What it takes to craft a signature story (Client behind-the-scenes) - Susan Boles - How Stories Happen #9
What should you include or omit to ensure your stories carry your message, resonate with others, and deliver something that could only come from you? That’s the challenge we encounter today.
In this special episode, Jay is joined by a favorite client, Susan Boles, to work through a draft of a signature story, which emerged on the back of their months-long work together developing Susan’s premise of “calm is the new KPI.” They apply Jay’s Align-Agitate-Assert structure, and they find the two biggest opportunities to improve the story.
Susan is the founder of Beyond Margins and host of the podcast of the same name. She teaches entrepreneur clients how to optimize their business for quality of life, not just profit margin, by making calm their focus and their literal KPI.
In the episode, Jay and Susan dissect her emerging, signature story involving Rand Fishkin, founder and CEO of SparkToro and, previously, founder and CEO of Moz. When one piece of the story runs too long, Jay shares some pointers for how to shorten it without sacrificing the story’s power, and the duo figure out what insights can be extracted and delivered from the story to teach and inspire Susan’s audience.
Whether you’re crafting your next keynote or fine-tuning your leadership communication skills, this episode will have you immediately elevating your storytelling in ways that illuminate insights others remember, share, and apply to their work or lives.
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Episode Resources:
⚫ Follow Susan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thesusanboles
⚫ Listen to Beyond Margins: https://podcast.beyondmargins.com/
⚫ Subscribe to Beyond Margins Newsletter: https://beyondmargins.ck.page/21380f9bae
🔵 Work with Jay to develop and differentiate your IP and stories: https://jayacunzo.com/
🔵Join his Creator Kitchen membership: https://creatorkitchen.com/
🔵 Follow Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayacunzo/
🔵 Follow Jay on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacunzo/
🟢 Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: https://shareyourgenius.com/
🟢 Cover art designed by Blake Ink: https://www.blakeink.com/
🟢 Find and support our sponsors: https://jayacunzo.com/sponsors
Full Transcript
(This was created with AI and may contain some errors)
Susan Boles [00:00:00]:
I'm Susan Boles. I'm a human centered CFO and COO for my firm, beyond margins.
Jay Acunzo [00:00:07]:
Awesome. When you and I started to work together, there were two things that were like lights blinking incredibly brightly, and I think others would agree, too. It wasn't just like when I scanned your site and your platform, it was the very name beyond margins, and it was the sort of above the fold copy of the website, which is calm as the new KPI. Even before we started to try and do the work that we did together, which I love the phrase you gave me, which is like, oh, this is like trying to draw a coherent circle around everything I'm doing. Like, you gave me that awesome terminology, and I've since used it with other people, and they're like, oh, I totally get the value in that because I've been at whatever this is for me a while. You know, I've been a whatever, a business strategist, a CFO, a COO, a public speaker, whatever the domain is of the person I'm speaking to. We've all been there where, like, we've created a lot of stuff on the Internet. We've said a lot and done a lot and made a lot of things and taught a lot of people and served a lot of clients or served our audience or what have you, and then one day you wake up and you kind of, like, can't see the forest anymore.
Jay Acunzo [00:01:18]:
You know, you're just, like, bumping into every branch on every tree. So I appreciated that the moment we started working together, there was, like, sections of the outline of that forest that you seem to, like, be already clear on. I don't know if you felt that way, but to me, it was the name of your firm, and then that tagline, comma's a new KPI. It was like, inescapably like, those are strong corners of whatever it is we're trying to draw together.
Susan Boles [00:01:44]:
Yeah, I think for me, it ended up being really. It was a circle. You know, a lot of, I've been doing this for eight years. I've been writing stuff for eight years. I've been talking about the same kinds of things in different contexts for eight years. But it's. I've always thought about it as, I guess, job first. Right? So what am I calling myself? Am I calling myself originally was software consultant, and then I was a fractional coo, and then I was a fractional CFO.
Susan Boles [00:02:15]:
And for me, the, like, stepping back to what's the premise? What's the circle that encompasses all of these things? Suddenly made it so much easier because it didn't really matter what I called myself. It was more about, here is this thing that now encapsulates stuff I've been talking about for eight years and how I'm talking about it now and made the connections. So it was. It was like wrapping my arms around all of the concepts I've talked about, but having a single thing to tie it together.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:50]:
Right. I always felt like, I mean, this happened to me in my career. It still does, where, you know, I'll be. I always think of this in my, like, professional. In a professional context happening now. And I think back to college when I had, like, a professor say this to me. So back in college, I think I signed up to mentor freshmen in the english department and helped them become better writers. And I forget if it was, like, a training or I just was talking to the professor in charge of that program, and they were like, the most important thing you can do with an incoming freshman is, yes, help them become a better writer, but acquire the things they can do on their own to be a better writer and prime in this person's list was have them, like, read their writing out loud to you or to themselves.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:39]:
And it was like, that's silly. They already wrote that stuff. But I remember trying it myself, and it was like, wow, this is so useful. Because you recognize, when you're in a consumer mode, or you switch the form factor from reading to speaking, maybe there's just something you spot when you're forced to step out of it and then analyze it. And so now, in a professional context, the version of this that I get either from my own mentors or, like, with clients like you, Susan, it's, what are you trying to say here? Or what do you mean by that? And then, inevitably, the person on the receiving end of that prompt says something, and either the whole thing is super clear or a piece of it is super clear. And then the response from the consultant or coach or advisor or friend is always like, oh, that's what you're trying to say? Great, so say that.
Susan Boles [00:04:31]:
There were so many times that that happened where, like, I'd be saying something, and then you'd be like, so what you're saying is this. And I'd be like, yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to say. With about half as many words.
Jay Acunzo [00:04:44]:
Again, that's hard. Cause as experts, I mean, this is me with storytelling. This is me with premise development. This is me with the advisory work that I do. I overthink what I am all the time. Am I an executive producer for my clients? Am I an advisor, a consultant, a coach? You know, I joke I'm like the director of differentiation or something like that. And I like that you just lit up a little bit. That makes you feel really good.
Susan Boles [00:05:09]:
I kind of love that.
Jay Acunzo [00:05:10]:
Cool. Okay, cool. I like that. I might play it forward, but it's already made its way a little bit onto my website. But my point is, when we're so close to something, we need things that help us step out of it to see it as others would see it or see it through a different light. And an easy way to do that is to work with somebody else. The hard thing is for that somebody else to give you the things you need to do it on your own. You know, that's hopefully how I worked with you.
