We have half term here this week, and we were meant to be up in Scotland (where most of my family live)… but too many things came up and we ended up staying home, which has actually been lovely. We’ve had cricket matches, plenty of revision happening for upcoming exams, the weather has been incredible (I’ve been working outside in the shade, enjoying all the sunshine), and I’ve suddenly found myself with a bit of extra time to focus on a few work projects, which is always a huge bonus.
And actually, that extra time has lined up really well with what I’ve been wanting to write about. There are three things I’m focused on at the moment, three things I’m properly studying, and the three of them together have given me a particular sort of view on something I think is worth sharing.
The learning I’m doing, I’m finding, asks something specific of me. Letting myself be a beginner at something new. Finding time to study with real intent. And it’s really hard, to find that time, with the to-do list, and all that needs to happen just in the everyday. It feels almost too indulgent. But it is so important to do.
And I’m finding, having three teachers I’m actively learning from right now, that this is exactly the thing worth pushing back against all the reasons not to focus on new ideas and approaches. Because I know how important this is, both for you and for the business you’re building. To stay curious. To stay willing to learn.
So I want to share the three things, briefly, and then I want to share the thing that’s really helped my thinking.
The first is AI. I’m part of an AI programme at the moment, and it’s both reconfirming a number of things I’ve already been doing, and helping me see further. The really exciting part, for me, is how applicable all of this is to small creative businesses. Specifically, how AI can take care of so much of the backend, the admin, the holding-things-together work, so that you have more time to do what only you can do. The client relationships. All the creative work. That’s the part I’m bringing into the Bright Line community as I go, and it’s just… brilliant.
The second is Instagram. Specifically, becoming more natural and more confident on camera. Like a lot of us, I find showing up on camera desperately uncomfortable. But there’s a particular teacher I’ve come across who’s so natural on camera, so completely herself, so non-performative, that I’ve signed up for her month-long programme. It starts next week. There are so many things I’d love to be able to share that need a more direct, more human format than a carousel allows. And this is the area I want to grow in next.
And the third is Meta and Pinterest ads. I’m pretty naive and absolutely a beginner at this. As a business we’ve dabbled in ads before, but nothing more than that. To date, I’ve grown my businesses and visibility organically, and it’s worked incredibly well, but I’m excited to push myself and explore additional methods to reach more creatives.
And yes, we could bring in an agency to handle it all (and I’ve spoken to a number of them recently), but actually I want to understand what’s going on first. Just enough to brief properly and recognise good work when I see it. So we’re not doing ads in earnest yet. Just a real, real mild dabble in Meta ads and Pinterest ads, starting next week.
So… three things. Three teachers. And the chance to be a beginner at all of them again.
And the thing I want to share with you actually came from the Meta ads programme I’m starting. The teacher who runs it opened her course materials with something I didn’t expect, which is that before she gets into any tactics at all, she wants to talk about beliefs. Specifically, the beliefs that get in the way of any of this working.
She uses this image of concrete. You can’t pour new concrete on top of old concrete, she says. You have to break it up first. And the same is true for beliefs. If you’re walking into something carrying thoughts like “this doesn’t work for my industry” or “I’m not tech-savvy enough,” those need to go before new beliefs can take hold.
And then she shared four beliefs that she says separate the people who really do well at this from everyone else. She uses the word “Rainmaker,” which she defines as someone with an unusual level of skill who brings real revenue into a business. The vocab is hers, not mine. But the four beliefs are properly useful, and I want to share them, because yes they apply to ads, but they also apply to absolutely everything else you might be learning right now.
The four beliefs
Belief one. Your results will match your beliefs. You will perform up to the level of your beliefs, and not higher.
Now, the specifics she gave around this used figures like $100K months and 8 or 9 figure entrepreneurs, which isn’t quite the conversation we have here. But the principle underneath is properly important. If you believe that something can’t work for you, it won’t. If you believe it can change everything… for you, your business, your family, your team… well, it will. And, importantly, the beliefs that got you to where you are won’t necessarily be the same beliefs that take you to where you want to go next.
Belief two. Skills are built, not born. The performance of your ads, she said, will only ever rise to the level of skill of the person running them. The only difference between a bad cake and a good cake is the skill of the person who baked it. Same ingredients. Same oven. Different results.
Which means… if something hasn’t worked for you yet, whether that’s ads, or Instagram, or pricing, or whatever it is, it’s not because the thing doesn’t work. It’s because you haven’t built the skill yet. And skills can be built.
Belief three. Divorce yourself from how long it “should” take. Some of you will want to rush this, she said. Others will feel behind before you even begin. So stop, take a breath. Your timeline is your timeline. The only thing that matters is that you keep going.
Belief four. Think like an expert, not a beginner. Beginners think in binaries. It’s either working or it’s not. The ad flopped. The campaign failed. I’m not cut out for this. Experts think in steps. What’s the next step I can take to get a little closer? What can I learn from this? What can I try next? She used Tiger Woods as the example, which I rather liked. He wouldn’t chuck his club if he hit the ball off the green. He’d adjust, and take the next shot.
And the line she ended on is the one that’s really stayed with me. You may not need a lot of directions, she said. Just one direction. As you go through this, be on the lookout for that one thing. Because one thing may be all it takes to change everything.
Which is… well, it’s not unfamiliar to me. It’s the same conversation we have in The Bright Line all the time. One clear positioning shift, or one decision about who you’re really for, or one belief that’s been quietly running your business from the back of your mind for years… when you finally name it and shift it, it can change everything downstream.
And this is, in many ways, the conversation we sit with in The Missing Piece. It’s the free 45-minute live conversation I run on Zoom, where we look at the underlying question that sits beneath most of the things creative business owners are trying to fix. The marketing, the pricing, the client mix, the sense of being scattered. There’s usually one piece underneath all of it. And the live conversation is where we look at what that piece might be for you. There’s a new page on the site with everything about it at HERE.
What I keep coming back to is the line she ended on. We may not need a lot of directions. Just one. One thing, this season, to be properly willing to learn.
Because the businesses that keep growing, in my experience, are the ones whose owners never quite stop being students.
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