Tin Shingle’s Blog Of All The Latest in Media, Money, Your PR and Marketing Strategy and Life as a Small Biz Owner
It’s getting hot in here! I have to put my shorts on! And your questions answered: “Katie - how do you blog every day? I stopped writing because I thought nobody cares!”
This is from one of my readers. Writing is a solitary thing. Very silent. Most of the time you don’t know how it’s received. You have to have faith. But here’s my tip on how to keep writing/blogging. Watch the video above!
As I claim my shed as my studio office for here and Katie James, Inc. projects (and I mean really claim, more so than in before at the start of the pandemic), it occurs to me as I hang my Katie James tin shingle made by the artist Tin Fish in Maine, that this sign is where Tin Shingle got its name.
Back when Sabina and I had to rename our company because a big magazine who is all about entrepreneurship came after us when our name was ‘Preneur (it’s not your fault, @heyfeifer it’s corporate). That cease and disuse letter was the best thing to happen to us, because it made us rethink and commit to what we really offered creators.
Business owners are creators. It’s a more fun word to say sometimes than “business owner.” We realized we are really only about getting the word out. Yes, we taught how to do that in different ways: PR, Website Design and Content, and Social. But that education plus our special sauce of empowerment was what made Tin Shingle what it is.
Sabina and I each went on our own now, and you can see Tin Shingle’s latest video TuneUp about that back in our Member Center on the Tin Shingle website. But that’s the story of how this sign I had made for my fist, core, and namesake business, Katie James, Inc., influenced this, my second business, Tin Shingle. Both my children.
Ok. Carry on! Let’s get some PR and grow your business. Join Tin Shingle today to get into the groove! >
Business creators are called a lot of things. Crazy. Delusional. A Hero. A Visionary.
How do you know when one of those names is right?
When you’re starting something, you’re dreaming big. Your worst fears are banging upside your boat constantly as frothy waves. Eventually, as you grow more confident with the undertaking, those waves of fears turn into lapping ripples gently hitting the boat, reminding the business creator to stay sharp and smart. To prepare for the worst while enjoying the sun and clear skies.
Tin Shingle’s Katie Hellmuth Martin and Press For Success’s Sabina Hitchen for a rare come-back tour on this TuneUp. Katie and Sabina created Tin Shingle together, and eventually flew away in different directions.
One of Sabina’s core strengths is recognizing the power in facing fears, discomfort zones, and supporting others. She believes: “Recognizing scary and stressful situations takes away some of their power.”
Katie and Sabina talked about how business creators must be crazy to make big things. Not everyone has these dreams. Not everyone makes the effort to take action on these visions.
“Everyone thinks it’s crazy until it’s done,” says Sabina.
Learn how to embrace your fantasies, face your fears, and experience what happens on the other side of the cloud of doubt.
HOW TO WATCH
Anyone can watch a Tin Shingle TuneUp from their computer, mobile phone or tablet. The process is different for premium members and the public.
MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE (FREE)
Stream any TuneUp Webinar anytime with your Tin Shingle membership. No need to purchase it, this TuneUp is ready to play from this page! When you are logged in, you will see a big screen.
NON-MEMBERS ($65)
Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play.
When: Wednesday, August 3th, 2022
Time: 1pm-2pm EST
Where: At your computer or on your phone.
Register Live Event (Free): Register Here (it’s through GoToWebinar)
Video Replay: Free for Members of Tin Shingle only. Join today.
Business creators are called a lot of things. Crazy. Delusional. A Hero. A Visionary.
How do you know when one of those names is right?
When you’re starting something, you’re dreaming big. Your worst fears are banging upside your boat constantly as frothy waves. Eventually, as you grow more confident with the undertaking, those waves of fears turn into lapping ripples gently hitting the boat, reminding the business creator to stay sharp and smart. To prepare for the worst while enjoying the sun and clear skies.
Join Tin Shingle’s Katie Hellmuth Martin and Press For Success’s Sabina Hitchen for a rare come-back tour on this TuneUp. Katie and Sabina created Tin Shingle together, and eventually flew away in different directions.
One of Sabina’s core strengths is recognizing the power in facing fears, discomfort zones, and supporting others. “Recognizing scary and stressful situations takes away some of their power.”
