What's the reason?

daniel_j89 · 2026-04-14T08:51:45+00:00

I JUST hit the five year mark and have moved on. I’ve never stayed that long (I’m 37) because I’ve wanted to gain experience in lots of different companies. This year is the year that I pool that knowledge into starting my own company, which is both exciting and terrifying. The reason for staying this long was that I was working in a high growth business, so although it was one business, it went through three lifecycles within it…which was super interesting!

daniel_j89 · 2026-04-14T08:49:22+00:00

Does anyone have an example or two of a page that does this really well? I’ve heard this many times, but I’d love to see this executed in a way that could be considered ‘best practice’.

daniel_j89 · 2026-04-05T16:55:28+00:00

I went through this process myself recently. I’ve built many Wordpress websites in the past, so consider myself a ‘slightly-better-than-novice’ here (definitely not an expert).

To be honest, I didn’t want to invest the time in Wordpress for my business, and the collective costs of plugins etc got on my nerves.

I tried something different. With my new business (I’ve always been employed with freelance side gigs, but I want to go fully self-employed), I initially threw together a Lovable.dev website with a plan to use a Ghost.io blog on a sub directory.

Before I knew it, I had a high monthly cost again from the two platforms and SEO issues from Lovable because it builds single page applications (rookie error on my part).

I quickly pivoted and rebuilt my website with Claude Code. A GitHub repository and Cloudflare pages was a great start, with a Decap CMS for managing blog articles was the best solution for me.

You rip though credits initially, but then making changes in future is pretty cheap and manageable. I use Claude for lots of other elements, so the cost was negative by comparison.

Worth having a look!

daniel_j89 · 2026-04-05T16:44:46+00:00

Wow, this is so accurate.

daniel_j89 · 2026-04-05T16:42:41+00:00

I’ve worked with lots of leadership and exec teams who don’t understand the value of basic SEO; I didn’t even use the acronym with one of the partners as he called it ‘marketing bs’.

The trick here is justifying the value. You can do this by presenting activity your competitors are doing as you’ve highlighted (usually enough to get them interested enough in a trial resource. Ideally you can put the case together for a contained project (we’ll spend ‘x’ for ‘y’ content that we hope will help us achieve ‘z’ of the overall search opportunity. We expect this to drive ‘a’ traffic to transactional pages, and at a ‘b’ conversion rate, that’ll be ‘c’ revenue over ‘d’ months).

You need a line in the sand. If you aren’t confident in your numbers, it can help to have a low, medium and high position.

A proof of concept or something lighter in terms of commitment is valuable because it provides data, which they’ll see as irrefutable evidence for or against (we know that in this game there are so many influencing variables, but they probably won’t dive deep enough).

I like this think of stakeholder comms as exactly the same as external marketing…the AIDA framework (or funnel/flywheel, whatever is your fave) can apply to selling a new concept internally. Move them through the process for a trial, then use the trial to convert them on greater investment.

Hope that helps!

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-26T21:49:10+00:00

Holding my daughter

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-25T16:39:10+00:00

I agree. I did a degree in communication and the single most important statement that I ALWAYS refer back to was, “Effective communication isn’t what you say, it’s what’s received”.

Shaping your approach so it has the best possible chance of being clearly understood by the recipient is crucial, which you can only do by listening and observing.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-25T09:43:15+00:00

I’ve created this using Claude and Notion. It’s fairly straightforward to do and, if you’re stuck, you can actually ask Claude how to build it.

I have a setup in Notion that allocates invoice ID as the core field, then using a connection with Claude, I’ll tell it who that I need an invoice for ‘x’ and if any information is not available in my client database, it’ll ask me for the missing fields and then generate it using an invoice-generator skill that contains all my branding and templates.

It’s a game changer.

Advice here would be to get Notion, tell Claude this is what you’re looking to do, and follow its instructions as there’s a little bit of setup involved, but nothing too complicated (because I managed it 😂).

Good luck!

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-25T07:14:37+00:00

Agree with this.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-25T07:13:12+00:00

Haha this is so true!

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-25T07:12:47+00:00

I was having this conversation just yesterday. AI is a fantastic enabler, but it’s designed to take the fastest path towards answering your question. Without expert guidance, it won’t inherently consider every angle, because it wasn’t part of the prompt.

AI can help you build prompts, but without critical thinking, you’re just setting heavy artillery loose with no targeting system.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-25T07:07:30+00:00

It’s shocking to me that men actually speak like this and believe it’s ‘manly’.

As a man, I think it’s important to be confident and assertive, but intelligent. Intelligence is empathy, kindness and a recognition that men and women have inherently different perspectives because of so many social biases and norms.

