I recently received an email from Substack congratulating me on two years of publishing this newsletter. I’m shocked. What started as a place to throw out my thoughts morphed into a newsletter about creativity. And how everyone is creative. And how to own your creativity. It was really a love letter to people like me, creatives trapped by our own negative thoughts about worth and where creativity fits into our lives.
Fast forward, and in these two years, I had a baby (Hi, Kaiyaan!), started a new role in marketing, and spent sleepless nights thinking about what exactly to do with this newsletter. I promise you that even though I only published a handful of posts, I have thought about this newsletter and what it could become for months. Years. Two years. And I think I finally found a purpose for it.
My therapist and athletic coach, two different people who have come to the same conclusion about my penchant for running fast and hard into projects until I burn out spectacularly (cough cough this newsletter), have suggested that I write down what I want out of this one life we get, and why I want it. I’ll spare you the long-winded journey to the conclusion I’m about to share, but I’ll say this. Writing down your wants and whys is surprisingly difficult. But it’s so necessary. Make time to do it and you will learn so much about yourself. The key is to write down your deepest desires and be unapologetic about them. Anyway…
I wrote down that I wanted to share what I know because it can potentially help someone. And what I know, what I recently realized I’ve been doing for the past ten years, is marketing. I have written articles and blogs, published magazines, built brands, developed content strategies, made voice and tone guides, launched products, and so many more marketing jargon activities to make your head spin.
And I’ve realized that through all this, marketing has become a walled garden (marketing term) that has kept folks confused about how to set up GTM campaigns (marketing term), lost with social media strategy (marketing term), and baffled about market research (marketing term). I want to simplify the process and help entrepreneurs, businesses, and fellow marketers, wrap their heads around how to be successful in marketing. Out of the goodness of my heart? Yes. And. This leads me to beehiiv.
I’m moving! Substack was a great, GREAT place to start a newsletter about nothing. I was able to play around with keeping a little writing practice again, and I gathered a little group of friends to follow me on my journey. But while I want to focus this next newsletter on helpful marketing tips out of the goodness of my heart, I also want to get paid to do it (another thing I listed in my “what do I want and why” exercise). Beehiiv has some tools for advertising, subscription payments, partner programs, and more. Anyway…
I want to thank you for following me so far on this On Brand journey! In full transparency, I moved all of your subscriptions to this newsletter to beehiiv in hopes that you still want to follow. If you don’t, no worries! Simply unsubscribe or send me a message and I will take you off the list.
If you’re excited for what’s next, and want to share this newsletter with your marketing, entrepreneur, and business friends, you can send them to:
Wow, it’s been a minute since I dusted off this little corner of the internet, my plot of digital real estate. This blog has gone through so many iterations (all in my head)—from a blog discussing crypto and NFTs (LOLz) to a blog about commoditizing creativity in a capitalist society (Isn’t that what we all do, really? By the way, for the avid readers of this blog, I’m sad to say I didn’t finish the book I set out to write. Don’t worry, it will haunt me for all eternity until I get it done.). But this newest rendition of my Substack is worth mentioning because I’m sticking to it. This version is about product marketing through the lens of motherhood, two topics I am navigating in real-time and which have some interesting—if not hilarious—parallels.
What this new On Brand blog is
If you’re an existing reader, I understand if you find this pivot to be jarring and maybe unrelatable. You may not be a parent or have no interest in product marketing. But before you unsubscribe, let’s go through what you can expect from this blog revamp.
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Both parenting and product marketing, as far as I can tell, is truly about empathy (for your baby, customer, or otherwise). At its core, product marketing is meant to bring a product or service to a person or group of people looking to somehow enhance their lives for the better hopefully. Children are not much different. As parents, our job is to bring support to a little person we’re suddenly in charge of to ensure they thrive. Empathy drives both professions of product marketing and parenthood.
To make this even more complex, I’m going to expand my observations of product marketing beyond tech. Though product marketing work usually involves marketing a tech product, I find the tools necessary to bring a product to market—storytelling, listening to the customer, and providing a stellar go-to-market experience—are universal across industries. And with the sudden seismic shift the tech industry has been feeling these past few months, it’s important to think outside the tech bubble to see how and where these skills can be used. I’m going to explore where product marketing techniques can apply to my new business venture, On Brand Photography.
So if you’re into learning about ways to incorporate product marketing skills into your current job or business venture, complete with a kick of parenting parallels for some added fun, read on! If not, I understand and hope you got enjoyed what you read so far.
What this new On Brand blog is not
This blog is not parenting advice. As a new mom of 3 months, I’m just as clueless as anyone about how to raise children. I’m learning on the job just like all parents who have come before me. Rather than calling this advice, I’d say this blog is a collection of observations from a new user. Be leery of anyone who claims to be an expert on a product that just came on the market (I’m looking at your ChatGPT bros).
This blog is also not going to be packed with product marketing jargon and flimsy advice like “just do market research” and “find your customer persona” because neither of these actually tell me how to do it and throwing out generalizations like this is not a very good customer experience if I’m being honest. I’ll try to make each blog post specific and actionable.
Finally, as I mentioned, I’ll try to tie in some product marketing ideas in industries other than tech, using my new photography side hustle as an example. But this won’t be solely a guide to starting a business. Product marketing is just one small portion of what is needed to run a business. If you’re interested in learning more about business development, I’ll try to find resources to help you out!
On Brand: Let’s collaborate!
Thus concludes the On Brand rebrand. I can’t wait to get started sharing my observations on product marketing and parenting, and I hope you get something out of it as well. This brings me to my final thought on this, which ties in nicely with a product marketing tool for improving a product and understanding customer needs. I’m about to do some market research and ask for your feedback. (P.S. When product marketing blogs out there say, “Just do market research” collecting customer feedback is one way to do it. Boom. Product marketing tool activated.)
I’d love your feedback on this new pivot. What are you most excited about learning? What specific topics do you want to know about? How can I help you get the most out of this blog? Is this whole thing totally weird? Let me know!
And finally, one more product marketing tool to mention is the call to action, a simple but effective nudge to get your users to do something. My 3-month-old is an expert at this. He screams his calls to action daily: Feed me to make me stop crying. Hold me while I sleep to give you peace of mind about how much rest I’m getting daily. Open my diaper to learn more about my digestive system!
So here’s my call to action (CTA for the product marketing pros out there). Please forward this email/blog to someone who might find this useful. I’d love to reach an audience of empathetic product marketing parents out there (or product marketers who find parenting entertaining. Or business owners who would like to learn more about product marketing tools to use for their business).
And my second CTA: If you’re in the Seattle area and need a portrait refresh or a product photographed for your business, email me at onbrand.photo@gmail.com to learn more about how we can work together!
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Hi there! Before you start reading this week’s newsletter, I have to tell you I have an announcement of sorts. But you’re going to have to get through the email to read it. Or just scroll down to it—I won’t stop you. Just be sure not to miss it!
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Humans—with the most technological advancement at our disposal ever in history—are the worst at directions. We don’t know where we’re going most of the time, so Apple and Google competed in our favor to create the best map app designed to never get us lost again. And yet…
We still get lost. Constantly.
You know who doesn’t get lost? According to this article in The New Yorker, “cats, bats, elephant seals, red-tailed hawks, wildebeests, gypsy moths, cuttlefish, slime mold, emperor penguins” all have no trouble navigating this world. Literally, almost every animal on earth can find their way home after venturing out. And yet…
We’re the worst at finding our way. This article in Wired gives a few reasons why we might be the most lost generation. “If you fail to pay attention when you walk in—the wayfinder’s fatal error—there is nothing to help you retrace your steps: no landmarks, no boundaries, no white blazes on a wayside tree.”
Where are we going anyway?
I’m no scientist, but this whole “not paying attention” concept when getting lost sounds particularly familiar. Losing our way physically feels just as disorienting as trying to find our way mentally. We’ve all been bombarded with questions like, “what’s your side hustle?” and “what would you do if you could do anything?” I would argue that these questions make us feel like we’re wandering around a bit without a map. So we ask for directions. And that’s where we start to go off course.
