“I need to create what wants to be created, regardless of anything or anyone.

Sometimes I will perform badly, I’ll write badly, I’ll film badly. But I have a right to do that to get to the other side.”

— Julia Cameron, The Artist Way.

My Future Proof experiment failed.

Notice how I say the experiment failed, not that I failed.

Ego separation is everything.

When an idea dies, we mourn the future it promised. The version of ourselves we’d already started fantasising about.

Our ideas are how we connect with the world. So when they flop, it feels personal.

It feels like proof we were wrong about who we are.

But that’s our ego talking shit.

The stories in our heads are only true if we believe them.

Here’s the reality.

The experiment died. My creative thinking and problem-solving skills are alive and well.

Our experiments succeed or fail. We don’t.

It will sting. But the wounds are not fatal.

Here are the numbers of the experiment.

$150 on Meta ads. 17k impressions. $0.30 CTR (which is impressive, to be fair).

11,000 Substack subscribers with high open rates.

6 people joined the waitlist.

2 of them were me testing it.

As idea flops go, that’s significant. But it’s just information.

It makes pivoting easy.

Listen to the signals, not the noise.

20,000 Gen Alpha parents were interviewed. 93% are scared about preparing their kids for an AI future.

Every Gen Alpha parent I spoke to got triggered by the problem.

They loved the solution.

But they didn’t sign up for the mailing list.

Which means they wouldn’t pay.

Research means nothing in isolation. Get real data.

Better for the experiment to fail now than after months and thousands of trying to force it.

This problem isn’t going away. Someone will solve it at the right time.

Maybe it’ll be me. Maybe it won’t.

That’s what drives every great pivot.

Pivoting is an act of necessity. When our backs are against the wall we have to overcome our fear and pivot.

Most careers will experience it.

Sara Blakely sold fax machines door to door for 7 years before Spanx.

YouTube launched as a dating site. Nobody cared. They pivoted.

Play-Doh was a wallpaper cleaner. When wallpaper went out of fashion, they pivoted into toys and made a fortune.

Mathew McConaughey was the rom-com king. He got bored. Took a risk. Didn’t work for two years until Dallas Buyers Club. He won an Oscar and reinvented himself as a serious actor.

Nintendo made playing cards, love hotels, and taxi services. Pivoted to video games in the 1970s.

David Bowie struggled for 9½ years before reinventing himself as Ziggy Stardust and becoming a creative icon.

We all face reinvention.

A lot of entrepreneurs believe in burning the boats.

But I prefer having a pivot ready before I experiment.

As multi-talented misfits, we can solve lots of problems. We are never short of ideas.

So if you’re in your reinvention era.

If you feel stuck.

Solve your problem. Create your solution. Have a pivot in mind.

Test your idea before going all in.

I’m pivoting.

I’ve already tested and validated a digital product. Now I’m experimenting with the system to turn it into a flywheel.

This is a steep learning curve, but it’s also a high-value skill.

Every creative business needs to earn more money.

The Lessons

1. Gen Alpha parental AI anxiety is real, but it’s a new category. It requires serious education, time and money.

2. Now I know what doesn’t work with cold traffic. Which means I know what does.

3. I started this to help my daughter. She helped me build Future Proof. Now she’s helping me pivot.

4. She’s learned that every failure contains an opportunity to pivot into something better.

5. She’s learning that being antifragile in an uncertain future means running lots of creative experiments that will mostly fail, but it only takes one idea to explode.

Have a great Easter break, everyone!

I saw a viral TikTok video about this.

A girl walks into a busy coffee shop and approaches the stressed barista.

“What can I get you?” He enquires.

“Anything but a black coffee.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I don’t want a black coffee.”

She sits down.

When he gets to her order, all he can remember is black coffee.

A few minutes later she’s handed exactly the thing she didn’t want. Because it’s all she talked about.

Most of us are living this way.

Manifesting our deepest fears without even saying them out loud.

I’ve certainly been guilty of this lately.

And it’s time to draw a line in the anxiety sand.

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”— Charles Bukowski

Intelligent people research and research. Scared of picking the wrong idea. Scared of wasting time.

The fear of wasting time paralyses them.

They get stuck. They don’t make decisions. Then beat themselves up for not being productive.

It’s why so many intelligent, gifted multipotentialites remain stuck.

The fear of wasting time is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The more they fear picking the wrong idea, the more time they waste spinning their wheels in decision paralysis.

Alan Watts called this the Backwards Law.

“When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. When you hold your breath, you lose it.”

“The desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing.” — Alan Watts

The Paradox?

Pursuing positive experiences often creates a negative one, while accepting negative experiences leads to positive outcomes

So obvious yet so hard to see.

Not wanting to waste time means we waste our time.

Not wanting to fail means we don’t start and fail slowly.

The more we try to control our anxiety, the more anxious we feel.

We get what we don’t want because that’s all we focus on.

This is the black coffee theory.

The Spiritual Way to Make Money

I created this framework 👆 to help me accept inevitable pain and avoid suffering.

Every creator will experience pain.

The spiritual part is accepting it.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. — Michael Singer

I accept I’m going to fail. Failure gives me information I can react to.

It doesn’t mean I don’t experience fear.

I do.

It doesn’t mean failure does not hurt.

It does. A lot.

But failure doesn’t define my identity. Taking action does.

Being cringe does not define my identity. Having the courage to consistently post content despite the cringe does.

I was not born this way. I have learned to reshape my identity on action and not outcomes.

Success in creativity or business is a numbers game.

All that matters is taking the shots. The results will take care of themselves.

Christiano Ronaldo has scored the most penalties in football history.

He has also missed the most penalties in football history.

Babe Ruth help the record for both most home runs, and the most strike outs for over 35 years.

The fear of being misunderstood is inevitable.

The people who judge us don’t dare to do it themselves. Every troll I’ve encountered on TikTok has never posted a single video.

But the biggest troll we face is our own inner critics.

The inner critic isn’t you. It’s your creative ego trying to keep you in your comfort zone.

Take risks, and you’ll experience anxiety. Do nothing, and your overthinking mind creates even more anxiety

You’re going to feel anxious either way.

The world is on fire. You might as well take the risks and be proud of yourself for doing it.

Anxiety is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Hello everybody,

Struggling with your creativity?

I am.

Perhaps you feel a bit lost and aimless.

I do.

You may be experiencing creative shame.

Yeah, me too.

This is normal.

Our creative identity is wrapped up in expressing ourselves.

When we can’t, we experience shame.

TLDR

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

We NEED human connection.

This explains our distaste for small talk and our craving for deep conversation.

Mainstream society labels this as oversharing; I call it connecting.

Being creative is an act of spiritual generosity. By sharing our stories, we help others not feel alone.

We connect through stories.

If we don’t exercise our creative power, we feel lonely. Not just on a human level but deep in our souls.

If we don’t express ourselves creatively, we suppress our true selves. When we’re not aligned creatively, we get depressed.

We dim our lights. We isolate. We smother our creativity inside a box

Creative shame isolates us emotionally. Creatively. Spiritually.

Our inner critic fabricates stories.

Shame is an old Saxon word for “covering” or “hiding.”

Our inner critics LOVE this.

They gorge on our insecurities and spew relentless bile on mental loops.

This is true of all creative people.

The more successful they are, the less worthy they feel and the bigger the creative blocks.

“When you’re living for the approval of strangers, and that’s where you derive all of your joy and fulfilment, one bad thing can cause everything to crumble.” — Taylor Swift

“I had enormous self-image problems and very low self-esteem, which I hid behind obsessive writing and performing. I really felt so utterly inadequate.” — David Bowie

For me, it’s creative overwhelm.

I create intuitively from curiosity or anxiety.

If something doesn’t feel authentic, I don’t post it.

I start an article on Monday morning. I write for a couple of hours every morning, creatively pottering about. Then I edit on Friday or Saturday and post it.

The world is on fire.

Monday, I’m anxious about the war, so I start writing about that.

Tuesday, I’m anxious about AI, so I flip to that.

