On my mind:

“If I catch you acting, you suck.”
– Joan See, founder of The New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts

This was my conservatory’s unofficial motto.

The idea is if the audience can tell someone is acting, you’re watching them play pretend rather than a fully realized character going on some kind of journey.

But this axiom is true for so many areas.

“If I catch you writing, you suck.”
“If I catch you selling, you suck.”
“If I catch you marketing, you suck.”

As marketers, we often forget we’re consumers too, and more often than not, the content / marketing / advertising that gets us to buy stuff is invisible.

We think in stories, and everything we buy, consumer products or B2B are all part of trying to make part of that story better in some way, shape, or form.

Try this:

Use this framework for whatever creative you come up with next…

For [audience member with a job to be done] [content] will grant the power of [power].
Whereas today they have to [do bad, boring thing] after interacting with [our content] they will be able to [do good, interesting thing].

It is a deceptively complex exercise that forces you to be deliberate in thinking about what the person on the other side of the screen should feel after being exposed to your content.


An interesting tweet:

Ryan Law discusses the fractal content structure.

Not a tweet, but a great discussion Ryan Law of Animalz sparked on LinkedIn, whose work I respect deeply.

I actually dislike this structure, because it is so common, and an easy reminder that you are in fact reading a blog post.

It’s is like a roller coaster, ramping up at the beginning of a subhead, making a peak (maybe) then ramping back down, before doing it all over again on the next subhead.

To me, a good blog post reads like a waterfall with the writing flowing from top to bottom of the page, and subheads being more emphasis than stopping points.

What’s your take?


📡 What’s on my radar?

✍️ It’s not just you. The data says blogging works, but big results are harder to get.

🎥 7 chapters and 8,800+ words on video marketing. Backlinko’s not messing around.

🔑 Untapped keywords? Yes please.


Weekly video:

Create record in Airtable and automatically create new Google doc.

This is just a teaser, but this automation will create a Google Doc and assign it to your author when you create a record in Airtable.

Save yourself lots of time, and take more ownership of your content.

Step by step breakdown coming soon.