Advertising Mindset Shifts I’ve Had To Make
Yesterday before publishing a campaign for a client, I shared these mindset shifts I’ve had to make:
- This is a long-term play. Not a magical sales vending machine.
- We’re building your company’s audience / ‘radio station’ / ‘media company’
- The big problem we’re solving is lifting you out of obscurity. Attention = opportunity + revenue. Obscurity = death.
- Ads help you get more longevity out of the organic work you do. If something you publish organically seems to resonate — let’s rotate it into a campaign, put a bit of spend behind it, and reach more people.
- There will be trolls. Either use them as an opportunity to educate others who happen to see what they write, or delete them.
- This is a laboratory. We’re testing what works and what doesn’t.
Curtis Duggan / Small Starts
I’m going to begin sharing (almost) daily updates on this blog. A way to keep The Publishing Muscle active.
I’ve been having a great time working with Curtis Duggan on a couple of projects that seem to have come out of the ‘ether’:
- A new podcast where we riff on small business starts and entrepreneurship, in general (aka earning an independent living)
- A podcast agency
- Restructuring our entrepreneur group—Brand Gravity—to be a 3 day intensive somewhere awesome. First one in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
And here’s a song I heard this morning that I liked:
“Presence Analytics”
Hey, Kyle here.
Every Monday I send a short, sweet email of useful resources.
I recently heard someone say that emails can’t be too short, but they can be too long.
So I’m making this my shortest email ever:
🛠 TOOL: I’m excited to demo this ‘Presence Analytics’ tool today. Many possibilities but the one I’m most excited about is attributing guest visits to specific campaigns — even if there’s no opt in or offer redemption.
🤓 READ: How a professional copywriter comes up with headlines. Fast.
🧠 PONDER: How can you pour into your people?
$100 ‘alchemy’
Hey, Kyle here.
Every 2 weeks I share the best of what I’ve learned growing small local businesses, restaurants, and myself.
Here’s what’s on deck in today’s issue:
📈 The $100 Challenge Results
🧲 Recruitment that doesn’t suck (hiring ad template you can use)
🎧 Eliminating wait times + weird restaurant models
2 tools to make social media fun
Hey, Kyle here. Happy Valentine’s Day. 😘
Every Monday, I send a short, sweet email of useful resources.
📸 TEMPLATE: Because Instagram is such a visual platform, I’ve struggled not being able to see what my feed will look like — until after. So I made a simple Canva template you can use to easily slot in your photos / videos to get a preview of your feed. (BTW, ever feel like Canva is taking over the internet?)
⛏ TOOL: If you’re going to grow in the marketplace, you need a point of view. I believe Twitter is the best platform to chisel your point of view. I’m only one day in, but HypeFury has been very effective at automating a lot of the grunt work — inlcuding posting tweets to other platforms.
🎧 LISTEN: No secret that music can be powerful for getting into, and staying in, flow states. This Spotify station built off of the song Oceans by RY X and Ólafur Arnalds has been keeping me dialled on work all weekend. Great walking music, too.
🧠 PONDER: Do you feel like you’re building? Or just doing?
4 workshops on local ‘offense’
Hey, Kyle here.
Every Monday, I send a short, sweet email of useful resources.
Beginning this Wednesday, February 9th at 1:00 pm PST I’m partnering with Victoria Hospitality Industry to give a series of free workshops and roundtable discussions to help bars, restaurants, cafes, and hotels play better OFFENSE.
(Useful for any local business, really)
Here are the next 4:
Solving Bigger Problems
Hey, Kyle here.
Every 2 weeks I share the best of what I’ve learned growing small local businesses, restaurants, and myself.
Today, I’m sharing 2 quickies and 1 longer piece near and dear to my heart:
🏠 A bar website format you can steal
🎤 How to tell a better story in 2022
👨🏼🎓 A bar + entrepreneurial growth program (presentation deck included)
🇲🇽 BONUS: 3 funny things my mom has said in Mexico
3 discoveries and a quote
Hey, Kyle here.
Starting today, I’m sharing useful discoveries I’ve made + 1 thought to ponder for the week. Every Monday.
🔎 REFERENCE: Kately Bourgoin of Customer Camp put together this Buyer Psychology Cheatsheet. It’s helpful when you want to arm your copy with high-octane firepower (rooted in how we think).
🤓 READ: I was recently coached by Mike Cooch on overcoming ‘resistance.’ While Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art is one of the books I gift most often, I’d never heard of the book Mike recommended — Turning Pro. My favourite line, so far: “The amateur tweets. The pro works.” Amen.
Suboptimal + the infinite game
Hey, Kyle here.
Every 2 weeks I share the best of what I’ve learned growing small local businesses and restaurants.
In today’s edition, I’m going to cover:
⚙️ A new training model any local business can adopt
🎯 2022 goals, habits, and themes
❤️ A few of my favourite recent discoveries
A breakthrough model
Hey, Kyle here.
Every 2 weeks I share the best of what I’ve learned growing small local businesses and restaurants.
In today’s edition, I’m going to cover:
⚙️ A new training model any local business can adopt
🎯 2022 goals, habits, and themes
❤️ A few of my favourite recent discoveries