Jay Acunzo [00:05:35]:
But more to the point of this show, that's what I want every episode to be for others, where it might not be their words that they're, like, grappling with, but we've all related to a recent episode where a guest is dissecting their personal story. Hey, how'd you get here? Tell me about yourself. Or a moment within something we're crafting, where it's like, am I too in love with that little line or whatever? It's not exactly what everyone else is writing verbatim, but I think there's a lot of relatable moments in the show already. That is a very long setup for me to sort of give you permission to share in it a little bit the story that we developed together for your platform in a way that just comes out, like, I don't want you to overthink it and over polish it. Cause what I kind of thought heading into this experience, this is a bit of an experiment, is, oh, it'd be kind of cool, because I have this show, if my clients took one of the stories we developed together and got, like, another round of practice in a way that was lower stakes. Cause, like, this is not a show necessarily where you're trying to win business. You're just trying to, like, improve the way you're saying something. That is the entire point of this show.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:53]:
So long, long setup. I don't know if that makes you less stressed out, but how are you feeling in this moment, Susan?
Susan Boles [00:07:02]:
Not really. I think so. You know, when we started working together, there was a conversation where you were asking me what I was nervous about of the process, and I think I said something like, I don't really identify as a writer. I have really struggled with the internal concept of being a writer or being somebody who's creative, that's been a real evolution for me, because when I was writing in school, I was very good at writing research papers and scholarly things, professional things. But then in creative writing classes, I would get hammered because I'm too direct. And I don't, you know, it's not flowery, it's not story y enough. And, like, I had really internalized that as part of my story about who I am as a creative person. And it took me quite a while to kind of reframe how I thought about creativity, especially somebody like me.
Susan Boles [00:08:01]:
I hang out in operations and finance and things that most of the time we inherently don't think of as being creative. And for me, it took me redefining that as, like, that is my creativity. And so I think I still have a little bit of that where I don't feel like a creative. Like, I recognize that I am. Like, I have a podcast. I write things all the time, but I don't feel like a creative, which I think makes me a little bit more nervous when it comes to storytelling because I'm still. I still feel pretty new about it.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:36]:
Yeah, well, I think one of the most important things to, like, creativity is kind of gotten away from us as a concept in our culture, partly because there's a lot of very smart philosopher type voices who have made a lot of amazing things now commenting directly on creativity, you know, comedians, actors, musicians, writers, podcasters, you name it, or some additional studies that have maybe been thrown behind it. There's a lot of focus on creativity as a thing versus creativity as what you're doing. Like, it's, as John Cleese said, one of those philosopher voices, comedian of Monty Python fame, it's not a talent, it's a way of operating. And I always felt like the way of operating for me started with frustration, which is where, as you now know, I start all of my clients with that inward turn. We got to be more honest with ourselves and how we view things and what frustrates us and what we don't like about the status quo to sort of dig for the gold that we will then polish later. But the polishing is what we always try to start with. The right wordsmithing. Exactly.
Jay Acunzo [00:09:40]:
That's the easy part. That comes later.
Susan Boles [00:09:42]:
For the longest time, I thought that people that like writers and creative people that I respected, that you guys just kind of poop out gold. Like it just comes out on the page like magic. Right? And it took me a very long time and talking to people like yourself or like Margot Aaron, where y'all let us into the back end of the process and how messy it actually is, like being able to see somebody's very messy process to get to the refined piece. I had not realized how. How much work actually goes into that final piece. Most of the time, it's not just you sitting down and writing it. There's a lot of work. And that seeing behind the curtains really helped me reframe my expectations for myself.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:38]:
Right.
Susan Boles [00:10:38]:
That I shouldn't expect to just sit down at a blank piece of paper and be able to just hammer it out. It's a draft and marinate and come back to it and edit it and revise and speak it. And then eventually it starts to feel a little bit better and more final. But that the messy lump of clay part, mentally, I had just skipped that. I was expecting to be able to write it. Like I used to write research papers, where you take the research and you just plop it out and you turn it in and it's good.
Jay Acunzo [00:11:12]:
Yeah. And I do think whether it's school or the sort of commodification of content, it's so bizarre. Still to me, even though I sort of came up in the content marketing industry, that marketers, entrepreneurs, people looking for a business outcome, have gone writing, podcasting, video, public speaking, all these things that people pursue for their lifetimes to master, all these things people feel called to do, like, it's a vocation or even consider it art. Now we're gonna do that as a tactic. And like, so how do you ten x your content output in 10 seconds or less? And I'm like, well, or like, how do you repurpose a thing into 17 smaller, tinier, you know, social things? And I'm like, but if the main thing is not, like, I've spent my whole career basically bashing my head against the wall, being like, you know, that thing you're making, you should make it good. And then it's like, that's. But that's not a productive thing to say to other people, many of whom are very well meaning. Like, what does that mean? And the beginning points to create something good for me, anyway, is always getting in touch with how you feel about something in very messy fashion.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:22]:
Like, I remember I asked you, so you have a business called beyond margins, but you talk to people about their finances. That's kind of interesting. You talk, you say, calm is the new KPI. Okay, so that's where we're heading. And by the way, we should pull that string, too. And we sort of did. But it's like, all right, well, why aren't we thinking or acting that way? And out came like, I remember we had this early call where you were just, and I said, I will write you, just talk. And you just went on this tirade.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:51]:
And there was this one emerging golden thread, because you'd used it elsewhere, which was about default decisions and like the plague that is default decision making among entrepreneurs, because you're like, well, listen, we start out as entrepreneurs who have rejected growth at all costs, hypergrowth, scorch earth capitalism approaches. We're trying to build something better, and then we start down that path with gusto, and then start feeling really burnt out or stressed out or all these things we're doing actually resemble these companies we didn't want to be building in the first place. And then the reason why is default decisions. And you just kept going. And I was like, hold on, hold on, hold on. What, what do you mean by default decisions? So, Susan, what do you, because it's such an important piece of your pillar platform here, but what, what do you mean by default decisions?
Susan Boles [00:13:44]:
Yeah. So, to me, default decisions are those decisions that you make in your business either because you think you should or you're making the decision without even realizing that you're actually making a decision. And it happens a lot more frequently than we really think at the beginning. And it makes sense at the beginning of your business. A lot of the times, you don't know what the right decision is. You don't have enough context. You don't have enough expertise. You don't understand the nuance enough.
