Last Saturday, a couple of hours before my 140th Nairobi sunrise, I was sitting on my Airbnb’s bathroom floor. Fluorescent light bathed me in regret. My head lay on my left fist. My left elbow wobbled on my knee. And some kind of liquid seeped through my eyes. I thought, “Where is this liquid coming from? Perhaps my soul is a borehole but my well is empty tonight.” I shoved my mouth up and over the toilet bowl to the right of my eyebrows and whatever was left inside of me announced itself. Such attention seeking.

This was the tenth time I had vomited in seven hours. I had drunk 60 ml of a local liquor that I had ordered via Uber Eats from a respectable supermarket. I thought I had learned my lessons about drinking in bars and clubs in a country in which they say 65% of the alcohol is counterfeit. Often, the alcohol is ethanol mixed with flavor. And some alcohol is just not good. But Kenyan liquor has a mind of its own and it was still making up its mind about me.

Later, I posted a video to Instagram and TikTok about alcohol poisoning. The video went mini-viral with 500,000 views. Nairobi’s gossip pages picked it up with tens of thousands of Likes in a matter of days. Big Twitter accounts took the content and reshared it. Then Classic 105 FM ran a segment on it.

However, my video appeared in a week with news that the UK had added Kenya to a watchlist of countries with dangerous alcohol and Rwanda had banned several Kenyan brands. Rwanda even arrested the head of its FDA for approving permits that his department shouldn’t have and it shared videos of government officials pouring out thousands of bottles of alcohol from many countries into a ditch.

(Source: Nairobi Gossip Club)

The comment sections starred instructions about foundations or “matandiko”. Foundations prepare stomachs for Kenyan alcohol. Kenyans take foundations as seriously as Australians take coffee multiplied by beaches multiplied by sunscreen.

The comment sections also featured the following:

• Lectures about not drinking,

• Tens of stories from people with similar stories,

• Teasing about not being strong enough for Kenya,

• Questions about which brand I drank and where,

• Accusations that I didn’t bless the ancestors before I opened the bottle,

• Tips about which Kenyan alcohol brands to avoid and which to trust,

• Calls to fix this liquor situation, and

• Mixed feelings that a foreigner is getting attention for this issue.

Unlike some of my other posts, the comment section did not feature many people calling me a white colonizer or white savior who should leave Kenya if he doesn’t find Kenya flawless. For some locals, these are my only two options as a mzungu.

And I love it.

I Started To See How Ideas Travel In This Era

I had lived through this pattern before:

1. A foreigner makes an observation from a place of pain, sometimes using local slang,

2. TikTok and Instagram find an audience for the pain,

3. The audience shares empathy for the foreigner and a little hatred toward him,

4. Other accounts on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter take the content and share it,

5. The news covers it on television, radio, or in articles, and

6. People reach out for interviews.

In Mexico, I posted a ten-second video about using ChatGPT to see if I needed a visa for Chile. People took my content and pushed it in front of over 20 million people, and the story ended up on French television news.

In Nigeria, I asked if the country is set up to shake down people for money at every opportunity. I was interviewed on their main breakfast news television show.

In Indonesia, I asked why there is so much paperwork to do business there. It’s reached over a million people.

In New York, I said that Australians struggle in Corporate America because we’re too direct. In Washington DC, I suggested that Amtrak, the regional train system, seems ripe for corruption.

And, earlier in the year in Nairobi, a friend coached me to review a local liquor called Kenya Cane. We made content that reached millions of people. Kenya Cane gave me a sweater and I now wear it at many of my talks around the world as a way to show my love for the country. Some of the language my friend taught me to use is now associated with the brand.

After twenty years of writing about how to do strategy, I was using my strategy brain to talk about the world. And I was reborn.

How Kenya Has Changed My Approach To Content

I have written millions of words about strategy. My book “Strategy Is Your Words” alone contains 80,000 words. For a decade, I could reach hundreds of thousands of people every month on each platform I used - Twitter, LinkedIn, my blog, and, later, Instagram. Even the Sweathead podcast reached tens of thousands of people each.

However, as the platforms shifted their algorithms and AI crap flooded the feeds, my watering holes dried up. Twitter died. LinkedIn went kaput. Podcasting became flooded with celebrities and international media companies through COVID in 2020. My initial audience of people in advertising and marketing seemed less inclined to Like or share my content or click on links in my newsletter yet thousands of people would Save my content or bookmark it. My own audience started to disincentivize me from writing about strategy.

And there stood TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube staring at me, wondering why I hadn’t just shifted to video like everybody else?

I tried to make videos about strategy. This one discussing the signs that someone might be a strategist reached hundreds of thousands of people.

However, I struggled with these things:

• Seeing my face on video,

• Technical frustrations such as sound not working,

• Workflow annoyances such as moving files around,

• Settling on a repeatable format,

• Feeling burnt out,

• Not having a peaceful place to work,

• Feeling increasingly disconnected from advertising, and

• Being unhappy in life.

I saw friends succeed with simple videos of them walking around while talking, something I had done with my audio-only podcast. I saw the emergence of the greenscreen marketing crew. I saw new creators appear with a simple talk-to-the-screen approach. But I just couldn’t trick myself into doing any of this.

Over time, my subconscious would let me loose for a few minutes and I’d quickly film myself doing or saying something. Every now and then, these brain farts would run the gauntlet I outlined above and possibly lead to me being recognized in public in foreign countries.

Slowly, I realized I didn’t need to be Anthony Bourdain or Mr Beast. So I made a deal with myself: if you have an idea about where you travel, record it as quickly as possible, post it, then move on. This led to the first shift in my approach to social media - being okay with lazy content. If I can get interviewed on the news after filming a sixty-second video on a bed in a Kuala Lumpur hotel once, then surely that is proof of concept.

The second shift came from me watching how friends used each of the platforms in different countries. I was more used to well-produced content on YouTube and Netflix. I was more familiar with the production standards of world-class advertising agencies. However, I saw friends interacting with and sharing lo-fi content.

The four categories of content I now think most about are as follows:

1. Hot-takes - Sharp opinions or questions with sharp ideas.

2. Gossip - In my Professional Strategy Mind, I thought gossip was vulgar but then I tested it with stories about being followed around clubs by men and dealing with HR, and I started to play with a different approach to stories.

3. Explainers and reviews - The Kenyan internet thrives on this content and I could probably just focus on this every day.

4. Comedy - In recent weeks, I haven’t been funny enough. But I did make a post about the construction in Kilimani, in which local creator Etemesi is throwing dust all over me to make a point about how much dust there is.

What I’ve learned about my own content:

• Indoor content performs better than outside content. Notably, Vidmod published research results a while ago suggesting that inside video content performs better for brands on TikTok.

• Lying on a bed or couch often does better than anything else. System1 has published a lot of research about the power of intimacy.

• Creator collaborations tend not to work that well. For years, I binged on a lot of travel YouTube and, sometimes, the person I’d tuned in to watch would have another creator or guest with them and, in a funny way, it felt like they were cheating on me.

• Lo-fi and lazy does best. I watch the greenscreen creators and often think I should improve my game. I mean I’ve made tens of hours of well-edited online strategy classes, but I just want to flow without thinking too much right now.

While Mexico, Nigeria, the USA, and Indonesia showed me signs, Kenya is where all of this thinking is taking root.

Here are some numbers from the past four weeks with around half of these numbers attributable to Kenya:

• Total reach: I reached 6.1M+ people across Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

• Facebook: 2.7M views, 730K viewers, 9K new followers (my public page)

• TikTok: 1.8M views, +5,300 followers, reaching 27K total (@markpollardyeah)

• TikTok Live: Top 5%, 55K views, with 100-200 peak concurrent viewers

• Instagram: 1.64M views, 539K viewers, +2,087 followers (@markpollard)

• Threads: 28.6K views, with one recent post reaching 12.8K (@markpollard)

• YouTube, LinkedIn, Podcast: I haven’t focused on these this month.

• I reached 100,000 followers on Instagram.

What’s more…

• I filmed multiple television shows for KTN (episode 1 is here),

• I’ve done many podcast interviews and a few creator collaborations,

• I’ve had people yell at me from buses,

• I’ve had people quote me as they walk past me,

• Even at an event at the Australian embassy, many people said, “I keep seeing you all over my FYP.” They usually pause here because they aren’t sure whether they like me or not, but we usually part as friends. That’s what I tell myself.

And Kenya is the elixir.

“Yeah But You Can’t Live Off Likes”

When I make people cranky, one accusation is this: You’re just here to ragebait us, get Likes, and chase clout. Often, the language and tone I used in the video that attracts this comment is not even close to ragebaiting but commenters like to think they have you psychologically understood and that revealing this to you will shut you down.

Back in 2008 as the world’s banks fell over and the offices of my clients emptied out, I decided to write about advertising. I didn’t want to enter rooms without some of the room’s people knowing how I thought. I believed this would give my family options in life and make me less vulnerable. I didn’t want to be “that guy” but I found my way into the topic, made many friends, and the world opened up to me.

When I went to New York for job interviews in 2011, I was one of a handful of people at the time who had deep experience in digital projects, decent experience as an advertising strategist, and who did the things I advised on. I’d spent a decade tinkering with user experience, content, email and SMS campaigns, search engine optimization, and running an online hip hop community. Writing about how I approached strategy on my personal blog meant that I was able to score fifteen-plus interviews in NYC in a two-week period.

Initially, the business model for my content was Job.

In 2016, I left corporate America. I’d spent five years working without enough focus on my own content or my plans for life after Corporate America. Then, two years later, I launched the Sweathead Facebook group and podcast, and, in 2020, I moved my teaching online. The business model for my content shifted from Job to consulting, speaking, teaching, book sales, then memberships and events.

Earlier, I shared a pattern that my content has flexed through many times now:

1. A foreigner makes an observation from a place of pain, sometimes using local slang,

2. TikTok and Instagram find an audience for the pain,

3. The audience shares empathy for the foreigner and a little hatred toward him,

4. Other accounts on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter take the content and share it,

5. The news covers it on television, radio, or in articles, and

6. People reach out for interviews.

But there’s a seventh step missing: Make money.

All the online experts will tell you to focus on content that helps you sell. While there’s a lot of research about how fame helps brands, if you’re a good citizen of capitalism, fame exists only for selling. And, right now, I’m not selling anything to do with cultural observations. I’m naughty.

This phase of content for me is about two things:

1. Managing my own psychology - I have always written and expressed myself and I need to put my brain somewhere,

2. Life discovery - I’m rebuilding my life and how the world reacts to me is a signal. In Kenya, I am meeting so many other content creators and business minds, and in a way that I had hoped to do in Colombia this time last year as I mentally prepared to move there.

In other words, I wasn’t doing all of this for Likes, I was doing it for Life.

So, yes, perhaps I’ve accidentally become a Kenyan influencer.

I don’t like the word because I associate the word “influencer” with shallowness and living off vanity, whereas I try to believe I live off ideas. And, after twenty years of trying to turn ideas into work, I’m enjoying letting ideas turn into life instead.

Kenya has given me something I had been missing: things to notice, things to laugh about, things to argue with, and people who argue back.

Millions of them.

And sometimes the lesson arrives while I’m sitting on a bathroom floor at 4am, wondering why 60 ml of liquor is at war with me.

Perhaps that’s what matandiko is really for.

Not just foundations for drinking.

Foundations for whatever happens next.

A Few Things Before I Go

I’m running a brand workshop in Nairobi on August 19. Come fix your brand with me.

I’m also open to meeting a talent manager or business development person who can help turn some of this attention into bigger opportunities. Reply if this sounds like you, or if you know someone.

And join my Premier League Fantasy League: Best League Ever.

-
Make the most of your mind,

**

Also read on Substack: How To Explain An Idea: A Mega Post

Strategy Is Your Words

You can find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here. We ship worldwide.
You can also find it on Kindle.

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

Ideas are your oxygen

If you studied accounting, you’d leave your first week knowing what the concepts “debit” and “credit” are. And, if you entered the career of accounting, you could only do so with intimate knowledge of these two concepts.

People can enter advertising careers without ever knowing what an idea is. Or how to define what the word “idea” means. Or how to have ideas. Or how to explain an idea once they have one in hand. Some people can sustain long careers through their personalities alone. And by playing a game of, “Well, if we all don’t know then who’s to know?”

If you do creative work or have a creative soul, then ideas are your oxygen. This article wants you to breathe. In it, I cover:

• The differences between ideas and thoughts

• The types of ideas we encounter in advertising

• How strategy and ideas work together and how they’re different

• Simple techniques to help you explain an idea

This article pares with How to do account planning - a simple approach and How to make a presentation make a point. If you do creative work, these two articles will catch you up to speed with concepts that took years for many of us to comprehend.

Learn strategy with me on June 24 in a 3-hour strategy class online. Find out more here.

What’s an idea?

Words often get in the way of creativity so it’s no surprise that the word “idea” often gets in the way of ideas.

1. We use the word “idea” to describe thoughts and suggestions. “I know this is heteronormative of me but I have an idea: let’s eat kimchi soondubu at Food Gallery 32 in Koreatown for lunch.”

2. We use the word “idea” to describe new concepts. “I have an idea  —  it’s a business where we turn memes into bath products  -  Dank Tank.”

3. We use the word “idea” when someone says something stupid. “You have no idea.” That’s a mean use of the word. Don’t be mean. The world doesn’t need it.

If we focus on the first two examples, the word “idea” telegraphs that something new is coming. And if you can pause on your Internet memes about whether anything is ever new (I’ll raise you post-modernism and ask if anything is ever real), what we now want to do is distinguish between the way we use “idea” as industry jargon and the way we use “idea” where we’re in casual mode.

Ideas are thoughts but not all thoughts are “ideas.” Here’s an example of the use of the word “idea” in an agency setting: “I have an idea — let’s do something with augmented reality or Blockchain or make a special lens.” This isn’t wrong; it’s sloppy.

In the traditional industry sense, “idea” means a novel concept. But when it’s used as in this example, it masks the lack of an actual idea  —  like when someone dumps in the word “strategic” before they say something that’s not strategic. It ups the importance of what comes next. The problem: sometimes this works as a meeting tactic but does not lead to good or clear thinking.

Compare this thought with the use of the word “idea” as a novel concept: “I have an idea  —  I want to create a tool that runners can use to track how far they’ve run and then compete with each other by sharing their achievements via the Internet. They’ll track it via this technology in their shoe which will talk to their computer.”

Ideas and thoughts feel different When I’m training people in lateral thinking, I point out how adding mischief feels different in the brain. But see how the two “I have an idea” statements above feel different? One is a yawn, the other a kick in the pants.

Yes, it’s complicated because humans complicate things. And what complicates all of this is that, as far as “ideas as novel concepts” go, in agency world, there are:

• Business ideas

• Advertising ideas

• Brand ideas

• Campaign ideas

• Content ideas

• New product ideas

And strategies (which are also ideas  —  even though the monopoly on the use of the word “idea” in an agency belongs to the creative department).

Oh, and concepts. “Concept” suggests a higher-level of thinking. To call something “high concept” means it’s asking a big philosophical or existential question. For example, what would life feel like if we started old and got younger every day? People use the word “concept” in agencies in as slippery a way as they use the word “idea” so it’s important to discuss the words you hear.

It’s can seem fussy but it’s useful to create a glossary if you’re working with a team for any period of time. The point isn’t to be a fascist about words. The point is to reduce confusion and help people work better.

Why do you need the ability to explain an idea?

Here’s a secret: many people in our industry aren’t idea-literate.

You could work with a creative team that focuses on taglines, hashtags, and manifestos. You might need to play the mind game of helping them articulate their idea without them knowing. You could work with other agencies who throw the word around like confetti only to catch yourself a few weeks into a project wondering, “What are we even talking about?” When you know how to explain your ideas, your working life will improve.

And it’s important to pry apart the executional stuff, the tactics from the idea for five reasons:

1. Longevity

If someone can’t explain their idea then they may be using verbal and visual tricks to get through an executional approach (eg a certain art style or piece of technology). This can reduce the longevity of a campaign/project because an execution may not carry interest for long.

2. Support and defensibility

To defend great work that’s based in strategy, there needs to be a clear line from the challenge through to the insight, strategy, and to the creative. A well-explained idea can help the team promote the work to the client. It also helps manage the conversation with the client so that executional concerns do not undermine the idea or the strategy. I have seen occasions where executional issues have led to a strategy change because neither the idea nor strategy were well explained.

3. It’s more efficient  —  money money money

If you can’t put stakes in the ground from problem to insight to strategy to idea and something executional gets rejected then DOMINOES! Re-work. More time, more money, more frustration. It will cost you.

4. Brain tether

If the thinking is executional (“I want to do 3D typography”) then it becomes harder to ensure every chapter across every channel builds on it without it all being matching luggage.

5. Laziness is contagious

It isn’t hard to define an idea — if you have one. When projects don’t start with clear, concrete strategy and ideas, they will slop from one meeting to the next.

Where strategy is distinct from the idea

With my former Creative Director, Vince McSweeney who’s now CCO at McCann Birmingham, we came to an agreement that strategy should be about finding insights and then flipping them so that the key output of the strategy is an idea that will get someone to see themselves, the world around them, the product, or the brand differently. It was then the creative job to take this flip and bring it to life in an impactful way. You can read How to do account planning for more on this.

First, the context of this agreement was advertising but it relates to non-advertising work. Second, you know what’s most important about that agreement? That we discussed each other’s point of view, what we wanted to accomplish, and that we agreed. Most agencies  —  especially with a younger workforce  —  avoid this discussion. People don’t want noses out of whack. Creative teams can find a planner who brings a “flip” to them intimidating because they wonder what their role is but their role is to flip it even further. What a great role.

An old example  —  Australia’s largest telco and the Great Wall of China

You may have seen the old Telstra Bigpond campaign where the father says Emperor Nasi Goreng built the Great Wall of China to keep the rabbits out. If you have, you realize this is from a bygone era. But what is the idea?

This commercial works in three ways. It appeals to parents’ fears of the future leaving behind their children. It makes light of parents’ own lack of knowledge and shows a parent who is left behind. As with much comedy, this gives the viewer a sense of superiority but most viewers will see themselves in this situation and feel sympathy. Finally, the commercial tries to shift the broadband discussion in the home from technology and to education and adult success. It suggests that broadband will prevent adult failure.