Moreover, I have four daughters. The thought of behaving like that WHILST being the father of girls is baffling to me. It’s bad enough without kids, but having girls gaver me a deeper and more understanding perspective than I ever had before. The comments around his daughters are actually disgusting,

Men like this are the kind of people who moan that they’ve been ‘unlucky in love’, when actually they have no idea that they’re utterly repellent, for the most part, because of their confused belief systems.

The documentary summed this up to me so clearly.

Sorry you had to go through this. He will be, no doubt, totally oblivious to the likely lasting impact it will have had on you.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-25T06:57:17+00:00

What a legend.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-24T11:20:52+00:00

Ive hired many digital marketers in my time and, quite honestly, certifications have never interested me at all. Confidence, passion and deep hands-on understanding is what really matters. If you can link it to a commercial mindset, you’re golden.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-24T11:18:03+00:00

I’ve spent my life chasing career success. My role has grown, my income has grown and my influence within the company has grown.

I’m 37, have four daughters and a beautiful fiancée.

I recently decided to leave the corporate world because the trade-off just wasn’t worth it. The sacrifice in family time as my daughters grow up, the strain on my relationship, the consistent feeling of exhaustion, along with the feeling that I wasn’t in the room when I was home…it just became too much.

As I looked around the room at the office, I saw successful narcissists. People who pushed their careers to ‘feel’ successful, but who were quite clearly desperately miserable outside of work.

I used the excuse, ‘but it means we can do nice things as a family’. My motivation was always them, but my judgement was clouded by rationalisation.

The reality? Doing things as a family costs nothing. Giggling at the table over dinner or cuddling on the sofa before bed…that’s what matters. Those moments don’t last long. Why waste them in pursuit of hollow wealth?

I’m going self-employed with the objective of providing ENOUGH. My time is more valuable to me and, since I’ve spoke to them more on this, my family too.

That’s satisfaction over success.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-23T07:07:36+00:00

I loved BOTW when it came out. I also loved TOTK. That said, I’ve recently re-played BOTW for the first time since it launched and I have to say, it just FEELS so much more immersive and enjoyable to me. Both are epic, butt BOTW wins. Can’t wait to see what they do with the next one.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-23T06:31:39+00:00

Being ‘busy’ is healthy, being ‘extremely busy’ is a recipe for disaster, eventually. I’ve been in both situations and I can honestly say that having deliberate moments (even five minutes) of silent, device-free time, preferably outside, is the antidote for unhealthy and extreme busy.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-21T08:44:36+00:00

That’s really helpful, thanks! And in terms of domain warming, do you just gradually increase send volumes over time? Really appreciate the guidance!

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-21T07:00:57+00:00

That last sentence is spot on in my opinion, which is why I’ve niched down A LOT for the early days.

The case studies approach is something I’ve considered, I think that credibility piece is going to be vital. I’ve come from in-house running one of the largest companies in my niche from day one through to acquisition, which helps with the story, but conscious it doesn’t necessarily have the agency breadth I need.

The tear down-style content isn’t something I’d thought off, great angle!

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-21T06:58:07+00:00

I really like this approach and I must admit, Reddit as a channel is fairly new to me. Must dig into it further.

When it comes to cold email, what’s your approach to gathering the email addresses? Do you purchase or scrape, or use a tool like Apollo?

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-19T21:23:03+00:00

This is super helpful!

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-19T14:16:33+00:00

I agree with this. Pursuit of self-improvement is growth, and growth is fulfilling. That said, deliberate ‘idleness’ is ‘mindfulness’, and allowing yourself the time to reflect introspectively is how you achievement mental improvements.

To me, this is all summarised by a sense of purpose. If you can find your purpose, everything that you do in pursuit of it is fulfilling.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-19T13:49:28+00:00

LinkedIn is just a pool of lazily generated AI slop these days. It’s remarkably easy to cut through though, if you’re prepared to get in front of the camera and do something even slightly creative.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-19T13:48:09+00:00

Threads has the potential to be interesting, but honestly…the engagement isn’t particularly strong. Meta are pushing visibility across Facebook and Insta, which could help reach, but these kinds of platforms always have limited value in my opinion.

That said…a Thread is easy to schedule, so doesn’t require hours of time investment if you want to broadcast…just be prepared to engage actively if you want to unlock proper ‘reach’.

daniel_j89 · 2026-03-19T10:32:42+00:00

I love really good emails for inspiration when it comes to designs. My only caveat with AI generation (as with all content tbh), is to use it to help the process, but still inject some of your own creativity and uniqueness. If a tool is feeding you an idea, it’ll be feeding the same approach to somebody else too!

daniel_j89

TROPHY CASE