Shownotes:
Get ready for an electrifying episode as I chat with the fabulous Allyson Liu. We discuss our game-changing creation: "Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and By You." Friends, this isn't your average journal. It's an interactive, vibrant, and downright fun experience that breaks free from the confines of traditional journaling. With "Bold Gratitude," you're in control—choose your own adventure and embark on a gratitude journey that's as unique as you are. It's time to get bold and embrace the joy of gratitude like never before!
About Our Guest:
Allyson Liu is a creative talent who discovered her passion for design early on. She has extensive experience in industries such as publishing and advertising. She also founded How Inviting, a line of custom stationery, which gained national attention when it was featured on NBC’s Today Show. Now, Allyson helps clients achieve their marketing goals through her company Allyson Liu, Marketing + Creative, where she brings a unique and inspired approach to branding.
Website: AllysonLiu.com
Facebook: @allysonliucreative
Instagram: @allysonliucreative
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of Evolving Learner and a contributing author of Because of a Teacher. Her latest book, Evolving with Gratitude, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! Purchase here!
You can also get bulk orders for your staff (10 copies or more) at a discounted price! Just fill out the form linked below and someone will get back to you ASAP! bit.ly/ewgbulkdiscount
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello friends. We have a very special episode today. Today we have Allyson Liu. Hello Allyson.
Allyson Liu: Hello Lainie. How are you?
Lainie Rowell: I'm good. See, we're pretending like we're just now talking for the first time, even though we've been talking for like an hour so far. Friends, here's why this is a super special episode, and that is Allyson is a lifelong best friend and the partner in Bold Gratitude. Our journal that's coming out. I'm so excited. Actually by the time people are listening to this, the journal will be out.
Allyson Liu: That is really exciting.
Lainie Rowell: I cannot wait. Okay. Let me give a proper introduction to my bestie. I'm gonna get real professional here. Are you ready, Allyson?
Allyson Liu: Let's keep it real Fun- Lainie.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, okay. That's fine. So we're gonna talk about Fun Lainie too, in case the listeners are wondering what the heck that means.
Okay. Let me get legit first. Allyson Liu is a creative talent who discovered her passion for design early on. It's really hard for me to do this with a straight face, but you are a big deal. So I wanna make sure and convey that because you've got experience in publishing advertising.
You're the founder of How Inviting and you have been nationally recognized on NBC's Today Show for your design work. And I think that's a pretty big deal.
Allyson Liu: Well, thanks.
Lainie Rowell: So I'm just saying it how it is. What do you wanna add? What do you wanna tell people about you that I did not cover in that semi-professional intro?
Allyson Liu: Well, I, I guess I would say that one of my biggest passions is helping other female entrepreneurs launch their businesses. So I love to work with other women who, whether they be moms who are trying to, you know, redefine what career looks like in their family and find that work life balance. I love to help support them in those goals, whether it's naming their businesses or creating their logos, helping them with their packaging, website, just branding in general.
But that's really where I feel like I make the most rewarding personal impact in helping other women who are in similar situations that I am with young families get back into the workforce and be proud of what they do.
Lainie Rowell: Well, speaking of impact, you've had a tremendous impact on my life personally as a bestie, but also professionally, in fact. I did put this in the acknowledgements of Evolving Learner, but I wanna say it here.
We were sitting in a Pei Wei in Tustin, and I was explaining to you this idea I had about professional learning and how I learned from kids and peers and the world. And you, without even taking a beat, you're like, oh, well it sounds like you're an Evolving Learner. And I was like, yes, that's it. And that ended up being the title of the keynote that I did at BLC.
And then that became the title of the book that I wrote with Kristy Andre and Lauren Steinman. Yes. So yes. And so basically, you have had a huge impact on everything that I have put out into the world as far as books. And you've helped me with so many things along the way. So I'll, I'll start to get like all emotional if I, if I lean into it too much.
But I just wanna put that out there because it was so easy to say, I need to do this next project with Allyson and one of my favorite things, we just celebrated the one year of Evolving with Gratitude, which you designed the cover of.
Allyson Liu: That's right.
Lainie Rowell: And I don't know if you saw this, but yesterday on Facebook I said, Hey, here's the cover for Bold Gratitude.
