Tekton Ink

Writing services:
Web page copy | email campaigns | landing pages

Helping the irredeemably entrepreneurial build business that set them free.

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© Cayce Pollard. All rights reserved.

Recent work

I've been writing professionally for more than 20 years; a bit for clients, and a bit for my own projects.

Recent Work

• Brick Printz
• My Truck Buddy
• Sophia Homeschool
• Last Chance Customs
• The Statement

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About

Hi. I'm Chris. I build businesses with a keyboard.I'd already had a few years of journalism, PR and non-profit work under my belt by the time I built my first business. But when my first simple website started to convert visitors at an astounding rate of about 50%, I knew I was onto something.What did I do? I just told people what I did for them, how much it cost, and how they could get it. You're not going to believe this, but people actually appreciated the blunt honesty. Who knew?For my clients, that means creating brand love among their clients and customers.It's weird how it works. Want to see? Let's:* Freshen up that home page copy* Invigorate that "boring" product or service* Educate and excite your customers with an entertaining email seriesOne thing, though: no sleaze or BS. Deal?

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Brick Printz Studio

Landing Pages | Website Design | Ecommerce

The Client

Brick Printz Studio is something my son came up with. Full disclosure: I love him and think he's brilliant.He also has killer entrepreneurial instincts. I showed him a thing or two and he ran with it, building a respectable and now profitable YouTube channel about all things LEGO®.

The Challenge

One of the BrickStoic's videos exploded, garnering more than 10x his usual number of views. It nearly doubled the number of his channel's subscribers.It was time to capitalize on the momentum by putting his custom-made LEGO®-build plans out there. He had achieved the critical mass he needed to start monetizing his work.One problem: he had let his website take a back burner. It was defunct. Not only that, in 48 hours, he would be one of the presenters at Brick Fest Live. He needed to get his plans out there and ready to sell.

The Solution

The solution was obviously to build a landing page and hook it up to a Gumroad account!I had Brick throw everything he had on Knuckles and Sonic the Hedgehog into a shared drive: every picture of the build, the PDF of his plan, and any images he had.I found a template on Carrd and got to work. The result was a respectable landing page that he could now drive traffic to and sell his plans starting at $5 a pop. The dream of creating his LEGO® instructions side hustle was now fully operational.

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• BrickPrintz.com

My Truck Buddy

Website copy | email campaigns | branding | workflow automation

The Client

My Truck Buddy started as a side hustle, but quickly became successful in the "micro move" category, i.e. simple couch moves up to studio apartments. In a few short years it was grossing more than $1 million annually.

The Challenge

It had all the challenges of a new start-up: No brand recognition, a crowded marketplace, and an extremely limited marketing budget.

The Solution

MTB's growth is a direct result of the no-fluff, no-jargon website that transparently informed customers of the process, educated them about their options, and made the estimate and delivery of services as seamless and automated as possible.We analyzed data from thousands of moves, and built a data-driven, almost completely automated estimate request system that provided clients with the lowest possible cost.We followed up with a review request system that prompted happy clients to write Yelp, Angie's List, or Google My Business reviews, which then drove new traffic to the top of the funnel. Not only did this system work so well that it generated tens of thousands of leads every year, but it was modeled by friends in the industry, competitors, and friendly competitors.

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Sophia Homeschool

Website copy | email campaigns | branding | workflow automation | landing pages | graphic design | videography | scriptwriting

The Challenge

Homeschooling has exploded in the last few decades. The amount of available resources, educational methods and, let's face it, gurus and experts, increases every day.My wife and I started this in order to help people just starting out in the homeschool world. She was the subject matter expert. I was the marketing and technology guy. She knows homeschooling inside and out. I was reasonably good with a word processor. We could do this.We were nobody in the space. No following, no blog, not even a subject-specific Facebook page. But we had the idea to make a dent in the homeschool world.

The Solution

The solution was a friendly, mom-focused tone across every asset: website, masterclass, workbook, and Facebook ads. The website emphasized parents' natural competence to educate their children. ("You got this!") This multi-page site assuaged several areas of concern (what to do, children with learning disabilities, how to manage a home classroom environment, etc.)The website drove traffic to a landing page for the Homeschool masterclass, a five-hour course of videos that we produced together that didn't recommend a specific homeschool curriculum, but taught how to harmonize available resources and each family's unique educational needs and learning styles for both children and parents.Facebook Ads were the key to initial success. While they were only run for a short while, a series of ads hitting parents’ main pain points proved to be an effective traffic-driver.

The Result

After the launch of the website and masterclass, we added several hundred people to our email list. Several dozen became students and successful practitioners of my wife's program. It was a modest launch that, honestly, didn't achieve the results we'd hoped, but it proved to the both of us that there was a need for the product even though it was entirely unique in the marketplace. Family tragedy and other work opportunities put the project on the back-burner for the time-being, although Sophia Homeschool will likely be relaunched in 2024.

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Last Chance Customs

Website copy | branding | landing pages | graphic design

The Challenge

Last Chance Customs began as a side hustle to support a side hustle, but quickly became something more like a vocation.As with many other projects, I knew nothing when I began. I just wanted to, you know, learn something new, build it up, and make a couple of bucks off of it.Ecommerce was a new animal for me. I'd built websites, run ads, written proposals and press releases, but selling physical items online? That was a new one.The technical side was one thing--designing for a laser engraving machine, dying the leather, attaching hardware, finding the perfect balance of form and function... That was almost easy.The real challenge was finding the market for these goods. It wasn't the usual cowboy stuff with hand-tooled rancher brands. I wasn't making saddles and chaps. No, in typical me fashion I had to create leatherbound notebooks with pretentious Latin phrases inscribed on them. Yeah. In an increasingly digital world, I had decided to get into paper notebooks.Was there a market?

The Solution

As a project that came primarily from a place of love for the craft, the different iterations of the website struck a friendly, even playful conversational tone. I had nothing to lose, so why not have some fun with it?While I'm sure that I could have created a large following organically or even through paid ads, I knew that was going to take either a lot of time or a lot of money. So, I went for "influencers" or otherwise large, established organizations.Perhaps ironically, marketing these custom-made leather goods involved something a lot more like proposal writing and networking. I reached out to organizations within a certain cultural milieu--traditional Christian organizations, men's groups, coaches, etc. I positioned LCC as a brand swag value add-on.

The Result

Within a year, I had scaled production up from an occasional hobby to generating thousands of dollars per month in sales. In fact, it generated more work than I had the capacity to do. As a side hustle, it was great--a little extra margin around the edges of my day job. But as a salary-replacing job, it required more inventory and manpower than I was ready to commit to.It was a good problem to have.

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