Archive of posts from March 2026

Got five minutes to spare?

You’ll be surprised what you can do with them.

You could sit quietly and focus on your breathing, calming yourself down in five minutes.

You could spin up a Hetzner server and get some open source software up and running in five minutes.

You could write a really rough draft of your next project or product idea in five minutes.

You could document some big sales challenges and where you think the solutions are hiding in five minutes.

You could tidy up all that clutter on your desk or on your desktop in five minutes.

Or, y’know, you could just waste it on social media, doomscrolling, for no reason.
But five minutes can go much further for you than that.

What if the landing page doesn’t work very well?

Or clicks from the initial page fall off in steps two and three?

Or the calls don’t book? Or there are lots of no-shows?

Or the outbound isn’t resonating? Or content engagement’s dropping?

Or? Or? Or?

Too many marketers fret about these things.

While forgetting that this is not a string of problems to solve before you can relax.

This is, in fact, the work.

Just as a young aspiring artist must learn every little thing, fighting form, volumes, inking, composition, or even drawing smooth lines.

The young artist isn’t stressed until they can draw well.

They are engaging in the act of drawing, and learning how to improve, all the time.

And so it goes in marketing or any other skillset.

Every project brings new challenges. Often hard challenges. No stress. Be like the artist.

If everyone wants “more more more” on social media…

More sensationalism, more content, more dopamine…

Then why is “slowmaxxing” trending on TikTok?

A trend that promotes:

• Spending 15 minutes making your coffee
• Choosing calm over pressure, rest over hustle
• Disconnecting from screens as a modern luxury
• Slow intentional meals, reading for pleasure
• Doing less, but better

What people do and what people really want are not always the same thing.

Many may be addicted to their phones. But that doesn’t mean it’s what they want.

If you ship work and it doesn’t get the response you expected,

It might not have anything to do with the work itself.

It could be related to:

• The moment in time (algorithms or news cycles not working in your favor)
• The portfolio it lives in (perhaps it’s still small, thus not carrying you forward like it might others)
• Who saw it (perhaps your people were doing something else, and it didn’t catch fire as a result)
• Something else entirely (who knows, we’re welcome to guess, but that’s all we’re doing)

The world is obsessed with judging work in numeric form.

But numbers don’t tell the full story, and can lead you astray if you let them.

Keep up the good work.

We can tell how much you showed up to your work.

It’s not obvious, when you look at what you’ve created logically.

A hand-drawn image, next to a generated image, might look technically very similar.

A real strawberry, next to an artificially inflated and polished strawberry.

Similar.

But your audience can tell the difference.

And if your audience wants to see people showing up for their work, the latter simply won’t do, however nicely done.

When you don’t know how to make your work better,

Ask how you might make it worse.

Then look for the inverse of what you find.

The opposite of worse, is often the same, similar, or better, than better.

A pencil from a well-known brand name might help you draw better than a free pencil you found randomly on the street.

Part of the difference is the quality of the graphite, the hardness of its core, the list goes on.

Another part of the difference is the story you tell yourself about the pencil, your relationship to your work, and what it means to invest in your craft.

Are you buying tools, or stories?

Usually, you’re buying both.

Some brands focus on cutting costs in order to cut costs.
Some brands focus on improve experience in order to improve experience.

One gives as little as possible without losing a customer.
The other gives as much as possible without becoming unprofitable.

Which would you rather be?

We can tell when you’re hedging your bets, keeping your options open, or vibe coding in the evening.

Because people who are fully committed to following through, “feel” different.

We can tell whether you’re really in it or not.

Just like a tennis ball can tell if the tennis player made a confident swing or not.

It’s subtle. But we can tell.

The Internet has enough content.

There is no content shortage anymore.

There is too much of it, and people are both tired and overwhelmed.

So maybe you shouldn’t focus on how to create “more”…

…when what everyone wants is “better”.

People without status, admire status.

People without skill, admire status.

People with status, admire skill.

So if you care so much about status… forget about it entirely and focus on your craft.

You’ll get everything you thought you wanted but didn’t, and everything you thought you didn’t but did.

If your audience knew everything you knew, would they still pick you?

