Whats the difference between an Entrepreneur and a Founder?

What's the difference between an entrepreneur and a founder? 

Since starting ASC in 2017, I have always cringed at the performed intensity of Entrepreneurship. The language around becoming an entrepreneur is melodramatic at best, and violent at its worst. We’ve taught entrepreneurs that “genius” or “talent” excuses any behavior. You’re told the only way to success is to adopt a manic, frantic energy: there is nowhere to live but on the razor sharp edge. As long as you stay in a mindset of scarcity, anything goes. Any action you take is valid so long as you can say you “moved fast and broke things.” We watch cutthroat narratives where anti-hero figures cut corners, lie, and put people in danger all for the sake of making more money.

Even when those figures do show empathy, or human traits, it's often in a bid to manipulate the market or leverage a particular outcome. So yeah, I’ve never felt comfortable identifying as an “Entrepreneur” and a lot of you have heard me say so. I believe mornings are sacred, quiet, springboards for the day. I believe it is always a good time to nap. I believe it is always worthwhile to be kind, to help someone out just for the sake of helping, and to

In truth, there is one key tenet separating Founders from Entrepreneurs: A Calling.
ASC began because I felt a calling to provide a marketing firm for Small Business owners that wouldn't prey on their weaknesses or hold them hostage. Your worth as a person is not tied to how many leads you bring in, how many sales you make, or how many contacts you can upload to an email list. I believe everyone is born with inherent worth that does not need to be earned, with incredible gifts that do not need to be taught. So my calling with ASC is to help inherently worthy people share their gifts and benefit the world around them even in small, every day ways.

I do not thrive in a mindset of scarcity and I do not believe anything goes. When you have a calling, you are often overwhelmed not by fear, but by the hope and abundance of where that calling can lead.

If you feel called to beautiful work that uplifts humanity in some small way, you might be a founder. If you feel you have a responsibility to lead by example - to treat your mind, body, and efforts with the respect they deserve, you might be a founder

5 Sunday Rituals for a Productive Week

The weekend and it’s activites can really hamper your momentum, deplete your energy, and haze your focus. Because I like my Mondays as packed and productive as possible, I like to treat my Sundays as sacred. So as I sit in bed and plan out my day, I thought I’d share with you my 5 go to Sunday Rituals for renewing my energy and guaranteeing my focus come that beautiful Monday morning on the horizon. 

1.) Exercise  

Now, hear me out on this one because it’s literally based in science. My fellow Nashville locals and natives will agree that there truly is nothing like a Nashville party. And no matter the weather, no matter the occasion, there’s always a party somewhere. Spending the weekend drinking, be it Friday night beers, Saturday night shots, or Sunday morning mimosas, ultimately depresses even the most optimistic of people. I like to take time out of my Sunday to hit the gym, even if it’s only for an hour, just to get the blood flowing to my brain. My endorphins are always sky high after I leave the gym, and that activity helps keep me from being groggy on my precious Monday morning. 

2.) Coffee Date with my Planner

Eventually this will be a date with my kickass assistant, but for now my Planner will have to do. This seems to go without saying, but taking a glance at the week ahead has never hurt anybody. I also like to use Sundays to fill my calendar in. Dinner with a friend I’d like to catch up with? I text them on Sunday. I also take a couple of minutes with my Bullet Journal and jot down whatever’s been swimming around in my head. Your whole week will be better for this one. And don’t front with me likenyou don’t have a planner and a pen from that first week in January when you were committed to your New Years Resolutions. 

3.) Candles Lit, Doors Open. 

Now, I’m not big into chakras and crystals, but I am HUGE into rituals of any sort. Because I do a lot of my work from home, the energy in my space is very important to me. Do you ever have those weeks or days where the mess of your space mounts and mounts? Dishes on top of dishes in the sink, piles of clothes, Amazon prime boxes becoming a sort of sick shrine to your consumerism? (That was a little heavy, but I seriously have an Amazon prime problem.) I may sound like a kook here, but the biggest consequence of all that stuff piling up isn’t just a mess or not wanting to have people over - it completely blocks the energy in the space. The longer you leave it, the more muddled you get. I like to take serious precautions against the pile up by taking time on Sunday to swap out last weeks energy for the new weeks. I open my balcony doors and windows, light a candle in every room, and let the air flow. Then I do some straightening and tidying up. This is also the perfect time to do a face mask and take some selfies. 

