I'm scratching my head that it was more than 2 weeks ago that I was in beautiful San Francisco for the Creative Freelancer Conference and HOW Design Live. The interim has been hectic: First, my little vintage recipe project on my ...
I’m just back from Edible Institute in Santa Barbara, a 4-day gathering of food magazine editors and publishers, foodies and locavores. My people. The conference had two parts: an informational meeting for folks who own and publish Edible magazines (there ...
With so much business-related interaction happening in the digital realm, you might wonder whether such old-fashioned niceties as a well-designed business card still matter. They do. A great business card design makes such a strong impression. These days, it's not so much ...
Once, while working on a Habitat for Humanity building project, one of the construction pros volunteering on the job told me, “You have good worksite awareness.” I took it as a compliment ... and then asked what he meant. Good worksite awareness ...
With Thanksgiving Day in our rear-view mirror, the subject of gratitude still feels relevant. We typically think of gratitude in a personal sense—as in, feeling thankful for our health and our family. For a moment, let’s turn that gratitude toward ...
As an independent creative professional, I share a conundrum with many of my peers: How to lend my creative writing services to causes that I support in a way that's valuable to them and sustainable for me. I explored the subject ...
You remember “pink slime,” right? Earlier this year, this PR fiasco in the food industry revealed a huge communication challenge (or, let’s call it an opportunity) for both brands and consumers. And the lesson goes beyond the food industry. (A refresher: ...
One of the biggest (and most difficult) lessons I've learned in my first year and change as the owner of a small creative business is the value of patience. I don't have much of it, frankly. But I need more of ...
I returned from the Creative Freelancer Conference in June to face a week packed with project deadlines. But my project-planning calendar showed me that I the following two weeks were fairly light project-wise. And that two-week window gave me the ...
If you're a creative entrepreneur like me, you know how difficult it is to open up space in your day/week/month for business tasks. Client projects take precedence, of course, and we get busy and pretty soon we lose sight of ...