I’ve been talking lately -- here on the blog and on the Marketing Mentor Podcast -- about building a content eco-system...(check out episode 556)

...but I have yet to define what a content eco-system actually is. (Oops :)

So in today’s episode, my 3rd conversation with messaging strategist (and fellow content machine), Stacy Eleczko, we start with that definition. (Listen to previous episodes with Stacy here and here.)

From there, Stacy shares what it takes to build a content eco-system and why it’s so much better than creating piecemeal content. 

By the end of our conversation, it will be super clear that you don’t have to be a content machine to have a content eco-system.

You can start small with one big idea or theme, then simply build on it, which is actually very natural.

The point is to connect the dots so that your content builds on itself and your message comes through clearly, even if no one is paying much attention.

(BTW That's what I'm doing here with this content about content eco-systems. A bit meta, I admit.)

You can listen here (or below):

And of course If you want my help figuring out your own content eco-system – or even what your main messages should be, I hope you’ll take advantage of my free mentoring session. 

Read the complete transcript here

ilise: Hello, Stacy, welcome back to the podcast.

Stacy Eleczko: Hi, ilise, thanks for having me back.

ilise: Of course — this is our third conversation and podcast episode. Introduce yourself before I go any further. Go ahead, tell the people who you are.

Stacy Eleczko: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Stacy Eleczko, I'm a messaging strategist, speaker, and workshop facilitator, and I help B2B service businesses figure out how to stand out in a crowded market with bold, deeply human messaging.

ilise: Nice, alright. On episode 551, which wasn't too long ago, we talked about your email newsletter — that episode was called The Newsletter That Had No Business Working.

ilise: I think you only have one newsletter, right?

Stacy Eleczko: Just one, yeah.

ilise: Good — one is definitely enough. One is enough for most people. And before that, we talked about why AI won't replace you — that was episode 539. So if anyone wants to hear more from me and Stacy, you can listen to those.

ilise: But today, the reason we scheduled this third conversation right after we recorded the second one, is because we were talking about your newsletter as part of your "content ecosystem" — and that phrase has been coming up a lot with people lately.

ilise: I also just recorded another episode — which will definitely be out by the time this one comes out — with Val Roskens Tews, all about her content ecosystem. So that's what I wanted to dig into today. How does that sound?

Stacy Eleczko: Yeah, that sounds great. I'm thrilled we're having this conversation — and some of my content ecosystem has actually come to fruition just because we were talking about it. It was a little kick in the pants to get started on some things that had been on my list for a while.

ilise: That's awesome. That's a big part of my job description — the kicking in the pants, although I don't actually do any kicking. But it seems to help to have told someone "I'm going to do this" and then have to actually do it.

Stacy Eleczko: Exactly.

ilise: Alright, let's start with — maybe, especially because you help others build their content ecosystems — let's define "content ecosystem" first, and not assume everybody knows what we're talking about. How would you define it?

Stacy Eleczko: So the way I define it — actually, I've never said this out loud before, so let's see — is that you have a system of content that works together, as opposed to just creating a whole bunch of content in isolation from each other. You've thought about how the content relates to each other, how it relates to your business goals, and how you're being strategic to keep it aligned and consistent. So people hear from you across different platforms but get similar information — you're not saying one thing on one platform and something else on another. You have an organized plan for it.

ilise: I love that definition, Stacy. I think that works.

Stacy Eleczko: Awesome, I'll go back and listen to it.

ilise: One thing that's reminding me of is something I've been thinking about a lot — the compartmentalizing I see people doing with their marketing, their business, maybe even their life. I'm focused on marketing, so the compartmentalizing I see is kind of the opposite of a content ecosystem — a blog post over here, a newsletter over there, a social post over here, and never the twain shall meet. The idea is connecting the dots between your marketing assets, each one building on the next.

ilise: I imagine people are wondering: what do you need to have in place first to create — it could be a simple content ecosystem, because I feel like the phrase almost implies there's a lot to it, and I don't think there needs to be. "Ecosystem" just implies that everything is connected. Respond to that.

Stacy Eleczko: Yeah, absolutely — honestly, I was exactly what you described for a long time. I was piecemealing everything: what do I want to write about on LinkedIn today, what's this week's newsletter going to be about. In my head there was a thread — I knew, in some way, these things were related, but I didn't have a plan. It was incredibly overwhelming. So when people said "content ecosystem," my chest would get tight and I'd panic, because I thought: does that mean I have to be on every platform all the time? Because if I only spend time marketing my business, how do I actually work in my business?

Stacy Eleczko: For a long time that really dissuaded me from even trying to build anything. So one piece that was missing for me was: what's my anchor piece of content going to be? What's the one piece I build everything else off of? For me, that became my newsletter — the anchor of everything else I've planned.

Stacy Eleczko: Let me back up. I've been on LinkedIn for a long time — that's been my primary platform — and I send an email once a week. I just sent out issue 102, I think. Around issue 94 is when I finally came up with a system, so I wasn't every Monday night trying to figure out what's going out Tuesday morning. That's when I had a solid plan in place for the newsletter, and I understood my content pillars — the three to five things I consistently talk about that I know my audience needs to hear and that relate to my business goals. What are my strong beliefs, my point of view on those things?

Stacy Eleczko: I used that as the basis to build a strategic plan — I used Claude Cowork to help me think through a lot of it — a plan for what my next 12 newsletters would look like. I wanted to start with just the first 90 days, knowing that once that was in place, I could layer in the other pieces.

ilise: Let me respond to one thing there — the idea of creating a pillar piece of content, sometimes called cornerstone content. For you that's your newsletter, and you've got four or five ideas to focus on based on what you know about your people — their needs, their pain points.

ilise: I agree with that, but I'm often channeling my listeners as I listen, and what I hear is: wait — you mean I'm going to repeat the same thing over and over? I don't have to come up with a brand-new, profound idea every time I send a newsletter? You actually want me to repeat myself? What would you say to that?

Stacy Eleczko: Yes. Absolutely, 100%. This is a conversation I have with clients all the time, because I've dealt with the same thing myself — the fear that people will get tired of hearing it.

ilise: We're the ones who get bored of it.

Stacy Eleczko: Exactly — we're the only ones who get bored of saying the same things over and over. People need to consistently hear the same ideas, the same message. We live with this stuff day in and day out, so we know what we're saying, but our audience is only getting bits and pieces — part of a YouTube video while walking to a kid's soccer game, a LinkedIn post while scrolling past other things. They're not consuming all of our content at once. So it feels repetitive to us, but it isn't — our people need to hear the same things multiple ways, across multiple touchpoints, before it really sinks in.

ilise: Two thoughts here. First — and this feels a little meta, because I think we talked about this last time too, and that doesn't bother me, because people need to hear it again and again — a client once told me, after she'd been receiving my content for a long time: "I finally realized what you're doing. I used to think you were saying something different every time, but now that I'm creating my own content and analyzing yours, I see you're just saying the same thing over and over." And I said, yup.

Stacy Eleczko: Yeah, I tried to buck that for a while, because I didn't want to keep saying the same thing — I have so many thoughts, ideas, opinions I want to share. But you want people to associate you with one thing. I associate you with the idea of making marketing simple, because that's what you consistently talk about — that's what you need people to think of first when that problem comes up for them.

Stacy Eleczko: You're the first person who comes to mind.

ilise: Exactly. And it's not like I'm literally repeating the same thing verbatim — and I'm sure you're not either. Every time I articulate it, I say it a little differently, a little better, a little simpler and clearer. It's constantly improving on itself. Do you do that too?

Stacy Eleczko: Absolutely — and a powerful byproduct we don't always realize is that the more we talk about something, the more we distill our ideas and get clearer on how we think about it and want to say it. Our message becomes clearer, more memorable, more relatable, because we've thought it through so many different ways and times, and we start to notice what's actually resonating with people, where they lean in. It's done so much for my overall messaging.

ilise: Yeah. Okay, good — I think we've done a good job defining what a content ecosystem is. So let's talk about what's actually in your content ecosystem. Maybe walk through it in the order it evolved, since I imagine this wasn't "do this first, then this, then this" — it's an evolution. I never know what the next thing will be until it's time to do it.

Stacy Eleczko: Agreed. I started with LinkedIn — that was my primary platform for a while, and I liked it as a starting point because it let me experiment and see what resonated with people.

ilise: You mean posting on LinkedIn.

Stacy Eleczko: Posting on LinkedIn, yes — I wrote a couple of articles, but mostly it was posts. Even commenting helped; when someone says something and you leave a thoughtful comment related to what you do, it helps you think it through. So that's where I started. Then — and we talked about this last time — my newsletter came next, about two years ago.

Stacy Eleczko: That started because I help clients with their newsletters, and I was about to speak at a women's luncheon about starting email lists. This was May 1st, 2024, and on April 30th I thought: I can't go speak to this group without having my own newsletter. So I posted on LinkedIn saying I was starting one — come join me — and got about 24 subscribers.

Stacy Eleczko: I started looking at which posts people reacted to, engaged with, or left thoughtful comments on — or sometimes, early on when I wasn't getting much engagement, just the ones I enjoyed writing — and asked how I could turn that into a longer newsletter. Someone would ask me a question, or I'd see someone talking about something interesting I could reframe, and I'd add it to a running note in my phone of possible content ideas. That's how I muddled my way through the newsletter for a while.

Stacy Eleczko: So those were the two things I had going. Most recently I've been thinking it's time to diversify. I know who I serve, what my differentiators are, what my audience needs to hear — I need to be in more than one place, and I need to align that with my business goals.

Stacy Eleczko: That's another thing people miss — we feel like "everybody's on TikTok, I need to be on TikTok" or "everybody's on Instagram," without asking which platforms actually align with our business goals, where our audience is, and what bandwidth we actually have.

ilise: Right.

Stacy Eleczko: So — LinkedIn first, then the newsletter. Now my newsletters are fairly long-form, roughly 1,200–1,500 words each, and that's become my anchor piece. The next layer is YouTube, which I actually just posted my first video to this week — on your calendar invite I saw the question "have you started your YouTube channel yet?" and thought, yes! I recorded it Wednesday, published it Friday, based on the newsletter that had gone out Tuesday.

ilise: We'll share a link to that video and your channel. But for people listening — what did you do, read the newsletter aloud? What's the format, and why YouTube?

Stacy Eleczko: Great question. I didn't want it to just be a regurgitation of the newsletter, since I expect some overlap between readers and viewers. So I took the big idea and went deeper on a couple of things I hadn't covered in depth. My last newsletter was about whether people are really being strategic about optimizing for LLM search — that's the big topic lately: you have to "get seen," get recommended, be visible in AI, and everyone feels pressure around it. But they're not necessarily stopping to ask whether that's actually the right move for their business. I wrote about that and listed questions to use as a filter, then took three of those questions and went deeper in the video.

Stacy Eleczko: I used Claude Cowork to help me think through a lot of this — I fed it my past newsletters, my content pillars, my business goals, how much time I have per week, what I'm already doing, and where I want to go, with the newsletter as the anchor of it all. We worked through what my workflow and rollout timeline would look like, and where I could go deeper for YouTube.

Stacy Eleczko: Right now the plan is: write the newsletter, then do a related YouTube video. I've channeled you on this — I'm doing a 90-day experiment, one video a week, just to see how it goes. I'm not stressing about production quality (you could see me half-reading, half-talking in that last video, and the lighting wasn't perfect) — the point right now is just to get the reps in and find out: is this sustainable, do I enjoy it, do I want to keep doing it?

Stacy Eleczko: As for why YouTube specifically — one of my big business goals is hosting more workshops and speaking on more stages, which are great lead generators for me. Being on YouTube serves multiple purposes: people who might want me to speak in their community can see me on video, which is more personal and relatable. The other reason — and this may sound like it contradicts what I said earlier, but it doesn't — is that I know AI tools pull from LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, and places like that. I'm not expecting to rank at the top when someone asks Claude a cold query, but if someone meets me or hears me speak and then goes and asks a chatbot to tell them more about me, I want there to be content for it to reference and pull from. Plus, a YouTube channel has been on my list for two years — it felt like time to experiment and see what results I get.

ilise: You know I love experimenting, so that all sounds good. But — do you think of speaking and podcast guesting as part of your content ecosystem? You haven't mentioned it.

