Antagonists & Allies: How to Make Every Character Count

Lightning Lessons

Practical skills & tools to accelerate your career

Antagonists & Allies: How to Make Every Character Count

Hosted by Tommy Walker

122 students

What you'll learn

Identify your audience's real life supporting "cast"

Nobody is alone. We all have allies and antagonists as we pursue our goals. We discuss how to find them for you reader.

How to navigate cast dynamics

What does your reader want? Who help them get it? Who gets in their way and can we help them overcome those challenges?

How to make content infinitely more grounded

Bringing in the supporting cast adds a layer of realism by using all of the competing voices on any given topic.

Why this topic matters

Content marketing struggles to connect when it ignores the voices influencing a reader’s decisions. It's easy to say “just do X”—but if gatekeepers are saying “you can't,” it’s not just a skill gap. Cast design helps map the allies, skeptics, and pressures around your reader so your content can create a real path to action.

You'll learn from

Tommy Walker

Founder @ The Content Studio / Formerly Shopify Plus & QuickBooks

Tommy Walker is a veteran content strategist whose frameworks have directly contributed to over 10 figures in revenue for leading brands.

As Shopify Plus's first marketing hire, he developed lead generation strategies that contributed to acquiring the first 1,600 customers, developed durable lead generation strategies responsible for six-figure lead volumes, and positioned them as a category creator.

As the global editor-in-chief of QuickBooks, he led global content operations across 16 markets, managing 40+ multi-disciplinary contributors and building highly scalable content automation systems.

His talent for identifying and nurturing top content creators shows in his track record of hiring authors from the New York Times and Emmy-award winning journalists.

Through The Content Studio, he works with companies like LinkedIn, Vimeo, Twitch, and GoDaddy to create distinctive, revenue-driving content programs.

Brands I've worked with