Beyond the how-to guides and editorial musings, it seems what you like most are those moments where we lay bare our personal and unresolved experiences—be it our relationship with creativity, work, jealousy, capitalism, or mental health. It’s been (truly, no exaggeration) a joy to receive your feedback, your reflections, your laughter, and no shortage of “Omg, ME TOO!” messages and comments in responses to our posts.

It’s that last category of reply that made us realize that there was something more to be mined here, an opportunity to foster better connections and conversations between so many of you who talk to us, but don’t have a way to talk to each other. (And you might be sick of hearing just from us!)

So here we are, giddily soft launching Campout, our online community for creative marketers and the creative curious.

Come join us at Campout

What is Campout?

Campout is an online community hosted on a platform called Circle. It features regular events and new courses monthly, an always-growing template library, vetted job board, and more. It’s 100% designed to foster more of these "Hey, me too!" moments, but in a way that’s less broadcast from us and more clubhouse for you.

And you’re enthusiastically invited to join us!

How much does it cost?

You can get the full Campout experience for free for your first seven days.

Once you get a taste of what’s available, we have paid monthly and annual plans, starting at $30 per month that get you access to all the Campout goodies, like courses, templates, a job board, and even 1:1 coaching. If you’re interested in those, we’re giving you an early bird discount for being a newsletter subscriber: Use code NEWSLETTER-FRIEND for 50 percent off your first month.

You can get started here, completely for free, today.

If a paid Campout plan isn’t for you right now, no worries at all. We will be running quarterly free events and newsletter convos that are open to all.

Is this newsletter going away?

No way! This newsletter isn’t going anywhere, but its name will change to Around the Bonfire, and we’ll be merging it with Kevan’s personal newsletter (new friends!).

You'll still hear from us, Kevan and Shannon, but with some new formats and maybe a new voice or two joining the conversation occasionally. And while some big things are changing, its frequency won't; we’ll still be in your inbox every week.

Thank you for being part of our journey. And whether you join us over in Campout or not, we consider you part of our community.

Kumbaya,

Kevan & Shannon

As a marketing director at a startup, I once temporarily reported into the CEO during a marketing leadership shakeup. Considering the man wasn’t a marketer, he very wisely and kindly recognized that he wasn’t going to have great guidance for my literal job during our 1:1s, but he could offer me some insights into my larger career trajectory.

At the time, I was feeling pretty ambivalent about the idea of even having a “career” at all, and I was downright disenchanted with marketing in general and my role in particular.

Given all the personnel changes, the business strategy changes, the changes to my own responsibilities, and the changes in my external life situation, it was hard for me to pinpoint exactly where the problem was. Did I just not like this company anymore? Was I done with this whole discipline? Did I want to get out of startups entirely? Like…how could I really separate symptoms from underlying problems?

This CEO had me do an exercise that I now recognize as a variation of the “Zone of Genius” framework popularized by Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap.

The CEO’s variation had me list out everything I do at work in a given week. Then, I plotted these things onto a matrix with two axes: enjoyment vs. competence.

It looked like this, and I made a slide where I stuck little boxes all over it that said things like “People management,” “Copywriting,” “Running meetings,” “Editorial planning,” “Booking webinar guests,” “Putting tasks in Asana,” “Managing up,” etc. etc.

Unsurprisingly, given how I was feeling at the time, I found I was spending a ton of my working hours in the Zone of Competence, doing things I was good at but didn’t enjoy.

Bummer.

There also weren’t many things in the Zone of Growth, which would have represented new interests, growing edges, and things I would be excited to experiment with and learn.

Basically, the graph said: Your motivation is in the toilet and there’s not much to do about it. I was stuck, the CEO told me, in a “competence trap,” because the things that were sitting in that Zone of Competence were the things that were business critical—it’s what they really needed me to do.

This exercise was an excellent diagnostic tool for thinking about what I did and didn’t want my role to be, and what I wanted more or less of in my next one. And it helped me be more mindful of how I could invest in my current role no matter how long it took me to find the next step.

In thinking about this exercise recently, it struck me that similar matrixed frameworks could be applied in different scenarios to help people diagnose and unlock their “zone of creativity.” Identifying the conditions, tasks, skills, and interests you have—or lack!—to help you stay creative or even just identify 🗣️🎶what in the eeeeeff 🎶 is going on with your feelings about a particular project.

Caveat: I’m not a sociologist or a business management researcher or anything, but there’s a proud history of, basically, randos writing questionable business advice books that go on to great popular success—and at least I’m not that!

So try on these three frameworks in different situations and see if they help you identify your ✨Zone of Creativity™️©✨, which I’m using to mean the optimal operating zone across many different intersections!

1. Originality vs. skill: Find your strengths

Example use cases:

• Great when you’re wondering if you need more practice or should push for more originality.

• Helpful when you feel "stuck" making competent but uninspired work.

• Useful for moving from imitation to innovation.

• Useful for evaluating a varied list of ideas for addressing a particular problem or project.

Examples of what you’ll plot on the graph:

• A list of all your regular work tasks, or

• All your current creative activities/projects, or

• A raw list of ideas/approaches to solve a particular problem or fill a brief, e.g. all the different campaign concepts you might make

What you might learn:

If you have lots of tasks, ideas, activities, or responsibilities in the…

• Zone of Competence: You might be in a "comfort zone" and need to take more risks.

• Zone of Experimentation: Your raw creativity is strong, but you may need to refine your craft or just embrace that you’re in a learning period.

• Zone of Imitation: You might want to lean into bolder, more divergent ideas…or maybe this is where you need/want to be for now because you’re trying to directly compete with another company or personally learn by doing!

• Zone of Creativity: ::party::

2. Passion vs. impact: Align your inspiration with meaning

Example use cases:

• Ideal for if you’re optimizing for work that’s fulfilling and resonating with others.

• Helps you decide whether to pursue creative work as a career or keep it as a passion project.

• Useful for brands or content creators trying to gauge whether they’re making work that matters.

Examples of what you’ll plot on the graph:

• A list of all your regular work tasks, or

• All your current creative activities/projects, or

• A raw list of ideas/approaches to solve a particular problem or fill a brief, e.g. all the different campaign concepts you might make

What you might learn:

If you have lots of tasks, ideas, activities, or responsibilities in the…

• Zone of Hobby: You might be making beautiful work that isn’t connecting with an audience—maybe you need stronger marketing or storytelling. (Or maybe this is great because you only want to invest in your personal creativity process at the moment!)

• Zone of Utility: You might be successful but creatively unfulfilled. Maybe it's time to pivot toward work that excites you!

• Zone of Obligation: You’re probably not going to be able to simply walk away from all the things here, but knowing what’s already here can help you establish a better balance!

• Zone of Creativity: Hell yeah.

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3. Mastery vs. risk: Balance growth and expertise

Example use cases:

• Great for trying to push creative boundaries and grow as a creative.

• Helps you see if you’re playing it too safe or taking risks without enough skill.

• Useful for anyone shifting between structured work (client projects, in-house work) and personal exploration (passion projects, experimental work).

Examples of what you’ll plot on the graph:

• A list of all your regular work tasks, or

• All your current creative activities/projects, or

• A raw list of ideas/approaches to solve a particular problem or fill a brief, e.g. all the different campaign concepts you might make

What you might learn:

If you have lots of tasks, ideas, activities, or responsibilities in the…

• Zone of Professionalism: You may be making polished work but not innovating. Time to take risks?

• Zone of Chaos: You have bold ideas but they might need more refinement. What professional development, classes, or training could you take?

• Zone of Blandness: It’s time for an all-around level-up! Make it a goal to move toward either the Zone of Professionalism (by upskilling), or Zone of Chaos (by getting inspired).

• Zone of Creativity: 😎

Over to you…

What do you think about applying these graphs to your work or creative pursuits? Which seems most helpful? We’d love to know!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

Behold my greatest athletic achievements:

• I played tackle football in school. Among my duties was snapping the ball to the quarterback, which I did very well and very faithfully except for one time when he wasn’t looking.

• I made the boys’ basketball team, but just barely, which afforded me the luxury of saying I made the boys’ basketball team and the leisure of sitting on the bench for every game.

• I did the shot put in track-and-field so as to avoid any of the running events.

• I played left field in baseball, the part of the field to which the ball is hit most infrequently.

In hindsight, it seems like my athletic history was actually a history of avoiding athletics, being physically present but aerobically safe.

Nevertheless, I remember my exploits, er “exploits,” with fondness because I really did enjoy aspects of these sports, just on my own terms. I loved figuring out how the games worked, the strategies that would set us up for success, the creative ways to work together to achieve our goals. I might not have been doing sports right, but my approach to athletics reminds me a lot of my approach to brand marketing—just with a lot less sweat (most days).

I’m not the only one who thinks so!

In his book Sweat, Bill Hayes explores the history of athletic training—not just as a record of how people exercised through the ages but as a metaphor for how to strengthen the mind and the soul and even the creative process.

Hayes shares six principles that sustain long-term fitness:

1. The principle of specificity: What you train for is what you get.

2. The overload principle: Train a part of the body above the level to which it is accustomed.

3. The principle of progression: Move on as soon as you have mastered a new task.

4. The principle of accommodation: Without challenge, the body settles into stagnation.

5. The principle of reversibility: When you stop training, you lose progress.

6. The principle of rest: Recovery is a crucial part of long-term progress.

And then he goes on to translate these principles to worlds beyond athletic training.

In reading these principles, I can’t help but draw parallels to the world of brand marketing. I don’t think Hayes would mind. A lot of the ways you show up to exercise can be applied to the ways we show up to our brand work and how we create remarkable, uncommon campaigns and content. A lot of the things that I found enjoyable about playing sports and sitting on the bench during sports are the same things that I enjoy about brand marketing.

If you don’t mind taking a little leap in imagination with me, here are some ways that exercise principles can just as easily be brand marketing principles.

The 6 principles of exercise, but for brand marketing

1 - The Principle of specificity

Exercise: “What you train for is what you get.”
Brand: “Know what you aspire to be.”

If you want strength, you lift weights. If you want endurance, you run. These statements sound obvious, but in reality, it can be very tempting to get lured into training your body in ways that are superfluous to your goals. I’ve wasted so much time on the upside-down table at the gym, for instance.

With brand marketing, the rule of specificity holds two important lessons:

1. You should know how you want to be known (we call this your brand positioning), and then focus all your efforts toward that outcome. If you want to be known as THE most trusted widget in the widget category, then you need to run campaigns and take actions that build trust: community testimonials, case studies, high-quality campaigns, and dare I say SOC-2 compliance (snooze!).

2. You should know what KPI you want to move as a brand, and then shift your priorities toward activities that move the needle. For instance, if you are all about brand awareness right now, then you would choose activities that gain lots of eyeballs like video and PR. If you want brand ROI, then you might choose campaigns that are tailored to an audience and a use case.

2 - The overload principle

Exercise: “Train a part of the body above the level to which it is accustomed.”
Brand: “Do more than the status quo.”

Growth doesn’t come from doing the same thing over and over again—in exercise or in brand marketing. If you want to build muscle, you gradually lift heavier weights. If you want your brand to grow, you have to push beyond your comfort zone.

In my experience, this means experimenting with new platforms, taking creative risks, and investing in bold campaigns that challenge the status quo. We often talk about this using Coca Cola’s 70-20-10 framework, where they allot their 70% of their resources to proven tactics, 20% to new experiments, and 10% to moonshots.

By giving yourself 20-30% of room to innovate, you’ll ensure that you’re reaching the “overload” zone and strengthening your brand muscles.

3 - The principle of progression

Exercise: “Move on as soon as you have mastered a new task.”
Brand: “What works today won’t work forever.”

Progression builds on overload. Once your body adjusts to a certain level of strain, you increase the difficulty—heavier weights, longer runs, higher intensity. The same applies to marketing. Once you’ve mastered a particular channel or tactic, don’t coast. Go bigger!

When I was creating content at Buffer, we reached a certain level of comfort and stability with our regular blog posting. So we found a way to systematize blog posts, and we went off to new horizons of podcasting and video and events (not all at once of course; brand never has that many resources).

If you’ve nailed organic social media, maybe it’s time to explore paid strategies. If your written content is thriving, consider expanding into multimedia. Not only is it good to broaden and diversify your brand tactics to avoid plateauing, but you’ll also find new audiences and deeper engagement by showing up in new and unexpected places. The people who love your brand aren’t staying the same forever either!

4 - The principle of accommodation

Exercise: “Without challenge, the body—or brand—settles into stagnation.”
Brand: “Be consistent, not conventional.”

If you only ever do the same workout, your body stops changing. The same goes for brands. Repeating the same campaigns, using the same visuals, or sticking to the same messaging might feel safe, but it breeds stagnation. There is a lot to be said for showing up consistently according to your brand values, your voice and tone, and your purpose. But you can carry these same characteristics into a wide variety of new and uncommon tactics so that things feel fresh.

To stay relevant, here are some things that we’ve seen great brands do to avoid stagnation:

• Creative ad refreshes on a quarterly or biannual basis

• New brand campaigns every six months

• Refreshed websites, refreshed social media profile assets (cover photos, profile pics)

• Fun little microsites

• Fun big partner campaigns

5 - The principle of reversibility

Exercise: “When you stop training, you lose progress.”
Brand: “Be unforgettable—by content and by cadence.”

Fitness gains don’t last forever—stop exercising, and you backslide. In marketing, the same holds true. Brand equity doesn’t stay static. If you stop investing in your brand—letting content lapse, ignoring your audience, or abandoning innovation—you don’t just stay still; you slide backward.

The antidote? Keep a regular cadence of brand content. You might hear this referred to as the “drumbeat” of your brand, that constant rhythm of new social posts, new blog posts, new PR placements, and new campaigns.

6 - The principle of rest

Exercise: “Recovery is a crucial part of long-term progress.”
Brand: “Revisit what works and what matters.”

Ironically, rest is just as vital to fitness as exertion. Muscles need time to repair and grow stronger. Brands, too, need moments of reflection.

Rest in brand marketing might look like stepping back to reassess a strategy, taking time for creative brainstorming without immediate deadlines, or pausing to gather data and insights before your next move. It’s not about stopping—it’s about recharging so you can push harder next time.

Over to you

Just like athletic training, brand marketing is about showing up consistently, pushing limits, and allowing space to rest and regroup. These six principles, born from the world of fitness, offer a surprising but powerful roadmap for building a bold, resilient brand.

