I recently decided it’s time for a wardrobe update.
My clothes aren’t creating a cohesive style and it’s bothering the shit out of me.
Lately I’ve been mailing in my look. T-shirts, zip ups, my favorite comfy Spanx sweatpants. I choose them day in and day out because they’re comfortable and I know how to style them. (Yes, styling sweatpants isn’t hard. That’s kind of my point).
I’ve also been letting my lifestyle take me on a journey.
We’ve all had these moments, right? The kind where you wake up and go “where did the last 3 months go?” The kind where you feel like you’re sprinting a marathon and yet you haven’t left your driveway. The kind where you think you’re making progress but you’re hammering away at the same problem over and over again expecting different results.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve made a crap ton of progress in the business. You’re reading a post from me on our brand new website in our brand new writing home. We’ve launched four client websites in three months. We were already really good at our craft. Now we’re efficient, productive, and humming.
Despite these advancements, I’ve treated myself as if I am still fighting and clawing for space to move and air to breathe. It’s like my mind hasn’t caught up to the fact that we are thriving and vibing.
Fast forward to yesterday where I’m sitting in the middle of my closet, building a massive Goodwill pile.
My closet had become a holding cell for prisoners of a time when things were on trend. Colors and patterns and shapes that resembled no particular vision or direction. Age created some wisdom — everything at least fit, no “I’ll stuff myself into this one day” dresses. And time healed some wounds — that hole has now rendered this shirt useless. But the assortment of clothing items was just that, an assortment. Baskin-Robbin’s 31 flavors.
Throughout this process I quickly realized my “save” pile had one common theme: Uniqlo.
Uniqlo is a staple fashion brand. Founded back in 1949 in Yamaguchi, Japan, Uniqlo launched as a clothing brand focused on high-quality, affordable basics. Today, their $10 t-shirts are strong enough to withstand hundreds of washes and wears. Their linen pants are timeless. Similar to an H&M but even more affordable, Uniqlo caters to the best part of your closet - those staples that you keep going back to again and again.
Uniqlo is a capsule wardrobe’s best friend, no matter what your income situation is. Celebrities wear it, kids wear it, and smart folk in between know its value to cost ratio is unmatched.
And in my Saturday afternoon wardrobe haze, I realized that Uniqlo was the foundation I needed in this hectic, energizing period of life I’m in.
Some of us update our wardrobes to push our lives in a new direction. For me, I wanted my wardrobe to reflect the life I’m already living. But I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. The path was there, hidden in my closet, this whole time. Those solid color t-shirts, comfy yet stylish pants, and well-tailored sweaters were always go-to’s. But I couldn’t see them due to the sea of mismatched crap that I accumulated over the past few years.
Oddly enough I related this epiphany to one I’ve had with marketing as of late. The marketing discipline has expanded to become practically obese. What was once one channel - for example, social media - can now be fractured into multiple platforms, multiple strategies (influencers, UGC content), ad systems that are so complicated they require analysts to run them. For global corporations, this proliferation of channels has created numerous ways to grow your brand. For startups, the sea of options becomes paralyzing. How on earth can you figure out marketing when the discipline has taken on so many forms? And without a huge team and budget, you can’t afford to try them all, yet it’s getting more and more difficult to understand which marketing channels to turn on.
Even with the promise of AI making marketing production faster and easier, there’s still the fundamental question of “for whom and why” that, if not asked, creates a lot of noise with no strategic ROI.
This is what I notice when founders say “I just don’t know what to do first, or next, or at all.” It’s not just the lack of knowledge of marketing, it’s the sheer volume of opportunities that is overwhelming.
This is where experience leads to invaluable wisdom for founders. Since I’ve been around the marketing block for nearly 20 years now, I’ve seen these channels emerge and play out. I know which ones last and which ones are flash in the pans. I know which bets to take, based on what you’re selling and who’s buying. I’ve seen the campaigns and the wins and failures and I just, well, know what to do. Marketing generates revenue when the right channels are executed well. One viral video isn’t enough to hit that Q4 goal, and it isn’t predictable. As founders get the itch to scale, they must determine if their marketing channels are a solid foundation or if they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. Many founders can circle the angel funding/pre-seed stage indefinitely because they cannot prove to institutional investors how the model is scalable, because, well, spaghetti on a wall looks more like a Jackson Pollock painting than a business strategy I want to bet money on.
I do love a good Jackson Pollock. But as a painting, not a business model.
I'll write more on marketing foundations in the future. Until then, maybe clean out your closet. Spring is coming.
