Most companies feel guilty about the purposeful exclusivity and pushy sales tactics, so they fall somewhere in the middle. Most companies are willing to give up a few dollars every year to make sure their customers have good things to say. They’re also willing to let go of a perfect brand feel to make sure they’re driving sales every month.

Do you ever wish you had 40 hours per week to work on your creative project? You could probably make some real progress if you did. Well, guess what? If you had 40 hours per week, you would fail. Let me explain.

Being a creative isn’t something you are because you know how to use the tools. Everyone can use the tools. Photoshop costs less than Netflix. Get over yourself. What makes you a creative is creating every day.

Try this out for your next project. When you find the key customer desire, wrote it on a sticky note and put it on your desk where you can see it. With every idea, ask yourself, “does this help people achieve their key desire?” If yes, keep it. If no, try again.

Usually it was a 7:15 wake up, a walk to a coffee shop, a chapter of a book, breakfast, and at my desk at 9:30. But when coffee shops closed, people stopped emailing, and sadness sunk in, my routine became burdensome. So I stopped.

Some clients are very comfortable letting go of the reigns. Some prefer a tight grip on the wheel. Some creatives thrive with near total freedom. Some creatives execute tight creatives well. There’s no right or wrong way, there are only good fits and bad fits. 

Making schedules chronologically often leads to procrastination. There’s no date it needs to launch, which often means it will never launch. Picking an arbitrary date in the future on which you will launch your project, and working backwards from there is a surefire way to actually launch it. Whether it’s perfect or not.

Chuck captained the customer experience from the second people walked in the door. Eye contact, a strong hello, a conversation starter, a free coffee sample. He really wanted people to love coffee as much as he did.

After one of these starter questions, I try to ask their opinion on whatever they told me. If they talk about where they’re from, I ask if they like it there. If they talk about the host, I ask what they think of her.

If you have a few important pieces of information to get across within an email, use bullet points. Important points buried inside of sentences are hard for people to extract.

This month I produced 4 videos. 9 shoot days, 20+ talent, 10+ locations. I’m still doing it actually. I’m headed out to Joshua Tree later today for a camping scene. Needless to say, it’s been pretty stressful. 

What if what you love is not that cool? It’s easy for other people to make content about international travel, or pop music, or major sports. But what if you’re into furniture restoration, or miniature painting, or luxury pens?

If you’re looking to grow an audience online, make sure you’re doing something you love. That’s the only way it will be sustainable

People with big audiences online cultivated them by posting consistently for years on end without seeing any return. Scroll back on their Instagram or YouTube channel and you’ll probably find some mediocre work without many likes.

A great solution for these last-minute stressors is a quick list of the first few things I need to do that day. I start with the easy stuff: wake up, take shower, brush teeth, make coffee. Once I start knocking these things off the list, I generate momentum and confidence to tackle the rest of the day.

I’ve been working from home since I started my career. If you’re feeling like working from home has you more stressed, and less-productive, don’t worry. Here are some quick tips for having better work days at home. They’re tried and true for me, maybe they’ll be helpful for you.

As I continued in my career into social media management, then content producing, I always had this picture of Travis in the back of my mind. One day, I would be like Travis. I would be working with cool brands. I wouldn’t be stressed out. I would be able to afford new Nikes.

If you want to build a business that lets you travel full time, invest nights, weekends and extra money into your idea. You won’t get a return immediately, but it’s what it takes. People who do what doesn’t make sense gain the leverage to earn a promotion, connect with an audience, and automate their income.

We’ve all met this person at a party:
You: “So what do you do for work?”
Them: “I enrich lives and help people find joy!”
You: “Ok… so what do you do?”

After a hand-cramping 40 minutes of copying, I ran over to show Dad my work–indents and all. He acknowledged the indents, but pointed out that I spelled a few words wrong. Since I was copying a pre-written paragraph, there was no excuse for that. He made me transcribe it again.