Joel K.'s Recent LinkedIn Posts

Here are the things that happened to / for me this year: 1. I took a contract that has me effectively in-house. I am not allowed to talk about where this is right now (for real). Needless to say: the right team, opportunity, and (OK, I admit it) numbers all hit my desk in one tight package, and it was an easy "yes." After a season of building — and with small children in my life to nurture — I cannot tell you how nice it is to be able to shut my laptop and be DONE for the day. Don't let anyone tell you that you need to be building all the time. Don't let yourself feel guilty if that's not your story for awhile. These are reminders for me. 2. I consulted with over 20 entrepreneurs on calls. From dynamic duos to solopreneurs to small teams, I got to connect with people building amazing things and weigh in on how they could grow, scale, and find more balance. I realize there's so much gross/greasy/charlatan bullshit around coaching, but I really threw myself into making this valuable for them, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. I would like to continue to do more of this as it brings me a lot of joy. 3. I shelled out over $60,000 for a roof repair. I am now, unironically, trying to plan out a sure shot $60K side hustle as a fully employed Dad of three. 4. I started, then fell off the planet on, a newsletter. If you are a paid subscriber to Calm Dads, I'm going to refund you out of embarrassment, quite frankly. I'm still in love with the idea, but this year proved way too much for me to manage and give that my meaningful attention. I also think I made it very hard on myself: put pressure on it to make it amazing/definitive/deep from day one. I am learning to let V1s be V1s. 5. I succeeded (mostly) at starting a once-monthly event called "THE BOYS" where I get together with many of my (Male) friends to breathe the same air and stay connected. I do the planning, they reserve the recurring date on their calendar. This was one of the simplest and most meaningful things I did, and it led to so many great things, and so much joy for me. 6. I paid for a roof, so I did not pay for a new website. I really do need one. Mine is so bad. I'll get there. 7. I booked a speaking gig for 2026. I'll be at Social Media Marketing World 2026 in Anaheim giving an unabridged 90 minute workshop on customer storytelling and processes. If that sounds fun to you, please come and hang out. 8. I celebrated a decade of marriage. That's not nothin'. 9. I stopped feeling continuous nerve pain where I shouldn't be feeling that sort of thing. That's not nothin'. 10. I got a teeny, tiny bit better at not trying to make everyone happy and not caring so much about what everyone thinks or whether or not I'm relevant to some big dumb industry or if people would buy something if I put it out there. But not enough to not write this post, I guess. Anyways Merry Christmas, shut off your computer.

Incredible. No notes.

I am older. Congratulate me or I’m going to write a post about all the stuff I’ve learned in 38 years and nobody wants that.

The best thing I can give anyone on "Giving Tuesday" is a recommendation for people you can hire without fear. So here we go: 1. Samar Owais is now an OG of email marketing and is exceptional for lifecycle, conversion, and all that entails. 2. Suneet Bhatt met me at a low and helped me find direction and momentum after selling Case Study Buddy. His program is almost as amazing as he is. 3. Matthew Rawle is a great guy who helps great companies build great owned media channels (newsletters, podcasts) - I want good things for him. 4. Meg Kendall and Amelia Zimmerman are tops for anything content related to climate tech/carbon content marketing, messaging, strategy. 5. Andrew D. is a copywriter with an engineering degree and the only logical hire for the water industry. 6. Andrew Yedlin can help your landing pages convert like nobody's business. Except... I guess... his. 7. Chris Silvestri is one of very few people I actively refer for copy. That means something. 8. Lianna Patch just launched an incredible deck to make your writing more fun (buy it!) and is also at the top my copy shortlist. 9. Jude Charles is the best filmmaker on the planet. 10. Nikita Morell is an absolute force and the go-to for copy for builders and architects. 11. Mary Knowles Tindall and her team do incredible content for high-growth B2B healthcare brands - so if that's you, she's your gal. 12. Chris Marin and his team are incredibly sound for cold outreach; great person as well. This list is nowhere near exhaustive and I will add to it in the comments as more people come to mind. Please feel free to do the same -- just, not for yourself (respectfully.)

Nothing really prepared me for the moment I looked up and realized I was the “old guy” on the team.

Never tell a copywriter how long something should take

A lesson that has cost me: too much of a good thing is still too much. When you’re consulting, editing, giving feedback, there’s a tendency to think the more insight you offer, the better. More comments. More corrections. More ideas, angles, opportunities. “Thud” factor. But more often than not, going deep and exhaustive only overwhelms. It gives the client or the team you’re supporting a new problem; too much to filter, to implement, to consider. Unless you own execution, better to hold back, prioritize, share just a couple things to move the project or problem ahead a little bit. Having a lot to share feels good. It just doesn’t usually work as well as distilling things down into a couple key progress points and shutting up for the moment.

