Telling Tales | #08

Hello everyone,

Today marks the welcome (I hope!) return of Telling Tales. Apologies for the radio silence these last few weeks. Trips to London, weekends of Daddy Daycare and a healthy dose of deadlines to hit have kept me a busy bee.

But I’m back, and here’s what I have for you…

1. Three lessons from three years as a freelancer

This time three years ago marked the end of my first week officially working for myself. Where’s that time gone?!? I’ve put some thoughts together of what I’ve learnt in these past three years. You can read them here.

2. Continuing the theme…

Loving Seth Godin’s new podcast and, continuing the theme above, he dishes out much better advice than me on the freelance life. You’ll find all the episodes here and there’s some absolute gold in there.

3. Two of the best marketing videos you’ll ever see

It’s 2018, video content is everywhere but (like a lot of content) huge swathes of it are just noise. These two aren’t. Take 5 minutes and watch them. I promise you’ll enjoy them. First one - What is Dollar Shave Club? Find out here. Second one - how do you sell more lingerie? You make a video like this (trust me, it’s not what you think!).

4. The joy of singing

So choir continues to smash it out of the park (so glad I decided to give it a try.) We sang in front of a live crowd in the beautiful early summer sunshine last Monday. Here’s a taster of what it sounded like on the day or, if you want more, here’s a link to the video of our final rehearsal.

5. The sadness of singing

Heartbreakingly sad to hear the news about Scott Hutchinson from Frightened Rabbit. I met the band a Latitude festival on my stag-do back in 2010. They’d actually got us on to the guest list thanks to my brilliant friend Tom who was working with them. As this article says - “there is no tragic poetry in this death, only tragedy – and the loss of a wonderful songwriter and a better person.” I’ve just watched this solo version of Modern Leper with tears in my eyes. 

Sorry to end on a sad note. And, without wishing to dish out unnecessary advice, take a minute over the weekend to check in on those close to you, tell them you love them and make sure they’re doing ok. Life is many things and it’s not always easy. So let’s help those we can and look for their help in return if ever we might need it.

Thank you for reading,

Tommy x