4.) Clear Desk, Full To-Do List, Can’t Lose.

This is pretty specific to those of you who also work from home. I like to make sure my desk is as minimal as possible for when I wake up on Monday morning. Desks, like any other accessible surface in the house, can get cluttered really easily. Especially, for me, when I come (read: stumble) home on an early Sunday morning and am eager to empty my pockets and crash. But I always take the time on Sundays to whittle that clutter down to my desk lamp, my laptop, and a notepad. The act of clearing out a space and putting things in their proper place is absolutely an act of self love. Of course, as soon as I start working, it’s a mess again - but if it’s a mess already it’s hard for me to begin at all! 

5.) Do Not Disturb  

There is a magical setting on iPhone (and I’m sure Android/Samsung/Jitterbug has some form of it too), called Do Not Disturb. Now, anyone reading this who knows me well enough to attempt to reach me via personal phone will wonder why I have this posted as a Sunday ritual when in actuality I use it almost constantly, every single day of the week. But Sundays are the perfect day to intentionally shut people out, even for an hour, and take a break from being glued to your phone. I like to take my undisturbed hour and read a short story, color, or just take an old fashioned nap (the kind without your phone next to your pillow, or an alarm to wake you up). I love Short Story collections, and am currently working my way through Subcortical by Lee Connell. (Shameless plug here, she was my professor for my first fiction workshop at Vanderbilt.) I’m only reading a couple stories at a time, but they are genius, and I am very proud.

Do you all have any Sunday rituals that you rely on to start your week? Mine are absolutely essential to me. It’s 9AM on Sunday: time to get started. 

xo, Lee

3 things i've learned about the instagram algorithm from running several accounts

I posted my first picture on Instagram on June 14th, 2012. It's a complete testament to the aesthetic of Instagram from five years ago: the photo has a silly, decorative frame, the filter is black & white, and its a selfie featuring the once-iconic duck face.

Instagram spoke to all of us from the beginning - a siren call to aesthetics, a technology-era tribute to scrapbooking and collaging. The trends were a perfect palimpsest of personal commemoration throughout the ages. The power to perfectly express the mood or vibe of any given moment with a filter, a caption, and a location tag, paired with the ability to catalog and anthologize those snapshots into a narrative. 

So much has changed since then that it feels more like ten years ago than five. It speaks to the exponential growth of social media that what was once an iPhone only (ah, the good old days) photoblogging app is now at the literal epicenter of social media marketing and advertising. You could even argue that Facebook's acquisition of Instagram (for $300 million in cash, and another 2.7 billion in Facebook stock) is a key pillar of how Facebook holds on to relevancy all these years later. 

As it's grown, however, it's easy to feel like those human impulses towards commemoration are being sold and packaged. Capitalism reigns, as always, and it follows us wherever we go. In truth, it's nothing without us, despite its efforts to prove otherwise. And it's that note that brings me to the real topic of this post - the new Instagram algorithm.

I'll start by saying I don't know much about it, but since that's a boat that a lot of us find ourselves in, I'm going to take the time to report some trends and features that I've noticed as I work with the platform in both a personal and professional capacity.

1.) THE PURPOSE OF THE ALGORITHM IS TO BALANCE USER IMPULSE AND CORPORATE INTERESTS

Put simply, from a user-standpoint, the more accounts you follow, the more normal your feed will seem.

My personal account has been active since 2012. Out of the 729 users I follow, only about 10% are Verified Accounts. I have 968 followers, about 45% of whom are accounts of people who I know and recognize. I notice the changes in the algorithm the most when scrolling through my personal feed. I never miss a post from Beyonce or Khloe Kardashian, but it'll take days for me to see the post my best friend put up of the two of us from the weekend. This is my guess as to why. Khloe Kardashian's engagement rate completely eclipses that of my best friend. The algorithm "incorrectly" assumes that I'd rather see her than my friend. And because on my personal account, only 10% of users I follow draw that much attention, the imbalance completely skews my feed.