Susan Boles [00:14:11]:
So you're just making the decision that you see other people making. We have, you know, an unlimited supply of examples in the business world of people who did a thing very successfully, and then they want to share how they did the thing and share their seven step methodology or whatever it is. And so we then try to replicate their success by following their framework, but the reality is that that just results in you building a worse version of their business, not the business that you actually intended to build. And so sometimes those default decisions lead us to building out a business that ultimately we end up wanting to burn down. Lots of us have done that. We've built it. We've burnt it down. We built it.
Susan Boles [00:15:00]:
We hate it. We built it. We realized it doesn't work with our lifestyle or with our values. And then we're at this point where we're like, do I stop and start overd? Can I rebuild what I have and all of that comes from a foundation of default decisions, decisions that you didn't necessarily either intend to make or you just made. Because everybody's like, oh, it's the best practice. Let's just do that.
Jay Acunzo [00:15:23]:
Right, right. One of the most genius things you said to me, this is why I like my work, because I get to be in rooms with people like you that are very smart experts, have you, in parts of the process, just rant, which is really fun. And then I'm sort of grabbing things and synthesizing things and putting it on the page and live writing with you. And in other times, I'm watching you work publicly and talking about it behind the scenes with you. But in both of those instances, I get to sort of see the power of saying things very simply, in ways people will remember or take an action because of. There's not the invented cleverness of create a category, come up with jargon and terminology. It's like, no getting down to the root of what you're trying to say, because it's the root of how you feel, then building that back up into a premise you're trying to own publicly, then using that premise to develop meaningful ip. It's not a new way of working, it's just the way of working that I don't think makes its way into the world of experts.
Jay Acunzo [00:16:26]:
I think mostly it's for the performer types, authors, speakers, show hosts, people that want to be just front facing as a product, as a service. And I'm trying to help get those skills out of just that domain and give them to people with substance who have something meaningful to say. But how you say it matters. And one of those lines for you is, I'm going to butcher it. But you said something like, and totally correct me. See, this is great. This is like, you are better at saying this now than I am, even though we worked on it together. But it's something to the effect of, if you want to build a business that's different, you actually have to solve for something different.
Jay Acunzo [00:17:08]:
Like is the new KPI is nice to put on a t shirt or a mug, but it's even nicer when you're actually measuring different things and operating with different processes and systems than other businesses. And I think that's the core of your premise, which is like you get into business for one reason, were totally aligned there, then you feel all this pain, which you agitate in your story. And the reason the illness underneath those symptoms is you're making all these default decisions. And the reason you're doing that is you have the intention to build something different, but none of the operations and metrics to do that. So your business is built to solve for the same thing as all the other businesses you said you didn't want to build. So I love that perfect encapsulation of, like, why you're saying make calm the new KPI is because if you want to build a business that's different, you have to solve for something different. And if anyone listening is going, oh, my gosh, that's so good, I would be like, yeah, I know. Cause Susan did that.
Jay Acunzo [00:18:06]:
Susan says that.
Susan Boles [00:18:10]:
No, I think that's right. And you did a pretty good summary. But I think that kind of the ethos of calm in a business is you have to have that permeate through all of the different areas, through your policies, through how you're designing your business model, and also what you're measuring. If you are solving for the default goal, which for most businesses is growth. We live in a late stage capitalist society. The expectation is that most businesses should be solving, and the goal is get bigger. It's always about getting bigger, make more money. It is almost never about quality of life or what the actual business feels like or looks like to run.
Susan Boles [00:18:55]:
So if you actually want to build something that is calm, you have to intentionally design every part of your business from the ground up to prioritize calm overgrowth. Your business will essentially become a reflection of whatever your top priority is. And when that top priority is growth, you solve for growth at the detriment of everything else. If your top priority is calm, you have to solve for things that result in a calmer business.
Jay Acunzo [00:19:25]:
Right. One of the questions that inevitably someone like you will get is, that sounds really great. Like, do you have any examples? And I even think we preempt that, even if we've never heard that in trying to collect and develop. That's really the operative word here. Our signature stories. And so you and I were talking behind the scenes about who can you already see as upholding this idea, this premise of you should make calm the new KPI? And you immediately mentioned good friend of the show, Rand Fishkin. So, Rand's company, Sparktoro, has been a sponsor of the show. Rand himself has been a guest on the show.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:03]:
I've spoken at Sparktoro's virtual office hours and annual event and things like that. Really big fan of Rand. And because what we were looking for, I always think in speeches, because that's just how I started doing this kind of work. And I was kind of thinking about that moment in the speech. And by the way, this story can be used anywhere. But just to give people context, there's this moment in the speech where you've sort of done the work of laying out your premise. In the first half, you start by aligning with people, and you're like, this is the goal you have, and this is how you're coming at it. People are like, yep, cool, keep going.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:37]:
You have my best interest in mind. Okay, if we're aligned on that. Well, here are these problems, and you kind of agitate their pain and create a little tension for your experience. And then they're like, oh, no, what do I do? Like, I want the goal. I see the problems now with the status quo approach I'm enduring, or it didn't even know existed with all those problems. Thank you for revealing that to me. Susan, what does it look like if I did the thing you're now proposing I do, which is make calm the new KPI? And I think business storytellers or business communicators, I think we tend to sort of give examples, which is like, it's like this company did this thing and saw this outcome, and then we're sort of putting the onus on whoever is receiving those words to ask follow up questions, to paint in all the details, or they don't. And now they're filling them in, in their brains, which is really dangerous.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:27]:
And I think the difference between that communication style and what we worked on and what I advocate for is you have to now embark on this mini journey that resembles your plain language description of the transformation you have in mind for your audience, but with an actual person that they can relate to, not because they're the same job title, necessarily, but because how they feel in the story matches how your audience feels. Right? They had the same goal. They went about it a similar way. They encountered these problems. They made the switch. I'm here to tell you to make, and here's what happened since and what we can learn. So it's not exactly a case study, though it is illustrative, but it's like this person who's not super inaccessible. Like, I'm going to tell you about Steve Jobs, you know, and it's somebody that you can kind of like either interview or research secondhand and create almost like a character in your back pocket that you can sort of take out this signature story and, like, literally sign your name to, you know, it's not just that you repeat it, it's that you know how to sign your own name to it.
