Category: Articles

“There are two kinds of pain in this world. The pain that hurts, the pain that alters.”

One of my favourite quotes from a movie.

That movie is The Equalizer 2.

TL;DR it’s what John Wick should’ve been.

Anyways. This isn’t going to be checklist and things you need to do but more a “hey you, yes you!” you need to reframe that pain.

Most of us are stuck in this type of limbo where we just let pain hurt us all the time.

We haven’t learnt to switch it around and use it as the type of pain that alters us.

Sometimes it does come naturally, or out of a forced situation, but most of the time the types of pain we suffer from are self inflicted due to how complacent and lazy we’ve become.

(Unless someone has driven a sledgehammer into your foot, then that’s real pain that hurts and you should probably get that checked out)

The point is this:

We can hurt and be in pain and be miserable and want to eat all of the cake and ignore the world. But that pain is just going to make us get deeper into a spiral.

We need to learn to use that pain and turn it into a pain that alters.

But do you know how to do that?

I’ll let you have a little think about it cause it’s definitely some weird spiritual and philosophical view, although it’s good to get the think-y bits in your brain box working again.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you haven’t seen them before. I suggest you watch them. It’s just better than John Wick.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I know the world feels like it’s circling the drain most days.

Open social media and it’s rage bait, grifters, and people filming themselves pretending to care about things for clicks.

Then there’s the performative empaths doing things like it’s some new TikTok trend.

But then there’s Josh…

This guy goes around handing out food, cash, whatever people need and he does it because he actually gives a shit.

Not because there’s a camera crew staging the perfect “wholesome moment.”

Not because he’s building a personal brand called Kindness™ or whatever.

He just does it.

And his community? (Yes we know a lot of communities are batshit unhinged)

They are the ones who help fund it.

Real people throwing in real money so Josh can keep being a decent human in a world that’s forgotten what that looks like.

No marketing spin. No “join our movement” horseshit. Just a guy who saw people struggling and thought, “Yeah, I should probably help.”

I don’t know about you, but that hits different, especially this time of the year.

And I know how easy it is to get cynical. Easy to assume every good deed is just another play to appeal to the social media engine.

Easy to think everyone’s in it for themselves.

Josh is out there proving that wrong though.

And maybe that’s the thing we need to remember when the news cycle feels like a slow motion car crash and half the internet is trying to sell you something you don’t need. (I DON’T WANT YOUR SCENTED CANDLES TIFFANY)

There are still good people doing good things.

Not for applause. Not for shares.

Just because it’s the right fucking thing to do.

So yeah. The world’s still dark in a lot of places.

But there’s light too.

And sometimes it looks like Josh, walking around his neighbourhood, making someone’s day a little less heavy.

That’s it. That’s the email.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you know someone like Josh in your world, someone doing the work without the performance, tell them they matter. We need more of that energy going into 2026. Oh and someone’s chopping onions on this side of the world right now…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Thought I’d hit you with a little bit of direct response shenanigans today, mainly cause my brain is mush.

Ever notice how sending an email these days feels like shouting at a wall, hell…

Even social media posts tend to just sit there and feel meh.

The thing is.

You fire off a message. Then you hear cricket sounds. Follow up some more. Then even more crickets.

And you start wondering if you’ve somehow become a ghost, if this is your “Sixth Sense” moment and nobody told you.

But we all do this and you get it. Cause you also treat your inbox/feeds like a biohazard zone.

Opening it feels like cracking a door where you trapped something feral and unpredictable.

We’re drowning in the wreckage of the attention economy. (THANK YOU GARY VEE)

Everything feels like a public square set on fire, where strangers attempt to relocate their problems into your Tuesday afternoon.

So what do you do when you actually need someone to respond?

Time to steal from the people we love to hate…

Salespeople.

Yeah, I know. Those “HUGE SAVINGS TODAY ONLY” emails make you want to throw your laptop out the window. But they work. And whether we like it or not, they understand human psychology better than most therapists.

So let’s ethically jack what they do and use it for good.

Whether you’re trying to close a work deal or convince your mate to finally pick a restaurant or place to grab a few beers.

