In 2021, I spent a lot of time thinking about community. When Unreal Collective was acquired and I was brought in to help build the Community Experience team at SPI, my life became community building. As a result, my community building palette has been refined. I’ve separated the ideas of “community” …
Lessons Learned in 2021
I think we can all agree that any year is a step up from the year that was 2020…but I have to say, 2021 was better than I could’ve imagined. I won’t focus on my own results too much, but I made some big moves this year that have really …
Upgrade your heros
As a 20-something, I was constantly looking up to other exceptional 20-somethings. Tech guys like Mark Zuckerberg (yikes), musicians, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list… It gave me a lot of drive! It fueled my ambition. If these people can do this at my age…why …
Addition over Invention
I love creating a first draft. There is an irresistible, magical feeling that comes with making something for the first time…so much potential and possibility… Maybe this thing is what creates my luck and really takes off! And of course, there are major benefits to going from …
Time is your friend
The story of my creative journey begins with startups. And in the startup and tech world, speed is really important. If your company doesn’t show rapid growth and improvement from day one, you’re not interesting to investors. If you aren’t interesting to investors, you’re not interesting to …
Seek out the babies
The more I’ve come to understand about myself and the things that I like, the easier it is to find myself in an echo chamber. I know what I like, and I stick to what I like. I know what I believe, and I naturally …
Aspirational decision-making
Last week, I interviewed Dan Runcie for an upcoming episode of Creative Elements. Dan is the creator of Trapital where he writes and hosts a podcast about the business of hip hop. He writes essays about how the biggest stars on the planet like Will …
Your content as a product
Creators and content entrepreneurs put a lot of time and effort into free content to feed the machine that is their creative platform. But what I see time and time again (especially with folks early in their journey) is that they fall into this trap …
Don’t build a personal brand – build a creative platform
You know how sometimes there’s a word or phrase you just hate but you can’t come up with a better alternative for it? The word “content” is one of those in the context of “creating content.” Is there a less appealing thing to create than …
Shiny Platform Syndrome
Every few weeks, I’ll get the bright idea that I should really be putting some energy into YouTube. I mean, come on – it’s a search engine. That’s organic traffic to the things that I create! And the successes I’ve seen from creators on Creative …