Hey hi hello, if you’re just wanting the tl;dr from this newsletter, I’m co-founding a new company called Bonfire! You can subscribe to our newsletter, reach out for 1:1 coaching, or inquire about advisory and workshops.
Hi there 👋
In last week’s newsletter, I left you all with a cliffhanger, teasing what I’d be doing next and hinting that it would be something big and impactful and unlike any adventure I’ve yet to take.
And like Sylvester Stallone in the movie Cliffhanger, I am here to rescue you from the cliff and pull you back to safety by sharing all the details. (Or was Stallone the one hanging from the cliff? I haven’t actually seen the movie. Too scary.)
At any rate, cliffhanger over.
Here’s the news … 🍿
I am co-founding a brand storytelling company called Bonfire.
And we’re officially open for business!
Wait, what? You’re starting your own thing?!
Yes!
As you may have read in last week’s newsletter or discovered by sleuthing my LinkedIn posts, I’ve dreamed of making the leap and starting something new, and the time has finally come! I’m incredibly grateful for the encouragement and support of my friend and co-founder, Shannon Deep, as we start this adventure together. I couldn’t do this without her. And the validation from friends, clients, our network, and the market has made Bonfire seem … inevitable. We couldn’t be more excited to build this thing and to fill a much-needed gap in brand storytelling.
So … what is Bonfire exactly?
Bonfire provides creative storytelling for brands and support for the people who build them. Today, this means we do:
Content
1:1 coaching
Advising
Workshops
Down the road, this will include software and in-person experiences. Let me tell you a bit more about each.
Content
Creative storytelling is at the heart of our business, so we wanted an outlet to tell those stories, to empower others, to start meaningful conversations around topics we love, and to create a community of Bonfire friends and family (like you, we hope).
We made a Substack where you can get weekly newsletters about how to be your most creative, fulfilled self at work and how to use this creativity to grow your business and your career. We also have a bevy of creative resources, coming soon.
We’d love to invite you to subscribe and join us.
Check out some of the upcoming stories we’ll be writing:
Tips for Infusing Creativity into Your Work Routine
100 sources of inspiration for overcoming a creative block
Why I left my career in the arts / journalism
The Wrong Reason to be Creative
How to sell your boss on brand
In defense of pipedreams
Capitalism vs. creativity
1:1 coaching
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to have me as a manager, this is pretty close! We offer coaching for marketers on the rise — marketers like you! — to help you get where you want to be or help you discover where that place should be. We have a handful of people we coach today; we have room for a few more. Drop us a note if you’re interested, even a little. We’d love to talk.
Here are some ways we can help:
Making you a more successful Head of Marketing
Transitioning from IC to Manager for the first time
Transitioning from managing a couple people to managing lots of people
Moving from a single-channel owner to a multi-channel owner
How to be successful in a brand role
How to advocate for yourself at work
How to feel more fulfilled and creative in your day-to-day work
(Pro tip: Coaching is one of the best ways to spend that L&D budget if you have it!)
Advising
We work with founders and leaders at companies big and small to help them define their story, differentiate themselves, and grow their brands. So far, this work has taken a variety of different forms. Some of the most common include:
Brand story development
Positioning & messaging
Brand identity definition
PR & comms strategy
We’ve also been pleased to build out a little Bonfire Network of experts in a variety of disciplines who take on the execution work of some of these brand strategies (and beyond). If you want to be part of this network, let us know!
Workshops
We love to share what we know about brand and storytelling and creativity with anyone who wants to hear it. We have workshops designed for teams (picture like an hour-long masterclass), and we perform these as talks and webinars, too. We’ll be joining up with a couple SaaS companies in October for a pair of events — more details soon — and I’ll be speaking on these topics at Hotjar’s first annual conference in November!
In the not-too-distant future …
One of the best things about having a business of your own is that the business can become whatever you want it to be.
We have big things in mind for the future of Bonfire. Specifically, we envision a potential future where we’ve created software solutions to fix some of the biggest problems that brands and creatives have and we’ve built a real-life space to welcome artists and creatives to invest in their work.
Yes, this means we may be a software company some day. In particular, we’re interested in exploring how we can make the brand marketing work that we love as defensible and valued as possible within the company so that everyone can keep doing more of it.
And yes, this means we may have an IRL “Chez Bonfire” where we host residency programs, in-person workshops, and accelerators to help people invest more in their creative work and to build community in a tangible, human way.
If either of these things get you excited, we’d love to chat with you.
Will anything change about this Kevan Lee newsletter?
Nope, I’ll still be writing this newsletter on the regular. But of course, if you want to read even more of my writing, you can subscribe to the Bonfire newsletter, too.
I will continue to share marketing advice here on my personal substack, plus I will keep you all informed of what we’re doing and what we’re learning as we build Bonfire.
Thank you for the support!
Thank you for all the well wishes and the curiosity from last week’s cliffhanger newsletter and for the comments and messages on LinkedIn this week. It’s meant so much.
As always, you can reply to this email to get in touch with me directly about anything, any time.
Wishing you a great week ahead,
Kevan
(ᵔᴥᵔ)
Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, Vox, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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