Wednesday, I’m anxious about the national UK Meningitis B outbreak.

Thursday, I meet up with a former client (Hi Suze 👋) who’s super positive, and I feel like writing an inspirational article.

Friday, I’m anxious about the war again.

Our sensitivity is what makes us creative, but it’s harder to live in the world.

When the world is on fire, we’re all over the place emotionally. I don’t know which emotion to channel.

If I’m overwhelmed emotionally, I’m overwhelmed creatively.

So I shut down.

I need to work on this.

When stuck, it’s almost always because of shame or fear. Write about the shame wound to liberate yourself from it.

When you have writer’s block, write about the writer’s block.

Talk about it. Write about it. Make songs about it. Paint about it. Make videos about it

Purge the shame.

Once it’s spoken, it’s no longer shameful. It’s no longer hidden, and you can move forward.

It works.

It gets us out of our heads.

It gets us unstuck.

I’m doing it right now!

If you resonate with this, you don’t need to publish your work. Simply journaling morning pages style will help you process emotions.

If you don’t, you’ll end up with the same shame loops.

Go create.

I’m shitting myself.

We’re validating Future Proof with a mailing list via Meta ads.

In 2 weeks, we’ll know whether we have a sustainable business.

Why?

Because it’s just math.

Future Proof costs £49/month. If we can get the advertising cost to £49 (after a 7-day free trial), we have a sustainable business model.

Month 2 onwards is gross profit.

If you’ve bought anything online, this is the classic e-commerce model.

However, communities are a hard sell to cold traffic.

They have no idea who I am. There’s no trust.

The world is on fire. Normal market conditions do not exist.

The odds are heavily stacked against us.

But here’s the thing.

Parental AI anxiety is such a huge pain point that parents may take a chance on the free trial for their neurodivergent kids.

We have world-class creative business instructors.

Having creative business and emotional resilience skills gives our neurodivergent/ multipotentialite kids a huge advantage!

Curious? More info here

I’m living it.

I have never experienced this level of anxiety before.

And I’m a fully paid lifelong member of the chronically overthinking anxiety club, haha.

Intellectually, I know I have no control over AI and what happens to Chloe’s future.

But as her father, I’m responsible for her.

I don’t know how to guide her.

This triggers me to the very core of my identity and self-worth.

Parental AI anxiety is not only about financial security but also about how our kids will cope mentally and emotionally in the face of high uncertainty.

I feel like I’m letting her down. That’s irrational because no one knows what the future holds.

But anxiety isn’t known for rationality.

A creative business academy to teach skills and emotional resilience not taught in school is a good idea.

A disproportionate number of successful creators and entrepreneurs are neurodivergent.

There are only two ways to validate a business idea.

Time or Money.

Time means building an organic audience around the problem.

This is what I did with multipotentiality.

It worked. But it was slow.

Money means paying Meta to send your idea to tens of thousands of parents.

Validating with money is scarier.

Investing time feels easier, but it’s an illusion. You have to factor in extended living costs.

Everyone’s hyping AI to get investment.

But I know enough technical people to take this seriously.

Time is worth more than money.

If the idea is going to fail, let it be quick.

I have a plan B.

There are only three potential outcomes to any creative business launch.

1) You smash it. Everyone loves it, and it generates word-of-mouth.

You help lots of people, and the business is financially successful.

2) It’s a spectacular failure. No one cares. Your idea was way off the mark.

3) It’s a zombie business.

Successful enough to provide hope, but flawed and doesn’t scale.

You spend all your time servicing existing customers with very little income.

You keep doubling down, hoping it will improve. It drains you, and you have no energy to make money elsewhere.

It’s great to have a purposeful business, but it needs to be profitable; otherwise, you will burn out badly.

I have been in this situation in two different industries, and never again.

I would rather fail spectacularly than get stuck in a zombie business again.

I get overwhelmed trying to do everything. I’m the classic bottleneck.

I know you think you can do everything…but you can’t!

So I’m working with Demi Aspey, an ex-Meta creative strategist who was the creative lead at Meta Rayban, Instagram for Business, Meta AI, and even did Zuckerberg’s socials.

She’s also neurodivergent. And a lovely human.

Obvs.

She also has a PhD in creative writing and runs an online writing studio for rebellious writers and storytellers.

I’m a member, and it’s awesome!

Her copy is rebelliously delicious, check it out here.

Future Proof is a very good idea, perhaps one of my best.

There’s genuine enthusiasm from parents, especially for neurodivergent kids who are let down by the system.

People instantly get it.

Our ND/ Multipotentialite kids will most likely chase creative projects and businesses anyway. Teach them the skills now.

However, unless there’s a sustainable source of leads, no business works.

The odds are against us.

But if we don’t try, I will be haunted by the “what ifs” forever.

It’s squeaky bum time, but I’m trying my best.

And that’s all we can ask of ourselves.

Cast your mind back to being a kid in the playground

Did you play “Would you rather fly or be invisible?”

It’s the classic superpower question.

The real superpower for multipotentialites is finishing projects we have started.

We have genius ideas. But most of them never see the light of day.

Why?

Because of the Idea Graveyard Cycle.

I’ve been guilty of this for much of my life. And now I watch my daughter repeat the same pattern.

1. My daughter hyperfocuses on a new creative project

2. She excitedly drags everyone to her desk to show what she is working on.

3. Next, she’s chasing food around her plate with her chin resting on her hand

This is super confusing for kids. They don’t understand that their divergent thinking brains struggle to sustain dopamine over long periods.

They think there is something wrong with them…

4. Then she’s deflated.

5. She quits. She doesn’t say anything, but we can feel her shame

6. The worst part? Every time she doesn’t finish a project, it makes it easier to do it again.

Neuroplasticty

This is neuroplasticity working against them.

Neuroplasticity means your child's brain physically rewires itself based on their experiences and behaviors.

This means the patterns and habits they practice now become part of who they are."

Who we are can literally be reshaped by what we repeatedly think and do.

Every time we quit a project, we strengthen the pathway to quit more projects. What we repeatedly do creates new patterns.

These patterns create our identity.

Caveat: “Not every project needs finishing, but abandoning ideas we deeply care about before giving them a shot creates shame.”

Our kids feel the same.

To avoid further shame, our kids may stop acting on ideas. They don’t trust themselves to finish.

So they stop trying new projects altogether.

And this explains why so many neurodivergent people have low self-esteem.

We are creative people, and if we are not expressing ourselves creatively then we are suppressing our emotions and often fall into depression.

We didn’t know about this when we were kids, but we can help our kids avoid the same shame spirals.

The Power of Finishing

I tried coaching my daughter. But she’s a pre-teen, and I’m her dad; we have a great relationship, but she’s not exactly looking to me for life advice right now 😆

Here’s what I learned: our kids need structure and gentle accountability.

In Future Proof, we run monthly gamified creative cohorts built around healthy dopamine hits and gentle peer accountability.

The kids get community points and can win cash prizes.

These are designed with neuroplasticity in mind.

When kids start and finish a project, they get a natural dopamine reward, but more importantly, they build self-trust.

Self-trust is the foundation of confidence.

And here’s the thing, this works for adults, too. It’s the same problem, but we have older faces and more to unlearn.

When we start and finish, we build self-trust. We stop second-guessing every pivot. We take risks and share our ideas instead of endlessly planning.

Do this once? Cool. Twice? Even better.

But do it several times in a row? That’s neuroplasticity working for us. That’s a new pathway.

That’s how we finally finish what we start.

Fellow multipotentialite parents: Quick show of hands: what age range are your kids in? (I have a theory about something and need your help testing it...)

Mirabel from Encanto is a multipotentialite.

She was born without a single gift.

Every person in the Madrigal family gets a magical door. A special power.

They are specialists.

Except Mirabel.

She gets no door. She’s a generalist in a specialist world.

A multi-talented misfit.

Of course, everything changes when the magic crumbles.

Mirabel saves the day.

The specialist society we have lived in since the Industrial Revolution is beginning to crumble.

