By Jessica Albon
If you don’t have kids, you probably haven’t given this much thought, but most parents have to teach their kids to share. It’s not something they just naturally do. So, at some point in your life, you were taught to share.
Sharing comes more easily when there’s more than enough of something. It’s hard to share when something’s limited or you’re worried you’ll run out. It’s easy to share when you know you’ll always have more than enough.
That’s what makes email newsletters naturally so easy to share. If I share my copy with you, I don’t lose out, and you get to read something you might enjoy too. It’s not like giving away a million dollars, where you’d want to really think about who deserved it and whether or not you wanted to give it up.
The good news is this means your readers won’t require too much encouragement …
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By Jessica Albon
Last week, I entered the delightful Marie Forleo’s RHH Live contest with a video entry. (Warning: I’m wearing my PJs–it’s a metaphor, obviously.) For the contest, she wanted to know the biggest challenge you’re facing in your business, and, I realized that I’ve been feeling kind of worn out, creatively, lately. My clients haven’t noticed, but I just haven’t had the creative energy to tackle my own projects lately with any sense of robustness. I just wasn’t feeling my usual sense of boundless creative enthusiasm.
After making the video, I got to thinking about the tools in my toolkit for replenishing my creativity and, unsurprisingly, I’ve letting most of them collect dust. No wonder I was feeling out of sorts! So, right after recording the video, I immediately made myself a little checklist card (I *love* checklists!) of creativity treats that I can add to my day throughout the …
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By Jessica Albon
A few years ago, I decided to do something about the way I handled failure. See, my tendency was to beat myself up for even tiny mistakes, and that wasn’t actually helping me make fewer mistakes. So, it seemed sensible to try something new.
What if you aimed for a failure a day?
I decided to make a failure a day part of my to-do list. That’s right, I was now *supposed* to fail. Every day. Some days that was something tiny and other days it was something I didn’t really want a repeat of (like the day I backed my car into a bush in the landscaping).
Though it’s been awhile since I practiced the art of failing daily, I remember that it had the exact effect I was hoping it would: failure became much less worrisome. See, when you’re *required* to fail every day, you do some things …
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By Jessica Albon
Happy Kid by Arsel
Even if 93% of all communication isn’t non-verbal, it’s true that at least a portion of your communication has nothing to do with what you say, but rather how you say it. But what does that mean about writing? Emails, sales pages, Tweets, blog posts… If all the other person has to rely on are the words you’ve used, that’s all the communication that’s happening, right?
Erm. Not exactly. Even setting aside all of the possible visual cues (like images, typography, line length, capitalization, etc, etc), communication is never as black and white as the words on this page.
See, the people you’re communicating with, they’re not robots. Which means that they’re participating in the communication. Which means they’re responsible for about half (and usually more) of the communicating that’s getting done. If they’re scanners instead of readers, they’ve just missed that very important …
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By Jessica Albon
(Law 4 of The 48 Laws of Power, Original image.)
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By Jessica Albon
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you don’t have much trouble coming up with ideas. They wake you while you’re sleeping, and distract you from your current project while you’re awake. They tantalize and tempt and just generally look so much more interesting than whatever happens to be on your to-do list at the moment.
There’s so much to learn, so much to explore, so much to share and say! Where most of us get stuck is in the fleshing things out, the adding depth and dimension to those ideas. Juicing up your metaphors until they’re rock solid, tangible, and resonant… that’s where most entrepreneurs stumble.
How many times have you seen someone in your industry develop a fantastic, creative hook only to… Let it fizzle. They don’t take the time to carefully steward that idea to maturity, instead they rush to make it public before it’s had time to fully …
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By Jessica Albon
While working on an html email design for a client, I was playing with curly quotes to add some extra interest and got to wondering which fonts other people love for their curly quotes. So I asked on Twitter and I got lots of great replies on how to pick a font for curly quotes. Yay.
I wanted to share some of my own favorites with you–so, here you have it, five great font choices for curly quotes. Curly quotes are especially popular for pull quotes (those fancy “Here’s part of the article, set apart, for decoration” quotes you often seen in high-end design and magazines), but they can be used in all kinds of situations.
Garamond Bold curly quotes
Academy Engraved LET Thin curly quotes
Headline One curly quotes
Pigiarniq curly quotes
Guanine curly quotes
As you can see, the font you choose for your curly quotes you use …
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By Jessica Albon
The Fortune Teller by aussiegall on Flickr.I used to spend a lot of my time raging against bad business advice. Complaining about it to my non-business-owner friends who’d roll their eyes and wish I’d get a more relatable hobby. Obsessing over just why those “experts” were so freaking wrong and how they were leading people astray and had they No Integrity?
