Archive of posts from February 2023

Things I know at 35, that I wish I knew at 15:

• Strength is found inside, not outside
• Obsession is power, not weakness
• Everyone’s winging it
• Your “make games & products” stuff works out
• Cut out bad people, they steal YEARS of life
• You’ll know when she’s the one ❤️

Behind each new growing digital product is:

• Attraction (education / edutainment)
• Immersion (blue ocean / gamified)
• Retention (necessity / gamified)

Doesn’t matter who it is.

And it’s a lot of work to get right.

That’s why it’s key to love on your favourite creators.

They’re probably working harder than you think.

Kids turn things into toys.

Forget about toys designed to be played with in a particular way.

I’m talking about cardboard. Sticky tape. Sticks. The good stuff.

Play doesn’t come just from being told what to do, or how to play. Nope. Play comes from ignoring the rules and doing something else.

Sticks become swords. Beds become trampolines. Pillows become… things to bash each other with.

What’s missing in most digital products nowadays is the opportunity to play.

Not to do merely as you’re told… but to discover. To explore. To create. To play.

We enjoy play. And play is missing.

So it’s our job to find it, if our job is to make things people want to use.

Other people want you do hurry up.

They want you to make it cheaper, shorter, and something a little more convenient for their near-term goals.

They want you to do more for less, pump their bags, and then get out of their way so they can do the same to the next shmuck.

Your people are not like these people.

Your people want you to take your time and do it right. They want you to use the right ingredients, charge fairly, and for it to be worth more than the others.

They want to go on a journey with you. And they’re looking forward to whats next.

Love on your people.

As for the rest, let them know it’s not for them. Because it’s not. It never was.

People are more savvy now.

Your $4997 course that promises untold riches? They’ve fallen for it once and they won’t do it again. They learned to spot the signs of a snake oil salesman, which they now avoid at all costs.

Your $20k service that guarantees an outcome, terms and conditions apply? They know that those terms and conditions are voided if you lift a finger, or grow a mustache. They’re not buying it anymore.

Your $7 ebook that reveals the super-secret success strategy everyone’s been missing? They know that’s no longer true, they know only gullible fools are buying secrets anymore, and they’re not one of them.

The game is different now.

People want to see for themselves. They have options, they want to have fun, and they don’t have to settle.

This is excellent news.

Now, you don’t need to lower your standards to win.

now, you need to raise them.

Do you see the trends?

Are they automatically better than what you’re doing?

If everyone’s making carousels, it doesn’t mean it beats animation, or writing, or video. It’s just popular because it’s an easy way of taking up more scroll real-estate with your words.

If everyone’s making short-form content, it doesn’t mean it beats long-form content. It’s a great gateway to long-form content if you have it. And even if you have neither, huge profiles do just fine with writing alone.

If everyone’s doing something, pay attention.

But paying attention is not the same thing as jumping on the bandwagon.

You do you. And do it better than anyone else on the planet.

Have you failed much lately?

Your favourite creators have. The dishonest ones will tell you they have the magic touch. The honest ones will tell you they failed at basically everything until some things finally worked.

Your favourite brands have. Some of them sweep failures under the rug. Most of them don’t even need to, as they’re easily forgotten. Getting the market’s attention is hard, so hiding things is rarely an issue.

Your favourite products the first attempts. Authors have many failed books. Entrepreneurs have many failed ventures. Directors have many failed shows. It’s part of the process, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

Unless, of course, you decide there is something wrong with it.

That decision will prevent you from succeeding.

Embrace the flop. Build on failure.

It’s where great work comes from.

I noticed a disturbing fear.

A lot of agencies and professional service providers would never dream of letting clients talk to each other.

Why, you ask?

Because most of them have mile-long lists of unhappy clients who didn’t get quite what they wanted, or were badly handled, or deserved their money back due to broken promises but never got a dime.

And the small number of providers who don’t have this problem are afraid they’ll out themselves as small-timers when they’re desperate for the world to look at them as successful power-houses.

These are not good reasons to keep people apart, to watch people grow as a result of each other’s contributions, to lead and serve people with everything you’ve got.

Why do you keep your clients apart?

Is that a good reason?

Some digital product owners just get it.

Others need a little warming up.

“Gamification”, for those others, sounds like a risky divergence into turning their product into a video game and alienating new and existing customers.

That’s not it.

The act of incentivising people with an itch to keep returning and deriving maximum advantage from your work, is not the same as wrecking your product. Quite the opposite.

The best thing to do is start small.

Start building incentives that make people want to come back again tomorrow, and be rewarded for it. Let people compete with each other. Let people wonder what will happen if they use your product more. Surprise and delight them.

