Lots of new friends this week! There's a solid chance you're here via a recommendation from my friend Stew Fortier. Welcome!

Quick note: Join Khe Hy's and my productivity webinar tomorrow (er, Tuesday, March 1). He's gonna show me how to instantly level up my focus and output. I will probably have an existential crisis on video, and you'll get a free Notion template.

🌶 Counterintuitive marketing gets you better ROI

One of the greatest ironies about content is that most of the content worth talking about wasn't created with an SEO strategy.

Counterintuitive to what we're taught about content marketing: create content with high-volume keywords and low competition!

Let's be clear. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with an SEO-driven strategy. It just isn't the right fit for every marketing goal.

In my opinion, an ideal marketing strategy is simple. For example: do everything in service to your audience.

This approach caters to your audience’s needs, serves them when they’re ready, and reaches them where they already are.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. And while acting in service to one’s audience may sound obvious, in practice, it’s not all straightforward. Counterintuitive strategies — like added friction when ensuring you’re reaching the right people, or freely giving value without collecting people’s data — may sound like bad ideas, yet are often the right approach.

​Here are a bunch of principles and examples to prove it.

🥇 Are you a first-order reader?

My friend Stew wrote a post this weekend about the importance of foundational sources, and how sometimes, the boring ol' PDF will teach you tons more than all the simple attempts to explain it. A taste:

It got me thinking. In this gluttonous digital age, when we can literally be spoon-fed Twitter threads that explain other content... and then spoon-fed threads that round up other threads... are we even learning anything at all?

Maybe all we're learning is the direct-response marketing version of actually-good source content. It's loaded with all the juicy bits, but we lack the context to put them into actionable mental models* that make the ideas stick.

This is another great irony: on a platform where threads about mental models do crazily, virally well, we're probably killing our own brain cells by gobbling up all these "frameworks" and then moving onto the next dopamine buffet*.

Stew has a point. At least for me. I've been reducing my Twitter intake lately, diversifying the content I'm creating, and now the next step is refocusing my information intake to primary sources. Back to books, long-form essays, and original research I go.

And by the way, Stew Fortier is one of my favorite internet writers. He's the co-founder and CTO of writing community Foster, a community builder, and he writes about hard-earned lessons along the way. I highly recommend subscribing to his newsletter.

*It's late, I'm tired, and my 11pm brain is chuckling at the mental model and Buffett > buffet puns. I'm sure when I see this email again in the morning, I'll regret this ridiculousness.

💜 The Menu is back with Brianne Fleming!

My friend Brianne Fleming, marketing professor and host of the weekly #PopChat discussion on Twitter is joining me this Friday at 11am PST for the Menu!

Brianne's unique approach to teaching marketing is that she does so through the lens of pop culture across the ages. We'll be chatting about that, and possibly sampling our favorite foods from our childhoods in the 1990s. Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can get the notification when we go live!

🇺🇦 Petits Fours: Ukraine

🔹 The Snake Island soldiers are still alive. You probably saw that video in which a Russian warship asked the 13 Ukrainian soldiers to surrender... and the soldiers told them to go f*** themselves. They were presumed dead.

🔹 Perhaps the best thing you can do right now is donate money. Data scientist Andrew Therriault explains why.

🔹 Speaking of donations, Jesse Pujji is matching them for up to $10,000. Check out details here, along with organizations to consider.

🔹 We have a front-row seat to all of the events in Ukraine unfolding in real-time. It's meta-historic. Both the conflict and our information availability of it. Trung Phan, who might be the world's greatest internet consumer and creator, breaks it down.

🍹 Skinny Margaritas (and watch me get roasted)

I asked my friend Khe Hy (writer/owner of RadReads, Notion ambassador, and instructor of the super popular course, Supercharge Your Productivity) for a productivity consultation and we decided to turn it into a free webinar. It's on Tuesday, March 1, 12:30pm PST, and you can sign up here.

Khe also has the best skinny margarita recipe, which I made last week:

• Juice of 2 limes
• 2 oz of tequila (ideally Casamigos Blanco
• Tiny splash triple sec (or Giffard)
• A squirt of agave
• And a splash of seltzer (Topo Chico)

Shake ingredients in a shaker and serve over ice.

And when you have time, read the first-order version of this, which is one of Khe's beautiful essays. 😉

Hope to see you at the webinar!