Essays on Writing Craft and Mindset
by Maggie Frank-Hsu
Your Marketing Email = A Sweaty Note Passed in Junior High
This is how a lot of marketing emails look. What’s the problem with this? Remember 8th grade? It was awkward for me. (I would include an image of my school picture here but I burned them.) ANYWAY, in 8th grade my best friend was Cecilia, we both loved The X-Files and I had a huge crush on David Duchovny. And we wrote each other letters.
Giving Yourself Permission... with Denise Duffield-Thomas
I was talking with a friend about the wide-ranging 60-minute conversation I had with Denise, and she said, “Maggie, you didn’t ask her a single question about email.” Well, that’s true. BUT. I did ask her a lot of questions about the things having an email marketing strategy allows mothers who are business owners like her to do,
2 Ingredients to Write Emails that Don’t Suck: "Proximity and a Reason"
Renee was talking about selling before the Internet. No Facebook ads, no funnels, no Zoom. She told me that she taught her teams that if they wanted to set up a meeting with a potential client, they needed “proximity and a reason to reach out.” So they needed to be in a place where their potential client would be, and they needed a reason to strike up a conversation.
What does 'nurture your list' mean?
“Nurture” is one of those business-speak marketing words that means nothing because it means different things to different people. Does “nurturing” your contacts mean, “email them regularly even though 80% or more of them never open your emails”? I think it means something else:
I'm So Off-Brand Right Now
What do we think about having a "personal brand"? Have we "basically been seduced into objectifying and dehumanizing ourselves," as my friend Jason put it? Yikes.
Talking about your “second shift” doesn’t just make you relatable. It makes you a revolutionary.
I’d like to take it a step farther. I don’t think you should talk about your kids at work just because it makes you more relatable. Although that’s nice. One of the stickiest lies that patriarchy has propagated is the idea that the work that we do educating young children is dismissible and should be hidden from site, when it’s actually the most important work on Earth.
How to Get People to Respond to Your Emails
It’s tough to stand out in a sea of email. Here are some common mistakes I see that make it even tougher!
What I Learned About Entrepreneurship From 'Clipless Pedals'
Last weekend I taught myself how to ride my bike with clip pedals (or “clipless” pedals… which are clip pedals?) I have not been so proud of anything I’ve done since I birthed my baby in October. Seriously. I have been active in cycling and triathlon since 2016, and I could never bring myself to go for clipping in It just too scary. But I finally COMMITTED.
3 Things to Try if Your Sales Funnel Is Failing
First, take a breath. Then brew some coffee, listen to my ideas on where to go from here, and get to work.
A Rebuttal to "How stay-at-home moms hurt gender equality"
Here's an assumption that crumbles upon examination: if a mom stays at home, that means she's not working.