One of my favorite creators only does two videos a year. And won’t change that for anybody but himself. Worth a watch. https://lnkd.in/grtFmW6D

Made some… slight upgrades to my office setup. PC? Facebook marketplace. Didn’t get knifed. Didn’t get conned. Found the Mr. Rogers of gaming machines; a 65+ year old who has 30 years of IT experience and builds these as a challenge to himself and to stay current, then sells them. Got it for less than the cost of the parts, plus manufacturer’s warranty on all of the components. Monitor? Facebook marketplace. Also not knifed. Also not scammed. Bought it from someone who got it as a gift and would rather have the cash, runs a Pokémon card shop so the “gift” might’ve meant it was stolen and exchanged for cards. Jury is out. Regardless, got it for less than half of its retail price, factory sealed in the box. Got records of transaction for both, for accounting purposes. Together, saved myself $1,250+ under retail. Merry Christmas to me. Joyeux Joel.

Tonight I dug into my storage space and pulled out some things I haven’t touched for more or less 10 years. My guitars. My pedal board. My gigantic amp stack. It was a rush of nostalgia, memories, crystal clear mental pictures of the shows we played, the friends I made, and how good it felt to just… create. Not through a prompt. But within my own hackneyed limitations, coming up with something I was excited about and gave me a shiver down my spine and sharing that with people. And creating WITH people. Friends, in a basement, playing around and hunting for something… feeling elated when it found you. Dialling in our tone, finding our sound and voice, struggling through the highs and lows of all that came with trying to create. I remembered how good it felt for people to love what we created. And it reminded me of why I fell in love with writing: the amazing feeling of affirmation when my fourth grade teacher told me I was good at it. The thrill of writing my own stories and comic books and showing them to people. Later, the pride that came with having people I respected smile on and pay for my work. How much a part of me that is and has been for so long. Maybe the nostalgic ranting of someone the world is passing by, but I miss what it meant. I played some songs for my kids. And if only for a moment, a little bit of it came back.

I found a box of the books I self-published about my job as an accounting gopher with a bunch of Russian and Belarusian women in 2009 (or so.) It’s full of some now-dated jokes and from that era, and I have (sadly) matured as a human being, but a lot of it still holds up. I might just distribute them to thrift stores across the country with wild inscriptions like “To Dolly, thank you for all the support and love. Keep singing - it might take you somewhere one day.” Or “Vladimir - enjoy the book you sweet little guy! Thanks for the Russian lessons.”

My most used “swag” from companies/events: 1. A mini cooler from a conference by 97th floor. It gets use on every single road trip. The catch is that this actually came from the hotel and not the company, but I’m counting it. 2. Keep cups from Unbounce and Whitespark - regular rotation. 3. Every Moz shirt since 2018 is still going hard in the gym, except one that became a seat cover to keep my kids’ dirty feet off the headrest. 4. Yeti mugs. So many yeti mugs. Too many yeti mugs. But they all get used. 5. The Roger stuffy from Moz has made it through all three kids. It mostly gets thrown around in battles, but still. 6. Unbounce turned my family on to smoked salt and now we always have it in the house. 8. I got a little knitted bag from 97th floor’s event that is wildly useful for cords when travelling. 9. I also got a Fjallraven backpack from that same 97th floor event that my son uses for school, so that event basically crushed it. 10. It’s rad when there are headshot stations set up so you can have something that isn’t 10,000 years old. Best gift I ever got for a referral was a Garmin Fenix 6 watch from Jennifer Havice - I still wear it daily and it’s improved my life. My friend Lianna has also sent me incredible books and even smuggled beer into Canada so that’s way up there. And someone got me a meat subscription so that was amazing too. How about you?

A reminder that to these guys, you are not a person. You are a data point with a wallet; an obstacle to be engineered out.

Never tell a copywriter how long something should take

When you run a business, you get to make choices. Choices like: "What kind of impact do we want to have?" And "What sorts of things do we want to make possible for the world? I hope if you're ever in a position to, you will choose better than the folks at Hootsuite.

Tonight I dug into my storage space and pulled out some things I haven’t touched for more or less 10 years. My guitars. My pedal board. My gigantic amp stack. It was a rush of nostalgia, memories, crystal clear mental pictures of the shows we played, the friends I made, and how good it felt to just… create. Not through a prompt. But within my own hackneyed limitations, coming up with something I was excited about and gave me a shiver down my spine and sharing that with people. And creating WITH people. Friends, in a basement, playing around and hunting for something… feeling elated when it found you. Dialling in our tone, finding our sound and voice, struggling through the highs and lows of all that came with trying to create. I remembered how good it felt for people to love what we created. And it reminded me of why I fell in love with writing: the amazing feeling of affirmation when my fourth grade teacher told me I was good at it. The thrill of writing my own stories and comic books and showing them to people. Later, the pride that came with having people I respected smile on and pay for my work. How much a part of me that is and has been for so long. Maybe the nostalgic ranting of someone the world is passing by, but I miss what it meant. I played some songs for my kids. And if only for a moment, a little bit of it came back.

