Entrepreneurship
Write Copy You’re Proud Of
There’s a category of businesses I call “cookie-cutter” because they all look the same. You can tell who runs a cookie-cutter business because they’re obsessed with business “formulas” for scaling. And they do it quite well. If you want to run a cookie-cutter business it will probably work, at least for a little while. Books (…)
Fine, I’ll Get Back On LinkedIn
At the urging of my friend Louis, I have returned to LinkedIn. I’d avoided it for years because I’m not in the market for a “job,” and find the dialogue on there to be vapid, performative, and – I cannot emphasize this point enough – emphatically boring. Forced hot takes, feigned “excitement” over things (…)
Sooo easy
In 2017, I wrote a piece on Hustle Guilt where I argued that we’ve put the wrong values on a pedestal when it comes to what we call “hard work” and “sacrifice.” It’s hold hat 🎩now. Once Mrs. Huffington collapsed on her desk and Peterson’s burnout piece went viral the world took a collective, “oh shit.” And (…)
Why Is No One Reading My Newsletter?
Back in April, I had the privilege of speaking at Newsletter Fest (“A FREE online conference to ignite your newsletter strategy!”) and you can watch the talk here. The polite version of how this talk came to be is that Curated asked me to come on and talk about email newsletter myths. The real version is (…)
How to Get a Life (no, really, how?)
The best manager I ever worked for told me to work less. Having just been scolded for needing to bill more hours to our clients, I was confused by his advice. “I need you to have a life. It’s part of your job as a marketer. We need to be in the zeitgeist.” I think (…)
Think Deeper
Forty hours. It took me 40. freaking. hours to write (and re-write and edit) the piece that led me to my first “viral” moment. For every “viral” moment I’ve had since, it’s taken about the same amount of work. Quality, for me, takes time. Time, patience, and so.much.editing. Those three ingredients feel diametrically opposed to (…)
The “I’m Better Than This” Phenomenon
“I SENT ONE EMAIL AND NOTHING HAPPENED.” I was older and more experienced than I care to admit in public when I had the above reaction to what-I-deemed-was a failed launch. I’d drank the online business Koolaid and believed that I should have arrived by now at the point where you “make sales while you (…)
Should You Work With This Client? (The Pink Flags Post)
When you play truth or dare, which one do you pick? TRUTH duh because dares always lead to recklessness and embarrassment. Ok, that is unsubstantiated. Truth can lead to those things too, but, in general, I am anti-dares because they terrify me. So when my friend Sarah “dared” me to get to my CTA in 400 words (…)