Gapingvoid newsletters
Miami-based culture consultancy Gapingvoid‘s newsletter is read by over 60,000 of the best and brightest. (Even if you haven’t heard of the company, Hugh McLeod’s sketches have been a fixture of the web for decades.) I’ve written a couple of guest spots – it’s a fascinating company that combines words and images to change people’s behaviour at work for the better.
A copywriter’s secret
INTRO: Twelve brief books for a material design team. Data wrangling for a datacentre. Articles for a mobile tech giant. Last quarter’s trip to Google NYC. This quarter’s trip to Google NYC. Squeezing in some Siamese SCUBA between Duolingo’ing two languages and getting out a new edition of a textbook on freelancing.
I’m not London’s best copywriter. But I’m arguably the busiest.
So Gapingvoid asked, “How?”
Because I’m pushing 50. Not many working copywriters with that shirt number. And I’m based in London, advertising centre that sucks dry and spits out creatives like cardamon seeds, competing with awards-laden superstars and the $5-a-day global south on AssWork and Loserr. Yet the calendar stays stacked.
So what’s the secret?
Here it is – the success plan for a sustainable freelance career, the searing insight behind all economic activity that’ll bring you health, wealth, and happiness:
People buy stuff they like, from people they like. (. . . continue reading)
The go-to guy vs. the here-already guy
INTRO: First lesson in Economics 101: everything is scarce.
But is it, really?
Because the global economy, today, is less about guns and butter than about ideas and conversations.
There’s no scarcity of YouTube videos. Or TV shows. Or Amazon pages. Or Google searches, Facebook pages, IndieGogo projects, and Zoom rooms.
In fact, most value creation today removes scarce stuff from the equation. Cars use less steel; computers use less silicon; planes use less kerosene. (Especially right now.)
What defines today’s economy is not scarcity, but plenty. And not mere abundance, but superabundance. The global economy is fractal: the deeper you look, the more there is.
Over 150 companies contribute to each iPad. There are 3,000 patents in every laptop. 500,000 suppliers to Google. And all these companies have yet more companies helping them, doing the stuff they’re less good at.
Yes, Riccardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage is a Mandelbrot Set. Which is great. Because superabundance is opportunity.
In a superabundant economy, there are countless niches to make money in, with more emerging all the time.
In fact, engaging with hundreds of freelancers through my (niche) product 100 Days, 100 Grand, what stands out is that the people making the most money are in the narrowest niches. Gaps in the market opened up by the superabundance surrounding them. (. . . continue reading)
Chris does Content 