Stacy Eleczko: It's funny — as I was just talking, I realized that's something I have on my list. I have tons of clips from podcasts I've been on. Yes, I probably need to start using those. One plan is to start posting on Threads — I did a listening tour recently, talking to a lot of ideal clients, and Threads kept coming up. I'm not a big social media person, but Threads feels less "social media–y" than the rest, so I want to be there and could use some of those clips.

Stacy Eleczko: I also usually prepare talking points before podcasts, or hosts send me questions ahead of time and I jot down notes. I've gone back through those looking for themes — things I can drill deeper into for the newsletter or potential YouTube videos. So those are becoming planning material. I'm really just trying to figure out how to repurpose things, because I was constantly reinventing the wheel before — every LinkedIn post was a brand-new post, every newsletter was brand new. It wasn't sustainable, and I'd never tell my clients to do that. So I need to be more strategic about reusing those, and it's on my mind as I map all this out.

ilise: Interesting. That topic of your newsletter this past week was really interesting — let's talk about it a bit, since it relates to AI. The way I interpreted it: everyone's saying search is going away, or changing, that no one uses Google anymore, and now you have to be found in the large language models. So — how do you do that? Do you need a specialist for that? And is it even important? That's the main question for me: how important is it to be found in AI search, the way people have always wanted to be found in a Google search?

ilise: I'll ask you to answer that, but I want to give my opinion first, since I don't think I've talked much about it: I don't think being found in search — when you're a solopreneur, freelance writer, freelance designer, or small agency — is how you get clients. Clients come from relationships. All the tools in the Simplest Marketing Plan are about building relationships, not being found on search. It seemed like you were leaning that direction too, but saying: if your business is like this, being found in AI search matters; if it's like that, maybe not.

Stacy Eleczko: Yes, 100% — I'm nodding along to everything you're saying. The question I posed at the start of the newsletter was: if you weren't worried about getting found in Google search results before, why are you suddenly worried about getting found in an LLM?

ilise: How's everyone else doing it?

Stacy Eleczko: Exactly — and I get it, there's a fear with AI of getting left behind, missing out. Overnight we have a zillion AI experts, everyone shouting about getting recommended and being visible. In the YouTube video I went further into this: yes, if you were already showing up in Google search results, you should be optimizing for LLMs too. But if you run a high-trust, high-ticket service, you're building on relationships — nobody hands over five figures to a contractor based on a search query they found in an LLM. They do it based on relationships. And even for businesses that aren't five-figure contracts, many service businesses are relational, and clients find you other ways.

Stacy Eleczko: Where I think it matters is what I mentioned earlier — not as a discovery channel, but a confirmation channel. If someone types your name into a search, what shows up? What I really wanted to get across in the newsletter and video is that, just like every platform or tactic that's ever worked in marketing, you have to have strong positioning and messaging first. It doesn't matter how much content you put out — unless you're spending millions on ad spend — if you don't have a clear, consistent message and aren't articulating what sets you apart. That's what both humans and "robots" respond to and look for.

ilise: Yeah. Alright — one more question, and then we'll definitely have to continue this conversation another time, since you're running so many experiments and we'll need updates. You've talked about podcasts and speaking gigs, which I'll say plainly I see as a form of content marketing — that's why they're part of your content ecosystem, in my view.

ilise: So how does one get speaking engagements and podcast guesting opportunities?

Stacy Eleczko: I've been very fortunate — a lot of podcast opportunities have come to me, but it goes back to relationships. Many of them happened because I was engaging with people on LinkedIn, or met them at a conference, or someone said, "I was a guest on this podcast, I think you'd be great for it — want me to make a warm introduction?" If you don't have those relationships yet, start building them. If there's a podcast you want to be on, or people are on podcasts you'd like to join, start connecting with them genuinely, and eventually you can ask: "I'd love to guest on your podcast — here's something I think would help your audience. Would that be interesting?"

Stacy Eleczko: (brief technical interruption) Sorry, my screen went black for a second.

ilise: No worries.

Stacy Eleczko: So — it all goes back to relationships, and also knowing where your audience is and not being afraid to ask. That's what's worked for me with podcasts. For speaking gigs, same thing — people with communities have asked me to speak because of other content I've put out, or because they've heard me speak and offered to make an introduction. Relationships are always the answer. But also — and this is why I'm building out YouTube and being in more places — the more visible you are, the better your odds of being in front of people whose stages you'd want to be on, or who can make good introductions.

ilise: The phrase coming to mind is: content begets content.

Stacy Eleczko: Yes, exactly. I spoke at a conference maybe a year ago and got six invitations to guest on podcasts right afterward, just from people in that audience who'd heard me speak. So if you're thinking "I don't know any podcast hosts" or "I don't have a chance to be on stage" — what platforms do you already have? Can you shoot a quick 30-second video and post it? Do a LinkedIn Live? Go to more in-person networking events, offer to speak for free? The more you put yourself out there and the more value you give, it comes back tenfold. That's what I did — I reached out to people running local women's networking groups or lunches and said, "I'd love to speak to your group — here are a few topics, would any of these help your audience?"

ilise: And what most people don't realize is that those hosts need your content — they need good speakers and presenters, they have slots to fill. You're not doing them a favor by showing up; it's the other way around. It's a win-win.

Stacy Eleczko: Absolutely. The biggest thing I keep telling myself this past year is: I'm not going to be the one to tell myself no. I'll let them tell me no. For a long time I wouldn't put myself out there because I was worried, "what if they don't want me on their podcast?" Well — then they don't want me on their podcast.

ilise: Who cares?

Stacy Eleczko: Right, who cares — because I also wasn't going to be on their podcast if I never asked. Now I ask. Maybe I'm still not on their podcast, but at least I asked. I'm done being the person who tells myself no.

ilise: I love that. Okay, one more question: do you see yourself as a confident person?

Stacy Eleczko: I think it's very situation-dependent. (pause) Can you clarify — are you thinking in general, or something specific?

ilise: In general — I'm channeling my listeners again, who are probably thinking, "she can do that, but I don't have the confidence to." So: do you think you have the confidence? Does it take confidence?

Stacy Eleczko: Yes and no — the confidence comes after. If you wait for the confidence to do the thing, you'll never do the thing. Right now, if someone asked me to be on their podcast tomorrow with zero prep time, I could do it, because I've put in enough reps. A year ago, that would've sent me into a tailspin — I'd have stayed up all night imagining every possible question and rehearsing every possible answer.

Stacy Eleczko: It's just a matter of putting in the reps, and remembering there's always at least one person one step behind you. If I can say something helpful to even one person listening, I've done my job. Take the pressure off yourself — you're not competing with someone who's done a thousand podcasts or gets paid five figures to speak. Just put your ideas out there, and you'll get a little better every time.

ilise: Yeah — and comparing yourself to others will kill you.

Stacy Eleczko: Yes.

ilise: Alright, this was awesome — we'll definitely have to talk again, Stacy. Thank you so much. Tell people where they can find you and your content ecosystem.

Stacy Eleczko: Now I have more places to point people to! LinkedIn is generally where I am. You can also find me on YouTube now — I think I just hit double digits in subscribers, very exciting.

ilise: What's your YouTube channel called?

Stacy Eleczko: Great question — I think it's just my name. That's hilarious, I think I just set it up under my name. I'll send you the link.

Stacy Eleczko: LinkedIn, my website, and YouTube are all under my name: Stacy Eleczko — S-T-A-C-Y, E-L-E-C-Z-K-O.

ilise: Perfect.

ilise: Alright, you're the best, Stacy — thank you so much.

Stacy Eleczko: Thank you for having me.

ilise: Of course.

In the last issue, I shared a way to “sprinkle yourself into your marketing” by being bold enough to say: 

Here I am! 
This is what I think. 
This is what I’ve learned. 
This is what I know.

(Have you tried it yet?)

But I also promised to contradict myself, so here goes…

While you absolutely have to boldly bring yourself into your:

• High-Quality Content
• Strategic Networking
• Targeted Outreach

(Which are, of course, the three tools of the Simplest Marketing Plan…)

You also have to listen to the market and let it guide you. It’s a balancing act, for sure!

So how do you bring yourself into your marketing while also letting the market guide you?

Let’s look at how it works with Targeted Outreach:

Start by reaching out to prospects as your (bold!) self, offering to help from a place of genuine generosity. You already know how to do that part, right?

It’s often the next step where you are likely to get stuck. What should you do next? 

That’s when you let the person you reached out to - a.k.a “the market” - determine your next step. There are usually 3 options to choose from:

1. If they engage: continue the conversation.

When they do respond, ask yourself: “How can I continue the conversation?” (BTW you can expect a response from about one in 10 people you reach out to.) 

2. If they don’t engage: add value.

Since you know that most people won’t respond to your first outreach effort, you’re not going to take it personally, right? People are busy.

Ask yourself: “How can I up the ante by adding value in an authentic way?”

3. If the timing isn’t right: stay visible.

Some will respond with, “We don’t need you right now” – which is not the same as “We will never need you.”

So of course you can stay connected via your LinkedIn posts and newsletter. But ask yourself, “How else can I stay visible to this person?”

How would you answer the above questions? Share here.

I asked these same questions in my July Office Hours for the Simplest Marketing Plan, and got some fantastic answers!

Want to see them?

Sure! I took all the answers and used AI to organize them into a PDF guide you can reference anytime you need a little help letting the market guide your outreach.

👉 Download it for free here.

So what do you think - could you be bolder in your marketing while also letting the market guide your next step? I think you could.

Try it, and tell me how it goes. Thanks for reading.

I recently “snuck” into a yoga teacher training and came away with an insight for you…

You may have noticed that I follow my favorite yoga instructor, Meg Shuba, everywhere (I’m a bit of a groupie) because I always learn so much from her. 

Now, I don’t teach yoga. But when Meg invited me to fill an extra cabana at her yoga teacher training in Costa Rica, it was an instant yes! (Being a groupie has its perks!) 

While eavesdropping on her classes, it hit me:

Marketing yourself is a lot like teaching yoga.

Here’s what I mean…

Meg teaches her trainees not just how to teach the poses, but also how to bring themselves to the front of the room in a very assertive, almost authoritative way.

That’s what I feel like I’m teaching you, too.

For example…

Of course, I want you to learn the 3 tools of my Simplest Marketing Plan…

• High-Quality Content…
• Strategic Networking…
• Targeted Outreach…

But I especially want you to own them in a way that positions you as an authority in your business (and your life).

Meg was showing these 20-somethings how to integrate the life experiences that have shaped them into their yoga practice. 

Which must be challenging for someone so young! I doubt I could have done it back then…

But if you think about it, isn’t that what you’re trying to do in your own marketing? Even in your 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond?

The idea is to sprinkle yourself (and maybe even your wisdom) into your marketing.

You can’t be meek. You can’t be wishy-washy. 

You have to stand strong and say, “Here I am! This is what I think. This is what I have learned. This is what I know.”

Are you doing that? If so, how does it feel? If not, why not? Share here.

With that said, now I’m going to contradict myself - very zen! 😉

Because while you do have to bring yourself through your marketing, you also have to listen to the market and let it guide you. It’s a balancing act for sure.

More on how to do that in my next post. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, watch a sneak peek in the “Best Bits” from my recent Simplest Marketing Plan Office Hours here:

Then check out the amazing sketch of our session by the fabulous Antonio Meza:

And if you ever need to do yoga in beautiful places all over the world, Meg Shuba puts on the best retreats!

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

It's a question that the Simplest Marketing Plan community has been debating lately. 

So I invited back Michael Katz (a.k.a. the newsletter guy) for a conversation in which Michael and I disagree a bit, which is always good for a debate!

And of course, he’s his hysterical self, as the conversation meanders from here to there and, of course, to AI as well.

So listen here (and below):

If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

And If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session.

If I were to guess why, I might say it’s because posting is not enough.

In fact, posting – a.k.a. high quality content marketing – is just one of the 3 tools in my proven marketing framework, The Simplest Marketing Plan (SMP) 

If you want your marketing to work -- that is, to get you better clients with bigger budgets --you also have to be doing the 2 other tools in the SMP – strategic networking and targeted outreach.

Here's why: those 3 tools work together so that when your best prospects (whom you’ve met while networking and/or by reaching out to them) – when they are in their time of need, they will think of you and reach out to you. 

Why? Because they will remember you -- they may even be able to fish your email newsletter out of their inbox quickly – because you've been top of mind. 

That’s what I mean when I talk about marketing that works – not to mention “newsletter magic.” 

That said, Episode 556 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast is focused on your high quality content. 