The commercial is a simple vignette. The “big idea” is in the strategy, whether or not a planner touched it.

Some agencies keep the planner in the obvious. Words like “easy”, “performance”, “authenticity” or “confidence” are common in some briefs. This is not planning. It happens because that’s what planning is supposed to do in the agency or because creatives feel insecure about having part of the problem solved for them. “That’s my job,” a senior copywriter once said to me.

So, the strategic process tries to understand the issues, the environment, the competition, the customers, and the insights. Then it creates an idea about how to shift perspectives. The creative process either solves the problem with a non-advertising solution first or it dramatizes the insight and perspective shift.

And… TALK TO EACH OTHER. Define these words and how you work together. Same team, yeah?

What types of ideas are there?

These are the common types of ideas bouncing around a creative agency:

• Business idea - what the company does that’s novel

• Brand idea - what the company stands for that’s novel

• Brand tagline - a short phrase that brings to life what the company stands for

• Advertising idea - the central thought in every communication and interaction across all campaigns

• Campaign idea - if the advertising idea and campaign idea are separate then the campaign idea is a subset and shorter-term execution of the advertising idea

• Content idea - jargon for stuff that isn’t an ad

• Non-advertising idea - a concept that solves a problem and isn’t advertising-centric  yet  it may get advertised

• Execution - the key bits of the execution that matter (style, channels, etc)

This list… it’s too much. It scratches the surface and the surface isn’t wearing protection. Without a clear and agreed definition of what we’re talking about and without knowing how to explain any of it when you have, it’s hard to work, and you can find yourself in meetings having conversations that go nowhere. Mind you, this is an excellent business model so what do I know?

Examples - applying idea types to real-world companies

Let’s take WWF and their Earth Hour campaign. Now, this is my take on things.

• Business idea - protect the environment from humans

• Brand idea - keep the planet alive

• Brand tagline - “For a living planet”

• Advertising idea - I’m not sure there is a macro advertising idea for WWF (the panda isn’t one)

• Non-advertising idea - Earth Hour — get the world to turn its lights off for an hour

• Campaign idea - Vote Earth — a populist vote about the importance of climate change measured by the numbers of lights switched off (2010)

• Execution - Shepard Fairey street posters as a rallying call

Old Spice -  again, my interpretation:

• Business idea - make men smell classically masculine (not stinky)

• Brand idea - the authentic essence of man (I can’t remember the actual phrase but I read it was something like that)

• Brand tagline - The man your man could smell like

• Advertising idea - Old Spice guy — the man you wish you were. This would be their advertising idea if it’s repeated across different campaigns.

• Non-advertising idea - N/A

• Campaign idea - The set-change

• Execution - The Old Spice guy walks through sets pulling off incredible feats of manliness, telling you about them as he goes.

If Old Spice’s business idea is to make men smell classically masculine (I made it up), then this idea gives them the opportunity to stretch into other areas. It anchors them in a core idea but allows them to explore further adrift.

First principles of how to explain an idea

1. The idea and how it works are separate; keep it that way

“And then this happens, and you click this and a bird appears on your screen… an otter taps at your window. Yes, a real otter… on your window at home. We’ll breed them for it.” Yes, you’ve lost them -   the audience, not the otters -  by now if you started here. Keep apart the idea, how you’ll make the idea, and how people will interact with the idea.

2. Labels stick; use them

Instead of labeling your idea “Idea 1” or “Direction 1”, give it a creative title. This suggestion might meet with resistance but guess what happens if you don’t label your idea? Your client does. And then the brilliant idea becomes known as the “gorilla idea” Earth Hour  - that’s a good name.

3. Use a logline

In 25 words or less, how would you explain the non-executional bits of your idea? Hollywood uses loglines. Earth Hour  -  “We’re going to get the world to turn off their lights for an hour.” The best way to get good at this is to pick things you’re familiar with and explain them in a sentence. Try movies or apps, try to explain a singer, or a company you love.

4. Show, pause, repeat your way through

Do not over-speak. Do not rush. Speak less than you think you need to. Take. Your. Time. Repeat a keyword through the presentation. They say 7 times makes it stick. Show your idea. Show people implying, anticipating, or explaining the idea. Get out of the way of your idea. It’s not about you. You think it is. It never is.

5. Let other people finish your sentences

A pause allows people to grasp the idea and process it through their own mental frameworks. You know you’re onto something when someone you’re presenting to says… “And then you could…” That’s what you want. Let them keep talking. Pauses make it happen. Counselors do it all the time…

6. Set it up

If you want your idea to happen, think about when, where, and for how long you do it. Smells? Sounds? Senses? Start dark? Start bright? In a home? In a shop?

7. Don’t let someone change your presentation moments before you present

Unless it’s bad or wrong. This will throw you. If you did this to me when I was young, guess what? I still remember.

8. Care and be confident

Both are contagious. Avoid condescension and too much ego. Increasingly, we need to educate people on how to buy our ideas and to help them feel safe while doing so. Some bravado is sexy but keep your feet on the ground.

9. Signposts help you get there and get remembered

When you present, remember that your audience has not lived with your thinking. Signposts help you focus and they help the audience process your words. They provide direction and respite.

You can tell the audience:

• What you’re going to tell them,

• How you’re going to tell them, and then

• Tell them what you told them.

Like this: “Today I’m going to show you how we can get 15-year olds to love retirement homes. We need to A, B and C. And here’s how…” And then at the end, repeat these words but using the past tense.

You can use signposts to end a section of the presentation. “Here’s what I said I was going to tell you, here’s why it’s important, here’s what to do about it.”

You can also use article-writing techniques in a presentation. You can use numbers: “3 things you need to know about X.” Numbers tell the brain, “You need to focus on these points now.” They also give importance to the information because they imply you’ve sifted through a lot of thinking to get there. You can use lists - if you dislike lists, relax: everything is list-able. You can use snappy Internet headlines. Whatever works.

10. Make it stick

Play with counter-intuitive headlines as well as “How to” and “Why” setups. Counter-intuitive headlines make people curious. They open a hole through which your ideas can burst. The “How to” and “Why” approaches cut to the chase by saying, “I have the answers for you; you’re in safe hands.”

The format of your presentation is also something that deserves thoughts. Think about your audience, what they will be comfortable with, and how far you can push them. Powerpoint is one default format but it doesn’t have to be. A combination of screen and analog entices people to shift their attention and it stimulates their senses (see, hear, touch).

If you use Powerpoint or Keynote, keep in mind that it’s not supposed to be a Word document with images. You are the presentation. Everything else supports you.

11. Rehearse

Rehearse your spiel. Write it, sharpen it, present it to yourself as you’re walking to work. It needs to feel automatic so that when you’re confronted with the anxiety of sharing it with a room of people, it flows.

12. Apply the Blink test

I can’t recall a client buying an over-explained idea. People either get it and want it or or they aren’t and they don’t. Within seconds. Make a fast impact.

13. Plan it analog

Don’t start planning a presentation in front of a computer. It’s a trap. Focus on your story dynamics, not your fade-ins and fade-outs. Grab a pencil and some paper and think about how to explain it before you design it.

i. Map your audience and what you know about them. ii. Write the one thing you want them to understand. iii. Write what you’re asking them to do. iv. Then outline. Write the 1, 3, or 5 key points that are essential to your argument . Then write 1-3 supporting points for those arguments. v. Cull. Draw a line through anything that’s not compelling. vi. Decide which points need drama. vii. If you’re nervous, write it longhand. viii. If you write it longhand and after you’ve practiced a bit, take it back to the handful of points you want to make. ix. Try not to take notes or cards into the presentation . Cards will distract you and make you worry about what you’ve missed. People won’t know you’ve missed something unless you’re incoherent or reaching for cards. x. Decide whether your presentation starts when you’re in front of the audience  or before. And then what happens after you present.

Five ways to structure your idea explanation

Read How to make a presentation make a point for details about making presentations.

1. Go Hollywood on it

It’s worth grabbing a book on screenwriting and learning how to map a story Hollywood-style. Techniques you can borrow: i. High concept: a succinct explanation of the premise ii. Precedent: When Harry met Sally meets Avatar iii. Characters: introduce characters that represent archetypes, their motivations iv. Plot points: map key plot points as you take your audience through your story

Watch a movie you think does a great job of story-telling and map how they do it. Borrow and steal.

2. Get old school on it… Aristotle-style

I use this approach most. I map it on one piece of paper. i. The story of your presentation: eg “I’m here to introduce you to new technology that can prevent mass-flooding in a matter of minutes.” ii. Three acts: use the basic three-act structure as a way to focus your argument. Yes, explaining an idea is you putting an argument forward. To build on the flood-prevention idea your three-act structure is: a. Show how devastating floods are. You choose a 3-minute video with infographics, interviews, a soundtrack; or you take your audience to a flooded area. b. Show the solution. You reveal your moment of inventor’s truth where the idea came to you, you show how it works, how it’s unique, and that it’s patented. c. Your ask. Tell them what you want from them, what they’ll get for it, when and how. iii. End: a quick reminder of what they’ve seen and what you need.

3. Elevator pitch

You have 15 seconds to explain your idea. i. The you-know-how? problem: “You know how floods destroy farms?” ii. The well-I-have-a-solution tease: “Well, I have a widget that can zap the water and move it to drought-stricken areas.” iii. The ask: “Want to find out more?”

4. The visionary

With this technique, you go for the emotional jugular. i. Problem-rallying: “Imagine if we could solve this.” You show an emotional video. ii. Solution: “Well, we can… and here’s how.” iii. Action: “And here is how you can help.”

5. Ignite it Pecha Kucha style

This is more a format than a structure suggestion. Ignite and Pecha Kucha are fast-paced presentation events where people have a few minutes to a story.

In the business world, this approach will add drama. The time limit will open people to hearing from you. See: “I’m going to show you how to do X in 5 minutes.” The time limit also implies a risk that makes for a more exciting presentation - “What if she forgets or stumbles?” It will energize you and force you to structure a succinct story.

What oxygen and ideas have in common

These techniques are yoga poses. They are available to you when you need them. Develop your own style. Read about writing and presenting. Post-rationalize talks and stories you love. But, most of all, practice them. And practice your breathing. There’s all this science-y stuff about breath and oxygen.

Learn strategy with me on June 24 in a 3-hour strategy class online. Find out more here.

-
Make the most of your mind,
Mark
@markpollard

**

Team Training

If your company would like strategy training, contact us here. I’ve trained teams at EA Games, The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, Uber, and more. Available online and anywhere in the world.

**

Also read on Substack: Are Outsider Observations Worth Anything?

Strategy Is Your Words

You can find my book “Strategy is Your Words” here. We ship worldwide.
You can also find it on Kindle.

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

Sometimes, I wonder how useful honesty is. In my first week in New York, the Head of HR at Saatchi & Saatchi said: “Be careful what you say and who you say it to. You Australians are direct and you say the wrong things to the wrong people.” Watch my video about this here.

Key to Australian bravado is that we say it how it is and, if you can’t handle it, then we’ll say it even more. It’s cute until it isn’t.

The Dutch are direct because it saves time and saving time is polite.

Some cultures are direct about a few things that would be utterly unusual in other cultures. For example, in South Korea, to discuss someone’s nose size, blood type, weight, and, possibly, job and salary in some situations is normal but saying “I love you” is rare in part of society.

And, having now taught in over 40 countries, I frequently struggle to calibrate to the kinds of honesty that are expected in different settings. I’ve misread people not being open with me as them being tricky or indifferent. My strategist’s search for truth is a buzzkill in many situations. I’m learning.

However, when I’m teaching strategy, the two most common issues I see are how people use words and how honest they let themselves be.

If advertising is about getting people’s attention, causing an emotional reaction, and getting into their memory, then honesty seems to be useful. PR godfather Edward Bernays aimed to disperse “startling facts” into society to get people to change their points of view. And countless strategists see insights as “unspoken human truths”. These things get attention and cause emotional reactions yet so many people I work with are uncomfortable with them.

Yes, we can pay a price for honesty but, in strategy work, the price is that you and your thinking are ignored.

Here are three examples of honesty from recent masterclasses.

ALSO - learn strategy with me.
On June 24, join me in a 3-hour strategy class online. Find out more here.

1. Kenya - Kenya Cane

Kenya Cane is a famous Kenyan liquor. It retails for about USD$5-$6. It’s in clubs and bars but I’m yet to see it on a table in Nairobi - and Nairobi likes bottles of liquor on tables.

In our class, we started by listing reasons for this:

1. Kenya Cane might be used in bougie places without people knowing or being seen with it

2. It could draw the wrong crowd to the club

3. KC doesn’t tell other people I’m important

4. It’s seen as an old person’s drink, a traditional drink, from the past

5. The flavored drinks are not seen as masculine

6. KC doesn’t have a fancy name

7. It’s not seen as a bougie drink

8. In the village, KC tells people you are important but not in Nairobi

These feel honest although a few are familiar. For example, 3. is a generic status issue, 4. comes up in most of my classes about many products, then 5. and 6. and 7. feel a bit obvious.

But what happened next surprised me.

We chose this problem:

In the village, Kenya Cane tells people you are important but not in Nairobi

And we dug in.

Why? It makes you look like you have money in the village but it makes you look like you don’t have money in Nairobi

Why? The Nigerian princes drink drinks from the USA, Europe

Why is this a problem? KC is a drink you leave when you become wealthy

Even I felt a bit awkward while acknowledging the heavyweight Nigerian effect on Kenya but I didn’t run away from it. The thing is, it would need to be a very careful campaign to touch the “Nigerian” problem without race-baiting. But, as an exercise in honesty, it resonated.

2. P&O Cruises - London

In London, we tried to sell P&O Cruises to the students in the room. People discussed how they wouldn’t take a cruise with fellow Brits because it would just feel like Britain was following them the whole time.

There’s honesty here although you’ll see how the strategy statement - as fun as it is - doesn’t solve the problem, it agrees with the problem. So we’d need to redo it.

3. Kriekepot - Brussels

Kriekepot is a pot of cherries. I’m not familiar with the brand but it was interesting watching the room of 65 attendees debate it.

I didn’t realize how complex Belgium was. There are Flemish people, the Walloon, German-speakers, and more.

And, as much as I tried to force consensus for the sake of the exercise, my observation about how difficult it was to force any consensus led to the strategy here:

With this Four Points, the insight and advantage set us up for a strategy statement that needs more work. It’s too loose for me. But there’s honesty to play with.

Slow Down And Let The Honesty Rip

A few weeks ago, I was in Rovinj in Croatia for the DK Conference. Chris Do volunteered to come on stage having already experienced me slightly unhinged in an interview on YouTube.

I asked him to give me a problem that was on his mind. He wants to buy a bigger house and this is causing friction in his life. Chris is used to being in public. He’s on stage and in front of cameras all of the time. And, even though he gives me space to be unhinged, I can often tell quickly when I’ve pushed too far. Unfortunately for me, this is often the same place where the chunkiest insights happen.

When we reach this place, the place where all the easy things have been said, people look for a way out or they close down or their throas dry up. And, having interviewed thousands of people myself, I try to make people feel comfortable but I won’t fill the silence with an easy way out. And, nearly every time I’m here, the honesty that pops out is the most beautiful and the most useful of the interaction.

ALSO - learn strategy with me.
On June 24, join me in a 3-hour strategy class online. Find out more here.

-

Make the most of your mind,
Mark

@markpollard

**

Team Training

If your company would like strategy training, contact us here. I’ve trained teams at EA Games, The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, Uber, and more. Available online and anywhere in the world.

**

Also read on Substack: Are Outsider Observations Worth Anything?

Strategy Is Your Words

You can find my book “Strategy is Your Words” here. We ship worldwide.

You can also find it on Kindle.

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

I love business.

When I was a kid, I’d buy rugby league cards before school and resell the popular ones at a markup. Sometimes I’d put a bunch of packs in a plastic bag and charge people to pick one or two at random, like a lottery.

As a teenager, I watched my single mom run a singles club. She’d place ads in the newspaper, people would leave messages on our answering machine, she’d filter them, then host parties in our apartment or in restaurants so they could meet.

At 15, I worked for a guy who ran major under-18 dance parties in Sydney. At 19, some friends and I put on a couple of Asian dance parties. The first drew hundreds of people to a club on Oxford Street. The second ended with an extortion attempt by a gang that later became notorious in Australia, a fight with the Lebanese security crew running the venue, and about 50 police officers shutting it down.

At 20, I started what became the first full-colour hip hop magazine in the Southern Hemisphere. I worked in agencies by day and on the magazine at night. I expanded into distributing CDs, vinyl, and merch. I put on conferences and events. I designed the posters, printed them at Kinko’s, then walked around Sydney putting them up while hauling boxes of magazines around the city.

That work felt real. Every sale mattered. Every mistake stung.

I’d approach some of those businesses differently now, but back then there were very few people to talk to about work like that.

That feeling of having no real peer to think with is something I now hear from people running all kinds of businesses, big and small.

Upcoming Consulting For Your Business

If you’re running a business and feel like you’ve been carrying a problem alone for too long, I’m opening a week of consulting slots in May, 2026, to help business owners think clearly, decide well, and move.

Find out more here.

**

Common Challenges That Face Business Owners

On my travels, I love hearing about different business cultures.

In Medellín, Colombia, the local Paisa population is known for their business acumen. A lot of the earlier wealth came through farming - often coffee - and, yes, possibly illegal means, and there’s so much wealth in the hands of a few pockets of Medellín that one of the biggest financial conglomerates in Latin America - Sura - was born there.

In Saudi Arabia, people I meet often have multiple businesses - yes, something to do with oil, real estate, perhaps a jewlry or fashion brand. There’s a love of business and growth and sense that they want more access to the kind of thinking that a lot of us have done in agencies for years. My friends there pester me: “When will you start a business here? I’ll call the government right now."

In Kenya, there are a lot of micro SMEs - think hair braiding, selling hair, selling imported sneakers, but also there are organizations like E4I who work with small coffee farmers, and people trying to create the next M-PESA (the main payment gateway in Kenya, owned by the main telco Safaricom).