You might recognize Allyson's name because she did the cover of Evolving with Gratitude, and someone wrote in the comments. I love everything she does.
Allyson Liu: Aw. It's like, I did not see that, but that makes me feel really good.
Lainie Rowell: I know. I was like, oh my gosh, that makes me so happy. And I know people who have actually reached out to me and said will she design my book cover?
And I know that people have already reached out to you to help with their branding educators and so yes, I love that.
Allyson Liu: Yeah. There's been a lot of great networking that has come through all of this. But I remember when we were talking about the cover of Evolving with Gratitude and you had this little seed that you, you, you planted saying, wouldn't it be great if we had a little spinoff, a little, a little baby come off of this book. So it's so exciting that we were able to to make this happen.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, let's take people through that. Let's talk a little bit about this, because people not knowing the backstory, which we're about to share, might be like, wow, Evolving with Gratitude came out June, 2022 and a year later.
We're having the Bold Gratitude Journal come out, like, how did that happen so quickly? But as you just pointed out, this has actually been in the works for a while. For me, I dared not say it out loud for a while except to you because I was like, I don't know are people gonna get excited about this?
And then as soon as I started letting it out of the bag, people were excited. So let's, let's talk a little bit about the origin story of this. Yes, we talked about it being like from the beginning with Evolving with Gratitude, but how did this actually come into to being from your perspective, and then I can share some of my perspective, but...
Allyson Liu: Well, I think when we really got serious about it was when we took over some property at Starbucks with a lot of research in other books and journals that are out there and where we really kind of zoned in on finding that missing element that we weren't really seeing in some of the journals that are out there currently. So when we honed in on what we felt like could be really impactful, which was to go after, you know a wider demographic. Particularly with tweens and above.
Yeah. And that was something that I think we, we saw was, was lacking.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And I, I just wanna say you know we say on the cover, so it's Bold Gratitude: The Journal Design for You and By You. And I feel like from the very beginning that this was gonna be universally designed, as interactive as possible, so we wanted to make it as accessible as possible, but we also, and you really brought this out in me wanted to make it creative and really to inspire creativity and to also have this like upbeat, casual, you call it Fun- Lainie which we, we were not seeing in some of the other journals.
Allyson Liu: Correct. And me being a creative writing my thoughts and feelings won't come as naturally as it will to somebody like you. And so when I see the journals that are relying all about writing instead of all the different other ways you can express what your feelings are, which, you know for me it's obviously with art and design, I felt like it was a really good direction to go where we are hitting more audiences because we make this journal, really interactive in a way that they can take on an assignment or skip over a chapter or go backwards. If I'm having a day where I do wanna write, there are many options for me to do that.
But if I have a day where I just wanna doodle or sketch or you know meditate or whatever, there are so many different paths you can take through this journal and for somebody like me that is way more appealing than a journal that is strictly for journaling in its traditional sense of writing.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and what I love is, I think we came up with a nice balance of, we've got fill in the blanks in there. Just give you a little bit of inspiration and you don't have to go full on writing essays or anything like that. You can just fill in the blanks and get to process through all those feelings, get that experience. We've got the activities that are really about creativity and bringing in kind of that artistic, which if that means stick figures to you, that's totally fine.
You don't have to be an artist for that. We've got some quotes. One of my favorite things that kind of came from you and I going back and forth on, well, how much space do we give for a journal prompt is, well, why would we dictate that at all? And one of my favorite things is that we have at the end of each section, there's three sections.
Gratitude for Happiness, Gratitude with your Peeps, and Gratitude with the World. At the end of each section, we've got the page of prompts that you can either cut out and glue on the pages that follow, that are wide open. Or you can rewrite them if, you know, cutting or tearing in your journal is, you know, non-starter for you.
Allyson Liu: Right.
Lainie Rowell: But that was, that was one of my favorite things that came from, and that was a hundred percent a reflection of this being a partnership where I would say something to you and you'd be like, well, I don't know about that. And vice versa. Right. And so definitely that was...
Allyson Liu: It was back and forth.
Lainie Rowell: It was. It was. And the practices are pulled from Evolving with Gratitude and things that I've done over the years. But you contributed practices too. Yeah. And then the design is a, you know, that is led by you. And then sometimes I'd be like, Ooh, can we do this? I mean, I have no design skills, but it was...