Firstly, you need to appeal to their self interest.

Stop thinking about what YOU need and start with what THEY get. The reader doesn’t care about your goals. They care about their Tuesday not getting worse.

Don’t bury the benefit. Lead with it. First line. “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.”

Not “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, when I was a young boy…”

Get to the point ffs.

Second: Your subject line better earn its keep. The rent is due and those words need to pay up.

The best ones offer a benefit, promise news, or spark curiosity. Ideally all three.

“Newsletter #37” is not a subject line. You might as well pretty it up and send it straight to the cemetery. Nobody’s opening that.

Something like “How we quietly crushed Q2 while everyone else flailed around.”

Same information. Now it’s gossip. Now it’s alive.

Probably most important: Write like a human, I honestly don’t think I have any other way to say this.

But here goes: H U M A N

“Our groundbreaking app provides cutting edge tools to enhance workplace synergy.”

Who talks like this? Nobody you’d want to have a beer with, that’s who.

Write like you’re sitting across from someone, telling them something that matters between bites of a sandwich.

Short paragraphs (under five lines). Short sentences. No jargon that sounds like you’re regurgitating an HR manual.

“Circle back” makes me want to run in squares out of spite.

Fourth: Tell them exactly what to do. (I have no clue how people fuck this up)

Don’t hover around the point like a nervous teenager asking someone to the dance.

Give them ONE action. One deadline. Make it stupidly obvious.

Not “Let me know what you think.” Try “Can you send feedback by Wednesday so we can move forward?”

A clear call to action wins. You’re doing the hard thinking so they can just reply “yes” and get on with their life.

Here’s the dirty secret which does suck to a degree:

Nobody’s reading your email/posts. They’re skimming.

But you know what everyone reads?

The P.S.

It’s where you drop the performance and just say the thing. “P.S. Please send the draft by 5PM or the boss will lose his mind at both of us.”

These techniques are just good manners in this whole marketing shindig thing we’re doing. If you’re borrowing someone’s attention for a few minutes. Consider it a favour from them to you.

Tell people why they should care. Be friendly. Ask for one thing and make it easy.

The best types of emails/posts aren’t seen as transactions. Think of them as slow built connections.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. See? You read this bit. Now go write an email/post that doesn’t make people want to fake their own death.

P.P.S. A lot of these things can be forgotten if you’ve built somewhat of a “brand” but that’s a topic for a whole different time.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I know this world is a cold place a lot of the times.

But it can also be a beautiful place if you let it be.

Sadly today. A friend I work with got the call that nobody wants to get. His best friend has sadly taken his own life.

In this situation you can’t always think of the right words to help comfort, cause the brain switches off and emotions take over.

But if we can show that we’re there for them with actions, it makes things a little more bearable.

While human connection is hard to get nowadays, cause everyone’s living permanently online while projecting a perfect world.

We need to realise that behind every screen is an actual living person. That same person has good days, bad days and days that are so heavy that they often wonder it’s worth pushing on.

You might feel this too.

There’s no right or wrong way to approach being human, but what you need to know, that no matter how difficult things get, you matter.

You matter more than you know, even on your darkest days.

If you feel that someone might need a little help, reach out.

If you need a little help, reach out.

My inbox is always open if you need it.

This time of the year is tough but we’ll make it through it.

Look after yourself and don’t forget.

You matter.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I’m busy thumbing this email while on the last train back home.

If it sends, it sends. The signal is meh.

I had a catch up with a friend who I’ve not seen in forever.

We shot the shit, had a few espresso martini’s, did some people watching and mused on the state of the world.

We both came to the conclusion that the hyper acceleration of artificial everything is going to lobotomise society.

We’ve predicted that 2026 is going to be filled with the biggest gap of fake versus real we’ve ever seen.

It doesn’t matter what space you operate in, it’s going to be monumental and so far his and mines predictions since 2019 have all come true.

But here’s the short and sweet fix to it all…

Connection. Genuine, fun, friendly and intimate connection.

That is how we don’t get sucked into the world of fakery and bullshit.

