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Marketing Lessons From A Small Family-Owned Restaurant

Last updated on January 15th, 2022 at 06:19 am

I thought if I sold more sushi, I’d earn my dad’s respect.

On paper, offering to help with marketing for one of the family restaurants made sense: I knew the food. I knew marketing. And I was a millennial, so obviously I knew Instagram, #natch.

The upside potential was high. It was also a good way to give back to the family.

However, if I peel back all the layers of resume speak, the naked truth was much simpler:

I wanted to impress my dad. I wanted his approval. So I spent a lot of 2019 working on this, on the side.

If you have a family business, you can learn from my approach to marketing our family restaurant, what I experimented with, and why I failed.

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The Passion Economy, The Gig Economy, and The Difference

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:45 am

The future of work is here. And it’s neither the golden age, nor the Hunger Games of our generation.

Li Jin of a16z thoroughly broke down the future of work here. Some highlight reel stats:

  • The top-earning writer on newsletter platform Substack earns $500,000+ a year from reader subscriptions
  • The top creator on video course platform Podiaa earns $100,000+ a month
  • One of the top creators on artist platform Patreon earns $95,000+ a month (source)
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What Will You Accomplish This Year? A 2019 Recap

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 02:58 am

At the end of 2018, I decided there was a large “skill-gap” that I wanted to bridge. Some skills I wanted to improve were more technical:

  • Excel
  • SEO
  • SQL

Other skills were softer, but equally important to me:

  • Email automation
  • Food photography
  • Instagram marketing

I didn’t see a way to work on these skills without making certain sacrifices. So I made a decision: I’d give up blogging for a year.1

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2019: The Year of Becoming a Practitioner

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:56 am

My every career opportunity came because of my writing habit.

I wrote my way into my first Hollywood internship, covering entire book manuscripts in a day — that’d take others a week. I wrote a cold email that landed my job with Dennis. An article on how to get health insurance opened the door to working with Ramit for 2 years.

The quality of that writing fluctuated over the last 10 years, but the work ethic never wavered.

Until now.

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Finally Moved to LA – November 6, 2018

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:57 am

This article is part of a series, where I offer individual and specific pieces of advice to people about moving to LA and getting started in entertainment via email, over coffees, and on phone calls. You can see the rest here.

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Subject: Finally Moved to LA

Nov 6, 2018

Hello Chris!

A lot has changed since we last spoke, but as it so happens one constant in my life has been the weekly connection. I finally took the leap and moved out to LA, to hopefully start a career in Film and TV. I did in fact read a lot of your Fighting Broke blogs and it helped me transition through a tough time after graduation.

That said, I do have a few questions for you. You talk a lot about offering your services for free, and impressing your boss.

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To Learn, Start Small

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:55 am

I used to work at a horror production company called After Dark Films. We churned out memorable films like Asylum (“A mess, from the moment the film starts, you can see it and feel it” – HorrorNews) and Getaway (2% on Rotten Tomatoes, and “…a reminder of the dangers in attempting to speed past coherent editing, character development, sensible dialogue, and an interesting plot.”)

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“This Is My Job”

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:48 am

A friend of mine is a personal trainer and former bodybuilding competitor. We used to work together.

We were working on a fitness product, and on this particular day, we were on site at a gym, shooting fitness videos. Every 30 minutes or so, she’d stop and turn to her phone to take a selfie or shoot some video explaining an exercise. Then she’d spend a few seconds publishing the content to Instagram and Snap.

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