We turn to anyone and everyone who might have the right answer about side hustles and life. The way starts to become more clear because of the advice and guidance of outside influence. By giving everyone else agency over our own directions, we forget our own internal compasses. We become lost little lambs in the woods, waiting for the wolves.
The life-changing magic of messing up
Businesses have been built around the idea that past mistakes can be avoided if you follow their advice to achieve success. The entire self-help market has been propagated on the idea that you can’t find your own way, but there are influential leaders out there ready to help. I appreciate the sentiment. I follow some of these leaders and their advice myself. But we quickly fall into the trap of thinking that all mistakes can be avoided by following someone else’s road map. It’s easy to hand over the keys to your mental kingdom with the hopes that one book or one course or one product will answer all of your questions.
These leaders became successful because of their ability to find their way after getting lost. Less often, we’re encouraged to make big, messy mistakes. I’ve grown to love them. The more obnoxious and embarrassing the better. Because mistakes lead to breakthroughs. They give us the greatest gift of insight.
Just do the thing
So I’m here to give you full permission to make mistakes. Write the garbage. Make a terrible video. Decorate some ugly Christmas cookies. Above all, follow your own road map. Pay attention to your own path markers. This doesn’t completely absolve you from taking sound advice when you’re so far off course you’re putting yourself or others at risk. But without making your own choices, you lose your ability to find your own way home.
I tried to get through NaNoWriMo, like everyone else, with something to show for it. I didn’t accomplish the goal of 50,000 words, but I did make it a point to write as much as I could in November. None of what I put together is worth sharing. It’s strange and clunky and surprising and interesting. It’s a snapshot of my ideas at this point in my life, at this moment in time. Without writing through the awkward thoughts and unstructured ideas, I would have not uncovered the surprising and interesting bits. And now I’m turning those interesting and surprising bits into a story I could be proud to share. (Not yet. But I’m getting there!)
Because I love a good list of action items in an article, here are a few steps to finding your way back to your own inspiration:
If you have an idea, don’t shop it around to your trusted friend, supportive parent, or loyal partner for the first 24 hours (at least). Let your own mind sit with the problem, and enjoy what comes when you let yourself come up with solutions. We often get lost because we don’t pay attention, so we start moving in directions that seem like the best without giving them enough thought, or by following someone else’s thoughts.
Write every solution down! Even if the idea seems ludicrous, your mind came up with it. To reward your mind for coming up with an idea, write it down. That way it will feel safe to keep coming up with ideas, as ridiculous as they may be. This will also help you see all of your ideas in one place, so you can start narrowing them down.
Pick an idea and stick with it for a while. It’s easy to fall in love with multiple ideas and feel the pressure of picking the wrong one. So you go down the path of one idea, misstep, and immediately pivot to the next idea without really seeing if the original idea ever works out. Here’s a little secret: there’s always a way for an idea to work out. Post-It Notes were born from a scientist failing at making stronger adhesives. Brandy was meant to be concentrated wine for easier shipping across the Atlantic. These mistakes turned into opportunities because the creators stuck with it long enough to make it something else.
I’m also doing the thing
Now that we’ve all decided to do a thing, I suppose this is a good time to tell you. I’m also doing a thing.
I’m trying something new for 2022, and I hope you can all help.
I have acquired a lot of information about content writing and marketing over the course of my career: how to tell a good story, what medium works best for what audience, how to mock up amateur designs in a pinch, how to promote your work on various marketing channels.
And I want to share it all with you, dear reader who also struggles to put yourself out there. Or dear reader who wants to put yourself out there but doesn’t really know how to do it. Or dear reader who knows exactly how to put yourself out there but is getting just a little burned out by writing content online and “if you have to read another article about SEO so help you… .”
I’m here to help! But I’m asking you to help me first.
If what I just wrote a few paragraphs up doesn’t make any sense to you, or is of no interest, I don’t blame you. Us writers and content creators are an odd bunch.
But you can always keep reading. And I hope you might have a content writer/creator friend in your life who might be interested in this newsletter. Would you share it with them? It’s free! And who knows, they might learn something. Or I might learn something from them! See? It’s getting good already.
