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Processing… processing… processing…processing…processing… ⚠️ Warning: information overload ⚠️ I’m a few days out from the end of Craft + Commerce, and this is what my brain feels like. For the uninitiated: Craft + Commerce is Kit’s annual conference for creators. Conveniently located right here in Boise, meaning I got to do things like hike my favorite trails with fellow attendees. Prove to people that Idaho has more than potatoes. And perhaps more importantly, walk bike & sleep in my own bed every single night. (Gosh, I wish all conferences were like this.) Anyway, here’s what my still-stuck-in-processing-mode brain is taking away so far. (Part 1 of 2, though TBD on when part 2 is done buffering in my head. Only time will tell!) 1) Get yourself in the room. I love a good business crush. (Don’t we all?) You know, those people whose work you’ve followed for years, whose emails you always open, and who you occasionally find yourself social media stalking just because. At C+C, I got to meet some of mine in person. Like Liz Wilcox, the self-proclaimed Fresh Princess of Email (and who I also happen to have a little collab coming up with, stay tuned 👀). Tarzan Kay, one of the first copywriters I ever followed and looked up to. And Courtney Spritzer, one half of the Entreprenista founding duo – and, as it happens, a previous client of mine! (Plus like a gazillion others, including this spectacular group of women I had the privilege of masterminding with the Saturday after the conference.) There was a group dinner one night that I skipped. And it might just have triggered the mother of all FOMO moments for me. But there really was no way around it. I consulted the social battery spreadsheet in my head, and I knew, with complete and utter certainty, that if I didn’t go home, decompress, and give my brain a full reset… I would not have survived the following day. Despite the guilt I felt about it initially, I was totally right. The next day, I was able to show up functional, caffeinated, and fully capable of human interaction. (Which served me well, given I was at the event from 7:30 AM - 11 PM!) 3) The “wait, am I behind?” club has more members than you think. I’ll be honest: for a minute there, I thought I was doing this whole conference thing wrong. Everyone around me seemed to be walking away from C+C with clarity and neat little action plans. While I seemed to be walking away with more questions than I arrived with and, if I’m honest, a handful of “wait, am I behind?” doubts. That is, until I ended up in a LinkedIn DM conversation with a delightful brand voice and messaging expert (and former high school English teacher) who I’d bonded with at the conference over a shared, passionate hatred of Moby Dick. Turns out, even several days post-conference, she was also still feeling "completely overwhelmed" and like her "brain was wrung out." So chronic overthinkers who sometimes walk away from events feeling more confused than clarified (at least temporarily): you’re in good company. ~~~ Slightly more polished C+C thoughts to come soon, including something about AI that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. ~Nicole P.S. One more thing: on June 29th, I’m co-hosting a free workshop with the lovely Christi Cooper, a website designer and branding strategist, called The 3 Cs of a Website That Converts. The idea: design gets visitors to stop scrolling, copy gets them to act. We’re coming in to cover both – including the mistakes that confuse visitors before they’ve even finished reading your headline. And how to make it crystal clear to visitors who you help, what you do, and what to do next. (Because confused visitors don’t buy!) P.P.S. Is it weird that I kiiiinda just want to share all my cool conference pics with you? Well, there’s no stopping me now:
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Nicole's Notes | A Newsletter by Nicole Elliott
Join the weekly (ish) newsletter for business owners who want their copy to sell without the sleaze, excessive sales pressure, or disappearing into the AI-flavored sea-of-sameness. Served alongside embarrassing personal stories, the occasional (okay fine, *frequent*) existential crisis, and at least one parenthetical aside per email.
Here’s a rapid-fire “let’s make your website (or sales page) convert better” tip for you on this fine Thursday morning. It’s about your bio. You see, most bios do a perfectly *acceptable* job of explaining what someone does. And hey, they might even cover how they do it. But they still remain painfully generic with something like: “I’m a [title] who helps [audience] achieve [outcome].” Which sounds okay (ish)! Until you realize it also sounds like it could have been written by ~literally...
My 10-year business-iversary was this July, and I’m marking the occasion with a classic “10 lessons from 10 years in business.” Part 2 incoming below. Catch part 1 (lessons 1-5) here ICYMI! 6) Perfectionism will be the (second) death of you. [Wondering what the first is? I was being serious when I said to check out part 1 if you missed it. Link here ;-)] Hi, I’m Nicole Elliott, and chronic overthinking and/or agonizing may as well be my middle name. (Yes, I totally overthunk – not a word, I’m...
10 years ago this month, I found myself back in the U.S., fresh off a difficult year of teaching English in South Korea (plus another 3 months of backpacking in Asia with my newish-at-the-time husband), sitting down in my still-bare living room googling “how to make a living writing online.” Amazingly, I’ve managed to make an entire career out of that single Google Search… and am still here, much to my own surprise, a decade later. Here’s what I’ve learned since then. [Part 1 of 2!] 1)...