👋 What’s growing: Playing it safe. This year’s Super Bowl ads used unadventurous humor, silliness and nostalgia to connect with an estimated 127.7 million people (via Nielsen reports).

Marketing professor Tim Calkins said brands were trying to avoid controversy even more than usual, with most ads being produced during last fall’s presidential election race. 

The outcome? A few giggles from mostly watered-down commercials. Did every brand hire the same ad agency?

GROWTH

Your business is in its awkward teenage phase

Good, scrappy entrepreneurs make things happen early, but scaling? That takes a whole different skill set, which is why great founders don’t necessarily make great CEOs.

Businesses at this stage are like awkward teenagers, waiting for a growth spurt that never seems to come. Minus the hair growing in weird places.

So should you work on yourself? Our opinion: hell no.

The best way to get unstuck is to fill the talent gap. Which costs money, which is exactly your problem. Awkward AF.

The smart move? outsource.

1. Get Clear on Your Strengths & Blind Spots

You don’t need to do everything, and frankly, you shouldn’t. Figure out where you’re exceptional and where you’re just… okay. Ask mentors, ex-colleagues, or even a brutally honest friend for input. Your growth stalls when you try to force yourself into every role instead of doubling down on what you do best.

2. Know What to Keep vs. What to Delegate

Growth strategist Alexandra Greifeld recommends a simple framework:

• Keep in-house what’s both business-critical (brings in revenue) and a competitive advantage (what you do best). These are your Bucket 1 tasks.

• Outsource anything that’s not core to your differentiation or direct revenue generation. These are things like admin, bookkeeping, basic marketing tasks, or operations support.

3. Work Within Your Budget (But Be Smart About It)

You don’t need a full team to grow—you need the right people in the right seats.

• Hire full-time for Bucket 1 roles if you can afford it.

• Use fractional talent (part-time executives, consultants) for high-level strategy where you lack expertise.

• Bring in freelancers for everything else—design, writing, bookkeeping, and beyond.

4. Work That Network

Job boards are flooded, and filtering through candidates takes more time and skill and than most admit. Leverage your network to find people who complement your skill set and don’t need their hand held.

5. Empower, Don’t Manage.

If you’re stalling, you need more than people to offload tasks on. You need growth catalysts. If you do find them, make sure you don’t get in their way.

6. Brace

The people you outsource to should be smart enough to question your current status quo. Even if the bottleneck is you. In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins covers how the best leaders create a culture where the truth is heard and brutal facts are confronted. So brace yourself.

Let’s wrap it up: If reading this has inspired you to do some personal development to debug your weaknesses… don’t. 

High-growth leaders build on their strengths and hire out their weaknesses. If there’s any skill you need to develop, it’s learning to let go and trusting people who are better than you.

Your best years are ahead.

CULTURE

The explosive story of Lillian Virginia Mountweazel

May you never be forgotten. Or plagiarized.

Lillian was an Ohio-born photographer in the 60s, famous for her snaps of mailboxes, buses and cemeteries. She died at 31 in an explosion while taking photos for Combustibles magazine. The irony.

Her story lives on in the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia.

But the whole thing is fake.

Lillian never existed. 

The encyclopedia created the entry to spot plagiarists. They knew any other publication printing Lillian’s story had stolen it from them. Caught red-handed. But don’t worry – if we see this story on your blog later, we won’t call you out for copying us.

The term “Mountweazel” was later coined by a writer at The New Yorker to describe fictitious biographical entries, or “copyright traps”.

Obviously, today, we have tools like Copyscape and Grammarly to catch plagiarists. But where’s the fun in that?

DATA POINT

HubSpot’s State of Marketing 2025 report just dropped

It champions going “all in on AI” for the marketing science-y stuff, so humans have more time for personality-led content.

The report jumps into 2025’s biggest content trends, which are best executed when humans and robots come together. Magical.

The trends

#1 Visual storytelling is overtaking text-heavy content 

Of the 1200 marketers surveyed, most say the highest ROI comes from short-form video (21%), followed by images (19%) and live-streamed videos (16%). That’s where they’ll be investing most this year. 

AI helps cover more ground by turning text into multi-modal content such as video demos.

#2 Podcasts and audio content are growing in B2B and B2C 

Edison Research found that 98 million Americans listen to a podcast every week, inspiring purchases for 46% of those listeners. Solid numbers. It’s no wonder 91% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their investments in audio content this year.

Generative AI tools can turn scripts into podcasts, with a choice of host voices so marketers can spare the world their presenting skills.

#3 The top social channels for 2025 are YouTube, Instagram and TikTok

Plus, B2B marketers are investing more in LinkedIn vs B2C brands putting their dollars into TikTok. Only around 10% of marketing teams are on Reddit, Discord and Threads, so they’re getting first dibs on leads over there.

Tools like Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT can help with social calendar planning, but the human touch builds connections.

#4 Marketers are finding success through influencer partnerships 

The most success comes from working with micro-influencers (10,000-99,999 followers). These creators tend to have niche, engaged audiences who trust them more than celebrities with huge followings.

The highest influencer ROI comes from Facebook (28%), Instagram (22%) and YouTube (12%).

AI-powered platforms can now comb creator networks and check the data (like engagement and growth). Humans still need to give final sign-off: A creator is only right for your brand if they align with your values and operate in your niche.

The overall biggest challenge across the board, though? Keeping up with trends.

Hear, hear.

You have to be on the right platforms and roll out the right content, and your “Work Husband” is now a robot. Stick with us. We’ll keep you in the loop.

This week’s issue was written by Amy Hawthorne and edited by Catherine Solbrig.