Inversely, on my ASC account, and other non-personal accounts I manage, my feed feels more like what I remember from 2012. I follow over 1k accounts from @ascdaily, and more like 90% of those users are Verified. Because of this, I've noticed that Instagram seems to know that I don't actually care what wig Kylie Jenner is wearing on any particular day - because those verified accounts seem to cancel each other out. When I switch accounts to @ascdaily from @allenagrams, I'm more likely to see all the posts I missed from my friends and family.

The tradeoff is simple: @ASCdaily is following a ton of high-engagement accounts and increasing the worth of Instagram advertising overall. @allenagrams is mostly following smaller accounts, so the algorithm forces the big accounts onto my feed in an attempt to manipulate my decisions. 

2.) IT NO LONGER MATTERS WHAT TIME YOU POST

Social media managers everywhere, bear with me. Because of the algorithm manipulating the timeline, chronology is now completely immaterial. It used to be that the best times to post were governed by agreed upon assumptions as to when the majority of people would be looking down at their phone uninterrupted, scrolling leisurely through the timeline. A lot has changed, and its not just the algorithm. It's safe to assume that anyone in your target demographic who is looking at their phone, is looking at their phone MOST of the time. Add in features like "stories" where people are encouraged to post snapshots of what they're doing at any given moment, and the myth of "downtime" is completely eviscerated. I recently saw a great meme where someone reminisced to the time when we used to type "brb" - the joke was that we don't anymore, because we never actually disconnect. We don't have to "be right back" because we're never leaving. 

Furthermore, Instagram is fully globalized now. "Post on Tuesday evenings" doesn't only mean "Tuesday evening." It could be "Tuesday morning" "Wednesday morning" or "Two days from Tuesday" depending on the location of your viewers and the way the algorithm impacts their individual feeds.

All that matters now is consistency in posts. I advise all of my clients to choose a day/time for themselves that depends on their own behaviors, not on the number of eyes glued to the timeline at any given time. Every couple of weeks, we assess the results, and make any adjustments. I also advise symmetry and aesthetic, so that no matter when eyes land on your post, the content is distinct enough to engender immediate recognition, and when someone taps on your name to see your entire feed, it's aesthetically pleasing and memorable.

3.) HASHTAGS HAVE CHANGED FOR THE BETTER, (BUT THEY'VE ALSO STAYED THE SAME)

Hashtags are simultaneously the most and least confusing aspect of social media. How did an octothorpe gain so much influence!? Most of the users I talk to really have no clue how to use them. Hashtags are simple - it's a way of organizing your content so that people can find it if they're looking for it (#webdesign, #foodie, #DUH!) Because of the way the algorithm manipulates the timeline based on engagement, #tags are more important than ever. They also bring groups together and appease the human impulse to join a conversation - (#instadaily, #foodstagram, #dogsofinstagram). 

Here's how they've changed: Hashtags have evolved from simplified categories into colloquial aphorisms. Instead of merely hashtagging "food", we hashtag #instafood, #foodporn, or #foodislife. The colloquial tags can be as simple as #mondaymotivation, or as specific as #flashesofdelight (one of my favorites). Instead of only putting #salon, or #eyebrows we put #salonlife or #browsonfleek. See the difference? We hashtag the way we talk, similar to the way in which we caption the way we talk.

Another change I've perceived is that there's almost zero shame in using as many hashtags as you want. THe algorithm completely necessitates the use of tags to make sure your content is in front of the right audience, so its perfectly acceptable to throw them on and increase engagement. I say almost, however, because the "how" of using hashtags is tragically lost on some accounts I've come across.

Place your hashtags in the first comment, so they don't disrupt the aesthetic of your posts on the timeline. What matters is the content, and a splay of tags can really distract from that.

I'd love to hear your own thoughts on the algorithm, if any of this is helpful, or if you've had a completely opposite experience with the platform! We're all in(sta) this together, after all.

5 Intuitive Ways to Make Travel Better

I have a love/hate relationship with travel that I'm working on resolving.

