Joe Rooks 👻✏️
@Lexicontent
Followers
400
Following
530
Media
37
Statuses
592
Ghostwriter of brand-building content for leaders & investors in tech, energy & engineering.
Seattle, WA
Joined March 2014
🧵 Eleven years ago today—July 3, 2014—I was sitting in the food court of the Atlantic Station Target in Atlanta, looking out at the skyline and laying the groundwork for what would become Lexicontent.
1
1
2
1b: Picked a business that's successful by the wrong metrics, so it doesn't feel good at all even though it "should".
The people who say you shouldn’t work on your business on the weekends either:. 1. Have never built a successful business or.2. Spent years working overtime to build a sustainable business/lifestyle (great!) and forgot what it took to get there (not great!).
1
0
1
RT @yongfook: Every 6 months there is a new “make money by doing <grift>” grift. Shitcoins.NFTs.Boilerplates.Vibe coding a SaaS. Learn to s….
0
14
0
Here’s to 11 more years of making it up as I go, writing it down, and telling others how it works. Happy 11 years, @Lexicontent. <3, @josephrooks.
0
0
0
There’s a lot more grey in my hair now. Might all be grey, honestly. I stopped keeping track. But I’ve never stopped:. * Inventing the process.* Writing it down.* Trusting it to take me where I need to go.
1
0
0
We never did find out what the original project was supposed to be. But that moment changed everything. It was proof that having a process, not just a promise, builds trust fast.
1
0
0
By the time we got home, we had an email waiting. Asking for a proposal. Worth nearly $100,000. (Turns out the tag-along was the executive director of the agency. lol).
1
0
0
Our second potential client - an agency creative director - wanted to meet about working on a project for one of their clients. But someone we didn't know tagged along and spent the whole meeting asking questions about our work and our process.
1
0
0
Our first client booked a $5,000 project. We were thrilled. But they wanted everything done their way. they were messy and disorganized. We mutually ended the project halfway through. Losing $2,500 hurt a lot back then.
1
0
0
. and the other half writing down “our way” of doing things. Even if it was just for us at the start, it gave us something to point to. A structure. Promises. Principles.
1
0
0
I figured if we could show we had a thoughtful way of working, we’d be taken seriously. So as we got things rolling, I spent half my day reaching out to people we wanted to work with. .
1
0
0
Before we even had a client, I was obsessed with process. I wanted to be able to say we had one—when so many others were just taking orders like it was a drive-thru window.
1
0
0
But we were confident we could come up with an approach that treated people better than most of what I’d seen in the market. Even if we didn’t yet know what “better” meant.
1
0
0
At the time, my then-partner wanted out of their agency job. We decided to team up and see what we could build together. We didn’t have it all figured out.
1
0
0
I’d been doing everything I could to learn enough about business to become a successful freelance writer. Back then, there wasn’t much useful advice out there on how to actually do it.
1
0
0
RT @TheOvermanEthos: You only need one content strategy. Document your journey - . • Your backstory and vision.• The roadmap to get there….
0
4
0
RT @azeemk_: Speaking positions being pay for play at conferences + side events and we're still wondering why there's lack of nuanced thoug….
0
6
0
Somebody else doing your idea before you is not their "moat." It's your market validation.
0
0
0
How much content do you have collecting dust? . Here's a little something I made to help my clients figure that out. (No opt-in.). Every item in this list can be turned into at least a few of the other items in the list (without starting from scratch).
lexicontent.com
A trigger list is like a content strategy treasure map. It's a detailed list that helps you dig up all sorts of information hidden just out of sight within your company. This list is designed to...
0
0
0
Keep hitting the keys. Natural writing doesn’t happen in your head. It happens on the page.
0
0
0