You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
SHARE
Today's YATM newsletter is brought to you by...
Our friends at La Mias who are looking after us for the Creator Day after party.
Hi YATMers, my name is Mandy Borchardt. I am a German marketing strategist and translator helping UK small businesses market their brand in Germany to grow globally.
I am based in Leipzig, Germany, or Little Paris as Johann W. Goethe used to call it.
This pic of me is taken at a hotel in Rostock at the Baltic Sea (Ostsee).
I am all about overcoming language barriers with my clients and love digging deep into cultural nuances to create great country-specific marketing.
As my job involves being glued to a screen most of the time, I like to unwind with a good book.
We often forget what writing is a way to reach another person, one thought at a time.
Today, we can be the confident alternatives we never were, at breakneck speed.
We can tell people what to do in minutes, jump back to ChatGPT HQ and then move onto the next command. As a result, our work becomes generic and slowly erodes the role we once played.
When we take the lead to share an idea with someone else, it’s the stamp of who we are, not a manufactured version of ourselves.
Everything Has A Start
I never set out to be a writer in the traditional sense but since 2013, I’ve been writing.
Every week I send to you this newsletter (apart from a break in the summer and Christmas).
I started from zero and week by week, I’ve become better at explaining myself through writing. I’m figuring things out as I go. Writing forces me to clarify my half-formed thoughts.
When I started, it was nothing to do with strategy or thinking about personal branding. It was about something much simpler, it was my way to make sense of things.
It’s easy to share generic thoughts, but you’ll never stand out that way. Having an audience to share a newsletter every week provided me that opportunity.
You don’t have to be accomplished at it immediately. You just have to do it.
I write for these reasons....
1) Writing To THINK
The biggest misconception about writing is you need to have it all figured out before you start.
When I sit down to write, it’s because I have a thought that I can explore out with you. For instance, it could be a sentence from listening to a podcast that struck a chord, it could be an idea from a book that I want to explore for myself.
The act of writing forces me to ask better questions, to challenge my assumptions, to find connections I hadn’t noticed before. It’s thinking in public, in real time, with an audience willing to follow along.
We need that thinking space and I like the idea of a blog as a repository of stories that I can look back on and see how the thinking has shaped.
2) Writing To Be BETTER
Writing every week since 2013 taught me the importance of finding routines.
It gives you a rhythm, a structure, a way to measure progress that isn’t tied to external validation. I’m not writing to impress, to go viral, or to please an algorithm. I’m writing because it makes me sharper.
In the beginning, my writing was unstructured and somewhat haphazard. Over time, I found my voice and recognised what I cared about. The only way to get better at writing is to keep writing.
3) Writing For CONFIDENCE
I wasn’t always confident in my voice. The thought of putting my thoughts out into the world felt risky.
What if people criticised me? Even worse, what if they ignored me altogether? But something shifts when you keep showing up, week after week and you start to know the people in front of you.
Confidence doesn’t come from getting everything right. It comes from knowing you have something to say and trusting yourself enough to say it.
Writing has given me that. It’s made me more direct and less afraid to stand by what I believe in.
4) Writing To SHAPE WHO I AM
There’s a strange thing that happens when you keep going, you begin to see patterns.
The themes that matter to you, the ideas you return to again and again. Writing has helped me define my own values, my approach to work, my place in the world.
YATM started as a newsletter. It became a community. It grew into something bigger than me. At the heart of it all, writing has been the thread that ties everything together.
Every time I 'send' the YATM newsletter, I’m reinforcing my own belief. Every time I hear from someone who connected with what I wrote, that belief grows stronger.
Writing, more than almost anything else, forces you to stand behind what you believe.
5) Writing To TINKER
I don’t see writing as a rigid process. For me, it’s a chance to experiment, to test new ideas, to see what sticks. The point is to keep moving, to stay curious, to never let the process become stagnant.
That’s what keeps it interesting. That’s what keeps me coming back.
I see this with other people in the YATM community, too. The ones who keep showing up, who keep refining their ideas, who keep sharing despite the fear, those are the ones who build something meaningful.
6) Writing To BE ME
AI-generated content is in overdrive, the most powerful thing you can do is write in a way that is unmistakably yours.
Lately, I've been reflecting on the idea of relying on AI for more content creation. I came across a post from someone I know and thought, "That doesn’t even sound like you."
I don’t want to be another version of me or be moulded into someone else. I write because it’s me. My words, my voice, my perspective.
That’s the best reason to write. Because it’s you. Because no one else can do it quite the way you can.
Writing To PEOPLE WHO ARE LISTENING
The biggest privilege in all of this? Knowing that when I write, people are there to read it. It all started from zero.
It’s easy to take for granted. But having an audience, people who show up, who engage, is something I never want to lose sight of.
That’s why I keep writing. That’s why I’ll keep showing up. Not because I have to, but because I can. Because I want to.
Let’s Round-Up
We’re at a crossroads. AI can help us write faster, but if we’re not careful, it can also strip away what makes our voices, us.
If we automate too much, we risk losing the personal connection that makes writing powerful.
I keep returning to the table each week because writing is about being myself and sharing my thoughts with you.
So write. Write even when it’s hard. Write even when you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to say.
Time Wasting
Line up chickens in groups of three so you rescue them.
The intention is to bring people together to feel a part of an occasion that goes beyond one day. You'll make new friends, you'll leave filled with new ideas and feel closer connected to the YATM space.
Still want to come? Reply to me, I've got a little coupon pressie to give you 🎁.
The Heroes Journey
Joseph Campbell introduced the idea of the hero’s journey in 1949. He said, “You can get a lot of work done if you stay with it and are excited and it’s play instead of work.”
Creating can’t just be about the need to fill space with posts, but having a sense of responsibility for other people.
Showing a fighting spirit, learning and becoming knowledgeable over time, is better than thinking you have to be correct, straight away.
People Of YATM
"Friend of YATM, Sonja Nissan told me about YATM in 2019. I signed up to the newsletter.
Being part of YATM means a community where I can contribute, take the lead in some cases and, importantly, be seen for doing so.
I’ve always found social media a drag. I’m much better in person than online. But YATM brings the two things together - supportive social media connections and online and in-person events that are enjoyable and worth it from a work perspective.
Get involved with YATM Club on the Circle app. It’s not a cheerleading club, you’ll get support, friendship, and really qualified advice from people who’ve faced the same challenges as you.
YATM is a refreshing dip into the ocean of networking and collaboration."
You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
