EVERYTHING IS NEW

Hey all, 

Happy Sunday. It’s been a long 3 weeks, and I think I have another 2-4 weeks to go.

Everything I’m building right now is new.

That’s simply because Knight Vision companies need to dominate and crush (they are).

But marketing is changing quickly. It’s our job at KV to make sure portcos adapt and do it fast. 

But you know how, when one part of life changes, other parts start to change too?

Welcome to my current reality. 

Here’s what’s going on. 

All brands that I bring into Knight Vision are because the founders have connected with me through a referral or through my newsletter. 

Some of our Q1 brands: 

Our waitlist is still long because I do not have unlimited capacity. Saying no sucks, but it’s part of what building an agency is about.

In Q1, I focused a lot on top-of-funnel and welcomed the most incredible customers. What makes a good KV customer: 

This led to the KV team building growth engines that included: 

I have considered this an excellent quarter. 

Now it’s time to 10x. 

So for Q2, I started focusing entirely on our organization and workflows.

I’ve built marketing orgs from scratch before. My process for the last decade has been as follows: 

This exact process is what led to building our 100M views/mo content creation and distribution system at Citizen. The process I built did the following: 

= 100M views/mo. #4 in the App Store. Millions of downloads.

My bread and butter has always been creative production (example: this newsletter). 

So, when I started going through our current workflows at KV, I started by doing each workflow that I felt had the most upside to iterate on, based on both my strengths and where the world is going. 

(👋 Hey Claude Design, I’m 5 steps ahead of u in that I’ve already rebuilt all our workflows with AI butttttttt now I will learn how to use this)

This Q2 process has led me to rebuild multiple workstreams with Claude and connectors.

I started with our creative production.  

It has taken an egregious amount of time, learning, and work. But the output is already 10x better just from the information standpoint alone.

A few weeks ago, I was on my day off (that turned into me texting Blake, BoomPop cofounder, all these new designs I made with our new workflow from the Noguchi museum). 

We are still early on with the new workflow. It reminds me of Citizen when I rebuilt our entire marketing org from scratch. 

The workflow scaffolding is there, it's running, and we can pump out content that is awesome, HIGHLY informed by not only what has won from the brands over time, but also by what people are searching online, competitors, roadmaps, customer data, ICP data, and more. 

We are making the same changes across the company for all workflows. It’s what needs to happen, or KV brands will lose to competitors who are making more informed content at higher volumes. 

And I won’t let that happen. The future is here, now, and you better fucking believe my brands are going to be at the top.

My grandma passed away in July 2024, and I literally miss her so much. I am her in so many ways – she was artsy and fabulous and so cuddly and stylish. It’s so weird getting older without that source of love. 

I am beyond close with my entire family (talk to them daily) and couldn’t imagine life any other way. 

But it’s becoming harder that the more I grow up and change, the more friendships I know no longer fit into my life.

At the same time, I’ve welcomed many new friends into my life over the past few years just through work, building, and doing things I love. 

I look for friends who are incredibly loyal, hardworking, patient, and fun. My friends are fierce and unwavering in the excellence and passion they demand from life.

I also haven’t had a boyfriend in what will be 2 years in July. I say this as someone who had a 4-year college relationship and a 3-year post-grad relationship.

I was just talking about this with my friend Andrew Yeung this week - I love love but just haven’t found the right fit for who I am now. Maybe that’s because I’m still growing into this version of myself and my life. It’s unfamiliar.

I can’t wait to have a family and a baby and all those good things. As someone who loves wins and fast-paced building, this part of life is testing my patience x10!!!!! If you happen to know my soulmate, send them my way lol (very smart, math-y, low ego, loves adventures and fun things)

It’s kind of interesting how my mom has always been one step ahead of me in knowing who I am. Years ago, she told me my top trait I look for in relationships is intellectual stimulation. 

25-year-old Julia just lol’d. 

“Not fun friends, cool clothes, etc??” I literally didn’t even listen. Meanwhile, my boyfriend at the time literally did the Caltech to Bridgewater pipeline. I was clearly very self-observant (not).

Turns out, everyone around me now is incredibly, undeniably brilliant. 

Booksmart, streetsmart, businesssmart, emotionally smart. 

A combination of all the things. 

They are also all hardworking. I don’t have one friend who doesn’t care about their career or what they are building in this world. 

I’m more in touch with qualities in others that matter to me, and therefore more in touch with qualities that I care about in myself. 

All this to say, maybe everything feels so new because it is all new. And when things are new, and you make choices based on who you are now and what you need, it turns out to be the right ones.

Newness is hard because it challenges tradition. 

Newness is right because it's fitting based on who you are now. 

Existing in this is uncomfortable but necessary. 

What’s the alternative? Living an inauthentic life, building stale products, not evolving….

Thanks, but no. 

If you found this newsletter relatable, I’d love to hear from you.

I hope you have an incredible week ahead. Take a moment to reflect on all the newness in your life, that is EXACTLY what should be there.

Julia