First of all, thank you to every who responded with such enthusiasm to the lo-fi newsletter I sent last week. β€οΈ I really loved hearing your wins. Here's just a few things that Marketing Design Dispatch readers are celebrating recently:
- Increased confidence in their role
- Taking the bold step of asking for a promotion
- Landing a meaningful project
- Landing a new job
- Making progress in dealing with anxiety
All absolutely worthy of celebration π I loved hearing your stories.
Second, you know what's happening on October 1st, Reader?
That's the date that ConvertKit (the company I work for) officially rebrands to Kit.
My whole year has been leading up to this, and even then I can't quite believe how soon it's going to happen.
Rebranding a company is no small feat. It's definitely a marathon, not a sprint; but as the lead on this company-wide project I have been working at what is (quite frankly) an unsustainable pace since February. So I am very glad the rebrand date will be here soon! Your girl needs some PTO where she is actually fully switched off from work π
(and don't worry, I have some booked)
Sometimes I take a step back and ask myself how the heck I'm doing this, considering I'm still recovering from burnout. I think I'm partially running on momentum at this point, but there's a few key things I can point to that have majorly helped me to work on a big project at a fast pace over a long period of time:
- Being realistic, early - Several months ago I had every team write up alllll the things that needed to change or be worked on for this rebrand in their domain and sort them into lists of "Need to have", "Nice to have" and "Can happen later". And I really pushed folks to be strict with this. We are planning to only have the 'need to have' items completed by October 1st, to set realistic goals for ourselves. Cos the 'nice to haves'? They can actually happen later too, and this has massively reduced overwhelm.
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- Dropping the plastic plates, not the glass ones - When you're spinning lots of plates, it's inevitable that some will fall. You're gonna drop the ball on things, and I have been. I've just been trying to make sure that the things I drop are plastic, not glass (meaning they're things that won't break anything). This acceptance that I'm going to miss messages I meant to respond to, I'm not going to contribute as much as I could have to some other projects, I'm going to miss some not-vital deadlines... it's helped me to save my energy for the things that really matter in this project.
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- Not running my business - If it weren't for this project, I would have a lot more of my business back up and running by now post-burnout-hiatus. But work has needed a lot more energy from me this year, so rather than try to do both I just... haven't. This is a major financial bet I'm placing: that in the long (well, hopefully medium) run I'll benefit more financially from the value I'm adding to the company than in the general income I could have made from my business. And I have already earned a $30k bump to my annual salary through the skills I've demonstrated through this project, so I think that bet is already starting to pay off.
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If you'd be interested in more detail on my thinking behind this, let me know! I could always write more about it in a future issue of these lo-fi newsletters.
If you're in the middle of a large and important project right now too, I see you, I feel you and I'm sending you peaceful vibes.
In more personal news, I'm officially back home in Spain after spending a month in North America. It's nice to be able to hang out with my cat (and with my sewing machine π
) again! I'm not quite back to my normal routine yet though because I ended up having a tooth extracted on Monday π« I knew it had to happen sometime soon but I wasn't expecting it to happen this week. What a fun welcome home surprise π. Recovery is going good tho, so all is well.
My question for you this week is: what's the biggest/most important project you've worked on in your career so far? And how did it feel when you completed it? I honestly don't know what to expect come October 1st when everything ships, so I'd love to hear your stories.
All the best,
Charli
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