As promised, this week I'm sharing highlights from my trip to Cleveland for the Content Entrepreneur Expo (CEX)...enjoy! 😃

Andrew Davis

Lumiere's Law! The Lumière brothers were the first to create "moving pictures," or what we now call video. They had success but in the end stuck with photos, because hey didn't see a future for cinema. The lesson? We can't use new innovations the same way we use older technologies.

Ahem...AI....🤖

Davis said we should embrace and work with AI—we can use it to our advantage, without using it for everything. His tagline was repeated by other speakers several times throughout the conference..."What do we do? ChatGPT it!"

Latasha James

I was SO looking forward to this one. I've followed Latasha for a while, and love how real she is.

She said to figure out your character arc—are you the hero, the everyman, the mentor, or the rebel? I'm the every(wo)man...humble, welcoming, and familiar.

Be the go-to person for your niche. Talk to people...no rules, just vibes. Come up with good stories and tell the same stories over again but in different ways. Stop trying to be good at every platform, instead focus on being great at 1 or 2.

And her best piece of advice? "Go outside with pen and paper." 📝🌳☀

Check out The Freelance Friday podcast wherever you listen. And join the almost 200K subscribers on her YouTube channel. ​

Soundarya Balasubramani

In her inspiring talk, Soundarya spoke about her experience being an immigrant in the United States. A few of my fav quotes from Soundarya: "Turn crisis into opportunity," and "Stay focused on vision but flexible on tactics."

Justin Moore

Justin is the founder of Creator Wizard, a school and community that teaches creators how to find their dream partnerships. Along with most of the other speakers, Justin emphasized the importance of having an audience-focused approach—one of the many things I took away from the conference. "Understand what makes your audience tick."

Rafat Ali

Rafat is the CEO/Founder of Skift, the largest business intelligence and marketing platform in travel. Here are some of my fav quotes from him: "Write for the audience that will care for what you write and build," and "Ignore and break silos in whatever sector you are writing about."

Jay Clouse

I'm a big fan of Jay's brand, Creator Science. If you haven't already, get on his newsletter list, listen to his podcast, and check out his YouTube channel. Jay talked about focusing on long form content to reduce your dependence on social media.

If you're just starting out online, don't try to do everything at once. If video is your jam, do video. If you prefer writing, write. Use social media as a discovery platform, and have a separate place to build a relationship with your people. For me, that's LinkedIn (discovery) → this newsletter (relationship). 👌🏼

Robert Rose

I skipped most of Robert's talk to lay on a bed in my quiet hotel room (IYKYK), but before leaving, I wrote down some of his quotes:

"Plans are useless but time spent planning is invaluable."

"Decisions are less important than making them."

"Understanding is more important than knowledge."

"Market where you're going, not where you are."

Julia McCoy

Julia is a former writer who built her own human-writing agency before exiting for "several million dollars" in 2021. Today, Julia is the President at Content at Scale and a leading voice in the AI + content world. Those darn robots again...

Her talk, How AI Can 25x the Content Creation Process, taught me it's okay to pivot. She shared how we can use AI to speed up our production. One quote from Julia, "Study the tools you're using, and understand how to use them."

Katie Brinkley

Katie is a digital marketing and branding expert who talked about using social media to our advantage. Again—she advised to understand your audience and figure out what their problem is. Katie recommended posting a variety of content 3-5x per week.

Purna Virji

Her talk intrigued me because Purna works at LinkedIn! She recommends using multiple posting formats: GIFs, video, text, and use the real-estate you have to stand out (vertical graphics vs square).

Austin Church

Austin is a BIG name in the world of writing, and I've been following him for a while (in the least creepy way). He's also the person I spent the most time with, and he quickly became one of my favorite people.

Oddly enough, we didn't talk much about writing! Instead, we had conversations about being happy and content with where you are in your business and life, trying not to do everything just because you think you have to, and that there is far much more to life than work—I think we can all get behind that idea.

You NEED TO check out Austin's Freelance Cake website—for playbooks, a blog, podcast, and so much more brilliant info for freelancers. We were even talking about planning an event or conference just for freelancers....sounds fun, right? 🥳

Lastly, go buy Austin's book, Free Money: Nine Counterintuitive Moves for Life-Changing Freelance Income.​

Our crew managed to snag front-row seats for the final two conversations and it was well worth the sprint we made through those doors. 🤣

Justin Welsh sat down with Anna Gynn to chat about how he got started and where his business is headed. If you're anyone who creates content online...you probably recognize his name.

I've always appreciated how down-to-earth Justin is, and listening to him speak about his business is easy. He doesn't have much of a "secret sauce," aside from focusing on his audience and doubling-down on what works.

One major takeaway was: Don't do things that you don't want to do...period.

To end the conference, Anne Hadley chatted with BJ Novak. When an audience member asked BJ where he finds inspiration, he took out a tiny notebook from his jacket pocket. Inspiration is everywhere, you just have to be ready to write it down so you don't forget.

I just bought his book, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories.​

And that's a wrap!

Oh, one more thing I learned—I can still "hang."

I was up 'til 1:30 am most nights, and lived to tell about it.

And that's WITHOUT alcohol, people. 🤣

CEX will likely be a regular event for me, so I hope to see you there next year!

A very interesting article about cheese 🧀

Velveeta updates people! The cheese brand highlights 'unapologetic pleasure' with jarred queso and updates to Shells & Cheese.

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👋🏼 Until next time, find me on LinkedIn.

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Rochester, Minnesota
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