Which of these principles resonates most with the way you go about your brand-building? What is missing from this list?

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

We talk often about the importance of resting and recharging, intentional pauses, and taking breaks in this newsletter.

(A selected few:

• Gimme a (different) break

• How to know if you should rally or rest

• What we learn from the routines of celebrated creatives

• Time, commitment, and the power of constraints)

We talk about it because it’s seriously important, not just for mental, emotional, creative, and physical energy reserves, but also because furthering “slow” culture—whether that’s slow food, slow work, etc.—is a great way to fight against toxic productivity culture.

This concept of intentional rest is usually packaged together with “self-care”—something else we’ve talked about frequently here. Especially in politically tumultuous times, when our attention and energy is deliberately exploited and shredded, we need to practice self-care in order to stay engaged, motivated, resourced, and connected to others.

But doesn’t it seem like a lot of “self-care” just ends up being…self-distraction? Many of us—especially those aware and engaging with the chaotic world—are (often rightly) skeptical of both our own and others’ self-care practices, because we suspect what we’re really participating in is escapism. We shame ourselves for disengaging, scoff at others for remaining ignorant. Our wish to be good, aware citizens of the world gives us an aversion to perceived escapism that either leads more swiftly to burnout or to a cyclical indulge → guilt → indulge cycle that traps us in bad feelings about ourselves.

Either way, we tend to throw out the self-care baby with the escapism bathwater, if you know what I mean.

But they’re not the same! So let’s explore the difference, and how to make sure your self-care practices fill you up instead of check you out.

Escapism vs. self-care: What’s the difference?

The difference between escapism and self-care comes down to intent and outcome.

Escapism is about avoiding reality. It’s a coping mechanism that helps you temporarily disconnect from stress, discomfort, or difficult emotions—but without addressing the root issue that led you to the disconnection in the first place. The respite is temporary, but can often leave you feeling numb rather than relieved.

Self-care is about renewal. It’s an intentional practice of recharging your mental, emotional, creative, and physical energy so you can engage with life more fully. Instead of avoiding reality, you’re preparing yourself to face it with more strength and clarity. The relief is also temporary, but it is restful—it gives you something to take back with you.

The same activities could be either escapism or self-care, depending on how and why you're doing it. If you’re bingeing TV to numb out and avoid responsibilities, that’s escapism. If you’re watching a show you love in order to relax after a long day, and if doing so, say, inspires you or helps you sleep better, that’s self-care.

Here are some common activities that can go either way, depending on the intent behind them and the outcome you end up with:

• TV/movies

• Scrolling social media

• Playing video games

• Reading books

• Socializing

• Snacking

• Exercise

• Wellness/beauty activities

• Cleaning/organizing

• Traveling

• Even creative work!

The key question to ask: Is this helping me return to my life feeling more whole, or is it keeping me from doing or feeling something uncomfortable, unpleasant, or confronting?

And sometimes it’s really, really hard to answer that question honestly, not because we’re all selfish, lazy little snakes, but because our brains are so, so good at protecting us from stressful things. Self-deception is an incredible (and often incredibly useful!) coping mechanism.

Warning signs of escapism

Ok, so if self-deception is a coping mechanism that will keep you in your escapism, how can you tell? It’s important to check in with yourself to see if:

• You feel guilty or anxious after your “break.” (And not just because you took a break—that’s toxic productivity talking.)

• Your activity/practice allows you to procrastinate on doing important tasks or dealing with “big” emotions, (e.g. a deadline, a tough conversation, etc.).

• Your activity puts you in an endless loop with no natural off-ramp (e.g., binge-watching, doomscrolling, phone games with infinite levels).

• You feel more drained, numb, or dissociated rather than recharged afterward.

• You feel distracted and “noisy-brained” without it.

I mean…relatable, right? We all do the above to a certain extent, but if you realize all of your self-care activities could be categorized this way, it might be time to reevaluate!

Cool...

How?

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Flipping escapism into healthy resourcing

If you’re suspecting some of your “breaks” are less restorative than you thought, here are four techniques to try to adjust your approach:

1. Interrogate your intention before you start

Next time you sit down to watch TV, snuggle up with your phone, run off to the gym, or start planning your next trip, ask yourself:

What was I just doing or feeling before I started this activity?

If you were in a tense work meeting, squabbling with your parents or partner, or reading an upsetting news story, you might be trying to avoid processing how you feel about those things rather than seeking to restore yourself.

2. Use timeboxing or other constraints

Constraints are magic when it comes to mastering our energy and focus. If you recognize something you’re doing as escapist, try giving yourself an artificial timebox or limit. For example, “I’ll play this game for 45 minutes, then get back to work.” or “I’ll watch two episodes, even though I have more time than that.”

On the flip side of the coin, your constraint could be to do the thing you’re avoiding first, in order to sap the charge from the escapist activity, and push it into the realm of relaxation and restoration. For example, if you know you’re avoiding responding to your manager’s email, give yourself the “constraint” of having to do that before you can go exercise or watch TV.

3. Balance passive and active rest

Sometimes we think about rest as doing nothing, but that’s not always the case!

If absolutely all your breaks are passive, meaning that you’re doing nothing while consuming something else you might be leaning toward escapism. Consuming here could mean reading books, watching TV, listening to podcasts, scrolling social feeds or the news, or literally consuming food mindlessly—usually while doing one of the other passive things!

Try balancing your passive rest with active rest: creating something, exercising, socializing, going for a walk, etc. Active rest does require something of you. It takes energy. But, important, it’s a different kind of energy from the one that’s required to fulfill work tasks and other obligations.

That’s not to say that active rest can’t be used as escapism, but being intentional about balancing active and passive rest will keep you consciously engaged in your rest vs. defaulting to what’s easiest and most immediate.

4. Check in afterward

Just like you checked in before you started your self-care activity, check in afterward. Here are some questions to guide you:

• Do I feel sluggish, guilty, or anxious?

• Did this break give me new energy or insight?

• Am I returning to my work/life/relationships with more clarity?

• Do I feel present and engaged rather than zoned out?

If you’re not happy with your answers, try one thing differently next time, whether that’s setting your intention beforehand, doing a totally different type of activity, or giving yourself a timebox.

Then rinse and repeat!

Over to you…

By choosing intentional self-care over mindless escapism, we can sustain our energy, avoid burnout, and remain engaged in our lives and the world around us. What’s your relationship with rest? How have you figured out, or struggled with, taking the right kind of breaks?

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

It is a not-so-hidden secret that some of the most creative agencies in the world have some of the most boring websites.

You’d think it might be the opposite, but when you’re so busy making amazing websites and award-winning campaigns for others (your clients, who pay you), there is neither time nor brainspace to do the same for yourself. Putting others first is obviously not a bad strategy for a services business—in fact, it is a most essential strategy—but the FOMO of doing creative work for everyone else before doing anything nice for yourself is bound to get old. We agencies want nice things, too!

(Go figure: we are working on a new website for Bonfire. Ours is not boring per se, but it is definitely untouched since we launched it in 2023.)

And it’s not just agencies that struggle to prioritize themselves. It happens to people everywhere, at work and at home, in jobs and in relationships. You name a situation, and there is probably someone—often, me—who is self-sacrificing to an extreme. Of course, sometimes this selflessness is purposeful and admirable, but when left unchecked, it can become an avalanche of burnout and resentment. Stop me if any of these sound familiar:

• You, the helpful employee, volunteer to collaborate on someone else’s project, which means your projects get shelved or pushed to after-hours work.

• You, the people manager, encourage everyone on your team to maximize their use of vacation days while you stay back to cover for everyone.

• You have never used your professional development or started a passion project or even organized your Google Drive because you always tell yourself you’ll “get to it later.”

Investing in personal pursuits, hobbies, projects, and goals is a major part of developing one’s creative practice. Not only do you get the chance to learn new skills or grow your abilities, you get to create work that is uniquely, satisfyingly yours. Of course, it’s easier said than done.

Why we struggle to prioritize ourselves

It’s not just about being busy—it’s about how we are wired to think about productivity and value. Many of us equate productivity with output for others, seeing our worth in what we contribute to external goals rather than internal fulfillment. And when we do try to prioritize ourselves, guilt often sneaks in, making us feel selfish for putting our own needs first. (The reality, of course, is that successful, balanced people are the ones who invest in themselves, too.)

Doing stuff for yourself is hard for a lot of reasons.

Who has the time? As a business co-owner, my days are full with things like client work and Googling “what is a W9 form.” You can’t spell “business” without “busy” (sorta). The same goes for our personal lives, which seem to fill the hours to the brim with no room for left over.

Who has the energy? Even if we do happen to spare an hour or two, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be in the mood to do creative work.

The work (for others) never ends. People need things, emails keep coming, and our to-do lists know no end. This is, of course, where boundaries come in (as you’ll read below), but in a pre-boundaries state, the flood of tasks can be overwhelming.

Self-sacrifice is lionized in certain circles of leadership. We are taught that “leaders eat last” and that servant leadership is an admirable quality. If taken too far, these ideas can become burdens for leaders who never do find a way to justify investing in themselves.

So what is a person to do about it?

The answer isn’t to stop helping others altogether. It’s to create a more sustainable balance—one where prioritizing yourself doesn’t come at the expense of others, but rather enhances your ability to be present, creative, and effective in the long run. Here are a few ways to work toward that goal:

1 - Note: Investing in yourself is NOT selfish

Many of us have been conditioned to think that spending time on ourselves is indulgent. (Me: raises hand, acknowledges childhood.)

But research suggests the opposite: taking time for personal growth, creativity, and self-care leads to greater productivity, job satisfaction, and overall well-being. According to a Harvard Business Review study, employees who take time for personal growth and creative pursuits perform better at work and experience lower stress levels. It’s the classic “put your oxygen mask on first” principle—if you’re burned out, you’re no good to anyone else.

Think about it: when you’re creatively fulfilled and personally energized, you bring more to the table in every aspect of your life. It’s not selfish—it’s strategic.

2 - Determine what’s urgent (for others) and what’s important (for you)

The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple but powerful tool for prioritization and one that we often recommend for the marketing teams that we advise. It categorizes tasks into four quadrants:

• Urgent & Important (do it now)

• Important but Not Urgent (schedule it)

• Urgent but Not Important (delegate it)

• Neither Urgent nor Important (eliminate it)

Most of the time, the work we do for others falls into the urgent category, while the work we do for ourselves languishes in “important but not urgent.” According to Eisenhower, we are supposed to schedule this important-but-not-urgent work. The big problem, of course, is that we schedule it for later and then keep re-scheduling because more urgent work crops up.

Which brings me to point #3:

3 - Literally schedule a block of time in your day for YOU

If you don’t carve out time for yourself, no one else will do it for you. Block time in your calendar as if you were your own client or as if your teammate had asked for 60 minutes of your time (which you’re always happy to give them, right?). Whether it’s updating your website, working on a side project, or just taking a moment to breathe, make it a non-negotiable part of your schedule.

(And I do mean literally put it on your schedule.)

3 - Set boundaries and stick to them

If you’re always available, you’ll always be busy. Setting clear boundaries—whether that means not checking email after a certain time (my window closes at 4:00 p.m. so I can eat by 5:00 p.m., which even I admit is a little absurd), protecting deep work time, or simply saying “no” more often—helps ensure you don’t constantly deprioritize yourself.

Boundaries are not just about saying no; they’re about making conscious choices about where your energy goes. A boundary, as they say, is something that YOU will do and requires nothing of the other person. Communicating these boundaries clearly to colleagues and clients can prevent misunderstandings and help reinforce the importance of your personal time. It can be as short and sweet as, “Hey, if you aren't able to get that back to me by 3pm, I will pick it back up tomorrow instead of today.” Remember: protecting your time is not about being unavailable; it’s about being intentional.

4 - Create accountability for your own projects

We meet deadlines for clients because there are external expectations. But personal and internal projects? Those are easy to push aside. Try creating accountability by:

• Setting internal deadlines (and treating them like real deadlines)

• Assigning a team member or peer to check in on progress

• Publicly committing to an update (if you tell people it’s coming, you’re more likely to follow through)

It doesn’t all have to be about you (but some of it should)

Being a servant leader or a self-sacrificer isn’t a bad thing. But when taken to an extreme, it can lead to burnout and a loss of creative energy.

Sustaining creativity and motivation requires balance. Prioritizing yourself doesn’t mean neglecting others—it means ensuring you have the capacity to continue serving them effectively.

It’s okay to prioritize yourself. In fact, it’s necessary. As Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.” And if you want to keep doing great work for others, you have to take care of yourself first.

Over to you

How do you strike a balance between doing work for others and doing work for yourself?

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

2025 has been a bit of a rough one, eh?

There are many reasons why things are tough across the globe right now. But as an American living abroad and watching the rise of pretty naked fascism and oligarchical rule in my homeland, in talking to my American friends, family, and colleagues, in watching other people’s stories online, in having the perspective of getting news media outside the U.S. bubble about what’s going on, I’m often struck with the overwhelm of what to do. (Which is the Trump administration’s tactic, of course: flood us with outrage to the point of exhaustion so they can ride roughshod wherever they please.)

I can give money to places like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, of course. I can organize with other Americans abroad to write letters and make phone calls. But what else can I, me, personally do in order to resist an authoritarian regime? And how can I make sure that I can do whatever it is for as long as possible?

You may have seen things floating around the internet about how self-care is resistance, or how joy in a marginalized community or in the face of adversity is considered a radical act.

This concept is more than feel-good Instagram fluff. Because think about what authoritarian regimes want: submissive masses too stressed, too underresourced, too afraid, too resigned to organize and fight back. Too defeated to introduce friction. They want people who feel like they must be self-sufficient, or who are kept isolated, because community and connection lead to interdependence, sharing resources, sharing real information instead of propaganda, and taking collective action. Authoritarian regimes want to pretend—depend on pretending—that nonconformity and difference of identity and ideology don’t exist, because it’s ultimately demoralizing and squashes action. Kills hope.

In these contexts, taking care of yourself, being yourself, and finding ways to remain resilient, present, and engaged is resistance. When authoritarian administrations would pretend trans people are shameful perverts and criminals, being a visible, happy, vibrant, caring trans person with a big community is resistance. When these administrations would pretend that the only acceptable form of womanhood is one that follows traditional gender roles, prioritizing homemaking and childrearing, deference to men, and the upholding of patriarchal standards of beauty and behavior, simply being a woman who is a healthy, happy example of absolutely not fucking that is resistance.