Allyson Liu: You had a lot of design ideas and then back to your point, if you're not artistic, we've got the coloring book page, we've got doodles that you could just fill in. So you don't have to have an artistic side either to really enjoy the different options that the journal has for you.
And then even the origami, you know, that's also kind of a neat craft that I think a lot of people are interested in learning how and then it serves you well throughout the journal because then you can use your bookmark.
Lainie Rowell: So the origami bookmark a hundred percent your idea. And I loved it. And I will say that that was one of the first suggestions that you made that made me go wider on what this journal could be.
And realizing we have a lot of opportunity to not only leverage what we give them on paper, but have them bring things outside in, right? So it's like go get a piece of paper. It can be patterned, it could be blank, it could be colored paper, whatever it is. And then we give the directions for the origami bookmark.
Which is so brilliant because we clearly state you don't have to go in order, you can hop around, right? And you could potentially create multiple of them and put them in different spaces for like, okay there's a day where I wanna do a fill in the blank.
I'll do this. If there's a day I want more open-ended, I'll do this. Right. There's a day I wanna be more creative and artistic, I'll do this, but. I just am so happy with how it turned out, and I really cannot wait for people to get it.
Allyson Liu: I really cannot wait for my children to get it.
Lainie Rowell: Awww.
Allyson Liu: You know, it's just nice to have something that is age appropriate that they can participate in too.
Even though they're younger than the tween, this is still something that with my assistance that they would be able to work through and to participate in, so, I see this being something that families can do together. I see it being something that adults would love to do just because it is so interactive and different than a typical journal.
But I also think it's a really great thing for families to do together.
Lainie Rowell: I'm glad you mentioned that because I'm excited for that too. And my kids have been testing, they're my focus group. So when people see some of the prompts that are in there, know that those made it past two rounds of a child and a tween And they had to rate them and if it got the veto it definitely wasn't making it.
Yeah. Most of them got the thumbs up from both.
Allyson Liu: Right. And that means that we're speaking to a broader audience. And if our kids understand and can do this journal, then it's really open to all ages, which is exciting and different.
Lainie Rowell: When we first started, and I still use this language "for anyone 10 to 110 and then some", because like you said, if it's a family doing it, you can go much younger.
Mm-hmm. And if you can live past 110, I think you should still do some gratitude journaling. So that too. Right?
Allyson Liu: Agreed. You definitely should be doing some gratitude journaling. You have a lot to be thankful for.
Lainie Rowell: You do. Exactly. Yes. Exactly. So let's continue down this memory lane, can you think about something throughout this process, maybe it was taking over a Starbucks, and by the way, friends, I own pretty much every gratitude journal that's on the market right now, I have an entire bookshelf that is just gratitude journals or anything, gratitude journal, adjacent, even planners, things that we just dumped out on that Starbucks.
I brought a suitcase. It was literally a suitcase full of journals.
Allyson Liu: Yep. It was a carry-on. You know, to be fair.
Lainie Rowell: Exactly. It did not require being checked.
Allyson Liu: No. It was perfect for overhead space.
Lainie Rowell: It would qualify for overhead space, but it was still an entire suitcase of journals. And some of those journals are thin.
And we had to put tables together at the Starbucks. Yep. And then we laid them all out so I'll tell you a little bit about what I loved about that part of the process. It was very organic, very messy, we just went through and one of my favorite things was, there were some journals, which are lovely, but I remember you opening up one of 'em and you're like, oh, that feels like a homework assignment.
Allyson Liu: Homework assignment. Yes.
Lainie Rowell: And I was like, oh, we don't want that. It was like, visually...
Allyson Liu: And that's the creative brain, you know, when, when you see something like that, that it just to me, personally felt very taxing. Overwhelming. I did not feel like I could make it through that, and it had a redundant feel to it, so that also kind of is how we went down the path of combining a lot of different activities.
Lainie Rowell: I've listened to people talk about some of their hesitations in journaling, and one of the things that I've heard multiple people say is they'll get a journal and then they feel like they have to do all the prompts in order.
Allyson Liu: Mm-hmm.