Our kids are growing up in an AI world where specialist roles are disappearing fast.

AI replaces linear sequential thinking.

The good news? Our brains don’t think this way.

Our divergent thinking blends disparate concepts into weird new ideas that should not work. But they do.

We’re all Mirabel.

But we must learn to leverage this thinking.

Eileen Gu has mastered this.

Eileen Gu is a Multipotentialite

Born to a single mum, a Chinese immigrant and former speed skater. She falls in love with skiing.

But Eileen’s also academically gifted.

Every academic told her skiing was a distraction. Every skiing coach told her she was too academic and couldn’t do both.

Both sides told her to pick a lane.

And you know how much we hate being told what to do, right?

Today, she’s the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history. 3 golds and 3 silvers across two Winter Olympics.

Stanford student studying International Relations with a passion for quantum physics. Catwalk model. Multimillionaire entrepreneur.

Age 22.

She didn’t niche down. She didn’t squeeze herself into a tiny box.

Obviously, she’s very gifted.

But gifted kids underperform all the time.

What makes Eileen different is how she leverages her divergent thinking brain.

She puts her success down to neuroplasticity. She’s trained her brain to move toward discomfort and stress, whereas most of us train our brains to avoid it by doomscrolling.

Her main creative source is journaling and metacognition…thinking about her thinking.

“You can control what you think. You can control how you think and therefore you can control who you are.

And especially as a young person, with neuroplasticity on my side, I can literally become exactly who I want to be.” — Eileen Gu

Here’s the science behind why her approach works. And why doomscrolling is training your child’s brain to do the exact opposite. 👇

👆 Join over 1.7 million people and watch this 2-minute viral video. A neuroscientist breaks down exactly how she does it. Genuinely brilliant.

Neuroplasticity. Simpler than it sounds.

Imagine walking through long grass. Same path. Every single day.

Nothing at first. Then, slowly, a clear trail appears.

That’s your brain. Repetition carves the path. The path becomes your identity.

But here’s what most of our kids are training their brains to do instead.

Every time our kids feel stress or anxiety, they reach for their phone and watch brain rot. Doomscrolling is an easy way to numb out the stress and anxiety of living in an overstimulating society.

Our kids are training their brains to be unproductive.

They consume more. They create less.

And slowly, that becomes who they are.

So we built something to get kids to consume less and create more

Amy, my life partner, and I designed Future Proof for our highly sensitive daughter Chloe.

We’re teaching Chloe to consume less and create more. To start and finish her creative projects. To be resilient and adaptable.

To give her the creative business skills not taught in classrooms.

We can’t predict the future of AI. But we can prepare Chloe for it.

We’re doing this with monthly, mini creative business cohorts led by creative experts.

Wrapped around gently, gamified daily gratitude journaling and healthy dopamine with cash prizes

The peer-reviewed research shows gratitude journaling builds resilience, positivity and mental wellbeing in pre-teens and teens.

The whole thing gently trains kids to move toward challenges instead of away from them.

Stress action instead of stress avoidance.

If you want your 10-16-year-old kid, nieces or nephews to try it out, we’d love to host you.

7-day free trial. £49 a month after that. Cancel anytime.

Join the Waitlist Now

P.S. Just to be a tease.

Cohort 1: How to become a fashion designer.

The first tutor is a friend/ client of mine.

A celebrity fashion designer and former lecturer at the London School of Fashion who has created bespoke designs for Lady Gaga, Madonna, Sabrina Carpenter, Gwen Stefani and Dua Lipa, amongst many others.

Her work has graced the cover of Vogue, Rolling Stone Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, etc etc

Five weeks. The kids walk away with a completed project, a new skill and the pride and confidence of starting and finishing.

New cohort and new skills added monthly.

That’s all the info for now.

Peace Out ✌️

👇 Join the waiting list now

Multipotentiality is like Bing Bong from Inside Out.

Bing Bong was Riley’s imaginary childhood friend. Riley adored him. They did everything together.

They played, consoled each other, and flew to the moon.

But Riley grows up. She changes…Emotionally.

The sacrifice scene

When Joy and Bing Bong fall into the memory dump, they try to escape using the trailer rocket. But it’s too heavy. They can’t both make it.

So Bing Bong jumps out. He sacrifices himself so Joy can rise to save Riley’s happiness.

As he fades away, he shouts: “Take her to the moon for me.”

Then he’s gone. Forever.

Why it hits so hard

My daughter was inconsolable watching that scene because Bing Bong isn’t bad. He hasn’t done anything wrong.

He belongs to a different part of Riley’s life.

Reinvention

This is our experience as multipotentialite people.

We have eras. Creative phases and bursts of business ideas that we travel through.

Bing Bong represents our niche, our career, our purpose, our creative era. Something we’re emotionally attached to. Part of who we are.

We form relationships with our creative projects and business ideas.

Riley didn’t get bored with Bing Bong. Her priorities changed. She started caring about other things.

Just as we do. Slowly at first.

We can feel it creeping up on us, right? And then one day we wake up, and we don’t want to do the thing we have obsessed over anymore.

And if you’re like me, you feel the shame in the pit of your stomach.

Many of us think we’re broken because of this. I know I did for a long time.

But we’re not broken. We just don’t know how to leverage our multipotentiality.

A specialist society has conditioned us to feel guilty. That we should just pick one thing and focus on it. That change and pivoting is failure.

The shame piece

Shame is an Anglo-Saxon word for “disgrace” or “dishonour.” So the kids won’t tell you, but they feel it.

What age were you when you realised you were weird?

It’s normally between 5 and 7 years old.

My daughter has three unfinished novels, a faceless YouTube channel, and numerous sketches. She felt shame when she bounced from one creative project to the next.

At least she used to. We encourage her to follow her creative curiosity now.

If we don’t help our kids feel seen and heard, that shame festers and entangles itself deep in their adult identity. Just as it did with us.

Can you imagine how much easier your life would have been without decades of feeling like a failure? Feeling lost and broken?

I think one of the greatest gifts I can give my daughter is to be proud of her multipotentialite creativity. To leverage it and not be ashamed of it.

That’s at the heart of what we’re building.

This is history repeating itself

The inventors, the scientists, the artists, the mathematicians who drove culture forward for thousands of years were nearly always multipotentialites.

We just didn’t have a word for it.

The traditional specialist path is being disrupted by societal shifts and AI. And it will be the multipotentialites who stack their skills in unique ways, spot the opportunities, and solve the new problems.

Our kids don’t need to be fixed. They need to be shown how to leverage their divergent thinking brains.

Future Proof Gen Alpha

That’s what Future Proof Gen Alpha is. An online creative entrepreneurial community for 10 to 16-year-olds.

Gen Alpha kids are growing into adulthood during the biggest technological disruption in human history, which will reinvent the social contract along with the structure of our society.

Just as the industrial revolution did, but that happened over a century whereas AI revolution will be a decade.

Gen Alpha multipotentialites have the innate skills to thrive: adaptability, pattern recognition, creative problem solving and idea synthesis in the face of change.

Ironically, our brains thrive in crisis, but struggle with normality and boredom.

The rocket was always big enough for one.

Unlike us, our kids, nieces and nephews don’t have to wait decades to figure that out.

We can teach them the hard and soft skills as kids so they don’t carry shame into adulthood.

Our job is to architect the creative confidence and emotional resilience within them so they take action and leverage their innate skills.

Only then can they fly to the moon.

Peace Out ✌️

P.S Thanks for the emails with suggestions of Child Therapists for the Future Proof Gen Alpha Community, we now have some great candidates.

Hello everybody,

I’ve been consumed by deep anxiety for a long time now.

As highly sensitive people, the darkness of the world weighs heavily on our souls. Social media is fucked up!

In between videos of AI, WW3 and the horrific evil in the Epstein files, TikTok is serving adverts trying to sell me mops 😆

WTF?!

We need more kindness. We need a mission.

So I’m shutting my creative coaching practice down for new clients.

I LOVE creative coaching and will continue working with my long-term clients, but there are bigger missions to tackle.