We’ve written before that creativity is a form of self-care, so by the transitive property, it’s also a form of resistance. And the more I thought about that, the more obvious it became. Here’s why:

1. Creativity resists conformity

In a world that rewards predictability and efficiency over originality (because it’s much harder to sell shit otherwise!), choosing to create—especially in ways that challenge the status quo and raise differing, contrary opinions—is an act of defiance. Making and saying novel things disrupts the expectation that we must follow a predetermined path or do what’s expected.

2. Creativity resists capitalism’s productivity obsession

Much like self-care resists toxic productivity culture by prioritizing intentional actions at a healthy pace, creativity resists the idea that our worth is tied to output or monetization. Expressing ideas purely for the sake of exploration, play, or personal/communal meaning-making is radical in a world that is always asking, “bUt HoW dOeS tHiS sCaLe?” (It doesn’t have to, suckers!)

3. Creativity resists oppression by making the invisible visible

As in the Audre Lorde quote above, sometimes simply existing, simply representing something is a political act. Artists, writers, and creators of all kinds have long used their craft to expose injustice, reframe narratives, and give voice to the traditionally unheard or intentionally silenced. By creating and telling those stories, we challenge dominant perspectives, shine a light on problems a regime might not want you to consider, and invite empathy for those different from us.

We cannot “unsee” or “unknow” things. Once we see and know, it’s a lot harder for us to remain complacent or resigned.

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4. Creativity resists fear and scarcity thinking

One of my “favorite” contradictions under late-stage capitalism is the simultaneous messaging that a) you gotta compete tooth and nail or somebody else (an immigrant! a diversity hire!) is gonna take your piece of the pie, while also insisting b) there is always infinite profit potential and value creation if we just let the free market do its thing! So which is it: Us vs. Them or a rising tide?

Fear and scarcity—whether personal (self-doubt, fear of failure, imposter syndrome) or systemic (censorship, exclusion, inequality)—keep people from expressing themselves because they believe there will be adverse personal or social consequences, or that something is predetermined to fail.

Choosing to create despite these barriers is an act of bravery that insists: There is room for me. My voice matters. I deserve to be here.

5. Creativity resists the idea that the future is fixed

Creativity is an inherently hopeful act. To make something new is to believe that new things are possible—that the world can be shaped, reimagined, rebuilt—and that new things, new ideas have value. It disrupts the fatalistic idea that things are the way they are and will always be. If we believe that, why act? Why try to change anything? (A very helpful sentiment for the voting populace to have while a bunch of narcissistic authoritarians unceremoniously dismantle government agencies, have their way with budgets and tax breaks, and basically put an end to the 230+ year American Experiment in free governance, huh?)

6. Creativity resists isolation by building connection, which builds community

This one is actually one of the most important. Whether through art, writing, music, or marketing, creativity is a way we communicate, find like-minded and like-valued folks and businesses, and build community. When division is often manufactured by those in power who benefit from sowing it, creative collaboration and bonding through shared appreciation of creative works become an act of resistance against separation and othering.

There’s a trend on TikTok I’ve seen where creators are sharing videos of people who voted in this authoritarian regime but are already seeing the negative impact in their lives and are shocked or upset: return-to-office mandates for federal workers, workplaces crippled by deportation or just the fear of it, realizations of exactly what more tariffs will do to the prices of many essential products, who is actually getting a tax break (spoiler alert, not them!), etc.

While there’s never one simple explanation for someone’s psychology and why they might vote against their own interests, these videos imply that a lack of empathy is certainly part of it. It’s easier to throw your vote to an authoritarian government when you believe that you will be unaffected. When you believe all the consequences will be borne by others, and those others are supposedly different from you in ways that someone on the TV or on a podcast said should matter.

When we build connection, when we break down silos and unite in community through collaboration and engagement and mutual appreciation of the same things, we develop empathy. Through empathy, we have a clearer view of exactly who is Us and who is Them.

Empathy is resistance, too.

In short, engaging in your creativity isn’t just self-expression, escapism, or frivolity; it’s an assertion of agency, a pushback against systems that stifle innovation, and a refusal to accept the world as it is. It’s an act of reclaiming space, leaning into possibility, and asserting power.

Over to you…

We would love to hear your take—how do you see creativity as resistance in your work or community?

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

The Super Bowl is this weekend. Nearly 50 advertisers will spend $8 million apiece for 30 seconds of captive screentime. You could buy a lot of French chateaux with that money!

(Oh, and I guess there’s a sports game happening, too.)

I love me some Super Bowl commercials. They sell to me without making me feel like a garbage human; they make me laugh, they make me curious, they make me hopeful. They also make me a little incredulous that companies spend $8 million dollars for me to forget which one of them uses Jennifer Coolidge in their ads (it’s either Uber Eats, ELF Cosmetics, or Discover Card. Or all three.)

The commercials are, honestly, quite refreshing. Especially when I think about some of the marketing I’ve been asked to do over the years as an in-house startup marketer, creating pitch decks and campaigns that strike fear into the hearts of my persona and promote urgency to whip out that credit card. It’s hard to believe that the creative professionals making Super Bowl ads are the same marketing species that I am; they craft set-piece jokes for TV, while I toil away making a C-suite’s LinkedIn content go viral.

What we do have in common, though, is an understanding of human psychology. Marketers are storytellers (not manipulators), which means we’re really good at understanding our audience and crafting narratives that resonate with our people.

One of a marketer’s most-loved tools is psychology. We use psychology to tap into human emotion, which helps us connect and identify with our audience. But this asset does, of course, have its pros and cons. With great behavioral knowledge comes great responsibility.

For marketers, the responsibility lies with how we use psychology to tell our stories: empathizing with our audience to build them up versus taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.

You can probably guess where we, Bonfire, stand on that spectrum. (Build people up!)

And you can probably guess where a lot of marketing today resides. (Vulnerabilities = ROI)

Many companies choose to use psychology against their would-be customers, appealing to their base desires rather than letting customers meet their own needs on their own terms. As Shannon put it in last week’s newsletter:

Companies get rich by selling sexy cars and plastic surgery and single family detached houses, not by encouraging you to look within yourself and around you at your community for ways to meet your emotional needs that don’t cost shit.)

Companies get rich by selling us on emotions of fear, jealousy, inadequacy, selfishness, and guilt. Oof! I nearly threw my computer in the ocean just thinking about it. There are a handful of popular sales techniques in business-to-business (B2B) selling that make no qualms about the strategy of challenging the prospect in order to close a deal. One of the techniques is literally called Challenger.

@30mpcSend a frowny face #salestips #b2bsales #objectionhandling #salesdevelopment

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It’s this type of breathless appeal from sales people and marketers that has become incredibly commonplace in a lot of the marketing that we see today. It happens because it is the shortest distance between Point A and a sale, regardless of the icky feelings created along the way. Does it work in the short term? Sometimes. Does it lead to long-lasting, positive relationships? Not likely.

(And it doesn’t always happen between companies and customers. I’ve been emotionally manipulated by people, bosses, and peers to take a certain job, to not negotiate a salary, to accept work outside my scope, etc.)

But I believe there’s a way to move from the negative end of the spectrum to the positive.

How to use psychology for good in your storytelling

The issue with this approach to witch-hunting your customers' deepest negative emotions is that it creates a company culture of weaponized words and power displacement, and it builds a brand based on fear and strong-arming. Long-lasting brands are not the brands that coerce and manipulate someone’s feelings in order to sell.

So if you don’t want to appeal to people’s scariest feelings, then where does that leave you?

We believe in the power of storytelling at Bonfire—and we have seen the power of positive storytelling firsthand. I experience it every year with my favorite Super Bowl commercials (consider me a Reese’s peanut butter cup fan for life now). I have seen brands scale to audiences of millions based on brand foundations of freedom, encouragement, and togetherness.

So with this in mind, if you’re looking for alternatives to the scare tactics of some modern marketing messaging, here are some of the most compelling, positive narratives we’ve seen work wonders:

• Appeal to the future—One of my favorite storytelling frameworks is the before-after-bridge narrative, where you tell someone about life today (“before”), you paint them a beautiful picture of life tomorrow (“after”), and then you describe how the thing you sell can help get them there (“bridge”). This method relies on positive emotions of progress, betterment, and development, which help your would-be customer feel more ambitious and hopeful.

• Appeal to optimism—“How great would it be if …” This narrative borrows a bit from daydreaming, where you are inviting your audience to come imagine with you, to come build a better world together. Instead of focusing on what’s broken, it focuses on what’s possible. This can be incredibly powerful when paired with visuals and aspirational language that makes the future feel real and within reach.

• Appeal to balance—Not every story needs to be about radical transformation; sometimes, people are simply looking for equilibrium. This kind of storytelling is about alleviating friction, simplifying complexity, or making someone’s life just a little bit easier. Whether it’s a time-saving app, a stress-reducing habit, or a product that brings harmony to their routine, balance-driven narratives speak to the deeply human desire for steadiness and peace.

• Appeal to betterment—People love a good underdog story—not just about others, but about themselves. The best brands make their customers feel like the main character of a self-improvement arc, where they have the power to grow, achieve, and become a better version of themselves. This kind of storytelling leans into themes of learning, growth, and mastery, showing people what they can unlock when they take action.

And one big, general idea:

Find the inverse of the negative

Negative emotions typically come with positive counterparts. Carl Jung’s “light and shadow” psychology is a metaphor describing human tendencies as a spectrum, spanning from light to shadow. For instance, if I am a really hard worker, the “light” side of this might be that I accomplish a lot and feel productive and am seen as a valued contributor to my family, friends, and teams; the “shadow” side would be that I get burned out easily, I am hard on myself, and I don’t take time to reflect and lift my head up while I’m diving into projects.

The negative emotions we may be compelled to use in our marketing can also be reframed and phrased to acknowledge the “light” side of their psychology. Here’s a table with some of the more common negative emotions that we’re asked to employ as marketers and some of the positive alternatives that we can lean on instead:

Negative → Positive

Fear → Confidence, safety, reassurance

Envy / Jealousy →Inspiration, aspiration, motivation

Selfishness → Self-care, empowerment, worthiness

Inadequacy → Growth, progress, self-improvement

Guilt → Responsibility, integrity, redemption

Scarcity → Abundance, opportunity, generosity

Individualism → Community, collaboration, togetherness

Death → Renewal, transformation, legacy

Over to you

At the heart of it all, the best brand stories don’t just sell—they inspire. Whether you’re helping someone dream bigger, feel more capable, or simply breathe a little easier, a strong positive narrative will always leave a lasting impact.

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

One of the more transformational pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten in my life was to set goals based on how I want to feel, not what I want to do.

Because, waaaay deep down, accomplishing goals is actually about feelings, isn’t it? You want to do X, because it will make you feel Y. And Y could be almost anything, like proud or important or loved or impactful or validated or appreciated or belonging or like you’ve finally shown those assholes back home just how far you’ve come!!! (You know…just for example.)

If we aren’t being really mindful, these drives and ambitions give orders from the murky depths of our unconscious, and we’re none the wiser. We think we want a new job, but really what we want is to feel purposeful again. We think we want to be in a relationship, but really what we want is to feel deeply witnessed by another person.

If you could feel the same amount of support from making one new friend as you could if you hit 100,000 followers on Instagram, you’d probably choose to make the friend, right? If you could feel just as attractive as you are right now as you could after 6 months on an intense diet and exercise regime, you’d probably skip the gym. But we don’t usually think about the underlying feelings so much. We think about the thing or the accolade or the milestone because we believe it will give us the feelings we want and need.

I say “we believe it will,” because the problem with humans is that we’re actually really, really bad at predicting what will make us feel a certain way. (See also: this and this.) Plus, we’re constantly fighting against cultural and social programming that tells us that doing X = feeling Y, as if there’s some kind of universal equation for meaning and fulfillment. (Because one-size-fits-all dreams are a lot easier to monetize and sell to people! Companies get rich by selling sexy cars and plastic surgery and single family detached houses, not by encouraging you to look within yourself and around you at your community for ways to meet your emotional needs that don’t cost shit.)

So we chase goals, achieve them, then wonder why we still feel the same. Or we chase goals, fail to achieve them, and then suffer believing we’ll never feel differently until we succeed. All the while, we’re unknowingly going after the wrong stuff. It’s a trap until we understand the underlying feelings we want and what will really give us those feelings.

Goal-setting becomes particularly thorny when it comes to artistic and creative goals. (I’ve talked about redefining success for your creative goals before, so that’s a good companion post to this one if you’re interested in this topic.) Artistic and creative pursuits are about self-expression, which (technically) has nothing to do with how those pursuits are received or perceived. But where most people derive meaning from self-expression is its ability to connect us to others, and that’s a super noble goal! So…what? You’re supposed to not care about that?

No. Of course you care about that. But we live in a world where caring about that often supersedes the self-expression. You have to be able to care about it…healthily. With boundaries!

So let’s explore four strategies for setting meaningful, flexible creative goals that won’t leave you emotionally bereft.

1. Be outcome agnostic and process proud

I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t easier said than done, but it can really make a world of difference. If you center your goals around the way in which you do things—being intentional, operating with integrity, in collaboration with others, to a high standard of quality—you have (nearly) complete control over achieving these things. On the other hand, once you start staking success on the outcome of your work—it makes X amount of money, it gets Y amount of attention—you’re tying your emotional health and fulfillment to the whims of the world.

Why strap yourself to a permanent roller coaster that everyone else but you can control?

2. Frame goals around experiences

Piggybacking off of the idea that your goals should be outcome agnostic, another way to think about it is to frame them around experiences you desire or need rather than achievements you chase. So for example, your goal could be “write for 15 minutes a day” or “attend one creative retreat per year” instead of “write a short story collection” or “sign 3 clients through networking.”

Goaling yourself on experiences that bring fun and curiosity to your life is another great way to go about it, like “experiment with three new [whatevers] this month.” Some people even frame their goals around negative experiences, like “get rejected 100 times this year.” How empowering is that?! (I’ve heard that goals like this are actually really hard, because people find that when they put themselves out there and start asking/applying/pitching, they end up getting more yeses than they thought!)