Lainie Rowell: And that feels very restricting because maybe that, that prompt isn't speaking to me today, but they don't necessarily feel like they have permission to hop around. We explicitly say, please hop around if you want to. You don't have to. And then also just some of the feedback I've heard, cuz I was asking a lot of people, do you journal, do you not?
Why or why not? Some people were saying they felt real guilt about not filling up space that was given or not doing enough items or things like that so I, I really am happy with where we landed on, I think it's a good amount of guidance without being overwhelming or too prescriptive.
Allyson Liu: Absolutely and I feel that the same way, you know which has kept me from doing as much journaling as I would like.
My journaling comes in more of a creative field, you know, vision boards and things like that appeal to me personally more. I find that I enjoy doing things like that, the scrap booking aspects versus the writing. Everybody's different and that's what's great about the journal is that we are offering a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Lainie Rowell: And there's a little bit of stuff at the beginning, if you want, get you in the mindset of like, okay, we're gonna do this.
We're gonna give ourselves a little permission slip, and then we have an intro which has a subheading of, unless you decide to skip it, but I think you'll like it if you give it a try. And then we've got some guided practices. But in these sections, at the end of each, there's a bunch of just somewhat blank pages. I say blank- ish pages cuz you gave them a nice little border that people could decorate if they wanted to. But it's really pretty free, wide open space. And we talked about do we put the dots there? Do we put lines and I'm happy that we just settled on it's free space.
Allyson Liu: Yeah, and you know, also one of the thoughts that had gone by our heads were during the places where we have the quotes. You know, that could be potentially a page where you can scrapbook around that quote on how that quote speaks to you.
So if you're inspired by Oprah's quote, then maybe you can either doodle or you can scrapbook and you can use that page to design how that quote inspires you.
Lainie Rowell: I tell people, I'm somewhat allergic to paper just because I don't like people handing me paper and it's something really important that I'm gonna lose.
But there is something really special about the tactile of a journal. And also I'm a nerd for post-it notes and I can get behind some good stickers and stamps and things like that and I went full out. One of my favorite memories of this process, we made a field trip to The Paper Source.
Allyson Liu: One of my favorite places.
Lainie Rowell: This is not an advertisement. Although Paper Source, if you're listening and you wanna send some, you know...
Allyson Liu: Do you want this wonderful journal?
Lainie Rowell: In your, in your establishment, in your stores.
Allyson Liu: Yeah. I think that would make a lot of sense.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. Or feel free to just send us a check for the shoutout. Well, either way, whatever you...
Allyson Liu: But we're not being sponsored by Paper Source.
Lainie Rowell: But we're not being sponsored. But that was one of my favorite field trips because I brought supplies home and my kids, it was really interesting to see how one would gravitate towards certain materials and another different materials and me as well.
And so even if you're not an artistic person I found, I think it was like $5 on Amazon. I bought some stencils because I just, I don't consider myself really artsy and so that's why I have you, Al. But the stencils helped me to like make it aesthetically pleasing, which was just kind of a nice calming activity just to sit there and use the stencils and color them in.
And that was just super fun for me too.
Allyson Liu: And a little washi tape goes a long way too.
Lainie Rowell: Oh my gosh. Washi tape is amazing. Mm-hmm. That's a really solid point. We hope that people just have so much fun. Treat it like a scrapbook, obviously it's a journal, but put things in it.
It's not just already what's there, which is, I feel a lot and I think you're gonna love it, but the idea of actually gluing or taping things in, I think is super fun too.
Allyson Liu: Agreed. And another thing that I love about the journal is the back cover because the owner of the journal is the author in our eyes, so I love that we let the author acknowledge themselves on the back cover, which I think is really special too.
Lainie Rowell: And full choice on that. You can just describe yourself in some words. You could tape or glue a selfie on there. You could...
Allyson Liu: do your self portrait.
Lainie Rowell: Absolutely.
Allyson Liu: You could write adjectives about yourself.
Lainie Rowell: A hundred percent. That's one of my favorite things about the journal and I think we, we did a good job of reinforcing that with each other is that we kept saying it's their journal. It's their journal. So when we were asked okay, are you gonna have an acknowledgements? It was like, well, but it's their journal. Right? Right. And so there were times where you and I would get into the habit of doing things that would normally go in a book and we're like, but this is their journal, so we're not gonna take that space. It's theirs. I love it so much. I am super excited to get this into people's hands and if you are listening to this, the journal's available.