I've been to my fair share of places - and it's never the destination that disappoints or exhausts me. The act of traveling, however, can be frustrating, draining, and downright discouraging. I hate airports, the lack of personal space on airplanes, and too-soft hotel beds. Lately, however, I've been traveling pretty frequently - and when you're a consultant in this day and age, airports are familiar territory. Here's my goal: to take the strain out of traveling so it fits more easily into my routine. Here are 5 simple steps I've taken to achieve that goal.

1.) TSA Precheck

We've all been there - your flight is boarding, and just because the traffic getting to the airport wasn't bad enough, the universe has thrown in a veritable landrush at Airport Security just to thoroughly ruffle your feathers. As much as we talk about budgeting at ASC, this first step is exactly our idea of money well spent. It's a little known fact that TSA PreCheck isn't just for big ballers anymore. For a one-time fee of $85 that covers you for 5 years, you can enroll in PreCheck and be granted a Known Traveler Number. The process includes an online application, an in person interview at a location near you, and a brief waiting period while your application is reviewed. I've only been a Known Traveler since this summer, but it's been well worth it every time I've walked into BNA. Now, I'm more worried about whether or not Vino Volo is open than I am about getting stuck at airport security behind a family of nineteen headed to DIsneyland.

2.) Pick an Airline You Trust

This is pretty simple: but in case you're addicted to Skyscanner or Travelocity, here are the pros. Using an airline you trust, consistently, normalizes the process of travel through familiarization. All airlines do things a little bit differently, and adjusting to all those differences can really suck. I exclusively fly Southwest Airlines. I'm completely assimilated into the system, from checking in to my flight 24hrs beforehand to land an essential spot in the A Boarding Group, to using my Rapid Rewards credit card to rack up points that I actually use. Two free checked bags comes easily in handy, and my Known Traveler Number is associated with my account, so I don't have to worry about getting my boarding pass PreCheck ready. Hopping around between different airlines means taking a lot of extra little steps every time you travel. This is not to say that everyone should only use Southwest airlines - but it really takes a bite out of the hassle to know exactly what to expect, when to expect it. 

3.) Fly at Normal Times

So you're looking at flights and you come across that truly ghastly 4:30AMer, with a very appealing price to compensate you, financially, for putting yourself through the absolute hell of getting to an airport at 3AM. My advice? Do not do it. Level with me for a second here. Cutting costs as the risk of your mental health is a big ASC no no. The flight looks inexpensive, from a pricetag point of view - but there are costs that come in elsewhere. Getting to the airport, for example: Either no one can drive you, or you drive yourself and park, or you whip out your go to rideshare app to a ridiculous surge that you absolutely deserve to pay. Not to mention the absolute interruption of routine - unless you're an Olympian - recovering from being up at odd hours is no way to spend your time. Tiempo es dinero, people - and if you're spending the whole first day of your trip exhausted and disoriented, you may as well have stayed home.

4.) Budget Realistically

This, of course, applies in all circumstances: but I've learned that for me, specifically, travel is where I'm most likely to accidentally overspend. Travel budgeting includes a lot of big-ticket items that can take up most of your attention: flights, hotels/lodging, and transportation. But it's also key to factor in the little purchases that travel necessitates. Food and drink at airports, that emergency drugstore run, in-flight wifi and/or messaging, even rideshare in a different city. This is not to say that you wouldn't have those things in mind, but I'm way less likely to run up a $50 bar tab in the terminal if I've consciously budgeted $75 on airport alcohol for the entire trip. (BNA specific lifehack: the bar at Vino Volo has outlets underneath for paying customers. Drink up, charge up, fly happy).

5.) Relax

This is a bit of a junk-drawer step. Airports are stressful. Everyone knows the struggle of wanting to stay charged while staying entertained. I've taken to reframing travel time as time to start shows, time to get to the bottom of that mystery novel I started, or just time to organize my life in my planner. Take a deep breath, the time is going to pass anyway, you may as well capitalize on it and use it to take a break. No naps though, I do not sleep on airplanes for the sake of all of those around me.

Are you going anywhere anytime soon? Any steps you take, personally, to take the big deal out of travel? Whatever they are, I hope they're working for you - and if you get something out of any of these suggestions, feel free to let us know!