Sparring Mind

Creative thinking is the act of expressing an idea or solving a problem in a novel and useful way. Though it might seem abstract, thinking creatively really comes down to knowing what you want to accomplish, coming up with possibilities, and then testing

The growth in the number of YouTube channels with over 1M subscribers. There are approximately 41,900 YouTube channels with over 1 million subscribers. This estimate is based on publicly available data. Thanks to Jacob Bates who first shared this approach

Amateur blogging is when a blog is independently run by a single author or a small team, not a large corporation. An amateur blog may be focused on one topic, multiple, or even cover parts of the author's life. That may seem strange to say: do big faceles

I've been an entrepreneur for nearly twelve years. When I was last employed, I worked at Shopify profiling dozens of entrepreneurs in our magazine and podcast. After so much time spent practicing and studying the discipline of entrepreneurship, you end up

Most writers, bloggers, and content marketers aren't great designers. That's where data visualization tools come in: if you're in need of a clean, simple chart or graphic, these tools can help you share your data visually, often by letting you import your

Content creation is a craft, and all crafts are influenced by their tools. So, what does the toolkit of the modern content writer or content marketer look like? Well, that depends on who you ask. I previously led content marketing at Shopify, so my perspe

After 15 years of experience running content marketing programs for startups, global public companies like Shopify, and my own content-driven businesses, I've ended up trying a lot of tools. The truth is that it's easy to get stuck chasing the latest and

Marketing is a game best played with a scorecard, and the metrics you use will determine the type of game you end up playing. Picking relevant metrics matters when you're playing to win. At the time of this writing, the first search result for content mar

For five years, I led the team responsible for producing and growing the Shopify Masters podcast, which is (obviously) owned by Shopify. When I left, the podcast had earned over 8 million downloads, with hundreds of thousands of listeners per month. Our p

Over the years, I've run blogs and content marketing programs for small startups to massive public companies like Shopify, where I lead the content and media teams. In these competitive spaces, the right tools can give you a meaningful advantage-but you c