Jay Acunzo [00:22:30]:
You've created a version of it. And so I give all that context not only so people listening can place, like, what are we talking about when we talk about signature story, but the signature piece is so important. Right? Cause it's not just, like, example x did y. It's that you're trying to find a way to, like, include the right details and in the right order and, like, exaggerate this or diminish that and then arrive at these insights, like you are in the process, I think. Susan, correct me if I'm wrong, of figuring out now how to go from the details to how do I sign my name to this story.
Susan Boles [00:23:04]:
Yeah, for sure. I definitely am. Like, naturally, I want to give people examples, and so I can list off the bullet points of, you know, a particular client story or a particular personal story. Like, I can give you the bullet points, but taking it from bullet points of these are the pertinent details that helps, I guess, show the transition. That part is really difficult of, like, which. Which bullet points should be included? And, I mean, I have that. I think we all have that problem on, like, when we're saying, here's what I am. Here's what I do.
Susan Boles [00:23:42]:
What bullet points should you include in the story that are pertinent? Which ones kind of give it personality. Like, which ones are the. Like, the interesting pieces that kind of pull you in, and which ones can you leave out? And being able to take the bullet points and turn that into a story is definitely where I am still spending most of my time and energy on the stories is, how do I make this from bullet points to a story?
Jay Acunzo [00:24:14]:
Right. And I think there's one version of this, which might be the cliche in people's heads, which there's some good to this, too, which is sort of the details of the action, like, what happened and how it made the protagonist feel. That's important, too, like, the descriptors, so that you're in it and visualizing it. Someone who shares an example or just speaks in plain language would tell you about the time they met Jay, but a storyteller would say, would tell you about the time that they heard Jay from a mile away. Right. It's not that I met Susan. It's that I shook her hand and it was trembling. Right.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:52]:
Like, there's a difference between how normal people talk and how a storyteller talks. That, yes, we have to figure that out, too. But more to the point, because I think these details, then those details of the descriptors follow from this. It's like, what am I trying to say? Or to show them? So that's why it matters that you have your premise of Comma's the new KPI. Because if that's what I'm trying to show them is like, how you build according to that, then you go into the story going and like, what details sort of match the actual things they're going through or the emotions they're going through. And which can I summarize or skip? Which need to be exaggerated because, you know, like, oh, I'm trying to land the plane over there at this major insight for them, not just give them an example of a quote unquote success story. So I think that's a big difference between your and my type of storytelling. And I don't know the case study type storyteller or the generic expert storyteller talking about success, because they don't really know what details to include or not beyond just trying to make it entertaining, because all they're trying to do is be like, and look at this amazing person, and here's how they're amazing.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:06]:
But you're like, I'm here to convince you to make the new KPI. Not to put that on your notebook as a nice little tagline, but to actually operate your business differently. So now I need a story of someone who actually did that. So ranting over. I want to hear if I were anyone else interviewing you to be like, Susan, I followed you for weeks now ahead of this interview, and I got to say, I'm so excited to talk to you because of, like, your business name is beyond margins. This tagline has come as the new KPI. It all makes me light up. Like, I really want to build a business like that.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:47]:
You just explained to us the dangers of default decisions and what we need to do differently. For those who are still on the fence, can you share an example? Do you have an entrepreneur in mind who's actually done this? Because we want to go there, but we might need to see what it looks like. Who would you point to right now?
Susan Boles [00:27:09]:
I would point to rand. Honestly, I think I picked him because his journey had a lot of similarities to my own journey. When he was on your show and he did his story, he said he wants to share that he failed, so you don't have to. And that is essentially my similar story. That's why I started my business was because I messed up a bunch of times so you don't have to. And I think that's why I ended up picking it.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:42]:
Cool. So I'll set you up a different way. We'll take out the previous setup, uh, of mine that was too long winded. But the short way to I want to set this up is. So you're up there on a stage, you're on the microphone, on a podcast. You're writing wherever you show up, this has use. And you're trying to not just tell people, make calm the new KPI. You're trying to show them.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:05]:
And you've gone on your little journey to say, here's the premise. This is what I stand for. This is what you want. Here's the problems. Here's the change I really want you to make. Commas, the new KPI. You're actually going to operate differently. You're going to look at your finances differently, you're going to solve for something differently, because you're trying to build a business that is different.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:24]:
And then you go, all right, let me just show you what this looks like when done well, let me show you the story of Rand Fishkin, because he, of all people right now, seems to be embodying this. So whenever you're ready, the draft of the story that you have so far.
Susan Boles [00:28:43]:
So think back to when you started building your business. Why did you want to start a business? If you're like me, you probably wanted to do some interesting work and have a lot of freedom and flexibility. Maybe, probably you wanted to make some money or just solve a problem that frustrated you. But the path from that vision to actually building it is not always smooth. Am I right? For most of us, we end up building at least a few versions of something entirely different. First, I've done it. You've probably done it, and so has Rand fishkin. Today, Rand is building a business that exemplifies what I mean when I talk about building a calm company.
Susan Boles [00:29:21]:
He's the co founder of Sparktoro, which is a marketing software company. But at the beginning, he was just a guy running a marketing agency with his mom, who had a problem to solve. He wanted to understand SEO, so he started writing a blog called SEO Moz to explore what was working in SEO. And the blog became an online community. And then from there, the demand kind of exploded. So the company shifted from consulting to software, and eventually it became Moz. You might have heard of it. And Moz was every business owner's dream.
Susan Boles [00:29:54]:
There was wild demand, rapid growth. It was so successful that investors started approaching rand, completely unsolicited to ask to invest in the company. So he raised around, because if you're a founder and investors are knocking at your door. Why wouldn't you take it? There's not just the financial upside, but there's a certain cachet with being a founder of a software company who's actively raising. It's cool. So Rand started getting invited to speak and getting featured in the press and all these accolades. Even ended up with the nickname the wizard of Maz. So who wouldn't want to be Rand? And it wasn't just Rand who was seeing all the success.
Susan Boles [00:30:32]:
Moz was doing really great, too. It grew from this tiny agency into a software company with 130 employees, $30 million in revenue. They went ahead with the first investment raise, and then a second, they acquired three different companies. And from the outside, everything was great. But on the inside, it was a different story. Because when you raise monies from VC's, they expect certain results. They're looking for a unicorn. A company that's going to make all their money back by getting acquired for big bucks.