But start small.

It’s not so scary that way.

Businesses don’t experiment much.

They think they do, but not really.

Game developer Ankama’s hit game Dofus is pay-to-play. To increase reach they produced a french anime and made a free-to-play game to accompany it. Pay-to-play, free-to-play, cartoons. Then they wanted to reach a mobile audience and offered a retro Dofus experience to touch devices as another free-to-play experience. That’s three different takes on the same content, each differing in offer, each inviting new players into their world in a unique way.

When Budnitz started designer toy brand Superplastic, he wanted to experiment with the formula. They created “synthetic influencers” out of their characters, giving them social media profiles people can interact with. They joint-ventured with prominent luxury brands to appeal to new audiences. They made NFT collectibles to take the culture into web3 culture. That’s three different takes on the same content, each differing in offer, each inviting new collectors into their world in a unique way.

Experiment.

Dare to try new things.

Nobdoy else dares. That makes all of the new opportunity, your opportunity.

How often do you talk with customers and peers?

As in, really talk to them.

Not that polite twaddle that they call ‘networking’. Real talk.

For years, I ran a “Tea with Adam” slot in my calendar where studio clients would get an hour with me to shoot the breeze over a cup of tea. No agenda. If we talked about their business, we talked about their business. If they wanted to chat about flying or politics or NFTs or anything else, that’s what we’d talk about.

Almost every single time, something brilliant happened.

Sometimes, we’d get onto an idea they’d love to build, and I’d hook them up with the resources to do so.

Other times, they’d have a fantastic idea that came from nowhere that massively benefitted my work, thanks to their differing vantage point.

Maybe they knew someone I wanted to connect with, or vice versa.

The insight and value that came from this far exceeded that of any contrived “marketing campaigns”

Make time for real conversations with real people, like a real person.

You’ll be amazed by what you find.

The best things in my life came to me when I broke the ‘rules’.

I met my wife while doing business in the metaverse in 2007. The metaverse was a new-fangled thing, and meeting people online was unusual. And yet here we are.

I started a creative studio in 2009 without having a clue how to run a creative studio (and the internet was not the infinite repository of advice on such things like it is today). I started by doing packages of 3 website designs for £20 a pack. I sold them by going door to door in my city. Now that studio has worked with folks from places like Cisco, Wrangler, Asana and similar.

I moved to the US because I wanted to, lived there for ten years, then threw out my green card and moved back. I decided to not bound or identified by borders, and so I’m not.

I started a web3 project when the world thought web3 projects were ridiculous. But it sold tens of thousands of dollars in a few short months and seeded funds for an exciting venture without diluting stake or raising venture.

Break the rules.

People are bored.

Market-defining products are afraid to make things fun.

Spot the opportunity…!

Often, opportunity is hidden in plain sight.

We don’t miss it because we couldn’t see it.

We miss it because we weren’t brave enough.

Seize the opportunity.

If you want to build things you & your kids’ll be proud of…

…there are a few things that you need to remember.

It’s supposed to be hard. It being hard is the point; if it were easy, everyone would do it effortlessly, and it would no longer be a standout achievement you’d be proud of having pursued in the first place.

It’s supposed to take time. It taking time is the point; if building it (and everything that’s involved in equipping you to be able to build it) were only a five minute trip around the corner, why celebrate the arrival?

It’s supposed to be a bit uncertain. If it was a sure-thing, where everyone achieved the same thing with absolutely certainty, is it really an achievement? Or would it be as notable as an eighteenth-place trophie?

Be okay with it being hard, taking ages, and being uncertain.

It’s the whole point.

Sometimes you just can’t find the staff.

Not because you’re not trying.

Not because you’re being an unnecessary stickler for perfection.

Not because you don’t know where to look.

And not because you don’t have the budget.

But because you have a specific, rare intersection of skills that enable you to see around corners that others can’t.

And because of that, you have a unique opportunity to bring to market all manner of unique advantage that others just can’t see, nevermind implement.

This may not be an opportunity to delegating everything.

This may be an opportunity to change the market with something very special.

Consider leaning into that genius. Hard.

After consulting for folks from places like Cisco, Asana, Wrangler etc… I learned something.

Everyone is trying to work out how to forge deeper relationships with their audience.

Everyone, across all sizes.

My first pieces of advice are usually:

Care more about your people: If you’re able to shift from “how can I make people want this” to “how can I make what people want”, everything changes. No more R&D departments in dark rooms. Lots more phone calls with customers, or hanging out in their favourite subreddits.

