Hi friends! I've been pretty heads down with my Content Marketing 201 course which sold out in just 7 days. If you're considering joining the next cohort be sure to join the wait list so that you can secure a special discount.

👯‍♂️ Building an audience sounds douche-y... no?

Friends in the semi-private communities I'm in — Foster, Write of Passage, Maven, and My Secret Writing Club — have asked how I grew my Twitter following from 1K to 60K in a year. So I decided to hosted a secret webinar to share my learnings. And you can watch the secret replay. (Shoutout to my friends Karaminder and Christin who managed this event!)

I broke down the ickiness of audience building and suggested a reframe. Perhaps it'll resonate with you:

When people feel gross about building an audience, it's often because they feel like they're chasing status, fame, power, or virality. (Or some combination of those.)

But what if we thought about it differently?

Instead of status... maybe you want a network to increase serendipity and opportunity.

Instead of fame... you want a larger community of friends and intellectual peers.

Instead of power... you want greater leverage in your career.

Instead of virality... you want resonance of your ideas.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with wanting any of the things I listed. If you want fame, that's great! I just think audience building in general gets an unfairly bad reputation that does more to discourage well-meaning people.

When we pile onto that negative sentiment with eyerolls and shitposts, we're doing more harm than good. Because the people who are afraid to get started will never get started. And the people who are further along don't care what the haters think.

🏈 Nobody asked, but my fave Super Bowl ad is...

... Chevrolet's shot-for-shot remake of the Sopranos intro with Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler. It is excellent because:

It uses tried-and-true car commercial tactics but with a novel spin: Shots or angles of the car, the open road, local scenery — those are all things car commercials already do. But this time it's in the Sopranos world that we already know. Brilliant. Nostalgic.

Speaking of nostalgia, it wasn't cheesy: Some voiceovers in car commercials harken back to some time or place we're supposed to wish we were in. Snore. But because it's the Sopranos theme, no voiceover is needed. Just the iconic theme song. Now we're nostalgic for one of the greatest shows of all time.

It's progressive: Of course, misogyny is a clear theme in the Sopranos. But this time we get to see a progressive version of the intro in a way that respects the show — badass grown woman Meadow Soprano (who was always headstrong!) getting to her destination. In a dope-looking car that's good for the environment. And not smoking a cigar, unlike her dad. 🙃

Easter eggs abound for fans: Compare it against the original intro and you'll see in Anthony's world, he drives past a graveyard. In Meadow's world, she drives past a playground. The original intro ends with Anthony arriving home, at his house. The commercial ends with Meadow arriving home — but home is with her brother. And finally, Meadow parallel parks easily, a subtle nod to the show's finale. (I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I found.)

The acting was good: C'mon. That hug, and those tears in Meadow Soprano's eyes? Your heartstrings were tugged too.

Anyway, it was brilliant. And I'm furious Adweek excluded it from their top 10 list.

My two other favorite commercials were the absurd Pringles ad (way underrated!), and the delightful Squarespace ad.

🎥 The Menu Show: We were wrong...

No episode this week. I need the time back on my calendar. But in the meantime, check out past episodes...

​Why you shouldn't sleep on LinkedIn and SnapChat: Jenny Li Fowler, who heads social media at MIT, joined the show to talk about social media, drink whiskey with me, and dish on the social media opinions we were once wrong about.

​We were wrong about career success: Author of "The Pathless Path" Paul Millerd stopped by to show off some sick yo-yo tricks (seriously) and we had a frank discussion about the lesser known things about career success — like why it's not a bad thing to say that sometimes, you should work really hard.

​Stop doing those $10 tasks and focus on $10K work instead: Khe Hy, writer and creator of the Supercharge Your Productivity course taught me his skinny margarita recipe and the concept of $10K work. (Hint: Say your goal is to get healthy so you can live longer. $10K work might not be running marathons. It might be getting better sleep, which is associated with longevity.)

🧁 Petits Fours

Four bite-sized blurbs to content worth consuming.

🔸 A pretty wild social engineering scam in the web3 world [thread]: Alright, so this person definitely shouldn't have had $160 million of ETH on their public ENS wallet. But still, a great cautionary tale about the cleverness of social engineering. I'm no crypto expert, so I appreciated that that thread was digestible.

🔹 It's your friends who break your heart: I didn't finish reading that essay yet. 😂 (I'm really busy lately!) But this line stuck with me: "I was wary of your clear pattern of forming mutually idolatrous relationships with women who you cast in a particular role in your life only to later castigate."

🔸 92 email hacks: a cheat sheet for achieving inbox zero: Alright, I didn't read that either. (I'm on a roll!) Though I need to because I am in productivity hell. 4 email addresses. 2 calendars. Plus the need to coordinate with my husband's calendar. So far, I've taken the first step of doing a 7-day free trial with SavvyCal. Oh, and my friend Claire wrote that blog post so I know it'll be great.

🔹 Marketers need to chill [tweet]: Hahahaha.

🐓 Buffalo Wings: Oil-Free and Oven-Roasted!

I know, this recipe would've been useful yesterday.

• 1 pound chicken wings (I had 14 total)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1/4 cup Frank's Red Hot Sauce

1. Using paper towels, pat dry chicken wings. Mix baking powder and salt in a large bowl, and toss in the wings to coat. Arrange wings on wire rack. Place wire rack on a baking sheet, and allow to rest, uncovered, at least 3 hours (and up to 24 hours) in fridge.

2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cook wings (on the wire rack on the baking sheet) for 20 minutes, skin side up. Flip wings and continue to cook until crisp and golden brown, 15-20 minutes longer.

3. Meanwhile, combine butter, honey and hot sauce in small saucepan and cook over low heat, whisking until combined. Transfer wings to large bowl, add sauce, toss to thoroughly coat, and serve immediately with whatever sauces and fix-ins you want.

P.S. You read this right. There's no oil or fat used in cooking the wings!

💝 Happy Valentine's Day!

The only reason I remembered was that I was looking for a heart emoji for this subheader and the heart-wrapped-in-bow gave me Valentine's Day vibes.

Here's a hot take: Valentine's Day is probably a good thing. Isn't it nice that it's on all of our calendars to take a day to celebrate the person we love?

Maybe take a moment to do something special for the person you love most.

And hopefully that person is you.