Archive of posts from October 2023

Redos are the kiss of death for creators.

You illustrate a chapter, realise your skills grew as you drew it, and now you want to draw it again.

You animate a scene, realise a way to improve the style, and now you want to animate it again.

You code a feature, realise a way of improving your semantics, and now you want to prune your old code right away.

This will prevent you from shipping anything.

We should look upon...

I don’t enjoy writing.

I enjoy drawing pictures in peoples minds.

And sometimes that requires writing.

But not enjoying writing means I look for ways to draw those pictures in different ways.

Instead of writing business content, I make business cartoons.

Instead of writing long sales letters, I make gamified experiences.

Find what you enjoy,

Find what you don’t enjoy,

And watch what happens when those things collide.

When I need to think…

I don’t go to the iPhone in my pocket.

I don’t go to the Mac Studio on my desk.

I go to my pile of notebooks… pick one up… and start writing.

A notebook is still, in my opinion, the best thinking devices.

The battery doesn’t run flat.

It doesn’t demand my attention.

It forces me to write (and think) slower (because I type way faster than I write).

And it lets me doodle when...

When you’re planning a project, consider asking yourself:

What is the calmer, simpler alternative to this?

Sometimes, the answer might be to cut a superfluous feature, or to extend the deadline to as long as you know it should have been in the first place.

Sometimes, it means lower the headcount down to a number that requires less administrative overhead, so there are fewer moving parts.

Sometimes, it means not doing the project at all, because it’s not really helping...

Throw a rock.

And try to avoid hitting a Notion content template with it.

See? You can’t.

Everyone’s got one. Everyone’s making them.

Selling them, even.

And yet not everyone has a successful content or advertising campaign.

Something’s off, isn’t it?

Partially. Man cannot live on Notion templates alone.

But he can live on this:

1. Spend time with your target audience. Hang with them. Expose your worldview to theirs. The combination of market exposure and your brand philosophies...

I get creators asking me about how often they should post on social media.

I don’t like this question.

Artists do their best work when they create great work and put it out into the world.

Not when they’re on a factory conveyor belt.

If you’re no good, peppering people with more graphics won’t make people like it more.

If you’re good, they’ll eagerly await your next drop.

Create like an artist. Publish like an artist. Nurture your tribe. Make...

If you’ve ever heard you need content templates for your social and ads and marketing campaigns…

You’re being sold car tyres as if they’re the full car.

And if you’ve ever been told you need a ghostwriter for your content…

You’re being sold a gas pedal and a foot that presses it.

All useful stuff, but incomplete.

You need eyes. And a brain.

…and a car.

Your eyes are exposure to the market, so you develop good taste for what...

My heart taught me a lesson yesterday.

And I got rushed to the hospital sock-in-croc because of it.

Here’s what I learned:

Push too hard?
= Your body will push back.

Never slow down?
= Your body will pump the brakes.

Doing too many things at once?
= Your body will add another.

Not prioritising your health?
= Your body will prioritise it for you.

Here’s what we can all learn:
= Build cool stuff, but take it easy.

At...

My son’s 10 months old.

He teaches me about business & life.

And he’s got a lesson for you:

We recently went to a ‘messy play’ day at a farm. (Apparently super-popular for babies!)

All the babies were playing in slime… Except one.

My boy wasn’t in the slightest bit interested.

He’d spotted something much better: A tractor.

We spent most of the session on that tractor. He was mesmerised. The steering wheel. The huge tires. He loved it.

Know...

Sometimes it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

And in those times, we messed up.

Trying to do too much at once with insufficient resources.

Go slower or get more resources.

Slower is fine.

More resources is fine.

It doesn’t matter which you choose.

But there are enough hours in the day if you make a decision and make peace with it.

It’s cool to upgrade your tools.

It’s cool to get the latest shiny thing.

But you know what’s even cooler?

Working on your craft, rather than wasting time on all that.

Instead of reading the latest product marketing pages, go fullscreen and create.

Isn’t that better?

Best practices.

You’re bombarded with them on social media.

But they fail to factor in one small detail:

Maybe you just don’t care.

There are many best practices I don’t follow. Rituals and routines I don’t adopt. Delegations and systems I don’t use.

Why?

Because I don’t care.

I use rituals and routines that bring my family and I joy, and prioritise my creative output. I delegate only what will be better because of it, not worse. I don’t care...

Sometimes, when you’re building products or marketing campaigns, you have a choice.

One where you can make one of two choices.

The first: be brave and try that new idea you had.

The second: be safe and just do the normal thing.

If you choose the first, it might fail spectacularly. And if it does, it’ll feel like you wasted your time. “Stupid, you should have chosen the second one.” But it also might be the best thing you ever...

There’s a dangerous side of ambition.

“Ambition means tying your well being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6, 51

Perhaps ambition isn’t what you need more of.

Perhaps self-indulgence isn’t a good goal at the end of the ambition trail.

Perhaps sanity is the journey and the destination.

If we choose for it to...

Social has a lot of shouting.

He who is loudest tends to win: more engagement, more reach, louder.

Louder.

Great.

Except I have tinnitus. Loud doesn’t work for me.

There’s another way.

Lots of whispering.