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3. Regularly check in and adjust

A goal can be a goal for a minute or a day or a season or your whole life. Just ask my sports-obsessed little brother about the one glorious day 10-year-old me decided I wanted to be in the WNBA and I asked him, to his delight, to train me. Turns out, I just wanted the feeling of being a powerful woman, and I “quit” the next day. (He is now a professional athlete. I type into the internet for a living.)

Why not decouple the idea of success from achieving something that you might not actually even care about or want to do anymore? What’s the point of doing something just to say you’ve done it once it’s lost its appeal? Regularly check in on the things you want to do and make sure you’re pursuing them with intention. Believe it or not, there is no cosmic retribution for changing your mind, wanting something different, and altering your course. (And if you’re unsure if you should change goals or just take a breath first, read about how to tell if you should rally or rest.)

4. Check for values alignment

A great way to dissect your goals to figure out the emotional needs fussing underneath them is to ask yourself, “What do I believe it says about me if I achieve this? And what do I believe it says about me if I don’t?” (And maybe get your therapist on standby to discuss what you uncover.)

If you find yourself coming up with things like “If I achieve this, I believe I will finally earn respect” or “If I don’t achieve this, I believe I’m lazy and untalented,” then ask yourself if those statements align with the way you view others in your life and the world at large.

In other words, do you apply those same value judgments to anyone else except you, or do you think, for example, that people are worthy of love and respect regardless of what they achieve? Do you think people who engage with their creative work, find joy and meaning in it, but never get the milestone or the accolade are lazy and untalented? If you’re reading this newsletter, I’m guessing the answers to those questions are “yes” and “no” respectively!

Over to you…

Ultimately, setting creative goals doesn’t have to mean pressure, stress, or failure. It’s about progress, curiosity, and self-compassion. We’d love to hear your own creative goals, or even one that you’ve struggled to reframe. We’re here to support!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

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Nishant Jain is an interesting fella. He was an aspiring neuroscientist who was in the middle of his PhD program when he abruptly decided to quit and become a writer and artist. Now he creates beautiful sketches of day-in-the-life scenes around his city—formerly Chicago, now Vancouver, British Columbia; he writes a substack and has a podcast.

His background in neuroscience gives him a really unique perspective on today’s media and marketing landscape, which he summarized with this quote:

“I do not want to be in the business of manipulating your split-second attention.”

As a former head of marketing, I feel personally attacked lol.

But seriously though, the “business” that Nishant describes—the business of manipulation and attention—is a very apt description of the world in which today’s brands must operate and the marketing efforts that they may feel compelled to employ in order to be seen, heard, and noticed. By some estimates, we see over 10,000 ads per day. The battle for attention is real.

For the record, we (Bonfire) do not want to be in the business of manipulating anyone’s attention. Through our agency work, we help businesses tell unique and authentic stories that, we believe, cut through the noise just fine, thanks—no manipulation necessary.

But we are no strangers to the modern world of marketing and the demands that growth-oriented businesses place upon it. Those demands have been placed on us plenty, whether in agency discovery calls or back in our in-house marketer days.

What does it mean to be a marketer in 2025? (Or a marketing and branding agency, for that matter?)

If not manipulate attention, then what is a well-intentioned brand supposed to do?

What even is marketing?

ChatGPT, help us!

The many definitions of marketing: Pick a fave

As a former head of marketing for influential tech companies and unicorn startups, I recognize the irony in my asking the painfully basic question: What is marketing? The answer—in my defense—is elusive, even to former heads of marketing, because the discipline keeps evolving with the times. Don Draper did not have to deal with split-second attention; he also did not have the luxury of TikTok ads.

If I bristle at the thought of manipulation-as-marketing, then how exactly should we be defining it in today’s day and age?

Here is a list of options.

The definition I used most often is a simple little axiom I created over the years:

“Marketing is connecting a company with its customers.”

HubSpot defines marketing as:

"Marketing refers to any actions a company takes to attract an audience to the company's product or services through high-quality messaging. Marketing aims to deliver standalone value for prospects and consumers through content, with the long-term goal of demonstrating product value, strengthening brand loyalty, and ultimately increasing sales."

Investopedia defines marketing as:

“Marketing refers to the activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of its products or services. Marketing includes advertising and allows businesses to sell products and services to consumers, other businesses, and organizations.”

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as:

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Wikipedia defines marketing as:

“Marketing is the act of satisfying and retaining customers.”

To drive home the point(?), Wikipedia also includes a picture of Steve Jobs posing over a rad computer.

And yes, I did end up asking ChatGPT for its definition, too. Here is what it said:

“Marketing is the process of promoting, selling, and distributing a product, service, or idea to meet the needs and wants of a target audience. It involves understanding customer behavior, creating value, and building relationships to achieve business goals.”

What marketing is

Based on all these definitions, you can begin to see a few common characteristics that hint at a singular definition of marketing:

The vibes

• Connection

• Relationship

• Retention

• Satisfaction

• Understanding

• Value

The tactics

• Promotion

• Distribution

• Audience-building

• Advertising

ChatGPT, ever the curator of jargon and business speak, included “sales” in its definition of marketing, but I would argue that “sales” is part of, well, sales and not marketing. In fact, this anecdote from Reader’s Digest does a great job of explaining the difference:

“If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying 'Circus coming to the Fairground Saturday', that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed, that's publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. If you did all of this on purpose, that's marketing. If the town's citizens go to the circus, you show them the entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that's sales.”

Marketing is walking an elephant through the mayor’s flowers on purpose.

What marketing is NOT

You’ll notice that in all the different definitions of marketing, the words “manipulation” and “attention” were never uttered.

So why then do the words feel so apt and unavoidable when discussing marketing in 2025?

Back in the day, I avoided pursuing a business degree of any sort because I associated business (and sales and marketing) with the idea of convincing people to buy something they did not need. I recoiled at consumerism (still do). Which is why the marketing path I’ve taken has been much more about authentic brand-building than it has been about growth-at-all-costs world domination. How did we end up with a marketing world tasked with attention-seeking? Capitalism is partly to blame, sure. So is the glut of content and the systems we use to access the content. The problem with modern marketing, as it were, occurs when you take the positive notions of marketing—connection, relationship, value—and you weaponize them as tools to grow, grow, grow, capture, capture, capture, eat, eat, eat.

Marketing is not a magic bullet. Some businesses think that all they need in order to grow is a little splash of marketing. And then a little more. And a little more. Manipulation occurs when you pour on more marketing tactics without bothering to consider the beating heart of your efforts: your brand purpose, mission, and values.

Marketing is not a megaphone. Another misconception is that marketing is all about spray-and-pray tactics to tell as many people about you as often as those people can stomach. Quantity without quality only exacerbates the attention issue. The antidote is in finding places to have conversations (not megaphone broadcasts) with your people, not all people.

Marketing is not a one-and-done event. You do not market once and then it’s over. (Wouldn’t that be nice.) Instead, you build a plan that persists and keeps your story consistent, relatable, and alive.

How to avoid manipulating people’s attention: Bring on the brand strategy

As Nishant has said (and we agree), we “do not want to be in the business of manipulating your split-second attention.” But given how prevalent the attention economy can be, how do we avoid falling into this trap?

In many ways, this is the reason why we do the work we do at Bonfire, to invest in the type of marketing that rejects the need for manipulation and embraces the freedom of being yourself—whether for you, personally, or for the business you’re running.

To break it down further: marketing, as per our previous definitions, is about connecting your company to your customers, and within marketing, you’ll typically find these three disciplines:

• Brand marketing: Which is all about who you are as a business

• Product marketing: Which is all about what you sell

• Growth marketing: Which is how you sell it

(We help with the brand marketing work at Bonfire, and we have great folks in our network who can help with the rest.)

With this setup in mind, we can begin to see a path away from the typical manipulation and attention-seeking. When you start your marketing efforts with brand marketing, you are forced to figure out who you are as a business and how to be true to yourself. Manipulation occurs when you’re putting on a false pretense and convincing people that you (or your product) is something that it’s not.

Brand foundations create the authentic, consistent versions of your messaging that will be true, never manipulative. From these foundations, you can then layer in the product, then the growth. Starting with who you are makes for a very different dynamic with your marketing efforts.

How do you ensure you’re on the right track (which is to say, not the manipulation track)?

Build your story with these three principles in mind:

1 - Stand out from the crowd. It’s okay to be you!

You don’t need to manipulate to get people’s attention. In fact, the more authentically you can be yourself, the more likely you are to attract the attention of the “right” people who get you and who want to spend time with you.

Part of the race for attention and the impetus for manipulation is the sheer volume of same-ness that takes place online. Turn on your LinkedIn feed, if you dare, and prepare to be assaulted with recycled anecdotes from a million AEs. If you and your brand are zigging while everyone else is zagging, then you don’t need to manipulate one iota.

2 - Stand for something, not for everything. It’s okay if you are not everyone’s cup of tea.

When you stand for something that you really believe in—and keep standing for this thing again and again—people who value the same thing will find you. It’s tempting to jump onto trends and participate in every conversation, but this dilutes your story and paints a fuzzier picture of what people expect from you and your brand. Pick a cause that’s true to you, and make it something you are known for!

3. Stand on business, not for business. Consistency and authenticity are where it’s at.

What you do and how you do it speaks louder than any flashy campaign or gimmick. Instead of chasing trends or trying to constantly sell yourself, focus on delivering value, keeping your promises, and showing up consistently. Let your actions and your reputation tell the story of who you are and what you represent. When you build your foundation on integrity and authenticity, you don’t need to stand for “business as usual” — you’ll stand out naturally by simply doing great work and being true to your values.

What do you think?

We’d love your thoughts on marketing, brand, manipulation, and attention. Hit reply to let us know!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

You know what I will no longer have time for in 2025? When people experience art—most often non-literal visual art, but sometimes a performance or a poem, etc.—and they say, dismissively, “Psh. I could do that!” Or worse: “My kid could do that!”

First of all? I’ve played Pictionary with you before, my dude. You cannot make a straight line to save your life, so check yourself.

But secondly, and more importantly, I say to these people…sure. They could do that! They could take a canvas and paint a bunch of squares on it, or only paint one solid color, or splatter paint everywhere, or make found poetry, or sit in the same chair in a famous museum all damn day. They are absolutely 100% capable of those things, right?

They could indeed pretty easily take a few oil and acrylic paint classes to learn how to properly prepare a canvas and blend colors and recreate Mark Rothko’s or Piet Mondrian’s work. They, too, could consciously collect scraps of text from their daily lives and publish it as poetry. They could also, say, spray paint a garage door with the date every day for a year and call it performance art. Sure!

But the value of art and creativity is not that some people are physically capable of it and others are not. (That attitude is so telling, isn’t it? It’s almost like our Western capitalist mindset needs us to believe that the only art worth making and consuming and celebrating is art with an almost insurmountable technical skill barrier, because god forbid people invest their own time and energy in amateur creative self-expression, which does less for major corporations than people buying their catharsis, self-soothing, and entertainment does! But I digress…)

Again, the value of art is not in whether someone else could or couldn’t create a particular piece of it. So someone saying “I could do that!” is beside the point.

Because the point is that they don’t.

They could, but they don’t. They don’t want to. They don’t need to. They could, but there wouldn’t be an idea behind the creation, and their attempts to copy would not account for the commentary the work is making nor the context in which it was created, which imbues it with additional meaning. So while yes, they could paint Rothko’s gradients, or Pollack’s splatters, or Rauschenberg’s solid white canvas, or recreate Abramović’s feats of endurance, they would be saying nothing.

What separates artists and creatives from the “I could do that!” folks is not the painting or the poem or the performance, but rather having something to fucking say!

Why am I on this rant? Because—shocker—the rise of generative AI has led to a democratization of creation that I fear is wildly outpacing the democratization of self-expression. It’s fuel for the “I could do that!” fire. Because now anyone can generate digital images, can generate song lyrics, can generate book-length narratives. All while expressing basically ::fart noise:: other than, “Look: Now this exists.” (And then, let’s be honest, usually trying to use whatever it is to make money.)

I want to stop and take a big breath here and say that I wholeheartedly support the democratization of self-expression! (As evidence, please see: Every other newsletter post on this Substack.) Everybody is creative. Everybody has something to say. But our social norms and patriarchal ideas of value have ensured that fluent self-expression remains in the realm of those technically and traditionally skilled enough to become widely lauded and funded and/or those brave enough to withstand public and private ridicule.

What a shame that self-expression leaves us vulnerable to the judgments of others rather than the celebration of others. Others love to decide that something isn’t “good enough” or “relatable enough”—but “good enough” for what? “Relatable enough” to whom? What we really mean when passing these judgments is: “This isn’t commercial enough.” Because we have been accustomed to conceive of no motivation other than profit—or fame, which is also profit—and attribute no value other than a monetary one. If you’re a musician but you have a day job, you’re a failed musician. If you make quilts but just give them away to friends and family, you have a cute hobby, not a body of work as a textile artist.

But it’s a long walk between “This isn’t commercial” and “This isn’t worth expressing.” We’ve just conflated them.

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So what’s the point in all this? (Other than me getting it off my chest—thanks for listening!) I’ll go back to something that Kevan wrote in last week’s newsletter:

“Urgency matters a lot less than you might think. As much as it might pain me to acknowledge, far fewer people than I think are waiting on pins and needles for me to launch something. Maybe no one is waiting!”

“No one is waiting,” really hit me hard. Because it’s true. Being an artist/creator/maker of any kind is to exist in a noisy, oversaturated world where, with very few exceptions, no one is waiting for the thing you’re creating. And all the hollow, soulless, AI-zombie creations, all the stuff that is just for commercial purposes, makes it even more crowded and competitive these days. It’s truly disheartening. But just like how what makes someone an artist is the impulse and not the creation itself, another dividing line is that no one is waiting and you do it anyway. Because you have something to say, and you’ve somehow, blessedly, against all odds, come to the conclusion that it’s worth saying without guarantee of recognition.

If people were waiting for something specific, they would go out to get it, or someone would figure out a way to quickly give it to them, probably cheaply and poorly. But the things that are worth making are the things that people don't even know they want or need. And the discovery that something fills an unknown want or need is what's most meaningful, delightful, compelling, and touching: "I didn't know I needed this, but here it is. I learned something about myself. I am more than I knew."

“I could do that”—yeah, you could. And maybe you should. You might discover you actually have something to say.

