Why step 1 is ACTUALLY step 6 ... [🐝U]

There's a storm rolling in … again.

Alberta's doing the thing where the sky turns dark out of nowhere & suddenly you've got 40 minutes to deal with what should've been handled yesterday.

Which means I've got a small window to get the leftover garbage cleared from around the barn before the rain turns the ground into a muddy mess.

Metal sheeting with razor-sharp edges is hard enough to carry when the ground’s dry.
(That my new work gloves already look like Swiss cheese proves it)
Add mud & slick footing … It doesn't get easier. It gets dangerous.

So the window matters.
Because once the rain hits, the job changes completely.

That's been sitting with me all week because client projects work the same way.

Anyone can do the thing. That's not actually the job.

I'm 3 weeks into a new contract.
It started the way a lot of client relationships start … with a specific ask.

They needed someone to take over writing their emails.

& here's the thing … I could have just done that.

Sat down, started writing, delivered emails.
Technically, that's what was asked for.

& a lot of freelancers would have done exactly that.
But I haven't written (or edited) a single new email … yet.

& I want to tell you why …
Because it's the difference between someone who does a task
& someone who's actually responsible for the outcome.

What you can't back up & fix it after

If I'd jumped straight into writing
& the emails hadn't performed … open rates flat, clicks low, list shrinking instead of growing … what's the explanation?

Bad writing?
Poor offer?
Campaign sequence?
Deliverability?

You don’t know … not for sure.
The only thing for sure is I'm the one who owns the failure if results don't show up.

You can't back up after the fact & blame deliverability.
Not credibly.
I've watched projects spiral because everyone kept fixing the copy while the real problem was the emails weren't consistently landing in the inbox to begin with.

Or throwing money at rebranding when the issue had nothing to do with colors and fonts and website layouts.

I even had a client once that refused to change the website …
& kept blaming the ads for not getting customers …
even though hundreds of people were landing on the site every day.

So before I write 1 word, those words have to have a real path to the inbox.

That means looking at the technical setup first.
Current engagement data … the open rates, click rates, unsubscribes
& what that data says

Because you can't just “take over writing emails” & expect better results when you’re not even sure the emails are making it to the inbox …
& if they are, then they’re not getting inundated with 20-30 in a weekend.

Can't write the emails until the foundation is right.
Can't assess the foundation without the audit.
Can't understand the flow without knowing how the sequence functions right now.

What looked like Step 1 is sitting at the end of a chain with 5 or 6 real steps ahead of it.

This is what order takers miss

There's a version of "I write emails" that's just task completion.
→ You hand me a brief, I hand you words, we're done.
→ Results are your problem.

That version exists everywhere.
It's fast.
It's cheap.
& honestly, it’s exactly what AI is taking over.
There's even a name for it now … "AI slop."

Because there's no strategic thinking in front of the work & behind it.

Content that's technically correct but disconnected from reality.
No before or after reader experience taken into account.
Just the output, delivered, task marked complete.

But here's the thing … it's not an AI problem.
It's what happens when nobody's thinking beyond the deliverable.

A real person can produce the same slop if they're just executing the ask without understanding what the ask is actually supposed to do.
→ You can't redesign a website without a clear goal for when someone lands on it.
→ You can't write a social post "just because" & expect it to do anything useful.
→ You can't write emails without knowing what those emails are supposed to move someone toward … & whether the infrastructure exists to get them there in the first place.

The task is never just the task.
The real work is everything that has to be true before the task works.
& everything breaks after if it doesn't.

That's not a longer version of order-taking.

That's a completely different job.

& here's why it matters for your business

You're probably operating as both people right now without realizing it.

You're the strategist in some places … you know why you're doing what you're doing, what it's supposed to connect to, what comes next.

& you're the order taker in others …
→ executing on something because it seemed like the right move,
→ or because someone said it worked for them, without a clear picture of what happens before or after that thing in your specific business.

The question worth sitting with…
Where are you just doing the task?

→ Social posts going out because consistency became the goal instead of the outcome.
→ The opt-in offer you built because everyone said you needed one
→ The email sequence you wrote because the program told you to write it
→ The offer you created because someone asked if you had one

None of those are wrong.
But without the before & after to bookend the “thing” …
Without the strategic layer that connects each piece to what it's actually supposed to do … they're just... tasks.
Completed.
The task got done.
But you want whether it worked to become someone else's problem.

The valuable work usually isn't the deliverable.
It's the judgment wrapped around it.
& that thinking has to happen before the first word gets written.

That doesn’t mean you have to do it all.
You can … then get paid more for the extra scope.

But even if you don't own the before or after,
asking better questions immediately changes the quality of the work.

That’s going to set you apart from other freelancers & from AI
Even if the marketing you're doing is strictly for your own business.

your turn …

Where you've been order-taking when you should have been bookending the “thing” so it holds up better.

Make it a great “question-filled“ week!
EG

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PPS:
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