And I’ve also worked with independent businesses in the USA (like Poo-Pourri).

The settings are different. The cultures are different. But the underlying challenges are often surprisingly similar.

And here’s what I hear:

1. “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

This is a truism but how I interpret it is as follows: “I want to take the next steps with my business but I’m stuck.”

2. “I’ve brought in outside help but it doesn’t go anywhere.”

This is usually a combination of outside help over-engineering the work they do (eg massive research projects) as well as the need for many SME owners to be the author of their own world while not knowing how to put hired help to the best use.

3. “I don’t have peers around me - it can feel lonely.”

Sometimes, the business owner is such a dominant personality that they struggle to get honest thinking of their growing teams. Or they spend so much time in the business that they struggle to find and form community for themselves.

4. “Do I need to put myself onto the Internet as a personal brand?”

This stresses out most business owners because their days are predominantly operational.

5. “I’m not sure how to expand.”

For a business that is mostly clicking - i.e. decent systems in place and profitable - that next step can seem difficult. Do you keep things simple and repeat the business in another location or country? Do you add new products or services and risk complicating your business?

6. “"I’m too close to the business to see it clearly.”

This might be the deepest challenge of all.

A lot of business owners do not need more information. They need perspective.

Why Strategists Fantasize About Working With Small Businesses

When I left corporate America, I tried to solve a dilemma for myself:

I loved doing strategy but I hated the bureaucracy and politics of doing it in large companies for large clients. It felt like nothing happened.

I’ve watched many strategists leave the big agency world and try to solve this problem for themselves. Perhaps they move client-side or they fantasize about working with start-ups and small businesses, hoping they can make a bigger impact. And they become addicted to a new drug called “consequence”.

For any of you thinking through these things now, I guarantee you’ll feel consequence by starting your own business. It might take a few years for you to shift the rhythm of your weeks, to ween yourself out of needing to intellectualize everything, and for you to become a good operator, but, with the way the world is going right now, it is worth considering.

After leaving corporate America, I took on a few consulting projects with small businesses, and I found that doing strategy with small businesses presents its own set of challenges:

• Many business owners want to be the author of their entire business. This makes sense but it can also make a business owner un-coachable.

• Business owners might share the work you do with a coach or a friend and it all falls apart.

• Business owners might not be set up to implement your recommendations and default back to business as usual. Change is difficult and many business owners might require frequent coaching to push change through but a coaching business is very bitty to run unless you charge a lot of money.

• Business owners aren’t sure how to value the work you might do as a strategist or creative mind unless they have spent time in or working with the agency world.

Over time, if you focus on working with business owners, you can tighten up your offer and how you work with them, while attracting people who are better set up for what you want to do.

The promise of being close to the business and the daily decisions is powerful. Consequence is addictive.

What Small Businesses Actually Need From Strategy

When I speak with small business owners, often what they need help with is this:

1. Help working out what the business actually is

2. Understanding basic business and marketing concepts

3. A push to simplify how they communicate

4. Understanding how to make their message about their customer

5. Someone to untangle whether the real issue is brand, product, team, pricing, or focus

This is one reason strategy can feel so different in a small business. The work is usually less about “big ideas” and more about clarity.

Not many business owners are set up for what they themselves would call “out of the box” thinking. For example, I love the work my friends do at Vacation Inc - sunscreen that comes in a whipped cream format is incredible. Most business owners are trying to operate their business - making sure their farm survives bad weather, that deliveries happen on time and without theft, dealing with employees and contractors. Lobbing in wild ideas can give us strategy types a dopamine hit but they are difficult to pull off and many business owners don’t exist in such a three-dimensional world.

What This Means

This, to me, is the fantasy and the reality of working with small businesses.

The fantasy is closeness to consequence. Less theater. More reality. A chance to do work that actually changes something.

The reality is that most small businesses do not need a strategist to arrive like a magician. They need someone who can help them see their business clearly, describe it simply, and decide what to do next.

That kind of work can be incredibly satisfying. It can also be hard.

And that is part of why I’m opening a week of consulting slots for business owners in May, 2026.

If you run a business and want someone to help you think through an important problem properly - positioning, offer, brand, growth, team, direction - I’m opening a small number of strategy sessions.

You bring the problem. I’ll help you find the story and the move.

Find out more here.

Upcoming Masterclasses

🇮🇪 Dublin - Thu, Apr 23
🇬🇧 London - Thu, Apr 30
🇳🇱 Amsterdam - Mon, May 4
🇧🇪 Brussels - Tue, May 5
🇦🇹 Vienna - Thu, May 21

May - Croatia, Sydney. More Africa plus LATAM and India to come.

-
Make the most of your mind,
Mark
@markpollard

**

Team Training

If your company would like strategy training, contact us here. I’ve trained teams at EA Games, The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, Uber, and more. Available online and anywhere in the world.

**

Also read on Substack: Are Outsider Observations Worth Anything?

Strategy Is Your Words

You can find my book “Strategy is Your Words” here. We ship worldwide.
You can also find it on Kindle.

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

Often I catch myself wondering, “Is this really how I want to spend my time right now?”

It happened when that older Kenyan banker followed me around a club asking me if I knew who he was (read about it here). It happened when I chose to spend my first New Years Eve, Thanksgiving, and Christmas alone. It’s happened many times in Nairobi when I’ve been out and seen everyone sitting at high tables with their bottles of liquor and not dancing for hours. It’s happened when I’ve landed in countries I’d never thought of visiting and knew very little about - I’d arrive in my hotel room, close the door, and say out loud, “What the fuck am I doing?” And lately, it’s happened many times mid-interview or halfway through conference panels.

The full-time strategist inhabits a rare role. How many other jobs let you learn every day, express yourself, work with creative minds, and develop your own critical thinking skills while earning a decent salary? But for me, even though strategy gives me an intellectual kick, the most interesting thing about it has always been people.

Upcoming Masterclasses

🇰🇪 Nairobi - Thurs, March 26
🇮🇪 Dublin - Thu, Apr 23
🇬🇧 London - Thu, Apr 30
🇳🇱 Amsterdam - Mon, May 4
🇧🇪 Brussels - Tue, May 5
🇦🇹 Vienna - Thu, May 21

I’ll also likely be in the USA, Egypt, and Indonesia in April if your team needs training. May - Croatia, Sydney. More Africa plus LATAM and India to be decided.

**

Too Much Theory Goes Nowhere

Most conference panels jog on the spot: awkward self-introductions, people speaking over each other then quickly performing politeness (“Oh sorry, you speak”), vague and wordy questions that try to sound zeitgeisty but confuse the room, panelists answering every question even when they have nothing to add, company talking points lifted from press releases, and a litany of jargon and buzzwords.

Where’s the personality?
Where are the rare truths?
Where are the hot takes?

When I’m on these panels, I try to short-circuit them by asking the other panelists to talk about people, not just their theories. For example: What’s the most unusual behavior you’ve ever come across in your research?

Many interviews I’ve done recently lose me halfway through. Maybe that’s partly my fault because I’ve written a book about strategy. But sometimes I get the sense interviewers are trying to meet a fantasy intellectual version of me, when I’d probably rather talk about some weird shit I saw on the street five minutes earlier or a new Afrobeats song I can’t stop playing.

I earn a living by sharing a point of view on strategy - how to think, how to define things, how to express ideas - but the point of all of it is to get inside human behavior and the mind. From a martial arts point of view, it’s the difference between debating the finer points of a kata versus sparring.

Lately, I think that’s why some of these conversations have left me feeling in between. I can do them. I know how to sound like myself in them. I know how to offer a clean idea, a framework, a useful phrase. But part of me is often somewhere else, tugged towards life as it’s actually being lived - the street, the club, the awkward interaction, the song, the strange little behavior that reveals how people really are. Maybe that’s the tension I keep feeling. Not that strategy bores me, but that strategy becomes limp when it loses contact with life.

And maybe that’s why cities like Nairobi and Lagos and Medellín have felt clarifying. So much of what’s interested me in these cities has had nothing to do with theory and everything to do with watching people who are alive with energy I’m new to: how they sit, when they dance, how they dress, how they flirt, how they wait, how they perform status, how they let go, how they talk about money. That, to me, is strategy’s raw material.

Over the past month, my videos about Africa on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have had millions of views. Talking about a liquor called Kenya Cane (for example, this unboxing video) has led to me being recognized on the streets of Nairobi most days. Discussing Nigerian “give me money” culture led to me being on the national news in Nigeria. While I’ve had help writing many of these videos, they are embarrassingly simple. And I’ve felt guilty as I’ve pushed beyond the strategy topic into cultural observations. But the reactions from people light me up.

How Close Can You Get?

Most panels and interviews I’ve been part of lately include a section on artificial intelligence. A common question is, What will happen to the strategist as these AI tools develop? Part of any reasonable answer should involve strategists getting away from their computers and getting closer to human behavior.

For example, if I talk with ChatGPT about the nights out I’ve had in Nairobi - especially nights where hundreds of people have sat for hours while a DJ has played - it might tell me that nights in Nairobi start slowly. But watching those behaviors up close completes the picture.

Nairobi loves liquor and takes shots early, often in a squadron of shots. Many venues are packed with furniture because tables full of liquor make money. Waiters move chairs and tables on their heads and shoulders as the room’s shape changes with the arrival and departure of guests. Waiters ask if you want your drink cold or room temperature. Some put two drinks on your table instead of one so they can close the next sale early. Sheesha appears and creates a whole other set of dynamics. A few people dance close to their tables, but tables are prizes, so people don’t stray far. In fancy areas, politicians, actors, and celebrities occupy the furniture, which leads to a lot of people scanning the room to see who else is there.

Eventually, a few people head to the dance floor while others take power naps at their tables. Some people call this swatching or reloading. (“Swatch” means “sleep” in the Sheng language). Then the night kicks on and it could take you to three other venues. Some people might have stocked up on a local stimulant called jaba juice, which keeps them awake for a long time. Many will party through the night, joking that there should be a day between Sunday and Monday, that Kenyans do not really do Mondays, and that they are definitely quitting alcohol like they said they would the last few weekends.

A lot of these behaviors are new to me. Maybe I could prompt-engineer my way towards some of these observations. But until I’ve seen them in the flesh, been confused by them, and had them explained to me, they remain theoretical. And when they remain theoretical they’re limp. They’re hard to bring to life in a way that might electrify people.

The Theory Is Not the Point

Yes, there can be an intellectualism to strategy work. But for it not to go limp, it needs to stay closer to real talk, hot takes, and the street than to theory alone. Theory is there to help you focus on what matters. Spoiler alert, what matters is the people, which is where I’m loving spending my time right now.

And, as I prepare to return to the USA before teaching in Asia and Europe, I can tell you that Africa - and Kenya in particular - is very much on mind as somewhere that I need to spend more time. Africa isn’t easy but the youth population, the energy, and the sense of what could be are unlike most other places I’ve visited.

-
Make the most of your mind,
Mark
@markpollard

**

Team Training

If your company would like strategy training, contact us here. I’ve trained teams at EA Games, The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, Uber, and more. Available online and anywhere in the world.

**

Also read on Substack: Are Outsider Observations Worth Anything?

Strategy Is Your Words

You can find my book “Strategy is Your Words” here. We ship worldwide.
You can also find it on Kindle.

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

Sometimes, I shut down and disappear.

As a child, I disappeared into writing poetry and raps and journaling. In my twenties, I disappeared into work. I published a magazine while often also working a job. For years, I worked until I fell asleep at my desk then I woke up and I kept working. Many nights, I could only fully fall asleep on the floor in front of the television with the sound of a late-night show or white noise soothing my mind.

I have always felt the world in an intense way. People have called me complex. They have called me sensitive. Both are true but I didn’t make myself that way. And, every now and then, I wonder, “Why do I spend so much time trying to understand people when few people try to understand me?”

Strategists are supposed to see patterns. We are trained to notice them in culture, in brands, and in behavior. Yet many people with strategist brains struggle to see the patterns shaping their own lives. Or they see them clearly and still cannot interrupt them.

Next strategy masterclasses:

🇰🇪 Nairobi - Thurs, March 26, 2026
🇮🇪 Dublin - Thu, Apr 23, 2026
🇬🇧 London - Thu, Apr 30, 2026
🇳🇱 Amsterdam - Mon, May 4, 2026
🇧🇪 Brussels - Tue, May 5, 2026

**

A Simple Framework To See Your Own Patterns Through

When I teach insights, I ask people to think about a big life change they have made in recent years. We then discuss how this change happened, the routine it broke, and how their behavior changed. In other words:

1. Routine

What was happening in your life before the epiphany?
What habits, rhythms, relationships, or assumptions had become normal?

2. Inciting incident

What happened to force the epiphany?
This might have been one dramatic event, a slow build-up, or even something small - a conversation, a video, a sentence that landed at the right time.

3. Epiphany

What did you realize?
What truth became difficult to ignore?

4. Behavior change

How did you change your behavior?

My Epiphanies On The Road

In 2023, I realized that I knew how to be happy. I realized this because I travelled to new countries and I saw photos and videos of myself happy. I had had my head down working in New York, trying to be a decent dad, and trying to build a business. But the financial stress, the pandemic, and certain relationship dynamics sat on my shoulders like a rhinoceros. They sunk me. My chest was often tight. All I could do was repeat the pattern I grew up with so I disappeared into my podcast, I wrote a book, and I published a lot of social media content.

Travel introduced me to another person inside of me. I fell in love with new music, languages, food, and cultures. I started dancing again after years of feeling frozen. But the old pattern still had a grip on me.

I visited Brazil for a friend’s 40th birthday party but I froze and I didn’t dance because I wasn’t sure of the social dynamics. I wanted to dance salsa every day in Colombia but I couldn’t bring my body to do it. In Kenya, I had a lot of boundaries crossed in my first few weeks here. People asked for money. They tried to find angles with me. It put me on high alert. I’d been robbed in Colombia a few months before and I’d just dealt with the aggressive begging culture of Nigeria. And I found myself literally getting up and leaving many situations.

In moments like these, I can feel my chest close, my heartbeat rise, and then I just walk. It’s hard to catch myself as it happens and it’s led me to spending less time with people I really like. Sometimes, I try to talk to myself as it happens: “Calm down and go back. Calm down and go back.” But my self-regulation isn’t as strong as it needs to be, especially if a drink has been involved. And, usually, this reaction happens in a group situation or in a crowd. I prepare for the worst.

Recently, I shut down in Ho Chi Minh City. I was with a university friend that I hadn’t hung out with for 20 years. I just wasn’t into the music or the crowd. The next day, I texted him and said, “Sorry about last night. My mood dropped.” And he said: “We’ll know we have a real friendship when we don’t have to apologize for ourselves.”

That stayed with me.

I’ve been lucky to build a social circle around the world with people who can hold me in the way I can hold them. If you’ve worked with me or had me teach you, I hope you’ve seen up close that I am decent at allowing people to be themselves, to be vulnerable, and to explore difficult topics. I do wonder why I don’t spend more time near these friends but I continue to move because moving helps me not get stuck in my feelings.

So, even though I believe I know how to feel happy now, I still fall back into old patterns that sabotage me. If I sense rejection or abandonment or a lack of safety or someone trying to find an angle, my triggers prepare themselves.

One response would be to keep moving. This is something I think of any time I run into conflict - “Let’s go”. Another response would be to work harder to catch myself in these situations or to think more intentionally about which situations I put myself in.

I do not think the answer is to judge myself for being sensitive, complex, or easily overstimulated. I did not make myself that way. But I do think I have a responsibility to understand the patterns that come with that wiring.

Strategists are trained to spot patterns in the world. The harder task is interrupting the ones running your own life.

Insight is not intervention. You can name a pattern, teach a pattern, even warn yourself about a pattern, and still obey it. The work, I think, is to catch yourself a little earlier - to notice when the body starts to close, when the old story starts talking, and when leaving begins to feel wiser than staying because you might not just be leaving a situation, you might end up leaving a friendship.

Team Training

If your company would like strategy training, find out more here or fill in this form and our team will contact you soon. I’ve trained teams at EA Games, The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, Uber, and more. Available online and anywhere in the world.

**

Also read on Substack: Are Outsider Observations Worth Anything?

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

Years ago, I worked with an agency on a pitch for an alcohol brand. We were in Manhattan but the brand was based in a conservative state. The beer was drunk by people who might never travel to Manhattan and, if they did visit Manhattan, they’d probably marvel at it while also scoffing at things that fit the conservative propaganda about how broken Manhattan is because it’s a blue state, not a red state.

This era was before the algorithms had parted us and our families. This era was before the explosion of alpha male content on the Internet. It was the era of early experimentation by conservative think tanks that would publish weird videos on YouTube about how “contemporary art isn’t real art”.

However, it was the era of early political polarization. And the strategists working on this alcohol pitch didn’t identify with the people they needed to sell to. What’s more, they seemed to look down on them because of their political beliefs and their lifestyles.

When we poured through the research about the audience, much of which I had conducted, little comments flew around the room. It was a form of pitch pollution and it suggested that some of the pitch team couldn’t get out of their own way.

Dave McCaughan spent nearly three decades working in strategy in Asia and Australia with McCann. He once said that every strategist who went to China reported the same insight about “Little Emperors” as if nobody had ever thought of it before. Because of the one-child policy, a lot of children in China were treated like Little Emperors, receiving the full attention and doting of their entire families - parents, two sets of grandparents, and more.

When I use the term “outsider insights”, I’m referring to observations that smell more like judgments or condemnations rather than empathy, or they’re simply too obvious and useless. And they can ruin projects and careers. The “Little Emperor” insight is an “outsider insight”. It’s an observation that an outsider had that might not be useful.

One truth many of you might not enjoy is that most of you aren’t in the audiences you’re selling to. If you’re well educated, earning decent money for your country, you have a passport and you travel, you are in a small percentage of people in your country.

Obviously, this doesn’t make your research useless but it can make it shallow because the temptation will be to stop at the first things that seem surprising without having the tools or life experience to go deeper.

For instance, you’re a 22 year old working on a brand that sells to mothers. You’re a 28 year old working on a brand that sells fancy cars to people in their fifties and sixties. You’re a 32 year old selling erectile dysfunction products.

The majority of people in these situations will struggle to truly understand their audiences, which is why people who are exceptional at doing this are so sought after.