It's an interview with Val Roskens Tews, who shares the content ecosystem that she has built for herself since she learned how to do the SMP. 

In part 1 of this conversation with Val, Episode 552, she talked about the book she wrote, The Butterfly Strategy, as part of her content strategy.

But there’s so much more to Val’s eco-system than a book.

In fact, the book is actually a by-product of her content eco-system. That’s why I had to bring Val back – to share how her eco-system works – so you can build one too.

By the way, we also talked about AI and ghostwriting and donuts.

So listen here (and below):

If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

And If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session.

But as people leave for the beach or campsite this summer, it can be harder to get traction from your outreach. 

Networking events might be a little sparse, too.

Don’t fret - your prospects will come back. And you want your name to be on their mind when they do.

How do you do that?

By keeping your content machine going. 

Now, if you’re distracted by summer, too, why not make some lighter “summertime” content? No need to rack your brain!

I like to say I’m “listening for content” because anything happening in your life or business can lead to a LinkedIn post or newsletter issue.

And, while you should mostly share things that speak to your prospects’ pain points…

Quick life updates and personal details make great “light” content, too. Sometimes it’s good to mix it up.

For example, since I just turned 65, I’m using my birthday as content and sharing 13 “pithy” life lessons. (And you can do the same, at any age!)

So…

Here are my 13 “pithy” life lessons on turning 65:

1. The most important thing is to take care of yourself.
2. Listen to your body.
3. Stop rushing.
4. Keep reading.
5. Trust yourself.
6. Drop anyone who doesn’t bring out the best in you.
7. Invest in yourself.
8. Invest in the stock market - a little bit every month, no matter what.
9. Waste as little as possible, especially time, but also attention, effort and money.
10. Remember that tomorrow is a new day.
11. Always have a back up plan.
12. Always do your best – and when you make a mistake, don’t hesitate to apologize.
13. Always bring champagne! 🥂

What did I miss? Share your own life lessons here!

Too busy for regular content right now? Do half of what you're currently doing. So if you're doing weekly posts, like most of our SMP+ members, every other week could be enough.

And for more birthday wisdom (plus a crazy story from my younger days about why you should always follow-up with your outreach) watch the “Best Birthday Bits” from my Birthday Office Hours here:

And look at this fabulous Birthday-themed “Ink Insight” drawing from my favorite “strategic storyteller,” Antonio Meza!

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

I’m trying something new for Episode #555 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast. 

I am doing a lot of reading at the moment – non fiction – How to Not Know by Simone Stolzoff and fiction – This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman. 

In today's episode of the podcast, I am reading aloud from (and then commenting on) a chapter called (literally) "$" from This is Not About Us.

It's a story about a ghostwriter who feels ghosted (but actually isn't, of course) and has trouble talking about money. (Sound familiar?)

Listen here or below....

What I love about Goodman's writing is that it’s about all the things people don’t say. The little voices in our heads that we often keep secret, sometimes even from ourselves.

I have to credit my awareness of this (in part) to Philip Schultz, who founded The Writer’s Studio in NY and with whom I studied writing (well before I wrote any books). 

Phil taught me so many things -- but especially how to listen and how to give feedback, a skill I have honed over the years and which seems to be valued by my clients.

He also taught me how to read fiction and how to listen for the voice of the narrator. I learned that the narrator’s voice is always more important than the writer’s voice. In fact, I learned that you can find your voice by inventing other voices, which in turn helps you find other aspects of yourself, which then informs your own voice. Plus makes for a very self aware person, which is rare (I find).

It’s a beautiful idea that I have carried with me ever since I studied with Phil in the late 90s and have learned to apply to all my writing and even to marketing. But I digress. 

Listen here and enjoy!

And If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session.

I have to say, I can’t wait to turn 65.

I love getting older - really! I just love it.

With age, I get clearer on what’s important, care less about what anyone thinks, and see how little actually matters. I love to say, "who cares?" and then move on to whatever’s next. Plus, I've always valued simplicity, and that gets easier too.

What’s gotten better for you over the years? Share here.

Of course, as I get better, so does my business. 

For one, I’ve built in more time for myself. And I want to spend it doing what matters most to me: passing along what I’ve learned.

First, by building spaces for people to help each other grow personally and professionally.

Someone did that for me long ago and it was life-changing. Now I get to do that for you.

It's the essence of Marketing Mentor.

Second, through content marketing (BTW that’s one of the 3 tools in The Simplest Marketing Plan – I hope you’re using it to pass along what you learn, too). 

Have you noticed how I’m making my content both richer and available to more people? It doesn’t take much extra effort to do this.

In fact, your ideas will stretch much farther if you draw them out over multiple issues of a newsletter, for example.

I see so many people with younger businesses drop an idea as soon as they share it – thinking you have to come up with something “original” and/or “profound” every single time. (Not!)

Here’s a business secret I’ve learned over the years: No one is paying attention!

In fact, the only way to get people to remember what you say is to repeat it over and over. 

In the last few months, did you think, “I can’t believe she’s talking about unshakeable trust again!”

Or did it all just feel connected? (I hope it’s the latter.)

So how can you take an idea and expand on it? Here’s how I do it…

How to Expand an Idea:

1. Introduce it in your newsletter.
2. Cross-post it to your blog.
3. Break it into 3-4 LinkedIn posts.
4. Take a comment from one of the posts and make it into your next newsletter.
5. Rinse and repeat!

If you do this, you’ll have more content than you need and you’ll never again rack your brain thinking, “What should I write about this time?”

Really, you should be repeating the same few key ideas over and over so your market comes to associate you with those ideas. For example…

Wanna guess how many times I’ve written about “listening to the market?” Here are just a few:

• How Exactly to Listen to the Market with Ilise Benun
• Where do ideas for content marketing come from?
• How Not to Rack Your Brain for Ideas
• Don't Let "What Do I Say" Get In The Way
• 3 Simple Ways to Listen to the Market

And there are many more where those came from, spread across my newsletter, blog, LinkedIn posts, podcast episodes, and more.

This is what I’ve been calling a “content ecosystem” lately – and you’ll hear more about that soon. 🙂

That’s another benefit of getting older. You realize you don’t need more ideas. You need to trust the ones you already have. Then simply keep deepening and clarifying them and making them better.

Could you do that? (I think so.)

OH! And don’t forget to take 65% off the Simplest Marketing Plan for my birthday right here! 🎁

One of my coaching clients recently wrote to me, " It feels like all of humanity is walking in a dark tunnel with a light at the end, ready to spill out into another world. But we have no idea what is there and what we might need to have when we get there. The only thing that I feel certain of investing in is people and relationships. And the strength of my own mind I suppose."

I totally agree! (Do you?)

That’s why, in today’s solo episode #554 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast, I shared a few new ideas about how to invoke trust to counter the unknown – not only in yourself, in the marketing process and in me.

But also how to build trust in the minds of your people, your market, your network.

This idea of unshakeable trust as the antidote to uncertainty is one I’ve been building on for a bit now – it’s inspired by what I’m hearing in the market, of course, but also by a new book I’m reading, How to Not Know by Simone Stolzoff. Highly recommended. 

So listen here (and below):

And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

And iuf you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session. You can find that and lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan here.

Listen to this issue here 👇

How do you feel about the unknown?

I ran a poll in my recent Office Hours for the Simplest Marketing Plan, and here are the results:

Personally, I love not knowing where things will go - in business and in life! 😍

But clearly some (at least 32%) don’t. And I get it. 

However, if you’ve been self employed for any length of time, you know it involves an awful lot of not knowing, right?

That means building your business involves lots of seed planting and lots of watering those seeds – without knowing when (or if) they'll sprout.

So I have a question about your business. (This is inspired by a really good book I just finished: How to Not Know by Simone Stolzoff. Watch him speak about it here.)

Here’s my question: 

What do you wish you knew about your business?

Now, ask yourself:

Is the answer to your question even knowable? 
If it’s not, can you tolerate not knowing the answer?

Either way, if you want to build a business, you need to keep those seeds growing. And that's where unshakeable trust comes in.

I introduced the concept of unshakeable trust in my Quick Tip on May 27th (read or listen to it here).

When I talk about trust, I’m talking about:

• Trust in yourself, that you can figure it out…
• Trust in the process, that marketing works when you do it…
• Trust in your community, that it’ll be here to support you…
• Trust in me, that I know what I’m talking about…

I’m talking about moving forward, even when you can’t possibly know what will happen or whether you’re moving in the right direction.

That’s a very special kind of trust.

This was the “big idea” I shared at our May Simplest Marketing Plan Office Hours. Watch the “Best Bits” here:

And then tell me: What do you wish you knew about your business? I’d actually love to know your answer.

By the way, have you noticed what I’m doing with my content and how I expand on ideas over multiple issues? It’s one of the ways I get the most mileage from my content marketing.

Stay tuned for more on that.

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

What about when they accept your connection?

At what point should you reach out to a new connection?

And what the heck should you say?

Should you ask for a meeting or send them a joke? :)

And what about posting – how do you write a hook that makes your people stop scrolling?

These are just a few of the questions answered by this week’s guest, Brenden Delarua, a growth marketing strategist, when we talked about how exactly he hit recently 10,000 followers on LinkedIn!

I worked with Brenden when he was a wee one, still in college, studying marketing but not learning what he wanted to know.

That's when he Googled “marketing mentor” and he found me.

We worked together for a couple years and then he continued on his journey.

So it was a thrill to recently hear how Brenden has taken what he learned and run with it, turning it into a thriving business 10 years later.

If you want to grow your network on LinkedIn, but find the platform’s algorithm confusing, Episode 553 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast is for you. 

I love Brenden’s take on LinkedIn and on AI – not melodramatic, not overly pessimistic. I find him to be super realistic and keeping his eyes open for how he needs to evolve and adapt as the unknown future approaches.

So listen here (or below) and learn…

If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

And If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session. 

Read the transcript here

ilise benun: Hi there, this is ilise benun, your marketing mentor, and this is the podcast for you if and only if you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind. And I mean for good.

Should you send a note when you invite someone to connect on LinkedIn? And what about when they accept your connection? And at what point should you reach out to a new connection? And what the heck should you say? Should you ask for a meeting or send them a joke? And how effective is commenting on LinkedIn? These are just a few of the questions answered by this week's guest, Brenden Delarua, a growth marketing strategist.

I worked with Brenden when he was a wee one, still in college studying marketing but not learning what he really wanted to know. And this was before I even named my framework the Simplest Marketing Plan, but I was already teaching the three tools: outreach, networking, and content marketing. So it was a thrill to hear how Brenden has taken what he learned and run with it, turning it into a thriving business 10 years later. So listen and learn. All right, Brenden, welcome to the podcast.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, thank you for having me, ilise. This is a dream come true.

ilise benun: Awesome. Well, tell the people who you are and then I'll kind of tee it up.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, I'm Brenden Delarua. I'm co-founder at Stella Incrementality, which is a marketing technology company. I'm also a consultant. I go under the DBA of Growth Marketing Machines where I help run paid media programs for up-and-coming e-commerce brands.

ilise benun: All right. I'm going to ask you to just tell a little of the history of how we met and what the foundation was and then where you went with it. But first—and maybe this will come out as you're doing that—my listeners, as you know, are self-employed creative professionals, lots of copywriters and designers and marketers and photographers. I'm not sure they understand what you just said you do with Stella. So, if you would just put it in layman's terms and then we'll go back in time.

Brenden Delarua: Sure. Yeah. I'm not even sure if I know what I do at Stella. I like to pretend I say big words and it confuses people so they don't ask questions. But now you've called me out on my bluff.

ilise benun: All right. Well, tell us in plain language then what you do.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah. So incrementality—that word does not seem to be a real word. Not in the dictionary. If you type it into an email it'll have the line under it that says it's not a real word. But incremental means an additional—like a sale that would not have happened without some sort of intervention. So an incremental sale is an additional sale that would not have happened. Incrementality is measuring those incremental sales.

How you do that in paid media is ultimately turning off ads. So what we do at Stella is we help brands figure out regions to just turn off ads in and then we start to monitor their source of truth, which is revenue. Basically, if we turn off Meta, how much revenue do we lose? If we think Meta is driving X when it comes to our revenue and we turn off Meta and we see no drop in sales, then we know most of our spend on Meta is wasted. So that's a very high-level version of what incrementality is. It's becoming a big buzzword.

ilise benun: Good. That's definitely clear. And one thought I had as you were defining incrementality is that it also seems to be about baby steps somehow. Would you say that's true?

