Mr. Edutainment (Adam Fairhead) writes daily notes (since 2017) about making and marketing your ideas, creativity, storytelling, and leading a creative-led business for over 20 years. Artist and family man at heart.
If someone called you on the phone, and said…
Hey there. That thing you’ve been thinking about making? Well good news, I’ve got a huge group of people who might be interested in it. I can show it to them. If it’s good, valuable, enjoyable, and worth making a remark about, if you show up as yourself and give them a reason to care… then they’ll spread the word, you’ll have a following around that thing you’re making, and around yourself, too. But I need you to make it, I need you to start right away. Can you make it so we can do this?
You’d probably reply with an enthusiastic “Yes!”
It’s the call you’d have been waiting for.
You’ve already received that call.
It’s from the Internet.
Can you make it so we can do this?
Some notebooks make me feel fancy. Others make me feel calm.
Some tools make me feel productive. Others make me feel in control.
Some movies make me feel anxious. Others make me feel relaxed.
Some websites make me feel sad. Others make me feel happy.
Some home furnishings I barely notice. Others make me smile.
I try to consider this in each piece of work I create, both for how it makes me feel, and how it makes those it was created for feel.
We get to choose how we want to feel, in part, by designing an environment that helps us feel that way.
How do you dress?
How do you build your business?
How do you pick your tools?
How do you spend your leisure?
How do you define success?
How do you do anything?
The lousy answer is to choose answers that others have defined for themselves, and shoe-horn it into your life. Whether or not it fits particularly well. It’s like wearing someone else’s clothes. Unlikely to suit you like it suits them.
A better answer might be to choose answers that may be wrong for others, but are very right for you.
Most predictions about the future are wrong.
More people regret not trying than they do a poor outcome.
Many people overestimate how many resources they truly need.
So why not spend your days creating what you love?
Why do people pay for music on Bandcamp, when it’s just as easy to steal it?
Because it was never about the money.
People don’t tend to turn to piracy because they can’t afford something. They turn to piracy because they can’t stand something. Greedy gatekeepers, or the inability to legitimately “own” something through official channels.
Bandcamp music buyers are a great example of this. They’re savvy enough to manage their own library instead of renting forever from a subscription service, so they likely know how to pinch a free copy from somewhere. And yet they choose, deliberately, to pay money anyway. Not because they needed to, to listen to the music. But because they wanted to support the artist. That’s it.
This applies to what you create, too.
Want people to buy? Do great work for your chosen few, let them feel a connection to your (or your team’s) efforts, and let them choose to support you.
People support people they like.
Be those people. On both the creating and the supporting sides.
To an amateur photographer, a good photo is perfectly sharp, brightly coloured, devoid of shadows, with all imperfections generatively erased.
To many actual photographers, a good photo captures the story of a moment in life, with its warts and defects proudly on display.
I think about this when I see small business owners vibecoding their tools to save a couple hundred dollars a year, or when small town communities generate village hall posters.
A growing number of consumers don’t want to see “perfect” generated images.
They ring hollow, synthetic, disconnected.
Instead, they want real, provenance, connection with a person.
Words from an author who toiled with their words to write something worth reading. Images from an artist who toiled with their volumes to draw something worth seeing.
To connect to others through words and images.
It’s what they want.
Why not give it to them?
I have paper notebooks from the beginning of my career.
I do not have digital files from the beginning of my career.
The thoughts, ideas, and explorations that took place on slices of compressed tree-mush… outlasted the immutible, everlasting brilliance of digital.
A hard drive failure here… a no-longer-supported-filetype there… gone.
Logical doesn’t always mean right.
To be a household name,
First define which household.
To be the best in the world,
First define which world.
“I don’t know” became more valuable.
“I don’t know, and I’m going to find out” became more valuable than ever.
Because AI never says “I don’t know”. It’s just confidently mistaken.
Don’t be confidently mistaken. You’re better than an LLM.
Open Twitter today, and you’ll see endless tweets about AI tooling and their associated displacement of… everything.
Someone released another vibecoded GitHub project, boom: another sector down the toilet.
Except that’s not called reality.
That’s called bandwagoning.
The dictionary describes it this way:
“An activity, group, movement, etc. that has become successful or fashionable and so attracts many new people”
Worth keeping in mind.
I get anxious sometimes.
I know I shouldn’t, but I do.
Very, very few things make me anxious.
But the things that can, reveal what’s most important to me.
So I try to reprogram my relationship with anxiety.
Instead of it meaning, “Oh no oh no oh no oh no”,
It means, “This is my body letting me know it’s important, so I should acknowledge that, maybe write it down as a to-do, then release the anxious energy”.
Easier said than done. I’m a work-in-progress.
Hope it helps you.
If you want your service customers to all behave in the same way,
Asking the exact same questions, being satisfied with the exact same answers,
Enjoying systematic output that the last person wanted, just like the next will,
I’m afraid you don’t deserve their custom.
The complexities, unpredictability, curve-balls and adaptability are precisely why professional services exist. They’re not for everyone. Neither are you. But together you make a great team. That’s the point.