The most common comment I hear from CMOs is this: “We have a lot of research, a lot of data, but not much insight.”

And it’s why a pitch for an alcohol brand in a conservative part of the USA might just look too Brooklyn than it should.

Next strategy masterclasses:

🇰🇪 Nairobi - Thurs, March 26, 2026
🇮🇪 Dublin - Thu, Apr 23, 2026
🇬🇧 London - Thu, Apr 30, 2026
🇳🇱 Amsterdam - Mon, May 4, 2026
🇧🇪 Brussels - Tue, May 5, 2026

**

Observing worlds you’re not a part of

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you’re trying to understand an audience that is quite different from you:

1. You are not your audience but your own life experiences can matter

It’s useful to think about your own life experiences when it comes to your research. They might lead you to useful hypotheses or give you sharper questions for interviews. Just remember to not make the research about you.

2. Search for things you haven’t heard or seen before but don’t get clingy

If you’re writing a research debrief, you’re right to start by collecting observations that you haven’t heard or seen before. In fact, you’re more powerful sharing one slide with “Five unexpected things we found in our research” than a sixty slide deck with everything you’ve found. The challenge is to share these things in a way that invites discussion because perhaps what you found is obvious to other people.

3. Dig deeper

When you have a list of observations that seem unexpected and useful, give them time to breathe. Ask yourself, “What’s really going on here? What’s causing this behavior?” Try to avoid the obtuse or the obviously academic - for example, try to avoid rolling out Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to look smart (by the way, it’s said that Maslow borrowed a lot of his thinking from the Blackfoot - Siksika - Nation in Canada).

4. Try not to collapse useful observations into useless buckets

You know when you’re a bit junior and you have a bunch of research on the wall and you think you’re getting somewhere interesting then someone more senior comes in, looks at the wall, and tries to collapse your observations into a meaningless bucket and then you copy them for a few years? Don’t do that.

- “Oh, you mean, people want to feel empowered when they buy a house?”
- No, I mean that many people are scared shitless in case they end up buying a house and the cost of it destroys them or they have to sign up for a life they don’t want to live.

Implicit in all of this is that novelty is useful in business and in brand-building. Novelty can help you find new business opportunities and it can help you find new ways of getting people’s attention. Novelty is worth money. But taking observations that aren’t novel and bringing them to life in novel ways is also worth money.

Observations I’ve had in Africa

I’ve been sharing observations about Africa on Instagram and TikTok. For example:

I’ve found myself asking, “Why does everybody’s skin here glow?” Answers include cocoa oil and shea butter. But there’s nothing insightful about this. And, sure, we can connect this behavior to how skin and hair can make people look healthier and more virile and therefore more likely to attract mating opportunities but I’d still want to dig deeper or just dig somewhere else to find something to play with.

I’ve found the money culture in Africa different. What people refer to as “black tax”, girlfriend allowance, provider or sponsor culture, and “send me money” culture are new to me. Some people might point at colonialism as the cause. Others might point to African community dynamics that seem to be falling apart in other countries as the cause. And, yes, someone in the comments will say, “Africa isn’t one country”. All true but not yet an insight and not yet usable.

I’ve repeatedly been surprised by how Kenyans often start a night out by sitting down and appearing composed only for the night to later get crazy. I’ve been told, “Kenyans start slow while Nigerians start fast”. There’s an observation here that borders on an insight but we’d want to dig deeper.

How do we dig deeper? By speaking with people, which is what my Reels linked above try to do.

Being observed in Africa

I’ve spent time in 40+ countries in the past couple of years.

In some countries, I’m told I’m tall or I have a nose bridge or I have double eyelids or I’m told I look like a particular actor that I definitely don’t look like.

In Kenya, I hear about my white skin which is pink when I’m sunburnt (not “red” which is how I’d describe it), how I don’t dance like popcorn, how my eyes are green (versus hazel), how my hair is soft, and so on.

It’s been interesting because people’s descriptions or labels of me might not fit how I see myself. This doesn’t make them true or false. But, if you’ve ever experienced this, keep it in mind the next time you research a group of people who are different from you. It might help you avoid trying to sell Brooklyn vibes to conservative beer drinkers.

Team Training

If your company would like strategy training, find out more here or fill in this form and our team will contact you soon. I’ve trained teams at EA Games, The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, Uber, and more. Available online and anywhere in the world.

**

Also read on Substack: How To Make A Presentation Make A Point

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

In December, 2025, I flew from Nairobi to Abuja. Three months before, I had no idea I would even come to Africa. Then my first time in Kenya slingshotted me to my first time in Nigeria.

I passed through one of the worst airports I’ve ever set foot in. It’s in Lomé, Togo. Few electronic signs or televisions worked so it was difficult to know where to go. The lines made no sense. The loud speakers spoke over each other so it was impossible to hear anything. But I don’t blame the workers for this. These sorts of issues are usually due to a systematic failure of leadership. And, having watched how airports and airlines in the USA have monetized themselves by monetizing the pain they can cause travelers, it’s obvious that, when things work badly, it’s because someone has a vested interest in things working badly.

Abuja is the political capital of Nigeria. It’s an hour flight north-east of Lagos, Nigeria’s heaving heart. I was there to train the team at Rage Media in one of the best events I’ve ever been a part of. And I was the event.

After reaching the front of the immigration line, I was told I needed to fill in an arrival form. So I hurried into a room off to the side and smiled nicely for the local bureaucracy. With my form completed, I was now the only person in the immigration line. A tall, uniformed officer took my documents to see that I had them then asked me to give him money.

I haven’t had cash for months because my bank cards are all expiring while I’m on the road so I said I had no money and he waved me through to the people who needed to stamp my passport. Two guys took interest. They smiled, looked at my wrists, looked me up and down, asked me where I was from, then they let me through.

The team at Rage took care of me in Abuja and, later, in Lagos. They said the checkpoints can be difficult but I didn’t know what they meant when they said this.

I was only in Nigeria for three nights but people in uniform seemed to think that they deserved money for doing nothing. My hotel security asked for some food I was carrying. At the security checkpoints, we didn’t get asked thankfully but I think that’s because of whom I was with.

Then, as I left Lagos, I had to deal with more than thirteen people at the airport. Seven of them asked for money.

There’s no reason for Lagos airport to be like this except that someone has a vested interest in it being like this. Someone will intercept you as you walk to check in then ask you for money because they told you where to go. Later, you have to deal with all these separate people who do not need to be in the airport at all - one looks at your passport, another checks your exit visa, another asks if you’re carrying currency, then you walk past airport workers who ask for money, but the weirdest one was just before I boarded the airplane, a uniformed officer patted me down and repeated the pattern: “Where are you from? You have USD? Now you give me USD?”

I ignored him and he said, “Are you okay?”

But it led me to this thought: Nigeria seems set up for shakedowns.

My strategist brain never turns off. I’m constantly collecting patterns–hopefully with less paranoia than what I now feel after the past year of travel–then trying to name them. If you speak to me, my brain will listen for sentences like the one above.

This is an example of the strategist’s mind outside of the brief.

And you can see it on display on national Nigerian news here:

**
If your company would like strategy training, please fill in this form and our team will contact you soon. I’ll announce the next public masterclasses next week.
**

Here are other strategist behaviors that you can use outside of your dayjob:

1. Strategists turn patterns into ideas

Ideas combine at least two topics in novel and useful ways:

Topic A x Topic B.

My Nigeria experience lead to the idea that Nigeria is designed for shakedowns.

Topic A = Nigeria

Topic B = Designed for shakedowns.

Ideas create new meaning. They get us to see the world around us differently. This sentence attempts this.

Another sentence I was told about Nigeria is this:

Nigeria is Africa on cocaine.

Topic A = Nigeria

Topic B = Africa on cocaine.

A lot of strategists are good at finding patterns but strategists are strongest when they can turn the patterns into ideas.

Every slide of a research debrief, a trends report, or competitive review is stronger when an idea leads it. Dumping observations on people isn’t useful. Turn the pattern into a thing.

**
Bonus content

• My interview on national Nigerian news

• My hot-take about Nigerian shakedowns: Instagram, TikTok

• My hot-take about the money culture in Africa: Instagram, TikTok

• My warning to people with shy friends in Kenya who drink: Instagram, TikTok

• Deck: How Strategists Can Create Fast Brand Strategies

**

2. Strategists turn research into stories

I see a lot of decks. Most struggle to find a voice and point of view. Most dump information in decks as if the more information a deck contains the more important the deck is.

If you can focus on turning patterns into ideas then you can remove observations that do not support the idea because they become noise.

What’s more, you can turn your research into stories.

Since Colombia in June, 2025, I’ve written 40+ lyrics. I then play with them in Suno. I listen to people’s stories and I have my own adventures and then I turn them into songs.

For example:

• What If Never is me replying to a student who had a brief romance in Mexico and asked, “What if I never feel that way again?”,

• Man For What deals with stories and research I come across to do with a lot of heterosexual women being fed up with men, and

• Hold Me (3k listens) is me processing my own feelings.

Strategists often ask, “What do strategists do after their strategy careers?”

Well, what if you continue to do what you do but you find a different shape for it - like music, painting, or fiction?

3. Strategists explore

A few years ago, a famous London agency got publicity for launching an initiative for its strategists to get away from their desks and explore their country. I was stunned because isn’t that what strategists do?

Now, not many people travel as much as I do but I travel to learn and to be changed. And my life is full of music. If I didn’t travel, I might have never fallen in love with these music genres and through these music genres I learn about people and culture:

• Brazil funk – Santa Rita do Sapucai (3 hours north of São Paulo), Brazil (2 a.m., standing next to MC Binn)

• Reggaeton – on a rooftop in Quito, Ecuador (through Bad Bunny’s “Callaita”)

• Dembow – Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

• Merengue – Dominican Republic

• Bachata – Medellín, Colombia

• Salsa – Medellín, Colombia

• Amapiano – Johannesburg, South Africa

• Gengetone – Nairobi, Kenya

• Rancheros & corridos – Mexico City, Mexico

• Bongo – Mombasa, Kenya

• Afrobeats – Nigeria

Trying new hobbies, watching documentaries, reading books (fiction and non-fiction), and learning languages can help you explore if you can’t travel. You’ll emerge from all of these with a deeper understanding of the world and a new sense of self.

4. Strategists direct action

Strategy usually involves some combination of situation analysis, goal-setting, pattern-finding, plus declaring a strategy and connected tactics.

But how many strategists do this for themselves? We are our most difficult clients.

I’ll repeat this many times in these newsletters but the two questions I focus on are:

A. What am I doing when I feel alive? (What are my verbs? e.g. write, teach, talk, travel)

B. Is there a community to which I can make a meaningful contribution?

My answers to these questions guide my life. And lead me into these sorts of situations:

1. A massive Indian wedding in Bangkok (Congrats, Chirag and Sarah)

2. Meeting some of Nairobi’s main radio shows, DJs, and MCs

5. Dealing with a fast and, sometimes, scrambled mind

As the marketing and agency worlds twist and turn through this era we’re in, many strategists will untether from what they thought were stable lives and livelihoods. For the past three years, I’ve heard a lot of stories about layoffs and the difficulties of freelance life. Sure, we all know people who are crushing it but many people are struggling.

I’ve hung out with a lot of you who do similar work. Yes, many of you are well balanced, but a lot of you deal with anxiety, ADHD, trauma, stress, and minds that don’t slow down.

I’ve felt scrambled many times in Kenya, especially on the one night that turned into two nights after drinking liquor, jaba juice (a naturally occurring stimulant), and konyagi (the only drink I’ve ever drunk and immediately vomited back out into the cup I was drinking from).

This week is my first normal week in months. I’m back in the gym. I’m writing. I’m planning. I've cooked. I’m finding a routine for the next few weeks. I’m continuing to dance - a great cure for being in your head too much. And I’m exploring Nairobi’s excellent food and nightlife world. But I’m trying to steady myself after doing events in 7 cities in Asia in 4 weeks and burning out.

It’s difficult being a strategist without a brief. Without a company to work for, it’s like being a ronin. And, if you’re feeling like this now, your job is to write your own brief for the next phase of your life.

Also read on Substack: How To Make A Presentation Make A Point

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch my strategy and travel YouTube channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

5. Find out about how we train teams like yours

Last week, I wrote “Attract What You Want - Clients Included” as a way to answer a common question that people ask me: “How do I get clients to buy my ideas?”

This week, I want to share how we’re thinking about our own product strategy in 2026.

You can take a sneak peek at our B2B curriculum here. I’ll explain where the curriculum came from below.

BTW don’t forget to find out about my strategy masterclasses in Asia this month. Manila and Jakarta are close to selling out. They will be big. Find out more at www.sweathead.com.

The situation right now

Since the start of the pandemic, every year has felt very different. We’ve launched subscription products, 4-week accelerators, summer camps, conferences, online classes with guest teachers, online classes with me, topical webinars, and in-person masterclasses with me. We’ve reached millions of people and we’ve taught tens of thousands of people.

In 2020, the number of podcasts quadrupled, everyone was launching newsletters, and creators were all launching courses. The market got flooded but we made it work.

We pushed on with the Sweathead podcast, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube, we published a book “Strategy Is Your Words”, but we let a few channels slide.

Now, it feels so hard to lock in an annual plan for a creative business. So, if you’re struggling too, we feel you.

These are some of the dynamics facing us all:

• Inflation is squeezing margins and disposable income is tight,

• The algorithms are unpredictable and organic reach difficult,

• Paid advertising is expensive,

• People aren’t Liking and Sharing social media content like they used to,

• People are burnt out and under a lot of stress,

• A.I. is coming at junior jobs in our industry,

• The political, economic, and war situations in many countries make it hard for many businesses to push forward.

When it comes to Sweathead, here’s where our heads used to be:

1. Make Sweathead about other people’s voices

When I started Sweathead, I wanted it to be about other people’s voices. I did the same thing with my hip hop magazine “Stealth”. So when Sweathead started as a Facebook group and podcast, I tried to boost other people’s ideas. And on Instagram and LinkedIn, I published strategy essays. I tried not to take the spotlight.

The challenges?

Fame grows you faster. Many successful podcasts do one of two things: they focus on one to three characters every episode or they chase famous people.

A lot of people who aren’t frequently in public can struggle to “be content”. People who are frequently in public have their hot-takes ready, plus their equipment (lights, microphones, etc) and audiences.

2. Build a business model to support other people’s voices

Connected to the above - I wanted to create a business through which I could pay other people to share their knowledge.

I think there’s a big problem here - there are a lot of people with incredible knowledge who don’t know how to build businesses around their brains plus the existing ways through which they can earn money from their brains aren’t great.

For example, I have friends who’ve published books with B2B publishers and they complain about the whole process - they get an advance but then little editing support, generic design, and poor marketing. And teaching or speaking at conferences isn’t lucrative unless you’re famous.

To solve all of this, I thought about whether we could partner with people to help them develop IP and then flywheel it. For example, we could help people develop a public presence while writing a book then flywheel the book into courses, events, swag and more. But this would require a long-term relationship and a lot of deep work from all of us.

The challenges?

It’s been hard to generate profit from events in which we bring in other people, especially relative to the energy we put in. This is not a criticism of anyone.

Also, sometimes we bring in people and we feel they don’t put any energy into promoting what we are doing together so it can feel very one-way.

When it comes to Sweathead, here’s where our heads are now:

Some of these thoughts have brewed for years and some we are discovering on the road:

1. Be more of a main character

When I feel spooked by artificial intelligence and I start to wonder what I can contribute in writing, in books, or in teaching, the one thing that A.I. can’t do is have my adventures, tell my stories, or replicate my tone of voice (yet). Plus, so much of our social media time is spent with characters. So, I’ve decided I need to be more of a main character.

I’ve recorded a lot of video courses but, relative to how much content I’ve made, I’ve been shy to put my face online until recently. You can see my YouTube channel for proof. On the weekend, I decided to film a few videos for my Instagram and TikTok.

I’ve seen a little trend towards gossipy education so I’m starting to tell stories from my adventures plus reflecting about a country while I’m in it often does well. I still haven’t settled on a series or style but I’ll find them soon.

2. Go where the energy is - global arbitrage

In 2024, I did about 10 events overseas. In 2025, having felt the energy in cities I had never visited, I did 40+ events. In cities such as Jakarta, Manila, Lagos, Abuja, Nairobi, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and others, the energy has been crazy. We’ve done a lot of events in the USA and Europe but the mood feels flatter, something I want to test again this year.

While in Nairobi last week, I had a simple realization - let’s build our B2B curriculum for the Global South. Yes, there’s more personal risk but people are excited for what we do (in spite of very difficult personal circumstances) and we get a lot of interest from companies, NGOs, and government.

We’ll launch more in-person events soon. We’re just debating the cadence because, while it might look glamorous if you’re following on Instagram, it is also exhausting and risky.

3. Shut up and do video properly

Building on the point about being a main character, I need to get out of my way and do video properly. The bulk of Sweathead has been built without a studio, often from a cafe or bedroom. If I set up a base in a country like Colombia or Kenya, I could do better video. And, towards the back end of last year, we found a way to make YouTube content with guests for Sweathead (you can watch it here). However, I’m debating about having so many social media channels and whether we need to focus on my personal presence for 6-12 months first.

4. Sell our B2B training more clearly

Until now, we have not been very clear about how we work with companies and yet we have worked with the best and biggest - Microsoft, Meta, Twitter/X, Pinterest, Wall St Journal, EA Games, and many more. Usually someone who follows me just asks me how we can work together.

We’ve been thinking about how we can broaden what we do even though my main masterclass is the product that most people want. I do some consulting but I like to turn the consulting work into training because I want to leave behind some change.

You can read the curriculum here. We’ll launch it soon.

It’s informed by polls we’ve run, conversations we have had, feedback from clients and students. For example:

• A lot of marketing bosses want their teams to write more insightful documents, not just documents full of long words and numbers,

• A lot of business leaders want their direct reports to present to their companies in more compelling ways,

• A lot of business executives want to learn about a more creative approach to strategy that has nothing to do with advertising or marketing, and

• Many companies still need help understanding marketing 101 concepts.

