Jeff recently spoke with a prospect joining the Come Alive Creative team and shares two important questions he always asks during the interview process.

What have you done in the last 12 months to improve your skills?

This gives you an idea of how intrinsically motivated the person is to improve and take their craft seriously. The answers could be hobbies or work related but it shows their drive to get better at things they’re interested in.

How long would you expect to work with us if you get the job?

In the same way that it’s easier to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one, it doesn’t make sense to invest in training someone only to have them turn around and leave in a few months.

Get a sense for their long-term goals and if they want to really grow with your business.

There is inherent failure in everything.

Everything CAN fail, so the more you do something, the better chance you have of succeeding at it, according to JT Smith.

JT has built 21 businesses in the past 22 years, including The Game Crafter, Tabletop Events and Plain Black.

In your marketing, or business, what are you doing to help mitigate failure?

What things do you have in place in order to safeguard what won’t always work, won’t always be successful?

Today’s insider tip comes from Joe Casabona, podcaster, course-creator and developer.

Joe shares his favorite tool for building beautiful and flexible landing pages on WordPress – Beaver Builder.

There is a free version but most plans will cost $100-$300 per year. Beaver Builder is easy to use, includes templates and there are lots of options for customization. You don’t need to be a designer to use this tool!

Today’s inspiration comes from Jeff’s interview with Howard Benson, a popular and successful music producer in the United States.

According to Benson, having the right attitude can be the best indicator of success in life.

There are many intrinsic principles that are difficult to teach or cultivate; values like curiosity, drive, a desire for self-improvement, and having the right attitude.

Someone may not be the most qualified person for a particular task, but if they have the right attitude, they’ll succeed.

If you’re familiar with Creative Marketing Brief, you’ll remember the book, “The 1 Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib.” Today’s brief is taken from page 126 of that book

Much of our work can be automated and what can’t be automated should be delegated. Lack of a functional, running, marketing infrastructure will harm, or possible kill, your business.

So, take some time to pause and reflect.

What are those things that you can automate, that you can just stop doing completely and give to automation?

And, what are those things that you shouldn’t be doing, that you can’t automate, but you can delegate?

How often do you check your Google search ranking? When you do, you probably find yourself becoming exhausted with the amount of scrolling and searching you have to do just to find your website. There’s a way to make this problem go away, says SEO Consultant, Sara Dunn.

Use the Small SEO Tools Keywords Rank Checker to search for your website’s Google ranking. It’s a free tool, and saves you all the time you’d ordinarily spend scrolling searching for your website!

A video can be a powerful tool for the modern marketer. Face to face is ideal, says Growth Marketer Dan Moyle of Impulse Creative, but video is a close second.

When recording, make sure your audio is up to par. First and foremost, make sure there’s any audio at all—your audience isn’t looking for a silent film! Secondly, record somewhere suitable for audio (in a windy space or a crowded area will result in noise pollution).

Plan for audio, test your sound, and adjust as necessary. Bad audio in, bad audio out—you cannot fix it in post!

A constant theme in Jeff Large and the Come Alive Creative team’s work is that you should always find ways to repurpose your content. In fact, this very episode is made from repurposed content.

If you aren’t repurposing content, using it in at least three different ways, you’re doing yourself and your audience a disservice.

While it’s great to have a professional videographer to shoot your videos, it’s not always possible, even necessary, or even in the budget, especially at a moments notice. Sometimes it’s just best to shoot on your phone.

Here’s a quick and easy tip from Impulse Creative’s Dan Moyle: turn your phone sideways when you shoot. This way, your video will appear widescreen for viewers—just like it does on a widescreen TV.

This is a simple tip, but it can transform your content for the better, making it appear more accessible (as well as easier on the eyes).

When is the last time you looked at Google Search Console for your website? Have you even set it up? With Google Search Console, you can find out what searches on Google are bringing traffic to your website.

How? Well, first, you have to set it up! From there you can scroll all the way down to the performance section to learn about your clicks, impressions, and position. Scrolling even further, you can see what impressions you aren’t utilizing—these are the opportunities you should be going after.