For many, the answer is “No”. Their work is of smoke and mirrors, maintaining a facade, putting their wellbeing at risk without them knowing, withholding them from better alternatives, or a combination of the above.

For a few, the answer is “Even more so”. Their work is a deliberate act, a commitment, a genuine desire to overdeliver and love upon a chosen few, to make their lives so much better as a result.

Be the latter. Support the latter. Forget the former.

If you don’t have enough time for your ideas,

Throw out your phone for a day. Leave it in the kitchen or in a drawer, for a full day.

Notice how many times you feel anxious, or reach for your pocket.

That’s how many times your mind could have been on your ideas.

That’s how many times your hands could have been reaching for the tools of your craft.

Even when there is no time… there’s a little more than you thought you had.

Give it to your ideas.

Make an advertising campaign this week.

One that you never plan to actually run in the wild.

One that will never see the light of day, ever.

Why?

Because the value in an advertising campaign isn’t just the advertising campaign.

It’s the learning and depth of thought that comes from trying to make an advertising campaign.

The act of making it will reveal a lot about your understanding, your knowledge gaps, and how you present yourself to those you serve.

And that’s valuable all on its own. The advertising campaign itself doesn’t need to run for it to have been intensely worthwhile.

Often, the result isn’t the point. The work itself is where all the value is.

Those old school essays in boxes in the attic at your parents house?

Why don’t you read them?

Because the essays aren’t your education.

The study, commitment and depth of understanding required to produce the essays, is your education.

So why be in such a hurry to generate your words with AI?

It skips the most important part of the entire process.

The work.

If you have free time… and you doomscrolled in it… were you really free?

Or are forces at play manipulating how you spend your time, reducing you to a phone zombie and leaving you feeling objectively worse for it?

Does that sound like freedom to you?

Take your time back.

Don’t think of it as “free time”, think of it as “freedom time”, and invest it into something that builds your freedom.

Advancing skills. Learning craft. Enjoying something.

Anything except the brainrot of empty-calorie doomscrolling.

There’s no more time to lose.

When dealing with talent, it’s not about “good” vs “bad”.

It’s about “how good”.

Juniors aren’t as experienced as Seniors, but they’re nevertheless “good” at lots of things.

If someone’s consistently underperforming, it doesn’t necessarily make them “bad”. It could mean you’ve assigned them the wrong “level”.

Let Lv1 creators create Lv1 creations. They’re excellent at that. They’ll upgrade to Lv2 when they’re ready.

We can all be great at the level we’re at, without having to compare with those at other levels.

What’s the difference between a fit and unfit person?

Or someone with lots of savings or not much savings?

Or someone with a good marriage or a bad marriage?

Or someone with a vast skillset or a weak skillset?

Lots of things.

But one of those things is that the former always invests a little bit daily, and the latter always thinks they could do something about it tomorrow.

A little bit daily makes all the difference.

Toyota and Lexus.

MAD and MB&F.

iPhone 17e and iPhone 17 Pro.

Bundled membrane keyboards and hot-swappable mechanical keyboards.

Book and signed book.

Some people want the accessible one, others want the elevated one. It’s not really up to us to decide for them, or what their reasons should be for choosing one over the other.

Take how our StrategyComics product has an accessible option (bespoke strategy, wrapped in a selection of pre-made stories) and an elevated option (same strategy, entirely bespoke story and artwork).

Many want the accessible option. Some want the elevated one. Their choice.

What might your accessible and elevated options be?

What won’t they dare do?

A money-back guarantee? “That’s crazy, we can’t afford that!”

A cheaper option? “That’s crazy, we can’t sustain that!”

A more expensive option? “That’s crazy, no one will pay that!”

A version that lasts forever? “That’s crazy, no one will value that!”

A version that only lasts one week? “That’s crazy, people want longer than that!”

See how every single one has a knee-jerk reaction about how it can’t be done?

Those knee-jerk reactions are lazy. Of course they can be done.

The question isn’t whether or not it’s possible.

The question is which ones do your audience want, that you dare do?

Small, forgettable, similar bodies of work are quick to build.