Wish that away and you’ll be replaced with a product that will polish the edges and slash the prices, for the benefit of those customers.
Deserve their custom by reveling in their problems, taking responsibility for the chaos, and bringing orderly results.
It’s what professionals do.
Your product doesn’t need to be perfected to launch.
But it needs to launch to be perfected.
I write every day because its a workout for my “idea muscle”.
I use that “idea muscle” every day in my innovation work, artwork, and teamwork.
It means I can sit with a paper notebook and blast out good ideas any day I like.
This muscle would get weaker if I “generated” ideas instead of “had” ideas.
I don’t want that muscle to get weaker. So I don’t “generate” ideas.
The best part is, the ideas available to me aren’t median, “most likely to be accepted” ideas, like what an LLM will propose.
They can be reckless, wild and free, for right-sizing to an opportunity by my own hands and thoughts.
It’s not the first time I’ve recommended you write every day.
And it won’t be the last, either.
Train that muscle. It can be better, for you, than even the superintelligent computer in the cloud you may have been tempted by.
I was reading a vintage comic today, admiring the artwork, and noticed something that has been lost today.
All done by hand, of course. Every graphic by hand, as there was no other way at the time.
I noticed, in a large, full-page scene, in one corner… what looked like two alcohol markers smudging together.
A blue, and a red, over-painted, resulting in green that didn’t belong there.
But it’s still there.
The scene had been beautifully drawn. And inked. And coloured. That last little detail. Green.
A modern colourist would erase the overdrawn colour. Cmd+Z. No green.
But that smudge of green adds to the scene. A reminder that a human sat there, with alcohol markers, colouring the whole scene by hand.
The result feels even more magical. More intoxicating. Like you could stare at it for hours, feeling the moment where someone worked hard on creating such beautiful artwork.
I think we need more smudges.
More little mistakes retained. Brush strokes that were drawn twice to get the right shape. Colours that bleed just a little in places.
More humanity. More connection to the effort that went into the work.
Don’t Cmd+Z the connection away.
The PHP exploit this week has caused madness among tech.
The PHP Foundation fixed the exploit the same day it became public. Hours, not days. These are people who know their stuff, and took care of it.
All the rest of the world needed to do was update their package manager and run a minor, non-breaking upgrade to patch the exploit.
My team did this for multiple companies — as an act of camaraderie, not a paid service — the same day, because it doesn’t take long and we value their online safety. It was the right thing to do, as people who know how.
But many still haven’t acted. Many in positions of authority over the safety of brands had no idea what to do. A leading voice in UK cybersec even said, on TV, that he’d never even heard of PHP before.
This is what happens when people phone in their skills and don’t care enough to continually invest in their craft, in painting the back of the fence, and keeping things simple enough that safety doesn’t feel so complex.
Keep things simple. Invest in your craft. Do the right thing. It costs you nothing, but gives society everything.
Not least of all because so few seem to be doing it these days.
Interesting thought exercise in the car this week.
I asked my wife, if you received a home-made greetings card, would that make you feel more or less special than a printed card from the card shop?
The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, was, “Much more”.
I then asked, if that home-made greetings card was generated rather than done by hand, does that influence the choice?
“Much less, it’d suggest they didn’t want to spend their money OR their time.”
As ease, reduction of effort, and increased productivity become celebrated as “features” of an AI-saturated environment, many are quick to forget that effort is in many cases a feature, not a bug.
As many people move to make less effort in their duties, the value of effort is increasing. Good news, for those who like to make an effort.
If you want different ideas to everyone else…
And you’re generating ideas from the same source everyone else uses…
Consider whether that’s a predictable path to different ideas.
Or if your unique experiences, perspective, opinions, and vision for the future, might be better matched up with a paper notebook, a cup of tea, and a free, screen-free hour.
If everyone is racing to create more “content” as quickly as possible…
To create as many “pieces of content” a day as they can…
Generating and marginalizing their voice in the name of volume…
And that sounds like a race to the bottom you’d be afraid to win…
…Consider whether you want to get in that race at all.
I’ve chatted with a few folks this week with an interesting problem.
They’re vibecoding a lot of things, telling me how productive they are, how many things they’ve made.
But when asked what their focus is, the answer is less clear.
And when asked how much of their week is spent on that focus, the answer is murkier still.
Making things, when hard, is a wonderful exercise in focus. If you shouldn’t make it, you don’t. If it’s a “not for right now thing”, you don’t. If it’s not in line with your current relentlessly-focused priority list, you don’t. And “don’t” is better than half-making lots of things that didn’t benefit from your focus, care, commitment, and voice. “But I need to use my token allowance” isn’t a good trade for focus.
And when things should be made? It’s a “right now thing”? It’s in-focus? It being hard doesn’t even matter: you do it anyway. With focus, care, commitment, and your voice.
You’ve always been able to do whatever you want. The tokens aren’t what’s worth stewarding… Your focus is.
I have toys from my childhood on display in my home.
I’m not 4 anymore. But my son will be soon, and I want the same childlike wonder, optimism, and can-do attitude that 4 year olds have, even as I approach 40.
