Anita Stubenrauch says she ‘lives feet on the ground, head in the clouds (with her ’arms and heart wide open'). But Anita doesn't just dream big, she executes big.
After thirteen years at Apple, starting out on the retail floor and finishing up as the author of Apple's credo and an executive speech writer to Apple's VP, Anita is now working on realizing her biggest vision yet: creating The Land of Make+Believe, a fourteen-acre retreat space in the Sierra foothills of Murphy, California.
As the build progresses (the huge project is now five years in) Anita also runs Cause:Effect Creative, a brand vision-writing agency she founded, whose clients include Community.com, Verb and Franklin.
We spoke to Anita about her work, dreams, and plans, and how Craft helps bring her ideas to life.
The Land of Make+Believe is my a long term project. My vision is to create a place where people can come and do various therapies; anything that might connect you to meaning, purpose and joy. That could be an entrepreneurial experience, it could be bodywork, or it could be a story or experience.
I've been building it for five years. The scale of the project is beyond anything I've ever attempted to do before.
Finding Craft
Anita has long been big on note-taking but frustration with her go-to tool at the time led to a search for something better.
How did I discover Craft? I was in the airport, complaining to my partner about Evernote. I've been using it for forever and had a bunch of stuff in there that was really important, but every time I tried to open it to capture a thought, it would take so long the thought was gone!
My partner, who's very solution oriented, did a search to see what was new and found Craft, which had just won the Mac App of the Year award, and said 'you should check this out, there might be something for you here.'
By the time I boarded my next flight, I had downloaded Craft to my phone, my iPad and my computer.
For the remainder of my flight home, I tested it across all three devices. By the time we landed I was like: This is it. This is what I've been waiting for for years. Wow.
Crafting Course Materials
Anita began to play further with Craft, first rebuilding supporting documents for her courses that she had already created on other platforms.
I was taking what already I'd already created in Google Docs and rebuilding them in Craft.
One of the first things I built that gave me of a sense of what Craft was capable of - was a course called 'Build A Bio', which helps people show off their awesomeness.
I just started playing. And I was like, oh wow, this nested card concept is super cool. Especially when I can just share it. It looks a bit like a book when you're unfolding it on a web and I thought it was really awesome.
The easy share functionality enables Anita to quickly share her material with course participants (check out our own Online Course Template).
Craft makes makes it so fast to build things. I like that it's playful, flexible and impermanent, because I am always changing things.
It has allowed me to rebuild my courses and share them via a link to my participants. A lot of people ask me: 'What is this? How did you do this?' And then I rave about Craft!
Bringing New Clients On Board
Anita has also found Craft ideal for pitching and onboarding new clients.
I use Craft to walk through the way that I do brand work with prospective clients. I present them a high level overview and what the process looks like phase by phase. Afterwards I send them the link and they can look over it themselves at their own leisure.
You can find a client onboarding template inspired by hers in our template gallery.
Asked how she describes Craft when introducing it to others, Anita doesn't need to think. Having been interviewed by ABC7 Morning news earlier this year, sharing her advice on how to stay creative and effective while working remotely, Anita replies:
Craft helps me think, write and communicate better, beautifully.
We couldn't put it better ourselves.
Read more about Anita’s backstory in our People of Craft collection where she describes how she went from Big Tech burnout - to building the Land of Make+Believe.