There are things I’d love to teach such as how to do interviews and qualitative research, how to write, and more. But I feel that people want the fundamentals and what I refer to as the “heroics” of strategy (i.e. the climactic tasks that make them look good - e.g. pitching, creative briefs, and so on).

5. Deprioritize some of what we do

We have a lot of good content on Sweathead plus we have run a 4-week accelerator, guest masterclasses, summer camps, conferences, and free online events (such as the discussion about the Barbie movie).

We are currently debating how to proceed with the above since people are turning up less to online events, there is subscription burnout, and online courses don’t often get finished.

6. Simplify our technology

Like many small business owners, I’m burnt out with all of the tech we need to use and pay for, the notifications, the emails, the plugins, and the need for maintenance. So we are looking at how to simplify our tech stack.

Also, we have debated how to use A.I. since it popped onto everyone’s radar. People have tried to turn me and my content into A.I. tools - always without asking or offering anything in return except “Hey, we took all of your stuff and turned it into an A.I. tool so do you want to give your readers a 10% discount?” Umm no.

The Internet seems like a mess right now and the leading A.I. tools might eclipse anything we could build in the short term so we’re keeping an eye on the space but we’re focusing on what A.I. can’t really do - in-person education and adventures that turn themselves into stories.

7. Keep developing IP

I shared a list of 7 books I’d like to write here. I mentioned that I feel spooked by A.I. But, at some point, I’ll need to bite the bullet and create the next bit of IP that we can flywheel.

Conclusion

I talk about not using big words but the theme for this year is maximal simplicity. LOL. I’m such a hypocrite. I’m almost embarrassed. Please don’t tell anyone.

Maximal - main character energy.
Simplicity - more focus, less technology.

For those of you working through your own futures, hopefully this essay helped a little. All you can do is treat everything you do as a way to learn. You have to place bets and then do more of what works and less of what doesn’t seem to be working.

And to new friends in Nairobi, I miss you and I hope to return soon.

Go get it.

**

Up next: strategy masterclasses in
🇵🇭 Manila - Tue, Jan 20, 2026
🇭🇰 Hong Kong - Thurs, Jan 22, 2026
🇹🇭 Bangkok - Tue, Jan 27, 2026
🇻🇳 Ho Chi Minh City - Tues, Feb 3, 2026
🇸🇬 Singapore - Fri, Feb 6, 2026
🇮🇩 Jakarta - Mon, Feb 9, 2026
🇲🇾 Kuala Lumpur - Thurs, Feb 12, 2026

Find out more here.

Also read on Substack: How To Make A Presentation Make A Point

And this song From The Highway To The Mountains is getting a little attention on SoundCloud. It’s a capella and, well, I like it and I hope you do, too.

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

Last week, I was in the bathrooms of a fancy club in Nairobi. While I was taking a piss, a guy confronted me:

“Do you know who I am?”
Umm, no, sir, I do not know who you are.
“I’m a banker from Hamburg.”
I am very happy for you. I bet you’re an excellent banker from Hamburg.

Then I tried to leave the bathroom and he cut me off. Eventually, I moved past him and he followed me. He tried to cut me off multiple times for at least ten minutes until I asked some friends to get me out of whatever was happening. They surrounded me and he backed off only to sit and stare at me for another 30 minutes. It was as if he wanted to deal with whatever internalized racism he felt and whatever racism he had dealt with in one night by following me around drunk, telling me how good he was, and two days before Christmas.

A few days later, I was in a different club, and another guy sat down and watched me for an hour. He moved around the club - upstairs and downstairs - to watch me. Luckily I was with friends who knew people but I still don’t even understand what was happening.

In fact, last week, I had bad interactions and verbal altercations with several people. Obviously, I am the common denominator but, as I speak to more people about Kenyan culture, I realize that there are things in Kenyan culture that cross my boundaries.

Like, if you stare at me, if you bring up money and I don’t know you, if you don’t react to situations in a way that I’m used to, if your face is too stoic that I can’t read it, or if your friends watch me from a distance, then my alert system fires and I confront or I leave.

I travel to bad places in which one broken boundary could lead to a very bad situation.

These sorts of drama-filled moments remind me of what a lot of agency people speak to me about.

“I have this client. And they do this and this and this. And I really don’t like it. How can I change them?”

Chances are you won’t.

The bigger question is this:

“How can I attract more of what I want?”

As in, “How can I attract clients who want what I do and how I do it?”

Strong questions show you how to answer them. So how do you answer this question?

1. You work out what you want to do, and

2. You work out how you like to do it, and

3. You work out what kinds of clients you want, and then

4. You put this into public and force people to make a strong decision.

What do you want to do?

When I first left Corporate America, I thought I wanted to do workshops and workouts. I was the workshop guy, wheeled out around the USA to conduct meaningless workshops but I liked the idea of working quickly and not getting stuck in bureaucracy. I ran a few workshops I was unhappy with and so I offered them less and focused on doing the strategy work by myself as well as a little training.

How do you like to work?

I like the concept of M.R.E. - Minimum Required Effort. As in, what’s the least I need to do to make the biggest impact? Not, “What’s the least I need to do?”

Most clients I’ve worked with - The Economist, Euronews, Twitter, Decoded, and more - have had a lot of data. Some have even had a lot of agencies. But many would say, “We have all these agencies and all these strategy decks but there’s no clear strategy.”

So I sat down and thought, “How do I like to work?”

1. I like interviewing people.

2. I like coming up with provocative strategies.

3. I like sharing my thinking in informal ways.

4. I like working with senior decision-makers.

5. I like writing.

6. I don’t like making long decks.

So my “process” was simple:

1. I’d write a discussion guide or two,

2. I’d interview 10-40 people,

3. I’d digest the client’s existing research which was rarely very useful,

4. I’d write a research debrief,

5. I’d develop different strategies,

6. I’d share the strategies on single pieces of paper,

7. I’d write strategy stories (one-page strategies),

8. I’d print the strategy stories out and put them on boards if the client was in New York or I’d simply share them.

What kinds of clients do you want?

The challenge with any kind of strategy and creative work is that most clients don’t know how to buy it.

This is why when someone says to me, “I really want to work with start-ups,” I ask, “Are you sure? Because start-ups often don’t know how to use what you do for them and the CEO might want to author it and it could all come undone because they share your hard work with their romantic partner who has opinions.”

When I was consulting more, I was fortunate to attract clients who knew me and who would ask: “How do you get to your best work?”

I was fortunate to attract clients who had some idea about advertising agency work. And, if they didn’t, they didn’t try to get in the way.

I was fortunate to attract clients who saw the weird things I did on the Internet and still thought, “Oh, we should work together.”

There were CMOs who wanted their internal and agency teams to write less boring strategies. There were CEOs who were building businesses as acts of self-expression. And there were other leaders who had worked with agencies and just wanted that - “big agency thinking”.

I’ve found small business owners difficult to work with. I’ve found early stage start-ups difficult to work with. I’ve found people who are not a little strategy-literate difficult to work with. I’ve found narcissistic leaders difficult to work with. I’ve found interagency teams difficult to work with and life is too short.

But note my use of the word “found”. Building a business and a life is an act of discovery. You make decisions. You place bets. You go through the adventure. Then you work out what you want more of and less of.

What Do I Want To Attract More Of?

A couple of hours ago, I got to chat with Sheila Kwamboka (@kwamboka). She’s been in the media for two decades here in Nairobi. Like me, she likes teaching, she’s done radio and podcasting, she’s offering agency services to clients, and she’s just started writing songs again. (You can find my songs brand new on SoundCloud).

I’ve met local radio show personality and rapper Jakes, journalist Aluoch aka Cyn, a Nairobi fashion icon Ochichi, podcaster Andrew Opere, and Nairobi Design Week boss Adrian Jankowiak.

I don’t want to attract strange men in clubs. I don’t want to argue with people because I don’t understand “Send Me Money” culture. I don’t want to ask someone what on earth is happening when their face doesn’t react through hours of conversations.

So how do I do this?

1. I tell the universe what I want.

2. I learn about the cultural nuances that I’m taking personally.

3. I make better decisions.

And this is what I have just done in this newsletter.

We’ll talk about jaba juice, dawa, and konyagi next time. Send MPESA.

Good luck this year, friends. Take bigger creative risks. They won’t take themselves.

**

Up next: strategy masterclasses in
🇵🇭 Manila - Tue, Jan 20, 2026
🇭🇰 Hong Kong - Thurs, Jan 22, 2026
🇹🇭 Bangkok - Tue, Jan 27, 2026
🇻🇳 Ho Chi Minh City - Tues, Feb 3, 2026
🇸🇬 Singapore - Fri, Feb 6, 2026
🇮🇩 Jakarta - Mon, Feb 9, 2026
🇲🇾 Kuala Lumpur - Thurs, Feb 12, 2026

Find out more here.

Also read on Substack: How To Make A Presentation Make A Point

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

Next strategy masterclasses: Asia. Find out more here.
For info about training your company, visit here. 

Writing from Nairobi, Kenya. Monday, December 29, 2025.

In 2017, I wrote a list of questions that I was trying to answer. I don’t claim to have originated the questions. I collected many through conversation and reading.

I published this list then my friend Rosie Siman turned it into a postcard. Then the postcard appeared in the real world. For example, Rachel Mercer and her team at the time put up the postcards in their office like this:

So that you can copy and paste the questions, here they are:

1. What are you doing when you come alive?

2. What does the world ask of you?

3. What is something you care about and feel angry about?

4. What do you know that your customers don’t that would change their lives?

5. What can you do that others can’t?

6. What do you do that others don’t?

7. If you designed a good day or week, what are you doing, where, and with whom?

8. What do you want?

9. What’s in your way?

10. What do you need to do to make it happen? And what’s your first step?

I’ll give you some of my answers:

What are you doing when you come alive?

I tend to use a different question these days: “What are my verbs? As in, what am I doing when I feel alive"?”

A lot of you have heard me talk about this but these verbs literally define my life:

Write, teach, talk, have deep conversations, go to the gym, interview, dance on rooftops, travel, learn languages, and more.

What I imply when I discuss these verbs is that I needed to not do a lot of these things for many years to feel the pain of their absence and to then realize they were who I was. These verbs are me, my operating system.

Fourteen winters in the USA and five years of Corporate America were enough to teach me that if I don’t pay attention to what brings me to life then I feel the opposite - dead inside.

What is something you care about and feel angry about?

I feel some anger when I teach. I feel it because I remember a lot of people I’ve worked with, people with beautiful brains, who had to spend their lives fitting into systems that would never fully appreciate them or help them reach their potential.

I care about about squandered potential - especially creative potential.

It’s one reason I struggle in conservative cultures. And, yes, for me, the USA is conservative and Corporate America is conservative despite all the talk about how it' became too progressive in recent years. When I say Corporate America is conservative, I’m mostly talking about its allergy to ideas and different people. I found this even in agencies.

What do you know that your customers don’t that would change their lives?

The feedback I receive the most is about helping people with clarity. This probably stems from my book “Strategy Is Your Words”.

So what do I know that might change a few people’s lives?

Clarity happens through short, sharp language whereas most people in business hide behind big words because it’s safer there.

What can you do that others can’t? And…What do you do that others don’t?

It feels a bit obnoxious to answer this in public but I think it’s a combination of:

• My personal experience working in Australia and the USA,

• Having published a hip hop magazine and hosted a radio show,

• Publishing a lot in public - social media, book, YouTube, podcast,

• Psychology - I can speak specifically to the experience that many people are going through,

• Comedy - lol this year, a lot of people have said, “I didn’t realize how funny your class would be.”

• Doing events around the world and talking to strategists everywhere,

• In my events, I try to put on a bit of a show (yes, this is relative),

• I am decent at deliberate practice - breaking down concepts into simple exercises,

• Eek I’m a white man who was born with a good passport.

This last one is true and I’m not being woke for bringing it up. I get to do what I do because of how and where I was born. I know this.

After some training sessions, people will say, “We needed some Anglo Saxon thinking.” I’d never thought about this before but I guess account planning and strategy come from London so they’re accurate enough. And I meet so many talented people around the world who will struggle more than I ever will simply because of where they were born. For example, I can get into many countries easily (except Chile, which went viral) but most people in the world cannot.

In fact, one of my favorite quotes is:

“Talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not.”

I’m not 100% sure who said this.

However, to simplify my long list above, what I think I’m decent at is creating educational experiences that get into people’s heads.

What do you want? And…What’s In Your Way?

I’m trying to build an independent and creative life. I don’t belong in most systems although it’s almost impossible to break free of systems altogether.

And I want to take bigger creative risks.

When I’m in flow, I feel a deep sense of love and creativity, like I’m alive but also making a difference. However, obviously, my main obstacle is me.

In 2025, I wanted to film YouTube videos in every city I visited but I found it really hard to manage my energy. I’ve probably been jetlagged for 3-4 months of this year. Then there’s my mental block when it comes to logistics. And I have to deal with some avoidant personality traits.

I have seven books that I want to write but I feel spooked by artificial intelligence. As in, are these books even worth writing? What am I really contributing?

These are the books:

• Where Do Comets Land?
  When Leaving Feels Like Home
  Poetic nonfiction about return, orbit, longing, and reinvention.
  Stories from the road and from people who’ve left home.

• How To Quit Advertising
  No One Escapes the Baggage
  A revenge novel about advertising, ambition, trauma, and identity.
  Less “how-to,” more reckoning.

• Write Yourself Into Public
  Share Yourself Without Hating Yourself
  About finding a voice, coherence, and visibility without turning into a personal brand cliché.

• In Front of Slides
  How to Stage a Presentation
  A sharp, observational book about presenting as performance, power, and responsibility.
  Not slide design - presence design.

• Grow Yourself a Personality
  Satirical self-help for the screen-raised and emotionally stunted.
  Mostly inspired by watching how guys struggle to interact.

• How The World Thinks
  The World Walks Through You
  Essays on how thinking, meaning, and behavior shift by place, ritual, and culture.
  Strong overlap with travel, teaching, and intellectual tourism.

• In Front of Trains
  When Death Misses Its Stop
  A dark, absurd novel about suicidal rumination, survival, and cosmic misfires.
  Heavy subject, deliberately un-heavy execution.

Final Thoughts

The healthiest way to think about business and life is that everything you do is part of discovering what you need to do. You place bets - a job, a degree, a relationship, a trip - and you see what works. Then you adjust.

For those of you dealing with a difficult end-of-year - due to job loss, difficulties in your business, relationship issues, or mental health - I send you hugs. For well over two decades, I’ve struggled at this time of year. Sometimes, I make bad decisions because of it. I’ve made big life changes over the past year and I know I’ll pay a price for them but I was so unhappy that I decided I needed to.

Happy New Year. And good luck with these questions.

Also read on Substack: How To Make A Presentation Make A Point

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

Friends, I’ve just done 11 events in 9 cities in three weeks. I checked into a hotel in Nairobi at 4am today. I. Am. Cooked.

2025 has been a massive year. You can read about it in the 2025 Sweathead Annual Report. And you can see photos and videos of recent events on my Instagram @markpollard.

I’ll record a podcast this week with reflections about the cities that I remember the most. You’ll be able to find it on iTunes and Spotify.

If you’re looking for travel videos to watch over the break, you can watch my YouTube Channel and also find strategy videos on the Sweathead channel.

Big thanks to the Sweathead team for all of their work behind the scenes - Dot for making the masterclasses happen, Marshall for running ops, Mayara for being on top of our social media, Juliana for beautiful design every time as well as many other people - Kevin, Tlanezi, Rosebella and more.

Next events:

🇵🇭 Manila - Tue, Jan 20, 2026
🇭🇰 Hong Kong - Thurs, Jan 22, 2026
🇹🇭 Bangkok - Tue, Jan 27, 2026
🇻🇳 Ho Chi Minh City - Tues, Feb 3, 2026
🇸🇬 Singapore - Fri, Feb 6, 2026
🇮🇩 Jakarta - Mon, Feb 9, 2026
🇲🇾 Kuala Lumpur - Thurs, Feb 12, 2026

Find out more at www.sweathead.com.

Happy holidays, friends.

Mark

@markpollard

Share Sweathead, A Strategy Newsletter

Today:

1. Speakers announced for The Sweathead Do-Together - November

2. Have You Used A.I. To Explore Being Someone Else?

3. Recent YouTube: Learn Storytelling from DJs, Memes, and Songwriters

4. How to sound 5% cuter in Colombia (NEW TODAY)

Have you read my other Substack posts?

1. Is “Strategist” A Personality Type?

2. How Brand Characters Build Memory - And How We Built Ours

3. Strategy Is Not A Back Office Function

Things to do:

1. Get tickets to November’s The Sweathead Do-Together (NYC, Chicago, online)
   Sweathead members - access is included with your membership, register by “buying” a ticket (it will appear as $0 once you log in)

2. Come to my strategy masterclasses in the Middle East and Africa in December and Asia in January and February. We’ve already sold 100 tickets in Lagos. Some of these events will be huge.

3. Add me on LinkedIn - I opened my profile after having it closed for years.

4. Quito, Ecuador meetup this Thursday - RSVP here

Interested in strategy training for your company anywhere in the world or online, find out more here.

**

Speaker Announcement:
The Sweathead Do-Together

New York Speakers:

Chicago speakers:

We’re hosting our fourth strategy conference The Sweathead Do-Together this November. In the face of the batshit crazy stuff happening in the world, we’ve decided to do the event in person and online.

Chicago happens on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, from 1pm – 5pm Central Time.
New York happens on Thursday, November 20, 2025, from 1pm – 5pm Eastern Time.

If you buy a ticket to an in-person event, you’ll get access to both days - one online.
But you can also watch both days online with a ticket or a Sweathead membership.

Earlybird tickets are available until October 31.

Bring your team. It’s a great way to re-energize them after what has probably been another intense year.