I want to help my 11-year-old daughter.

She is highly sensitive, a deeply kind soul brimming with creative ideas, life and hope.

It would be beyond tragic to watch that slowly crumble before my eyes.

I’m 54, have done a LOT of work, and I’m struggling to cope with how bleak everything feels right now.

I can’t begin to imagine how highly sensitive pre-teens and teenagers must feel.

I’m launching an online Creative Entrepreneur Academy for Gen Alpha kids to learn business, life, and personal finance skills that schools don’t teach them.

We’re going to teach highly sensitive kids how to leverage their multiple skills and passions to help others.

And provide practical, creative business skills that give them options, in addition to their school education, for an uncertain AI future of work.

Having a mission to help others creates purpose. Purpose gives kids hope.

I’ll also bring in child therapists, so the kids can speak to them anonymously without stigma.

(If you’re a child therapist or neuroscientist who works with pre-teens or teens, please reply to this email. It’s a paid gig.)

Existentially, we’ve already lost a significant percentage of Gen Z to nihilism.

There are 10X more degrees than jobs. AI technology is going to expedite that further.

So I deeply believe we have to provide new options for Gen Alpha kids to have a future that gives them hope beyond the traditional path.

I know loads of highly sensitive, creative geniuses at the top of their fields with highly successful creative businesses.

I’m hiring some of them as mentors and instructors for the kids to learn new skills.

I’m going to build in public.

I’m going to write about the hopes, fears and anxieties of burning down a business

…and reinventing yourself with a new mission.

If you’re consumed by anxiety, start a mission. It gives you agency.

My anxiety is mostly gone as I’m going towards it, instead of hiding from it and making it worse.

I’m an existentialist. I have never believed we find purpose. We create purpose by helping others.

We gain hope by helping others gain hope.

My main anxiety is how to guide my 11-year-old in an uncertain AI future without losing hope, and how to manage mental health in a society fuelled by division and hate on social media.

It’s a primal anxiety at the core of my identity as a father.

If you’re a Gen Alpha parent, I’m sure you resonate.

It’s Valentine’s weekend.

I’m taking the weekend off from my phone to spend time with my family.

Have a great weekend.

Peace out.✌️

This is a great question 👆

How will AI rewrite the social contract for our kids’ generation?

In the Roman Empire, Latin wasn’t just a language.
It was an opportunity.

Everyone did not speak Latin.
It was only spoken by those who governed, judged, and controlled.

If you spoke Latin,
you could enter the courts, serve the emperors,
work in administration,
and shape law, religion, and philosophy.

You had status.

Entire institutions and careers were built around it.
Identities were shaped by speaking Latin.

Then the world changed.

Empires crumbled.
Vernacular languages slowly replaced spoken Latin.
Power began to decentralise.

Latin didn’t disappear.
For centuries, it remained the language of elites, the Church, and universities.

But when the printing press spread new ideas and knowledge in everyday languages,
Latin lost its monopoly on opportunity.

Slowly, Latin merged into Spanish, Italian, and French.

You could be successful in society without Latin. It lost its status.

The printing press disrupted the power of Latin
by sharing books with new ideas and languages.

History is repeating itself.

AI is disrupting the knowledge economy and the education system
with technology that knows everything.

Will the status of universities and colleges crumble like Latin?

We are entering an era of large-scale job disruption.
Like Latin, a university or college degree was the cost of entry
into a successful life.

Having the right degree,
from the right educational institution,
guaranteed opportunity.

A degree was status,
a way to signal that you had a wider understanding
and depth of knowledge.

It was a way to stand out in the crowd.

Knowledge was a competitive advantage.

Now, everyone has access to all the knowledge in the world
in their pockets for a $20-a-month SkyNet subscription.

The system is crumbling.

When I was a kid, only 1 in 4 went to university.
It was free in the UK
and guaranteed opportunities to experience a better financial life.

Now, over 50 per cent of kids go to universities or colleges,
and there are more degrees than jobs.

There were 1.2 million new university graduate applications
for 17,000 graduate positions.

There is still status if you go to an Ivy League college.
A graduate from Harvard or Oxford will get employed.

But in an AI world that will replace most knowledge white-collar work,
the value of degrees will diminish even further.

What will the new status be?
A unique skill set?

Or is it taste?

It seems clear that we will enter a white-collar gig economy.

AI will replace many linear systems,
but it has no emotional intelligence.

It has no taste.

Being a creative visionary
is combining taste with pattern recognition.

In his New York Times best-selling book Blink,
Malcolm Gladwell showed that our most powerful decisions
aren’t made through credentials,
but through taste.

What he called thin-slicing
is pattern recognition under uncertainty,
intuition trained by failure and feedback.

In an AI world where machines process information
faster than any human ever could,
what remains uniquely valuable
is the capacity to decide what matters.

That’s what taste is.

The ability to sense quality, relevance, and meaning
before it can be articulated.

As the old languages of power,
Latin, degrees, titles,
lose their monopoly,

the new status won’t belong
to those who know the most,
but to those who see the most clearly.

Judgment becomes currency.
Taste has value.

Pattern recognition becomes the new language of power.

Not a sterile, linear pattern recognition mastered by AI,
but emotional pattern recognition.

Idea synthesis.
Joining the dots,
which is the main function
of our divergent thinking brains.

The future is not specialisation and linear thinking.
The future is idea synthesis and taste.

It is adaptability.
It is creative thinking.

I used to believe I had a good ear for a hit records.
But really, I was using pattern recognition skills and taste.

In dance music, it took about 12 to 18 months
for a record played in small underground clubs
to build momentum
and end up being played to millions
on BBC Radio 1 and in the charts.

The pattern looked like this:

Step 1) DJs played promo tracks sent to them by PRs
Step 2) Tracks started to get specialist plays on tiny radio dance music shows
Step 3) Tracks featured heavily at the Winter Music Conference in Miami
Step 4) Tracks were played heavily in Ibiza clubs
Step 5) Tracks were played on mainstream radio
Step 6) Tracks entered the mainstream charts

Following this formula meant I signed DJs,
usually one-hit wonders,
before they blew up
and enjoyed mainstream success.

Did it work every time?
Hell no.

I have way more failures than successes.

But it was a pattern.

The question you need to ask yourself is this:

The 5 Key Pattern Recognition Questions

1) What patterns can you spot in your industry?
2) What do you see or feel before others?

This is your pattern recognition skill,
and like all skills, it can be fine-tuned.

3) How is AI going to disrupt your industry?
Disruption is going to create new problems.

4) And how are you going to create the solutions?

5) And then how can you turn those solutions
into a business
that helps other people?

I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety about how to guide my 11-year-old daughter into an AI-driven future, so I wrote this to process it.

Modern Society was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Everyone was given the same expectations.
Work hard at school
Follow the rules.
Get a good degree.
And you, too, could win the golden ticket and live a good life.

That was the social contract.

It worked for the Boomers.
And for Gen X-ers.

For everyone else, it stopped working.

Millennials and Gen Z did exactly what was asked of them and still lost.
They lost because the social contract broke.

The golden ticket was an illusion.

And when the illusion fades, it’s replaced with ”Why bother?!”

The Happiness Gap

Imagine happiness is a simple equation.

Happiness = reality minus expectations.

The gap between reality and expectations is unhappiness.

You didn’t invent your expectations.
They were passed down to you by parents who believed the system worked because, for them, it did.

For Millennials, the promise was clear.
Work hard.
Get a degree.
Get a good job.
Live a good life.

Buy a house.
Buy a luxury German car.
A couple of holidays a year.
A family.

That was the social contract.

The reality?
Crippling student debt.
No housing ladder.
Two kids are a financial flex.

Millennial expectation minus the reality =
disillusionment.

Gen Z and the Collapse of Belief

Gen Z were told the same story.

Get good grades.
Get a good degree.
Get a job.

But there are more degrees than jobs.
Wages are stagnant.
Security is gone.

