I gave myself a pep talk in the shower today. I told myself that success this week depends on short bursts of immense focus.

If you stop to think about it, why wouldn’t you read reviews? The goal of advertising is to get inside the mind of the customer. To listen to them. To understand what inspired their purchase, and to use that in your marketing.

I’ve written about this framework dozens of times, and I’ve used the framework for clients hundreds of times. Its nothing new to me, but I wanted to give another shout-out to this framework because it recently helped me navigate a medium I was inexperienced with.

After a serendipitous meeting at a baseball game, Keith explained his creative blocks to me. I knew exactly what he was going through. I explained the Creative Sprint to him, a process that helped me publish a blog for over 300 days in a row. Keith and Em put it into practice, and finished lyrics for their band’s next Ep that same week.

Marriage was always drawn up as this monumental thing. And if our personal investment in it is any indication, it is indeed important. But it doesn’t negate any other corner of life.

Add this to the list of Apple’s endless innovation: now they’re making their own words. On the landing page for the AirTag, Apple says it’s a “supereasy” way to keep track of your stuff. Supereasy. Supereasy isn’t a word. There’s a red underline in my text editor right now.

I know creatives who turn off their phones during editing sessions in order to stay in their flow state. I’m a big fan of this, as finding flow state as often as possible is the best way to achieve top-tier work. But there are some clients I always pick up the phone for.

I find this passage inspiring. It’s so relatable as a creative person. I’ve had my own seasons of living violently, drinking hugely, eating and sleeping too much and too little, working way too hard or not at all. For all the chasing I do of moderation, stability, and consistency, there are certainly times on all ends of every spectrum. And in Steinbeck’s eyes, this is magical in its own way, too.

Reading a Seth Godin book is like scrolling someone’s profile on TikTok. A series of short-form pieces hit you one by one, each one meaningful and insightful in its own way.

At the end of the year, Kris Bryant will be a free agent. With his resume, he’ll be able to get about $100 million for maybe 4-5 years of work with almost any team who has the piggy bank to pay him.

“Greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable.”
–Dan Chambliss

I was reminded of my early days out of college in Venice beach, sharing a 120 square foot apartment with a buddy and a bunk bed.

“There’s a price to waiting.” Blockfolio’s tagline is pulled straight from an advertising psychology book. Advertisers have tried to induce this fear in a thousand creative ways, and Blockfolio just came out and said it.

This morning I grabbed a handful of raw, cold spinach, and put it all in my mouth at once. The strange thing is, it was one of the most normal parts of my morning.

I read a sentence recently by Chris Gayomali in an article about Olympic runner Noah Lyles that struck me. It said, “Meanwhile, Noah Nyles is a sprinter who seems to have more fun than anyone else and isn’t afraid to use his platform to advocate for Black lives mattering.”

If you want to build a habit of working out, you better redefine what working out means to you. The thing that gets in the way of habit development is feeling like our small steps aren’t meaningful enough to pursue.

This isn’t a blog about how to make an online class. It’s only a blog about how to sell one, with good copywriting.

I used to have endless ideas and no follow through. I jumped from unfinished project to unfinished project in search of novelty and excitement. Meanwhile, my creative goals went unaccomplished. Then I discovered the creative sprint.

Different clients want different things. Some clients want to impress their boss with your work. Some clients want to not lose their job with your work.

All the Instagram Ad best practices say to focus on the products. To call out features. To not get too creative. Dandy Del Mar broke all those rules.