/rant

Over to you…

Creative rants? Let’s hear ‘em! Sound off here or on socials and tag us!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

Occasionally, I write Substack stories as advice to myself, researching the problems I have yet to personally solve in the hopes that my due diligence might finally convince me to do the thing, to be the person, to solve the puzzle. It’s very much “do as I say, not as I do.”

This particular Substack is no exception.

I am a notorious hurrier with a complicated relationship to pace and urgency. Recently in therapy, I admitted that I am used to an environment in which it is a failure to bring the same topic to a 1:1 with your manager in back-to-back weeks, that you should be solving problems, not rehashing them. My therapist gently told me that the same rules don’t apply in therapy. Phew!

So by writing about it, I hope to learn a thing or two myself.

Moving fast comes up all the time in my day-to-day: I feel compelled to check off to-do items as quickly as possible, to launch programs and initiatives now (yesterday, ideally), and to get stuff done with breathtaking speed. Case in point: I tell clients that we can complete a rebrand project in four weeks before I actually think about what goes into a rebrand project. Another case in point: I am dead-set on completing the purchase of a French castle in three months, despite Shannon’s repeated assertions and reams of evidence that the pace of French real estate is, how do I put it, leisurely.

There are books and apps and philosophical movements around the notion of slowing down, so I know I’m not the only one stuck on the “fast” setting and looking for relief. How did I (we) get into this hurried state? Good question. Let me give you a quick answer. (See? Even my Substacks are hurried.)

1. I have worked at a lot of startups, and startups celebrate pace because they need to ship features and to acquire customers quickly in order to survive (aka appease their shareholders).

2. I reported to CEOs who typically wanted things done right away, and I struggled with boundaries.

3. I am a people pleaser who says yes to lots of things.

4. I equate moving fast with learning fast, which is my own way of rebranding “hustle culture” to something that sounds more noble.

5. I fear that if I don’t move fast enough then I will miss out on an opportunity.

These are some of the prevailing feelings behind my hurried mindset. Do these resonate with you? What would you add?

And also: How do you break the cycle?

Like I mentioned, I am still very much in this cycle, but I am learning lots from helpful books and patient friends on how to be more balanced. Here are five stories I’m working to embrace regarding hustle culture, hurriedness, urgency, and pace.

5 reasons not to hurry

1. Creativity requires time

One of the main ingredients in a creative practice is carving out the time and space to be creative, which is difficult for us hustlers because time and space are our natural enemies!

Since the science and research behind time + creativity is sound, and assuming we can actually succeed at carving out time in our day to slow things down—block our calendars, take a walk, put some buffer into a project deadline—then, ironically, the boost in creativity might actually boost our productivity.

Creative thinking leads to innovative solutions, improved problem-solving skills, and fresh perspectives that can streamline your work processes, transform your approaches, and actually end up making you more effective in the long run.

Creativity requires time, and relatedly, hard things also take time.

In my haste to finish stuff, even and especially the big things, I can get pretty down on myself for failing to move along just as quickly as possible, like I’ve got the answers wrong on the test of life or have missed something obvious that everyone knows but me. However, it turns out that if things were super easy, then I probably could breeze through them; it’s logical and acceptable for the harder stuff in life—career decisions, business decisions, big projects, big changes—to take the time they need.

2. Patience is actually a pretty powerful differentiator

Startup founder Allen Pike tells this interesting anecdote on his blog, recounting a magic trick by the magician Teller of Penn & Teller fame:

First, he’d have you pick a card. He would attempt to produce the card, but fail, indicating the card may have travelled elsewhere. He’d then lead you on a short walk to a nearby park, and then be inspired to dig a hole. Buried there, beneath undisturbed grass, was a box. When opened, the box would, somehow, contain the card you’d chosen. An impossible trick.

To create this magical moment, he had to do something you wouldn’t expect: he’d gone out into the park and buried a number of boxes, corresponding to potential cards one might choose. Then, he waited months – until the grass had grown over. Only then could he perform the trick.

Deducing what card you’ve picked is a well-known sleight. But performing a trick where your card is seamlessly buried requires so much advance preparation that it seems impossible.

The justification that Teller gives for the time and patience required for tricks like these is incredibly relevant for the work that us creative marketers might choose to do, too:

Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

One of the most successful articles that I ever wrote for Buffer’s blog required that I (gulp) not do anything for 30 days. (We wrote zero posts on the blog for a month to see what would happen to our traffic.) It’s not exactly the same as burying playing cards in the park, but it certainly took me out of my hustle-and-grind mindset and created a little moment of delight and “magic.”

Especially when everyone else is running as fast as they can, being patient with your creative output might allow for some truly differentiated output that feels unique compared to all the hastily made stuff in our feeds and inboxes.

3. Urgency matters a lot less than you might think

As much as it might pain me to acknowledge, far fewer people than I think are waiting on pins and needles for me to launch something. Maybe no one is waiting!

I often build up artificial urgency in my head by setting arbitrary deadlines and then holding myself accountable, despite the deadline being arbitrary and completely self-invented. For instance, at Bonfire we are excited to launch a community for creative marketers. But are thousands of people refreshing our homepage every hour for the big launch announcement? No way! Does the whole world have the same go-live date circled in their Notion calendars as I do? Nope!

When I pause to think about it, the urgency is often a product of my own overthinking, based on the mistaken beliefs I outlined earlier: startups gotta go fast, bosses want stuff done NOW, etc. Donna Farri, author of The Breathing Book, suggests some zoomed-out questions to help give some perspective:

“Is my need to hurry real or imagined? Is this task so important that it is worth losing my peace of mind? And the clincher, Will anyone die as a result of this not getting done today? Question whether hurrying will really help you arrive at your destination.”

Journalist and author Katharine Whitehorn puts it even more directly:

“You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.”

Sorry to all you others upon whom I’ve foisted my hurry!

4. The goalposts keep moving

Goalposts sit at the back of a football end zone, which is where teams are constantly hustling to arrive at as quickly and frequently as possible. Moving the goalposts, then, is a rather rotten experience! In our knowledge-work world, goalposts could be milestones or achievements or KPIs or targets—basically anything that you’re aiming for.

What happens once you get there? In my experience, there’s often something else to chase next. The theoretical goalposts keep moving so that you’re never in the end zone.

If goalposts aren’t your thing, then there’s also the metaphor of mountains. As you scale one mountain, your view from the top might just reveal that there is an even taller mountain to scale next!

The flip side, of course, is a growth mindset of going after bigger and better things. The trick for me at least has been disassociating this quest for personal improvement from any sort of timeline expectation. I don’t need to build a million-dollar business in 12 months OR ELSE. It’ll take the time it takes. (And maybe I should even re-think how I view success in the meantime.)

5. You might hurry past something really great

“Move fast and break things” may have gotten Facebook pretty far, but you know what actually got broken in the process? The people doing all the moving!

“Boy, I hurried... I hurried for a long time. I'm sorry I did. All the time you're hurrying, you're not really as aware as you should be. You're trying to make things happen instead of just letting it happen.”

These words were spoken by the musician Bob Dylan, who could have just as easily been speaking for me and my fellow knowledge workers in our hurried and harried marketing jobs. One of the obvious risks of hurrying all the time is burnout. In 2024, almost half of workers (44%) admitted to feeling burned out.

Of course, the less obvious downside of hurrying is that you might miss something fun or fulfilling: the perfect job, meeting someone who’s a great fit for you, a creative idea that you’d love working on, etc.

Over to you

What is your relationship like with hurry? What have you found helpful in slowing down and taking your time with tasks and to-dos? I’d love to learn from you!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

The other day, in a burst of co-founder enthusiasm and latent savior complex, Kevan made a LinkedIn post calling for freelance writers interested in working with us in the new year as we look to engage with clients on some potential content projects. The result of his 20-word message was 900 comments, 500 connection requests, dozens of Bonfire inbox queries, tens of personal emails, and unknowable loss of time, energy, and focus for not only him but also Shannon as we tried to thank everyone for their interest while also stressing that we didn’t actually have any work to offer anyone right now.

Oops!

It was not our first Oops of the year, and as you can tell by the nature of the Oops, it came from a good place, no one really got all that hurt, and it actually did have the potential to solve a business problem.

We will laugh about this eventually, as we do all of our oopsies.

And we’d like to invite you to laugh along with us!

Rather than a year-end post listing our achievements and reflections, we thought we’d take an unconventional turn and tell you about our bloopers over the past 12 months. Hope you enjoy!

1. Trick or treat! (Spoiler: It’s “trick.”)

We hosted a casual online event on Halloween for some of our close professional contacts, emcee’d by our talented friend Kris Martinez. We encouraged everyone to show up to the Zoom in costume. Kris was dressed as a Yankees player, Shannon was dressed as her anti-social cat that lives under her bed, and Kevan was wearing a blue nylon suit that inflates to look like a giant blueberry.

Two people showed up to the event. (Bless you, Meg and Simon!)

Neither were in costume.

Us:

👁️👄👁️ 👁️👄👁️

Oh, and the topic? “What you need in order to feel safe being silly at work.” The apparent answer? Not being the only people in costume on a Zoom call.

2. Red Hot Chili Buttholes

If you’ve seen any of our other digital presences, you might have seen our main logo:

Our original brand designer, the fantastic Blake Suarez, gave us a rich and diverse set of design elements and the complete creative freedom to explore what worked best, so we took the “O” from that logo to use as a little standalone element in our materials:

We use it everywhere! It’s the favicon of our website, it’s our profile picture on every social media platform, and we gleefully made ourselves buttons and stickers featuring this little symbol. (We also love that it could be a “spark,” and that it looks like the arrangement of logs on a fire from top-down.)

Anyway, we wear these buttons on our backpacks and coats, and we have these stickers on our laptops and notebooks. They catch people’s attention! And more than once, we have been asked the same question:

“So, you really like the Red Hot Chili Peppers?”

Us:

🤨🤔

Them:

Us:

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️

“Ok, it’s fine!” we said to ourselves. “We’ll just use a different version of this element from another version of our logo!”

“Sorry, but now this…this looks like a butthole,” our friends said.

Us:

👁️👄👁️ 👁️👄👁️

…sooooo, long live the RHCPs!

And note to our future selves: Be careful cherry picking design elements since we are not as self-aware as the pros are. But at least we have honest friends. :)

3. Banking in The Twilight Zone

ICYMI: Shannon lives in France, and Kevan lives in the U.S.

This fall, we opened a French subsidiary of Bonfire for a number of reasons we won’t go into here. But in order to do that, we needed a business bank account at a French bank. Sounds reasonable enough, right?

Well, since Shannon is an immigrant in France, it wasn’t quite so simple. To maximize our chances of being approved for this account, we decided to open the account at the bank where Shannon already does her personal banking in France.

Did Shannon vet and choose this bank? No, because she initially had a different, well-known bank…but then it was bought out by this new one and her account was migrated. Did we do any research into this new bank and whether it was good? No. No, we did not. Were we told that the bank account would be open within 10 days at least 4 times? Yup.

At one point, the immigration authorities needed a document from the business registration authorities, who in turn needed a document from the bank, who in turn needed that same missing document from the business registration authorities to issue their document… A true Joseph Helleresque loop of infernal paperwork. It was like a joke, except it wasn’t. (And all of it was happening in French!)

Us:

🫨😭

Did it take from August until December to actually open the account? Why yes, it did!

4. You, too, can be a celebrity for only $695/yr

Our email inboxes are stuffed with a variety of warm, sincere outreach and also cold, unsolicited outreach; normally we are pretty good at sussing out the relevant from the chaff. Well, one of us is a little better than the other.

Kevan had the honor of being invited to apply to America’s Who’s Who, a list of luminaries compiled into a physical book and digital database, which features said notable people from all walks of life: marketers, sure, but also teachers, athletes, writers, volunteers, academics, librarians, the list goes on and on. In fact, the list goes on and on so long because part of the business model of Who’s Who is to compliment a vast array and huge number of people of interest in the hopes that these people will be encouraged compelled to purchase the books and plaques and other notable artifacts to put on their bookshelves and wrap as Christmas gifts for their families.

Well, guess what Kevan’s family is getting for Christmas!

Kevan’s family:

😬💀

Just kidding, Kevan did not spend the hundreds of dollars for the paraphernalia of Who’s Who. He did say yes to the intro emails and yes to a live phone screen where he was interviewed for his merits, immediately granted admission to the club (note: his merits are not that impressive), then asked pretty directly for the number of leather-bound Who’s Who books he wanted to purchase. Incredibly, he held firm and said, “Zero.”

In the months since this experience, Who’s Who has sent him two more cold outreach requests to his LinkedIn DMs, asking him to apply for Who’s Who, as if his admission were forgotten in their files or, just as probably, his admission did not completely stick because he did not pay for anything. So far, he has resisted the urge to respond to the DMs.

5. Go home, Midjourney; you’re drunk

Every week, this very newsletter has an AI-generated image that represents a quirky scene from the imaginary little world of Bonfire. Since we’re trying to inject more creativity into realms where it’s traditionally or systemically devalued, we depict that metaphorically with Polaroid-type photos of extremely stereotypical business people having a surreal campout experience in the woods, or outdoorsy/artsy elements magically integrated into a stereotypical office environment. Very playful, quite ironic, and a little bit ✨mystical✨.

We think it works for our vibe! But you know what doesn’t always work? Midjourney, the AI image generator we use to create these pictures. (Orrrr maybe we just don’t know how to prompt it properly, tbh.)

The results are sometimes, frankly, horrific. Or they’re nonsensical. Often, they’re just hilarious. To commemorate these cosmic and corporeal horrors, we created a Slack channel to share them called #midjourney-oopsies so that we can remember them forever.

Here are some of our favorite little abominations! While these are not technically NSFW, they’re also not not NSFW? Like, you probably wouldn’t want anyone to know that you’re looking at them. You’ll see what we mean…

And finally, the cherry on top, the pièce de résistance: These women, like the rejects from a Hieronymous Bosch painting, demonstrating that Midjourney has no effing clue how a human eats a carrot. (Recommend zooming in on each face for maximum effect.)

We’re sorry, ok? WE’RE SORRY!

Over to you…

Tell us it’s not just us! What were your funny flops in 2024? Please, don’t leave us hanging!

Happy holidays, and we’ll see you in January!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

In our last post, Kevan revealed that the number of Bonfire business ideas that have come from TikTok and Instagram videos is not zero. (Though our shame about that is zero.) This sentiment applies equally to posts on this Substack newsletter. Like this one.

