Happy Thursday Reader, I have a confession to make... I think I might think about hot dog stands more than most people. Shortly before writing this I was recording a lesson for... *have we announced this yet(?)*... a course we're launching soon. And I spent a solid 5 mins figuring out how to make it look like I've worked at a hot dog stand. I'm not the canva pro in this business... Recently I've been thinking about two phrases: They could sell snow to an eskimo It's as easy as selling water...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Do you ever say something in passing that your brain latches onto and keeps turning on? During a coaching call this week I brought up the idea of a "sea of sameness", a phrase I haven't thought about since grad school. A sea of sameness is defined as: a market where competing brands look, sound, and act so much alike that customers cannot tell them apart. As creative service providers sometimes this feels like what our job is, if we're doing basically the same thing as our...
16 days ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, Hows your KPI graveyard doing? This week I assigned one of our coaching clients OKR homework... which he had no idea what that meant, so I proceded to put together a little workbook & breakdown for him. This sentence has been stuck in my head ever since: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics used to measure ongoing performance against specific business objectives, while OKRs are a goal-setting framework that combines ambitious objectives with measurable outcomes. source...
23 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Class: COM527 - Effective Communication Day: The first class on a cold Tuesday in January 2019 Lyndon: "Does anyone else think it's weird that there's no text book for this class, but we were required to have multiple packs of white college ruled 3x5 cards?" We got that answer pretty quickly - for the entire semester every class member would be presenting in front of the class at least once a week. And every person in the class would write each person feedback (1 good, 1...
30 days ago • 4 min read
Heyo Reader, Do you remember when there was like 50 variations of the iceberg meme going around? (here's an example) Apparently it's still used in coding forms Your business is an iceberg and your content is what's visible above the surface. We see a lot of people talking about trends, reel audios, and content calendars (all important), but today I want to talk about what's below the surface that make the content you actually post connect with dream clients and nurture them to book. Quick...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, It's beginning of August 2021, we're in a perfectly average stakehouse in suburban Chicago. Crammed into a long booth table with ~10 people, most of them I've never seen IRL before, just in small virtual boxes on my computer for the last year on calls. It's my farewell dinner. And I am 10 questions deep in an awkward line of questioning from my boss' boss trying to wrap his head around the fact that I was walking away from a "good" 6 figure job with high visibility and likely...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, Today is the last day to sign up for Creative Maven Society at the founders rate. And I'd be doing you a major disservice if I didn't 1) remind you of that, and 2) make sure you have all the info necessary to take the next step! We want to make sure it's a good investment for you, too so here's a few commonly asked questions we get: Who is this for? Creative Maven Society is a co-ed membership for Creative Service Providers photographers, brand/web designers, systems pros,...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, It’s Jo. Your Chief Brand [Positioning] Officer, resident Launch Aficionado, Creative Connoisseur, and Professional Pivoter. Usually, Lyndon is the one to write these emails, but this week I felt like taking a turn & when the moment strikes, hand me a mic. If you've been paying attention to the easter eggs I've been dropping on socials all week, you'll know we've been teasing a pretty big change for our membership. And today is the day we finally reveal it. Spoiler alert: we...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, When I was in grad school I learned about the idea of an MVP or Minimally Viable Product. Basically it was the idea that you build the simplest working version ("viable") of your offer/product to be able to put it out in the world and get feedback on it as quickly as possible. In the creative space we see this all the time when people ask for "beta" testers for something new that they're launching - they've built a working version, but it may not have all the bells and whistles...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read