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Hi Reader,
You are probably aware that I’ve been planning a September retreat for freelance CME writers — a small-group experience designed around sustained rest, nervous system recovery, and opportunities for deeper peer connection.
Two people signed up right away in December. Many more expressed serious interest and excitement. But by the end of the second promotional campaign in June, we were still at two.
After talking it through with Marybeth, my co-host and logistics lead, 90 days out from the retreat date, we decided to cancel.
I’m not going to sugarcoat how I feel about this: I’m disappointed.
I designed this retreat because I know how much freelance CME writers need time out from running on fight-or-flight, white-knuckling through uncertainty, treating rest as something to get to after the next deadline. The retreat was built to interrupt these patterns and move people from survival mode into tend-and-befriend, and toward deeper clarity about business and life.
The two people who signed up described exactly the challenges the retreat was designed to address. This tells me the need is real.
Blame vs evaluation
Here’s where I could go sideways (also a great movie which is on my summer rewatch list).
I could blame myself for not communicating the value clearly enough. I could blame the economy and the deep uncertainty people are feeling right now. I could blame the format, the price, the timing, or the audience.
But thinking about blame in this way is unproductive. It keeps your nervous system activated and your thinking reactive. It doesn’t produce information you can act on, and it doesn’t move you toward acceptance or “clear seeing” in yoga philosophy terms.
Evaluation is a more effective way to practice clear seeing. And as a CME writer, I already have the tools I need to do this (which we teach in WriteCME Pro).
Three evaluation frameworks
1. Gap analysis
In CME, we define a practice gap as the distance between what is happening and what should be happening. The same logic applies to the retreat. The gap I need to understand isn’t why did this fail? The gap is more about the distance between expressed interest and completed registration, and what factors explain that distance?
When you face a business disappointment, ask the same questions you’d ask in a needs assessment:
- What is the gap?
- Who has it?
- When does it show up?
- Why does it exist?
Is it a knowledge gap (they didn’t understand what the retreat offered), a motivation gap (they wanted it but couldn’t prioritize it), or an environmental gap (the economy, timing, or logistics created barriers that had nothing to do with the offering itself)?
Naming the gap precisely is the difference between being sad that the retreat didn’t work out and identifying specifically what to change next time.
2. Root cause analysis
Surface explanations are tempting. People didn’t sign up because the price was too high or I didn’t market it well enough. Maybe. But root cause analysis asks us to go deeper. Why might the price have felt too high — was it the absolute number, or was the perceived value unclear? Why didn’t the marketing convert — was it the message, the channel, the timing, or the audience’s readiness?
In CME root cause analysis, we know not to stop at the first plausible explanation for a clinical practice gap. The same discipline applies to my — and your — business. Keep asking why until you land on something you can actually act on. So I’ll do this too.
3. PDSA
Plan, Do, Study, Act is the continuous improvement cycle that drives most CME education planning. I planned the retreat. I did the promotional campaigns. Now I’m in the Study phase: gathering data, reviewing what happened, identifying what I’d change. The Act phase comes next, when I take what I learn and build something better.
PDSA works for your business too. Pitched a new client and didn’t hear back? Don’t just move on. Study: Was the pitch aligned with their actual needs? Did you articulate your value clearly? Was the timing right? Then act on what you find. The PDSA cycle isn’t about perfection. Rather, it’s about making each iteration smarter than the last.
Why this matters for your nervous system
Here’s what these frameworks have in common: they slow you down. They replace the reactive spin of what did I do wrong with a structured process that produces usable answers.
This slowing down is essential for growth. When you slow your breathing, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the biological counterweight to fight-flight-freeze. Your cortisol drops and your executive function kicks back in.
As CME writers we make business decisions constantly: which projects to take, how to price, when to push back, whether to pitch or wait. Those decisions are measurably worse when you’re operating from a dysregulated nervous system.
So evaluation frameworks aren’t just intellectual exercises. They’re also nervous system regulation tools that give your brain something structured to do instead of spiraling.
A practical invitation
Summer is a natural slowdown in CME. Many clients are between planning cycles. Conference season has a wee bit of a lull. Clients are on vacation. Maybe you are too—yay to that!
Instead of filling this seasonal space with more hustle, consider filling it with intention:
- Take a project off your plate if you can.
- Breathe before you reply to an email.
- Go for a walk without your phone.
- Sit with a business decision for 48 hours instead of responding in 48 minutes.
As Tricia Hersey of Nap Ministry reminds us: rest is not laziness. It is a form of self-care, healing, and empowerment. And as Madeleine Dore writes in I Didn’t Do the Thing Today, the antidote to productivity culture isn’t doing less, it’s cultivating fecundity—a capacity for growth, which requires light, rest, movement, nourishment, and connection.
The retreat will not happen this September. But the need it was designed to meet hasn’t gone anywhere. Neither has my commitment to addressing it.
In the meantime, I’m going slow over the summer. I know I’ll be better for it. I hope you can try this too.
Until September,