Katie and Sabina will talk about how business creators must be crazy to make big things. Not everyone has these dreams. Not everyone makes the effort to take action on these visions.
“Everyone thinks it’s crazy until it’s done,” says Sabina.
Learn how to embrace your fantasies, face your fears, and experience what happens on the other side of the cloud of doubt.
Tin Shingle’s Live TuneUp with Sabina Hitchen of Sabina Knows Press for Success.
Sabina is the co-creator of Tin Shingle in its original forms. She is the Queen of Courage, and the Discomfort Zone. That is why she is my guest expert for this Tuneup: Mindset: On Being Crazy and Embracing Fantasies To Build Success.
Look at this beauty and the beauty that surrounds her! She has made this life, and launched this book to bring it here.
Hair, Hair Everywhere is a beautifully illustrated children's book celebrating Black hair. Proud of her hair, our fashionista naturalista sets out on an adventure to find all the fun hairstyles in her neighborhood and beyond. This wonderfully written story encourages self-acceptance, builds self-esteem, and underscores the importance of kindness, love, and appreciating the differences and similarities in everyone.
If you’re a member of Tin Shingle and missed today’s office hours, don’t panic! They happen often. Keep tabs on your email so you can join in.
Tin Shingle’s Office Hours are a place where you can bring your questions, our ideas, your fears and your successes.
Remember: July is Holiday Gift Guide Season! What is your plan?
We can discuss them and things like this in Tin Shingle’s Office Hours TuneUps!
If you are a member of Tin Shingle, you can join in on Office Hour Members-Only TuneUps! These are closed sessions, and not open to the public. This is a safe space for Tin Shingle Members to come in with brainstorms to give and get feedback.
You can turn on your video camera to speak eye-to-eye, or just talk on the phone or through your computer speakers.
In this series, members of Tin Shingle with the Media Kit Membership can call in to workshop any need in their marketing campaign, including:
Media Pitching: What a pitch to a certain media outlet should look like, and how it should read.
Instagram: How to get sales and create PR opportunities from you posts.
Facebook: How do you increase traffic from this platform?
Website: The media will circle back to evaluate their website. What are they seeing, and is it clear?
SEO: What's your game plan? Let's get one. You don't want to miss out on all that search traffic.
HOW IT WORKS:
Tin Shingle's owner Katie will moderate the call.
She will rotate through people on the call, and encourage each other to contribute to each person's challenge as a conversation.
CALL-IN DETAILS
When you are logged into your Media Kit Member account at Tin Shingle, you will be able to click this link in our Community section of the website to get the private link to call in details.
Once on the call, Katie will adjust your settings so that we can hear and/or see you. We love talking face-to-face, so turn your video on if you want. Otherwise, audio-only is fine.
Great ideas are flying in and out of your mind all the time, and some of them would have been good had you planned them in advance. Now you can. Tin Shingle has released early our 2023 Editorial Content Calendar Planner so that you can plan into the future when you have a great idea that would have worked now.
Good news: you can try again next year. Log it into your 2023 Editorial Calendar, and plan around for what you need to do to publish. Give yourself plenty of lead time. Check your own Editorial Calendar each week to begin prepping the articles, videos or social media posts you have intended.
FREE
This template is free for members of Tin Shingle. When you are logged into your account, visit this page and you will see two files: 2022 and 2023 Editorial Calendars.
BUY
Anyone can buy this template. When you purchase, you’ll have unlimited access to future calendars.
UNLIMITED ACCESS
If you have already purchase Tin Shingle’s Editorial Calendar, simply log into your account, and you will see the two files to download. One for 2022, and one for 2023.
When Entrepreneur magazine came in the mail this time and landed on the bench in the front hall, I felt compelled to read it. Compelled, like, drawn to. Like there was an article in there that was speaking from behind the cover that whisper-yelled: “Reeeead meeee”.
So I picked it up for my Sunday magazine read, and started with the cover story for Odell Beckham Jr. Not knowing who he is. The article promised a story on “the art of the perfect partnership.” That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about, so I started there.
Wow. What a mind-cycle-breaker to read about how he and his partner and best friend, Ajay Sangha, came to be business partners. And how Ajay grew in the relationship, balanced by Odell.