A couple videos on my TikTok feed recently felt like the perfect cluster of topics for this time of year: the paradoxically fast-slow December Slide™ where every project and deliverable feels at once urgent—because it must be done before seemingly everybody physically disappears into the Holiday Hole™—and yet at the same time sluggish and neverending, because people’s hearts and minds have already passed the Holiday Event Horizon™.

It’s a time of year when you’re bone tired, fed up, and ready for a break—and when everything that’s standing in the way of that break feels like the worst, biggest, and hardest thing you’ve ever had to do. (Even if it’s something you’ve done a thousand times before!)

In these moments, when you’re more stressed than usual and the deadlines are deadline-ier than usual, it can be really helpful to consider two different competitive impulses that are interrelated:

• Rally vs. rest

• Intuition vs. fear

I’ve linked above to the original TikTok explainers by a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, but I’ll unpack them here and explain how these apply to our relationship to our work and our creative projects.

Should you rally or rest?

There are moments in creative projects, at work, in relationships, in your career trajectory, where you just hit a wall. And when that happens, you have two choices:

1. You can rally (move through discomfort), meaning you can muster your energy and push through your slump in order to lean into a growing edge and Do the Damn Thing despite it being challenging, OR

2. You can rest (go resource yourself), meaning you take a full break from whatever it is you’re pursuing in order to collect yourself, regain your motivation, and then later return to whatever it is you were doing.

So why wouldn’t you just always rally? Because you run the risk of a) being less effective since you have low energy and motivation and b) crash-and-burning out. And why wouldn’t you always rest? Because you run the risk of a) being less effective (in a fun, different way!) and b) not developing resilience and perseverance to accomplish the things you do really want.

There is a time for rallying and a time for resting. (Cue: “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by The Byrds.) Take a moment to think to yourself if you have a natural inclination toward one or the other when things get hard. (I’m a natural rester; Kevan is a natural rallyer. Sometimes this is a great balance, and sometimes we annoy each other.)

So how do you know which is the right strategy for any moment? Here are some qualifying questions for the next time you Simply Cannot (sorry, really into Cute Caps today apparently!):

• Can you still connect this thing to meaning, enjoyment, or importance? If so, it’s time to rally! If not, it doesn’t mean that this thing is stupid and worthless; it just means your brain is working extra hard to protect you from burnout by making the thing you want seem unattractive to you. Take a rest, then see if you still think it’s pointless! (And maybe you’ll indeed learn that you don’t actually want certain things in your life…)

• Do you feel like you’re always coming back to the same obstacle? If you seem to always circle back to the same tough spot where you’re tempted to give up, it could be a sign that you need to rally in order to push through. Basically, you have to do something different to break the pattern.

• Pay attention to your body and emotions. Are you specifically overwhelmed emotionally or depleted physically? If so, it’s probably time to rest. If you’re just feeling bored, avoidant, or annoyed, try rallying.

These, of course, are not super scientific questions. But they can help you identify if you’re hitting a wall to prevent physical and psychic damage (aka burnout!), in which case you should rest, or if you’re just responding to fear and discomfort, in which case you should rally.

But wait, is it bad to avoid fear and discomfort? Aren’t fear and discomfort useful because they tell us that something isn’t right? Isn’t that just our intuition telling us what’s good for us?

Not so fast! Fear vs. intuition is our second convoluted spectrum to unravel.

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Is it fear or is it intuition?

Before we get into some qualifying questions for whether something is fear or intuition, let’s talk about why we really and truly hate fear and discomfort so much.

Our brains like predictability because predictability in our lives and environments = survival. You know what our brains have a harder time predicting, and therefore a harder time ensuring our survival? New things.

We’re afraid of new things because they throw off our brain’s ability to predict what happens next. Only, the problem here is that for the vast majority of us, the Scary New Thing isn’t an unknown cave with hidden dangers like snakes and bears and unstable terrain. No, for most of us, the Scary New Thing is like…an improv class. Opening an Etsy shop. Having a hard conversation with your boss or a friend. For most of us, the Scary New Thing poses zero actual danger, but our brain can’t really tell the difference. So it makes us afraid and uncomfortable, hoping we avoid the Scary New Thing and go back to all the things we already know—even if those things aren’t what we want, need, or are good for us!

This kind of fear and avoidance isn’t necessarily intuition, which is “the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.” For example, you’ll hear people say things like “I got offered the job and it looks great on paper, but I had an intuition it wasn’t right for me, so I declined.”

For me, I can identify fear vs. intuition by the regret I feel or don’t feel after the situation passes. I can point to really clear moments in my life where I did not listen to my intuition, and I later regretted it. I can also point to moments where I did listen to my fear, and I later regretted it. (Take a minute to reflect on similar moments in your own life; can you make the distinction?)

While that might be helpful for identifying intuition vs. fear retrospectively and learning your patterns, that isn’t very helpful in the moment, is it? So here are some qualifying questions to better understand if the resistance you’re feeling is fear or intuition:

• Is this resistance coming from feeling incapable, uncertain of yourself, doubtful of your abilities, or just out of your comfort zone? If so, this could be a fear/discomfort response, in which case it might be time to rally.

• Do you feel anxious, tense, or panicky? Are you overthinking or “crashing out,” as the kids say? If so, you’re probably in a state of fear and discomfort rather than listening to your intuition. Intuition, even when warning you about something, is often a calm, clear thought or feeling.

• Is your instinct to avoid, or is your instinct to go toward something or pay attention to something? Intuition is more often nudging you to go towards something or to pay close attention to something rather than screaming “Run away! Run away!” (Even when it’s warning you!)

• Does the action this feeling is encouraging lead you toward your values and goals? If so, it’s more likely to be intuition than fear. For example, if you want to cancel an interview with a company of your dreams because you feel inadequate for the role, canceling will get you further from your goal. On the other hand, if you want to cancel an interview because you feel like a company might have shady business practices you don’t stand behind, that brings you closer to your values. One is fear, one is intuition!

The next time you come to a crossroads (or just an impasse!) and you aren’t sure what to do next, try sussing out how you feel based on the rubrics above. Not only will you learn more about yourself, but you’ll also develop tools for accomplishing more of what you really want with less risk of burnout and overwhelm.

Over to you…

What are your personal litmus tests for whether you should rally or rest, and whether you’re feeling fear or listening to your intuition? (One person commenting on the original videos said they knew they needed to rally or rest based on whether their hardcore rap playlist motivated them or irritated them. Love!) We’d love to collect more useful questions/litmus tests!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

Tis the season to have a bunch of gift guides flood your inbox!

Here we are joining the trend but hopefully doing so in a bit of a different way. Gift-giving is one of the five love languages—but importantly, not all gifts need to be tangible or commercial: the act of giving can still communicate love and generosity whether or not you’re giving and receiving physical gifts, particularly if you or your recipient are mindful of materialism, budgets, or space. One’s closet can only contain so many Moleskine notebooks until one needs a new closet (or to give some notebooks away).

We have certainly felt loved in a lot of ways during this first year of Bonfire business by all the generosity from our friends, followers, and families.

So with this gift-giving spirit in mind, we put together a list of some uncommon and unexpected gifting ideas inspired by what has been meaningful to us in 2024. We hope these ides might be helpful to you and yours as you’re thinking about gifting this holiday season.

Spark some creativity!

Gift a domain name (browse some options here)

We had a handful of domain-related adventures this year: we forked over $2,000 for our aroundthebonfire.com domain well before we were reliably earning $2,000, we bought a handful of tiny joke domains that may become some fun projects in 2025 (stay tuned), and we had the privilege of doing coaching with an awesome marketer who runs brand for the top-level domain .store.

These days, most creative projects need a digital home. Whether it’s a portfolio, a personal website, a microsite, or something just for fun, a domain name can be an inspiring option to get someone thinking creatively. We’re biased, but why not gift someone a .store domain if they’re selling something!

Send a Midjourney gift card (purchase here)

The surreal images you see at the top of every Bonfire newsletter are made in Midjourney, an AI image generator that takes Shannon’s prompts and turns them into images. What better way to let someone’s imagination run wild than to give them an AI companion that will turn literally anything into an image—so long as you don’t mind the occasional six-fingered hand.

Craft a digital collection: a Pinterest board or a Spotify playlist

Are Pinterest boards and Spotify playlists the new mixtape? Maybe not, but they do a great job of letting someone know you’re thinking of them and showing off a bit of your personality to boot. We used a Pinterest board as inspiration for some of our first Bonfire brand designs (er, technically it became more like what we didn’t want to do), and the song Eye of the Tiger was the backdrop, played through Shannon’s Spotify speakers, to our first pressing of the launch button on our Bonfire announcement social posts.

Upgrade their free software to a paid version

For the creative friend or business colleague who’s getting by with a free version of a favorite tool, what a difference it can make to upgrade to features that remove even a tiny bit of friction from an essential part of their daily workflow. We’ve noticed this with upgraded Loom licenses (no more five-minute limit!) or with premium Zoom (sooo many new features). Here’s a look at our full, upgraded tech stack in case it gives you any ideas of what gift you could give to others:

• Slack

• Notion

• Zoom

• Loom

• Calendly

• Google Workspace

Encourage someone to keep going

Leave a comment on someone’s LinkedIn post or Substack

This is not a naked attempt to get you to comment on this Substack newsletter. Rather, this is a call to be generous in your support of the future things you see from your friends. A little comment can go a long way.

Send an email or letter to a friend, just saying hi

We love hearing from our friends, so it stands to reason that our friends might like hearing from us. The “thinking of you” note can be especially uplifting for solopreneurs or stressed-out in-house folks who can sometimes feel alone.

Bonus, you can turn this into a New Year’s resolution in a month from now.

Make an introduction

We had the opportunity to work with a super cool global supply chain company this year thanks to one little email introduction sent from someone in our network. Thank you, someone! The introductions you make don’t have to be business deals; they can be friendly intros, skill matches, interest matches, or even values matches—“You two just seem like you’d get along swimmingly!”

Send a lil meme

The number of Bonfire business ideas that have come from TikTok and Instagram videos is not zero. It’s fun to give and receive something cool you find online, and it technically means your scrolling can be classified as research / friendship-building.

Make something for them (Bonus: you get to be creative!)

A homemade gift—a drawing, some pottery, an art and craft, etc.—is one of the most unique and priceless gifts you can give to someone. Plus, the act of giving a homemade gift necessitates you creating the homemade gift, which is a wonderful reason to spend time in your creative practice. Earlier this year, Shannon explored this concept through the lens of redefining creative “success,” thinking of success with a broad definition, including how it feels to give to others.

“I don’t make a lot of things that I don’t give away. And often, I make things with particular people in mind. Now, when I visit my friends and family, I see my watercolors on their walls or fridges. I like knowing that they have these little monuments to my affection for them. I like feeling connected to and present in their lives, even when I’m far away. And their excitement and appreciation for them is a reward in and of itself that keeps me creating.”

Show up and show out

RSVP to a friend’s event

Over the past several months, we’ve held a few little gatherings over Zoom and have been so honored to have people say yes to our invites and give us 30 to 60 minutes of their days. If you have 30 to 60 minutes to spare, this can be a great gift for your friends and colleagues who are setting up workshops or webinars or events and hoping for a good turnout.

Invite someone to that online community you love

How special it can feel to be invited into an inner circle, even if that inner circle is a Slack group. If there are places you enjoy hanging out online, it can be a wonderful gift to bring others along with you.

(Speaking of online communities, stay tuned for some community updates from Bonfire in the new year!)

Donate to a charity of their choice (or your choice)

Last week we announced a Brand Together initiative for minority-owned organizations. (If you are one of these organizations or know of one, we highly encourage you to apply!) There are so many great and worthy causes out there, and giving to any of these causes on behalf of a friend, colleague, or family member can be a wonderful way to give this holiday season.

Here are some non-profits doing good work for underrepresented communities:

• Code2040

• Black Girls Code

• Lesbians Who Tech

• Black & Brown Founders

• Anita B

• Project Potluck

Share their work on your socials

Talk about a good and simple way to be an ally for someone. If there are voices in your network that you’d like to amplify, a simple little gift would be to share people’s work on whatever platform you happen to have. We are very grateful for all the folks who have shouted us out this year. Every bit of attention makes a difference!

Over to you

What are some of the unique ways you’re thinking about giving gifts this holiday season? We’d love to hear your ideas!

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

Stories bring people together, lift people up, and show us the possibility of a better tomorrow. We love stories at Bonfire, which is why we built a business around helping others tell great ones.

We also built our business around a set of core values: connection, exploration, unconventionality, and devotion. When we hold up these values to the world around us, we feel called to give back to the people and communities who are underserved and underrepresented, particularly as politics and policies evolve over the coming years.

What does this mean in practice?

We’ll keep exploring ways to get involved, but one way to act now has become clear:

We’re launching Brand Together: a free brand strategy initiative for minority-owned organizations and/or companies working to make change in some particularly relevant fields.

How it works

For every three clients Bonfire serves who are venture-backed tech startups (our bread and butter), we will conduct a free brand strategy support session with an organization that meets the criteria below. We’ll pick this organization randomly from a pool of applicants (apply here!), and then undertake a brand project together, spanning a half-day of collaborative workshops, audits, and/or reviews, done asynchronously or live.

If you are interested in applying to Brand Together, or know a business or organization that might be interested, please check out this link.

(Side note: If you’re another brand or marketing services provider and you want to team up to offer free consulting sessions, send us an email at hello@aroundthebonfire.com.)

Who it’s for

In particular, we’re looking to work with organizations who are:

• Non-public, non-venture-backed businesses/organizations

• Based in the United States

• That are

  • POC- or queer-/trans-owned, AND/OR

  • Operating in the space of women’s health, reproductive health, human rights, or DEIB

• And do NOT need to be tech companies! We’re open to B2B and B2C, goods and services, brick-and-mortar, advocacy orgs, you name it.

We encourage you to apply if these descriptions sound like you!

We’ll collect all applicants into a pool on a rolling basis and will select a new organization randomly each time we reach our service threshold. We hope this will allow us to work with a meaningful number of organizations and leaders over the course of the next several years.

If this service could be useful for you, please do send in your application today—and don’t sweat it, it’s just a brief questionnaire! And if you know a business that could benefit from brand and storytelling support, we’d love your help in amplifying this program to others.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Shannon & Kevan

If you know me personally at all, or even if you’ve just gleaned a bit about my personality and point of view from these newsletters, it might surprise you that at one time, I was the woman at the office until 10pm.

