7 techniques for demotivating and generally giving yourself a hard time. — Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine yourself tasked with infiltrating the life and actions of a solo creator. It could be anyone. A popular, well-known author. An up-and-coming artist. A niche community YouTuber. Now let’s imagine that, for whatever reason, you have it on good authority they’re a dangerous agent…

A 7 step process for data-driven creators — The modern creative landscape is digital. Every blog post, podcast episode, Instagram story, and YouTube video leaves its unique digital footprint — and with it, a parallel stream of data flows from each day’s activities, waiting to be mined and put to use. Depending on the publishing platform, many of…

Because… why are we still using Word docs, again? — A well-written creative brief can be the difference between a delightful collaboration and an overly-drawn-out, costly, and unsatisfying project. And in 2022, there’s really no reason for creative briefs to look exactly as they did 20 years ago. That is…

Battling noise as the norm. — One of the great challenges of modern, digital life is to protect a vacuum in the mind. To intentionally battle for a bordered area of dedicated, empty silence, amongst a world that is constantly humming. In a mental vacuum, the meaningful is pulled forth, irresistibly. And it is in the…

Be strategic about delivery and format, not just the content inside. — It isn’t far down the rabbit hole of digital product building that we bump into the question: “What type of product could I actually build?” ‘Could’ eventually turns into ‘should’, and soon enough we find a form to sink our product building teeth into. But before rushing to find the…

A framework to hone in on gems, while avoiding the awkward and all-too-abstract. — Naming is a fascinating process. For a period in my freelancing career, I was so fascinated by the psychology and creativity behind successful names that I pinned myself as a naming specialist. I would read up on the frameworks, study use cases and for a good 6 months I only…

Use this Freelance Rate Calculator to explore how much you should be charging per hour for your work, your freelance day rate, and plenty more. — Pricing is one of the most underrated skills of running a freelance or client-based business. It’s literally the fastest and simplest way to double (or cut) your earnings in under 5 minutes. Building a 100% universal freelance rate calculator is impossible, since rates are derived from the value of services…

Free content calendar template linked. — Content planning is easy to get lost in. From repurposing across channels to targeting the right keywords; it’s often far easier to simply ‘wing it’ than to setup a dedicated content plan for success. Part of the difficulty comes from the tools we have at our disposal. Reduce the friction…

The ‘Marketing Hammer’ analogy, and why it is that one, two and three-hit attempts mostly fail. — Imagine 100 nails standing tall in a plank of wood before you. Your goal is to fully secure as many nails as possible, with a limited number of hammer swings. As it happens, you only have time for 100 swings. Not all nails are the same. Some rare number are…