Category: Creativity
-
Three dimensional business cards
I once heard a CEO of a construction company describe his buildings as three dimensional business cards. It was a great way of thinking about work, and emphasizing why it’s important to do a good job on everything. When a prospective client sees the work you did for somebody else, even if they’re not on…
-
Confidence buffer
A friend once told me about pitching one of the world’s biggest companies. While they didn’t do business together, my friend was saying it was incredible—borderline a miracle—that the sales conversation even went that far. Then he reflected that it was his own responsibility. He said, “We shouldn’t have to be perfect to get it.”…
-
Game reps
If you want to compete as a creator—to help your work gain recognition, to improve your craft, to earn respect and prove yourself, to monetize your work—then you will need to show up to the marketplace. In your early career, as you still improve, you want to find every opportunity to do this. Sometimes this…
-
Be nice and kind to yourself
When you’re being nice, you are being polite with the intention of making someone feel good. You may be withholding your honesty because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When you’re being kind, you are being honest with the intention of helping someone improve. You will tell someone that there is food in their…
-
Doing the impossible
Nobody thought it was possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Until 70 years ago, one person did it. He believed he could, because he saw his run times improve slowly and steadily. Then a month after that, somebody else ran a mile in under four minutes. Since then, nearly 2,000 more…
-
The case for a non-social publishing surface
One of the traits of publishing work on social media is its quick feedback loop. You’ll quickly know if an algorithm believes that people care, or doesn’t. Some people strike gold the first few times, but it’s more likely that the experience of posting will feel disappointing. You need to hang in there until you…
-
3 ways out of the declining writing market
A friend of mine was a thriving freelance writer looking to escape. His situation made me think of my own experiences with freelancing. Rates were always low, competition was always cutthroat, and clients rarely ever saw value in hiring somebody creative. Now, AI has blown the door open. Fortunately, writing generally is also a great…
-
Most things won’t go anywhere…
So you need to either commit to making an important project go somewhere by promoting it constantly. Or you need to use it as a reason to make more work. If a hypothetical 10% of your work goes somewhere, then making 10 projects mean one goes somewhere. But if you make 100 projects, then you…
-
The timeline of change
A lot of change happens on its own timeline. You can push, pull, and prod at it, and yet rushing it is like honking your car’s horn in gridlock traffic. Most times it just takes the time it takes. There are still many decisions in your control: What’s not in your control is when the…
-
No optimism, no business
“It is your optimism, your belief, that created the shop and that keeps it alive. Should you lose that, then the business is done,” Peter Miller writes in Shopkeeping. He opened his self-titled bookstore in Seattle in 1979. If you read Peter’s book, you’ll quickly find that shopkeeping is a craft just like any other…