And for those who already follow this newsletter and are writers/creators: welcome! I hope we can pass around wisdom like the first creators who discovered writing in order “to communicate across time and space.” Only a writer would think of doing something like that.
So that’s the story. Stay tuned for upcoming newsletter issues in which I will be decidedly more helpful (or try to be). I look forward to meeting all the kindred creative spirits who wander here!
A few Friday nights ago, my husband and I were about four episodes deep into our Modern Family binge-watching marathon—an activity held on from our early pandemic days. He turned to me and asked in the most sincere and honest way possible, “what do you want to do with your life?”
I didn’t know what to say, honestly. My mind sort of turned blank. And then I couldn’t think of anything else for the rest of the weekend. This seemingly innocuous question pushed me into a black hole of anguish and torment only I could put myself through.
“What do I want?”
Maybe I want to start a band, own a coffee shop, or be that poetry writer lower Manhattan who sits in Washington Square Park and cranks out sonnets on the spot for lucky tourists.
Apparently the question of starting a band at any age above 18 burns in enough of us to warrant a common search result.
All of these interests inspire me enough to daydream about them. But what does it take to become a musician or a barista or a poet? The simple answer is time and patience. The deeper, more insidious answer is—to become a musician or a barista or a poet, you need to set goals.
The word goal sits like a half-eaten bag of potato chips in the stomach—hard to digest and full of regret. It conjures up old memories of setting objectives to watch less TV or go to the gym five days a week or finish reading a book a week only to be left not accomplishing any of them.
For me, goal brings up the times that I actually accomplished what I set out to do, through sheer force of will or stubbornness, and in accomplishing the goal, I sat at the top of Goal Mountain looking out on the horizon with an empty feeling, questioning, “now what?”
Goal has that unique baked-in quality that forces the goal-maker to think only of the future, leaving the present to be felt only occasionally or not at all. It convinces the goal-maker that happiness can be achieved only when the goal is finally met: when the book is written, the business is started, millionaire achievement is unlocked, and the band books a gig at The Wiltern.
“Anxiety arises when the future becomes constantly contrasted with the present and we live our lives primarily aimed at a future that may never come to be,” says J.W. Traphagan in his article This is when goal-setting gets in the way of happiness published in Fast Company.
And what about the goal-makers—like me—who have so many contrasting interests that it’s impossible to pick just one? I want to start a coffee company and create a work-from-home fashion line and write a book and start a podcast and be a contestant on the Great British Baking Show (I will sadly probably never be able to achieve that goal for reasons beyond my control). Do I try to get them all done? Or sit in decision paralysis? I see you, multipotentialites.
So I may have some slight anxiety around goals. Apparently, I’m not the only one.
Short-term goals vs. long-term goals
Why do I dislike setting goals so much? How did I get it so wrong?
Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee, the godfather of modern content creators, published this video at the beginning of 2020 (pre-pandemic, hence the huge crowd gathered without masks). In the video, he answers a question from a woman in the crowd who has high anxiety to match her high ambitions.
Gary explains that setting big, audacious goals, but giving yourself enough time and space to achieve them, is his ultimate way to set goals. Small, short-term goals can lead to anxiety, burnout, a narrow vision for the future, and ultimately self-judgment when the goals aren’t met.
“I don’t make short-term goals,” he says.
Dorie Clark, a business professor at Duke and Columbia business schools and author of the book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World also supports the idea that long-term goals are the way to go.
In her newsletter on LinkedIn, Dorie says, “And while short-term thinking is necessary at times— we do need to pivot and adapt and change—it can't be how we live our entire lives. Because we have goals, and dreams, and things we're aspiring toward.”
Like being a coffee shop entrepreneur-writer-podcast host-music producer-fashionista.
She continues, “And if we're in reactive mode all the time, we'll never get there. We have to take action and put a stake in the ground. It's time to become long-term thinkers again.”
My original intention for this newsletter was to, I kid you not, publish an article every day. EVERY. DAY. To my small but mighty list of subscribers, I say thank you for continuing to read, but we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. Between my full-time job and family dinners over video games and the semi-regular trip to the gym, my short-term, unattainable goal unsurprisingly went off the rails quickly.
