#40 - Level Playing Fields
Failing, the best decision, and rigging life
I have no interest in level playing fields. Put me on one and I’ll lose. I’m too lazy.
I’d much rather spend my energy trying to rig the game.
Welcome new readers! If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed you can subscribe here:
Failing
I never excelled as an employee. After University I joined a tech startup where I spent a year in sales, a year running product, and a year running growth. I wasn’t much good at any of them. I suspect they only kept me because I was good natured. But as a practitioner of sales, product, or growth? Hopeless.
It comes down to my failings on a level playing field. Something in my constitution just isn’t built for it. In all three roles I was given the rules and left to do what I could. The results were unremarkable to put it kindly. Take my final year in Growth, for example:
We sold (or tried to) software to cafes and restaurants. But nothing differentiated us. We started out focused on small independent businesses but this soon got diluted.
With no USP our only hope was good marketing. A better Growth Marketer may have prevailed but I was not Them. I spent a fruitless year trying to draw blood from the proverbial stone. No luck. Among other failures I co-directed a catastrophic content marketing play. This resulted in the marketing department going from 10 people to just me. Yikes.
My failures contributed to an implosion in September 2019, which saw us fire half the company. Remarkably, they kept me on. But a week later I had quit to launch my own venture. I struck out with Ben, determined not to find my way onto another level playing field.
The Best Decision
The best decision we made at Unplugged was to actually lock people’s phones away. It’s given us a unique USP, enhanced the experience, and generated a ton of free PR. What you’re trying to market makes all the difference.
I have no interest in trying to “out market” someone. I find ads tedious, lead nurturing is a faff, and even thinking about IG engagement wears me out. We could compete with the other Growth Marketers. We'd lose. Or we could build something that has an unfair advantage.
This all sounds obvious in hindsight, like we had a master plan from the beginning. Not the case. We were far less sure on it starting out. But it did strike me as a way to rig the game, and that was very appealing.
All it then took was one person throwing their support behind the idea (thank you Matt) and we had the conviction to do it. That simple decision has made marketing probably one hundred times easier. Even we couldn’t fuck it up.
Rigging Life
I suspect this is why I give such weight to the “self-care” world.
I’ve tried playing life on a level playing field. The result? At 25, after a decade whittled away on pints and pills, I was very much losing. But I found life too is a game you can rig.
2019 was a big year for me. I started reading much more. I learnt Transcendental Meditation. This lead to the silent retreat in the Himalayas. Which in turn led to me quitting my job to launch Unplugged. Which, just a couple of weeks later, led to me packing in the drugs and alcohol for good. Life got easier.
We’re all living drastically different realities. One’s perception of reality is their reality. For most of us- including me two years ago- reality is a stressful place to be. It’s littered with pitfalls. But there is hope; our perceptions are malleable.
Meditation, reading, going sober- they all work. The last thing I want to do is preach to anyone about how to live their life. But I can say they have all helped me rig my game. I needed all the help I could get.
My Week in Books📚
The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer
Wild. Michael Singer went deep with meditation as a young man and move to a cabin in woods. He lived there for the next 40 years and accidentally built a Billion dollar software company along the way. Magical things happen when you surrender to the flow of life. A crazy story. He makes a compelling case.
Thank you Connor Swenson for the recommendation 🙏
Do Team by Charlie Gladstone
I hadn’t heard of the “Do” books a month ago and now I see them everywhere. An enjoyable read- good for thought. People are indeed everything. ✌️
I’ll be updating the books I’ve read this year here. Any recommendations? Let me know!
A Final Thought 💡
“All things are difficult before they are easy.”
– Thomas Fuller