He learned quick, worked hard, and treated everyone he met with respect and kindness. That’s what garnered this compliment from my photographer friend. I was struck by how simple and powerful that description was.

Maybe you’re in a similar spot. Maybe you’re working hard at two things. Maybe you wish you could fast forward a few years, or quit your day job, leave your boss on read, and put it all on red.

The next step is to show up to the places where success happens. And to show up as often as the successful people do. That’s what designing a trajectory looks like. And, just for the record, getting magically discovered as a prodigy by a record label (or a movie studio or a publishing house) isn’t part of the trajectory. That’s just daydreaming.

Do you have the Sunday scaries? You know, the rising tide of stress and anxiety that creeps up as the sun goes down on Sunday evening? The feeling of dread for Monday morning, for all the things that you’ll have to do, for all the mistakes you might make?

We’ve seen villains spruce up ad campaigns for years, most notably with Allstate’s Mayhem character. Recently, the villain-based ad campaign has been pretty popular, with Jimmy John’s, Little Caesars, and Mint Mobile introducing their own villains.

Life gets boring. There are two options when this happens. Switching your focus to something new, or deepening your interest even further.

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.