Brenden Delarua: I guess it depends, right? It's basically data science, and when marketers get into data science, it gets a little weird because there's so much nuance. I've learned just since starting Stella working with my co-founder Vinnie, who is a data scientist, there's just so much nuance of what's an actually good model or not. But yeah, I guess there are baby steps of leaning into incrementality and then getting further into the weeds and figuring out how to use it. The end goal is just identifying what's causing new revenue to happen and then figuring out where to invest to get more incremental revenue to happen.

That's why larger companies have been leaning into incrementality testing because there's this big misconception about multi-touch attribution or just dashboard records where everything is click-based. They need a UTM—basically the URL that tells you where the click came from.

ilise benun: We call it a "fancy link" here over at Marketing Mentor.

Brenden Delarua: A fancy link. Okay. Yeah. So you need a lot of fancy links that tell you where things come from. But the issue with that is that's showing you correlation. Someone saw an ad or clicked an ad and then later converted, but it doesn't tell you what caused an ad to convert. So what you end up getting, especially on a larger scale, is a lot of misattributed conversions like branded search or retargeting—sales that would have happened regardless of your media spend. As a marketer held to a ROAS (return on ad spend) goal, you're kind of incentivized to lean into higher ROAS campaigns which sometimes are actually bleeding the company dry and you don't even know it.

ilise benun: Interesting. Now, all right. So, that's enough about that. Now, forgive me for this question, but I feel like it's relevant. Brenden, how old are you?

Brenden Delarua: I'm 29.

ilise benun: Okay, good. Excellent. And when we met, I don't remember how long ago it was, but you were still in school, I think, studying marketing, but you're not a data scientist, right?

Brenden Delarua: I mean, not by title, but I think I probably know a lot more about data science than I thought I ever would.

ilise benun: Mhm. So, I guess my point is more it's not what you studied. So, start back there. Start with what you studied and how we met.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah. I went to college in Tampa for marketing, and I think it's pretty standard with most colleges where the first year or two you're in a bunch of classes that have nothing to do with your major. I had one or two marketing classes in my first few years of college, and at the same time, I was reading so many books from Barnes & Noble or whatever I could get from eBay. I was reading a lot of marketing books, but then the college classes felt so dated at the time. I felt like the marketing they were teaching was almost more like a data analyst—observing ethnography data or census data—and I was like, "This is not what I want.".

So, I just Googled. I believe I was 19 when you and me met, ilise. But I Googled "marketing mentor" because I wanted a marketing mentor that actually has done what I want to do and I want to learn from. And then I found you. I reached out and I don't remember if I said it or if you said it in your reply email, but you were like, "I don't normally do that—like talk to a student.". But you were happy to have calls, and then you and me started meeting weekly. Oh my god, I'm so appreciative of it. It taught me way more, and I still use the insights—it taught me way more than my entire college education did.

ilise benun: That's amazing actually. And you know I'm thrilled that was the case. I don't remember saying that to you, although it was definitely true that I was not marketing myself to students. But I'm always open to whoever is gung-ho to learn and just take the ball and run with it. And that's what you did, and that's what always makes me very gratified and satisfied.

In a recent LinkedIn post that you put out there, you talked about hitting 10,000 followers on LinkedIn by using the tools of the Simplest Marketing Plan. So, let's also talk about how to increase followers on LinkedIn because I think my listeners would love to know about that.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, I think the whole content, networking, and outreach—it's so simple, and that's why it's called the Simplest Marketing Plan. But the more I think about it, the more it will transcend time. Even when AI takes over, if you're growing any type of business or following, it is all coming around to networking, content, and outreach in whatever form that you want. I have a specific strategy that I use on LinkedIn specifically, but my TikTok following is six times what I have on LinkedIn, and I still did the same thing over there.

But I think like when you and me started talking, ilise, I was a broke college kid. I was negative money, in a lot of debt from college, and you were the one that recommended I look into BNI (Business Networking International). I went to my first one, I think I was 19. I couldn't even drink yet. I went to the one in-person networking event—this was before the pandemic—and later that day, I signed a social media management client for a thousand bucks a month or something like that. It was insane.

Then I just kept going and that was a big source of referrals, but that was the networking, right? And then when it came to outreach, I was a part of a lot of local Tampa Bay Facebook groups where people would ask for a website or an SEO guy or someone to run ads. I would be the first one into those comment sections or I'd have people recommending me as well. And then my content—I was posting a lot of blogs back then and trying to post content on LinkedIn and everywhere else, but nothing was really successful for a while. It took me a while to find my voice, but I was doing all three of them and basically, it started my marketing career.

ilise benun: And if you can remember, what exactly were you offering in terms of services at that point? Because I see a lot of people struggling with not knowing who they are and what they're offering.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I had no idea what I was selling. I think I would joke to you, "If a client asked me to mow their lawn, I would do it.". I had no bounds because then I started getting some clients and that was my first introduction to working with business owners. A lot of them are kooky, and I would get calls from my clients at midnight because they had an idea, and I would answer it. I was a constant ball of anxiety.

When I went to the first networking event, I knew I wanted to offer marketing services, but I didn't know exactly what it was. So, the first contract was social media management for a health insurance provider. I'd build websites because people needed websites, and word got around that I was charging hardly anything—like 300 bucks for a website—and I could turn it around in 48 hours.

Eventually, people were like, "Okay, I have a website. What do we do now with this?". And I'm like, "Well, I guess we can get people to the website." And that's when I started getting into paid ads—running ads on Meta and Google working with tiny budgets, like $5 or $10 a day. What I liked about paid ads was it was the easiest way to prove value. If you're doing social media management, you make a post, it gets 100 likes, but the client asks, "How many people bought from this post?" and it's hard to quantify. But when I'm running ads and we're spending 20 bucks a day and returning a trackable $100 a day in revenue, it's very easy to be like, "Oh, okay. This is working.".

ilise benun: And it took time, right? It doesn't go fast.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, I think that whole process took like two years for me to find advertising. And then I stepped away from freelancing for a while to work at an agency in Tampa where my whole job was just advertising. I got exposed to a lot of larger accounts and running bigger budgets. I loved that job and I didn't have to worry about the stress of inconsistent income. I had health insurance and I didn't have to go to networking events anymore.

ilise benun: And so, I remember when you took that job, I think you said something like, "I just can't deal with this self-employment thing." Is that how you felt?

Brenden Delarua: Yeah. I think what it was was there were months I made a decent chunk of money, at least for back then. I had two months back-to-back that were very good for me, and I think I was like 21. And then I remember that December—Christmas—I made $300 total. I was like, "Oh my god." Even though I had money from the months before, it started making me think every check I got, "I need this to last until the day I die.". It was very scary. I had bills to pay and I got engaged to Bonnie. So I thought if I got a job, I would have consistent income and that might be what I want.

Now that I'm working for myself again, I've found a lot of consistency, which is much better.

ilise benun: And so the part where you were working for the agency and then how did you build Stella? Where did Stella come from?

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, so Stella is named—my co-founder named it after the Marlon Brando skit or A Streetcar Named Desire.

ilise benun: Streetcar. Right.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah. I'm too young, you know. I'm 29. But that's where it came from. Also, I like the idea of a personified SaaS platform. Anytime I sell Stella, I talk about her like "Stella can do this and do that," which is cool.

I worked at an agency based out of LA for a while and I got exposed to so much more. I worked with VC-backed companies that had infinite budgets to scale—they didn't care if they were profitable, they just wanted to scale as much as they could for two years then make an exit. Then that agency got acquired and I got to work with huge clients. I ran all the ads for one of the 2024 presidential campaigns and one of the largest movie studios.

What I started noticing was basically what incrementality is—I just didn't know the name for it. For example, I worked with this publicly traded pharmaceutical company. I looked at all their campaigns and I was like, "Oh, let's just cut budget from the campaigns with the lowest ROAS and invest in the campaigns with the highest ROAS.". When I did that, profitability increased dramatically, and I was very rewarded. I won an award, 30 under 30 performance marketers.

But then about 3 months later, we started to see this decrease in conversions and demand. What ended up happening was we cut the top-of-funnel tactics like CTV, display, audio, or YouTube. Those tactics are hard to track because people don't really click on them, so they have a low ROAS. I turned them off, but there's this long customer journey or payback period—a longer lag time—but it is incremental. It was driving new customers into our pipeline that we would not have had without that money, but it's not something you can track in dashboards.

So I learned about incrementality firsthand from running these paid media programs, and then I started realizing it's called incrementality and I found some competitors of Stella now in the space.

ilise benun: Mhm. And that's really what I want to emphasize is finding the problem, living the problem.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah. Exactly. It's a real problem everyone has even if they know it or not. I get on calls with really cool brands and they'll be like, "We keep hearing everyone talk about incrementality, we have no idea what it is.". I have to explain to them that multi-touch measures correlation, not causation, and Stella measures causation. What's causing sales to happen?

ilise benun: I guess I want to use that as a way to connect to building followers and connections on LinkedIn. Tell me how you are educating your market through content marketing and how people can build their LinkedIn following.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah. Like I said, I've lived this, so I know the pain points. I do a lot of psychographic work, which is also a term I believe I learned from you, ilise, a long time ago. Basically, I write LinkedIn posts myself and I try to be as human as possible. With AI, a lot of people's posts kind of blend together.

On LinkedIn, everyone is just glorifying everything and patting themselves on the back. The "where everyone zigs, we zag" kind of thing is that the more human you are and talk about failure or a learning experience, those posts seem to do really well. So I just try to be as human as possible. Sometimes I will intentionally curse because a lot of people don't do it, or I'll have improper grammar. I just try to write the way I speak.

But the hook is the most important part of a post on LinkedIn because people need to click that "see more" button. The hooks I write are very specific and relevant to the pain point that my ICP (ideal customer profile) has. I've come to find especially through working with CMOs is that the CFO is like the big scary dog. CMOs are terrified of CFOs because they need them to prove that the budget given to them is causing sales to happen. And that's exactly where incrementality comes in. Basically, I'll start off with a hook.

ilise benun: Here's one from the post I was talking about. You wrote: "I just hit 10,000 followers here on LinkedIn. Here's exactly how you can too." And then you have a pointing down arrow. I imagine that's what you're calling the hook.

Brenden Delarua: Exactly. Yep. So, I say my own personal experience in the first line and then for the people reading, I say, "This is how you can too," rather than "Here's how I did it.".

ilise benun: And actually let me just stop there for a second because that small detail is huge—using the word "you" instead of "I.". Marketing is all about you. And so you have to use the word "you.".

Brenden Delarua: I think you're right. I did used to write posts specifically using "you" language. But what I will do is look at what I call "LinkedIn viral posts"—anything with over a hundred likes—and look at the structure. What I started noticing was utilizing the "I" statement to talk about your own personal experience but then making sure that throughout the post you are translating what this means for the viewer. So I'm hitting both: showing my personal experience—I've done it—and now this is exactly how you can too.

The idea is to start with a hook that my ICP can resonate with or instill a little bit of FOMO—like you're being held to a ROAS goal but your CFO is not even looking at the halo effects on Amazon. Then I explain that Meta has a halo effect on Amazon, and here's how you measure it: you use a tool like Stella. It's valuable content even if you don't use Stella.

ilise benun: All right. So we're going to have to wrap up soon. I do want to follow through on the promise of how you hit 10,000 followers. In a nutshell, tell us.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, let's do it. First is content. We need to provide value for our specific ICP. If you have not lived their pain, use AI like Claude or ChatGPT to work through: what are the psychographics? What keeps them up at night? Do they want a promotion? Do they just want to look good to their CFO? What's their deepest fear or deepest desire? Those are the things that should be interwoven into your content.

All content does not need to be pointing back to your offer. If people like you, they'll click on your page, they'll follow you, they'll see what you're offering. As long as your posts are valuable and people can leave after reading that post with value, that is the main important part.

The second part is networking. On LinkedIn, that means reaching out to the right people. For me, I might like a brand like Graza Olive Oil. I'm going to connect with their CMO, their VP of marketing, their director of marketing. I will not send a message with my connection. I'll just connect directly. If they accept, they accept. And then I just continue posting content. I'm not reaching out to them yet. I post content so they can see my face and I'm growing trust. You accept a connection and someone messages you immediately asking to buy something, you immediately lose trust. After maybe two or three months of consistently posting and connecting, that is when I'll start doing the outreach. None of it is automated. I will reach out offering a free month or an audit, or I'll read their content and DM them a joke about it. I'm never asking for anything in my outreach. I'm building a following of the people that could potentially be my ICP now or in the future.

ilise benun: And what about commenting, Brenden?