Heck, LLMs can probably do most of the heavy lifting for you, if you’re that way inclined.

And it’s good news. Because it means those types of work are going away, their value diminished by the hordes of hustlers looking for their big gold biscuit.

The things worth making are slow to build. Things that require patience, discipline, care, commitment, craft, and time.

All things the hustlers don’t have.

So whatever you plan on building next,

Let it slow, let it slow, let it slow.

When we work on two projects at once, how clever we feel.

Like a productivity monster.

Perhaps you’re chipping away at one, maybe an LLM is researching another, and there you are. Doing multiple things.

Badly.

Multitasking usually only slows us down.

Single-tasking usually feels like we’re slowing us down.

But it’s the other way around.

Your uniqueness should push people away.

Not everyone, but some of them.

The wrong ones. Those its not intended for.

Because the act of being clearly “not for them” is often exactly the action required to be clearly “just for me” for those you wish to serve.

A louder, faster “No” from the wrong ones is precisely the signal you should be looking for.

The wrong No means the right Yes.

If you go big, go hard, spend big to look big, you hurt yourself.

Your runway goes away.

And everyone needs a runway, no matter how big their operation becomes.

So really, your competition isn’t your competitors.

Your competition is your costs.

If your runway is longer than theirs, you have space for the brave work you seek to build.

Last August I wrote:

Good, compassionate, committed people are better than AI.
AI is better than Bad, lazy, selfish people.

What’s fascinating is how the line isn’t moving, but people are.

Good talent is starting to “phone it in” to AI, intoxicated by the ease.

And from that ease, comes atrophy.

And from that atrophy, comes people who aren’t good at their thing anymore.

And so they change their position, from being better than AI to being worse. Not because of competency, but because they stopped being as good, or as committed, as they used to be.

Shame.

This is my 3000th post on my blog.

Some are great. Most are alright. Some stink.

That’s fine.

Keep hitting publish. The reps that count.

The gift of producing great work, is the opportunity to produce more great work.

The gift of producing mediocre work, is the opportunity to get better.

The only bad work is whatever was made in haste to make a quick buck.

Other than that, it’s all good. Just keep producing.

“What if I ship my work and they don’t like it?”

So what?

Lots of people won’t like it.

It’ll be too happy, too sad, too light, too dark, too professional, too silly, too loud, too quiet, too safe, too edgy, too something.

It’s not for them.

If you ship your work and they don’t like it, that’s great, they’re making room for those it’s for.

Ship away.

“If you’re not embarassed, you shipped too late.”

Nonsense. Survivorship bias at its finest.

If you find yourself listening to that, feeling anxious about wanting to do better but wanting to satiate the quotes…

…ignore them. Do better anyway.

The world doesn’t need more mediocre work, yet most will ship it anyway.

Focus on better. It’s what you do best.

When we make OK work, we have to speak for it, to anyone who will listen.

When we make great work, it has a voice of its own, to those it was made for.

Which would you prefer?

If you think outbound is icky, this one’s for you.

Think of what the most “dreamy” invite you could receive from any company could be. What would it be?

Someone coming over to give you free tickets to Disneyworld doesn’t count. That already means something to you.

Instead, imagine a local restaurant opened up. Imagine, they come to your house with hot food and say, “Hello, I made you this. If you hate it, we’re sorry. But if you like it, just ring the number on the bottom of the plate and we’ll come over tomorrow, cook you a three-course meal in your kitchen, for free.”

So you accept the free food. You like it, so you call the number. They come over, cook an amazing meal, and they say it’s to show you what their food is really like — a delicious meal and a lesson in making delicious food at home too. They ask if you’d like to book a reservation for your birthday when it rolls around, and they’ll prepare your favorite meal for it. You say yes, of course.

You go, it’s wonderful, and you feel so good about the place you can’t help but go again. And again. As a show of gratitude, as well as for a good meal. Each time you go, they teach you a bit more about how to cook like they do, so you can take the magic home.

You continue going because it’s a night off of cooking, and you love what they do. You take all your friends there, because it’s a place of meaning for you.

And every time you cook at home, you cook better, and when you cook better, you think of them.

That’s outbound.

Still think outbound is icky?