A quick way to improve your writing?
Shorten long phrases.
Take time to examine every word.
Is there a place where you can minimize?
Do it.

Examples:
* "in order to" --> to
* "be able to" --> can
* "at this point in time" --> now
* "at a later date" --> later
* "make use of" --> use

The 'good enough' marketing trap.
It's what I see a lot of founders fall into.
They do so with best intentions, but...

It's more damaging than it's productive.

'I have to get a blog post out the door this week.'
'Ugh... totally forgot to post on social.'
'I'll hammer out this ad copy real quick.'

Control the controllables.
That's my mantra for the rest of '25.

There's going to be so much that we can't control, that controlling what we can is one of the paths to at least a bit of sanity.

My Spotify Wrapped would say 'none.'
Why?
Spotify's a crap company.

And I dumped them for Apple Music long ago.

First: Your CEO or founder is killing it at sales.

Then: You hire a marketer to pour fuel on the flames.

Reverse this and you're in for a world of hurt.

Fun fact about Subaru Foresters.
You can't just replace the headlights.

You have to replace the WHOLE ASSEMBLY.

I dropped our car off a block from a favorite coffee shop.

They'll have it all day so I figured I'd camp out for a while and hammer some stuff out.

Lemonade out of lemons, and that.

Whatever you're working on, remember:

It probably won't move as quickly as you'd like, but it also won't take as long as you think.

For those of you just starting out:
Make payments due at the outset of the work.

Invoice is paid, then you start working.

You DO NOT want one of your sub-titles to be Chief Invoice Chaser.

💰 🏃

I'm cool with social.
But focused on something else lately.

A slight rebrand and building a new website.
Three, 3K word blog posts written.

I haven't placed much focus on a website primarily because I didn't need to with business coming from social & referrals, but that's been less predictable.

I've decided to better practice what I preach. Making a small pivot in our company brand and launching a new Wordpress site this month.

Step 1?
Roll out 6 blog posts over 3 weeks with highly-targeted structure based on low hanging fruit keywords.

Done depending on social and IRL networking.

There are a few things I work on for any new retainer client, and this one of them. Write blog content centered on opportunities 'hiding in plain sight.'

This graph is for a client I've been working with for 60 days. We started weekly blog content on November 1st.

Let the data do the work!

You aren’t selling products.
You aren’t selling services.
You’re selling someone’s ’future you.’
A better version of themselves.
Sell to that transformation.
And the emotions attached to it.

The best marketing is happy clients.

I'm just not into Thanksgiving this year. It's been a strange year to put it mildly. Business has been up and down, certain things happening politically (sigh), and a good friend has been in the hospital lately.

I know I should be more thankful, but sometimes hard is hard, you know?

You can make all sorts of assumptions about who your customers or clients are but if you're not talking to them, consistently, those assumptions are going to cause your marketing to be misplaced at best and totally off at worst.

The best tool stack ever can't replace customer conversations!

There's nothing wrong with re-sharing good content that performs well once, without tweaking it at all.

Nothing says that every single post has to be BRAND NEW. Make republishing your friend and win some sanity back!

The most important metric in cold outreach?
Click rate.

Why? No one replies except to unsubscribe or from an OOO auto-responder. It's once in a blue moon you'll get a positive reply.

Focus on who's clicking on links and what they click. Then start fresh, targeted conversations based on that data.

The holidays are definitely feeling different this year. I just don't have the same care about them the older I get that I used to - they're days that pass like any other days.

The best marketing is rooted in empathy.
When you meet your ideal client where they are...
And show them a better path.
You earn trust - people listen.