Brenden Delarua: Commenting is huge. There's a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of the things is the best way to get someone to care about you is to show you care about them. So having authentic comments. I've met so many people on LinkedIn by commenting on their post and then they will DM me later. Commenting and engaging with other people's posts earns you so much more trust as well. And when you comment on someone's post, you get more visibility from their followers who are reading their comments. It's a win-win.

ilise benun: Love it. All right, last question since you brought up AI. I'm curious how you see AI infiltrating your world.

Brenden Delarua: Yeah, I've been taking plumbing classes to try to make sure I'm ready for the AI takeover until they make robot plumbers. This is a big conversation we're having internally at Stella. What we think is there's some things we can't fight. Anthropic or OpenAI are building screwdrivers—tools to help people build things themselves. They won't specifically build Stella, but they are providing the tools to help you build a Stella.

So what becomes the moat is the data that we collect. We have tons of data on what's incremental and what's not. How we think about it is if people are moving to utilizing AI more and more, we want to move towards that and figure out the additional value prop of Stella. Stella will be more of an app that you call into your AI. All your data lives in Stella, so you can make more informed decisions when you're optimizing your ad campaigns in Claude using Stella's causal data to know what's actually causing growth to happen. A lot of AI companies are getting replaced because they're just building features that AI can easily replicate. We are a little concerned, but overall we are optimistic about what AI will allow us to do.

ilise benun: And actually one more question. How's business?

Brenden Delarua: Business is good actually on both fronts. My consulting side is doing good, especially from TikTok—a lot of people find me from TikTok and I'm very surprised by the quality of people there. And Stella is doing really good. Tons of people have been moving over just from my organic marketing, which is interesting. I get on calls weekly with huge brands. We work with Tushy Bidet—I've always admired them—and PopSockets and Plunge. It's growing. It's definitely growing.

ilise benun: Awesome. And do you have a bidet?

Brenden Delarua: Every toilet I ever have sat on, ilise. I bring one in public. I only have two bathrooms, but I have four bidets in this house.

ilise benun: Oh my god, you are too funny. Okay, tell the people where they can find you.

Brenden Delarua: Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Brenden Delarua. I'm the co-founder of Stella. I want to give a lot of credit to my co-founder Vinnie; I wouldn't have been able to build any of this without Vinnie. And on TikTok, @BrendenBuilds. I highly recommend TikTok; even if you have zero followers, you can have a viral video. @BrendenBuilds on TikTok, Brenden Delarua on LinkedIn, and Stella is https://www.stellaheystella.com/ if you want to check out the incrementality testing platform.

ilise benun: Beautiful. And let's just specify that it's Brenden B-R-E-N-D-E-N, right?

Brenden Delarua: Correct. Yeah. My mom cursed me with a harder-to-spell name, so I've always had to do that. And my last name is terrible to spell as well.

ilise benun: Yes, I'm sure they'll find you. And thank you so much, Brenden, for sharing.

I just love Brenden's take on AI. It's not melodramatic; I find him to be super realistic. He is keeping his eyes open for how he needs to evolve and adapt as the unknown future approaches. Could you do that too? I think so. So, if you want my help figuring all this out, I invite you to take advantage of my free mentoring session. You can find that and lots more resources at marketing-mentor.com. So enjoy and I'll see you next time.

Have you ever noticed that when you don’t think something will work, it doesn’t?

Then you get frustrated waiting for it to work, so you get discouraged and stop doing it. And then of course it doesn’t work, right?

This is one of the things I was meditating on earlier this month when I attended a 5-day yoga retreat with my awesome teacher, Meg Shuba. 

On Day 2, as we started our morning practice in the beautiful Glass House (pictured with Meg in it, below), she asked us to close our eyes, interlace our fingers and place them, open-palmed, over our hearts.

“This is unshakeable trust,” she told us.

What do the words "unshakeable trust" mean to you? Share here.

Now, I tend to be more practical than “woo-woo.” But in that moment, I had a bit of an epiphany, which can happen on a yoga retreat. 🙂

As it was happening, it occurred to me that unshakeable trust might be the missing element in your marketing.

Because when you don’t trust that your marketing actions will work, you give up too easily. And then, as you predicted: it doesn’t work.

But what if you start with unshakeable trust? 

What if you did each marketing action – your content, your outreach, your networking - all of it - with unshakeable trust?

• Trust in yourself that you can do it.
• Trust that the marketing does work when you do it - even if it’s not instantaneous.
• And trust in me, that I know what I’m talking about.
  

Could you – will you – try that this week (and then next week too)? 

It is with unshakeable trust that so many of the SMP and SMP+ members bravely took on the “Every Day in May” Challenge. 

They posted to LinkedIn every weekday in May.

And because marketing works when you do it – especially with unshakeable trust – some of them landed new projects and new clients.

But that’s not all. Here are more “side effects” reported by those who took on this challenge. Daily posting is:

• Building their confidence
• Showing they can do something that seemed impossible before
• Building their community
• Giving them new ideas
• Breathing new life into their marketing
• Attracting new followers and connections
  

Plus, when I asked at the SMP+ Outreach Club how everyone was feeling about the challenge in one word, they said:

• Inspired
• Empowered
• Accomplished
• Motivated
• Confident
• Accountable
• Excited
• Surprised
  

As you know, marketing is all about timing. We never know when “our people” will be in their “time of need.”

So keep doing your marketing, keep posting regularly to stay top-of-mind to your best prospects. No need to keep doing it daily. Once a week should be enough.

And try it with unshakeable trust – see if that makes a difference. 

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

Copywriter Val Roskens Tews shares her simple “Butterfly Strategy” — a practical guide to turn everyday moments into authentic content, real connections, and paying clients.

It’s a refreshing, doable approach that makes showing up feel natural instead of overwhelming.

In this conversation, she maps her strategy onto the Simplest Marketing Plan. 

And it makes perfect sense!

One of the things I love most about the work I do as a business coach is helping creative people not only build a business they can depend on but, more important, build the inner strength to make it successful. 

In fact, my very favorite part is seeing the potential in them before they see it in themselves.

You see, I never know in advance who will take the ball and run with it – or in Val's case, fly with it. :)

When I first met Val, she was very soft spoken and self effacing, so I wondered if she’d be able to pull this off. 

But if there's one thing I know, it's that I never know. So I assumed she could. 

Well, indeed she has.

Val is one of my star students, always ready to experiment and take action based on my suggestions, even when she can't quite see how it could work. 

By now, she has far surpassed my suggestions, built her own framework and turned it into a book, The Butterfly Strategy.

That's just the tip of her content eco-system, which we didn’t even get to talk about yet. So there will definitely be a part 2.

But for now, you can listen here (and below): 

If you even did a bit of what Val is doing, it would take you very far. So why not try it?

If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session.

And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

Read the complete transcript here

Missed it? Catch up - or listen in - here.

Want to know how? 

The source of all my content is you – not me.

I get my ideas from my market (you) and the world – things I see, hear, wonder about and am moved to share – then I put my own take on it.

I am always listening for content – for me and for you.

In my coaching groups and with my 1:1 coaching clients, I constantly “hear” content, especially in the challenges (a.k.a. pain points) creatives like you face every day.

For example, I recently couldn’t not hear so many struggling with their email newsletters. 

So here’s the content I created based on that one challenge: 

• Podcast: What’s the big deal about email newsletters?
• Blog post: How not to rack your brain for ideas
• Video: How to stop avoiding your newsletter
• LinkedIn post with 33 comments

And this very blog post you're reading now.

It’s kind of amazing how, when you gear your attention outward, rather than inward, you find an infinite source of content ideas.

In fact, the beauty of creating content is that once you start, ideas start to flow freely – it can even be hard to stop them!

Plus, you get to add your own creativity and your own spin to the process. By now, this comes naturally to me, but only because I’ve worked on developing this skill over the years.

With practice, you will “hear” content everywhere too.

Want to try it?

Take one idea and split it across multiple media – newsletters, social media posts, podcast episodes – anything!! 

I shared more in the “Best Bits” from our last Simplest Marketing Plan Office Hours – watch it here:

And if you need an idea to get you started (or have one to share), I’m collecting a list here.

That’s plenty for today. Thanks for reading.

Messaging strategist, Stacy Eleczko, launched her email newsletter in exactly that situation — and what happened next might just surprise you. 

Here's what happened....

Two years ago, Stacy realized that if she was going to help clients with their newsletters, she better have one of her own. (Is that you too?)

The problem was she had no goals or plan for what she wanted the newsletter to do for her business, no name for the newsletter and no list of people to send it to.

Still, against her better judgment, she launched it anyway. 

And guess what? 

It worked anyway!

It’s brought her new clients – what I call newsletter magic – plus confidence in her own work and a deeper understanding of where her gaps are, not to mention the opportunities she wouldn’t have known about otherwise – like guesting on podcasts just like the Marketing Mentor Podcast. 

I just love Stacy’s story because it proves the point I am constantly making – you don’t need to have all your ducks in a row.

You don’t need to have everything buttoned up. You don’t even need to know what you’re doing. :)

You just need to trust yourself -- that you’ll figure out as you go. (Trust me, you will.)

And then you need to start. 

That's it!

So here’s my challenge to you

Will you take whatever inspiration and/or motivation my conversation with Stacy has given you in this moment and use it to just do something you’ve been putting off? 

It could be your newsletter – or it could be reaching out to a dream client. Whatever it is, just do it.

Who knows – maybe one day I’ll share your newsletter as an excellent example and maybe even invite you to be a guest on the podcast. Why not? 

If you’re sleeping on your newsletter, listen here (and below): 

If you like what you hear, listen to Episode 539 with Stacy on why AI won't replace her (or you!)

we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

And If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session.

It was brimming with early issues – from 1993 – of my newsletter. This very newsletter you’re reading now, except back then it was called, The Art of Self Promotion, and it was printed and sent in the mail.

Isn’t that fun?

And guess what? 

I’m still saying the same thing! 

As I flipped through them, something occurred to me that I thought I should share with you:

I’ve published my newsletter every other week for more than 35 years - and I’ve never run out of ideas. Not once!

Now, you might be thinking, “that’s a you thing, Ilise.” After all, I do like to say that I’m a “content machine.” 

But my ideas don’t actually come from me. And yours don’t need to come from you, either.

The reason I’ve been able to consistently write and send my newsletter over nearly four decades is very simple:

I don’t rack my brain for ideas. Instead, I listen to the market, and ideas come to me.

In the last Quick Tip, I showed you some “excellent examples” of newsletters, so you can “mimic the masters.” Catch up - or listen in! - here.

Today I’m giving you the “secret” to getting your own ideas, so you never have to “rack your brain” again.

The thing is, it’s not really a “secret” – but it is a mindset shift. You have to think differently. But I know you can. 🙂

How to Listen to The Market for Ideas

You see, my content doesn’t come from my brain. It comes from the market – and yours could, too. 

First, you need to think about what your best prospects are interested in. What they need. What’s helpful to them. 

If you don’t know, take a look at what they’re posting to LinkedIn, and any comments they’re making. (Or ask Artificial Ilise.)

When you meet with them, notice their pain points and the challenges they have.

Then, write about:

• Things you see
• Things you hear
• Things you react to

All in relation to your market.

Here are some newsletter issues that do that particularly well:

Amy Jahnke’s design clients occasionally use stock photos, and she started noticing a surprising trend. So she wrote about it here.

Melissa Bogen, a medical editor, uses special characters in work, and knows her clients and fellow writers do, too. So she published a “cheat sheet” for creating special characters. Find it here.

Isabeau Iqbal noticed a link between her own career journey and those she helps in her career coaching. It became an issue in her micro-newsletter here.

So you see, each of these examples are about listening and noticing. 

It takes a little practice, but once you get it, you’ll have endless ideas for content that’s relevant and helpful to your potential clients.

And if you’re a part of SMP+, remember you have a head-start with the content ideas I laid out in your personalized plan.

Are you already listening to the market for content ideas? Share how you do it here.

When I was in LA with her recently, she sent me home with a box full of my old newsletters – mostly printed ones from as far back as 1993, when it was called The Art of Self Promotion. 

You see, at that point, there was no email and I didn't have a computer. (In fact, the first person I knew with a computer was my cousin and I have a very clear memory of wondering what the heck he would do with it. Turns out he was using it for the stock market. And let's just say that was a smart move.)

