Hot Olive Agency

Quick note: This week’s newsletter has a heavier hand from ChatGPT. My mental health has turned up a notch, and while I’m committed to showing up, I gave myself a little grace and let the robots carry more of the editing load. This edition may look and sound different from my normal voice. It's time to talk about Q3. Aka, the “summer slump" quarter that most folks treat as marketing limbo. But you need to rethink that: Q3 can be the workhorse of the marketing year. It’s the perfect “business...

“How many tripods should I have to make content?” I was sitting at my favorite coffee shop, Golden Drops Cafe, with 5 strangers-turned-fast-friends for the third meetup of Social Media Club Atlanta. The energy in the room was something you can’t replicate online. We were excited. We were chatty. We were vibin'. So the questions flew: Does YouTube count as a social media platform or it something else? Do you guys use Reddit for work? How can I actually understand my audience? But my favorite...

In my early 20s, every Thursday was wine night. There were four of us. Michael brought the wine (usually fancy, sometimes boxed, always red). Rebecca always had the good crackers — the kind I pretend to just “have on hand", she seemed to actually always have them on hand. Caroline brought the salami or random deli meats. I was the cheese plug. I worked the farmers market circuit for an Atlanta cheesemonger, which meant I always had something tangy, creamy, or deliciously herby on hand. My...

This told me everything I needed to know about Sherwin Williams corporate. In 2020, a Sherwin Williams store employee, Tony Piloseno (@tonerserpaints), got famous on TikTok just by showing behind-the-scenes content of mixing paint. Notice how this post only has 2.5K likes? Not everything has to have 10K+ views to be viral... He'd show the gorgeous colors, talked about how the mixing process worked, different finishes. This dude was a total paint nerd. He bought all paints himself and made...

I went on a retreat this week and was in a workshop with an ex-Peace Corps, ex-United Nations conflict mediator. Here's the best thing she taught us: The Platinum Rule: Treat others the way THEY want to be treated. The why: We act out of subconsciousness many times. (Have you ever been told to fix your face?) So when we're in conflict, we may not be aware of what's actually happening inside us. This is where it got good (and I started to hear my therapist in my head): Beneath most conflict...