The Weekly Arsenal

From the Arsenal: SOPs can reveal problems. Story Of The Day: Bob was walking me through a bunch of docs. There were A LOT of them.He had an SOP for every content process they did. To be honest there were so many I even lost track listening.Excel sheets, word docs, Canva slides...The list went on. After he went over them I asked:Does the team use these?Do you have one for this process? and he said:“Yes we have them, and it's shit… but it’s good.”At first it sounded contradictory.So I asked...

The Weekly Arsenal August 12th 2026 From the Arsenal: Where you put the video matters. Story Of The Day: Bob sent me a message over the weekend. "Adding that video increased our conversion rate on our Skool page." He had just added the all star testimonial we shot last year at his in-person retreat to the page where people opt in to join his community. Me:"Good to know the retreat video is increasing conversions." Bob:"Yeah, just adding the video took us from 2.2% to 2.5%...It was the last...

The Weekly Arsenal july 31st 2026 From the Arsenal: Don't flip the whole world. Story Of The Day: The pyrotechnician looked at us and said: "Let's just turn up the fire." And all of us went: Oh.Yeah. Let's back up 4 hours... We were shooting a night scene outside Savannah, Georgia. A little kid and his mom were talking in the woods. It was supposed to be a quiet bonding moment. There was a fire in the scene. Simple enough. my version of simple enough Except a huge rainstorm came through that...

The Weekly Arsenal July 20th 2026 From the Arsenal: The market is running on video FOMO. Story Of The Day: I had a quick Sunday thought yesterday. Pretty simple one. Some of my clients are annoyed because marketing keeps asking them for more videos. And then my marketing friends are annoyed because they keep chasing founders or clients for more creatives. Which made me think... Do you actually need to shoot more? Or are we just making video feel heavier than it needs to be? Because right...

The Weekly Arsenal July 17th 2026 From the Arsenal: Beneath creativity is choreography Story Of The Day: Film production is wild if you think about it. Someone has an idea.Money shows up.People assemble.Roles appear. Everyone works inside a temporary little pop-up shop. Then the thing gets made.The people move on.And the company basically disappears. Very normal.Totally not strange at all. But that is what I love about it. The system can expand and collapse.(If you look pass the creativity...

The Weekly Arsenal July 13th 2026 From the Arsenal: People always look for cheat codes. Story Of The Day: I was going through my emailwhen one email caught my attention. It was from Bob. It was one of those week-in-review emails. A lot had happened. The 2.0 version of the self-checker was live. The team had been using it. Some people were improving.Some people were not. The tool was creating more clarityaround what good work looked like. Good.That is what you want. Because a few weeks ago,the...

The Weekly Arsenal July 10th 2026 From the Arsenal: Good production is about removing variables. Story Of The Day: I’ve scouted the same locations four times this year. Same director.One project.3 filming locations. And every time we went back,something changed. One scout was about the shot list.Another was about light.Another was about schedule.Another was just walking through what would actually work... Once people, gear, money, and time entered the picture everything can change. Where does...

The Weekly Arsenal July 8th 2026 From the Arsenal: You built a cleaner way to keep wiping someone's ass. Story Of The Day: Bob could see it now. That was the frustrating part. A few weeks earlier,the problems were harder to name. Now he had more visibility.The process was less messy.The team had better tools. Standards were clearerthan ever before. It was progress. But it also made the problemmore annoying. Because once you can see the thing,you want to fix the thing. RIGHT NOW. Bob is a...

The Weekly Arsenal July 1st 2026 From the Arsenal: Give the video a job first Story Of The Day: This came up twice. I was reading over the transcripts from my last few sessions. On one call,it showed up after people watched the video. The next step was muddy. Then what? Book a call?Click a link?Talk with somebody? It was missing. So it was not about:"make more videos." More like:"make more loose ends." On another call,the problem was inside the team. People were getting it. The work was...

From the Arsenal: Make the old work teach. Story Of The Day: We were looking at a finished project. Clean deliverable.Happy client.(The kind of thing most teams archive and move on from) But the finished work was not really the point. The better question was:"Why did this one work?" I've had this come up in different conversations lately. Different teams.Different type of work. A finished deliverable shows the result.The useful lessons live in the steps it took to get there.Between version...

From the Arsenal: Video isn’t the problem. Supplying it is. Story Of The Day: “Is your marketing company asking for photos and videos that you just can’t supply, or are too busy to do that?” That was the issue. Not that video doesn't work.Or "we don't have a roadmap". But this: money + creatives = video marketing engine The money part, most teams understand. Budget for ads.Hire the agency.Give the account access.Figure out the messaging. But the creative assets is where everyone gets stuck.It...