Picture me living in New York, taking rage-inducingly unreliable public transit 50 minutes to and from a startup office every day, a marketing contributor in the middle of an irresponsibly fast rebrand and Super Bowl commercial campaign, with a new boss and new goals as the whole team restructured. (Are you sweaty yet?)

Every day, it seemed like there was a new crisis. Always some new resourcing gap that needed to be filled immediately. Some project that had to be babysat 24/7 like a sickly newborn foal. Some critical, last-second task blinking like the timer on a bomb, threatening to blow us all to smithereens if no one jumped on it.

So I would do it.

I’m not saying I was the only one on the team who stepped into the breach, but I’d linger at the office with a strung-out handful of colleagues until well past any reasonable American dinner time, chipping away at an endless mountain of tasks just so that I wouldn’t be caught in a total avalanche the next morning. I told myself this level of stress and overfunctioning was acceptable because it was just for a limited amount of time—until the rebrand! until the Super Bowl! until we hire a new Creative Director!—but secretly…? 

I loved it. 

I loved it because the environment rewarded me for it. I was given more responsibility, more influence, and (remarkable by today’s standards) I was even given more money. The job was a bottomless pit that would take as much of me as I gave it with zero qualms or restraint, and while I might extract some value in return—money, clout, experiences to pad the resumé—the bottomless pit was indeed bottomless! When I think about it now, I picture myself plummeting down an infinite tunnel, my body slowly eroding from the wind shear, collecting cash and accolades until, for the rest of eternity, all that’s falling is a cluster of unenjoyed rewards, my actual self vanished completely. (This is not to pick on this particular role or company, by the way! This is pretty much the relationship between all companies and their employees.)

At the time, this madcap pace was energizing and exciting, and/because it precisely salved/exacerbated a wound in my psyche that was desperate to be recognized for what I could do because I didn’t have faith I’d be recognized for who I was.

This was a wound previously soothed/worsened by academia; I was good at school, I was recognized and rewarded for being good at school, and I was motivated by the attention and approval I received from people around me who seemed to be able to help me get to where I wanted to go. Then I blithely entered the harsh reality of trying to work in the arts in New York City, where absolutely no one gives a shit about what you can do because there are already 300,000 people doing the same thing and half of them already have a lot of money and connections and the other half got there before you. Being really good at stuff didn’t seem to matter anymore, and I lost a huge pillar of (what I thought was) my identity. 

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Then I joined the corporate world, first at branding agencies and then as an in-house marketer at startups. And you know what really does seem to care when you’re good at something? When you work really hard and overachieve and take on more than your fair share? The norms and standards of a for-profit business environment, that’s what! It’s where everyone is incentivized to believe all jobs serve some greater human purpose and we do them because we’re passionate and dedicated. Employers are incentivized to believe this because it means a loyal, compliant, overfunctioning workforce who don’t necessarily need to be paid more to perform more; employees are incentivized to believe this because it means they aren’t “wasting” their one wild and precious life making widgets.  

Whenever I get on these particularly anti-work rants, I always feel the need to caveat everything so as not to be strident and alienating. (And I also hope it’s clear that I’m largely talking about knowledge work jobs and not, you know, being a paramedic!) Because nothing is black and white, and what brings people meaning and purpose can be subjective. Plus, I genuinely did find some meaning in the job I’m describing and the ones that came after. I adored my colleagues, many of whom are dear friends to this day. I learned an incredible amount about what I’m capable of. I took from those experiences what I needed to successfully launch Bonfire with Kevan—hell, I met Kevan at one of these jobs! 

All I’m really saying is that the ways in which I was/am wounded, insecure, and have learned to cope fed in perfectly to a system that would perpetuate and exploit those tendencies if I wasn’t conscious of them—which I wasn’t for a long time! But then I went to therapy. I read a lot of books about attachment styles and family systems and dysfunction. I saw the ways in which I was people pleasing and dishonest about my true feelings with those around me. I uncovered some core beliefs about myself that were harmful and false. I discovered mindfulness and separated my idea of self from my thoughts and emotions. I started paying attention to what made me angry (things that violate our values!) and what made me jealous (things we truly desire for ourselves!) to know myself more deeply.  

And throughout all that, as I felt better about myself, as I reconnected to joy, as I began to have healthier boundaries and show up more authentically with the people in my life…I got worse at my jobs. (“Worse” according to a rubric I no longer believed in.)

If something was broken, I didn’t volunteer to fix it. If there was a resourcing gap…then there was a resourcing gap. A new initiative or project that needed a champion? What a great task for somebody else! I said no to things and I said no on behalf of people I managed. Too much to get done on a normal work day? Then I guess it’ll happen tomorrow, and if there’s too much to get done this week, then I guess it’ll happen next week. And if it doesn’t…? 

No one will die. No one will even get hurt. The stakes for me and the people around me, when I examined them, were actually incredibly low. And more often than not, a scootched deadline or a missed deliverable was hardly a blip on anyone's radar; we were all just operating under breakneck urgency for a lot less legit of a reason than we thought. (The reason? Making the company more valuable, and any of us at any time could be laid off or reassigned or managed out in order to make that come true.) 

I leaned into the idea that, unlike in the arts, it was in fact an enormous, expensive pain in the ass to replace me—and replace me for what? Not even being bad at my job, just simply not being over-the-top exceptional. When my self-worth didn’t depend on being exceptional at work, I wasn’t. And I was a lot more peaceful because of it.

The problem, of course, is that these issues are systemic. It’s not a bad boss or jerk CEO or toxic company culture; it’s the whole set up of working life under late-stage capitalism. And when you’re in a system with coworkers whom you really care about, people who are maybe buying into the system more than you are, it’s really hard to let those people down! If your peer wants to overfunction to get something done and they need you to help them, it’s really, really hard to leave them hanging. And this is also a way the system perpetuates itself, exploiting the inherent goodness of people not wanting to let down their friends and colleagues. (Side note: This is why collective bargaining is so powerful!)

I wish I could tell you that there’s some clear answer, some exact sequence of steps that achieves the perfect balance of showing up for others and protecting yourself—both from overfunctioning and from being fired or managed out of a role. I wish there was a formula for working exactly enough. There is not. I struggled with it throughout my years working in tech and I struggle with it now as a baby business owner, when in fact I am one of the people who directly benefits, in certain ways, from overworking.      

Perhaps just being increasingly conscious of these forces and how we participate in and resist them is the only goal. Because then no matter what you choose, no matter how hard you lean in (or opt the eff out), you are doing so intentionally.

Over to you…

Have you noticed a change in your relationship to work? Did you ever put “too much” of your self-worth on your job or professional achievements? We’d love to hear about your journeys! 

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

Some days I feel like I could take on the world. 

Other days I feel like crawling into a cave and sleeping for 1,000 years. 

What makes the difference between world-beating days and hibernation days? One of the main factors is my mindset. (I have plenty of days that fall in between these extremes, too; I’m just being dramatic.) My outlook on work and creativity can be easily influenced by the thoughts running around my head—positively so when the thoughts are affirming and encouraging; negatively so when the thoughts are judgmental and cynical. The tricky bit is that our brains are wired to fixate on trouble, so it’s the negative thoughts that require more work to keep at bay. “I'm addicted to you,” sings Britney Spears. “Don't you know that you're toxic?” Was she speaking about human psychology or a boy? I guess we’ll never know.

Toxic thoughts and negative self-talk are incredibly commonplace in the modern world of work and creativity. So our job as creators then is to understand the nature of these thoughts and actively work to restore a sense of reality and hopefulness to our outlook. 

Easier said than done! (Or is that the toxic thoughts talking?)

Here are some approaches.

First, what even are toxic thoughts?

Toxic thoughts are false beliefs that can negatively impact your life and the lives of others. They can arise from a previous pain or a lived experience, especially when you’ve felt a violation of trust or safety or security. Toxic thoughts can show up in all aspects of life—yes, work and creativity, but also your relationships, your family, your community, your worldview. 

Given my part-time role as toxic thought documentarian, let me share a few with you.

Here is a sampling of my toxic thoughts around my posting to social media: 

1. No one’s even going to see this, so why bother?

2. No one wants to hear what I have to say.

3. I’ll never get as many likes as [fill-in-the-blank], so what’s the point? 

4. People will probably think I’m trying too hard if I post this.

5. If this doesn’t get any engagement, it just proves I’m not good at this.

And here is a sampling of my toxic thoughts around starting a business: 

1. The world has enough [insert my business idea here].

2. I have no idea what I’m doing and will therefore mess it up.

3. Starting a business will consume my life. And I like my life!!

4. Why would anyone want to work with me? I am a baby who knows so very little.

5. I can’t handle the pressure and the risk of doing it all on my own. 

(Now is also a good time to point out the overlap with toxic thinking and with imposter syndrome. Here is a really really good newsletter about imposter syndrome in particular.)

As you can see, these thoughts share some commonalities with one another. Generally speaking, our toxic tall tales spring to life because of one or more of these factors: 

• Blaming others for your circumstances 

• Having expectations of how yourself or others should behave 

• Constantly worrying about what others think 

• Feeling the need to prove you're right 

• Constantly replaying situations in your mind 

• Jumping to conclusions 

• Trying to be a mind reader

Psychology Today calls these “thought distortions” and categorizes them in four different ways: 

1. Black-and-white thinking. Seeing everything as one way or another, without any in between.

2. Personalizing. Assuming you are to blame for anything that goes wrong, like thinking someone did not smile at you because you did something to upset her. (It's more likely that person is having a hard day and her mood had nothing to do with you.)

3. Filter thinking. Choosing to see only the negative side of a situation.

4. Catastrophizing. Assuming the worst possible outcome is going to happen.

I am personally predisposed to black-and-white thinking, worrying what others think, replaying situations in my head over and over again, and mind reading. What are you most susceptible to? Or maybe I can just read your mind and find out myself? jk

What to do about toxic thoughts 

Knowing is half the battle. Or at least, it’s the beginning of the battle. As we become more familiar with what triggers our toxic thoughts and when they appear, we can start applying strategies to reframe them and foster a more constructive mindset. 

Here are some approaches to help.

1 - Name the thought—generally or quite literally

One powerful way to take the sting out of a toxic thought is to name it. When a negative idea surfaces, try to give it a consistent label. This could be a generic label like “Toxic Thought” (obvs), which will help you separate it from other thoughts like “Idea” or “Curiosity.” Or, you can give it an actual name, like “The Critic” or “The Impostor” or “Evil Kevan.” Naming it externalizes the thought, helping you see it as a visitor in your mind rather than a core truth.

For example, if you’re thinking, “I’ll never be as successful as others in my field,” you can recognize this as your “Comparison Critic.” Once you label it, you may even find humor in it and realize that it’s not entirely rational—it’s just a reflexive, unhelpful thought that doesn’t define you or your potential.

2 - Challenge and replace the thought

When a toxic thought surfaces, take a step back and question it. 

Ask yourself: 

• Is this really true? 

• Is there evidence that contradicts it? 

Sometimes, toxic thoughts go unchecked because we assume they’re grounded in truth, but a quick reality check can reveal that they’re often based on assumptions or fear rather than fact.

Replace the thought with something that feels both true and encouraging. Instead of “I’ll never be as good as [fill-in-the-blank],” try replacing it with “I’m learning and growing every day, and my path is unique.” This switch doesn’t deny the challenge; it just reframes it—rebrands it, you might say—in a way that empowers you.

3 - Take small, consistent actions

Toxic thoughts thrive in inaction because they often magnify uncertainty and fear. Action creates clarity. Action also creates reality. By breaking down your goal into manageable pieces, you can slowly chip away at the overwhelming nature of these toxic, theoretical thoughts. Every little achievement serves as proof that your efforts matter and that progress is possible.

For example, if you share my social media anxiety and believe that “I don’t have a social media strategy, so I can’t post,” then you and I can start small: post once this week, even if it’s a simple update or thought, no matter whether there’s a bigger picture vision to your social presence. Action is an antidote to overthinking and can help build the momentum to keep going.

4 - Practice self-compassion

One of the most underrated tools for combating toxic thoughts is self-compassion. Imagine how you would respond if a friend came to you with the same fears that are rolling around in your head. You’d likely encourage them, remind them of their strengths, and assure them it’s okay to make mistakes. Try to extend the same kindness to yourself.

When you catch yourself thinking, “No one wants to hear what I have to say,” counter it with a gentle reminder: “Even if only a few people listen, it’s worth sharing. My perspective has value.” Self-compassion isn’t just “being nice” to yourself—it’s about giving yourself the grace to grow and make mistakes.

The internet is rife with affirmations, and some of my favorites are the ones they give to kids to build the habit of positive self-talk and encouragement. Eight-year-old me would have loved something like this:

Lightning round!

There are a lot of other great tips and tricks out there for combating negative thoughts. Here are a few other quick things to try next time they rear their head: 

• Limit exposure to triggers: Identify and reduce exposure to people, situations, or content (like certain social media accounts) that feed negative comparisons or self-doubt.

• Practice gratitude: Regularly note three things you’re grateful for, which can help shift focus from what’s lacking to what’s abundant in your life.

• Visualize positive outcomes: Instead of fixating on worst-case scenarios, take a few minutes to imagine a positive result to build confidence and reduce anxiety around challenges.

Over to you

Implementing these strategies won’t eliminate every toxic thought, but with practice, they can become a much quieter part of your mind. Over time, you’ll notice that your less toxic days come around a little more often. And when the cave days arrive, they won’t feel quite so overwhelming—you’ll know you have tools to manage them.

What do you do to manage your negative self-talk? 

Do you fear social media as much as I do? 

It’d be great to hear from you in the comments or replies. 

For more…

Follow us on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Stay tuned to our Substack space for new community features and ways to meet your fellow subscribers.

And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

• Team workshops and consulting for marketing and leadership

• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,
Shannon & Kevan

In lieu of the longform, here are some quick little thoughts and encouragement from the both of us …

An election is not a destiny; rather, it puts us on a particular path. That path may be uncertain. It may be fraught or dangerous. But, importantly, the path doesn't end. And we can veer off, push and pull in different directions. We can sit down in the middle of the path and make it hard to go fast. All of that is useful. Valuable. Meaningful.

