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Hey folks, it's your content friend Eric here.

Look at us, on a new email platform, all growed up.

My favorite writing prompt (for myself, not for AI—I promised no AI talk this week!) is “What do I wish I had known a year ago?”

Sometimes that advice is profound. Sometimes that advice is very simple. This week, a very boring, but very useful, tip came to mind:

Do whatever you can to get yourself a small monthly flex budget (for SaaS tools or freelance help) that doesn’t require any approvals.

So much of being a great content marketer (or knowledge worker in general) is learning how to remove friction for yourself in “the workplace.” There’s the friction of the work itself, and there’s the friction of internal politics (i.e., agreeing on things).

I’ve worked at both big and small companies. Over time, I’ve gravitated to “small” companies (startups) because I prefer the friction of the work itself (e.g., the capacity constraints of being a one-person team) to the friction of workplace dynamics (e.g., budget approval).

To get straight to the point: In my day job at Dock, I have a virtual credit card with a small monthly capacity that I can use for pretty much anything that helps me do my job. I didn’t think too much of this at the time it was given to me, but it’s been transformative.

There’s something that throws me off about the usual process of deciding I need a tool for a task, asking for budget approval, waiting a few days or weeks, and then trying to get back to that task. The ship has always sailed. The context has shifted. The momentum is gone. The creative spark that made you think "I could solve this problem right now" has fizzled out.

With a flex budget, I can act on ideas when they're fresh. I can experiment without writing a business case. I can fail fast and move on.

For example, sometimes I need Canva for one month just to make a specific graphic. Or some API credits for Claude Code. Or to test a few AI visibility tools. Or just to pay someone to help upload a bunch of blog posts.

None of these are "strategic investments" that warrant a Slack thread and a budget-justification doc. But they add up to me being significantly more effective at my job.

The reason I'm sharing this advice is that I wish I had advocated for this for myself a long time ago. I am much more productive with only a few hundred dollars a month of wiggle room. Prior to this job, I had never really fought for tool budget or advocated for myself—I mostly accepted what was given to me and prided myself on being scrappy.

If you’re not in this situation, I can think of a few good opportunities to ask for this:

The key is to frame it as an investment in your productivity and velocity, not as a perk. Companies pay you tens of thousands of dollars a year. A few hundred dollars a month to make you 10-20% more effective is an absurdly good ROI.

I told you this advice would be boring! But I promise it works. And leaders: give your teams tool budgets!

Cheers,

- Eric

PS. I held my promise not to talk about AI this week, but I didn’t promise that Jimmy wouldn’t.

📧 We've moved this newsletter to beehiiv, a platform I've had my eye on for a while! We've also partnered with them to try out the product in public over the next few months. Also, you can use SUPERPATH30 for 30% off. - Alex

📝 New on the Blog: How to use Claude Skills to pressure test your writing with synthetic feedback

Jimmy wrote a great guide on how to use Claude to get writing feedback from your readers' perspective. The intro to the blog speaks for itself:

Read the article here.

📆 Upcoming Superpath Community Events

First, we have our virtual events. To get the invitations to these events, join Superpath Pro.

And then we have our open-to-everyone, in-person happy hours:

🎙️ New on Content, Briefly: Three new episodes!

Not gonna lie, we got a little behind on our podcast calendar in the new year, so we’ve been firing off tons of new episodes to catch up. So instead of being perpetually behind in the newsletter, I’ll just give you the quick hits here.

Listen here.

📙 The Reading List

Here are some thought-provoking articles shared in the Superpath Slack community this week:

💼 Who's hiring?

Here are the latest roles on the Job Board:

We're currently re-evaluating the future of the Superpath Job Board. If you like the job board and still want to receive job post notifications here, let us know! We're curious how much people are using them.

PS. If you're looking for a new role, many roles are posted privately in the Superpath #jobs-and-gigs Slack channel.

🆓 Get a free 30-day trial of Superpath Pro

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