Susan Boles [00:31:02]:
And investors require growth. Not just some growth, exponential growth. Everything else has to take a back seat. It's all about the hustle, moving fast and breaking things. Profit doesn't matter. Ten x everything. And you always have to be growing. There's no plateaus, there's no pauses to breathe.
Susan Boles [00:31:17]:
Even a slight dip in the rate of growth can cause investors to start questioning you. And Rand was feeling that Maz was growing, sure, but unicorn level growth, not really. So there was a lot of pressure on Rand as the CEO to keep the growth growing. But let's be honest, Rand hadn't been a CEO before. This dude started out thinking he was building a small marketing agency. And just a few years later, he's the CEO of a software company with 130 employees and investors to deal with them, thousands of customers to support. And that's a lot of responsibility for somebody who's essentially doing everything for the first time, anytime something happens. So the pressure kind of started to get to rant.
Susan Boles [00:31:56]:
We've all been there, so many decisions to make, so many balls to juggle. It's exhausting. But he needed to grow the company because, you know, the investors. So he went all in on a new project, Moz analytics. And the idea was to build this comprehensive suite to manage all the SEO, all the stuff in one spot. And so he went down this path, and the first due date for the software came and went, and the pressure to launch grew and grew and grew and grew. And here's the thing about what happens when things aren't going well. It's really hard to make good, thoughtful decisions because when you're stressed or overwhelmed, the first thing to go is critical thinking.
Susan Boles [00:32:35]:
So you end up falling back on what I call default decisions. And these are decisions you make because they're what you should do. Maybe they're best practices, or what's working right now, or just that's the way things are done. Generally, they don't turn out well because they're not about what you or your company needs. They're based on, and they prioritize the default goal, which is growth. And Rand was making default decisions left and right. He hired a bunch of folks to try and speed things up, but they mostly weren't a good fit. He acquired a few companies to shorten the development cycle, but it didn't work.
Susan Boles [00:33:08]:
He replaced the engineering lead. Still no software launch. Maz analytics did end up getting released, but it was almost a year and a half after the date and it bombed. And during this time, Rand was also having a lot of conflict with the board. His relationship with his COO and his best friend was crumbling. Personally, he fell into a really deep depression. And things didn't get better after that. All that investment of time and resources and the damage to the reputation of the quality of the products, it ended up taxing the company so much that they ended up having to do layoffs.
Susan Boles [00:33:37]:
And the conflict between Rand and the board eventually led to him stepping down as CEO. And he left the company. Rand and Moz went from tons of growth and lots of success and accolades to layoffs, and Rand leaving the company because they had to make growth their top priority. Because remember, they took vc money. Whatever your overriding priority is for your company, that will drive every single one of your decisions to the detriment of everything else. So if you solve for growth, youll probably ignore profitability, youll ignore sustainability, youll ignore employee well being, because the focus is on growth and only growth. But its not about intention, its about the quality of your execution, its your incentives and values that chart the course of your business towards chaos and stress, or towards something more sustainable and in line with your values. The thing we need to realize is our KPI's fundamentally determine what our business becomes.
Susan Boles [00:34:32]:
Moz was running the way it was designed. Rand was making choices according to that design. Often we don't want to, but we end up designing a business that is feast or famine. What we want is values aligned with our goal. But what we're actually solving for in our business, that might be a different story. We need to change that. To change the outcome. I propose the thing that you should solve for is calm.
Susan Boles [00:34:55]:
Make calm your new KPI. And Rand came to the same conclusion. And when he left Moz and started spark Turo, he set out to solve for something calmer that prioritized the people. He and his co founder, Casey Henry, decided to start with a foundation that was different, that didn't prioritize growth over everything else. And they started with developing an entirely new type of funding structure to finance spark Turo. It prioritized profitability over growth. It allowed them to pay back their investors from company profits. And that meant that they had more freedom to build the kind of company they wanted instead of being forced towards unsustainable growth.
Susan Boles [00:35:34]:
They had a unique set of priorities for the companies. They wanted to prioritize in order, customer satisfaction, team happiness, community value, and then investor performance. So those priorities are reflected in pretty much everything the company does. It's not wishful thinking. Their very incentives, including their actual financial planning and structuring, leads the way. And that's the missing piece for so many of us. For two years after funding, Rand and Casey were the only employees of the company. And they built Sparktoro as slowly as they needed to.
Susan Boles [00:36:07]:
They launched their company at the very beginning of the pandemic into a world where no one really knew what was going to happen. Everybody was locked in their homes, and there was a, you know, worldwide economic crisis looming. Not exactly the ideal for launching a business, but even in those trying times, they actually lived according to their values. They put people first. They donated a dollar for every unique search. The spark toro ran to a Covid-19 charity. And today, they still only have three employees. And there's a lot of work to handle with only three people in a growing company.
Susan Boles [00:36:36]:
So things aren't always smooth. But Spark Turo formalized their commitment to building something calmer into a philosophy they call chill work. It's their version of what a calm company looks like. And there's six different facets of what work and company structure should look like. As Rand says, you know, chill work can only happen in environments that are designed to encourage it. And that means if you want to build a different company, you have to design for that from the ground up. You have to solve for what your true top priority is. If you want a calmer company, you have to make calm your overriding KPI.
Susan Boles [00:37:14]:
And before you start coming after me about how this is something all fuzzy and warm and woo woo, here's the thing. It works. Sparktoro built something calmer and sustainable and still successful. That first year they grew about 10%. They hit their break even cash flow point in September, less than six months after they launch. And they have kept growing year after year. They hit a million dollars a year in revenue two years after launching, and pay back all of their investors in three years. And they've been profitable every single month since they've been in operation.
Susan Boles [00:37:46]:
Now, none of those are vc level growth metrics, but they're pretty damn good and pretty successful by any measure. But let's also talk about the quality of life that the employees are leading. Nobody at Sparktoro works more than 35 hours a week. They take multiple week long vacations each year. Their vp of marketing recently took parental leave for several months, and while she was gone, nothing broke. And even coming back to work, shes been able to work and parent her newborn. Rand stops to play video games at 02:00 p.m. most days, and even decided to launch a second business.