The other day, I showed these old printed newsletters to Bonnie Fanning, who helps with my Quick Tips, and she said, “Wait - have you been publishing consistently since 1993 or before?"

I shot back, "Before! I actually started my newsletter in 1990."

"Wow. That's impressive. So many people have trouble even starting. What makes it possible for you to be so consistent for so long?

I said, “I do what I say I'll do.”

That's when she said something I haven’t been able to get out of my head. “Ok that feels more like a personality thing. A YOU thing.”

And I thought, well, maybe.

So I had to do a podcast episode about it! (That's where I get my content ideas -- always in response to something I hear.)

Because here's the thing: there’s nothing special about me. I am simply committed to my business, and therefore to my marketing. Anyone could be.

Plus, one of the principles I live by is that I do what I say I'll do -- even if it's just for myself.

Actually, especially if it's for me. 

Anyone could make that decision. In fact I talked about "deciding" earlier this year when my mother told me she'd "decided" to take her meds every day -- after years and years of being inconsistent. (Ugh!)

Why wouldn’t you decide to commit to yourself and to your business and to your own marketing and never again question whether or not you’ll do your newsletter?

I have been publishing my Quick Tips (the digital evolution of The Art of Self Promotion) via email every 2 weeks for a good 25 years and The Marketing Mentor Podcast also every 2 weeks since 2008. (This is episode #550!)

I don’t think about whether I "want" to or whether I have any good ideas.

I do what I say I will do and that includes my Quick Tips and my podcast. 

For more on this...listen here (and below):

And If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session.

And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

Have you sent a newsletter yet this year?

I asked this question in our recent Office Hours for the Simplest Marketing Plan, and here’s what everyone said: 

Are you with the 33.5% who’s resisting? I hope today’s issue will help. 

In my last issue, on “How to Stop Avoiding Your Newsletter,” we reframed “doing your newsletter” as simply “writing a letter.”

Much simpler, right? Read that issue here.

But maybe you still don’t know what to say.

Whenever you’re short on ideas, I like to say, “mimic the masters.”

That means: 

• Find a few newsletters you really like
• Analyze what they’re doing well
• Do your version 

A flurry of Simplest Marketing Plan members just published their first newsletter (or rebooted an existing one) - and so many are truly excellent! 

Scroll down to see if they spark any ideas for you.

These are all LinkedIn newsletters, by the way. Which are much quicker to start and – best of all – the list is “built-in.” LinkedIn automatically invites all your contacts to subscribe. Watch the video about how to start one below too.

Here are a few really good brand new newsletters: 

A Photo Minder, by Gene Smirnov

The Content Brief, by Clara Mathews  

Deeper, by Joyce Flory 

Quiet Authority, by Bonnie Heisse

And here are a few recently rebooted ones: 

The Creative Spark, by Marla Norton

The Scott Hull Newsletter, by Scott Hull:

Pick your favorites and mimic what you like best. 

Are you ready to start your own? I’ll walk you through it in this 3-minute video:

Do you have a newsletter? Use my network to spread it around. Share a link to it here!

And one tiny outreach tip…

If you ever catch yourself thinking “this person is way out of my league, I shouldn’t reach out…” you just have to watch what happened when SMP+ member, Kathryn Grill, reached out anyway.

Now promise me you will never assume anyone is “out of your league!” 

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

That question is about whether your clients will choose AI over you, a human.

But I hear also that question another way:

“Are you already replacing yourself with AI?” 

By that I mean, for example. are you running everything through AI now?

Are you avoiding making decisions without AI weighing in? Or not publishing your own content with AI’s approval? 

So maybe the real question is, "Are you becoming dependent on AI and letting IT replace YOU?"

That’s actually just one of the questions I covered in my latest conversation with Nancy Ruzow, who runs Ruzow Graphics and Creatives Roundtable, prompted by an article on her blog entitled, AI isn’t replacing creatives. It’s changing where we add value.”

So listen here (and below) and learn.

So what do you think? Where do you add value? And where are you becoming dependent? All super important questions to be pondering, I think.

And if you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session. And check out The Simplest Marketing Plan here.

That’s the question on my mind after talking with over 100 SMP+ members about their marketing.

Even after I suggest doing a “micro-newsletter,” so many people still avoid it. 

You, too? Tell me why here.

One problem is the word “newsletter,” which comes with history and connotations.

“News” feels official. Journalistic, even. 

So let’s lighten it a bit.

Here’s my favorite piece of newsletter advice from my good friend, content expert and author of Everybody Writes, Ann Handley:

“It’s not about the news, it’s about the letter.”

Rather than sending a newsletter…

Think of it as sending a letter – maybe even a love letter – to your favorite prospect. Does that lighten the mental burden at all? 

Watch me reframe newsletters in our recent Office Hours for the Simplest Marketing Plan:

Sending a newsletter (or love letter) is one of the surest ways to build credibility and stay top-of-mind to your best prospects.

You might even get “newsletter magic.” ✨

That’s when someone replies “out of the blue” saying “your timing is perfect, I have a project for you…”

But here’s the thing: there is no “newsletter magic” without a newsletter!

Need a little motivation to get yours done? 

Here are some “excellent examples” of newsletters from within the Simplest Marketing Plan community.

Each of these went out after our recent Office Hours (great job, everyone)!

• Inspire - email “micro-newsletter” by Jeffrey J.
  
  
• Career corner email newsletter - by Isabeau I.
  
  
• For affluent buyers, the story is the product - by Kathryn G.
  
  
• Coffee Talk: From My Desk to Yours - email newsletter by Nanette A.
  
  
• The Real Cause of Decision Fatigue Isn't Too Many Decisions—It's Too Few Filters - by StacyLynn S.
  
  
• Is Your Content Pink? - by Amy O.
  
  
• TRUST FIRST - by Dona S.

Some are longer, some are shorter. 

There’s no right way – but there is one rule: Don’t overthink it.

By the way, if you need an ongoing push to get your marketing done, get this year’s Simplest Marketing Plan - and join us in our monthly Office Hours gatherings all year long. Join here for just $197.

Thanks for reading.

So today’s episode is from the best part of the Simplest Marketing Plan: the monthly Office Party, where 100 creative pros from my community come together, to gather and to make new business friends.

It’s a very interactive (and really fun) session where I set the tone and the topic, and then everyone shares their wins and their struggles, what’s working (and what’s not) in their marketing right now.

The topic for March is email newsletters and my pressing question is"

What’s the big deal about email newsletters?

Because honestly, an email newsletter – a.k.a. content marketing – is one of the most effective marketing tools you can use -- and often leads to “newsletter magic.”

But so many creatives avoid it.

Why?

That’s what I want to know.

And more important, how can I help change the way you think about it, so that you will do it. Then you will have newsletter magic too.

Because, as I said in this session,

There is no newsletter magic without a newsletter.

Makes sense, right?

Then listen here and learn…

If you want your own invitation to the next Office Hours, check out The Simplest Marketing Plan.

...and yet they remain one of the most powerful marketing tools available.

Indeed, if I did nothing else to market my business, I would send out my Quick Tips regularly.

Why?

Because my email newsletter is, hands down, my most powerful and most effective marketing tool.

Why?

Because it allows me to speak directly to you, my people, with my voice. And that builds trust. And that way, when you're ready, you just may think of me when you need help getting better clients with bigger budgets. 

That's why Episode 547 is a re-release of one of my favorite episodes of the Marketing Mentor Podcast, with one of my favorite guests, the one and only, Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs and author of Everybody Writes.

Ann is the one who said my very favorite thing about newsletters – that it should be more letter than news. And she practices what she preaches, through her own fortnightly newsletter. (Mine is also fortnightly, which is the perfect frequency, if only because we get to use the word fortnightly!)

In this episode, Ann shares her secrets for how to create email newsletters that people actually look forward to opening — the kind that build trust, strengthen relationships and keep you top of mind with your prospects.

If you’ve ever wondered:

• What makes a newsletter worth reading?

• How do you find your voice in email?

• What should you actually include in a newsletter?

• How often should you send one?

• How do you keep it interesting over time?

I just love how Ann shares practical ideas and examples you can start using immediately. So please do!

Here are a couple #excellentexamples of first "inaugural" issues of micro-newsletters that I shared in the March 2026 Office Hours for the Simplest Marketing Plan: 

1. The Clarity in Care Report (LinkedIn)
2. The Lift Brief LinkedIn (LinkedIn) 
3. Connection: No One Wants Their Face Smushed (MailChimp)

Don't forget to subscribe to any or all of these.

And if you are one of the many who keep putting off starting a newsletter — or reviving one you abandoned — you know who you are! -- I do hope this episode is the push you need.

Remember: marketing works when you do it right, and a newsletter is one of the simplest ways to stay visible and nurture relationships with the people who may one day become your clients.

So listen here and learn: 

And when you do publish your newsletter, be sure to add me to your list. One day I just may use it as an #excellentexample!

And if this is the year you stop starting over, be sure you’re signed up for my Quick Tips because you won’t want to miss what’s new in the Simplest Marketing Plan. 

You know I hate hype. And I don’t hang around people who make hyped-up income claims.

So when my friend, a costume designer I met 40 years ago, told me she made $100k in 20 minutes, my ears perked up.

It was very out of character for her - as it is for me to say this to you! 

But when she explained what happened, I realized she was describing something I call compounding.

And it was the perfect example of my new favorite tagline: "It's not a pipe dream if you have a pipeline.

You see, my friend has been building her network and refining her expertise for over 40 years.

She now has one very big customer – a company you’d surely recognize – and for one of their very popular shows, this company orders more than 50 pieces of one garment at a time.

She takes the order, writes the specs, tells her team what to knit, and collects the money.

Each garment costs $1,800, so you do the math!

“My ship came in!” she told me.

No, I thought - that’s compounding.

You may think of compounding in financial terms: when your money earns money over time. 

You don’t just grow what you put in, you grow the growth.

But compounding applies to marketing, too…

Each small marketing action you take makes the next one easier and more effective. Each one reinforces all the actions that came before it.

In fact, everything compounds – your actions, your network, even trust in you and what you do.

So we could say that compounding is the antidote to feast-or-famine – but only if you keep doing your marketing.

How do you keep doing your marketing, even when you don’t “feel like it”?

Rather than relying on willpower, you need a plan made up of things you will actually do.

Small daily, weekly, and monthly actions. Or what I am calling for 2026, your "micro-marketing plan."

In the next Quick Tip, I’ll spell it all out for you, so stick around!

Watch me expound on compounding in the “Best Bits” from our last “Office Hours” for the Simplest Marketing Plan here:

Then check out the amazing sketch of our session by the fabulous Antonio Meza:

And before I go, I just had to share this comment from a brand new Simplest Marketing Plan member:

Congratulations on your potential new client, Evelyn!

There’s still time to get this year’s Simplest Marketing Plan - and join us in our monthly Office Hours gatherings all year long. Join here.

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

Episode 546 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast is for you. 

I'm doing something a little different…today’s episode is a live recording from my Fill My Client Pipeline Crash Course.  

You see, I realized late last year that the creative freelancers in my community who were killing it during what was a difficult and challenging year for almost everyone – the ones who had the best projects and the most reliable income were, not surprisingly, the ones with a pipeline.

So I decided to make that my mission for 2026: to teach everyone – and that includes you! – how to build that pipeline!

I gave a 4 day Bootcamp attended by more than 500 creative freelancers. For those who couldn't make it, I did a 30 minute crash course version – that’s this recording – where I explain:

• Who belongs in your pipeline (and who doesn't)...

• Where to find your best prospects...

• What to say to them so you don't feel awkward, salesy, or pushy…

• And how to stay top-of-mind so they reach out when they’re ready!

So listen here (and below) and learn. 

This is all the foundation for my 2026 Simplest Marketing Plan Plus (SMP+) Program. So if you want help filling your pipeline, check it out.

If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

Maybe, "How are you using AI?" is a better question? 

These days there’s a lot of sharing about how each of us is using AI to do things we never could have done before, including in our personal lives.

Often the response is, “Wow, I never thought of that!”

So I want to share more often and more publicly -- and who best to do that with than my good friend, Terri Trespicio?

So today we hopped on to share a few things we’ve each done that you may want to try for yourself.

So listen here and below: 

I do hope you’ll try a few of those ideas. And be sure to share the creative ways you’re using AI with me. 