Gen Z already know they won’t own a home.
They won’t retire comfortably.
They may never catch up.

Nihilism is a now trending term for Gen Z

Gen Z expectation minus reality = existential nihilism.

When hard work no longer maps to outcome, belief dies.

In the UK, 700,000 university graduates are unemployed.
Average graduate student debt sits at £53k.
Most graduates are paying a 9% of their salary for thirty years.

Gen Z are a generation trapped in a student debt spiral for an education that only delivers broken promises.

The system is broken.

Gen Alpha and the Real Danger

This is my daughter’s generation.

How long will it take for Gen Alpha to realise the system is broken?

When they can see that degrees don’t provide jobs.
That university comes with decades of crippling debt.

Why study hard at school for a future that no longer exists?

This collapse started long before AI.
AI is just accelerating it.

The education system was designed for the industrial age.
To produce obedient workers for factories and then offices.

But the factories are filling with robots.
The offices with AI algorithms.

Corporations will still need humans

We are entering the corporate gig economy.

Just as Uber Eats and Deliveroo avoid pension contributions, sick pay and holidays by using contractors, corporations will do the same at scale.

In the near future, most so-called white-collar workers will be freelancers, coaches and consultants.

We’re clearly moving from a society that is mostly employed to mostly self-employment.

But we’re not preparing our kids for this.

The New World

The education system must change to reflect this new world.

Teachers aren’t failing.
Most schools care deeply.

My daughter is in one of the best state high schools in the UK. We got super lucky.
She’s getting a fantastic education.

But it’s only preparing her for a future of employment.

That’s the problem.

We need to start preparing kids for a freelance future, not to replace the current education system, but to augment it by teaching them practical entrepreneurial skills.

Otherwise, the alternative is this: When incentives disappear, behaviour changes.

If degrees don’t guarantee jobs,
if jobs don’t guarantee security,
if security doesn’t guarantee a good life,

Then Gen Alpha will, like Gen Z, lose hope and say, “Why bother?!”

Building the New Golden Ticket

What does this mean for Gen Alpha?

It means teaching our kids how to think creatively, not just what to memorise and repeat.
How to spot patterns.
How to solve real problems.

We need to teach kids how to become creative entrepreneurs.

We need to teach them how to manage personal finances.

How to vibe code websites with AI.
How to vibe code apps with AI.
How to launch E-comm stores.
How to leverage Facebook ads.
How to monetise faceless YouTube channels.
How to start and monetise podcasts.
How to become a freelancer, coach, or consultant.

Because in a world with no guaranteed path or job security,
entrepreneurial skills, agency, and adaptability become the new golden tickets.

Arthur Schopenhauer said:
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit.
Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

The Social Contract Reset

In the new world, seeing the target no one else can see matters more than following the rules of a broken path.

Because it’s judgment and taste. AI cannot replace taste.

Even before AI, it felt like society was resetting, just as it has repeatedly across history.

For non-conformist multipotentialites, it’s preparing ourselves and our kids for change.

It’s about adaptability.
It’s about innovation.

It’s about experimentation.

It’s about giving the next generation something the old social contract no longer can.

Hope.

This is an article for people who never fit in.

We were born into a world that’s not designed for our brains.

A neurotypical society built for specialists.

Specialists who have a nervous system that can work at giant corporations with endless meetings and soulless performance reviews.

If you can survive the rat race, you can survive anything, right?

The current social contract is set up for specialists who follow the rules.

We don’t.
We never have.

We tried to fit in.
We wore the masks.
We pleased the people.
We tried to pick one thing and focus on it.

But we can’t.

And we burnt out trying to be specialists.

Non-Conformists

We’re non-conformists.

We are iPhones in an Android phone world.
Not broken.
We’re running a different operating system.

This is our competitive advantage as AI sweeps through the traditional corporate job market.

We are entering a period of uncertainty, and it’s those of us with high adaptability, pattern recognition, and multiple talents who will thrive.

Society will transition from a specialist society back to a generalist society.

The Current Social Contract

The culture is changing.

The social contract of the modern specialist society was built on a traditional path designed to create an illusion of certainty.

Get good grades at school.
Get good grades at a college or university.
Get a graduate job in corporate.
Get promoted and work your way up the corporate ladder.
Retire.
And die.

(No pressure.)

This has been the social contract for over a hundred years.

The school system was built to provide obedient workers for the factories.

The system was built to produce workers.
Not thinkers.

That system is crumbling before our very eyes.

And how do we prepare our kids for a future that does not exist yet?

Disruption Creates Opportunities

Every major technological shift creates new opportunities for big thinkers.

Disruption creates new problems to solve.

This creates new opportunities for first-class problem solvers.

And non-conformists are excellent at spotting problems everyone else misses.

The printing press destabilised religious authority and enabled books to share new ways of thinking.

Books literally changed the way the world thinks.

The Industrial Revolution disrupted artisan trades.
People were forced to become specialists in factories.

Electricity revolutionised how we lived, worked, and socialised.

The internet destroyed entire industries, then quietly created hundreds more while we were arguing in comment sections.

The Non-Conformist Opportunities

People assume all the opportunities lie in AI.

Most of the opportunities lie in us solving human problems in the face of AI.

Artists.
Philosophers.

Creatives.
Meaning makers.
Spiritual guiders.

Most opportunities will come from the human need for meaning and purpose.
We need to creatively express ourselves.
Helping others navigate the new world.

How do we educate our kids?
How do we help secure kids’ future careers?
The human need for meaning and purpose.

These are the biggest problems to solve in an increasingly AI world.

Human problems.

Creative problems

Spiritual problems

Emotional problems

Why Non-Conformists Adapt Faster

Multipotentialites are non-conformists.
We have the tools to thrive.

We’ve never relied on old social contract in the first place.

We don’t understand the hierarchy.
We don’t blindly follow rules.
Those systems never made sense to us.
Try to fit in burnt us out.

So as these societal rules and structures crumble,
the impact on us is smaller.

We were never dependent on them.

Where others feel lost, we feel liberated.

We thrive in chaos.

And because we’re not attached to the old societal rules,
we’re free to create new ones, rules that actually work for our brains.

Non-Conformist Renaissance

We don’t win during stability.
We win during transitions.

Transitions reward the ability to:
learn fast
connect ideas
be adaptable
experiment without certainty

Change is scary. But it’s happening.

We do not fit in with the rules of the current society.
Our non-conformity means we can recreate rules that do work for our brains.

Breaking the rules is our natural habitat.

Financial Opportunities

There will be more opportunities in the next few years than at any other time in history; this is guaranteed.

Because there will be more disruption than at any other time in history, at a faster pace than ever before.

Most of us missed the opportunities the internet created. I regret not taking action on a few ideas that have provided generational financial security and have an impact.

We can’t miss the opportunities AI will create.

But to do that, we need to prepare ourselves emotionally, creatively, and spiritually.

We’ll talk about how to do that in the coming weeks.

Hope this helps ✌️

Hello everybody,

I’ve started a cult.
A cult of one.
It’s my tongue-in-cheek coping mechanism.

There are no robes or chants.
I did briefly consider a welcome pack, but that felt like admin.

The world is feeling pretty fucking weird, huh?

There’s a super strange energy in the air.
Everything feels unhinged.

The levels of propaganda are off the charts.
And this is only the beginning.

So I’m creating my own life philosophy
and opting out of mainstream thinking.

I’m leaning into absurdism.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

— Albert Camus

This sounds heroic.

In reality, it mostly means disappointing people.

This is not a manifesto.

It’s a messy collection of thoughts,
with contradictions,
and a bulging Notes app
that would be enough to guarantee an ADHD diagnosis alone.

I’m rebelling against societal norms
and conventional wisdom that make no sense to me.

But without the witty placards.

I’m leaning further into nonconformity
because I need a framework built on my values and beliefs,
a way to decide what I let in, and how I respond
when reality is being warped with propaganda.

Most societal norms are outdated

The fabric of society consists of many illusions.

The illusion of control.
The illusion of certainty.
The illusion of security.
The illusion of freedom.
Our education system.
And the traditional path of
school → university → corporate work.

