when praised, and to move the goalpost the second we clear it.
So the criticism gets laminated. The praise evaporates.
One solution: start keeping the receipts.
📁 Make a Hype Doc
A Hype Doc (AKA brag file, AKA text-based comfort for your soul) is one running place where you capture evidence of your own competence in real time — before your brain has a chance to hit delete.
A doc, a note, an email label, a folder of screenshots. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the good stuff lands somewhere on its way past you. Toss in:
Kind client notes and "you absolutely nailed it" emails — screenshot the ones that made you sit up straighter.
Glowing reviews and testimonials, the full paragraph, not just the star count.
Positive feedback from mentors and people you admire.
That DM that made your week.
Wins with numbers: booked out for the season, grew the list by a third, sold through the first drop in a weekend, more than 40 people showed up, etc. etc. Sometimes wins just hit different with proofpoints.
Press, features, shout-outs, tags, reposts.
The scary ones: the project that terrified you and worked anyway.
💼 It's a feelings folder and a business asset
Here's the part that turns a mood-booster into a moneymaker. Your Hype Doc is a content library and a sales tool wearing a self-care disguise. Everything in it does double duty:
Testimonials for your website and capes deck. The words a happy client typed in a rush of gratitude are better copy than anything you'd write about yourself. Bank them so your capabilities deck writes itself.
A reference bench. When someone offers to vouch for you, note it. Six months later, when a big prospect asks for references, you won't be scrolling your memory in a panic — you'll have a list.
Receipts for raising your rates. A year of documented wins is the quietest, most powerful argument for that new number. (See our issue on raising your rates.)
Case studies and proposals, half-written. Every logged win is a mini case study waiting to happen.
For our product-based folks: those five-star reviews, unboxing videos, repeat-customer DMs, and tagged photos are your product-page copy, your packaging inserts, your retargeting ads. Screenshot the "obsessed, ordering three more" comment before it scrolls into the void — that's UGC gold, and it's free.
✨ How to start one (today, in about ten minutes)
Make the doc. Name it something that makes you smirk. "Receipts." "In Case I Forget I'm That Girl." “Read Me Daily.” Whatever gets you to open it.
Ask in the moment. When a client gushes, that's your cue: "This means so much! Would you be open to me sharing it as a testimonial?" A yes is free marketing. (More on asking without the ick next week.)
Set a Friday reminder. Two minutes, one question: “what went right this week?” Drop it in.
Forward to a folder. Make an email label called "Hype" and route the nice notes straight there.
Screenshot everything. DMs and comments disappear. Testimonials shouldn't live somewhere that vanishes when a platform has a bad day.
🍂 A pre-fall reset
As we head into Q4 — new offers, fresh pitches, that project you're about to put yourself forward for — you're going to want the receipts close. Not because you have anything to prove, but because you deserve to remember the truth about your own work as clearly as you remember the one comment that stung.
Receiving praise is a skill. Keeping it is a practice. Start the doc.
Need some emotional permission to brag? Our next Work With Day is today. Stop by Talea Cobble Hill and let us remind you that you deserve to keep your applause close at hand and top of mind.
And look out for the newsletter next week when we’re talking about how to make the ask without the ick: how to request that testimonial, referral, or intro without wanting to crawl out of your skin.
🪢 Laura & Lauren
Things We Loved This Week
LaurA’s Things
😲 Wait, are we moving to Chicago?
🥿 I’ve had my eye on these flats for months and finally ordered them.
🥐 This bakery is doing a weekend pop up in my neighborhood and WOW are the cinnamon rolls good. (And I’m not even a cinnamon roll person.)
Lauren’s Things
💫 It’s comedy nerd week in the Karasek household, so Mary Beth Barone’s Netflix special, and…
🏝️ StraightioLab’s second ever book club with Jo Firestone (alongside, if you haven’t heard it, StraightioLab’s first ever book club with Jo Firestone).
💰 This is accurate, and if I’d known that in college, I’d be richer rn.
✅ Fact check: true.
