Field Notes
The journal of a small creative studio.
Marketing, brand, accessibility, AI, and the realities of building a deliberate business from a farm in the Sierra Foothills.
All posts
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Restaurants
How an Elevated Restaurant Grew Covers 25% Without Chasing Virality
The Chez Bacchus playbook: four disciplined moves drove restaurant covers up 25% YoY and ~$199K annualized — without virality, discounting, or paid influencers.
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Real Estate
Preferred Lender Lead Forms: RESPA-Compliant Co-Marketing That Actually Works
How established real estate agents can build preferred lender lead forms that convert referrals, stay RESPA-compliant, and turn a relationship into a system.
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AI
AI Receptionist Compliance: The SMS Rules That Actually Bite
Before you send your first AI-powered marketing text, there's a compliance checklist you need to run. A2P 10DLC, TCPA, and what every small business operator must know.
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Restaurants
What Happens to Your Sender Reputation After a Re-Permission Campaign
A week-by-week look at sender reputation recovery after a re-permission campaign — what the signals mean, how to read them, and what to do next.
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Astro
Why We Moved Our Own Website Off GoHighLevel
We sell websites. So when our own site was hitting platform ceilings on performance, accessibility, and SEO, we had to pick a side. Here's why we moved to Astro on Hostinger — and what we learned doing it.
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Email Marketing
Re-Permissioning Your Email List: The Forgotten Step That Saves Your Sender Reputation
Most small businesses have an email list of 'contacts' that haven't really opted in — and they wonder why deliverability is tanking. Here's how to re-permission a legacy list, clean it up under TCPA and CAN-SPAM, and end up with a smaller-but-engaged audience worth marketing to.
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AI
AI Receptionists Are Replacing Your Voicemail. Here's What That Actually Looks Like
The average small business misses 30 to 60 percent of inbound calls. Most of those callers never call back. Here's what a real AI receptionist does — voice, SMS, chat, and reputation — and what it actually costs.
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Brand Strategy
When to Split a Founder Brand From Your Business: The Executive Fitness Playbook
Some businesses outgrow being just a business. When the founder's story carries equal weight to the company itself, the right move is often to split the brand. Here's how we did it for a fitness studio — and how to know when it's time.
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Real Estate
Building a Real Estate Brand From Scratch: A 40-Year Book of Business Goes Digital
How we built a brand, website, CRM, and lead engine from zero for a realtor with four decades of trust and almost no digital footprint. The playbook for any established agent who's been putting it off.
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Restaurants
How One Restaurant Stopped Missing 30% of Its Calls — A Marketing Reset Case Study
A neighborhood restaurant came to us with brand drift, a dormant email list, and an inbound channel held together by sticky notes. Here's what a full marketing reset actually looks like — voice AI, list re-permission, OpenTable Experiences, and a brand pulled back to what made it worth visiting.
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Accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA Without Excuses: Building Accessible Sites That Hold Up
ADA web lawsuits crossed 4,000 federal filings annually in the United States. Small businesses are now the majority of targets. Here's the standard we hold every site we ship to — and why it's a business decision, not just a checkbox.
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Lifestyle
Why We Run a Marketing Studio From a Farm in the Sierra Foothills
Backyard Bougie is run from a small family farm in Placerville, California — chickens, donkey, sheep, and a great dane who doubles as a project manager. Here's why that's not a marketing gimmick — it's the actual operating model.
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Restaurants
OpenTable Experiences: Turning Reservations Into Reasons to Come Back
Most independent restaurants use OpenTable as a reservation tool and stop there. The Experiences feature is the underused half of the platform — and it's where Afternoon Tea, specialty dinners, and ticketed events go from one-time bookings to recurring revenue.
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