Daily Content Machine

You're a maker. You love to create and you love to produce. Maybe it's writing, maybe it's design, maybe it's art—most likely you share your creations through various outlets like social media or your own blog. What you probably don't use is an email list. "Email list? Email's dead though, isn't it?" Hardly! Did you check yours today? Thought so. Even if you already have an email list, I'm going to show you how to not only grow it but also utilize it in a way that will revolutionize your exposure and breed unprecedented loyalty with your audience. Are you ready to invest? Oh yes, it is indeed an investment and no mere one at that. But it's one that's going to give you the biggest return you've ever seen. Are you ready to put in the effort? Let's begin.

You have an idea. A really, really good idea. Seriously, it could be big. You're scared to tell someone about it though. After all, this idea is worth a lot, right? I hate to break it to you, but no. It's not worth a lot at all. In fact: it's completely worthless. The sooner you understand why, the sooner you'll be on your way to creating actual value. I'll also show you how to get people to notice when you launch something.

Establishing your brand as one of quality enables you to price on the value you're delivering to your customers. We look at highlighting your unique selling points to distinguish yourself from competitors and break into a higher market where you can demand greater prices. I talk about the limitations and constraints of selling within an external ecosystem and how you can make more money by selling less on your own website.

Lately, I've been realizing that all the tasks I need to accomplish share the same first action step: writing. I talk about the benefits of writing, why we don't write more, developing your own voice, and some of the best ways to use what you've written.

The previous episode on The One Concept Approach made some significant waves. The great deal of exposure it received generated a significant amount of feedback—both positive and critical. I unwind and converse with Ben about the many responses I received in what ends up being somewhat of a therapeutic session. We talk about how to evaluate negative feedback and receive it in a way that can have a positive effect. In conclusion, we are reminded that speaking passionately is often polarizing and that is to be expected. But the people you're truly speaking to will benefit from your passion in spite of any opposition.

What if designers only provided one concept? I recently saw this question tweeted, though it certainly isn't the first time I've read such a sentiment. It's a thought that is usually dismissed immediately as wishful thinking or a glorified day dream.

But what if I told you there was a way to never again encounter such a thing as a "rejected concept"? What if I told you that never again should you present multiple concepts?

Do you ever feel pressured to live up to your past best works? Maybe something you did was really well-received or achieved a certain level of recognition, and you feel like you have to match it with everything new you produce. You can experience this at any stage of your growth. It's not uncommon that this pressure on our creative process causes us to be more withdrawn and hesitant to put out new work. But the worst thing you can do is let a past success keep you from creating new things. We talk about overcoming this ambivalence.

When you carefully structure the questions in your questionnaire, you can filter out the clients you don’t want while at the same time setting the stage for good relationships with the clients you do take on. We look at the right and wrong ways of going about finding the questions to ask.

It’s not always easy to make the time or take a trip to go meet with other designers and creative people. But the good that comes out of these in-person interactions simply cannot be ignored. We talk about the benefits of relationships formed through networking and different ways to connect with others when face-to-face meet ups aren’t possible.

After some initial apprehension, I decided to share detailed traffic and conversion numbers on my recent launch of Learn Lettering. I throw my inhibitions to the wind and give you an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at everything that went into making it happen. I show how putting in the upfront effort to build trust and loyalty goes a long way towards enabling a successful launch.