Susan Boles [00:38:17]:
The best part about prioritizing calmer businesses is happy employees. And happy and relaxed employees make better decisions. They're generally more productive, and they do better and more creative work. And all of that leads to happier customers. And happier customers leads to more sales, which leads to more sustainable companies. When you make, call me your new KPI, you create the conditions to actually build that vision you had back at the beginning of your business. It's how you get that freedom and flexibility. It's how you build something that feels good to your brain, your body, your family and your team.
Susan Boles [00:38:50]:
And it's how you build a business where you can play video games. At 02:00 p.m.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:57]:
I was waiting to see where you're going to stick the landing. That was great. I love that you had that little detail in there. What's been so gratifying for me is you being like, I don't know. I would use Rand as the example because this is what Rand did at Maz and it didn't work. And he burnt out and he wrote about it in his book. This is what they're doing with Spark Turo. Like, when I pressed you a little bit for who you admire, who do you think is doing this? You were like, well, Rand, and here's an example.
Jay Acunzo [00:39:26]:
Like, you came with the example, and I remember as you started to develop that, it was like, I don't know if there's enough detail in here, or like, I don't know, like where the Susan of it all, that's my words, not yours. Like where you are. That last line, definitely you. So you were like, looking for details and looking for a personalization, like getting your fingerprints on it. And I feel like now what we've done is we've gotten to the point where. And please chime in. I'm curious if you see it this way. It's long, right? It is long.
Jay Acunzo [00:39:56]:
I mean, that's an essay, like you wrote. That's something you shipped to your newsletter.
Susan Boles [00:39:59]:
It's definitely the version I would use in a keynote.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:03]:
Yeah. And I think now what you have to do is get to the point where. And we went through an initial version of this process where here's the touchstones of the action. And so we kind of have those things that are in there. Here's the rest of the stuff that, like, probably goes away if you're asked on a normal podcast to give an example. Right. Because that's what you should go through. And then here's moving out of the action of the story now over to the teaching.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:35]:
Here's the insights that you need from that story that bridge the gap between me telling you a story about somebody who's not you and me, then directing you to embrace my premise. If I'm Susan, make calm the new KPI, right. It's like the thing we have yet to talk about is the stuff I wrote down. We'll talk about the story, but it's almost like, I don't want to talk about this yet, but I didn't want to put it out there after whatever version of the story you delivered. It's like, I think we can learn three things from Rand, and I wrote down what these insights were. One, it's not about your intention, but it's about the quality of your execution. And then I'm sure you can riff on that. Your goals and your values must align.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:22]:
Two, you didn't say it this way, but it seems like it's something you should admit headlong or head on, rather. Cause you kind of hinted around it and even come as a new KPI as an idea hints at it. Like, metrics shouldn't be given to you or thrust on you or implied. Like, they're not. Like, oh, you use that software tool. They give you this data. So I guess that's how you measure that thing. Like, you did use the word design.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:47]:
Like, we're trying to design our businesses so we can design our lives. Metrics are how you measure your progress towards. Like, is the design working as intended? That's the missing piece. Like, you know, if I think podcasts, what do I think for metrics? Downloads? But actually, that's not what a good podcast does. It's not about growth of downloads, really, where these are bad vehicles for net new growth. They're great for audience retention, they're great for deepening relationships. So how do you measure that? If your thesis is that's what a podcast is for, you need to then figure out the right metrics to use. So that could be like a second in addition to.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:21]:
It's not about your intention, but the quality of your execution. I think another insight was, if you're going to design a certain type of business a certain way, you also need to carefully select what you're measuring. Because what you're measuring isn't actually the goal, it's you checking in on your progress towards the goal. Right. Like, I want to make something that matters. How do I measure that? There's a million ways to measure that. My metrics aren't the goal, they're how I check in on my progress towards that goal.
Susan Boles [00:42:48]:
Whether or not you're doing that.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:50]:
Yeah, totally, totally. That's not how we treat metrics. So that's the second bullet and then the third one's very simple, which is, you did a good job at the end, I think, acknowledging. Cause this is where a lot of these illustrative lead stories go awry. People treat it as. So Rand did it, so you can too, right? It becomes this, like panacea, this like amazing magical thing of like, because that that person did it. That's how everyone probably does it, or that's how you can definitely do it. And it's like, no, you're not saying that.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:20]:
So coming to the third insight now, you acknowledge a little bit, without using the phrase necessarily, that there are trade offs here, right? Like there's trade offs in building a business this way. Like Rand, I think, would readily admit publicly, it's not all butterflies and rainbows and video games at 02:00 p.m. you know, there's a lot of stuff that's harder doing it that way. But he is willing to trade off the difficulty there for the upside over here with this other stuff. So, anyways, like, we will talk about the action of the story in a sec, but I just wanted to compliment you because you've now gotten it all in there. And now I think the work is, yes, carefully selecting and pruning, but that's easy. The hard part that's remaining is, so what insights do you extract and almost where do you place them? I think that matters a little bit less because you start to overthink it but what insights do you extract to then tee up the revisiting of your premise? Commas, the new KPI.
Susan Boles [00:44:17]:
So, like, I think I feel pretty good about the story overall. There's lots and lots of details in there. I think the part that, for me is now a challenge is being able to, like you were saying, tie this to specific insights or use it in a more flexible way to know. We talk a lot about, like, what beats do you need to hit? What are the. What are the beats that you need to make sure are in every, you know, every version of the story? And I think for me, trying to figure out which are the key beats, because they're not always the same, they're different based off of what's the end goal that you're trying to get to in the story? What's the insight, what's the point you're trying to make? Because the point isn't always just, I mean, the point is always to make calling the new KPI, but sometimes there's variations of that or different aspects of that, and learning how to pick and choose and have enough familiarity with the details of the story to be able to pull them out. That part is, I think, the challenge.
Jay Acunzo [00:45:27]:
So let's go back to the template that we use to develop your premise, which then we tried to find all of these elements in the story drafting. So now that we're trying to tighten and that's the mode you're in, we can revisit these. So, like, aligned, agitate, assert. So a line is like, I'm on the same page as you. You have these goals, you have these approaches, these philosophies, these beliefs. It's almost like you can't pitch anybody your creative idea or big change if they don't see why they should care. The best way to ensure they care, because it's what the science of resonance reveals to us, is I have to start from a place of alignment with you, right? Two frequencies are aligned. They are considered resonant frequencies.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:09]:
It's the same in communication. You did a little bit of that. Really, really. Well, what I maybe wanted to see was less agitate, because I think you spent a lot of time.