PSA: Just because you can spin up a 12-page report in seconds with supporting interactive Claude artifact does not that you should or that it will help anyone. Right now teamwork is basically just a whole bunch of people spinning up Claude things that nobody else looks at because they're spinning up their own Claude things. Maybe your spun up Claude thing gets jammed into someone else's Claude thing, at best.

I’ve been working on a 90 minute workshop for the upcoming Social Media Marketing World conference in April. I’ve delivered tons of talks, but for this one, I wanted to have a session where people literally built their playbook as we went along. I took… 1. A massive export of thought leadership (podcast scripts, social posts, past talks, blog posts) 2. An ugly version of my ideal flow and rough ideas for interactive elements 3. Details on my audience based on research from the team at SMMW Pushed one button, and… DONE! Just kidding. I spent literal hours refining, reworking, exploring new angles, correcting and reorganizing until I landed on a format I’m really excited about. Now I’m ready to start building the deck - which will be designed by a human I pay money to. This is the AI that I’m interested in. A synthesis tool. Not a replacement brain.

Canadian banks are objectively terrible, with high fees, huge churn on the service end, and general incompetence all around. If you're Canadian and want the path of least pain, here's (what I think) it is at this point. None of this is sponsored content, I just royally hate Canadian banks. 1. Wealthsimple for local personal/business banking + Zero-fee accounts + Access to ATMs (they cover fees) + Self-directed, no-commission investments (if you want them - there are better options for crypto, though, if that's you.) + The ability to mail you a banker's cheque within 48 hours for major purchases (one of the only reasons I had a physical bank) + Credit cards if you want to avoid running that through your trad. bank 2. Wise for international + International debit cards (If you have that currency, spend that currency) + ACH if you get paid in USD (ditch the exorbitant transfer fees) + Far better conversion rates in-app if you want to move from one currency to another + International bill integration This is likely to be the year I finally get all of my business out of the hands of TD Canada, who have done wondrous things like... 1. Spontaneously remove access to my online accounts (which I access often) because I hadn't used my physical debit card in awhile 2. Raised my account fees 30% to maintain the terrible level of service they're already providing (and will almost assuredly make it worse) 3. Refused, until run up the flagpole, to send me an export of all of my previous business' wire transfers and associated details, demanding I phone them and ask for 3-5 at a time, manually 4. Frozen my personal accounts when there was a potential issue with a business account, resulting in fee penalties from regularly scheduled bills The list goes on, and on, and on. I'll celebrate literally anything that takes market share away from these vultures.

The pace of everything is getting absolutely mental. I put together 4x, 4-step abandoned cart flows in a week, end-to-end for multiple cohorts. Oh... and 4x 4-step"inactive user" flows at the same time. I reviewed, edited, and helped launch 4x landing pages to go with all of them... in the same week. Those same flows had to go through compliance review and did so... the same day. While all that was happening, I reviewed and improved the copy for two app store listings. I'm not saying this to hype myself up. I'm saying this because there is no "slow lane." We are not in the "It's 2017 and everyone is chill and having fun" era, and I don't know that we'll ever be there again. Gaps are closing faster. Competitors catch up on a dime. The expectation is that things that used to take weeks or months happen in days or hours. There has never been a worse time to be terrible at process, or a better time to be one of the "you can just do/build/create" things crowd. I urge you: do not settle for the pace you were at five years ago. Two years ago. One year ago. The demands on performance and clear thinking on a short timeline have never been higher, and if you can't do it, good luck to you. Sincerely. You'll need it.

You can't tell me AI is a bubble when I can do this in my horrible overstuffed inbox and it actually works

A reminder that to these guys, you are not a person. You are a data point with a wallet; an obstacle to be engineered out.

Thank those who have helped you along the way.

This post is not about me, but I'd like to spend a moment pitching you on *someone else.* If you need a monkeywrench writer (the kind of person who can navigate whatever need you have: customer stories, long-form thought leadership, websites/landing pages, video explainer scripts, etc.) I'd like to point you toward Ian Winterton. We hired Ian at Case Study Buddy when CSB was still a thing. He was one of our first, and longest-standing contractors, because guy gets what other 'writers' don't: 1. Do great work 2. That meets a business goal 3. Reliably, on time ... and agencies, companies, and anyone with a brain will LOVE you. So I loved working with Ian. Enough that years later, I am STILL excited to recommend adding him to your writing bench. Add him to LinkedIn. Have a discussion. You'll be glad you did.

Scaling wrong kills more companies than staying small ever did

Give yourself a gift this Christmas and go work with one of the best people and minds in the industry, and it’s not close.