Most Recent Blog Posts
Pondering Newsletter Cancelation?
Publishing a newsletter is hard work. Whether you publish weekly or monthly or quarterly, there’s research and writing, inspiration-finding, editing and layout to do.
And though the rewards are great, sometimes, that’s just not enough. You know I think newsletters are amazing--and you know I enjoy spending this time with you each week. I love the emails you send me. Your vote of confidence when you forward your issue, or recommend someone read NIF, that means a great deal to me. And, of course, the predictable Monday-morning *sales* boost isn’t exactly annoying.
But, sometimes I find myself wondering if I could put the time I spend on NIF to better use. I worry that I’ll run out of ideas, burn myself out on writing altogether, and start to be dreadfully dull. Making it Rain Inspiration: Spinning Your Wheels in Mud?
Why Wells Fargo Needs a New Copywriter ASAP
Apparently, I recently neglected to celebrate an "important" anniversary: the anniversary of my home financing. My home loan has been huffy the last few days, heaving big sighs and refusing to speak to me except to accuse me of being forgetful and uncaring.
Think that's just me talking crazy? Normally, I'd agree with you, except I've seen the mailer. See, this weekend Wells Fargo sent me a self mailer that began: "You may not realize it, but you have reason to celebrate! It's the anniversary of your home financing." Spending the Night in an Irish Cemetery? Don’t do this…
It was a balmy summer evening and I was wandering through a small town in Ireland with three friends several years ago. When we were about a mile outside of the town limits, we came upon an old gated cemetery. Because it was still quite light (although it was after 10 p.m.), the atmosphere was anything but scary, so what was there to do but make things a bit scarier?
So, we sat under a big tree, and pulled the scariest stories we knew from our memories. Most of them, in any other environment, weren't exactly scary. There was the one about the guy with the hook for a hand and the tale about the babysitter, and many others I don't recall.
As it grew later and later, the fog rolled in, and the sky darkened. There was a full moon that night, and it cast its eerie, fog-blurred glow onto the headstones, and cast shadows through the branches of the tree we sat beneath. The wind picked up just the slightest bit, and knocked the branches against one another. And we continued to tell our scary campfire stories. Free Printable Perpetual Calendar for You
I've been searching for a fantastic perpetual calendar for my new office. Unfortunately, I seem to have picked an exceptionally unpopular color scheme or something because I couldn't find anything that was quite right. So, I did what any self respecting web designer would do--I made my own. And I packed it all into a pdf so you can have a copy too.
Content may be King, But it Won’t Rule Alone
Many moons ago, I wrote a piece about telegrams and a potential "return to terse" (how horrible is it to quote yourself, I wonder...).
Since I got started Twittering over the last two weeks, I'm both delighted and appalled at just what you can actually do with 140 characters. Delighted because, hey, it's kinda fun to pare something down to as few words as possible. Appalled because I find myself abbreviating great (gr8) and committing other "sins" of spelling and grammar all in the pursuit of shaving off a few extra letters.
And, as I'm practicing this new format of connecting with people, I've realized that though the medium might change, the formula stays the same. Unfortunately, that formula is often oversimplified as the oft-repeated: Content is King. We Get it Right… On the Third Try
Bet you didn't know that Thrive Your Tribe isn't the only company doing fabulous design work for WordPress based blogs, sites, and HTML email newsletters! But, since we do, in fact, have some wonderful competition, here's why you would hire us instead of the other guys:
We get it right. Eventually.
Killer benefit, isn't it? I mean, who wouldn't want to work with a company that, sooner or later, stumbles on the gorgeous design that catches your eye?
Oh, right--most people! You're busy. You don't have time for endless rounds of trial and error. So, perhaps you do think it would be great to find a company that promises to get it right right out of the gate. Making it Rain Inspiration: Take the Test
Should you self-destruct your tribe?
Two people buy fixer-upper homes. Both homes are in rough condition. In one of the bedrooms, each home has several enormous holes in the drywall around the closet.
If Ben decides to patch the holes, while Leslie decides to pull the drywall off the 8' of wall and replace it, who's likely to be done faster with the more seamless job?
That sounds like those old math word problems, doesn't it ;-). In my experience, it's Leslie. Most people can't patch a hole in drywall worth beans, so when they patch several large holes, the wall nearly always looks lumpy; it's almost always easier to start from scratch. Sure, it seems like it'd be easier to work on the holes one at a time, but that's very seldom the case.
What on earth does a home improvement project have to do with your tribe? Making it Rain Inspiration: Turn off the forecast
Here we are, in the middle of winter in North Carolina, and the weather has been gloomy, gloomy, gloomy! Sure, there's been some rain, but it's mostly just been cold and cloudy. Every night, I check the weather forecast to see what to expect tomorrow, hoping it won't be more of the same. Now something you only know about North Carolina if you've lived here for awhile is this: the weather is impossible to forecast here.
I'm a Santa Barbara, California girl. I'm used to the forecasters promising sunshine and temps in the 70s all week... And being right. But, even when I lived in Arizona, where the weather was a bit more adventurous, they were pretty accurate much of the time. Here in North Carolina, though, they get it right every 8th day of the week or so ;-).
So, whether the forecast is for sunshine, rain, or clouds, it really doesn't matter. My checking the forecast does little except give me false hope. Because the reality is this: tomorrow, the weather will be as it is. No more, no less. 