Takeaways From The Business Partnership
The journalist and magazine’s Editor In Chief, Jason Feifer, pulled out a few secret ingredients to what has been making this business partnership work, that started in friendship. Here are a few:
- Fear: Ajay was afraid of failing Odell, from it seems like, the very beginning. It’s a fear that stays with him through the many investments they have done together. But Ajay is able to harness that fear, and let it fuel him. However, it is with Odell’s outlook on life that makes balancing this fear possible. Said Ajay after their latest large investment: “I mean, it’s not my money. It’s a lot of money, right? It’s a lot of fucking money. And it’s a venture investment. It could go down the drain. I didn’t sleep for a month and a half.”
On the other hand, Odell’s approach is this: “I’m okay with taking the risk in hopes that it pays off. And if it didn’t, I was going to beat him up and then we’d move on to the next one.”
- Burned For Kindness Being Weakness: When Odell, an NFL player, he had fun dancing and taking videos of him out having a good time. But he said that started to change when the videos began to be “used as a downfall.” When he was open and authentic, he felt it backfire, and viewed “Kindness is taken for weakness.” The reporter noted that Odell closed himself off, quoting Odell as saying: “It’s hard to live in a lens where I’m going to be judged for those moments.”
- Short Term vs Long Term: As an NFL player, Odell was living a short and fast life, with big money going in, and big money going out. He began to think about his mortality, his unpredictable career, and how to make his career more scalable.
- Looking Around: When Odell invited Ajay to live with him in his big football house (according to the article, this is common for celebrities to do who need their social life close and private to them), Ajay accepted and they started moving and grooving. When Odell approached Ajay about doing the business development stuff, Ajay immediately looked around to find out: “Who can I trust? Who can I learn from? Who is doing it right?”
- Calmness: From the article, you’ll learn that Ajay is constantly thinking of what can work, what needs to change in order to grow, and what is fulfilling to their business and their people. But - Odell brings Ajay back down to calmness. Eventually the two moved apart from each other, and this improved Ajay’s mental health. “It gives their relationship more of a rhythm. ‘When I visit, [Odell’s] like ‘Hey man, you’re here for the weekend. Stop thinking, stop talking, just relax, enjoy a beer.”
- Wisdom: Here is some wisdom Odell shared with the reporter, that he tells to friends who are struggling: “I’ve said this so many times - I’m like bro, just remember the other time where you thought you weren’t going to be able to keep going, and the worst fucking possible thing happened, and then you got over it. And then it happened again, and this one was worse than the last. And it’s like, you just have to know that it is going to happen. It is. And that’s kind of what you’re saying about a moment, not the moment. I don’t really know if there is the moment. There might be that once-in-a-lifetime thing, but I feel like if you’re waiting for that, you’re not being present, and you’re not living in a bunch of moments that are happening right in front of you.”
Go read the full article. Better: subscribe to the magazine in print so that you can experience it as a page-turner on paper.
Happy July!
In the PR and magazine world that means one thing: Holiday Gift Guide.
Not the holiday that is just around the corner that some people are canceling since people’s body’s just got canceled and put at risk. No - we are talking about pitching the magazines for those coveted editorial gift guide roundups.
The research and writing starts in July. Knee high in July with the beginning of products being shipped around for testing and inspecting by editors and writers.
In this monthly TuneUp, “What To Pitch The Media In July,” you will hear of the many themes you could be pitching for different types of outlets. These include National US Postage Stamp Day (because we know one of you is actually launching a US stamp!), Celiac Awareness Month, Adopt A Shelter Dog Month. These themes are not in July - they are later. This TuneUp will help you plan for where to pitch, when.
This TuneUp is open to all to listen to for free for the next 24 hours, and then it’s getting packaged back up for the Tin Shingle Members only to stream at any time.
HOW TO WATCH
Anyone can watch a Tin Shingle TuneUp from their computer, mobile phone or tablet. The process is different for premium members and the public.
MEMBERS OF TIN SHINGLE (FREE)
Stream any TuneUp Webinar anytime with your Tin Shingle membership. No need to purchase it, this TuneUp is ready to play from this page! When you are logged in, you will see a big screen.
NON-MEMBERS ($65)
Once you buy a TuneUp, you own it forever. The video or audio recording will appear on the TuneUp page that you just purchased from, and all you need to do is press play.