Nowadays, though, I’m over it. Sure, there’s more awful business advice out there than ever before. More people telling you you MUST, ABSOLUTELY DO THIS or your business will fail. Telling you if you do that you will be an outcast for ever. Just plain blathering on about things that, unless they have a magical crystal ball somewhere, they couldn’t possibly know.
But, I’ve finally come around to knowing something: I get to decide. I mean, I knew this before, and it was part of what pissed me …
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By Jessica Albon
Over the last two weeks, I’ve released a video series for my newsletter subscribers. In the videos, I’ve been revealing how over the past 10 years, I’ve marketed my business in a way that all but exploded on me last year–leaving me frustrated, confused, and completely burnt out. It’s been awesome hearing from readers about how they’re enjoying just how authentic and vulnerable the videos are, and how much they’re learning from what I share.
But there’s a flip side. On the one hand, my tribe is rejoicing and clamoring for more. And on the other, a number of not-so-right folks have ditched the list. What’s been awesome about those folks who’ve decided to stop getting my newsletter is this: they were mostly my competition.
Now, I don’t actually have much “competition” in the traditional sense. There are a number of people who do what I do whom …
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By Jessica Albon
As I sat here thinking: I must write a post today. I must write a post today. I must write a post today. I realized that it’s not as simple as clicking my heels together three times. It’s also not as simple as pulling out my list of articles I want to write for you (which is a very, very long list, indeed!), nor is it as simple as turning to my own resources on Writer’s Block.
What do you do when the tricks don’t work?
Because, see, sometimes, as much as you might want to write something, all the tricks in the world won’t make the writing happen. Sometimes, as much as you really want to get something written… the writing refuses to happen.
So, today, I thought I’d share something with you that should only be used in cases of dire emergency. Seriously, before you try this technique …
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By Jessica Albon
“Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. The end of the year is an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead. With Reverb 10, we’ll do both.” (I took that straight from their site–forgive me, but they said it better than I could.)
Like Sarah J. Bray, I won’t be publicly posting my responses daily, but today’s was great inspiration for a blog post and for a computer-y end-of-year reminder (see the very end for that).
Looking back over 2010, the word that best suits my year as a whole is: Defrag.
I’ve mentioned that this year has been complicated for me. Professionally, it’s been a big year–so much adventure, so many amazing projects, so many thrilling clients. And, as “they” say, running a successful business is a crash course …
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By Jessica Albon
In the habit of hiding, I talked about how necessary it is to surrender to times of hiding out. Sometimes, hiding is a fundamental part of moving on to the next stage; sometimes you need to rest, be fallow, absorb, and go (relatively) unnoticed. For myself, I’m an expert hider. I can go months without visiting Twitter, blogging here, or logging into Facebook. Basically, the only inbox I can’t avoid for quite as long is my email inbox. And, even that, as close friends know… I have been known to neglect.
Sometimes, we just plain don’t feel like participating, and though the social media gurus of the world will probably disagree with me… I think that’s absolutely fine. I think we’re all entitled to be private when we want to be, whether that’s with certain sections of our lives or during certain times. It’s okay to step back and …
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By Jessica Albon
Hello darling! It has been 6 months since my last published email newsletter. Sure, I’ve been here writing for you. But, I haven’t been appearing in your inbox.
So, where have I been? Designing new sites, helping clients launch newsletters, or get started publishing newsletters in html. Redesigns in the works galore! Re-writing client websites. Along with about a dozen monthly projects.
But though I’ve been busy taking great care of fabulous clients… I’ve also been hiding. See, I’ve written oodles of blog posts (many long hand) and created some fantastic content for the site (like the currently unpublished Treatise Against Transparency). And I haven’t made very much of it available for you. Because I’m a chicken, sure. But also because I’ve gotten so exhausted by my high levels of output–copywriting, new designs, redesigns, articles, websites, sales pages, products…–that I had to hide out and …
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By Jessica Albon
(We’re currently profiling each of the five Signature Spotlight Styles, one by one. See the full series of Signature Spotlight Case Studies here. If you don’t know what your Signature Spotlight Style is, take the quiz to find out.)
When it comes to Judy’s work with clients, it’s always about the journey, not the destination. (In this way, she’s Edith’s exact opposite.) This means that a Judy’s relationship with her clients is deeply rewarding, and often very personal–she knows even the minute details of what her clients are struggling with.
