Make it yours: A new beginning

I'm not sure what's right anymore, but we're doing this!

👋 Good morning from Los Angeles! I'm Nate Kadlac, and this is Plan Your Next—a Sunday newsletter that connects design, creativity, and how you prepare for your next thing…

Update: You can view my newsletter, Make It Yours.

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💡 What’s new?

I’ve got a few things to talk about today. Which affects mainly me, you, and this newsletter.

But first, I built something I’ve come to depend on when I start out a new project. It’s called the Design Vault, and it’s a collection of highly organized, hand-picked sites that I love. This is an evolving vault with the intent to add 1,000 sites within a year. Snag it now at a 40% discount. (And enjoy the new site!)

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Illustration by moi

Make it yours: A new beginning

I believe I have found the secret to productivity.

Let your wife and daughter head back to Wisconsin for four days to take a vacation give you time to think, redesign your entire site, launch a newsletter, and create a new product.

And I didn’t even attempt mushrooms once.

When you have the house to yourself as an adult doing adult things—like trying to be responsible and not buy Ben & Jerry’s three times a day—you try to make the most of it.

And so, if you read nothing else, here’s the TL;DR of my current sitch:

1. We are expecting another girl in December

2. I am doubling down on Approachable Design

3. I am consolidating my newsletters and rebranding them as “Make It Yours”

When I created Plan Your Next, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And most days, I still don’t.

But in the past five years since creating Plan Your Next, I started writing, quit writing, then started back up. My life changed when I took Write of Passage, had a daughter, left my job post-acquisition, started drawing again, had my best-grossing year of freelance work, started Approachable Design, collaborated with friends, co-founded Fresh Prompts and Hey, Good Game!, and have met incredible friends online that I will have for a lifetime.

The last five years have been the most personally transformative five of my life.

Why Make it Yours?

I wrote an essay a while back called Make It Yours, and that phrase has stuck with me ever since. It hits on a core belief of mine that your taste matters more than ever. Our ability to discern and lean into what makes us unique is simply an edge for you to have in a world with this much noise.

Make It Yours is a statement that wherever you are in life, you should be leaning into your stories, experiences, and taste. It’s what separates you from any situation you find yourself in.

Even if you’re in a corporate environment, standing out gives you leverage. When you’re applying for a new job, cutting against the grain and bypassing the traditional paths gives you an edge.

And, the boat storage company I’m helping out with at the moment needs to lean into its unique perspective to stand out against its competition.

Building a business or a product has never been easier. But how you bring it into the world and differentiate it matters more than ever. Community matters, people matter, and taste matters. It’s why I don’t rely on templates or predefined color palettes.

Make It Yours extends what I write about already, but brings it more closely aligned with how I want to help people with design.

What changes for me?

Not a whole lot! I’ll do some exporting and importing into ConvertKit, and give you an easy way to opt-out if you’d prefer.

However, Make It Yours will be more design focused for non-designers. I’ll make the transition as seamless as possible.

What’s happening to this site?

Honestly, I’m not 100% sure yet. I might migrate a lot of it over, but I doubt it will get shut down for a while. At the very least, I’ll likely redirect this .com to the new page and design a landing page so it’s not all that confusing.

What if I’m a paying subscriber?

I will be pausing all subscribers, and going 100% free from here on out. It’s been a great experiment and I’m thankful for the support, but as I was sitting out on the grass with Alex Dobrenko` a couple of weeks ago while our kids ran as far from us as they could, I realized that having a paid newsletter was not my calling.

What’s new?

I’m so glad you asked! I will be talking and writing more about how to make better design decisions in your business and life. I’ll also be doing breakdowns by people or companies doing this well, giving you a blueprint to do this yourself.

But what I’m most excited about is doing more sessions around how to improve your design, and how it affects everything from your personal/creator brand to your startups and businesses. Keep an eye out for those.

How can I help?

Can I just say that these questions you’re asking are incredible? Spot on.

I’m not going away, I’m just slightly leaning into what makes me unique. I want you to do the same.

But if you need help with your brand or business, please find some time on my calendar, or check out some of my products.

See you next week!

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