Creative Wayfinding For Ambitious Optimists.
Blog
On this page, you can scroll back through the archives and view every post I’ve ever written.
I won’t lie, there are a lot. Many of them likely won’t be relevant to you.
But my hope is that by poking around and reading through a few of them, you’ll come across an idea that sparks something for you, makes you think about a problem in a new light.
Or, if you’d rather browse through a curated selection, feel free to start with one of the lists below.
Happy reading 🙂
Best Of The Blog
Complete Archive
Embracing the Mentality of the Underdog Creator
The mentality of the underdog is an empowering mindset to own and embody. The underdog expects that nothing will come easy. That nothing will be freely given. That everything they desire must be worked, clawed, and fought for. The underdog owns her situation. She...
Ideas & Broken Bones
Getting a new idea off the ground is a lot like healing from a broken bone. New ideas are typically made up of two (or more) disparate ideas that have never been connected and must now be grafted together. We set them in place, and at first glance, they might look...
Push the Domino
We often hold back on taking action because we're uncertain of the effect it will have. Sure, we have an idea that might work, but what if it doesn't give us the result we were looking for? What if, in hindsight, we realize that we would have been better off taking...
Seeking to Understand
When we set out to create something meaningful for any group of people, no matter how big or small, the first step is always understanding. Who are they? What are their specific challenges, backstories, and circumstances? Why haven't the other solutions available been...
Spotting The Potential For Interesting
Five years ago, when I first started editing and producing podcasts, I didn’t plan on sticking with it for long. I was a huge fan of the medium, but I certainly didn’t plan on building a team around my production business, writing about it in-depth, and dedicating the...
The Things No One Tells You
No matter the goal we've set for ourselves, there are always going to be challenges, hardships, and hard-learned lessons of which we are completely unaware until we're staring them in the face. These are the things we wish someone had told us to help us prepare,...
No One Wants Anything From You
As creators, we tend to waste a lot of time early in our careers trying to make work we think others want from us. The truth, however, is that nobody wants anything from us. In fact, they don't care about us at all. As Steven Pressfield writes, "Nobody wants to read...
Realistic Expectations
Part of the problem building a creative career feels so hard is that we're often working off of faulty assumptions and unrealistic expectations. We think that we can buckle down and in 6 months to a year from now be living that 6-figure online business dream life....
2 Types of Motivators
Anger, fear, scarcity, FOMO, loss aversion, loneliness, shame and guilt. Negative emotions like these can be powerful motivators in driving our customers to take the action we want them to take. In fact, they're some of the most common buttons marketers push in order...
Game-Changing Content
For every piece of content you create, it's a good idea to have one person in mind for whom that content will be a game-changer. Whether it's a podcast, blog post, YouTube video, or any other content piece, be clear on the one specific problem you're addressing for...
Marketing Is Inherently Inefficient
When it comes to our marketing, we're often in search of a formula that will consistently and reliably deliver the results we're looking for. Input x and receive y. Whether it's ad spend, conversion rate or any other metric we choose to track, what we're striving for...
Flipping Assumptions
Every now and then, it's worth writing out all the many assumptions you're making that influence the way you approach your work. Chances are, the list of assumptions is far longer than the list of hard facts. Then, when you have your list, flip them. Work through your...
What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
The voice in your head has one answer. An outcome of catastrophic failure, leading to absolute ruin, destitution, and maybe even death... perhaps simply of shame. The thought alone is so viscerally terrifying, you don't dare to even look at it in its entirety, let...
Acknowledgments & Accompaniment
It's not often that you come across a book that is completely engrossing, teaches you something valuable, and–most importantly–leaves you viewing the world differently than when you started it. For me, Underland, by Robert Macfarlane has been one of those books. It's...
Creating = Being
We often think about our work as occupying one distinct space in our lives. It has its role, time, and place in our day that it doesn’t extend beyond. If it is extending outside the box we’ve put it in, we might actually fight to cram it back in, feeling as though our...
Square, Grey LEGO Blocks
Homogeneous building blocks create homogeneous buildings. Sure they're easier to piece together, but is ease of building the point of building? To more quickly build structures indistinguishable from the others around us? A master may be able to create magic and art...
Recognizing the Signs
One of the great challenges of doing creative work is knowing whether or not you're on the right path. Big ideas take time and iteration to work through the derision and dismissal that often accompany their early stages, before gaining curiosity, interest, and...
If You Gain Traction Immediately, You’re Probably Doing Something Wrong
Few ideas of real value take off immediately. Ideas that hold our attention and create change require time to digest & grapple with, multiple listens, rereadings. These ideas are complex, risky, unproven, and must first run the gauntlet of ignorance, derision, and...
This Will Not Be the End of You
When you feel like giving up, remember this.
When No One Can Do What You Do
This is a freeing place to operate from. It removes the specter of competition and allows you to create from a place of confidence and generosity, without constantly looking over your shoulder. Of course, creating work that can't be emulated is no small feat. Almost...
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Hi, I'm Jeremy, I'm glad you're here.
No matter what you create, I'm guessing you spend a good amount of time feeling lost, hopeless, and unsure about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.
So do I. And so does everyone doing creative work.
This is the Creative Wilderness.
Every week, I publish a new article in my Creative Wayfinding newsletter about how we as creators and marketers can navigate it with more clarity and confidence.
If you're building something that matters, but aren't quite sure how to take the next step forward, I'd be honoured to have you join us.