A Mentoring Experiment, Video Content, and Other News
A lot changes from week to week behind the scenes here, but I’m always working on finding better ways to support my clients as they discover the marketing solutions that feel right for them. I’ve been experimenting with Discord, preparing some educational videos, and finding new questions to answer. Here’s a look at what’s been in the works during the first quarter of 2025 and what you can look forward to.
Experimenting with Mentoring over Discord
Being a stay-at-home parent with a little one makes consistently scheduling one-on-one calls tricky for both me and my clients who also have children. Additionally, many people work other jobs to pay their bills and fund their creative work. I wanted to find a way to keep conversations going with my clients that was more immediate than email, but with more boundaries than texting.
Since I use Discord a lot, I decided to experiment with holding mentoring conversations on that platform.
The beauty of this setup is we can keep our conversations organized with different channels for things like accountability check-ins, mentoring, and critique requests. It also lets us maintain the rhythm of deep conversation while respecting the boundaries of our respective daily responsibilities.
Since Discord servers come with a voice channel, it’s easy to hop on a call if needed. And with all our conversations taking place over text, it’s easy for my clients and me to refer back to earlier conversations.
Video Lessons Coming Soon
Creating video courses and offering on-demand learning options has been one of my goals for over a year, and I’m excited to share that I’ve reached a point where I can say they are officially coming.
I’ve known for a long time what topics I want to cover, but I was able to prioritize which lessons to create first thanks to my clients, my social media followers, and emailed questions. The people who come to me for help often have similar questions about where to begin and how to develop a deeper understanding of topics with which they are somewhat familiar.
A lot of creatives share the desire to learn how to do things on their own as much as possible before they’re ready to invest in one-on-one support to make it better. I’m really looking forward to when I can announce more details.
Free Resources on Instagram
The latest big algorithm update for Instagram is causing a lot of frustration. The idea behind pushing Reels content to more non-followers is to help smaller accounts grow their following. However, there are many complaints on how this is actually affecting people who use Instagram for their marketing.
Those with larger accounts have pointed out these changes are meant to benefit smaller accounts, but then punish them by decreasing their reach once they’ve grown too big.
Many, including myself, find it demoralizing that the platform pushes you to create content specifically to reach non-followers, convert them to followers, then continually restricts how much of your content gets shown to those followers.
In defiance of that, I’ve decided all of my social media content for April will be entirely focused on talking to my existing audience. I’ve paused creating anything to promote my mentorship. Instead, I’m going to create bite-sized resources to answer the questions and challenges people send me.
What This Quarter Taught Me
There’s always a lot of external pressure to do more more more. And it often comes with the urgency to do it all right now. But to make noticeable progress with measurable success — whether it’s with social media growth, website construction, SEO strategy, or copywriting — doing less is often the answer.
Pick one thing. Get better at just that one thing.
It’s amazing how quickly you see results when you let yourself be great at one thing and okay at everything else. (For now. Until it’s time to move on to the next one thing to become great at.)
