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Our accidental build week
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Hey Reader, We have a problem. We had a "light" calendar this week for the first time since May..? Which means we accidentally tried to make progress on a bunch of our own projects. As I'm typing this, I'm watching Claude literally click buttons on Canva/Chrome on the other screen trying to make a carousel to advertise our podcast episode going up tomorrow... it's... weird... and I'm not very worried about designers job security (I realize this is the worst possible way of having AI create graphics, but I wanted to try token maxxing like the cool kids). Monday:We're gearing up for a pricing change and re-positioning of The Breakroom on August 1st, so we did some of the deep thought work to pass on to our designer about how we want to visually show up with a rebrand before we take on a new website that's aligned with the new level. On August 1st, we're raising the rate of The Breakroom to $250/mo or $2500/yr and zeroing in on the fact that this is a coaching membership for creative service providers actively building and/or leveling up their businesses. In April we switched to 2 hot seat coaching calls per month. In May we added Business School that's a growing library of the exact framworks & exercises we use in our 1:1 coaching. And this month we're adding a dedicated "Ask a coach" space. All in addition to weekly masterminds with a peer group of creative service providers. Anyone who signs up before July 31st will lock in a founders rate of $97/mo for as long as they stay on the same plan - hit reply if you want to hop on a call to talk about if you're a good fit before founders rates run out. I have a running list of interview ideas for the podcast, so Monday I built/locked in our first Podcast Mini-Series - Websites For Creative Entropreneurs and finalized most of the programming for interviews basically through the end of August. Starting the last week of July we'll be dropping the first one:
Tuesday:9:17am - Lyndon: "I hate to say this, but maybe we should be changing the name of The Breakroom as well...?" 9:18am - Jo: "I've been wondering the same thing" We've both been feeling that "The Breakroom" as a name has 2 'problems' - it's not intuitive to people what it is, and it give social connotations rather than building/growth/business/action takers/strategy... Intuition is an amazing tool, but we also need validation - so we asked our members that afternoon during our first Hot Seat call of the month - and fairly universally they agreed the name didn't match the room. As of writing this, Jo's over 50 different word ideas deep in her journal trying to put together a new name that's 1. Not taken / trademarked, 2. Matches what were building (intuitively), 3. Memorable, & 4. Not impossible to rank in SEO for... we'll keep you posted. Wednesday:[NEW MEMBERSHIP NAME 🤔] got it's "Level Up" refresh for it's new era as a coaching membership: With each space in [NEW MEMBERSHIP NAME 🤣] we're intentional about how it should be used and building in guidelines. For example in the new "Ask A Coach" space this is the pinned 'How to ask a question' instructions: To make this as impactful as possible, we’ll give you a simple framework of how to ask a question that will make it possible for us to provide you with the best advice we can:
Part 1: Context/Situation - eg: I have a client who…, I’m building out a…, I’m struggling to…, I need to make a decision about…, etc
Part 2: Friction/decision considerations - eg: This is the third client this month who’s done this, I don’t know how to say ___ without sounding mean, I scoped this offer to take me ½ as much time as it is actually taking, this needs to be figured out by ___ etc
Part 3: A specific question - eg: How would you ___, What are my options for ___, Do you think I should ___, How do I ___, When is a ____
Bonus: Depending on the questions, including your Goal, Dream Outcome, or Definition of Success could help us tailor the answer - but not always necessary.
*This can all be done in a couple of sentences; don’t feel like you need a long paragraph for each part if it’s not necessary
If you want deeper support you can book a power hour here
Oh and while we we're leveling up we added a couple sections to our new 'Opportunities' section 👀 Thursday...?Well, claude created this gem of a carousel after taking almost 30 mins to come up with this (and 8 other similarly designed slides)... so it looks like we'll be building marketing for the Thursday pod episode... and who knows maybe we'll build something else new today 🙈 If you're interested in signing up for [NEW MEMBERSHIP NAME 🤫] before rates go up, hit reply and we can chat about if you're a good fit. See you next week, Lyndon |
Jo & Lyndon
We're the ones you call when you want to talk through the hard stuff of entrepreneurship and increase your income. You'll get a weekly dose of business tips, resources, and "wait, that really happened?" stories from us when you subscribe to our email list.
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