Stop being boring: If you’re able to make the first shift, you’re able to make this shift on the back of it. We’re all bored by things that aren’t in our areas of interest and aren’t delivered in a way that is our preferred delivery model. Entirely solveable problems. While the last step challenges us to understand, this step challenges us to implement what we learn

The past was boring. Full of sensational self-serving ads and ‘community’ being used as a synonym for ‘audience’.

The future is fun. Full of surprises, gifts, and a shared vision with those we wish to serve.

Most people aren’t great teachers.

Most people aren’t great students.

A great teacher creates great students: the invitation to possibility, to what could be, the permission to fail forward and have fun doing it, is as captivating to participate in as it is rare to find in the wild.

But terrible students can wear down a great teacher. Perpetual exposure to a lack of care for how much they care can suck the life out of the fragile but magical state they approach their meaningful work.

So we must protect the great teachers from the bad students, those who wish to irritate or came with intent to dishearten those around them.

And we must unleash the great teachers on those who want to be great but don’t yet know how, then watch transformation unfold.

When AI is writing tweets on behalf of others, who are you following anymore?

When VAs are commenting and DMing on behalf of others, is there any conversation left?

When influencers are entirely GPT-3 powered, from the photos and reels to the thoughts in the captions, who is there left for us to listen to?

When personalised emails are written entirely by machines, what becomes of our instincts to reciprocate?

When it’s all automated away, what remains of our ability to communicate?

Tough questions.

And they’re not questions for the future. They’re here right now.

The question is, will we abdicate our role in a digital society, or show up as our authentic selves for those who remain?

Because I’ve written a daily blog 1,887 days in a row…

…I can’t stop.

Because I don’t want to break the streak!

Discipline sounds boring…

But it turned creating into a game.

It’s a game now.

And games are fun.

Having trouble creating content, sharing your ideas, or building you product?

Make it fun, so you can’t stop, by committing to the discipline of showing up every day.

Then you, too, will not be able to stop.

When I started my creator journey, Twitter didn’t exist.

• I went knocking on doors
• My city was my primary audience
• You didn’t go viral, you cold called

Now:

• Your city is the entire world
• You can connect with anyone w/o interrupting

There has never been a better time to create ❤️

I started a metaverse wearables brand in 2006:

• The platforms were rough
• Creating was expensive
• Graphics cards kept overheating

But! It was fun. It sold 100s of items daily. It paid us well.

And I met my wife in the process of running that venture!

Follow your curiosity.

It could change your life.

To go fast, hustle it up.

To go far, calm it down.

Perhaps you’ve heard this one:

“We need to hustle more and grow”

“Dig deep, burn the midnight oil, then you’ll succeed”

Nope!

Hustle is short:

• Hustle is tense and unfocused
• Hustle thinks strategy is slow
• Burn-out comes next

But life is long:

• Strategy is calm and methodical
• Strategy thinks hustle is reckless
• Statistical inevitability comes next

Progress favours the calm.

I used to think I was a bad storyteller.

“Stories are for babies”, I thought.

Then we had a baby boy.

Now I talk about singing clouds, poop dragons, and more on-demand.

The storytelling muscle is strong. And now I see opportunities for story everywhere I look. For brands, businesses, products, content, advertising, everywhere.

Moral of the story: Creativity follows commitment!

Maybe you have an area you wish you’d like to develop. Perhaps you wish the creative energy would strike you so that you can do your best work.

First, commit. Then creativity will show up.

Before short-termism, brands valued:

• long-term relationships
• authenticity
• personal touch
• word of mouth

Now they value:

• quick buck first
• untrustworthy claims
• automate everything
• just spend more on ads

Patient, long-term brands win in the end.

Nothing grows a brand like edutainment

• Engages newcomers faster, because fun is attractive.
• Engages customers longer, because the alternatives are boring.
• Increases attention, because fun is designed to get attention.
• Increases emotional connection, because we warm to things we like.
• Increases viral potential, because we show things we like to our friends.
• Increases differentiation, because others are too afraid to be fun.
• Makes UGC easier, because if we loosen up, so will they.
• Makes JVs easier, because everyone to cheer for those who are winning.

Who knew that fun would be a good thing? 🙃

Creators always have a lot to do.

Most skip personal growth on heavy days because:

• it feels indulgent
• it’s not a deliverable
• it doesn’t pay

But skipping it causes:

• feeling stress
• deliverables to slip
• nothing pays.

To grow, make it #1 on the to-do list.

When I was 4, I was convinced I’d never learn to read.

I told my Mum in the supermarket that I’d never be able to read the cereal boxes. So I learned to draw all the brand mascots instead.

My journey as a creator began right there.

Adversity inspires action.

The obstacle becomes the way.