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Why the future belongs to independents

It was an honor to be back on Media & the Machine, which has grown to be an un-skippable podcast — usually with guests who are much smarter than me. Rob Kelly puts a lot of work into these episodes – more than any other podcast I’ve been on (even

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CJ’s Newsletter: 200 Abnormally Useful Ideas

Over in the VIP Lounge, I published a small ebook of readers’ favorite quotes from 20+ years of publishing.  I started it last month because I thought it would be the easiest project ever — a nice extra for paid members, filtering my collection of ~2,000 quotes down to the

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The $200 plastic box opportunity

If you ever needed an example of the increasing importance of personal brands in the AI era, I’ve got a whopper.  Over the past few months, I’ve noticed something that construction professionals and jewelry makers on Etsy have in common: they’re always looking out for better ways

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Can personal brands save big business?

NP Digital asked 200 companies about their employees’ personal brands. If you’re guessing that most companies said, “Huh? what?” you’re probably right. Over 80% of the companies didn’t support their employees’ personal brands. Only 18 of the companies reported that they both supported employees with personal brands,

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Do shit that doesn’t scale.

I get questions from marketers all the time about what to do as more and more of their work is eaten by AI. They see their clients happy with AI content, even if conversion rates and sales go way down. Why? The amount of cost-cutting involved is so massive,

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Surviving Advice Season

The new year is almost upon us, which means we’re about to enter advice season. Yay! My only advice for surviving advice season is to add the following caveats to everything you’re told: * If it’s about AI, add: “…for now.” or “…yet.” * If it’s about productivity,

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Publish or perish? Document or die.

I don’t believe in goals. I believe in process. I believe in process because I used to believe in goals. What I’m about to reveal to you is far more boring than goal setting, but far more effective. Goals tend to get further away the closer you get

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Why would you write a book in 2023?

It doesn’t make much sense to write a book in 2023 — especially a nonfiction book. In fact, your readers would likely pay 10X as much to get the same information in a video-based course. But, for many reasons, some of us still prefer creating books over any other

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Do Personal Brands Matter?

Many of you have asked me about the differences between personal and business newsletters, websites, and branding. There must be something in the air, because I’ve seen a lot of content spring up around the subject lately, including from Gary Vee, Seth Godin (in multiple new interviews), and Copyblogger.

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When Pay to Play Doesn’t Pay

Seth Godin just posted about the search tax you’re paying: “Amazon took in more than $30 billion in ad revenue last year, money spent to elevate some products over others in the hierarchy of attention.” Amazon, like Google, YouTube, and Apple’s App Store are often referred to as