Instead of pursuing one explosive social post… pursuing lots of personalised invitations to your tribe. Or small collaborations with other brands that share the same worldview as your tribe does, so you can share secret handshakes together.

Lots and lots of whispers.

Both can end up...

Dear creators:

You don’t have to feel ready.

You don’t have to be ready.

You just have to take a shot.

There’s rarely only one shot.

And misses are rarely fatal.

Let’s see what you can do today.

There are a few games in town.

‘Cool’ and ‘Big’ are popular games. They prioritise how others see you, and how much you’ve “dominated” the market.

But there’s a third game. One that’s a little less selfish and a lot more sustainable.

It’s the game of building for ‘falling in love’.

The ‘falling in love’ business doesn’t need to be cool, it just needs to make you curious enough to explore, discover, and experience delight on your own terms.

The...

Forget about survivorship bias.

Forget about celebrating successful outliers at the expense of the vast majority of failures behind them.

Forget about all that.

It’s all based on the idea that you must shoot for the moon and succeed while others fail.

It’s based on the idea that you have one shot to do something insane.

‘Insane’ is focused on building a highly lucrative publicly traded company that everyone has heard about.

But the world doesn’t need you to be...

I like cold email.

I get cold emails every day.

You probably do too.

But while I like cold email (the ability to send something of value to someone else in the world, which they can keep or trash, is a good thing)… I hate most cold emails.

And not because of junky offers that don’t interest me. Oh no.

I hate them because of the lying. The fake personalisation, trying to trick me into thinking they took the time...

One of the big problems that businesses have with video content is they typically need a charismatic leader with free time on their hands and no chance of ever leaving.

• Leaders are too busy to record
• Team members are often bad on camera
• The good ones leave to do their own thing

Fortunately there’s an easy solution to this.

Cartoons.

You can build rapport with the characters.

They’re consistently great on ‘camera’.

They don’t get drunk, demand pay...

We spent all day on hospital.

Our son lost consciousness and an ambulance raced us to hospital to see what was wrong.

At every turn, we were served reminders of how inefficient large operations can become:

• Every healthcare professional needed to be brought up-to-date by us, every time
• The hospital has no access to the doctor’s notes, or any other hospital’s notes
• Hours of waiting between every step, some of which required repeat steps because staff members ended their...

To damage your brand:

• Short-term plans
• Focus on transactions only
• Low-value trip-wires
• Low-quality content

To build your brand:

• Long-term plans
• Focus on audience happiness
• High-value gift-giving
• High-quality content

Long-term players win long-term prizes.

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

• Everybody is winging it
• You’ll know when she’s the one
• Obsession is power not weakness
• Strength is found inside not outside
• Edutainment is the future of marketing
• Cut out bad people, they steal YEARS of life

Ask yourself this:

Would what I want from the market and/or for my business be easier to attain if I was more generous with my time, product, service or skills?

Try finding ways to answer Yes.

Let them be generous ideas.

Some of them will leap out at you.

Sometimes, what you want is on the other side of generosity.

Unicorns are cute.

They’re also worth billions of dollars.

Creators get to choose a path:

Option 1: 20% chance of building a profitable business and life they enjoy.

Option 2: 00006% chance of succeeding at building a unicorn.

Option 2 is a fine option for folks who like to play those odds.

But for the rest of us, Option 1 lets creators:

• Build financial autonomy
• Build time independence
• Do things they...

Struggling?

Clarity and patience:

Clarity helps you see through the emotions and take a better perspective on your problem.

Patience helps you commit to the right path, rather than look for shortcuts that may not work.

Clarity.

Patience.

You’re welcome.

What makes a good ad or social post, would you say?

Impressions? Clicks? Engagement?

They are if you believe what you read on the Internet.

But here’s the thing about using these to measure success…

Annoy enough people or buy enough likes and the data will make you think you won. But it doesn’t mean people want to buy from you.

So what should we measure instead?

I call it “PoP”: Probability of Participation.

Y’see, ads and social are about...

The thing about working with a team is…

People will only let you down if:

• You lean on them for more than you should
• You trust them more than you should
• You need them more than you should

We feel let down when we needed someone to come through but they didn’t. It’s our fault that we were in a ‘need’ position. Don’t ‘need’, don’t feel let down.

We feel let down when we trust people too much....

Cartoons are underrated when it comes to business.

The right cartoon can explain a complex concept in a fraction of the time it would take with words.

They take you to worlds other videos never could.

Don’t tell them how cool your brand is. Show them.

20 years ago, online communities changed how I see the role of a creator.

And that role influenced many of the things I did since, including some really successful products.

Y’see, online communities were still quite new then, but they were tight. If you had an interest, there was likely a bulletin board or IRC channel for you.

Prior to then, if you wanted to make things that spread, you kind of had to be asked, or put it on...

Yesterday, we bought two desks.

Today, we bought two desks twice.

That’s three orders of two desks.

Why did we need so many desks?

We didn’t.

We needed just two desks.

But the marketplace managing the order messed up, twice.

First, they cancelled our order without telling us (the furniture designer contacted us asking what had happened).

Second, they rejected our payment because the second order looked like the first, which they had cancelled.

Third, they accepted the order, then...