Work Samples
Concierge Auctions sells ultra high-end real estate via auction for clients like Lehman Bros’ Richard Fuld and fund manager Peter Lynch. They have $2.5B in sales and have made it to the Inc 5000 list 6 years running. I’ve worked with them on and off for the past 10 years, including writing content for numerous marketing pieces, overhauling their print and digital direct mail messaging, drafting scripts for a video presentation, producing an oversized coffee-table book, and covering the maternity leaves of both the CMO and the CEO.
I know that the role at EY requires the ability to work with all variety of people, interview folks, and research as necessary to complete the assignment. At Concierge, I ran kick-off calls with the client, their lawyer, banker, or manager, the sales director, the account manager, my marketing team, and the president. I interviewed the property owner separately and then drafted the marketing content from there. Within a week, we had a large-trim book printed, bound, and distributed to key buyers, a press release sent to relevant media like the NYT and WSJ, and fresh content on the website.
When appropriate, I can make recommendations not only for messaging, but for format and design. In one such case, Concierge was wanting to increase both listings and bids in Q1 and wanted to test how well it might work to group auctions together by date instead of location. I created this February brochure, conceiving of it from start to finish, writing the copy and directing the design. The piece worked so well that they now often group auctions by date and use this brochure as a template.
In another assignment, they asked me to develop a full training program for agents, including developing a full presentation for several key industry events, a script for a training video with recommended graphics, a printed piece, and a coordinated digital piece housed on a private web page.ULSA: I enjoy taking a mess of information and transforming it into a useful and effective finished product. For ULSA, a B2B service provider for the banking and lending industry, I worked with both the CMO and COO. At the time, they had about $75M in revenue/year and 1500 employees; they sold in 2017. I saw the sales deck they had been using and asked if I could have a go with it. I reorganized, rewrote, and worked with Randall to redesign it from start to finish. Here is the overhauled version I did.
I continue to work with Brian Simons, the former COO at ULSA and now the CEO of Maxwell, a fintech that’s embedding fulfillment into lender platforms. Most recently, we drafted a 28-page sales prospectus for another company he is involved with. (I am not at liberty to share the prospectus.)Assurely. This insurtech start-up focuses on highly specialized products and embedded insurance. Their first release is a D&O insurance geared specifically for companies raising money through Reg A, C, and D-506c. I provided contract work, drafting website content, PR pitches, and direct emails. Here is a press release I wrote and pitched. It was picked up by 10 media outlets within 48 hours.
Baylor Law School. I have written copious amounts of content for Baylor Law School, including the viewbook each year for both Admissions and Career Development. Here are some spreads from one of Career Development’s viewbooks.
I also designed the wireframe and wrote a huge portion of the content for the previous generation of the website. The copy varied greatly depending on the audience, which included current students, potential students, law firms and recruiters, faculty, the larger Baylor community, nonprofits for pro-bono cases, and the media. To ensure the site met the needs of all parties, I conducted focus groups and personal interviews with upwards of 30 people.
The school continues to call for special projects; the rest of the work has gone in-house.Author Representation. As a literary agent, I have to craft extraordinarily compelling query letters to grab the attention of editors who, more often than not, have no clue who I am. Considering your background in the newsroom, I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir: these editors receive hundreds of pitches a day, and I need them to open my email, read it, and then request to see the full proposal. About 70% of them do. Take a look at just some of the titles that I’ve successfully sold, all starting with a well-written subject line and query letter.
Texas State Aquarium. The dolphin shows and jellyfish exhibits at the TSA? They’ve got nothing on the enormous rescue efforts going on behind the scenes. It is really the star of the show. (They just saved 1000 turtles from our unprecedented snow storm last month!) I have worked closely with the director of development on their $25M capital campaign for a new state-of-the-art rehab center to craft their fundraising letters for both individuals and corporations, educating them on this crucial part of their program. (ExxonMobil donated $2M and called the director to ask who created the development piece they received!) I also edit their annual reports.
For this upcoming season, the aquarium is having to raise prices yet again on tickets to more than $40. That’s tough by any standard. Visitor interviews are showing that people are less comfortable with the idea of aquariums and zoos, but highly supportive of rescue efforts. For this reason, I suggested the spring ads focus on the role that admission tickets play in saving area wildlife. You can see some of those concepts here and here.
Corpus Christi CVB. I worked with the Corpus Christi Convention & Visitors Bureau for more than 8 years, developing concepts and messaging for print, outdoor, and digital campaigns, annual reports, presentations (for the CVB director to present to the city or other relevant constituents), and digital content. Twice a year, I wrote a 16-page tourism guide that was mailed with Texas Monthly to 60,000 subscribers.
After Hurricane Harvey, the entire area was suffering from the devastation of the storm. The area was decimated and no one was visiting. I wrote this Texas Monthly ad to let readers know that their fellow Texas needed them to come back to the coast, rent a hotel, go fishing, take surf lessons, eat at their restaurants, and generally start spending money.
Here’s a campaign I wrote when Covid started. I had to thread the needle between asking people to visit, keeping everyone safe, and making all stakeholders happy.