What I'm doing wrong now and why I cannot stop doing it!
I am a willing victim of Playbook-itis.
First I must tell you that First Rodeo is doing something IRL here in NYC!! I’m so excited. In my last issue I wrote about a bake sale, and it’s happening, thanks to some contributions from other bakers in my Brooklyn community. We’re raising money for World Central Kitchen’s efforts to feed families in Gaza.
A thing you may or may not know about me is that I’m ferociously, manically competitive— I check performance data on truly everything I do and measure my “success” by it. Substack subscribers and unsubscribes? Checking every 36 hours, monitoring every spike and dip, using the number as a yard stick for how I’m doing. Likes on an Instagram post announcing my charity bake sale? My thumb is refreshing Instagram incessantly, hoping for more shares and orders to come in.
We have less orders than I’d like— and this isn’t even me being competitive, it’s just true— and this time it’s not about ego, it’s about a charity bake sale. If you know folks in the NYC area, I’d LOVE for you to share, and I’d love for you to participate however you’re able.
If you love the cause and can’t participate, I’ll mail you the stickers anyway if you shoot me a screenshot of your donation receipt, any amount. 🤍
Just the other day I wrote you about starting a brand, the founder mythology, and other ideas that were inspired by
and Nick Axelrod-Welk’s podcast Eyewitness Beauty.The other day I had a long 86 degree and rainy (ew) day of in person meetings around Penn Station (ew) and decided to treat myself to a sit down lunch for one at Kazunori (yes) and thumbed through Substack as I chomped on a perfect scallop hand roll (yes)— ah, Annie had just published her second Substack letter, Playbook-itis.
If you don’t feel up for reading it (though I think you should!), her theses are basically:
Stop using the royal “we”
Stop the regrams of inspo or moodboard content
Stop shoving the founder story down our throats
Stop making lip balm
Unfortunately, I am at present time of writing, guilty of 50% of these sins. (Thankfully, I do not make lip balm, and I am not the founder of Prima, so I dodged two deadly sins there.)
I don’t really care enough about the royal “we” to change— sometimes I write as “Zoe at Prima” and sometimes I write “we”… it is what it is. I’ve inherited a business founded and run by a team of people, it feels a little weird to write and claim it as “me” or “mine” and it can also rub me the wrong way when leaders lead with “me” or “I” and don’t credit the junior members of their small teams for their outsized contributions. Have I mentioned how great my intern, Charlotte, is? How she keeps the Prima train on the tracks? Because she does!
I am, however, deeply guilty of moodboard content, both on First Rodeo (formerly Goldune) and Prima’s Instagram. It comes down to money, frankly. I’ll explain the raw unit economics behind the paywall of how I budget for content in an age where Instagram doesn’t drive sales, and I’ll also contribute a few of my own “Playbook-itis” thoughts, aka unnecessary or overdone things brands ought to lay off, and what stuff I do think works.
How I budget for content in an age where Instagram doesn’t drive sales: