Grow Archives | Sam Vander Wielen

How My Productivity Killed My Creativity [Summer Read-Aloud]

August 10, 2026

Listen on Apple | Spotify | YouTube Listen Now: We’ve lost the plot when it comes to creating content. In this week’s summer read-aloud, I share a personal essay on how my own productivity systems, batching, optimizing, and keeping up...

Sam Vander Wielen smiling and wearing a blue denim shirt. Text overlay reading “I Declared a Gap Year. Then I Turned It Into a Full-Time Job. [Summer Read-Aloud]"

I Declared a Gap Year. Then I Turned It Into a Full-Time Job. [Summer Read-Aloud]

August 3, 2026

Listen on Apple | Spotify | YouTube Listen Now: What happens when you give yourself an entire year off and can’t actually take it? That’s the question I’m sitting with in this week’s essay. I declared 2026 my entrepreneurial gap...

Sam Vander Wielen sitting, smiling and holding a microphone. Text overlay reading "How I Stopped Letting the Algorithm Decide What I Like"

How I Stopped Letting the Algorithm Decide What I Like [Summer Read-Aloud]

July 27, 2026

Listen on Apple | Spotify | YouTube Listen Now: I recently stood in a long line for pancakes I wasn’t even sure I wanted. And it made me realize how much of what I consume, eat, buy, watch, isn’t actually...

Sam Vander Wielen sitting on the beach and smiling. Text overlay reading "15 Habits that Rebuilt Me After I Lost Everything"

15 Habits that Rebuilt Me After I Lost Everything [Summer Read-Aloud]

July 20, 2026

Listen on Apple | Spotify | YouTube Listen Now: One of the strange gifts of your life completely burning to the ground is the fertile soil it leaves behind for you to begin again. That’s where I found myself after...

Sam Vander Wielen sitting indoors and writing in a notebook. Text reads: More Memories of Other People's Lives Than Our Own

More Memories of Other People’s Lives Than Our Own [Summer Read-Aloud]

July 13, 2026

Listen on Apple | Spotify | YouTube Listen Now: Nobody talks about what actually happens after you put your phone down. Everyone’s obsessed with the getting off social media part — deleting the apps, doing the digital detox, bragging about...

Sam Vander Wielen smiling and wearing a blue denim shirt. Text overlay reading “How I Made K in a Summer Off (Before I Had a Team or a Budget)"

How I Made $10K in a Summer Off (Before I Had a Team or a Budget)

July 7, 2026

How I Made $10K in a Summer Off (Before I Had a Team or a Budget) I need to take you back to the summer of 2018. My legal templates business had been running for just over a year. I’d...

Sam Vander Wielen sitting on the beach. Text overlay reads "I Took a Whole Month Off and Didn't Tell a Soul — Here's What Happened."

296. I Took a Whole Month Off and Didn’t Tell a Soul — Here’s What Happened.

July 6, 2026

Listen on Apple | Spotify | YouTube Listen Now: I’m taking a little summer break, not just from the podcast, but from working in general. And yes, my friends are already cackling about that one, because as my friend Steve...

Sam Vander Wielen sitting indoors, smiling and writing in a notebook. Text overlay reading “Behind the Scenes at Craft + Commerce 2026 What Changed Since My First Conference"

Behind the Scenes at Craft + Commerce 2026: What Changed Since My First Conference

June 30, 2026

Behind the Scenes at Craft + Commerce I stepped out onto my balcony overlooking Boise’s state capitol to take a deep inhale, exhale. It was something between “holy sh*t I can’t believe I get to do this stuff,” and “I...