Here’s our first batch of speakers and our hosts:

New York

Jenny Chang - Cultural Strategist (Host)

Anibal Casso - CSO, Ogilvy North America

Joe Burns - Strategy Lead, Quality Meats Creative, NYC

Geno Schellenberger & Jack Westerkamp - Co-Founders, Breaking and Entering

Madison Giller - Strategy Director, Arnold Worldwide

Sharon Panelo - Founder, Stories & Strategy

Added: Rob Schwartz - former CEO TBWA\CHIAT\DAY NY

Chicago

Pilar McQuirter - VP Strategy, Current Global (host)

Ambika Pai - Head of Brand, TIAA / Podcast Host

Michelle Gerstin - VP, Strategy Director, Critical Mass

Kieran Ots - Founder & Creative Partner at Make No Small Things

Doug Malcolm - Founder, Pale Blue Dot Strategy

Stephanie Kelly - Head of Brand Strategy at Doner

We’ll add a couple more speakers soon.

Find out more here.

**

Have You Used A.I. To Explore Being Someone Else?

“Just crack me open again
On a rooftop in Medellín
Let the mountains breathe me in
I won’t come back to Earth, my friend”
- Crack Me Open, by me :) (Listen to one version of this chorus)

Last week, we filmed a session with Natalia Cristin, Sally Slater, and Sharon Panelo about artificial intelligence. We’ll share some of this on YouTube soon.

In the session, Sharon shared a story about a Colombian glow-up. In the space of a few days, Sharon went from being a regular globe-trotting strategist to a Medellín-loving Karol G-adjacent paisa (the word that describes locals from Antioquia, where Medellín is).

[And if you want to sound 5% cuter in Colombia, here are my tips based on 3 months of research]

Within minutes, Sharon:

1. Adopted a Colombian nickname - Sharon Chicharrón

2. Generated lyrics for a personal reggaeton anthem with ChatGPT

“Llegó Sharon de New York City,
con el flow global, siempre pretty.
Tokyo, Seoul, Dubai, Manila,
pero en Medellín la noche brilla.”

3. Generated a new Colombian look (see below)

4. And then we created a song in Suno - Lovergirl

Sure, this isn’t the most complicated endeavor but it changed me. And Sharon.

Exploring A New Side Of Yourself

Sharon and I only went back and forth a handful of times, sharing lyrics and music before she shared all of this with friends. One said, “I hate myself for liking this.”

Since my second trip to Medellín this year in June, I’ve written about 30 lyrics. I was going to write a book but I’ve let myself fall in love with writing lyrics and music again. After pausing this for years.

The first lyrics I wrote were for a song called “Crack Me Open” which is about this new life stage I’m in. I followed the traditional narrative but I wasn’t happy. For years. And now, most of the time, I am happy. Happier than before. And I’ll take that as a win.

[I read out some of the lyrics in this interview with Chris Do. Skip to the end to watch.]

But the creative process I’d been evolving with writing lyrics and generating sketches of songs in Suno was enhanced by a handful of DMs with Sharon. And a lot of the approach is drawn from strategy instincts and techniques.

My Evolving Creative Process

First, I listen for phrases out of people’s mouths or that happen in my head.

My ears are primed for unusual combinations of words that I haven’t heard before, words that get me to see things differently. I’ve interviewed thousands of people and, after years of writing Tweets and creative briefs, my mind grabs tasty sentences.

There’s a sense of reportage about this that I like. For example, a friend described a romantic relationship and added, “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like that again.” That led to this song “What If Never”.

Another friend shared some guitar licks and, for the first time in my life, I wrote a song to a male friend, describing what we’d been through in NYC. That led to “Dive Bar Days”. I’ve tried it in different genres which Suno allows you to quickly do.

And then there’s this song “Pelo”, which is about hair in Colombia. My female friend was amazed at the calibre of long, thick hair here. We asked people for their tips and I put it into a song.

This whole approach is based on a strategist’s mindset - observations, patterns, keeping alive words that get people to think differently.

Second, I generate a lot of sketches of songs in Suno. Quantity then quality.

Sometimes, I’ll generate prompts in ChatGPT but, other times, I’ll keep the prompts very simple (eg “Sexy reggaeton around 80-90 bpm”).

I’ve generated hundreds of songs so far and I’m not sure I find a strong correlation between the complexity of the prompt and the quality of the song. This is probably because Suno is working off genre templates.

In Suno, you can use the Advanced options of making the songs weirder or more genre-traditional and tight to the prompt or loose.

I’ll have a genre in mind and see what Suno proposes. Sometimes, Suno nails a song within the first few songs. Other times, the genre and the lyrics just don’t work, so I’ll change the genre.

Third, I change the gender of the singer.

Again, because changing the gender of the singer and the genre is so fast, it’s easy to experiment with how the lyrics sound in different shapes.

I started writing from my own perspective and a lot of my lyrics are sensual so I was writing from a heteronormative, male perspective. In the first weeks, I generated songs with a male voice because I was writing for myself to sing.

But around the time Sharon and I did our quick collaboration, I’d started putting female vocals to my lyrics and they often sounded better.

This led me to write songs from a less hetero-male perspective.

For instance, “In The Middle Of You” is written from the perspective of someone standing on a beach on a desert island, they’re looking at the ocean, and they’re about to dive in.

“Then I drowned
And found where I belong
In the middle of you.”

And “Just Us The Girls” is a very simple song written from the perspective of girls dancing on a dancefloor, knowing they’re being watched, but wanting nothing to do with the watchers.

The Epiphany

Because it doesn’t take long to experiment with different genres and voices in Suno, I’ve been able to find a new way of being creative through music.

Don’t hate me for saying this but, sometimes, I send the songs for lesbian approval. I know I have slight feminine energy (you know, feelings and all) and most of my female friends have masculine energy, hence our overlap.

But, in June, when I started writing lyrics again, I wouldn’t have thought that I’d start writing lyrics from the perspective of anyone other than me. And, now, I often think about whether a song could work in a non-hetero relationship in a non-hetero club.

In a way, I’m exploring a different part of myself that I would not have done without the A.I. tools that I use.

Are Other People Exploring Themselves In New Ways?

We keep hearing that the main use of A.I. right now is therapy.

Simple prompts such as “How would someone less agreeable deal with this situation?” and “If I were more extroverted, what would I do?” can help you experiment with variations in the Big 5 Personality Traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism).

And, according to a small poll I ran in my Instagram channel yesterday, about one-third of respondents have used A.I. to explore a different side of themselves.

But what if you could experiment in your own personal creative process by adopting different voices, different perspectives, and different sounds? How might you become exponentially different in a good way?

Applying This To Brands

I’m not sure there is a direct way to apply this to most brands. Most brands want to maintain the same tone of voice despite probably needing to flex their voices differently in different social channels.

But, as you develop creative briefs, decks, content, and advertising, this mentality might help you crack open the next phase of your career.

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

Share Sweathead, A Strategy Newsletter

Today:

1. More speakers announced for The Sweathead Do-Together - November

2. Using Metaphors In Strategy

3. New YouTube: Learn Storytelling from DJs, Memes, and Songwriters

4. Meet more Medellín friends

Have you read: Is “Strategist” A Personality Type?

Things to do:

1. Get tickets to November’s The Sweathead Do-Together (NYC, Chicago, online)

2. Come to our A.I. Show and Tell - Thursday, October 30 - with Natalia Cristin,

   Sally Slater, and Sharon Panelo

3. Come to my strategy masterclasses in the Middle East and Africa in December and Asia in January and February.

4. Add me on LinkedIn - I opened my profile after having it closed for years.

Interested in strategy training for your company anywhere in the world or online, find out more here.

**

Speaker Announcement:
The Sweathead Do-Together

New York Speakers:

We’re hosting our fourth strategy conference The Sweathead Do-Together this November. In the face of the batshit crazy stuff happening in the world, we’ve decided to do the event in person and online.

Chicago happens on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, from 1pm – 5pm Central Time.
New York happens on Thursday, November 20, 2025, from 1pm – 5pm Eastern Time.

If you buy a ticket to an in-person event, you’ll get access to both days - one online.
But you can also watch both days online with a ticket or a Sweathead membership.

Earlybird tickets are available until October 31.

Bring your team. It’s a great way to re-energize them after what has probably been another intense year.

Here’s our first batch of speakers and our hosts:

New York

Jenny Chang - Cultural Strategist (Host)

Anibal Casso - CSO, Ogilvy North America

Joe Burns - Strategy Lead, Quality Meats Creative, NYC

Geno Schellenberger & Jack Westerkamp - Co-Founders, Breaking and Entering

Madison Giller - Strategy Director, Arnold Worldwide

Sharon Panelo - Founder, Stories & Strategy

Chicago

Pilar McQuirter - VP Strategy, Current Global (host)

Ambika Pai - Head of Brand, TIAA / Podcast Host

Michelle Gerstin - VP, Strategy Director, Critical Mass

Kieran Ots - Founder & Creative Partner at Make No Small Things

Doug Malcolm - Founder, Pale Blue Dot Strategy

Stephanie Kelly - Head of Brand Strategy at Doner

We’ll add a couple more speakers soon.

Find out more here.

**

Using Metaphors In Strategy

There are two truths about metaphors that are awkward bedfellows:

1. Metaphors are useful when it comes to strategic and creative thinking, and

2. Metaphors can confuse strategic and creative thinking.

I’ll explain after you read these metaphors:

Metaphors For Strategy Careers

Find these in our free ebook “The Sweathead Career Planning Toolkit.”

1. Chris Charles, Freelance Commercial Director

NOW: A surfer at the top of a massive dam, in control of the flow of the water.

THE FUTURE: A captain in a great ocean, catching the wind in my sails.

2. Jaymie Rubiano, Director - Marketing, Strategy, & Planning, American Eagle Outfitters Inc.

NOW: An old beloved car that’s stalled out in the driveway.

THE FUTURE: I own the road. I’m in the driver’s seat. I call the shots.

3. Kat Richards - Associate Director - Experience + Strategy, Digitas North America

NOW: A baby sea turtle wandering into the big ocean.

THE FUTURE: A phoenix that is constantly reborn and re-evaluating where our passions and values lay.

4. Kavinda Welagedara - Chief Strategy Officer, Fudge

NOW: A one-man-band playing music .

THE FUTURE: Conductor of an award-winning orchestra.

What Is A Metaphor?

A metaphor is “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.” It’s a symbol.

For example, “freelancing is limbo.” To say this isn’t to say that freelancing is literally a place between Heaven and Hell. It’s to make the point that some people freelance without committing to a more long-term direction. They freelance to bide time. While this can work for some people, it can also prevent more ambitious action such as setting up a company.

Why Metaphors Are Useful

1. Metaphors create new meaning and new meaning creates new energy

An idea brings at least two topics together in a novel way (Topic A x Topic B). Ideas create new meaning. They help us see to ourselves and the world around us differently. Metaphors are ideas. “Strategy is an act of confusion.”

2. Metaphors drag people out of corporate speak

Most business documents I’ve seen in the past decade - yes, including documents from the biggest, coolest companies around - are very hard to understand. They’re riddled with poor writing and business speak. A simple metaphor about an urgent problem that needs solving or about how to reposition a brand can grab people’s attention and make action easier.

3. Metaphors are memorable

As emotional, mental shortcuts, metaphors get stuck in our minds. Getting people’s attention and getting your ideas stuck in people’s minds are the two main jobs of communicators.

The Issue With Metaphors

1. Metaphors are inaccurate because they’re not literal

I remember seeing a LinkedIn debate years ago between strategists in which one said to another, “You’re cherry-picking how you mean the metaphor.” Umm. Yes. A metaphor isn’t literal. So, yes, we need to cherry-pick its meaning.

For the metaphor “freelancing is limbo”, this is what I mean:

i. It’s a place that people go when they’re inbetween directions,
ii. They can get stuck there if they’re not careful, and
iii. If they get stuck there, it can suck there.

This sort of exercise in which you write your metaphor and then write the 3-7 ways in which it is true or in which you are using it is helpful.

2. Mixing metaphors is confusing

If I say “freelancing is limbo for a lot of people” and someone respond, “Sure, freelancing can be limbo, but I just keep swimming toward the next opportunity,” this is a mixed metaphor. Unless limbo is a pool.

3. Using metaphors on creative briefs is risky

A CCO I worked with once loved this single-minded proposition: “Brand X is Aladdin’s Cave.” He knew what to do with it. He knew he needed to capture how incredible it was to enter this store and marvel at what was inside. Sometimes, a metaphor can work on a creative brief. But, usually, people will ask, “What do you mean?” and this is a sign that the proposition isn’t clear.

So, metaphors are worth toying with as ways to reframe problems and brands and as ways to grab attention in a presentation, but make sure you can also explain what you mean.

**

New YouTube: Learn Storytelling from DJs, Memes, and Songwriters

What do songwriting, meme-making, and DJ-ing have in common with great strategy?

They’re all forms of storytelling - rhythm, structure, emotion, and timing.

In this episode of Cuts on Craft, three strategists break down how they use music, memes, and story to move people. From emotional hooks to cultural drops, we explore how strategy and creativity share the same beat.

Featuring

• Matthew Ryan - Sr. Director, Creative Strategy, Universal

• Hayley Truncali - Director of Cultural Insights, Fact & Fiction

• Luis Miranda - Group Strategy Director, Critical Mass

Watch now.

More Medellín Friends

Luisa and Manu run Medellín design agency This Is Haww (see their work here). We had a small meetup in June - maybe 15 people. Three of those people are now their clients. So they must be doing something right.

I’ve spent about three months in Medellín this year. The local creative industry doesn’t seem to have a center of gravity here. I could be wrong but I mostly spend time with local friends and I constantly ask them about this.

Having said that, I think it will be interesting to watch how Medellín grows in the coming years. The city has been inundated with tourists, retirees, and digital nomads in the past 5-7 years. This does create jobs but it also makes things more expensive for locals.

For the sake of comparison, Medellín has a population of around 2.5 million and Bogotá, the colder capital, has a population of nearly 12 million (which surprised me). Bogotá has much more industry there - including advertising. It hosts a lot of industry events for Colombia and LATAM but it can also feel closed.

Anyway, watch my Instagram stories for travel content. Medellín has been super interesting to try to understand.

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

Share Sweathead, A Strategy Newsletter

Today:

1. Speaker Announcement for The Sweathead Do-Together

2. Is “Strategist” A Personality Type?

3. A Brief Empath’s Guide To Caring Less

4. New YouTube: Learn Storytelling from DJs, Memes, and Songwriters

5. Meet friends from Medellín

6. My favorite Spotify Easter egg

Have you read: How Brand Characters Build Memory?

Things to do:

1. Get tickets to November’s The Sweathead Do-Together (NYC, Chicago, online)

2. Add me on LinkedIn - I opened my profile after having it closed for years

3. Come to my strategy masterclasses in the Middle East and Africa in December

   We’re launching our 2026 Asia masterclasses this week.

Interested in strategy training for your company anywhere in the world or online, find out more here.

**

Speaker Announcement:
The Sweathead Do-Together

We’re hosting our fourth strategy conference The Sweathead Do-Together this November. In the face of the batshit crazy stuff happening in the world, we’ve decided to do the event in person and online.

Chicago happens on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, from 1pm – 5pm Central Time.
New York happens on Thursday, November 20, 2025, from 1pm – 5pm Eastern Time.

If you buy a ticket to an in-person event, you’ll get access to both days - one online.
But you can also watch both days online with a ticker or a Sweathead membership.

Earlybird tickets are available until October 31.

Bring your team. It’s a great way to re-energize them after what has probably been another intense year.

Here’s our first batch of speakers and our hosts:

New York

Jenny Chang - Cultural Strategist (Host)

Anibal Casso - CSO, Ogilvy North America

Joe Burns - Strategy Lead, Quality Meats Creative, NYC

Geno Schellenberger & Jack Westerkamp - Co-Founders, Breaking and Entering

Madison Giller - Strategy Director, Arnold Worldwide

Sharon Panelo - Founder, Stories & Strategy

Chicago

Pilar McQuirter - VP Strategy, Current Global (host)

Find out more here.

**

Is “Strategist” A Personality Type?

In my teens and 20s, I didn’t feel I belonged in this world. I didn’t like the systems, the conformity, the establishment.

Maybe because I shifted between my parent’s two homes and I was often not at home from a young age, I felt more comfortable roaming Sydney than in rooms I take for granted today.

This caused a lot of internal turbulence. I literally didn’t feel I was built to be here. And I had days when I struggled to want to be here.

I found a home in the underground hip hop scene and I then published a hip hop magazine (Stealth Magazine) and I hosted a radio show (The Mothership Connection).

I also worked in and around advertising from the age of 20.

But, because I didn’t feel I belonged anywhere, I also didn’t think about having a career. I didn’t think I belonged in a career.

At first, I did UX and content strategy. I loved it. I could lose myself in research and thinking. I loved the immediacy of the Internet and the lack of gatekeepers.

At 28, I took a job in which I did 50% of this work and 50% account planning at Leo Burnett.

Leo Burnett Sydney was my peak advertising experience. Nearly everyone I worked with has gone onto big things or more meaningful things. You might recognize some of the faces above.

But, in my head, I was still doing hip hop stuff and I happened to have a job.

In 2011, I moved to New York to briefly work at Saatchi and Saatchi. This is when I almost saw advertising as a career.

The problem was that the industry was so volatile that it felt self-defeating to fully commit to it. And I was burnt out from working crazy hours in my 20s and with a young family, so I also didn’t spend enough time thinking about what else I could do. I just needed a change.

And a visa.

Five years in New York agencies taught me that I am not built to be inside Corporate America.

For years, I had been writing about and teaching strategy and I loved this. But the politics, the lack of creative ambition that I encountered everywhere*, and the exceptionalism that didn’t match the output drove me nuts.

*Except at Big Spaceship

Also, I struggled to build social circles.

I was often the young guy in a management team and parents with kids my kids’ ages were usually 10-20 years older than me, more corporate and conservative.

I didn’t like Corporate America. My social life was barely alive. I was just working.

I felt stuck. I felt trapped.

But there were clues - including, yes, from Anthony Bourdain. He showed a path - a more savage voice, adventures, and risk-taking.

Five years into my time in New York, I set up a company. At first, the goal was simple: break even on living in NYC.

Then I thought back to my hip hop days and rebuilt what I used to do in hip hop but in strategy: an online community, a podcast, events, books. Sweathead.

And I hit the road. I taught, I spoke at conferences. And, in 2019, Julian Cole and I did a bunch of events in different countries.

After each event, I found myself having conversations that I didn’t really access in NYC. They filled me with satisfaction, even happiness.

