“There’s so much beauty in the pain of this thing.” — Kobe Bryant
Kobe.
There’s no shortage of eloquent tributes to his life and the lives of the others lost in this tragedy — you don’t need to another one from me.
But I do want to share two things that were published before Kobe’s death that you likely haven’t seen.
The first is a blog post I wrote a couple days after he announced his retirement.
That’s where the quote you see at the top of this newsletter came from.
The second is a 5-minute video from Alan Stein (who happens to be a former high school basketball teammate of mine turned professional speaker) in which he shares a powerful story about what he learned from watching Kobe practice one morning.
It’s a lesson not only in what made Kobe great, but what can make us all great at whatever we choose to do.
Now, on to this week’s ideas…
1. Five Valuable Things That Happen When You Ask Your Audience How You Can Help Them
“The more you speak your audience’s language, the more likely they are to resonate with what you say.”
If you want to better grow, serve, or sell to your audience then I recommend you ask them a simple question: “How can I help you?”
In this post I share five valuable things that happen when you ask your audience how you can help them including that you learn who your audience is, how to communicate to them, and how best to serve them.
Related: The most important question in any project.
2. How To Find The One Decision That Removes 100 Decisions
“Making too many decisions is often symptomatic of poor systems or process.”
There are good decisions, bad decisions, and decisions that are so powerful they free up your time, simplify your life, and make everything you do more likely to succeed.
This post is about that last kind.
Tim Ferriss explains how to find the one decision that removes 100 decisions and points to his decision to read no books published in 2020 as an example of how the process can work and what can come of it.
Btw, I found this link in Khe Hy’s excellent newsletter.
Related: 18 ideas about how to make smarter decisions.
3. How To Use Upstream Thinking To Grow Your Audience
“Upstream thinking involves taking an existing problem and going upstream to solve a different issue, which renders the original problem irrelevant.”
A couple years ago Adam Holownia launched a YouTube channel and had a common problem: How could he get an audience to watch his videos?
But rather than tackle that problem, he instead focused on another problem — where to get ideas for his videos?
By solving that problem he made the other one irrelevant.
In this post he breaks down how to use upstream thinking to grow your audience and explains the secret sauce that helped him attract 300,000 subscribers.
Related: How to get more attention for your creations by telling your three stories.
4. The Best Twitter Threads About Advertising, Marketing, And Creative Strategy
“Being wrong and interesting is more effective than being right and dull.”
I’m not going to attempt to summarize this one because it covers way too much ground to boil down to a couple sentences.
Luke Divita has compiled a collection of the best Twitter threads about advertising, marketing, and creative strategy that features wisdom from people working in the field, books they’ve consumed, and real-world campaigns.
Btw, I found this link in the Article Group newsletter, which I highly recommend if you’re interested in marketing.
Related: Ogilvy on Advertising as a tweet thread.
5. A Search Engine Optimization Checklist
“This article lists what to do to improve on-page SEO.”
This one is a little more technical than what I typically share, but don’t be afraid!
I’m no SEO expert myself and found it a helpful resource if you dream of getting more Google traffic for your work.
This simple search engine optimization checklist includes things to remember about how to craft your URL, titles, links, and content to give you the best chance at ranking well in Google’s search results.
Btw, I found this link in the Creative Mornings newsletter.
Related: 27 ways to get more traffic to your website.
Three Quick Things Before You Go…
Want help accomplishing your goals? Check out my Creator Accelerator.
Last week’s most popular article was the first thing I send to people who give me their email address.
First time here and like what you see? Subscribe here.