A bi-weekly roundup of everything TL;DR from the past year December 13 - December 26 A Brief Year In Review Don't forget to enter my end-of-year holiday Cliftonstrengths & 1-1 Giveaway! Contest ends on Monday the 29th. Enter now! The end of the year always puts me into a reflective mood, and out of all my content channels, this newsletter has always been the place I feel most present. The ritual of waking up early on a Friday, putting on vibe-y instrumental music, and setting the lights to...
15 days ago • 4 min read
A bi-weekly roundup of ways to make EOY reviews a little less awkward November 29 - December 12 What Wrapping Paper Do You Use For Tough Love? It’s December 12th. You can practically smell the holiday break. But there is one thing standing between you and that final "Out of Office" auto-reply: The End-of-Year Review. If you are like most small agency owners I know, you are probably trying to find a way to wiggle out of it. You might be telling yourself: "We’re a small team, we talk every day....
29 days ago • 3 min read
A bi-weekly roundup of why now is the best time to measure the worst emotions November 15 - November 28 Burnout, On Sale Now While the rest of the world is obsessing over doorbusters and discount codes today, someone- either you or one of your team members- is sweating. If you have ecommerce clients, your team has been sprinting for weeks to get assets approved, campaigns loaded, and fires put out. Even if you don’t do ecomm, the sheer gravitational pull of Q4 deadlines has likely pushed your...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
A bi-weekly roundup of people problems, explained through short-form video November 1 - November 14 Doomscroll Some Problems TL;DR- I launched a TikTok channel. I consider myself good at time and project management but I also know that I'm a meatbag in a capitalist society. Companies with more money than God have designed supercomputers and apps pointed directly at my brain, but I've taken steps to protect myself from their siren calls. One of those steps was installing an app blocker on my...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
A bi-weekly roundup of terror: no unread emails October 18 - October 31 The Day Your Email Stood Still After you closed your laptop lid yesterday, you could still hear the screams: "Can you approve this?! It's been waiting a week." "Quick question..." "John forgot to do this so now I have to..." "YOU HAVE NOT SUBMITTED YOUR QUARTERLY TAX PAYMENT" As you lay your head down on the pillow, you fall asleep while mentally preparing your to-do list for tomorrow, trying to rank which dumpster fire...
2 months ago • 5 min read
A bi-weekly roundup of quietly suppressed opinions October 4 - October 17 What If Your Slack Got Wikileaked? Picture this: imagine that whatever you and your team use for private communication (Slack, Teams, long rambling email threads, texts, etc.) became public knowledge. And when I mean public, I don't only mean to other internal team members, but also clients, prospects, job candidates, etc. Yes, even Charlie. He's...horrified. And hurt. That mental image that's giving you the willies is...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, For six years, I’ve been a founder. The journey has been a winding road of trial, error, and a whole lot of learning. I’ve sold to HR departments, consulted for startups, and chased opportunities across different industries, always feeling like I was just one step away from "figuring it out." I was a generalist trying to solve everyone's problems. And it was exhausting. But looking back, a clear pattern emerged. Every time I did my best work, every time a client had a true...
3 months ago • 1 min read
A bi-weekly roundup of insights from six years of failure September 20 - October 3 Stitching A New Birthday Suit Next week, Learn to Scale turns six years old. I've been a professional failure for almost six years. I don't know about you, but birthdays make me reflective. It's a special event that connects you to previous versions of yourself: the person who used to believe one thing is the same person that you are today, but you've changed what you believe. And every year, the Dan from...
3 months ago • 3 min read
A bi-weekly roundup of how 1.9 billion AI queries are mostly about dating advice September 6 - September 13 Hey ChatGPT- how does my hair look? New research that came out this week from OpenAI and Anthropic shows some mind-bending facts about how the world is utilizing this new hotness they're calling "AI." I published a deep dive on this new research in a new blog post, Are You Using AI for $10 Tasks or $10,000 Decisions? The fact from this research that's still living rent-free in my head:...
4 months ago • 3 min read