I realized that strategists are my type. But that I have also have a type of strategist.

Sure, there isn’t one strategist type.

But, having taught thousands of people in 40+ countries now, here’s the strategist type that lights me up:

Share this and post a comment on Instagram or LinkedIn.

1. Strategists are curious

“Curiosity” is an expression of one of the Big 5 Personality Traits.

The traits are:

• Openness - Novelty, variety seeking

• Conscientiousness - Hard-working

• Extraversion - Energy derived externally

• Agreeableness - More Yes or No

• Neuroticism - Prone to dark emotions

Behaviors:

• Has deep interests,

• Has a range of interests,

• Asks questions.

2. Strategists listen

We’ve all worked with dominant personalities but strategists are usually good at slowing down conversations, probing, and waiting for words they can use.

3. Strategists hold space

Interviewing people, hosting workshops, and discussing difficult topics with clients are all examples of this.

4. Strategists can bounce through many disconnected topics

Since strategists tend to be curious and they tend to collect a lot of information and life experiences, they are often able to shift between topics faster than most people.

Yes, this can lead other people to think that they are in the clouds and don’t always make sense.

But, if you’re like this, it’s fun.

5. Strategists don’t always rush to answers

Strategists can handle ambiguity because they’re often looking at problems from many points of view at once.

Sure, the more you do strategy, the faster you can see patterns and appear adamant about solutions, but good strategists are happy to explore different threads without committing to one until they’re ready.

6. Strategists are empaths

In some ways, strategy has become a cool job that people want because, well, it’s cool.

But if a strategist isn’t interested in people, if they aren’t on the side of people, they might struggle in creative circles.

In political and propaganda circles, they might thrive.

7. Strategists can self-doubt

Strategist self-doubt is cute.

Why? It keeps them open to improving, to better questions, and to not becoming dogmatic.

Obviously, I want strategists to be powerful and creative but a little self-doubt is healthy. It keeps people on their toes.

8. Strategists connect dots

Strategy is about finding and creating meaning.

We create meaning by combining at least two topics in a new way.

Strategists are constantly inhaling stimulus - interviews, content, academic research, etc.

Over time, they become good at creating meaning from all of this stimulus.

9. Strategists can have a sense of humor

Humor is cultural and, in some places I travel, everyone is very quiet and serious.

But my strategists can laugh - at the world, at themselves.

If they can’t laugh, I feel they might implode because they are taking everything too seriously.

10. Strategists work hard and smart

Perhaps due to social anxiety, many strategy teams I’ve worked with weren’t the first to the bar on a Friday afternoon to hang with the rest of the agency.

Strategists are often intellectually diligent but they can struggle outside of their work roles.

However, the smart ones are always looking for better ways to work.

An Empath’s Brief Guide To Caring Less

One trap for strategists is to believe that they can think their way through anything.

When I was younger and repeatedly dealing with depression, I thought, “If I can just understand this - why it’s happening to me, what kind of depression it is, etc,” I can fix it.

This isn’t wrong but it isn’t fully right either. Yes, I have a better understanding of my mind, of my family, and of my relationships, but a lot of my downs were caused by not living the life I needed to live. This is what I try to do now.

And, while it took decades to realize this, I’m now at the point where if I am spending a lot of time trying to understand someone else’s behavior then that is a sign that we are oil and water. Or salsa and reggaeton. :)

There’s a desperation in spending a lot of time trying to understand someone else - “If I can understand them then I can make some changes or I can change them.”

Probably not. Probably you need to spend time with people who let you be you and who don’t make you doubt yourself.

This has been a big lesson for me this year. If I’m with you and I’m dancing or laughing then my fight-and-flight-oriented nervous system has calmed down and I feel safe. And, when I feel safe, I am happy.

So, here are three tips for those of you who keep thinking that you can think your way through everything:

New YouTube: Learn Storytelling from DJs, Memes, and Songwriters

What do songwriting, meme-making, and DJ-ing have in common with great strategy?

They’re all forms of storytelling - rhythm, structure, emotion, and timing.

In this episode of Cuts on Craft, three strategists break down how they use music, memes, and story to move people. From emotional hooks to cultural drops, we explore how strategy and creativity share the same beat.

Featuring

• Matthew Ryan - Sr. Director, Creative Strategy, Universal

• Hayley Truncali - Director of Cultural Insights, Fact & Fiction

• Luis Miranda - Group Strategy Director, Critical Mass

Watch now.

Meet Friends From Medellín

I’ve met so many people in the past few years but I have done a terrible job of sharing photos and videos with them. I’m going to change this. Here are a few people in Medellín for you to know.

Oh, and here’s the correct link to local Strategy Director Juliana Escobar’s Instagram (I made a typo last week): @julianaescobar___.

• Khyati Shah aka Kiki has lived in Medellín for 5 years. She is a Design Director and she runs a lot of local events through The Nomad Social. Follow if you’d like to make friends in Medellín.

• Juliana Grisales is a big tour operator here. She runs Top 10 Tours Medellin. I went to Guatape last week through here.

• Lucia Garcia is from the north coast of Colombia. This means she has a different flare. She’s a designer working in business development for a Brazilian tech company. I wish I could dance as well as her.

• Lauren Kim came to my masterclass in Seoul and told stories of her time in Latin America. She quit Deloitte the day of my masterclass and is now keen to meet people working in change management in Mexico. DM me if you’d like to meet her.

I Love This Spotify Trick

Is this trick well known? I’ve used Spotify since the first day it arrived in the USA but I had no idea about this.

Search “daylist” and Spotify will generate a playlist based on what you like to listen to at that time of day. I find it much better than the DJ.

Shoutouts to strategist DJ Bizhan Govindji for the tip.

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

Subscribe now

Today:

1. Brand Characters - What The Research Says

2. Brand Characters - Making Them Work

3. Brand Characters - Making Them

4. Four Points - Nosotros Panty Liners

Have you read: How To Make A Presentation Make A Point?

Things to do:

1. Come to Aisha Hakim’s portfolio building masterclass on Thursday

2. Get tickets to November’s The Sweathead Do-Together (NYC, Chicago, online)

3. Meet strategists like you - free event, Friday, October 17

4. New video drops this week: Sweathead YouTube channel

5. Add me on LinkedIn - I opened my profile after having it closed for years

Interested in strategy training for your company anywhere in the world or online, find out more here.

**

✨ 2025 Strategy Masterclasses

New dates announced. I’ll also be coming through Chicago and NYC in November.

• Wed Dec 3 - Johannesburg 🇿🇦

• Fri Dec 5 - Nairobi 🇰🇪

• Mon Dec 8 - Lagos 🇳🇬

• Wed Dec 10 - Dubai 🇦🇪

• Thu Dec 11 - Doha 🇶🇦

• Sat Dec 13 - Riyadh 🇸🇦

• Sun Dec 14 - Jeddah 🇸🇦

• Tue Dec 16 - Cairo 🇪🇬

• Thu Dec 18 - Istanbul 🇹🇷

🌍 2026 Global Strategy Masterclasses ✨

• Jan / Feb - South-East Asia

• March - India 🇮🇳 (+Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka possible)

• April / May - UK & Europe

• Late May - Sydney 🇦🇺

• September - North America 🇺🇸🇨🇦

• October - LATAM 🌎

• December - Middle East & Africa 🌍

**

Give Your Brand Character With Characters

Brand Characters - What The Research Says

Chances are that you remember an ad from your childhood. A catchphrase, a jingle, or a character etched itself into your memory so well that you’ll think about it every now and then. Just as well because this is exactly what distinctive brand assets are meant to do.

If we use the word “advertising” to mean “communicating to sell”, then the role of advertising is this: to get people’s attention and to trigger an emotional reaction so that a brand and its distinctive assets can get a toehold in people’s memory…breathe…so that, when people think about buying something the brand sells, hopefully they think of the brand and buy it.

tl;dr = get attention, trigger emotional reaction, insert brand asset, sell later.

Most of the research I’ve seen quoted about this topic comes from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute in Australia and from System 1:

Brand assets include:

• Characters

• Pack images

• Logos

• Shapes/signifiers

• Colors

• Slogans

• Typefaces

• Sonic devices

See:

When it comes to characters, here’s what the research says:

• Brand characters boost long-term business effects when they’re used long-term.
  Source - Research by System1 Shows Memorable Characters in Ads Boost Chances of Profit by 30%, Little Black Book, 2019

• Brand characters build memory shortcuts but must be famous and unique. Source - Brands of Distinction, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 2013

• Brand characters make stories easier to process. They increase emotional resonance and recognition. Source - Look out! Advertising’s effectiveness problem is staring us in the face, IPA 2021

So, the research suggests that brand characters make good memories and good memories can make money.

Brand Characters - Making Them Work

When I was your age, I thought brand characters were super cringe - like someone my age saying, “super cringe”. But, now I am mature and I realize that two important dynamics are true:

1. We need good discipline with our brand assets, and

2. We need exceptional story-telling and creative work.

This is what the research says.

To make brand characters work, you need:

1. Good brand stewardship - possibly a small group of people who hold the brand together internally and in agencies.

2. A commitment to the long-term - a lot of brands come up with campaigns that don’t have a lot of connective tissue except for a logo, a typeface, and some colors. This is the easy stuff. Characters require time to grow on people.

3. Famous campaigns - there’s little point in having characters then sitting on your hands. You need to send them into the world to grab attention in epic ways.

4. Characters to lead over celebrities - a lot of ads with celebrities mostly advertize the celebrity. This ad from State Farm is an excellent example of good brand stewardship (Arnold is wearing the brand) but also exceptional story-telling.

Brand Characters - Making Them

First of all, here are the new brand characters for Sweathead - our Sweatheads.

There are three: Kiti, Sharpeen, and Hi-Lite.

You can read the deck our friends at Modafoca made for us so you can see the process.

I was in Santo Domingo twice earlier this year. The city is tough but the creativity, the music, and the people took my heart (so much so I made this YouTube video about creativity in Santo Domingo).

I met the team at Modafoca and, having fallen in love with dembow but also with Latin America on my mind, I decided that I wanted to develop characters that were centered in Latin America.

The brief: “Strategy but dembow”.

Kiti - The Boss Of Volume

Kiti is a dog. A sausage dog. In a kitipo. Kitipos are these crazy sound systems that Dominicans unleash on each other - massive speakers, crazy noise. Kiti will be the heart of the Sweathead brand. Kiti’s goal is to make you louder with your ideas.

Sharpeen - The Queen Of Ideas

Sharpeen and Hi-Lite were built from what we were already doing with the Sweathead brand plus my own social media - black pen scribbles and yellow highlights. When designers build on something that exists, it melts my heart.

Hi-Lite - Chief Clarity Officer

Hi-Lite is a little like one of my favorite dembow artists Angel Dior. We see him like one of the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz but if the monkeys weren’t evil - zipping around the world, fetching ideas, helping people with their own clarity.

When I work with designers, I try to:

• Make each step minimal - I just need one slide with the idea, a reference or sketch,

• Understand the designer's decision - “Help me understand the main decisions that led to the idea or that make the idea worth pursing further,”

• Let the designer lead - I always want to know what excites the designer. If they’re excited, they’ll give us their attention and push the thinking further.

• Let additional ideas emerge - Originally, we sought one character but then other characters appeared and, as much as we tried to resist being a client, we did say, “What about all of them?” But, in a workshop, two weeks ago, we decided to make Kiti (the dog) central to the brand with Sharpeen and Hi-Lite acting as Kiti’s soldiers.

• Be low maintenance - You have to trust the people you hire. We didn’t fuss or fiddle much. In fact, usually, I try to limit my reactions to 2-3 key thoughts or notes (I hate the word “feedback”).

In our first review with Modafoca, I could immediately tell that we’d get along. They trusted my “strategy but dembow” direction (which some people might have shrunk from) and each direction they presented had some connection to the Sweathead brand, dembow culture, and what we do.

So big thanks to the team. Now to bring these characters to life.

May you do the same.

Four Points - Nosotras Panty Liners

I mentioned local Colombian Strategy Director Juliana Escobar (give her a follow: @julianaescobar___ and LinkedIn) last week. I don’t think there are more than 20 strategists in Medellin but Juliana is one of the best.

Juliana and her team at Jaimeuribe recently collected a silver Effie and Juliana shared the Four Points (from “Strategy Is Your Words”) that led to it. The brand is Nosotros panty liners.

I’ve not done the best job of taking photos or videos when we have all met up on my travels and I need to do a better job of it. This is me trying to do a better job :)

Feel free to share your Four Points with me. I love seeing them.

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

Friends, I’m experimenting with moving our newsletter to Substack. Hence why it looks and smells different.

Today:

1. Strategy Is Not A Back Office Function

2. Medellín Reflections

3. Tarot and Horoscopes

Things for you to do:

1. Come to Aisha Hakim’s portfolio building masterclass

2. Get tickets to November’s The Sweathead Do-Together (NYC, Chicago, online)

3. Meet strategists like you - free event, October 17

4. Watch the new Sweathead YouTube channel (Sydney Sweeney)

5. Add me on LinkedIn - I opened my profile after having it closed for years

6. Listen to my new song: “Hold It Against Me”

New AI tool from Davis Ballard:

Give your idea a reality check using 1050 marketing 1,050+ behavioral science studies and ad effectiveness books grounded in research from IPA, Ehrenberg-Bass, and more. Davis is one of my reggaeton friends. His partner Noa is also a crazy illustrator.

**

✨ 2025 Strategy Masterclasses

New dates announced. I’ll also be coming through Chicago and NYC in November.

• Wed Dec 3 - Johannesburg 🇿🇦

• Fri Dec 5 - Nairobi 🇰🇪

• Mon Dec 8 - Lagos 🇳🇬

• Wed Dec 10 - Dubai 🇦🇪

• Thu Dec 11 - Doha 🇶🇦

• Sat Dec 13 - Riyadh 🇸🇦

• Sun Dec 14 - Jeddah 🇸🇦

• Tue Dec 16 - Cairo 🇪🇬

• Thu Dec 18 - Istanbul 🇹🇷

🌍 2026 Global Strategy Masterclasses ✨

• Jan / Feb - South-East Asia

• March - India 🇮🇳 (+Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka possible)

• April / May - UK & Europe

• Late May - Sydney 🇦🇺

• September - North America 🇺🇸🇨🇦

• October - LATAM 🌎

• December - Middle East & Africa 🌍

**

Strategy Is Not A Back Office Function

The Last Job I’ll Ever Have

In the last job I’ll ever have, I was Head of Strategy of an 800-person PR agency in New York. I was told that new senior hires never fitted in. I was told that most people in the agency didn’t want strategists. I was told that the company wanted to do “earned media ideas,” which meant very different things to each of us because, to me, getting words from a press release into the news was low aura stuff. And, despite red flags that I desperately ignored, I took the job so that, later, I could be told, “You’re not a culture fit.”

PR is an individualistic, full-contact sport. PR people live and die by their network, their ability to influence their network, and their personal reputations that lead to more network to influence.

In New York City, where every second person says they’re a Type A personality and they’re either desperately trying to keep a grip on living in one of the most expensive cities in the world or they’re a nepo baby and they’re given an assistant during their summer internship (true story), the Corporate America vibes are frothy and feral.

I was a sucker in this environment. I tried to play soccer when I needed to play tennis. Singles tennis. With a sword.

And then it happened:
- “Hi there, my boss told me to come and ask you for an insight for our deck. We need to send it in two hours.”
- “Oh, would you like fries with that?”

Constantly, strategists were treated like internal service providers:
- “Give me stuff that makes me look smart in front of my clients but please don’t come out of the shadows as I have a reputation to handle.”

But here’s the thing: strategy is not a back-office function.

Lena Roland, Content Director at WARC, shared the above piece of research on LinkedIn this week. It’s from WARC’s annual “The Future of Strategy Report”.

On the left, you’ll see Tomas Gonsorcik (LinkedIn), Global CSO, say this:

“We have to rebrand strategy - not as a back-office function, not as a luxury, but as a service. Strategy as a service: clear, accountable, and indispensable.”

It took me moving to New York to understand how muscular advertising agencies and strategy are (or, were) in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

In high-performing agencies, there is an almost-aggressive focus on the work. Fighting for it. Everyone. Otherwise - get out of the way.

Agencies that focus on organizational charts, process, and job titles tend to be low-performing agencies because they have no creative heart.

But, like many of you, I thought my problem was a Me Problem and not an Us Problem.

I thought I just didn’t have the political skills or will to help strategy move from the back-office to the front-office in this particular agency. And the gaslighting made me realize how much I love strategy - doing it and teaching it - but how I’m allergic to Corporate America. So I built what I do now.

Front-Office Strategy Is Not That Hard

There are a few things that need to be in place for strategy to be front-office:

1. A sense of team over individual

Strategists can struggle in PR firms because PR firms are individualistic, plus they’re riddled with nepotism and dotted lines and matrix org charts. What’s more, creative departments often hold people who’ve never worked with strategists before. Yes, this has changed a little but I do speak with hundreds of people around the world every year so I’m not going to congratulate incremental change.

Strategists are rarely the first point of contact in an agency so they need the first point of contact to pull them in early and keep them there often. This will only happen if the first point of contact wants to play a team sport and has the leadership skills to do so.

2. Time to build real relationships with clients

In most agencies, the account management team will be in the pocket of their clients. But they will allow the strategist time to build relationships without feeling insecure about it. The strategist will also seek a direct line with key clients so they can have informal conversations about the work. If each interaction is formal and performative, the strategist might struggle to encourage the kind of work their team is capable of.

3. A charismatic strategy team and leader

Vibes matter. We’ve all worked with people who could make clients and colleagues swoon. A stiff, boring, and corporate strategy team will struggle to be front-office. If they constantly bore people, their own colleagues will shift them to the back-office anyway.

4. A reputation that precedes the strategy team

Around 2008, I started writing about strategy. At first, I didn’t want to be that guy but then I saw the offices of my clients empty out during the financial crisis and I got tired of competing in meetings. So I decided to write so that, in many rooms I’d enter, people might have a sense of how I thought before I entered the room.