Susan Boles [00:46:18]:
I think the agitate is too long.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:20]:
Yeah. Well, I think here's why. This is my assumption, number one, it's readily available material. So I always had an advantage developing my signature stories prior to launching this show is I had a different podcast called Unthinkable, where it was kind of, like, flexible in what it explored, which hurt that show's success. A little bit, but it made it a great vehicle to talk to whoever I wanted to get their story. So I remember talking to Mike Brown, the founder of Death Wish Coffee, the world's strongest coffee. I'd heard him on another business show, like a generic interview business success podcast. And I was like, well, that interview was terrible, but Mike is interesting.
Jay Acunzo [00:47:01]:
I want to interview Mike, but there's this stuff about my thinking and my eventual book and my speech that I'd like Mike to zoom in on. And I was able to get out these details by asking him the right questions and trying to craft his story through an interview that I wouldn't have had access to otherwise. But with Rand, he's written a book.
Susan Boles [00:47:20]:
Called lost the prolific.
Jay Acunzo [00:47:21]:
Yeah, he's prolific in showing up publicly. He's been on this show telling a version of his backstory. And Rand, because it's his way, and he is prolific in that way, has shared a lot of the agitate stuff, a lot of the problems that he endured and stuff that was going on at Maz or stuff that he was dealing with that was very, very difficult as a person, emotionally and mentally. And it could become struggle porn if done too much. I was thinking it'd be useful to sort of take that from anything on this show and be like, oh, okay, we gotta really narrow in or dial in that section, because then you get quicker to the switch that Rand made. I would almost look at summarizing really quickly the stuff with Moz and staying with Rand, because as soon as you go to Moz, you start talking about Moz's product and acquiring companies and all these things, which is obviously part of what really went down.
Susan Boles [00:48:17]:
Good default decisions. But it's. How much of that, like, I need a few examples so that I can talk about default decisions, because that's. That's the foundational piece there.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:29]:
Yeah. So there's all these little framing devices you can try. So one I'm excited to offer you is imagine you do the alignment piece as entrepreneurs, we. This. But then this stuff happens. Okay, cool. Same page, Susan. Whether you're talking about Rand's version or you're, like, to the audience, you know, you know how this happens, and then this is difficult, and then, you know, it's harder to get.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:50]:
Yes, cool. And then you start talking about Rand's period of default decision making by pivoting Rand from wanting something to doing one very obvious default decision. Making one very obvious default decision. So find what that one thing was. So maybe it was raising venture money or something like that. Right. And then the way I would describe it is. So, yeah, so Rand was going through something similar that we all go through.
Jay Acunzo [00:49:16]:
He wanted to do this. It started out decently well. I mean, who wouldn't want to be Rand, right? Big audience and wizard of Maz. And his name, company name was Maz, caught up in his personal brand, seemed to be going, going great. Then he decided he needs to raise venture. And this is the bad thing that happened soon after raising venture, because raising venture for Rand represented something that wasn't necessarily aligned with the type of company he wanted to design. It represented the problem we all face, which I call default decisions. Default decisions are this definition, and they usually lead to not just the repercussions of the default decision, but a cascade of more.
Jay Acunzo [00:49:58]:
And so now you give yourself permission to go back into the story and just rattle off a few. Right? So, like, Rand did this, Maz did this, Rand did this, Maz did this. It was all they could do just to, like, keep the lights on or keep it going and not burn out and not fall apart because of this cascade of default decisions. So now you've taken a huge chunk of the story and collapsed it. Collapsed it, but without losing the power of it, because it is visceral.
Susan Boles [00:50:22]:
Agreed. I think I'm using the whole Moz analytics part to have more relatable default decisions. I think. But I think that can be done with just the raising money as a representative of something that's not values aligned.
Jay Acunzo [00:50:39]:
Right? Yeah, yeah. And then what also gives you airtime or runtime to, like, show random on the backend coming out of it and figure out what made him do so. Like, you could send your character to the absolute worst low point they'll ever experience. Or there could be an inciting incident or a fork in the road where they make the right choice versus most people make the wrong choice or whatever. But again, you're taking someone's lifetime and compressing it into your runtime, whether that's 30 seconds or 30 minutes of reading something. But the next piece of this would be finding if you rattle off the default decisions and send things downward, then figuring out when Rand realized what you see, which is, we have to solve for something different. It's not enough to have good intentions. We have to solve for something different.
Jay Acunzo [00:51:35]:
So when Rand started his second company, here are some things he did at first to ensure they would when he started to grow it. Here are some things they did or experienced to ensure that continued. And as we look to the future, here are the things that rand is thinking about or started to reap the benefits from. So you kind of have starting growing, maybe looking to the future because they haven't scaled yet. And then you come back to that delightful 02:00 p.m. quip. That's how you do this, that and the other thing. And maybe play video games every day at 02:00 p.m.
Jay Acunzo [00:52:08]:
right. So it's a shorter run through. Yes, but what I'm not saying is cut stuff. Well, I kind of am. I'm saying you gotta truncate it. Cause you don't wanna. If you cut it out completely, you lose part of the power of the story. Does that make sense?
Susan Boles [00:52:26]:
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I think the agitate is too much of the percentage. And I'm not really getting to the, my assertion, my premise. Like the good stuff. There's a lot of good stuff in the Sparktoro side of the story that I don't get to share because I'm spending so much time on the Maz part of the story. And the value of sharing the Maz part of the story is just that. It's the inciting incident for founding Spark Tauro the way that he did.
Jay Acunzo [00:52:57]:
Yes. Too much setup, not enough punchline. Right? And so like, I setup part, it absolutely does the trick. But finding the way to tighten it, I think, is a simple fact of finding ways to give yourself permission to like, move quicker through it versus not acknowledge it at all. And that's, I think, the big trade off business storytellers make. We have to thread this needle between. It is like the cliche motivational speaker or gladwellian author being like, here's the story. And that applies everywhere.
Jay Acunzo [00:53:31]:
And that's how it is. That's fact. Cause that's the one anecdote versus what we're trying to do is sort of like, this person went through what you're going through. Like soften your head trash or remove your head trash, or soften your resistance to this change I am proposing you to make. Cause I want you to acknowledge that you feel seen by this story, that you feel open to a new way, that I'm not here to just demand you change and, you know, make calm the new KPI. I'm here to show you somebody who did a version of that merely to get you to think a little differently or merely to admit that might be the exception, but at least it's a possibility, you know, versus like, that's how it all works. So I think long way of saying I don't think we should be fearful of tightening those moments, as long as we are adept at being generous, humble, willing to admit nuance might be the best word that all this story seeks to do is not give you the blueprint, but to open you up to a new possibility. That's what it's for.