Just because the journey is rewarding, though, doesn’t mean it’s easy for a Judy. Would-be clients can drag their feet getting started with a Judy because they don’t see the final outcome and are reluctant to commit until they do. This often leads to endless emails and pre-work conversations–if the Judy offers free consultations, she can expect …
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By Jessica Albon
In the imaginary world where your business is a bus, each of the five Signature Spotlight Style types has a different approach to bus-driver-dom. For instance, Audreys tend to have trouble leaving the station (what if someone’s just running late and really needs this bus?) and Katharines tend to leave before the assigned time (what if we miss half the fun out there because we’re lollygaging?).
(Wondering who the heck are Edith, Katharine, and Audrey? They’re three of the five Signature Spotlight Styles. Basically, they’re role models for an easier approach to stepping into the spotlight with your business. If you’d like to find out who your role model is, you can take the free quiz.)
Ediths, though, start with the bus station.
See, an Edith tends to rename the bus. She rewrites the routes. And she has a tendency to suddenly pull out of the …
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By Jessica Albon
Your Signature Spotlight Style is all about which classic Hollywood film star (or creative) best embodies your most client-attractive way of being.
After all, each of these five women built an audience of adoring fans by behaving in a specific (and different) way.
What’s great about this approach is that it means by following your role model’s style, you can easily connect with more great clients (instead of connecting with clients you’re not a good fit for).
Each of the styles is described below. To find out which best suits you, take the quiz.
You can also read my other blog posts about the Signature Spotlight Style system.
Edith Head
You’re Edith Head, masterful at creating transformations. Working with you is magical and your clients often remark (or you’d like them to remark) about how working with you seems effortless, transformational, and mysterious.
When it comes to your website, …
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By Jessica Albon
Printers are my life-long enemy (desktop printers). When I’d have a school deadline and tried to print a paper the night before, the printer would start spewing error messages and blinking red lights. (Fortunately, my brother is the “Printer Whisperer” and could always be counted on to rescue me in the morning.)
Nowadays, this means that the gorgeous laser Xerox that cost a pretty penny sits in my office waiting for a visit from my brother (who now lives on the opposite coast) because after three years of persnickety behavior, it decided to make things official and stop working last December. Right in the middle of a big printing job.
Ordinarily, I don’t print much at the office–it’s easier to just send it out, especially given my track record. But, every so often, I get an idea for a project that leaves me babysitting the printer one sheet at …
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By Jessica Albon
I’ve been browsing blogs for about an hour now, procrastinating on a project, and there’s something we need to talk about. There are certain writers in who use italicized Special Named Phrases very well. Unfortunately, it looks like the style is catching on and resulting in… The Curse of Self-Aggrandizing Douchery.
Here’s the thing: naming stuff is usually senseless. Yes, on the one hand, it neatly delineates Those Who Read Your Stuff from Those Who Don’t. And yes, there’s a lot of talk right now about how having a common vocabulary can help make your people feel like part of your inner circle. And yes, there are many marketers who talk about how important it is to segment your audience into an “In Group” and an “Out Group” so that people will be willing to pay you just so they don’t feel left out.
Yes, naming stuff …
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By Jessica Albon
Today, I’m asking you to do me a favor. Will you email me and tell me what you need?
I want to make sure that I’m still on track to help your 2010 live up to its fullest potential. See, I’ve got a bunch of irons in the fire:
- We’ve got a new version of the Thrive Your Tribe website that’s *thisclose* to being done if I’d just get busy and put the finishing touches on the writing.
- There’s also this Something New (and really, really different) that’s being introduced (by snail mail) in the next week or two.
- A new office space to organize and decorate.
- A new team member to train.
- A bunch of programs that I have all mapped out (pain-free copywriting, for instance) that I need to actually put on the schedule so you can participate.
I’m officially overwhelmed. As I knew I would be last …
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By Jessica Albon
Today I’m re-running an article I wrote just after Hurricane Katrina called Writing with Humanity During Difficult Times.
It’s below.
The reason that I decided to re-run it is because I got a lot of emails from readers wondering what the Haitian earthquake meant when it came to writing their newsletters–did they need to talk about the donation they’d made? If they did, did that look like marketing? If they didn’t, did that mean their readers would assume they were heartless and hadn’t made a donation at all?
And then, you have the folks who move resolutely on with their launches or blogs or newsletters without addressing the devastation at all, and I know for many of *my* readers (because y’all are such a wonderful mix of caring, compassionate types) that feels all wrong.
Personally, here’s what I’m thinking: I’m erring on the side of assuming *everyone* …
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