The case of the unattainable goal
Why did I think writing a daily article was attainable in the first place?
According to the article Why We Set Unattainable Goals published in the Harvard Business Review, we often set unattainable goals because we don’t know our own strengths.
“When we set goals, we are not the best at measuring our own ability to achieve them. In fact, many of us sincerely believe that long shots are feasible,” say authors Haiyang Yang, Antonios Stamatogiannakis, Amitava Chattopadhyay, and Dipankar Chakravarti.
The article goes into the benefits and pitfalls of setting unattainable goals. The authors claim that setting unattainable goals could leave a trail of failed ambitions. Failure to reach a goal could have a negative impact on the well-being of the goal-maker.
But the authors also suggest that setting these goals could also in fact push us to go further than we realized, even if we don’t accomplish it to the level we anticipated.
“As long as we know that unattainable goals are not really about the destination, but the journey, they can be quite healthy,” write the authors.
Reach for the stars and you’ll hit the moon, or something like that.
Hi goal, it’s me.
The original theme of this post was to discuss my latest short-term goal to participate in National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). NaNoWriMo encourages participants to complete a 50,000-word book, manuscript, or another piece of writing. That is equivalent to cranking out about 2,000 words a day for the entire month.
With three days into November and not a single word is written to contribute toward my project, I could easily relegate this goal to the pile of other incomplete objectives.
But I’ll take the wisdom from Dorie and Gary and my past goal-accomplishing self and continue down the NaNoWriMo path anyway. Because the bigger picture isn’t about completing a 50,000-word book. It’s about focusing my interest and skills on a project long enough that something comes out of it. It’s about the short-term projects that benefit the long-term goals.
I may not get to the 50,000-word target, but I’ll enjoy the ride as I try.
Here are some quick steps I’m taking to get into the right frame of mind to keep this goal:
I’m holding myself accountable by making my goal public. Dorie talks a lot about this in her LinkedIn Learning course on goal setting (which I highly recommend taking if you’re ever stuck on a goal or deciding between multiple goals to set next). By putting the goal out there in the open, the goal becomes more tangible when others can check in on my progress.
I’m not worried about the outcome. Yes, a finished first draft of a book at the end of the month would be nice to have, but I am making a concerted effort to enjoy the experience. I know that nothing but benefits can come from this experience, whether the outcome is actually producing a book or just forming a new writing habit.
I’m going to make this project a priority. This is the hardest part of starting a new goal. Up until today, I didn’t write 2,000 words a day unless it was for creating content at work. So this new endeavor requires a total life shift to become someone who writes regularly for me. My dog may not like this new split in attention, and I may need to plan writing around dinner-video game evenings, but the change of perspective to get the work done is worth it.
I’m curious to know what goals you’re tackling. Are you facing a large, short-term project like NaNoWriMo, or do you have long-term goals on your horizon?
I’m sitting here with two thoughts that are taking up space in my brain and have kept me from finishing this article for the past two weeks. It involves a really strange reputation writing has received since the very beginning of the internet. Maybe you’ve held two big thoughts at the same time too. It’s a lot—but worth sticking with until the ideas untangle.
...or lead to more tangles.
Let’s dig in.
When William Shakespeare was born, the internet was 419 years away from coming into the world. Imagine the poets and business people around the world at that time who would have taken advantage of such a marvel. Shakespeare too, I’m sure, would be a self-published creator with a healthy collection of Twitter and Medium followers and weekly play readings on YouTube Live.
There’s a rather romantic notion of pre-internet days—which in the grand scheme of things wasn’t that long ago. It would be easy to believe that Shakespeare sat in a room for days on end and wrote all of his plays in a creative vacuum, fabricating all of his works from pure imagination, because how could he know anything without Google?
Of course, even without Google, he had access to knowledge from real-life books and real-life people with different perspectives in other parts of the world. And just like his successors who write and create things, he found inspiration beyond his own imagination. An article from the BCC gives us a little insight:
“Shakespeare used stories from older books of all sorts for his non-historical plays. He borrowed from Latin and Greek authors as well as adapting stories from elsewhere in Europe.”