And if this is the year you stop starting over, be sure you’re signed up for my Quick Tips because you won’t want to miss what’s new in the Simplest Marketing Plan. And I’ll see you next time.

...and I’ve heard all the complaints! 

Your feed is filled with braggarts.

All you get is one measly reaction to a post you spent hours (or days) on.

Worse, you have a feeling your posts aren’t even being seen by the people in your network.

Don’t be depressed! my guest on Episode 544 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast is Lynnaire Johnston, author of "Link∙Ability," the book and the podcast!

She has solutions to all of these problems. In this brand new episode, Lynnaire shared: 

• How not to get dropped by LinkedIn

• Which metrics to pay attention to and…

• the one thing you should be doing instead of posting

So listen here (and below):

So, if you want my help, make sure you’re signed up for my Quick Tips, because you won’t want to miss what’s new in the Simplest Marketing Plan. 

I’m especially excited about the completely new and reimagined SMP+ program – because this is the year you stop starting over, and when you go from stop and go to steady flow.

And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

What about when you get ghosted by a contractor you’ve hired for a project?

And what about when you encounter a big problem that puts you behind schedule and you can’t bring yourself to tell your client there’s a problem? 

Most of us have to learn these lessons from real and often painful experience.

But you could actually learn from this week’s Episode #543 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast. 

My guest, Amy Weiher of Weiher Creative, has made them and lived to write about them in her new book, Good Work, Practical Advice for Starting & Scaling Your Creative Freelance Business.

It’s all based on her more than 20 years running her small graphic design firm.

So listen here (and below):

And if you want my help, make sure you’re signed up for my Quick Tips because you won’t want to miss what’s new in the Simplest Marketing Plan.

In fact, I’m super excited about the improvements we’re making to the SMP+ program – because this is the year you stop starting over, and when you go from stop and go to steady flow. 

Is that what you need?

And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

Even though I bought the good stuff. And all evening I kept thinking about pouring myself a glass…

But then I thought about Future Ilise. And about you, actually!

I thought, “Tomorrow I want to feel good. I want my first Quick Tip of 2026 to make an impact. And for that, I need my head to be clear.” 

So instead, I savored a piece of dark chocolate and a book. 🍫

Then, I spent New Year’s Day working - yes! Because I wanted to.

Because I am so excited about our new Fill Your Client Pipeline Bootcamp that I couldn't wait to get up and write this very email message. 

That’s how much I love marketing my business - and helping you learn to love marketing yours.

Skipping the champagne was a moment of clarity. Which is fitting…

Because to me, 2026 is “The Year of Clarity and Action.”

No big resolutions. No more waiting to feel “ready.” Just knowing what to do - and doing it.

One "baby step" at a time.

Because that’s what builds a business you can depend on.

And I’ve seen proof of it again and again this past year.

Take freelance ghostwriter, Tina Matras. 

Tina was laid off from her big corporate job in 2021, while caring for her elderly father.

Since his care required so much of her time - time she wanted to devote to him - she needed something more flexible than another corporate job.

She’d already been a writer in her previous job. Maybe freelancing was the answer…

But her business didn’t “take off” the way she’d hoped. For 18 months, she floundered, volunteering here and there.

She was marketing herself a little, at random.

But she didn’t really know what to do. As many people do at first, she was wasting time on things that didn’t work. She spent months trying to choose a niche. And not landing any paid clients.

One day, she happened upon a course of mine and heard me talk about “baby steps.”

Intrigued, she joined my Simplest Marketing Plan Plus (SMP+) program at the start of 2025, and got something she didn’t know she needed…

Clarity.

She told me:

“Each baby step I took gave me clarity on the next step. That’s what finally helped me build my business.”

By implementing small actions, Tina naturally identified the kind of writer she wanted to be - and who she wanted to serve. 

That’s when things started to work.

Watch her share exactly how things started to finally work:

And now things are really falling into place for Tina! Stay tuned for Part 2 of her story next week…

If you are starting this year thinking:

• “I don’t know where to focus.”
• “I do some marketing… then stop.”
• “I just want to know what actually works.”

I’d love you to join my Fill My Client Pipeline Bootcamp.

It’s Feb 9-12 - and it’s FREE to attend.

Save your seat here.

Over four days, I’ll help you:

• Get clear on who to focus on...
• Know what to do (without overwhelm)...
• And understand how little is actually enough to build momentum...

No champagne required!

Just clarity, one small action at a time.

👉 Save your free seat here

Hope you can make it!

To kick off the 18th (!) year of the Marketing Mentor Podcast, Episode 542 is a conversation with one of my favorite clients, Florian Schleicher, a marketing strategist who has been running Future Strategies only 4 years now and is already, as we say, crushing it. 

How? 

Clarity.

This chat is also a two-year check-in on how his business has evolved since we last spoke in November 2023 (Episode 487 -- listen here).

Today, Florian walks us through his four-year journey from the startup-focused consultant he was then, to the clear, confident corporate strategist he has become—sharing one milestone from each year along the way. 

He shared exactly how he shifted his target market—what he stopped doing, how he changed his messaging, and how he evaluated every touchpoint through the lens of his long-term goals.

Among other things, we talked about:

• The feast-or-famine moment that led him to invest in coaching with me and then launch his podcast (one element of his content marketing strategy) 
• The newsletter he started -- just to stay busy but which has since become a powerful content marketing (and thought leadership) tool
• The Pulse, a marketing trend report (another element of his content marketing strategy) that solidified his credibility with corporate leaders
• The solo offsite retreat he took, where Florian got clear on clarity! He asked himself, “What do I want my audience to feel about me and my brand?” For him, the answer was "clarity," which is now the underlying message woven throughout all his marketing.
  

I just love how intentional Florian has been about building relationships in his market.

Of course, we talked about his content marketing strategy and how he uses social media and podcasts as relationship-builders. We even got into his experience with imposter syndrome. (Yes, he's struggled with it too!)

This conversation is a great reminder that sustainable success isn’t about hacks or hustle; it’s about being steady, being focused and showing up long enough for the right people to be ready.

So listen here (and below) -- and be sure to listen all the way to the end when we share a peek into how Florian will be more involved with the Simplest Marketing Plan for 2026.

P.S. Giving you access to more expert coaches like Florian is just one of the many ways we’re making the SMP+ program even better in 2026 – because this is the year you stop starting over, when you go from stop and go to steady flow.

So if that resonates with you, just sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor and you’ll hear all about it very soon.

Transcript of Episode 542 with Florian Schleicher

Ilise: Hello, Florian, welcome back to the podcast.

Florian Schleicher: Hi, Ilise—so good to be back.

Ilise: Right? It was two years ago—almost exactly—November 2023, when we recorded our first episode. So let’s see how far you’ve come and what you’ve been doing. But first, as usual, please introduce yourself.

Florian Schleicher: Yes—my name is Florian. I’m a marketing strategist, and my heart beats for sustainability. I’ve been working in marketing for the past 17 years—big corporations like McDonald’s, NGOs like Greenpeace, and I was Head of Marketing at a startup. Four years ago, I started my own business, and now I do consulting and strategy for corporates.

Ilise: Okay—let’s just focus on your elevator pitch for a second. You just said…

Florian: You just said…

Ilise: So now you do strategies… for corporates? Is that what you said?

Florian: Yes.

Ilise: And you’ve been in business four years. I’m sure I asked you this in the first episode, but let’s ask again: why did you start your own business? What prompted you?

Florian: Yeah, so… I think for me, it was a moment when I was working at an agency—my first job—and I met a freelancer working for the agency. I was struck by his approach to work. He had built his own business, and I wanted to do that back then.

But I was still rather young, didn’t have enough gray hair, so I decided it wasn’t the right time. Still, I always had it in the back of my head.

Then when I finished my last job at Too Good To Go—an app against food waste—where I was Head of Marketing, I felt: this is the best time to start. We built amazing brand awareness in Austria, in Vienna, where I’m based. Every tenth person had downloaded the app. We won a couple of marketing awards, too—so there was good traction, which helped me get a good start in my business.

And what I liked most—what always fascinated me—was choosing the clients I work with, choosing the people I work with, and having the freedom to follow my passions on whatever projects I want to create, instead of being bound by corporate structures.

Ilise: And that’s the dream, right? That gets sold to a lot of people who want to freelance or go out on their own. But very few people—based on my experience, and I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years—very few people actually achieve that. And it seems like—tell me if I’m wrong—but it seems like you have, in four years, managed to achieve that?

Florian: I think so, yes. And I hear from other freelancers and entrepreneurs that it’s very hard. And don’t get me wrong—it is hard.

Ilise: It is.

Florian: A lot of hard work. You have to get up every day and try to be a little better than yesterday. You have to have a vision for where you want to take this.

And sometimes it’s also luck—meeting the right person at the right time. Like: I met a client I worked with at McDonald’s in a previous job. She moved to another company. I moved on too, and now I’m self-employed. Then I met her again—at a playground—a year ago, just by chance. And she said, “Oh, I’ve heard what you’re doing. I’m thinking about a project—should we do something together?” That was luck: right time, right place.

But yes—it’s hard work.

And of course, network. Having worked in the field a long time, meeting amazing people—it helps now to approach them and stay in touch.

It feels like a good point. And I always appreciate talking about it because it reminds me: I built this, and it works.

Ilise: Yeah. So let’s talk about the evolution over the four years. I know you have a milestone for each year, which I want to hear about. But you didn’t start out focusing on the corporate market, right?

Florian: No. At the beginning, I was fresh off Too Good To Go, which is a startup, and I thought: I want to work with startups. That was my most recent touchpoint. I reached out to many startups—they knew who I was, they knew the brand. They wanted to get their brand and marketing engine going similarly. So I focused a lot on startups and also solopreneurs in the beginning.

Florian: In my first year—this was my first milestone—summer of 2022, I started writing a newsletter. Not because I thought it would become an amazing tool to acquire business later. The reason was: I was not sold out. I had a lot of time—first year. I wanted to keep myself busy, and I always enjoyed writing.

So I thought: maybe I’ll just start a newsletter. I checked today: it has 1,800 readers—from Bangkok to Amsterdam to Vancouver. It’s gone international. Mostly marketing people read it. And now, three years later, it actually helps me acquire new business.

That was year one.

Florian: In the second year, I realized: the beginning was still good, and then it went down. I felt existential fear—like many entrepreneurs and freelancers do. What you always say—feast to famine—that’s what I experienced. There were times with a lot of work, and then I crashed, and then nothing happened.

I thought: I have two options. Option one: keep the money I’ve made as close as possible and just try to get through it. Option two: invest my money into learning something.

I was listening to a lot of podcasts, and I think it was Jenny Blake’s podcast—

Ilise: Yep. Where I also listened to an interview she did with you.

Florian: —and I thought: “A marketing mentor”—that’s what I’m looking for. I reached out to you, and that was the highlight of my second year: having a couple of sessions with you.

Getting an outside perspective, being challenged, getting new ideas. For example, you pushed me to do a podcast. Now I have, I think, 40 or 50 episodes—and it’s become a driver for my business.

So that was year two.

Florian: In the third year, I felt like the basis was working. I had a mix of corporates and startups and solopreneurs. No feast and famine anymore—more balanced.

But I still felt: what can I do to reach the next stage? So I went on a solo off-site. I went to Norway for a week by myself, with about 40 questions I asked myself each evening at dinner about my business.

I thought about: where do I want to take this? And I figured out I want to focus more on corporates—there are interesting challenges there. It’s easier once you’re in—you can work with several departments. The challenges are more diverse than with startups and entrepreneurs. And what I enjoy most is doing workshops.

So in year three, I changed the focus—fully committed to working with corporates. It also made my communication easier, because I didn’t have to speak to three different audiences.

Ilise: But just focus on one.

Florian: Exactly.

Florian: And now I’m in my fourth year. My highlight this year was writing my first marketing trend report—about a topic that’s followed me for months. It’s been read over 3,000 times now.

Ilise: By a lot of leaders in marketing and communications.

Florian: And it’s become a source of people reaching out to me, wanting my perspective. I’m very happy with how it evolved.

Would I change things if I did it all over again? Yes, of course—but that’s always hindsight. At each point, it felt like the right decision, and it worked out.

Ilise: That’s awesome. And I think I said this in the first podcast, too: you’re one of those clients who, when we first met, I gave you a little direction and you took the ball and ran with it—which is unusual, but I love it. Because marketing works when you do it, and you are really doing it.