Susan Boles [00:54:38]:
Yeah, I love that. Because I'm never going to tell you to do things. I'm not giving you a checklist. I want to expose you to new ideas so you can think about it and interpret it for yourself and your business in the way that's right for you. And that's going to be different for every single person and every single business.
Jay Acunzo [00:55:01]:
So we talked about getting another revolution of workshop in the story. I don't think I anticipated talking about that element, even though I've heard you tell this story before, have seen it several times, written out. Right. The well goes ever deeper. But I think we're as close as we've ever been to this is a thing that you really can sign your name to, because not only are you able to tighten it up, that then gives you liberty to teach. Right. Get to the good half of Rand's story, get to the calm part, and extract some more plain language insights on the back half. I have two final questions for you.
Jay Acunzo [00:55:32]:
So, one is, as somebody who does show up a lot on podcasts or in general, is interviewed, talk to me about what goes on in your head and your heart when you're asked for a story. To me, it always felt like stepping out on the wire without a safety net. And all I have is this balance beam called my example or my story. And it was like, I just gotta try it. Oh, no. What would it take for you to get there, for you to go on another podcast tomorrow where they're just gonna talk to you about comm as the new KPI. It's not a storytelling podcast. It's a.
Jay Acunzo [00:56:07]:
Susan is an expert, and Susan is awesome podcast. And they go, do you have an example? And you're like, who do I ever? What do we need to get you there?
Susan Boles [00:56:17]:
So my first instinct is panic, obviously. But then after that, I think the things that I need is the way that my brain thinks is I want to have the beats. The way that I am able to make things shorter or longer is to know what are the beats and what are the examples inside that I could pull from, from each of these beats. And that allows me to make it a little bit more plug and play a little bit more flexible. And so I think I'm almost there. I think I actually just need to take the story and turn it into here are the beats. And then the beats can go longer or shorter, but I know that these are the beats I have to hit every time.
Jay Acunzo [00:56:56]:
Right. And they're all the beats of your premise.
Susan Boles [00:56:58]:
Yeah. None of them are any different.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:01]:
Right. You know, Rand, like everybody else, has these goals, brings good intentions to it as an entrepreneur, then rand bumps up into default decisions, and maybe there were so many that you have access to that it ran long. So what are we going to do instead? Frame it as this got it started. And I'll give you a little more explanation as to what that first one was. But then I want you to know this led to a cascade, and here's a whole bunch more. Right. And then you could even make a joke out of it if it's your way. You know, not that it.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:27]:
This may or may not be the case, but you could list out five or six and be like. And that was just that summer, right? This went on for two years. Or, you know, like, you can find your own way forward and then really quickly get to the moment where your protagonist, in this case, Rand, realizes, I gotta make a change. The same way that people you speak to have to realize, I need what Susan here is here to teach me. Not that rand hired you, although he should. He should. He totally should. Rand, if you're listening, hire Susan.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:54]:
She's amazing. So, yeah, I'm with you. I think the beats are readily apparent to me, and it might make sense. I know this doesn't sound like the best time of your life, to force yourself to just not read it the next time you show up. Because then.
Susan Boles [00:58:15]:
And that's, I think, like, the beats allow me to. Nothing read it. Like, it's the transition between the. I have the story and I'm not. I haven't done enough reps or like, to be able to just tell the story in a lot of different ways. Offhand, I've mostly only written the story, so then having the beats allows me then to tell the story without reading it, because I feel confident doing that, but without, like, being able to look and go, okay, these are the beats that I'm supposed to be hitting to remind me I have a tendency to be a little long winded and rambly, and I follow rabbit holes.
Jay Acunzo [00:58:58]:
So, final question, when we started talking together was, I don't know about working together months ago. At this point, what change? When you think about, like, you have a well developed premise and you can now use that as a lens to see everything you do, the coherent circle around your platform, as you like to say it, and you have this emerging signature story and the method to gather and develop more. You're continuing and have been throughout this time to show up publicly. You didn't go in a hole somewhere to develop all this stuff?
Susan Boles [00:59:28]:
No.
Jay Acunzo [00:59:29]:
What are you seeing from people who are on the receiving end of these messages and stories and ideas of yours?
Susan Boles [00:59:38]:
So I think it's the part that I like the most is the I'm going to use your calm metric example because it's now my default calm metric example of unsolicited response rate being the response. Like to me that's the best example of a calm KPI because it's something that's measuring something that you actually want to measure.
Jay Acunzo [01:00:01]:
In other words, you are getting unprompted, unsolicited, not gamified responses to your work, right?
Susan Boles [01:00:08]:
So I'm not like optimizing for likes or clicks or engagement bait kind of things. I'm getting people saying, you saw me, I relate to this, this is helpful. And that for me is the most powerful measure of that. My work is meaningful or working, and it's honestly where calm is the new KPI started from. It started as just a tagline that people kept saying, this resonates with me. And that is why it ended up being the beginning part of the premise foundation.
Jay Acunzo [01:00:54]:
How stories happen was created by me, Jay Akonzo, and it's produced by share your genius cover art by Blake Inc. If you would like to become a stronger storyteller in your work, if you want to stand out easier and resonate deeper, and you want to do that through the power of your ideas, not the volume of your content, consider one project its my free newsletter playing favorites. I send it every other week. Why is it called playing favorites? Because I believe that we should all care more about residents than reach to grow our businesses and careers. In other words, dont be the best, be their favorite and do that by creating things the way only you can. Subscribe for free@jayaconzo.com you can support this show by leaving a rating and review. It actually does help new listeners hit play for the first time with more confidence. So if you're enjoying the show, please in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, leave a rating and review.
Jay Acunzo [01:01:47]:
I really appreciate that and I also appreciate the support of our sponsors and partners. You can learn more about them using the links in your show notes. And lastly, you can join fellow listeners and other creative entrepreneurs who have joined my membership@creatorkitchen.com. thank you so much for listening. Until next time, keep making what matters. When you matter more, you need to hustle for attention less. See ya.