Shakespeare, in a way, was like the modern creators we see proliferating the internet. It’s both encouraging and complicated. To know Shakespeare recycled and repurposed content not only lifts the veil of mystery that shrouds his historical image, but it points out a very specific trend that has not changed in four centuries, a trend that still permeates content creation on the internet today.
Shakespeare had no new ideas. He remixed a bunch of different existing ideas. As Mark Twain so famously said, there is no such thing as an original idea.
After reading this, it took some fight to push the “then what’s the point?!” thought back. But then I read the BBC article further:
“Although he borrowed plots, Shakespeare made the details his own, and often combined different plots.”
By combining different plots, and infusing his own experience, Shakespeare created some of the most read plays and literature in history. Here’s the double-thought conundrum that has been tangled in my brain for weeks. There is no original idea. And also, AND ALSO, that fact shouldn’t limit you from creating something. Two diametrically opposed ideas. Are you spiraling right now? Cool, me too.
So, content creators, artists, and all-around creative people (everyone): what do we do with this information?
Don’t regurgitate content: We can all be Shakespeare, but why would we want to be?
So many creators have cropped up on the internet over the years with versions of articles that have made other creators so popular. Top ways to find your passions. Create a side hustle and make XX money per month doing what you love. How to get started as a successful blogger in one week. All of these articles—often full of shallow platitudes—have been written thousands of times before, with little added information to make them worth a rewrite. Yes, publishing these articles has led to career boosts and book deals and has made some folks on the internet very famous. But if they all jumped off a bridge, etc., etc.
The internet has democratized the creation process and given us complete control over what to publish, where, and when. So it’s up to us to make our own choices about what to produce. And simply regurgitating content in hopes of becoming a professional content creator is a missed opportunity. Because though no idea is new, ideas can be remixed and created in your own voice, interpreted in your own way. Like Shakespeare did with his plays.
Bringing back the metaphor, the Greeks wrote the “101 ways to make money on the internet” article, bringing them fame and fortune. Then Shakespeare came back with “Why we as creators have an intrinsic need to create and a conditioned want to publish it on the internet for money.” A remix, and honestly an article I would probably read.
Don’t choose to create content because it’s an easy side hustle: There is no such thing as an easy side hustle.
Let’s break down one of the articles appearing in one of my many contents feeds at least twice a day for the past week. XX side hustles you can start right now.
These articles are so popular because of the allure of making quick cash with a presumably low barrier to entry.
Rather than link to the articles (you can easily find hundreds of them if you Google “side hustle ideas”) here are a couple of screenshots displaying suggested ways to build a quick side hustle and get rich. Sandwiched between delivering food and driving for Uber is writing a blog and publishing an e-book.
Side hustles: start a blog, share your car
This is not a criticism of Doordashers and Lyft drivers. Delivering food and driving for rideshares is more difficult and laborious than most people would acknowledge, especially during the past year. Rather, these articles are perfect examples of content being simultaneously regurgitated and completely unhelpful.
Writing and creating content is not quick or easy. It requires a desire to improve and learn through attending training programs, reading books, seeking out mentors, and creating all sorts of material that will never see the light of day.
While recycled ideas are easier to produce, they ultimately make your content fall flat and feel identical to every other article. In business terms, if your brand isn’t differentiated on the market, you’re left with no audience. More importantly, writing these articles won’t help you become better.
Do keep creating: And understand why you’re doing it in the first place
So you want to write an article about the best way to market your blog or how to make cinnamon rolls or living in New York. Why, when so many articles have been written about these topics before? If it’s because you want to get noticed and have a quick article to put on your blog, try again.
By all means, write about blogging and cinnamon rolls to your heart’s desire. But when you create these articles, make them unique to you. Tell us why they’re important to you.
Don’t remove yourself from the equation. Don’t let the internet algorithms tell you what to write. Be inspired by what you see, but put your own influence into it.
The internet doesn’t need another article about side hustles. It needs your take about side hustles, your experience driving Uber, or writing a blog. You’ll never know where this will lead: maybe to a Shakespear-caliber writing career, or at least with a damn good portfolio.