I was working at Leo Burnett at the time. My boss was Todd Sampson, a strategist with a big reputation and, since then, someone who’s appeared on many TV shows. And the people I worked with all had amazing pedigrees and brands. We were competitive and we cared about doing good work. Clients wanted us in the room.

We didn’t have to constantly explain ourselves as happens so often in the USA in companies new to all of this and who don’t really want to change.

We just did the work and tried to help some of the best creative teams in the country do their work.

Just like with brands, strategy teams need reputations because reputations pull people into situations for which they don’t have to go sniffing around the building.

5. An unapologetic business model

Procurement has made a mess of our industry. The way agencies have had to open their books to reveal salaries and margins to clients is an embarrassment. Sure, there are a few people in procurement and a few forceful marketers who’ll fight to bring in their agency, but, mostly, Corporate America forces a blandness onto everything it touches - including the agency business model.

When strategy is strong and front-office, it appears on scopes by default. The Head of Strategy doesn’t have to chase projects through the corridors to beg for a strategist to be put on projects.

The Ultimate Front-Office Green Flag

Years ago, I interviewed Ilana Bryant (LinkedIn). I believe Ilana was the first American planner to work in London. This is quite a feat considering how Brits perceive Americans.

In the interview, she said that if a strategist’s or account planner’s name was on the building then it meant strategy or account planning was a legitimate activity in the agency.

These days, agencies don’t have such cute names as the partners’ initials but, as I’ve wondered why I made so many poor career decisions in New York and why I was eventually serving fries with ten slides of strategy having never met the clients, it’s so apt.

**

Medellín Reflections

Today ends my first month in Medellín as an experiment to see if I want to spend more time here. It’s the longest I’ve stayed in one Airbnb. I’m shifting from la Ciudad del Rio to San Diego, which is next to the Creative District, to see if it’s somewhere I could see us having a base - maybe even a studio.

Don’t hate me but I’m not in Colombia for the gringos. When I travel, I travel to meet the locals. I do feel eyes on me a lot of the time and I’ve been trying to understand the local dynamic. Luckily, I have met quite a few people in our industry (although Bogotá houses more of them) and I’ve enjoyed a lot of different experiences so far. But, I do feel a sense of conservative-ness here. And this is how I understand it:

Growth & Perception

• Medellín has only recently opened up.

• It’s harder to reach than many major cities.

• Its reputation for being unsafe slows what could be ridiculous growth.

• The recent growth isn’t benefiting all locals.

• But I believe it will become an increasingly important city in the years ahead.

Social Fabric

• Medellín is known for its mercantile mindset - people are enterprising, but also conservative in some circles.

• Heard locally:

  • “Medellín is closed, as if the mountains have closed it in.”

  • “Medellín is a napkin - it’s small, everyone knows everyone.”

• In industries like advertising: many went to the same conservative schools. Families all know each other.

• Catholicism still has a hold - although I have also heard that you can pray away your sins if you’re Catholic.

• Because it’s small, there’s a lot of “recycling” of boyfriends and girlfriends.

• Also, reputation management matters in the face of gossip.

Add to all of this the stress from Medellín’s recent history:

History & Context

• Medellín was a war zone in the 1990s → many families still carry grief.

• Gringos are a relatively recent phenomenon, especially post-pandemic.

• Gringos have taken over big sections of the city making them impossible for many locals to afford.

All of this leads to people “watching” other people more than in other cities I’ve spent time in. (Although some watching is seeing if you could be a good target). I think a lot of locals try to analyze what kind of foreigner people are before opening up. And, even if they do open up, they will keep eyes on who’s around them in case a friend, a relative, or former lover is nearby.

My Cheatlist For Medellín

Tarot And Horoscopes

One of my local Medellín friends does tarot reading. She’s a strategy director and existential coach (@julianaescobar___ and @llenadesentido) . She pulled this card for me and I couldn’t relate more. El Cogado - or, The Hanged Man.

Someone also did my birth chart recently and it was surreal because, if it were any more accurate, it could have described what I do every day.

The Hanged Man

Meaning: Suspension, surrender, new perspective.

From ChatGPT:

“The Hanged Man hangs upside down by choice - not as punishment but as revelation. He pauses in stillness, seeing the world from another angle. This card asks for letting go of control to gain clarity. It’s the moment between effort and breakthrough, where progress comes through patience, sacrifice, or a shift in viewpoint.

Light side: Acceptance, wisdom, awakening.

Shadow side: Stagnation, avoidance, self-pity.

Psychological take:
It’s the ego in timeout - learning that control and motion are not the same as growth. You don’t move forward by forcing, but by re-seeing what’s already there.”

Uncanny. Being in Medellín for a month without doing big events has been a challenge. I’ve had friends visit, which is a wonderful distraction, but my body keeps wanting me to choose Comet Mode and hurtle to the next place. I’ve been trying to sit with discomfort while also appreciating how incredible this year has been so far.

-
Peace
Mark
@markpollard

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

** Follow me @markpollard on Instagram.

You’re in front of a group of people. Your jaw juts and words poke out almost by themselves. The room seems glazed. Its den of eyes stare out, but are turned off from the inside. CLICK. You make the next slide appear. It thumps to arrival. The eyes don’t stir.

You turn to the presentation. The numbers, sources, and bullet points stare back. Nervous you might forget something that will utterly convince the eyes to return to your allotted time of thirty-minutes-plus-five-minutes-for-questions, you read aloud one hundred words. Thirty seconds pass. You find your back to the room, and you remember that the presentation class said, “Don’t turn your back to the room.”

You catch your mistake and you spin around like a belle at a ball. The G-force knocks your thoughts from your skull. You jut your jaw. No words poke out. Your cheeks fizz, your throat dries, your breath halts. This moment was going to make you. Then, to bring yourself back to earth, you wonder, “Why am I here again?”

Great question.

“Why am I here again?”

Humans are blessed and cursed with the ability to ask this question. Where other animals are free to animal, this question tickles and shin-kicks human brains day in, day out. Answers have led to art, war, love, hate, articles for business websites, and cumbersome presentations. And, if you’ve ever frozen in front of a presentation, as Michael Jackson once sang, “Remember the time.”

You’re here to do three things:

1. Make a point

2. Make people care about your point

3. Ask for something

We’ll focus on your point - how to get to it, how to structure it, and how to design it.

First: Aim for story rainbows, not information monsters

Many presentations feel like leafing through a collection of index cards in an old library catalog.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

Agenda, Overview, Objectives, Research, Competitors, Strategy, Metrics.

• Bullet point

• Bullet point

• Bullet point

Information matters and bullet points have a place. But presentations like this are what I call “Information Monsters”. They are big, long, huge, and overwhelming. One hundred slides and no point makes people want to hide under the bed until you’re gone.

A common breed of Information Monster in the agency world is the Statistactic. This is a presentation with tens of slides of useless numbers and then the output of every brain fart that happened in the rushed agency brainstorms - a bunch of tactics. Stuff we could do but we don’t really have a strong opinion about any of it.

“Story Rainbows,” on the other hand, are presentations that try to captivate, not subdue. They have a main, just-left-of-center point, and they re-assemble all the information around this main point. “Story Rainbows” travel infinity, whereas “Information Monsters” get stuck on company networks and they lurk there infinity.

So keep the Story Rainbow in mind as we go through the mechanics of making presentations make a point.

How to make your point

Start by asking questions: This is a set of questions to keep handy at all times. These questions will help you bridge what your audience asked for (or what you would expect them to ask for) and what you think they need now that you’ve done the research.

Do a point dump: Take a piece of paper and, as you work through the information, capture key points. Even if you need to use long words in the presentation, try to use short words on paper. This is how I started work on this article.

Find the words: All creative work tends to go through divergent (exploring lots of stuff) and convergent (narrowing and focusing) phases. Having dumped your points on paper, play this game on your brain: think about the one short word that best summarizes your point. Then think of others and mind map them (or list them). Feel for words that don’t seem too obvious and common. For this article, “pointy” is a word I like. I also like puns and dad jokes.

Play with titles: You might have farmed a few fine words from the previous exercise. Choose one and then list possible titles. You can do this on paper or take notes on your phone through the day as your sub-conscience kicks in. This is a good time to take a walk. It’s also a time to get your brain into an arm-wrestle—move it back and forth between words, seek less common language, push everything shorter and sharper. You’ll often need to use a mental keyword (“presentation” is the mental keyword in this article) but nudge something less common into it or use a common word in an uncommon way.

Three examples for this article:

1. How To Make A Presentation (the starting point but not specific enough)

2. How To Make A Presentation Make A Point (using “make” in concrete and figurative ways)

3. How To Make A Pointy Presentation (a shorter and less obvious version of 2.)

You can settle on a title now or keep a couple alive.

The real challenge is re-visiting your Information Monster with your word and title in mind, knowing you’ll have to do three things:

1. Select the information that fits

2. Let go of information that does not fit

3. Re-write your points based on your word and title

The presentation plan

Stories tend to have three acts. As I plan my presentation, I plot them out in this:

Story: What’s the Single Most Important Thing (S.M.I.T.) you want people to take from this presentation? Here, use your words from before. For this article, I want you to know there are practical ways to make a presentation make more of an impact.

Theatre: What’s a provocative way to bring my point to life? In this TEDx talk (The World Would Be Less Strange If We Stopped Making Strangers Out Of Men), I wanted to talk about how little we know men and how hard it is to be vulnerable. My theatre was two-fold: first, I didn’t use a presentation because I didn’t want to hide, and, second, I wore a shirt that I bought on the way to my grandfather’s funeral, and I ended with a story about being with him when he passed away and what another man said to me at his funeral.

Act I/II/III: When you hear someone say that a good presentation has a beginning, a middle, and an end, this is what they are talking about. It’s borrowed from screenwriting.

Act I tends to start with the regular routine and happens in the “real world,” which is the current status quo. It also tends to start with an Opening Image. Think of this as your hook. How will you poke people in the brain to get them to pay attention? Common business examples include:

• A provocative question (“When’s the last time you made a presentation that made a point?”)

• A statistic (“Did you know that 99% of presentations don’t make a point?”)

• A small moment (“So I was sitting in a room and could see someone’s mouth moving…”)

Act II breaks the routine and happens in the “other world,” the one that is possible with the solution that you’re presenting. It often ends with a Long Dark Night (almost beaten and ruminating, the hero collects herself and returns for Act III). In a business presentation, a Long Dark Night might be a “What If We Don’t Do This?” provocation.

Act III returns to some kind of routine in the “real world.” It tends to finish with a closing image that is the opposite of the opening image. Writers also call this follow-through—when you mention an idea or anecdote early and then re-frame it later.

Two examples for this article:

• We conclude by mimicking Oprah and we say, “Now you get a point. You get a point. You get a point. You get a point. Look under your chairs, the presentation is there.”

• Instead of doing an Anthony Robbins and getting everyone to walk on hot coals, we bring in a Balloon Fish and ask everyone to poke it so they can see how pointy it gets (if we did this we could even start with a story about a Balloon Fish)

A fall-back structure for advertising presentations is no more complicated than:

1. Scene-setting: What We Did and What We Found (research, audience definition, problem definition, competitive analysis)

2. Rising action: What We’ll Do About It (brand strategy, ideas, manifestos, channels, communications plan)

3. Denouement: How We’ll Do It And Make It Work (team, process, metrics, budget)

Close: How can you make your point end strong? You may like to summarize the three key things you discussed but don’t then turn to a slide that says, “Thanks.” You can get the group of people to do something, you can finish with a small story, you might play video of an interview you conducted. End, don’t disappear.

Keepsake: What can you leave behind to keep the point alive? A typical leave-behind is a printed, bound version of your presentation. Cool. Swag is also common. Leaving behind a balloon fish aquarium? Now that’s a keepsake.

Keep your point pointy

Before slides. It’s easy to feel you are doing the universe’s work when you dive into creating slides. But try not to do that. Spend as much time as possible on your story and the points you’d like to make. This will reduce the time it will take you to make the presentation.

This tool - The Pointmaker - is high-tech but useful. Take a piece of paper, divide it into boxes, then take a thick black marker and write your story with one sentence per box and so that the story makes sense on this one page. “Goldilocks went to the woods. She found a house. She entered the house.” And so on. This will keep your slides honest.

Happy Endings

You are your own work in progress, your own fun fact, your own meeting agenda. All of my points here are just a bunch of ideas and tools. You have your journey to take. You have more control over how you approach a presentation than its outcome. You have more control over how you practice presentation skills than how a presentation is received. It is all an experiment.

But if you can look into the bathroom mirror of Floor 21 of that downtown building and have a clear, visceral answer to the question “What am I doing here?” then others will want to be Here and wherever Here goes with you.

Stay pointy, my friends. We’re all Story Rainbows on the inside.

Now

1. Find out about our strategy classes at Sweathead

2. Follow us @markpollard and @sweathead

3. Watch us on YouTube - my travel channel, our strategy channel

4. Find my book “Strategy Is Your Words” here

1. Please Complete Our AI Survey This Week

2. London Strategy Masterclass with me - Thursday, Feb 1

3. FREE livestream with some of the UK’s best strategy minds

So far, it looks like we'll see the below APG gold-winning cases and more:
1. Leo Burnett x McDonald's - Tom Sussman, Deputy CSO
2. The Gate London x Replens - Kit Altin, CSO
3. Pablo x Flora Plant - Joan Devereux, Planning Director
4. Special Forces x Partners Life - Rory Gallery, CSO
5. adam&eveDDB x CALM x ITV - Will Grundy, Head Of Planning
6. Lucky Generals x Yorkshire Tea - Loz Horner, Strategy Partner
7. Aldi's and McCann's EFFIE-winning case with Jamie Peate

And we'll hear trend predictions from
1. Amy Daroukakis - Cultural Strategist, Culture Concierge
2. Carlotta Monzani - Senior Strategist, Ogilvy
3. Athena Chen - Cultural Foresight Strategist, RADAR
4. The team at Canvas8

This week’s episode of Sweathead:
Going Hard On LinkedIn - Alex M H Smith
Alex has been tearing up LinkedIn this year with his frequently viral strategy posts. I wanted to find out what he's doing and what he's learned.

**

How To Know You Might Be A Strategist

"I fell into strategy" is a common strategist refrain. "I was working in an agency in another department and someone said I might be better suited as a strategist" is a sentence that often comes next.

Truth is, a lot of people who end up in strategy didn't know it was a career until they were in their twenties.

Yes, the USA has a lot of advertising courses in college (or, university) so it's different here. In Australia, I don't know if I worked with anyone who did a 3- or 4- year degree in advertising. It was very rare. 

Anyway, there are a few clusters of traits and behaviors that are common with many strategists. Here are the ones I see most:

1. Strategists are students

Strategists love to learn. They ask questions. They nerd out on things most people don’t. Their minds are insatiable. And personal development is very important.

Strategy bosses will often say they look for curiosity. Curiosity is an expression of one of the Big 5 Personality Traits–the O for Openness. Openness is being open to new experiences, variety, novelty.

Being curious is one thing. I think the thing is that strategists will often act like students, delving into their clients and the topics they need to understand as if they were preparing for an exam.

The challenges for some strategists, however, are getting lost in the information and treating their work as something to get "right"–so they can avoid failing the imaginary exam.

2. Strategists are people-watchers

This can make many strategists seem aloof but, if you put a strategist in a room, many of them will  watch who’s doing what. If you put tens of them in a room at a strategy event, well, that just gets awkward. You know it :)

Some people are just wired like this–maybe a streak of introversion exists in the family but, sometimes, people-watching is a response to trauma. For example, growing up in a volatile household can make some people retreat to being an observer as the child tries to navigate adult emotions.

3. Strategists are performers

Most strategists who survive the industry for a few years learn they can’t just entertain themselves in their own heads–they need to take command of rooms and put on shows.

Strategy bosses will compile a team with different shades but, if a strategist can't compel people with their thinking, it puts more load on everyone else in the team to do so.

Being quiet and smart and useful is superb. But...being able to perform useful smarts will help a strategy career more.

4. Strategists are jesters

This doesn’t work in all work cultures but strategists often say the thing that needs to be said or ask the question that needs to be asked. This carries risk and many strategists pay for this over their careers. 

Sure, some strategists are master politicians–they never say anything wrong, they deprecate to the client, and they let difficult questions fly by. I've worked with people like this. And, sometimes, this person is an excellent strategist and not just politically astute.

But many of us don't have this in us. And so we risk our careers by saying the things we think need to be said.

5. Strategists are therapists

The older you get, the more you realize that listening to people, helping them find common ground, and working with them on a plan is very much like therapy. 

In my classes, someone will often say, "This feels like therapy." 

It can feel a little negative but, when I ask in response, "Well, what's therapy and why does strategy feel like therapy?" it's easy to make the connections.

6. Strategists are adventurers

Many strategists can come across as nerds running around in their own heads but there’s a sense of adventure to strategy work. It starts with this sentence: “I don’t know but let’s go and find out.”

Indoor Strategists (haha sorry but I think I'm going to use this from now on) are wonderful but the strategist who gallivants around the outside world will likely have a more fulfilling career.

7. Strategists are writers

It’s hard to be good at strategy without being good at writing. Why? Well, writing is thinking. And, to captivate people with your ideas, you need to be able to write (and speak) in a way worth paying attention to.

Find the full article here. 

- Mark
@markpollard, Author of "Strategy Is Your Words"
Sweathead

I’m not sure what happened but a lot of people subscribed to my Substack this week.

It hasn’t been active. But maybe it needs to be.

Especially if you like to laugh and cry at the same time:

You can find and share this on Instagram.

Also, we have a lot of free ebooks.

Start with this one (no registration required). It’s a compilation of our most-read strategy tips: Sweathead’s Top 2023 Strategy Tips.

Then…

1. Mastering Insights
A 45-page ebook (including a chapter from my book "Strategy Is Your Words").

2. Student Work From The Sweathead Strategy Accelerator
70 pages. Next accelerators: March & October, 2024.

3. A Mini Guide To Comms Planning
by Media by Mother's Maria Van Buskirk

4. How To Do Strategy
The big one, read by over 100,000 people

5. The Strategist's Career Planning Toolkit
Get your career in shape

So…professionals, do I do Substack plus my regular weekly newsletter?

LMK.

I hope you’re well,
Mark @markpollard
Sweathead, Strategy With Friends