These ideas were passed down
as conventional wisdom.

They made sense once.

But many of them are outdated in an AI world.

What is considered good thinking today
will likely be obsolete in the next decade or two.

Like mullets, tight jeans, and soft perms in the eighties.
Or pretending the world is stable.

Our thinking and worldview
are shaped by social conditioning.

Social conditioning

Social conditioning is the process
of training individuals
to respond in ways approved by society
and peer groups.

It’s how ideas, beliefs, and expectations
are ingrained in our psyche.

In other words:

Conventional wisdom
Societal norms
Societal expectations

Passed down from generation to generation,
like heirlooms, except instead of a watch,
you inherit grandma’s trauma.

Unfortunately for us,
social conditioning is created by neurotypicals
for other neurotypicals.

Which is why we don’t live in harmony
with societal expectations.

It’s why we’ve always felt left out.
Or weird.
Or like we’ve missed an important memo.

How social conditioning works

The two most common mechanisms
of social conditioning are:

👉 Reward and punishment
👉 Relentless repetition of messaging

Obedience at school is rewarded.
Naughtiness is punished.

Handing your work in on time is rewarded.
Missing the deadline is punished.

Comforting, if you like rules.
Less so if your brain treats time
as a vague suggestion.

The second mechanism is repetition.

Simple slogans repeated endlessly.
Via authority figures and the media.

“Make America Great Again.”
“Get Brexit done.”

When we’re exposed to this messaging long enough,
our mind starts to believe the bullshit
as absolute truth.

Propoganda

They use propaganda in the same way:
Repeat lies long enough
and it stops sounding like control
and starts sounding like the truth.

This is how we’re conditioned
into group thinking.

Multipotentiality in the AI world

AI is disrupting the traditional path
(the education system and the job market,
a.k.a. the rat race).

Many of the current societal norms
and conventional wisdom
will no longer make sense.

They will be obsolete.

The illusions holding the fabric of society together
will be exposed.

And propaganda will scale with social media and fake AI videos to levels never experienced in humanity before.

It feels important to have
a philosophical anchor
to guide uncertain paths.

A mental model
to help make better decisions.

I’m obsessed with this idea
because my daughter is 11.

I think constantly about
what her future will look like
and how I can help her prepare for it.

At the same time, I’m thinking about
how multipotentialites
can leverage multi-talents
and multidimensional thinking
to thrive, create meaning,
and make money in this AI world.

I don’t have the answers.

But I do have curiosity
to explore options.

The most important thing to remember is this:

If we don’t consciously choose and protect our values and mental models,
they will be chosen for us at scale.

P.S I’m going to share how I’m building my own personal philosophy on here soon, in case it’s useful.

It guarantees creative success.

It’s this:

“Stay on the pitch long enough, and you will eventually score a goal.”
— Darcus Beese, O.B.E.

Darcus is the former President and CEO of Island Records UK.
A fellow multipotentialite and ADHD-er.

His first job was an unpaid tea boy at Island Records.
He eventually got his big break, discovering Amy Winehouse.

He’s now a multi-millionaire.

What Darcus meant was this:

Creative success is simple.
You keep experimenting with projects until you get lucky and achieve success.

I’m not a multi-millionaire.
But I did make a very healthy seven figures in the music industry.

I managed over 20 artists in 28 years.

Most projects failed.
A handful were one-hit wonders.
And two artists sold millions of records and became superstars.

🤐 The Secret Sauce Is….

There is no secret sauce.
It’s just a numbers game.

I had no idea which artists were destined for greatness
and which would end up in the bargain bin.

Creative success is simple because most people care more about not looking cringe
than fulfilling their creative and financial potential.

90% of creatively talented people never start.
9% start but quit when it gets tough.
And 1% keep being cringe until they eventually get lucky and succeed.

The real obstacle is the fear of being seen.
The fear of looking cringe.

It’s the Van Goghs.
The Franz Kafkas.
The Nikola Teslas.
The Emily Dickinsons of this world.

Creative geniuses who died penniless,
believing they were failures.

And yet their work continues to shape culture and society to this day.

They had the potential to live fulfilled,
financially successful lives with purpose and meaning.

But they were consumed by the fear of being seen.

So they kept their ideas to themselves.

How You Overcome the Fear of Being Seen

It’s simple (but not easy).

It’s exposure therapy.

Expose yourself to cringe repeatedly,
and the fear of cringe diminishes to insignificance.

The quickest and best way to do this
is the 30 videos in 30 days TikTok challenge
(and yes, you can block your friends and family — I do).

This was my biggest fear.

By repeatedly facing it,
I rebuilt self-trust, creative courage, and resilience.

The Simple Truth

Nobody fears being seen when they’re successful.

People only fear being seen failing.
They fear looking cringe…

That’s the creative ego mental block
that has destroyed hundreds of millions of creative
and financial dreams.

We all experience fear.

We either avoid it with junk food dopamine
(doomscrolling, substances, buying shit we don’t need).

Or we move toward it with healthy dopamine

(curiosity, creativity, purpose).

That’s the binary creative choice
that determines the course of our lives.

The Invitation

If you want to overcome your fear of being seen
so you can live a fulfilled, creative life
with purpose and financial security,

Join the 6-week live training cohort.

Reinvent your creative identity.
Get out of your own way.

Or get a full refund.

Doors close January 4th.

Join in the next 12 hours for $425
($10.12 per day).

👇

Get More Info Here

Today we’re going to talk about habits.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear showed us that identity shapes habits.

Positive identity
= good habits
= success

Negative identity
= bad habits
= failure

In Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about cues to build habits,
but not the triggers that instinctively create habits.

The triggers are uncertainty and indecision.

Uncertainty is the trigger, and this is the main cause of it for multipotentialites👇

When we feel uncertainty, we do one of two things.

We either avoid uncertainty by procrastinating with junk food dopamine.

Or we take action with healthy dopamine.

When faced with uncertainty and indecision, we either:

1) take action and follow our curioisty or …

2) we procrastinate and beat ourselves up for not being productive.

These are the only two possible outcomes

And become our identity. 👆

Our identity becomes action takers or procrastinators.

This identity determines our habits in every facet of our lives.

Relationships. Career. Purpose and Meaning. Money.

We Have The Autonomy

We’re not broken.

We’re not lazy

We’re just using the wrong system. To reinvent our creative identity, we change how we deal with uncertainty.

We take action. We follow our curiosity. We experiment with our ideas.

Not once. Not twice. But repeatedly.

This becomes our identity.

I know this to be 100% true, as this is how I reinvented my creative identity. And I’ve witnessed scores of others do the same over 33 years in my creative career.

And you can do the same. Guaranteed or you pay nothing.

What is the Cohort?

The Cohort is a 6-week live training.

The Cohort exists to ensure you replace junk dopamine with healthy dopamine so your creative identity naturally shifts from procrastination to action.

How it works

Week 1) We rebrand you using your multiple passions, without niching down

Week 2) We build a creative strategy

Week 3-6) We help you create and publish 30 videos in 30 days.

6 weeks. Live support. Group coaching, step-by-step guided frameworks, content templates, video scripts, etc.

After 6 weeks of the live cohort, you will have reinvented your creative identity and overcome the fear of being seen.

Or you pay $0.

If this resonates, and you’re ready to embrace your creative freedom, then you know what to do.

15% off ($75) until Midnight Jan 2nd EST.

Lets go...

Doors close Jan 4th

Our problem isn’t being multi-talented. It’s monetising our multiple talents.

This is how Marie Kondo turned de-cluttering into tens of millions of dollars.

What is the difference between a cleaner on minimum wage and Marie Kondo, the multi-millionaire?

A system.

A step-by-step methodology that solves her client’s problem.

Marie Kondo created her own decluttering philosophy (KonMari Method), sold millions of books and online courses, which led to her own Netflix series.

She sold minimalism and inner peace, not decluttering.

This is the framework she used.