We're not gonna put this out there until people can get it and we'll put the link to get it in the show notes. All right, Al, any last thoughts that you wanna share about this wonderful collaboration?
Allyson Liu: Another thing that I love about the journal is we have an area on pages where you can check once you've completed the task.
And so I love that kind of ownership, like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do today to show others that I'm grateful for them. And then I'm gonna come back and I get to check this box when it's complete so that I'm held accountable for the gratitude that I share with my friends that day.
And I think that that's, that's a fun and easy way to use the journal to kind of, remind yourself of things that you could do. Same with cutting things out and posting them around your house to remind you, we've got a lot of those types of activities that are super easy. They don't require any real effort, but they will keep gratitude front in mind throughout your day.
Lainie Rowell: Absolutely, and I'm so glad you mentioned that it's not a huge lift. A lot of these things can be done in five minutes or less.
Allyson Liu: Yep.
Lainie Rowell: I love that you pointed out, we have a Gratitude in Action checkbox on a lot of the pages. If you're like me, lot of joy from checking things off a list like yes I did that.
It's very self-affirming.
Allyson Liu: I am. I am a hundred percent that way.
Lainie Rowell: I know I keep saying this, but I'm just so excited for people to get this and just wanna say one other thing, because I'm flipping through a draft of it that I have. As we're recording this, we're in the very final stages and if you're listening to this, you could buy it right now. But there's so many practices in here, like Dr. Robert A Emmons... There's a noticing the good practice inspired by him. These are not just on a whim we decided to put these things in here. A lot of them are practices that were mentioned in Evolving with Gratitude, but I wasn't able to give a lot of space because in that book I'm talking about the science and I have the stories from the contributors, and I'm trying to be really concise.
And so I really wanted to make this a, you've got the space. This is about you and expressing and experiencing gratitude, so yeah. It's gonna be a good time. I'm looking forward to it and the people who have been sharing on the socials are like, can't wait. Ready to order now.
Allyson Liu: Awesome. I love to hear that.
Lainie Rowell: I know, right? It's so fun. All right, Allyson. I know people are gonna wanna catch up with you and see all the amazing work you're doing, and they might need some help with their own branding, their own content. So, Al, what's the best way for people to reach out to you?
Allyson Liu: My Instagram handle is @AllysonLiuCreative. And my website is AllysonLiu.Com.
Lainie Rowell: I'm gonna put all that in the show notes, my friends, you gotta check her out. She does such great work. I am truly honored to not only call her a bestie, but a partner in this. .
I just wanna take a moment. This journal would not have happened without you. There was no other way this was gonna happen. It, it was something that I had hinted at when Evolving with Gratitude started, but I always knew in my mind that I would not do it without you. This was just something that had to be us together.
And there's so many things that if there was gonna be an acknowledgements, I would go very, very deep into explaining all the things that you did. For example, how long it took just to figure out the fonts. Like, it seems like such a simple thing, but if anyone has done any sort of design work, they know that picking fonts is not. It's not a simple thing.
Allyson Liu: No, but it was super important and I'm really happy with the font selection. I think it speaks to the journal quite well.
Lainie Rowell: I think so too. I absolutely love it and I know that people are gonna love it too. So I hope people will go ahead and click on the links in the show notes to catch up with Allyson on all the spaces. She's one of the hardest working people I know. She wants everyone to be happy with what she does, and I've just never worked with anyone that is so fast at getting things done, but not just fast great stuff. I won't be able to properly gush over you because it's like decades of friendship.
I can't even come to the words. But I just want you to know that I know there was so much heart and soul and creativity that went into this. And I just thank you for that.
Allyson Liu: And I thank you for taking me along on the ride.
Lainie Rowell: Like I said, it wouldn't have happened without you.
All right, friends, I'm gonna put links to all the goodness in the show notes. I hope you grab your copy of Bold Gratitude, the Journal Designed for You and by You with so much love from Allyson and I.
Allyson Liu: Thanks guys.
Lainie Rowell: Thanks for listening.