Hey Reader,

If you're tired of paying Adobe rates to edit photos... DaVinci Resolve added photo editing to their video editor this week. And it's free.

I've been watching early reaction/review videos trying to figure out if it's good enough for professional photographers to actually switch 🤔.

What do you think?

This Week's Needle Mover

Have you ever hear people talk about their business as their "baby"?

Would you trust a stranger (or an AI) to take care of your baby?

As creative service providers an important part of our sales process is building trust with our perspective clients that we're both competent & we can be trusted to make decisions in the best interest of "their baby."

It's really easy to default to using IG's saved DM replies, or having a generic automation when someone inquires. But we're hearing more frequently now than ever in the past that human touch points are where sales are happening.

And "human" touchpoint now include voice & video memos that are unpolished, ramble a little, and we can faintly hear the dog barking in the background.

We've been seeing the trend that "low-fi" content, eg: reels recorded on iPhones rather than professional cameras often times connect better because they come across as relatable. This is just taking that same "low-fi" relatable human approach and applying it to how we communicate.

Easy ways of doing this:

• Send a voice memo back with genuine excitement about something if you get a story reply on something you're currently excited about (aka: let them feel your excitement)
• If your have a convo in DMs drop in a "feel free to send over a VM if that works better for you," simply just giving them permission
• Use a tool like loom, zoom, or tella to record a quick video you can embed in an email response to inquiries

We have a whole podcast interview we did with Kendra about Sales in the DMs if you want to go deeper.

The Messy Middle

Does optimization & scaling just make quality worse?

Last week I listened to the audiobook of Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman that came out in February. Even going in with low expectations, I found myself disappointed.

The series Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC) by Matt Dinniman was one of my quickest listens last year. The 7 books (so far) were engaging to listen to, they pulled me in, and the audiobook narrator was excellent.

How did the same author go from one of my favorite book series of last year that I committed weeks of my life to, get to the point where this year I considered DNF'ng his latest book?

When Dinniman first started with DCC he was publishing to a platform called Royal Road where he was getting immediate feedback from people on the platform on how to improve and make it better. He was writing a story that he was passionate about.

The first book was self published in 2020. He was just getting it out into the world. Quickly follow by self published books 2, 3, & 4 in 2021, and by the end of 2023 he had self published 6 books.

Honestly a truly impressive run of books in such a short amount of time. And he was crossing over 800,000 sales of his books.

Then 2024 brought a publishing deal with Ace Books (imprint of Penguin Random House) for the whole series, and a TV deal with Universal & Seth McFarland's production company.

In late 2024 book 7 of DCC published (my least favorite of the series), and then Operation Bounce House came out in Feb 2026 along with book 8 of DCC coming out in May.

His focus just got split in so many directions and (to me) the quality of his main thing (writing) went down.

Why are you over 100 words deep in venting about one meh book?

Often times in our business we end up doing the same thing that happened to Dinniman. We start out creating something we're passionate about. We care about the craft, and the people we're working with. We're working overtime to deliver on our promises.

Then something happens, for Dinniman it was Jeff Hays & Sound Booth Theater publishing an engaging audio book starting in 2021, and the growth rate of our company changes. We go from steady growth to barely holding it all together.

We switch from caring about perfection to good enough because we're now juggling a million balls at once.

What can we do?

Let's look at a very similar example:

Andy Weir self-published The Martian in 2011, signed with Podium Publish & Crown in 2013, and when the movie adaptation came out 2015 it did $630 million in theaters.

How did he follow that success up with Artemis and then Project Hail Mary, which just had it's movie adaption come out in theaters a few weeks ago and has already done over $500 million?

In an interview he did last month he made the comment (paraphrased) - when writing Project Hail Mary, I refused to think about a possible movie or anything else. I just wrote the best book I could. Everything else was someone else's job.

We're in a season of focusing on what makes The Breakroom great, and trying not to get distracted on what other people's jobs are.

This Week on the Podcast

What does it take to grow an agency? How do you hire your first team members? Who should you focus on?

This week we sat down with Aashima to ask her these questions (and many more) about how she's built a multi 6 figure agency in the last 6 years.

It's a great listen if you're thinking about growing past your own capacity as a creative service provider, and what it actually takes to run an agency.

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Scaling a Multi-6-Figure Age... Apr 14 · The Sustainable Creator 53:09   ​

​Listen on Apple Podcasts / Listen on Spotify / Watch on YouTube​

Prefer the blog version? Here's a peek:

You’ve mastered your craft. Your roster is full. But you’re maxed out, trading time for money, and the thought of bringing on a team or stepping into the "CEO" role feels completely overwhelming.

We recently sat down with Aashima Verma, the brilliant founder of AV Marketing. Aashima left her secure corporate marketing job at just 26 years old. Despite the lack of validation from her parents, who thought leaving corporate was a mistake, she bet on herself.

The result? Her first month on her own was a $30k month. Today, she runs a thriving, multi-national ad agency with clients across the US, UK, Canada, and the UAE.

If you are a creative solopreneur currently eyeing the agency route, Aashima’s journey is a masterclass in how to build a scalable, multi-6-figure business without losing your mind.

TL;DR: 5 Hard Truths About Scaling an Agency

1) Niche to Scale: Broad offers create operational chaos; niching down allows you to build repeatable, "copy-paste" systems.

2) Hire Your ...

Overheard in The Breakroom

This week in The Breakroom we had a masterclass breaking down our 7 step process for how to use data to make better decisions, that was so fun!

For all of our calls we upload a video replay, or an audio recording that with the app you can listen to like a podcast* while you do other things.

*if you know how to do this as a true private podcast that'll show up in Spotify just for our members, I'd love recommendations!

Resource of the Week

It's hard to ignore that online communities are increasingly showing up for their favorite people in person.

This week we watched this 26 min BTS video of last year Sidemen Charity Soccer Match that sold out a 90,000 seat stadium & raised $6m for charity. It's a genuinely impressive production putting on an event at this level.

Oh and the 2026 Charity Match is this weekend, the announcement reel is really well done (in my opinion).

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What was the coolest thing you saw on the internet this week?

Lyndon