We are feeling big feelings this week for the people whose futures seem more tenuous now than they did a few days ago. Our hearts go out to those who feel pushed to the edges, unseen, and unsupported—groups that include marginalized communities, minorities, women in general. Both at Bonfire and in everyday life, we aspire to live up to values of inclusion, belonging, and love, so we feel especially called to show up anytime and anywhere those values are put to the test.

In the grand scheme of things, we are just a baby business up against monoliths of capitalism, patriarchy, and revisionism, but you know what? Babies give the best hugs.

We're committed to thinking hard about concrete and relevant ways we can show up and support those left more vulnerable in the wake of the election. When we figure that out soon, you'll be the first to know.

See you all next week,

Shannon + Kevan

The following is an abbreviated list of all the people I’m jealous of at various times and for various reasons.

1. Founders whose companies earn $1 million or more per year

2. Substacks with more subscribers than us

3. People who are good at making social media videos

4. The professional dancers on Dancing With the Stars

5. Taylor Swift

6. People who live in metropolitan cities where Taylor Swift has concerts

7. People who live near an IKEA

8. People who live in the big house on the hillside that overlooks my house

9. People who own castles in France

10. Retired people

11. People with passive income

12. Guests on podcasts that I want to be on

13. Whoever did the marketing for the Barbie movie

14. Whoever owns the bonfire.com domain name

15. The creators of the Lego Movie franchise

16. Professional artists

17. Professional writers

18. Professional musicians

19. Salespeople (only when I am on a call with a client and need to make a sale)

20. People who are good at saying no

21. Superheroes, particularly with powers of flight and/or time travel

22. Anyone with a strong GIF game

23. TED Talkers

24. The person who creates the Connections puzzle every day

25. People who complete the Connections puzzle on days when I cannot

What’s the deal with jealousy?

Technically, you might say that I am envious of all these people because they have something that I want. Jealousy, by contrast, is feeling threatened that someone might take what I have. It’s an almost imperceptible nuance … and rather moot since I feel both emotions, often at the same time!

Jealousy and envy both involve a feeling of desire for what another person has. As you can see from the above list, this definitely rings true for me as a primary trigger. Some days, I wake up and count my blessings. Other days, I wake up and let the comparison games begin.

Some days—the majority of days, I’m proud to say—I’m unbothered by what others are doing, knowing that things are good, Bonfire is great, it’s a wonderful life with no board of investors to answer to, no revenue goals that double every quarter, no OKRs. And then other days, I wake up and purposefully avoid LinkedIn because I don’t want to end up in a spiral having seen yet another post about how someone grew their business to seven figures in just seven months … while traveling the world and eating keto and getting their pilot’s license.

Jealousy typically rears its head in a few common ways:

• Success

• Money

• Relationships

• Freedom

• Notoriety

• Possessions

And underneath the surface it is driven by a few common factors:

• Fear

• Insecurity

• Unrealistic expectations

• Lack of communication or context

• Past experiences

How much of this rings true for you?

I can check pretty much every one of the above boxes at various points in time. In particular, I find that when I’m doing creative work I’m particularly susceptible to feeling jealous over notoriety, freedom, and success while dealing with my own insecurities and unrealistic expectations.

Creativity & inspiration, née jealousy

It is normal to feel jealous.

(I mostly wrote the above note for myself. Everyone feels jealous at some point. Phew.)

Especially for us creative folks, we are constantly opened up to a variety of influences, on purpose, so that we can be inspired and filled and collaborative. Very often, this path of inspiration can lead down side alleys of jealousy: people achieving acclaim or attention that we hope to get some day; people having access to resources that we long for; people having freedom and flexibility that has so far eluded us.

Re-branding jealousy and envy into a positive form of inspiration and motivation is one of the best methods for channeling some positive vibes into an otherwise negative affair.

There’s even some scientific research to back this up.

What is the evolutionary psychology behind why we feel envy and jealousy? A group of researchers studied this very question and found that inspiration may be the secret ingredient as to why jealousy persisted for all these years.

The researchers surveyed a number of respondents with a series of questions like:

Are you more envious of: (A) someone who is similar to you in most respects but is a bit wealthier (say 50% wealthier) or (B) more envious of Bill Gates?

Logically, you would think that you’d be more envious of the person with the most wealth. But the vast majority people were envious of the wealthier people who were more like them. The reason being: their envy was a motivating factor.

Envy evolved to motivate access to resources that are in demand by others in your group. … My brain quickly computes that in all likelihood the very rich Gates is either deservedly much richer (i.e., he is far smarter), or just extremely lucky. Evolutionarily speaking, there is no point in being jealous of him because he is “off scale” either in ability or luck, so no amount of effort by me can result in reaching his level of prosperity; envy would motivate an inappropriate and futile waste of resources. The richer peer, on the other hand, may be only slightly smarter, luckier, or more hardworking than me, so there is some chance, at least, that envy might motivate me to exceed his access to resources (or jealousy might make me steal it away from him with impunity).

I’m obviously not advocating for anyone to steal with impunity, but the other part about being motivation most certainly rings true!

How I live with my envy and jealousy

What does one do with all this jealousy?

If everyone has it and if it’s baked into our evolutionary DNA, then there must be—hopefully—some ways to deal with it. Like most emotional things, my process has been a journey, and it is far from complete. But along the way I’ve found a few techniques that have helped me reframe my perspective and learn to live with all these complicated feelings.

1 - Remind myself that it is not all zero-sum

Zero sum thinking is the notion that one person’s gain is another person’s loss. For instance, in my world it may be the idea that there is a finite pool of success out there and anytime someone has some it means I get less.

But you know what? That’s not the way the world works!

The world is full of gray and spectrums and infinite amounts of success in all shapes and sizes. I do not need to fear scarcity of the good things in life. Not only does this make me relax, it also helps me cheer for others anytime good things come their way. And what a wonderful community spirit that can be!

2 - Remind myself of all the good, amazing, wonderful things I have

Gratitude journaling might be one of humankind’s greatest inventions. I do not keep a physical gratitude journal—I am, ashamedly, sometimes jealous of those with the determination and handwriting to do so—but I do regularly return to mindful practices of noticing all the good things I have in life and being grateful for all the opportunities, resources, friends, family, and fortune that I’ve been lucky enough to receive.

This sure puts jealousy in its place!

I’m never antagonistic toward the jealous feelings when they flit across my brain. I see them, I label them, I listen to them and try to understand where they’re coming from. Then I use them as a reminder to turn the page gratitude.

3 - Empathize

One of the quickest ways to stop my envy train in its tracks is when I pause in the midst of my envy to recognize that other people may be envying me (!!) or that the people I’m envying have their own targets of envy (!?). This puts it all in a new perspective. I am not the only one who might long for something I don’t have, and I have much more than I might even realize.

Related to this idea of universal comparison, I love this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that acknowledges just how great you and I already are and how others may perceive us:

Over to you

What do you do when jealousy strikes? How have you learned to balance your envy and jealousy and maybe even harness them for good? I’d love to know your tips and tricks!

For more…

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And let us know if you’d like to go deeper with us to talk about you and creativity. We do:

• 1:1 coaching and mentorship

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• Speaking and appearances on podcasts and at events

Say hi anytime.

Kumbaya,Shannon & Kevan

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the 1-year anniversary of Bonfire, which, in case you’ve come into our little community from some unrelated corridor of the internet, is the creative brand consultancy behind this very newsletter. (And if so, hi! Here’s what we do.)

In that post, we touched on the fact that a major motivator to strike out on our own for both Kevan and me was that we get to do things our own way. We get to be creative—or at least, be intentional—about how we structure Bonfire, what kind of work we do, and how we work together.

It’s super easy to get caught up in the idea that there are playbooks for how to do things the “right” way, and the business world—with its competitive nature, its inherent complexity, and its devotees to econ, stats, and finance—is especially susceptible to that line of thinking. Our culture reveres people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Gary Vaynerchuk because they 1) are successful in a very visible, quantifiable way and 2) either dispense formulaic wisdom on how to replicate that success or are the subjects of others’ rapturizing theories and analyses on how they “made it.” We examine their routines, we ape their schedules and personal habits, and we build our companies and workflows and strategies based on what worked for them. 

But…none of us…are…them? 

Our companies aren’t their companies. Our audiences aren’t their audiences. Our market conditions aren’t their market conditions. Sure, we may have some overlap with these “gurus.” (Maybe both Warren and I prefer iced coffee year-round? Twinsies!) Those overlaps certainly increase when you’re studying and emulating business builders in the same industry or with the same model as you. And I can also buy that there are some universal, common-sense practices to run neither yourself nor your company into the ground. 

But our strengths, skills, weaknesses, interests, politics, hopes, fears, and resources are entirely individual and entirely, for better and for worse, our own. Kevan talks about this with our clients from a competitive benchmarking standpoint when it comes to marketing strategies and big brand initiatives; everybody wants to benchmark against what [Leading Cool Company] did, but unless you are also benchmarking their values and their org structure and their budgets and whether or not they launched pre- or post-pandemic, pre- or post-AI bubble, in an election year or not…you’re setting yourself up to be the Wish version of the original.

It’s just simply untrue that if Kevan and I want to learn how to make Bonfire the most successful it can possibly be, we should go devour Warren Buffet’s 7 Habits for Success or go watch GaryVee’s talks at various Success Unleashed conferences. (But your mileage may vary, I suppose!)

This is not some anti-intellectualist rant about how nobody is actually an expert in anything so just do things your own way all the time, take that horse medication someone is hawking on TikTok, lean into those 9/11 conspiracy theories (#themeltingtemperatureofsteel)—NO! Experts are real, and you should hire and/or consult them and/or become them in order to do specific things you don’t know how to do. All I’m saying is that it helps to have your own personal definition of success and then to keep vigilant about what exactly it is you’re trying to learn from them—just HoW tO bE sUcCeSsFuL???—and whether or not you and that person actually share similar characteristics, resources, and definitions of success and reality.

Because we over here at Bonfire seem to have a rather quirky definition of success, we’ve chucked the idea that there’s any kind of playbook out there for us. Instead, here are three ways we’ve been creative about how we’re building this-here airplane as we fly it, with the hopes it might encourage you to put down the playbook—or just release the anxiety that a playbook exists and everyone has it but you. (It does not; they do not.)

1. Dessert first: We start with pie in the sky 

In almost all aspects of how we’ve built and run Bonfire, we start from a place of imagination and then back into the logistics. We give ourselves permission to approach every decision with a sense of play and the freedom to ask “What if…?” We literally talk about “dream casting” our company like it’s a blockbuster movie or a fantasy sports league. We begin discussions by saying things like, “Can I tell you what my infinite budget, ideal version of this is?” And then we listen to each other. 

We don’t usually get to do the 100% no-holds-barred dream version of something because there are still constraints on time and money and energy and, like, physics. But when we start from a place of “dream first, ask questions later,” we find we end up a lot closer to our dreams. Makes sense, right? Figuring out the ideal state first gives us something clear to work towards and then lets us get scrappy and creative with the how. 

Being super pragmatic at absolutely every turn might seem like the smart or safe way to go about building your roadmap, but we’re here to tell you that there’s room to daydream. 

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2.  We don’t care what Bonfire becomes

Ok, this is definitely a flippant way to put this. Of course we care if Bonfire is one day synonymous with blood diamonds or strip mining or sweatshops. A better way to say this: We are not indifferent to what Bonfire does, but we hold very loosely any ideas about what it must be in order to be successful, because we’ve divorced our definition of success from our business activities.    

Today, we are a profitable brand consultancy. Up next, we’ll be launching an online community for creative marketers with digital courses and events (more on that soon!). In the future, we plan to have in-person experiences like workshops and creative retreats in the French countryside, which will support an artist residency program. Kevan has a clever software dream that maybe he’ll tell you about someday. We could see ourselves writing books or really leaning into content creation around the in-person experiences in France. Maybe we’ll sell the consultancy piece or wind it down after a few more years. Maybe the online community won’t work out, but the courses end up really popular so we’ll double down on that aspect. In other words: WHO KNOWS! 

We don’t have a 300-person-agency-or-bust mentality. We don’t need to spin up software and then sell it off for 8 figures at the first chance we get. The only thing we really, seriously, for sure care about doing—our definition of success—is building spaces that nurture a creative community. And we can do that in about a bazillion different ways. That means we get to experiment, invest in what works, and jettison the rest without feeling like we’ve failed. 

I said in a LinkedIn post a little while ago that in order to maintain your creative motivation, you have to be outcome agnostic but process proud. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get beaten down by delays and hurdles, and your creative life will wither. In our processes as Bonfire—how we build and conduct our business, foster relationships, and take care of ourselves, our families, and our friends—we can always be nurturing creativity. We have almost total control of the processes, and if we’re proud of those, then the outcomes can take a hike. 

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that having one crystal clear product or service is the best way to focus and succeed. But I dunno, sounds kinda boring…

3. We strive to give away our toys

In our pie-in-the-sky version of Bonfire, Kevan and I as cofounders would be establishing new lines of business—like consultancy, online community, in-person experiences, etc.—and then, when they’re doing well…we’d give them away. 

We imagine either literally giving or selling parts of the business to others to run, grow, and evolve over time, or just thinking up unconventional compensation strategies to get our future employees incentivized to “own” these lines of business for themselves. Maybe that’s a profit sharing model, maybe that’s a commission structure for roles you wouldn’t expect to earn commission, maybe it’s letting people “buy into” partial ownership with their labor. We’ll see! But it all boils down to: Why should we have all the fun—or all the responsibilities? Fun gets amplified when shared, and responsibilities get easier. 

We sometimes talk about the idea of not wanting to work for Bonfire, but rather on Bonfire. Like viewing the business as a whole as our ultimate product vs. executing what the business actually produces for our clients. This isn’t something we can do today or tomorrow or even next year, but keeping this possible future in mind is motivating and freeing. If I don’t have to imagine myself literally doing client work for the entirety of my career, what else might we build?

It seems like the more common model, the celebrated model, is for founders to sit on top of the pyramid and hang on to as much managerial control (and money) as possible. But that sounds super exhausting! And what’s the point of making all the money you possibly can when you don’t actually have the time or mental space to enjoy it? 

Over to you

We’ve given you a little peek into our business brains with this post, and we’d like to hear what resonates with you…or doesn’t! If you’re also an entrepreneur or thinking about becoming one, what are the wildest, most idealistic fantasies you have about how you’d do things differently than expected? Let us know in the comments or by replying to this newsletter.