It’s exciting to find someone who speaks your language. It’s enticing to jump on board with a new style of thought. It’s tempting to synthesize methods from a number of great teachers, because we feel like we’re getting the best of all worlds. As someone who’s done it a lot, I know. 

In five two-minute rounds of Boggle, I scored 15 points. My wife scored 50. She crushes me (and most people) at this game. I knew this going in.

Creative development is one of those “budget black holes” in the production process. We don’t charge enough for it, clients don’t want to pay for it, and we spend way too much time doing it. 

When we see a goal fall out of consistency, we ghost the idea of it. We avoid questions about it and we avoid thinking about it because we feel guilty when we finally remember.

Giving up on your 2025 goals by the end of January is ridiculous. January represents a little more than 8% of the year.

For better and for worse, we extrapolate success from one area to another. 

If you don’t keep your finances organized, freelancing will challenge that. If you aren’t comfortable networking, pitching, or negotiating, freelancing will force you into uncomfortable situations.

When I send an email blast, one of five things will happen. Four out of five of them are good.

Friction can be a good thing in sales, assuming you have a good product, because it forces the customer to think about you and to make a decision.

We compare our work to our inspirations’. Naturally, we’re not as good. This leads us to believe that we might just be the worst version of whatever it is we’re doing. We definitely know we’re not the best.

“You will save yourself from yourself by learning to just state the number and shut up.”

The first challenge of writing is this: can you trim the weeds around the flowers?

A hard-and-fast daily creative deliverable for a short-term challenge works wonders.

We misunderstand how the creative process works. We hear stories of great artists creating in a flash during a lightning storm of inspiration, and think we just need to wait for the right moment to come to us. 

“The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”

“If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.” 

The easiest path to success is to just do the same tiny thing every single day. If you’re willing to do that, you don’t have to make the same amount of sacrifices that the others require. 

The amazing thing about writing is this: anyone can do it. It’s all the other stuff that gets in the way. 

Within the past two or three years, it has become popular to say sentences with this structure: “I just couldn’t be more _______!” (Fill in the blank with whatever emotion you want.) One of the reasons it bothers me is because it’s not true.

In my years producing commercials, I’ve been involved in countless creative builds. This required me to digest the brand, understand the product, learn the audience, and create something that speaks to all of that. Now, I do something way easier.