She solved her own problem, systemised the solution, and then helped others solve the same problem.

This is my Niching up methodology. I teach this to one-on-one clients in weeks 1 and 2 of the January Cohort.

This is the framework I use.

It’s the framework James Clear used for Atomic Habits

Or Seth Godin created for Purple Cow

Or Eckhart Tolle used for The Power of Now

We solve a problem with creative thinking.

We turn it into a repeatable system or methodology and help others solve the problem with our solution.

We stack up multiple skills to create the methodology or philosophy.

And then build a brand around the system and methodology through social media, books, podcasts, and thought leadership

Why are methodologies so effective?

Because the consumer wants to solve their problem.

Using a proven method saves them time, money and months of overthinking and second-guessing.

A methodology provides certainty.

If you want your book, creative project, or ideas to actually land, if want to get more clients you need to publish thought-provoking content — not shout into the void.

If you’re burnt out yet worried about AI and your job, and want to replace your income.

If you want to monetise your multiple talents
without forcing yourself into a box that kills your creativity…

Then you can learn all this in 6 weeks using my providen methodology.

Cohort starts Jan 6th, doors close Jan 4th.

Overcome your fear of being seen in 6 weeks — or pay $0.

Reinvent Your Creative Identity

We are multi-talented.
A fire hose of ideas.

We can feel the potential bubbling within us.
But we lack the systems to fulfil that potential.

Without systems, we get stuck in decision paralysis.

We need a filter.
Constraints to channel our potential.

This is the system I use.
It’s also the system I teach.

It works for artists and creative entrepreneurs.
And it will work for you.

In this 2-minute and 23-second video, you will discover the power of this system, used by both artistic icons and renowned creative entrepreneurs. 👇

There are lots of systems out there.
Most are created by neurotypicals for other neurotypicals.

They don’t work for us.

I was speaking to a new client recently.
She has spent tens of thousands on neurotypical systems that did not work for her.

I see this all the time.

She thought she was the problem.
It’s not her.
It’s the neurotypical system, not designed for our multi-talented minds.

The Wounded Healer Creative Business System

The wounded healer is a guided system that creates purpose and meaning.

It helps the younger version of yourself overcome a problem you have already solved.

This means it’s authentic.
Which is one of your key motivators.

Your biggest goal is to help others and monetise your knowledge.
However, your biggest challenge is that without a purpose or emotional connection to your work, you tend to flip-flop from one idea to the next.

This system solves that problem.

Creative Personal Brands

Maya Angelou helped millions of women find their voice
by sharing her shame through memoirs and poetry.

Brené Brown helped millions understand shame by being vulnerable on Ted Talks and in her books.

Both of them used the Wounded Healer System to achieve this.

Creative Online Businesses

Patreon was founded in 2013.
Jack Conte was a musician and YouTuber
who had millions of views
but struggled to make a living from ads alone.
The platforms helped him build an audience,
but not a sustainable income.

So he founded Patreon to solve his own problem and helped others do the same

Etsy is an online flea market
for craft artisan designers.
It was founded in 2005 by Rob Kalin.
Rob was a carpenter
who couldn’t find an online marketplace for his artisan crafts,
So he built it himself.

Derek Sivers founded CD Baby to sell his own CDs. Then helped millions of musicians do the same.

They all scratched their own itch.

Then helped their younger selves do the same. This is the easiest way to build a purposeful business.

And they used the wounded healer system.

This is the system I am teaching you in the 6-week cohort.

Cohort doors close on Jan 4th and start on Jan 6th

Secure Your Space

I used to believe my fear of being perceived
was about how you saw me.

Then I realised
it was about how I saw myself.

I never actually knew what you thought of me.
I only knew what I feared you thought of me.

My inner critic was an asshole.
So I created an asshole version of you inside my head
and used it to stop me from doing cool stuff.

My fear of being seen
was rooted in my creative shame
of not being good enough.

I felt like a failure inside.
So I imagined that if I shared my ideas
you’d think I was a failure, too.

So I didn’t.
For decades.

The ideas that flowed through me got bored
and went to other creatives.

I got angry and envious watching others succeed

with ideas I’d had squandered away.

That reinforced my creative shame.

I was a shadow artist.

On the outside, it looked like I was building a business.

On the inside, I knew I was still hiding.

The fear of being seen
crushed my creativity
and massively limited my opportunities
and financial goals.

To overcome the fear of being seen,
I had to change
how I saw myself.

I had to reinvent my creative identity.

I stopped hiding.
Not because I wanted to.
I needed to.

My business was failing.
My partner has an autoimmune disease.
It was solely down to me
to bring home the family bacon.

So I swore to myself
that no matter what
I would overcome my lifelong fear of being seen.

I did a 30-video in 30 days TikTok challenge

It was hard.
I wanted to quit.

Every time I wanted to quit
I thought of my six-year-old daughter.

With every video, my fear diminished a little.
And my creative confidence increased.

A little

By day 15, I started to really enjoy it.

I was getting healthy dopamine
by facing my fear
and overcoming the challenge.

On day 31
I had my first viral video.

Six weeks later
I had my first five-figure month.

Every time I numbed myself with doomscrolling,
my fear of being seen grew.

Every time I faced my fear,
my creative confidence increased.

I still have shame and fears, of course.
But I process them
through my creativity.

Every TikTok video.
Every article you read.
Exists because I’m processing an emotion
or articulating thoughts and ideas.

This is the creative methodology you will learn
in my January cohort.

To process emotions through your creativity
and create engaging short video content.

A 6-week cohort.
30 videos in 30 days.
Weekly group coaching.
Daily support.

Complete this
And you will reinvent your creativity
and overcome your fear of being seen, or pay $0

If you want more clients and an audience that deeply connects with your authentic content, you can learn to create engaging short-form video content like this:

@jakecreativehackersYour creative ego is sabotaging your success #creative #multipotentialite #selfsabotage @Zach Sang Show

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Learn More Here

P.S. I was 50 when I reinvented my creative identity. I’ve had clients in their 70s do this and go viral.

P.P.S Happy Christmas, everyone!

Our creative identities are determined by our source of dopamine.
We are dopamine junkies.
Lab rats scurrying about the maze of life, looking for our next hit.
Why?
Because dopamine drives behaviour, and our behaviour becomes our creative identity.
So our source of dopamine becomes our identity.

Dopamine = Habits = Creative Identity

To change our habits we change our main source of dopamine

Imagine two buttons in your mind.

Both deliver a dopamine hit.
❌ A red button for doomscrolling junk food dopamine.
✅ A green button for creating healthy dopamine.

If you hit the red button more than the green button, you assume the identity of a doomscrolling consumer.
If you hit the green button more, you assume the identity of an authentic creator.

If most of our dopamine comes from doomscrolling, we become addicted to doomscrolling.
Our identities become doomscrollers.
We stop creating.
We become consumers.

The Doom Scroller Loop

1) We have lots of ideas.
2) We get stuck in decision paralysis.
3) Stress and anxiety kick in.
4) To numb the suffering, we doomscroll.
5) We feel shame and beat ourselves up for not being productive

6) Without authentic creative expression, we feel depressed.
To numb the suffering, we doomscroll

We train our brains to numb suffering with doomscrolling.
A vicious circle. Another paradox.
The doomscrolling loop means:

We waste our creative potential

We earn less money

We get fewer clients

We have fewer human connections

We get creatively depressed

You can choose your source of dopamine!

Healthy dopamine alternatives

When you experience stress and anxiety, be creative

👉 Building connections with our creativity.
👉 Solving problems.
👉 Helping others.
👉 Do this, and your creative identity is a creator.
👉 You create purpose, meaning, connection, and financial opportunities.

This sounds melodramatic…but it’s true

The whole trajectory of creative life and business
boils down to a simple decision.

When we feel stressed and anxious,
We numb ourselves with dopamine.

❌ If we get our dopamine from the red button, we remain:
Stuck.
Unfulfilled.
And earn less money.

✅ If we get our dopamine from the green button, we create:
More opportunities.
More money.
More purpose and meaning.

