Growth hacks are great. But the most impactful lessons about building a successful creative platform are more easily overlooked. Here are 10 of them. Just over two years ago, on April 12, 2020, I sent out the first issue of my newsletter, Creative Wayfinding. I’d attempted to write several newsletters in the past, but they had always fizzled after a few months at most. Something about this one felt different, however, and now, 100…

Your biggest potential opportunities are within arm’s reach… But are almost impossible to see. Here’s how to spot them. — My partner, Kelly, was frantic that she’d lost her credit card. She’d already searched her wallet, purse, backpack, and jacket-all the usual suspects turning up nothing-when she remembered her jeans. They’d been removed and tossed onto the top shelf of the closet in favour of sweat pants almost the moment…

When you’ve taken on too much, the slightest slip-up can result in catastrophe for all your creative projects. — Earlier this week I was walking from the living room to the kitchen to put away a few groceries I’d just picked up. Between the fingers of my right hand were wedged two glass bottles, one kombucha, the other, juice. My left hand had a hold on my jacket and…

When everyone around us is succeeding now, it’s tempting to try to immediately capitalize on our every idea. This is exactly the wrong approach. — Too often, I think, we misunderstand what we’re holding when it comes to our ideas. We treat them as difficult nuts to be cracked, subjecting them to pressure, heat, and force as we attempt to get through the hard outer casing to access the interior. Rather than unlocking creative sustenance…

A systematic approach to building a red-hot relationship with your audience members and turning casual observers into raving fans. — If you’ve ever built a campfire, you know that to build up the fire successfully, you need to follow a specific, systematic process. Regardless of what style of fire-builder you are (personally, I’m a log cabin-er), the process is always the same and can be summarized as follows.

We all feel like we should be moving faster. The reason that’s so hard, however, is surprisingly obvious. — For the first 10 years of my creative endeavours, I lived in nearly a constant state of frustration that things weren’t progressing as fast as I wanted them to. On any given day, the focal point of that frustration may have been related to income, audience growth, skill development, or…

You already have the confidence you need. You just need to find it and tap into it. — Within minutes of leaving my front door for a walk, it’s almost inevitable that I’ll have stooped down to pick up something off the ground. Most often it’s a small, interesting (at least to me) stone or pebble-when I’m walking along the coast my pockets will end up literally overflowing…

As a creator, you get to create the rules for how you make and market your work. And you likely won’t find success until you do. — Think about the board game, Monopoly for a minute. Chances are if you play it 10 different times with 10 different people you’ll get 10 different variations on the rules. Some of the variations are minor, such as changing the amount of cash each player starts with, randomly dealing out…

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter over the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably seen a near endless stream of cryptic posts like the one below, and thought to yourself, “What the hell is going on?”