About Me

Writing how-to business books came about pretty organically for me. I’ve always had a knack for understanding bureaucratic processes — and a somewhat perverse pleasure in tackling them. As long as I can remember, I’ve been the go-to person among my friends and family for advice on handling these sorts of tasks. As in, “Peri, how can I drop my Psychology 101 class after the drop deadline without paying a penalty?” or “Peri, how can I get my car un-booted from DMV when I can’t find my driver’s license and my car still has out-of-state plates?” That sort of thing.

I’ve also always been drawn to small, independent businesses and creative start-ups. After college and during law school I helped launch a couple start-up weeklies and learned the good, the bad and the demoralizing about starting and running a successful small business. From that point, I knew I wasn’t interested in working at any big corporate jobs — or practicing law, for that matter. Instead, after getting my law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law in the mid-90s, I moved to the Bay Area and got my first “real” job as an editor at Nolo, the nation’s leading publisher of how-to legal and business information. It couldn’t have been a better fit for me.

After a few years at Nolo, I transitioned to full-time self-employment and moved back to New Mexico. Besides continuing to update my books, I work with clients in a number of ways, including coaching, consulting and community-building. I spent several years teaching classes at WESST, a nonprofit working to grow New Mexico’s economy by cultivating entrepreneurship. I work a lot with creatives — musicians, artists, craftspeople, photographers, etc. — which for years now has driven me to create information resources to help artists (who typically can’t afford fancy consultants) forge independent career paths.

In 2021 I decided to build a full-fledged digital media team in order to have the capacity to build websites and integrations for clients and my own projects. P-Brain Media now has three awesome employees, is doing great work making technology accessible for small ventures, and is working towards worker ownership.

When I have the time, I participate as much as I can with nonprofit and community work. Sometimes this means starting new organizations; other times it means sitting on boards or helping plan or promote community events. And still other times it means political organizing — which has moved to my front burners after the 2016 election. I am like a moth drawn to the creative energy of people trying to make our world better. It’s often a struggle to find the time to be involved in everything I want to be involved in, but I find it impossible not to keep trying.

For me, the best part of self-employment is freedom — including freedom to organize my days as I see fit, and creative freedom to execute my ideas, my way. And as much as I like my work, I love the freedom to put work to the side whenever that’s feasible. I play in a number of bands including my own downer-country project, Peri & the FAQs. I feel incredibly lucky to have a super-supportive husband/partner in crime, and our two kids keep me inspired every day.

The common thread through all my projects and business pursuits is a desire to empower passion-driven people in bringing their plans and visions to life. To me, supporting entrepreneurship doesn’t mean chasing tech unicorns; it means supporting the diverse world of bootstrappers and micropreneurs who make up the vast majority of ventures in the US and beyond. I use diversity, equity and inclusion practices in managing my business and my team. My priorities are to support underserved communities, promote sustainable business practices, and help develop new economic models that serve profits, people and the planet.

My media development and consulting services are done through my company, P-Brain Media LLC. I founded P-Brain Media on the belief that quality content matters and thoughtful communications can change the world.