Life is simple, made complicated

✅ To lose weight, use more calories than you consume.

✅ To get out of debt, spend less than you earn.

✅ To get unstuck, take more action than doomscrolling.

✅ To live with more purpose and meaning, create content that helps others feel seen, than you consume.

If you repeat these philosophies, they will change your identity.

I’m excited to announce my new community cohort.

Reinvent Your Creative Identity. Overcome Your Fear of Being Seen in 6 Weeks— Guaranteed results or pay $0

This is for ambitious multipotentialites who are stuck overthinking, doomscrolling, and holding back ideas they know matter.

You will go from consumer to creator.

Starts January 6th.

In 6 weeks, you will:

• Build your mission to help your younger self

• Reframe ( niche up) your multiple skills into a focused, meaningful brand

• Replace doomscrolling with aligned creative action

• Do 30 videos in a 30-day TikTok challenge

• Overcome the fear of being seen through structured exposure therapy

• Learn how to create short video content that resonates

• Learn Creative Philosophies used by Bowie, Rick Rubin, etc

Overcome Your Fear of Being Seen

We do this with a 30 videos in 30 days challenge on TikTok.

This means hitting the green button to get healthy dopamine, so creating instead of doomscrolling becomes a habit.

Dopamine = Habits = Creative Identity

👉 You block everyone from your phone ( why make it more difficult)
👉 You take action daily.
👉 You build IRL momentum instead of being stuck in your head.

👉 You be intentional. Live in the moment. Create in flow.

👉 You learn to create short-form video content

👉 You get accountability. You get community support.

✅ Identity changes through changing your source of dopamine.

This is exactly how I overcame my lifelong fear of being seen!

If you complete the 30-day challenge and you do not overcome your fear of being seen, you get a full refund.

👉 Join now. 15% off for the next 48 hours.

Check It Out!

Promo code: CREATEDONTSCROLL

“Part of me suspects I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.” — John Lennon

John Lennon inspired generations with his music.

Started revolutions from his bed.

Yet he confessed to his split creative identity.
He existed on a spectrum between feeling like a genius and feeling like a loser.

Multipotentialites have two creative identities.

We think our ideas are genius or trash.
Often, we believe our ideas are genius at first, only to talk ourselves out of them.

“I think I’m amazing. I also think I suck. Both are true depending on the day.” — Tyler, The Creator

You may think that there’s something wrong with you.

There’s not.

It’s the way your multi-dimensional thinking brain works.

We are all-or-nothing thinkers.

Today, I feel melancholic.
Yesterday, I felt creatively inspired.

Tomorrow will be different again. These are all movies projected from my mind.

Being a highly sensitive multipotentialite is lonely at times
because we rarely feel understood.

This is part of the creative experience.
It’s our creative loneliness.

This is not loneliness in the traditional sense.
It’s the absence of creative connection.
The quiet ache of having an inner world
That few people can see.

“I’m always at war with myself! The part that believes deeply in my work and the part that thinks it is all meaningless.” — Nick Cave

If Grammy and Emmy Awards winners have split creative identities,
We can give ourselves some grace, right?

TLDR?

@jakecreativehackersThe dual creative identities of highly sensitive creatives #multipotentialite #creatives #neurodivergent #multipassionate

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Our Split Creative Identities

Carl Jung said the ego splits into opposites when we don’t integrate the self.
For creatives, this becomes our internal extremes:

The artist and the critic.
The innovator and the imposter.
The true self vs the masked self.

“Every novel I write, I’m convinced it’s the one that proves I have no talent.” — Zadie Smith

Our Paradoxical Creative Personalities

These paradoxes explain why:

We fear being seen.
Yet fear NOT being seen.

Why we crave freedom
but need structure.

We yearn to stand out
yet want to fit in.

We crave novelty
but need routine.

We chase freedom
but burn out without direction.

We start with enthusiasm,
then think the work is trash.

“I feel like a complete fraud. Then I think I’m a fucking genius. It oscillates hourly.” — Phoebe Waller-Bridge

The key is to keep working.
It‘s just a temporary emotion that shall pass.

Lean into the melancholy;
It’s a rich source of our true creative selves.

Most people believe identity creates our behaviour.
We don’t have a single identity.

Our behaviour decides
which one of our creative identities we embrace.

The creative fraud? Or the creative genius?

The creative experience is confusing.

If you feel this,
then know you’re not alone.

By taking creative action,
you will return to your inspired creative genius identity.

Have a great day.

✅ If you’re spinning your wheels, get unstuck and get a clear path forward 👇

Get Unstuck Now

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” — Søren Kierkegaard

Everyone wants freedom.
But freedom is often drowning in a sea of possibilities.

When we’re multi-talented, we can be anything we want.
Which means we often end up being nothing.

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” — Simone de Beauvoir

Freedom isn’t the absence of constraints.
Freedom is your choice in how you respond to them.

Too much structure squeezes us into a tiny box.
Not enough structure, and we drown in endless possibilities.

We need a creative container with enough structure to hold us
and enough freedom for our creative spirit to breathe.

Build a Creative Container

Before Bruce Lee became a Hollywood icon, he was:
a cha-cha dancing champion (yes, really!)
a philosophy student
a dishwasher in Seattle
a Chinese philosophy teacher
a Wing Chun practitioner
a street fighter
a boxing fanatic
a fencing student
a film choreographer.

A multi-dimensional thinker rooted in Taoism,
He practised Wu Wei, “effortless action.”

Wing Chun eventually felt too rigid as a martial art.

“All fixed patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.” — Bruce Lee

So he built his own martial arts and life philosophy.
He niched up…
Wing Chun,
boxing
fencing
dance
street fighting
strength training
and Taoist philosophy

into a formless, adaptive martial art:
Jeet Kune Do — “a style with no style.”

To stand out, we need to create our own methodology.
A way to synthesise many of our skills and passions
to create something new.

Like Michelin star chefs, we combine multiple ingredients
to create our own signature dish.
A dish so tasty it creates word of mouth.

This is what Bruce Lee did.

The One Inch Punch

His 1964 Long Beach demonstration changed everything.
Bruce Lee demonstrated his one-inch punch.
A punch to the chest so powerful it forced grown men across the room.

It worked.
Everyone was talking about him and his unique martial arts style.

Hollywood movie stars Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hired Bruce to train them in his martial arts style and philosophy.

This is where he began making industry contacts.
Then he got hired as Cato in The Green Hornet.
Then the film producers got interested in him.

Bruce Lee became a writer, producer, director,
and the star of many of his biggest movies.

He created his own operating system.

This is how multi-talented misfits fulfil their potential.
Not by niching down.
By niching up, stacking multiple things into a methodology and philosophy that allows them to stand out.

The Dizziness of Infinite Possibility

Kierkegaard said existential angst comes from too much freedom.
Angst is the anxiety of unlimited choices.

When you can become anyone, you’re scared you’ll choose the wrong version of yourself and waste your time.
When every path is possible, no path feels right.

It’s a structure problem.

A creative container isn’t a cage
It’s a philosophy built from your talents, passions, and worldview.

This allows your multiple passions to breathe and co-exist in a single direction.
It becomes your north star

A Structure of Freedom

We don’t thrive in rigid lanes.
We thrive in structured freedom.
A system without a system.
A niche without a niche.
An identity spacious enough for all our passions.

Jeet Kune Do wasn’t a discipline.
Bruce Lee called it “a style without a style.”
It was a container for everything Bruce Lee loved.
Freedom inside structure.

We’re not stuck because we lack discipline.
We’re paralysed because we lack a container big enough to hold our multidimensional thinking.

Misfits don’t need rules.
We need a personal operating system, a guiding philosophy.

Leap of Faith

You can’t solve existential angst with logic.
You have to leap.
You have to move.

You cannot think your way out of overthinking.
Overthinking is an addiction, a Fugazi.

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Søren Kierkegaard

✅ Black Friday Sale: 30-50% off 1:1 strategy sessions and online course 👇

Get Unstuck Now