Constellar Creative
What’s in it for you as an advisor?
Feel like you’ve been throwing good money after bad with your marketing?
We hear that a lot from the advisors who reach out to work with us.
That’s why we focus on doing the little things right. Because just like you, we know the little things are what add up to big successes.
Things like making sure your contact information and current role are up-to-date on your LinkedIn profile.
Or wireframing the copy for your website before it goes live so you can see whether what looked and sounded pitch-perfect in a Google doc translates to the web.
After all, even the most brilliant content will land with a thud if it isn’t aligned with a well-designed strategy.
Yeah, we need to make sure your tone and voice are relatable and appealing.
And that you say what you mean just the way you mean to say it.
But that involves a lot more than just coming up with the right words.
It means creating an experience so compelling your ideal client only realizes they’re several pages deep into your website once they look up from the screen.
And have already downloaded your lead magnet or booked a call!
Derek Pollard, PhD
The guy behind the biz
I was born in Flint, Michigan, and was raised between Kalamazoo, Fenton, and Traverse City.
It’ll hardly come as a surprise once we connect that I’m a Midwesterner through and through.
Well, except for the fact that I’ve lived and worked all over the U.S., from Austin to Minneapolis and New York City to San Francisco – and was named after a star center on the Bobby Orr-led Boston Bruins teams of the late 60s and early 70s.
One of my stops? Las Vegas, where I earned my PhD in English from UNLV.
Why spend 3 years researching avant garde poetry and poetics, you ask? Because I’ve been writing and publishing poetry myself since I was 15, including the books Inconsequentia (BlazeVOX) and On the Verge of Something Bright and Good (Barrow Street).
It was while I was still in high school that I also began my career in the editing and publishing industry, co-founding a small, independent press with two friends.
Since then, I’ve edited and designed award-winning books for some of the country’s oldest and most highly regarded literary and academic publishers and have worked with several New York Times bestselling authors and NEA and Guggenheim Fellows.
“OK, doc,” you may be thinking, “but what does all that have to do with copywriting and content creation?”
As it turns out, it’s at the core of the Constellar Creative ethos – that curiosity, connection, and collaboration are key to the most effective marketing, and that better business results from doing business better.
As it turns out, it’s at the core of the Constellar Creative ethos – that curiosity, connection, and collaboration are key to the most effective marketing, and that better business results from doing business better.
You’ll experience that whether we’re applying the lessons I’ve learned as a poet to the formatting of your social media posts or adapting one of the persuasive writing techniques that have helped the 1,000s of students I’ve taught (there’s that, too: I’ve taught college English for the past 25 years) become bolder, more confident writers to your website or email funnels.
At every step, you can count on having an entire writers room at your disposal – so that your marketing makes it clear:
You’re the advisor your ideal client has been searching for!
FAQs
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You’re partnering with someone who excels at putting a distinctly humantouch on your content:
• Writing for the one person you’re trying to reach – instead of trying to reach everyone at once.
• Editing so what you’re saying is exactly what you mean (especially if “you” is an AI chatbot!).
• Asking the questions that’ll lead to the questions your audience needs you to answer.
• Building teams that thrive on collaboration and putting EQ front and center.
• Being quick enough to adapt, pivot, and problem solve like a parent facing their 5-year-old with the news that this morning’s character breakfast was just sold out.
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One of the most deeply impactful classes I’ve taught over the years?
Basic English.
After several semesters of having an impact that didn’t quite go far enough, I chose to redesign the course.
I created a 2-part capstone writing project that was due at the end of term:
• A step-by-step recipe – which I would grade by following the steps in the order they were presented.
• A short personal essay about why that recipe mattered to them and what it told the people they would make it for about them and their family history.
For students who were just starting to build confidence as writers, it was a “Hey, I can do that” assignment.
It was also an opportunity for them to express themselves – both on the page and the plate.
And to be celebrated for their efforts.
One of the coolest moments?
A particularly dedicated student managed to convince his grandmother to give him the recipe for his favorite dish – something she’d never given to anyone before!
Not only that, but NPR just launched a new series called "All Things We're Cooking."
The premise? “Kitchen gems from our listeners & the special stories behind them.”
Nothing like being ahead of the curve, is there?
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Sure, the books I’ve published and edited are literary in nature, but as Percy Bysshe Shelley said: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
And he may just be on to something.
Just ask U.S. Poet Laureates Ada Limón and Joy Harjo. Or Presidential Inaugural Poets Richard Blanco and Amanda Gorman.
Which means you’re getting someone who:
• Understands that what you have to say really matters to the people you serve.
• Quiets the noise so your ideal client can focus their full attention on how you can help them thrive.
• Helps you stand out by connecting on an emotional level through direct, expressive language – in a register your ideal client will recognize as coming from a real person.
• Knows how to say what you mean on social media and on your website because I don’t just write using sentences; I write using easily scannable lines.
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I’ve been dedicated to the success of others since I first struck out on my own.
And I don’t mean with Constellar Creative.
I mean, struck out on my own, period.
When I was still in high school, I joined 2 friends to co-found an independent publishing house. In the 10 years we were operational, we went from just the idea of launching a small press to an international network for sales and distribution.
And a list of authors that includes New York Times and USA Today bestseller Danielle Trussoni and “Queen of the Small Presses” Lyn Lifshin.
All before ecommerce was the default setting for business.
Sure, we were writers ourselves, so we had a vested interest in joining the conversation on the publishing side of the equation.
But our mission from the start was to open doors for emerging writers and to connect them, as well as the more established writers we were publishing, to the broader conversations about creativity and innovation going on at the time.
That’s the same principle guiding Constellar Creative – that the most effective, compelling content is an invitation.
Not a hook.
That what you have to say should create connection and establish trust.
And that your marketing should give your ideal client an opportunity to become a stakeholder, a co-creator.
Because (this isn’t news to you, I know) whenever someone has a stake in their future – and in the futures of others – they strive for success at every turn.
However they’ve chosen to define success.
For what it’s worth, that’s not something even the savviest AI chatbot is going to do for you.