Welcome back 🤝

It’s 2020. The pandemic just hit, and me and a good friend are sharing a 564 sq. ft apartment in NYC.

2020 was….a lot - so we decided to put up quotes to read every week to keep us positive during such a tumultuous time and we thought a white board would be perfect for this.

So we put up a small one right outside our kitchen.

It was perfectly placed above the arrow where we’d see it right before one of us walked out the front door.

Here’s an example of the quotes we’d put up.

You get the gist. 

So today we’re talking about white boards.

Because just like how a whiteboard saved me and a good friend during the pandemic, a white board is what is saving me now while building Ink Equity.

Sooooooooo with that…say hello to the MEGA white board I see every time I walk into my office.  

Using a whiteboard of this size has been an absolute UNLOCK. Sometimes I get exhausted from using AI or I don't want to write my to-do’s out in a Google Doc or a notes app. I do enjoy writing stuff out in my notebooks I keep at my desk, but sometimes the white board just hits differently. 

Call me crazy, but it’s not that crazy when you think about it!

Let’s take off and talk about it.

Vote Whiteboard 2028

A white board is one of the best investments I’ve ever made and getting one that’s as big as me is pretty cool.

I believe it can be one of the best decisions you’ll make if you’re working on a project, need to get ideas out of your head or really however you see fit. 

I got inspiration for this massive whiteboard idea from the book Sprint. It’s a book written by folks from Google Ventures on solving big problems and testing new ideas. They’ve used their Sprint method with companies like Uber, Slack, Blue Bottle coffee and more. 

While I haven’t used their exact method for Ink Equity, I have taken some inspo on using it for ideation, brainstorming, among other things.

Here’s an example of what was on one side of the board (you dang right it’s dual-sided). 

The top left was a reminder for myself to make selling a priority. 

Believe it or not, I did not go hard on selling during the first ~60 days after launching on 6/24. Tbh, I solely focused on getting the offer right. 

I made sure I fine-tuned that first before selling. so I made the decision to work for someone for free.

I’ve talked about this before, but I did a pilot program with a startup founder to help get his voice-to-market on LinkedIn. In other words: I helped get the stories out of his head, find his voice and how he wants to write, and show him how he could leverage content for more brand value and revenue for himself and his company. 

However, the last ~30-45 days I’ve been turning up the outreach and selling more, and keeping that selling portion in the top left is a reminder to keep me accountable everyday.

Then, if you look to the bottom right of that whiteboard, whenever I’d get on a call with someone or I’d be putting together outreach, I needed to list the benefits someone gets from working with Ink Equity. So those are all outlined on the bottom right in blue as my in-the-moment reminder. (There’s more benefits, but these were used a starting point). 

The other side of the white board is all about my content. Content for this newsletter, content for LinkedIn, and ideas for video content in 2027. 

Where it’s benefited me most

Every month I randomly take an afternoon and write everything I am thinking about regarding the business and content.

Some days I feel puzzled about where I’m at. Others I’m focused on what content I should put out. Others I need to work on my outreach copy.

For example, when I was thinking about how to re-launch this newsletter, it was super challenging. Honestly more challenging then when I first launched it ~4 years ago.

There were so many factors that went into it. The rebranding of it, the content, the format, the voice, etc. So I outlined everything I could think of that I needed to make decisions on and jotted it all down. Then maybe a week later on one afternoon, I looked at what I put on the white board and made decisions on everything. I walked out of the room with this huge weight off my shoulders.

It’s probably the healthiest thing I do for myself with how crazy it may sound.

In 2020, that little white board was something me and my friend leaned on together. Now? I don’t have a co-founder or employees (yet!). So when I don’t have folks to bounce ideas off of or help me get unstuck on something…coffee, silence, and a white board have been a phenomenal backup plan.

I’m a visual thinker, so seeing things mapped out in one space that doesn’t involve technology feels so good. Better than the Jets winning on a Sunday. Well, maybe not that good. 

Alright enough whiteboard talk. 

But please, go get one, the juice is worth the squeeze.

Next week’s edition will share why I am booking demo calls with my competitors.

On your way out…I have a question:

Last week’s poll: Do you read more fiction or non-fiction books? (3,760 subscribers)

Thanks for reading. See you next Tuesday!

PS — if you want the link to the whiteboard I got, I will personally email it to you. The dimensions are 46" x 32" and the price isn’t that bad either.

All you need to do is respond to this email and I’ll send it your way! (No affiliation btw, just vibes)

To building together,

Dan

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