And I want to dig into some of the tools you mentioned. But first: a lot of people have questions about shifting or narrowing their market. When you decided to focus on corporates, I’d love to hear: how exactly did you shift? What did you stop doing? You said it was easier to message to one audience than three—how did that show up specifically?

Florian: Let’s look at my channels. In the newsletter, I used to write for three audiences: simple things solopreneurs could use, advice for startups, and occasionally strategic content suitable for corporates.

So I skipped all the freelancing/entrepreneurial stuff and focused on: what would a Chief Marketing Officer or Head of Marketing be looking for? I lost some readers—but it helped narrow it to my audience.

Another thing: I stopped going to events where I knew my target audience wouldn’t be present. I also skipped speaking at startup events—even though it brought in a bit of money—because I knew it wasn’t helping me build the business I want.

I looked at all the touchpoints: my website, what I write there, what I write on LinkedIn, who I reach out to. I kept re-evaluating: will this help me build a track record with corporates or not?

And it worked. It’s still a journey—I’d still like two or three more corporate clients. But at the beginning of 2025, my goal was to bring in new corporate clients.

I structure goals in three levels:

• Small success: 1 new corporate client

• Medium success: 2 new corporate clients

• Epic success: 3 new corporate clients

And now—almost at the end of the year—I acquired three new corporate clients. So it’s been a full success. It’s satisfying: you set out to do something, you do the hard work, you change the things, and then you see: it works.

Ilise: Okay, now part of me wants to ask: what are your three levels of goals for 2026? Do you know yet?

Florian: Not yet. I always write three goals, and each has three levels.

My first goal was what I called “corporate success.” Second was “financial relief”—not thinking about money all the time, building a more robust buffer, building a more consistent stream of monthly income. And the third goal was qualitative: finding and spending time with people who live the lifestyle I want—people who help me grow, inspire me, and challenge me.

Ilise: Nice. I love that. I want to borrow it.

Florian: Because I really feel the more you surround yourself with people who are on the same level—or slightly above—in an area you want to grow, the more you will grow.

I met amazing new people this year who inspired me and were there for me. For that, I’m deeply thankful.

Ilise: I love that—especially the people part. Because when it comes to freedom: yes, financial freedom is important and helpful. But the freedom to spend time—because time is really all we’ve got—with people who help us grow, and who bring out the best in us… that’s the ultimate freedom to me.

Florian: And that’s also not easy. What I saw over the last four years is that with some people I started this journey with, we’re not on the same level anymore—

Ilise: Clients or colleagues?

Florian: In terms of where our businesses are. And I like to call myself an entrepreneur, not a freelancer. For me, an entrepreneur builds a business, whereas a freelancer works project to project.

Some people are still freelancers. And I don’t get as much out of meeting with them anymore. The hard part is saying no to some people—because you can’t just let new people into your life forever and keep all the old ones. You have to restructure.

I’m a big believer—and I tell my clients this whenever they want to start something new—ask: What are you willing to let go of? You can’t just add and add and add. You need to let go of some things.

Ilise: Okay, now I have two thoughts. One is about when you shifted your content focus. And I want to talk about your content marketing because you do a lot of awesome content marketing.

Florian: Thank you.

Ilise: When you shifted the focus, you got rid of things that weren’t what corporate marketing leaders need to hear or want to know. So it makes me want to ask: what do they need to hear and want to know?

Florian: First: they have super busy lives. They’re at the top of their careers. They get thousands of emails and tons of outreach from freelancers and companies that want to work with them.

So I always try to add value to their work. I don’t reach out saying, “Hey, do you want to work on a project?” or “Here’s something I created—don’t you want it?” Instead, I give them tools, questions, and thoughts that I would’ve liked to get when I was a marketing leader.

So number one: always add value.

Second: build long-term relationships. It’s still a people business. I’m under no illusion that I’m the best strategist available, but the people who work with me want to work with me. So I need to show them who Florian is.

I have two content categories:

1. Educational/inspiring: deep dives, frameworks, showcasing work

2. Entertainment: how I approach work, highlights, what frustrates me, what doesn’t work

That entertainment part gives an emotional layer and shows I’m a human being. Some leaders won’t enjoy it, but others feel a connection—like, “Okay, this is someone I’d like to work with.”

Then from there: build the relationship, meet people, talk.

And the challenge—if you have a consulting/service business—you need endurance. It’s a marathon. Some clients I work with now, I first had contact with two years ago. You show up, build trust, and at some point—as you like to say—they’ve marinated enough in the content that they think, “Okay, now I’m ready. I want to work with you.”

That requires trust. And the entertainment/social part—plus showing up and showing my face—really matters.

Ilise: That’s a nice segue into social media. Tell me your social media strategy.

Florian: Should I talk about LinkedIn or Instagram? They’re different.

LinkedIn: my strategy has shifted. The problem with social media is I don’t think it’s social anymore—it’s algorithmic media. The algorithm decides what gets pushed out. So on LinkedIn, I have to provide more entertaining content than inspirational content, because the algorithm punishes me for just posting deep dives.

People want pictures. They want people smiling into the camera, or a certain mood in their eyes.

So whenever I post, I think: what photo of me will work with this? Then the algorithm pushes it further, and I add the value in the text.

I’ve tested a lot. For me, videos don’t work as well on LinkedIn. Photos of me—looking into the camera, or in action on a stage or in a workshop—work better, with value in the caption.

Instagram: I do more videos—short snippets of inspiration. It’s a bit more clickbaity, because that’s the language of the channel. I aim for about 50% video and 50% carousel or photo that adds value.

And one learning from the past year: I have one Instagram channel that’s both personal and private. So when I go on vacation or do something fun, it’s up there too. If you follow me, you’re up for all of it.

Ilise: And you’re saying that works? Or would you do it differently?

Florian: It works—and it was a big learning. In my second year I was thinking: where do I separate work-self and private-self? With a job, you shut the laptop and you’re off. Now I think about work all the time—because it’s my business, I’m involved, and I like it.

But what I learned is: I had to become one person. In business conversations, I bring my private side. In private conversations—even on a date—I’m also the entrepreneur. My Instagram reflects that. It’s not for everyone. If you want highly polished posts, my channel probably isn’t for you. But for people reaching out and coming back to me, it works.

Ilise: Beautiful. All right—let’s talk about your podcast. And then, to wrap up, we can give listeners a question or two to reflect on for next year, so they can move in the direction you have, if they want to.

What I find interesting about your podcast is: your prospects are the guests. You’re doing it for the prospects and the conversations—not for how many people listen, right? What’s the strategy?

Florian: The strategy is… first: my podcast focuses on sustainability and how to communicate about it. That’s my passion. I want to provide a stage for companies doing something good in sustainability—to share their message so others can learn.

I invite companies and people I find fascinating. And in the end, my goal is the same: build relationships.

I had a case where I interviewed a marketing leader two years ago. We stayed in touch because we had a great conversation. We had virtual coffees afterwards. And then two years later she asked, “Hey, I’m working on this project—would you be the right person to work with?” And I said yes. And I’m traveling to the company next week for a full-day workshop.

I don’t want this to sound like my plan is always to turn guests into clients. Sometimes you realize: interesting company, but we don’t vibe personally. Other times, you meet someone and it’s like, “We could talk for hours.” So let’s do this.

I never push anything. But the relational part matters. For me, the podcast is a way to open a door—and then we’ll see where it takes us.

Ilise: I love that. All right—we could go on for hours, but we’ll have to do another episode.

Since it’s the end of one year and the beginning of another, let’s give listeners a question or two. From your 40 questions in Norway—what’s one of the most effective?

Florian: One of the best questions—and I use it a lot in workshops—is: What do you want your audience to feel about you and your brand?

We’re so in our heads. We think: “This is the message, this is my positioning.” But we’re emotional beings. It’s more important to leave an impression as a feeling.

So I ask myself: what feeling do I want to evoke with my whole marketing strategy? With one Instagram post? When I go to an event?

And even when I meet someone on the way to a meeting, I think: what do I want them to leave the conversation feeling?

Just one feeling—not a lot. One.

Ilise: Because then we get confused and overwhelm the other person. It’s really just one thing.

Florian: Exactly. One feeling.

Ilise: Then I have to ask you: what’s the feeling you want people to get from your brand?

Florian: Clarity.

Because there’s so much information out there. I work with amazing people with great strategies—but what gets lost is clarity: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? How are we doing it? That’s what I want to give my clients.

Ilise: And that begs one final question: do you ever struggle with imposter syndrome?

Florian: I haven’t met a really intelligent person who doesn’t struggle with imposter syndrome. If I meet someone who doesn’t have it, I get cautious. So yes, I struggle with it.

When I published my first trend report, I was like: will anybody read my thoughts? It’s 75 slides. It doesn’t follow a structure I copied—it’s my own findings and examples of brands using the insights.

Sometimes when amazing people invite me to speak, my first thought is: why are they inviting me?

Then I give the talk or do the project, and afterwards they say, “This was great.” And I have to remind myself—that’s where the voice gets a little quieter. I don’t think it goes fully away, but it gets quieter.

Ilise: Right. And I asked because listeners might assume you’ve done all these amazing things, had success quickly, and therefore… you don’t have that problem.

Florian: No, I do. I do.

Ilise: I feel like a lot of people do.

Florian: It’s natural.

Ilise: How about you, Ilise—do you struggle with imposter syndrome?

Ilise: Not anymore. I used to, for sure—but I was kind of arrogant and cocky, and if it was a problem I didn’t pay attention. I was like, “I don’t care. I’m doing it anyway.”

So it didn’t get in my way. And over the years, at a certain point—when you get to be a certain age—you’re like, who cares anyway? I don’t care what those people think. I’ve got so many options.

That’s why I always say: marketing is the solution. Because if you have many irons in the fire, what one person thinks doesn’t matter. If one client fires you, it doesn’t matter. You know how to go get more. It’s fine.

So hearing that won’t cure everyone, but the hope is: the more practice we get, the more mature we get, the older we get—some combination—the more we can relax. Because the problem with psychological baggage is it becomes an obstacle to doing what needs to be done. And then you can’t achieve success.

Florian: Yeah—when you get into freeze mode, or flight mode. Bridging that gap is just doing it. Learn on the way. And every negative feedback is just a data point: for this specific example, this did not work.

Ilise: Exactly.

Ilise: Beautiful. That “data point” is the perfect bookmark. We will definitely continue this conversation.

And I’ll reveal right now: you’ve agreed to be one of our coaches for S&P Plus in 2026—so more coming soon. A little cliffhanger.

Florian: I’m super excited to be part of this.

Ilise: Of course. I think you’ll be perfect for it. In the meantime, tell people where they can find you online.

Florian: You can find me on LinkedIn—my name will be in the description, because my last name is Schleicher and it’s difficult to pronounce. You can also go to future-strategies.com—my website—where you can find my newsletter, my podcast, and all the work I do, and get an impression of how I approach what I do.

Ilise: Beautiful. And you mean “future hyphen strategies,” right? “Minus” is the same thing, but we don’t say it that way—just so everyone understands.

Florian: Then let’s use the hyphen, yes.

Ilise: Great. Florian, thank you so much—and I’ll talk to you soon.

Florian: Let’s do that. Thank you for having me.

Ilise: Of course.

And still others, who've been marketing themselves all along, had a "banner" year - like my friend and Simplest Marketing Plan coach, Andy Brenits, of Brenits Creative.

Andy's celebrating a decade in of self-employment this year. And he's always looking for smart ways to streamline his marketing and workflow. 

His "Year by The Numbers" post is filled with tips & insights you can borrow to use in your own business in 2026.

Here's an excerpt:

I last wrote my year-end recap in December 2019. It was, by all accounts, a good year. Then, in March 2020, everything shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While my business grew that year, due in part to a wave of new solopreneurs navigating layoffs, furloughs, and unexpected pivots, I knew many businesses were struggling. Writing a celebratory “by the numbers” post at the end of 2020 didn’t sit right with me, so I stopped.

2025 feels like the right time to bring it back. Though it was another banner year for me, I’m still hearing about small businesses struggling. My hope is that this is seen as nothing more than insight, perspective, and inspiration.

And so, encouraged by my business coach, Ilise Benun, and inspired by Deidre Rienzo’s long-running “By the Numbers” posts, I’m returning to this format with a fresh perspective. It won’t be another five years before I write the next one. I plan to do this again next December. Who knows, maybe there will even be a mid-year check-in.

Read the rest on Andy's blog here.