549. Best advice I received in 2024 🍫
Words of wisdom from authors, friends, family, TikTok, and therapists throughout the past year
Hellooo 👋 So happy to have you here. I’m Kevan. I have spent 15+ years as a head of marketing for some cool tech startups. Now I’ve co-founded a brand storytelling business called Bonfire. We do coaching, advisory, and content. If you identify with creativity and marketing, we’d love for you to join us.
The best advice I received in 2024
One of the most popular Best Of newsletters I sent last December was my collection of advice I heard throughout the year.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure anyone was going to care about it! There are a handful of year-end posts of a similar nature—including Tom Whitwell’s lists of the 52 things he learns every year—so I was curious to see if I could replicate the theme. And here I am trying it again.
The past couple weeks I’ve been running through some Best Of content: favorite articles and all 66 books I read in 2024. Feel free to check out the past couple weeks if you’ve missed them. There will be more Best Of content still to come!
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Here is the best advice I received in 2024.
“If you want to have loving feelings, do loving things.” ~ author Anne Lamott
“Hard things take time.”
I resumed regular therapy sessions this year, and with all the stuff we talk about, I feel either compelled to solve it and fix it as quickly as possible or guilty for not having already solved it and fixed it. Then I’m reminded by my therapist that, if these things were easy, I would have already done them. Hard things take time. 😅
“However you frame yourself as an artist, the frame is too small.” ~ music producer Rick Rubin on the huge potential within everyone
The bucket theory of creativity.
Check out this video for a theory of creativity that posits that being creative doesn’t mean having all the answers right away or knowing exactly what to make. Sometimes all you need is a place to store inspiration, then the answers will reveal themselves.
“Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.” ~ 16th century English poet John Donne, talking about the virtue of challenging yourself to new things
“The person who makes something today isn’t the same person who returns to the work tomorrow.” ~ Rick Rubin, again
This story from Anne Lamott (again), which reminds me that there may be a “right” answers and there may be a way I feel, and it’s okay if sometimes those things don’t match up all the time. (I love the proverb below, and I also empathize with the way that Tim and Anne feel.)
There’s a story from an ancient Chinese Zen master, of the Buddha coming upon some people who had just been robbed while picnicking. They were racing around, enraged, asking him to help them. But Buddha asks, “Who would you rather find, the burglars or yourself?”
My friend Tim nodded, and then said, “The burglars.”
I said, “Same.”
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” ~ bishop Desmond Tutu
“The faster you’re moving, the more you’re in fear, and the more you’re in fear, the more you’re thinking about yourself, and the more you’re thinking about yourself, the less compassion and kindness you have for others.” ~ author Evan Carmichael
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“Have I been a good memory in anyone’s life today?”
“What do I know but live as though I do not know?”
These two questions are from a daily meditation exercise called the Examen of Consciousness. There are a dozen more questions just like it, intended to be read and reflected on every day. I’m not good at doing it daily (or even weekly for that matter), but the notions behind these two questions in particular always make me really stop and think.
Paceometers
In this clip from author Rory Sutherland, who wrote one of my very favorite books about marketing, he talks about the relative time savings of driving 10mph faster—it’s more significant savings at slower speeds than it is at faster speeds. It’s a metaphor about safe driving, of course, but I think it also applies to how fast I try to move with projects and work stuff!
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“I knew exactly what to do, but in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do.” ~ Michael Scott, helping me feel better about imposter syndrome
Over to you
What advice did you hear this year that made a difference to 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. Now I am cofounder at Bonfire, a brand storytelling company.
Each week on this substack, 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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