Getting old isn’t about numbers, it’s about how we interact with the world around us.
And as someone who creates worlds, characters, stories and growth experiences, it’s really important that I don’t “get old”.
So I won’t.
And you don’t have to, either, if you don’t want to.
It’s strange.
After years of wishing there was a one-time purchase version of Adobe Lightroom… a bunch of open-source alternatives have popped up over the past month, free, with largely comparable quality.
The weird thing is, I still pay for — and use — Lightroom.
It revealed something I hadn’t really thought about until the alternative showed up: the software isn’t the whole product.
The software is part of the product. The other part is the 43 years Adobe has been in business, assuring me they’ll still be around tomorrow. Another part is in knowing they’re financially incentivized to keep going with the product, and so it will likely still be supported tomorrow, like it is today.
The free vibecoded alternative that does most of what I need out of an app I use as a hobbyist, seems pretty good… but I don’t know if it’ll still be supported tomorrow. I don’t know if it’ll receive care ongoing, by photographers as well as just LLM nerds. I don’t know if the bugs will be worked out, or if a breaking change will download one day that damages my library or, worse, my photos. There’s no way to know, not today.
The solution for Adobe is to stand by its pedigree, and rebuild its reputation with creatives, so that they’re glad to align with the brand again. The software isn’t the whole product, and there’s an open goal for them here.
The solution for the new open-source alternatives is to stand by its software, and demonstrate a level of care and commitment that goes far beyond the typical “slop” narrative. Relationship-wise, there’s an open goal here until (or if) Adobe makes a move.
Sadly, it seems more likely that Adobe won’t make that move.
But it’s nevertheless interesting to see: the software isn’t the whole product. It never was. And as software becomes cheaper, it still isn’t. And it likely never will be.
It taking a long time to make doesn’t automatically make your work better.
It taking a lot of people doesn’t automatically make your work better.
It taking a weekend or a late night doesn’t automatically make your work better.
If the time results in something more special, more rare, in a way customers can appreciate, then sure. But more time doesn’t mean mo’ better. More people can often make something worse, not better. And late night work is more likely to be an indicator of poor planning than of great work.
Focus on the output — the great, high-quality work. Let the inputs be guided by that, not defined by it.
Picking up my son from nursery is one of the very best parts of my day.
I’m always (always) the first to get there, and first in line.
What fascinates me is, every other parent has their noses buried in their phones.
The kids wander up to the glass window waving to their parents, and not one of them wave back.
You see their faces light up when they see their Mum or Dad, only for it to fade, with a wave that slows to a standstill, as they see no reaction at all.
It makes me think: there are moments of beauty and generosity around us all the time, every day. People just miss most of them because they’re too busy being busy.
I could have a stack of emails and “stuff” to get back to 10X longer than theirs, waiting for me to review or speak to.
But if we live by the wave of “stuff”, rather than by waves of beauty and generosity, how can we create anything great?
True of a business, project, or relationship with your son.
Planes fly themselves. But having a pilot is still important, to make sure everything’s OK, for the times when it’s not.
AI can write code without you knowing the frameworks or languages it uses. But knowing those frameworks and languages is still important, to make sure everything’s OK, for the times when it’s not.
Because the last thing you — or Airbus — want, is to put your name against a pistol that shoots backwards 5% of the time.
You can “get more SEO” if you trade a few quality thought pieces for a sausage-factory of slop.
You can “get more clicks” if you become less discerning about the quality of the collabs you push on your followers.
You can “get more views” if you trade an honest voice with sensationalism.
But it comes at the cost of a reputation that means anything to anyone, compared to sticking to quality, and allowing it pay off each time someone is so amazed with what you do that they can’t help but tell the others.
Not many take the reputation path, despite it being the best long-term path. Turns out it’s both better and easier, then.
We want to see the backstory behind your brand.
We want to see what you stand for, and what you stand against.
We want to know what you’ll always do, and never do.
We want to know what annoys you about your industry.
We want to know what you’re working on, that you know could be better.
These things all matter, when we consider buying from you.
It tells us more about your product, and endears us to your brand, more than you realize.
If machines write your copy,
and machines design your pages,
and machines write your code,
and machines generate your images,
adn machines build your products,
and machines answer your phone,
and machines handle your emails,
and machines have your ideas,
and machines run your reports,
and machines run support,
and machines plan your future,
and you sit watching them do it,
Remind us why we should pay you?
Teenage Engineering, a company that makes synths, announced they’re no longer making synths.
They said the products aren’t the company.
“Then what IS the company?!” cried many.
A company is a group of people.
A brand is a story with a host.
A product is an expression of that story, by that group of people.
When a company says the products aren’t the company… they’re right.
A company doesn’t even need products to be profitable (though they certainly help).
Great example of how the rules aren’t set in stone, it’ll be interesting to watch what they do next.
I create a newsletter called GrowthCandy. Each issue shares one idea to help build and spread your work, delivered as a short comic. Fast to read. Easy to apply. Hard to forget!