While everyone is trying to automate their lives with AI. If you drill down into being an actual human…

You’ll be leaps and bounds ahead. Funny thing I witnessed over this last year too is, that everyone who has peddled some AI “thing” in their offers, have truly not given a rats ass about the person who buys it. They’re only in it for their own profits.

Profits of people? Not my gig.

So keep this in mind as we roll into 2026.

Connection will be the new commodity and if you can handle that. Everything will be golden.

Figure out how to make that human element stronger in what you do and you’ll wipe the floor with these AI nerds wanting to squeeze every buck out of everyone.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” – Warren Buffett

As I write this, my brain feels like applesauce.

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The reason:

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I entered into a solo retreat last Saturday, where I’m…

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Eliminating salt, oil, sugar and caffeine (and most other foods for that matter)

Meditating intensively

Restricting all inputs (social media, reading, tv, etc)

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For two weeks.

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My plan was to keep working as usual:

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Banging out YT content, emails, and the new offer I’m working on.

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But my brain had other plans, and decided to teach me a surprisingly valuable lesson in how to:

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Match the work you’re doing to the state you’re in.

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It started when I tried outlining a new YouTube video, and flew through the first 80% of the ideation phase before smacking into a brick wall when I tried to apply the final 20% polish necessary to actually record and post it.

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In other words…

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When I zoomed out and focused on the big picture — the central idea, the core points, the stories — I could see it perfectly.

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But when I zoomed in on the details — the hook, the examples, the supporting evidence — everything went fuzzy and my mind turned to mud.

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This is normal during solo retreats like this:

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Cutting out salt and stimulation and cranking my meditation volume way up pushes my analytical, detail-focused left brain into hibernation.

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But it also lights up my intuitive, vision-focused right brain and activates a higher intelligence that is often drowned out by the noise and stimulation of regular life.

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That’s the point of doing these retreats, after all.

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So I should have known better.

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But it still took my stubborn ass four days to stop fighting against my state and start working with it.

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In practical terms, that means waiting until after the retreat to:

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Polish and record YouTube videos

Write my email welcome sequence

Build out my new offer

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And instead, spending the next week:

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​Coaching one on one clients (the intuition boost has made coaching even more effective)

Clarifying my big-picture vision

Planning big ideas for content & offers

Identifying & removing any psychological blocks that are slowing down my business & personal life

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In my younger years, I would have been way too bull-headed, too brainwashed by mamba-mentality to shift gears when I ran into excessive friction.

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But this retreat has schooled me in the value of:

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Matching my work to my internal state.

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And I hope it gives you permission to dump the grindset propaganda and introduce more flow into your own work, as well.

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Of course, sometimes the task just needs doing.

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And before you shift tasks, it’s always a good idea to:

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Make sure you’re in the right state for the task ahead of time (lifestyle, diet, training, sleep)

If you’re not in the right state for the task, put yourself in it (movement, breathing, caffeine)

Try grinding for ~20 minutes until your state naturally shifts and you sink into the task.

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But sometimes that’s either not possible, not efficient, or not optimal.

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Sometimes, the wrong state for the task you planned is the right state for a task you didn’t plan.

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And sometimes you just need a nap.

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Hope that’s helpful.

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Let me know if anything landed for you.

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– T

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P.S. This means, most likely:

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No new YT talks or emails for a couple weeks.

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But I’m not sure yet.

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I’m going to run the rest of the retreat as an experiment in following my energy and seeing where it leads me.

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Should be interesting…

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“Relaxation is essential for the full expression of power.” – George Leonard, Mastery

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There’s a new type of energy floating around social media, and it’s not the good kind.

I’m calling it “Dig Bick Energy”

The not-so-nice flaccid cousin of Big Dick Energy.

Instead of confident competence, it’s just digging into topics you don’t understand and bickering about them online to sound profound.

Some masculine woo woo influencer just posted a rambling takedown of “48 Laws of Power” that perfectly demonstrates this phenomenon.

His hot take?

The book is “tragically incomplete” because it promotes a “zero sum scarcity model” and treating people like “game pieces in your own private chess match”

This is peak Dig Bick Energy.

He’s taking a complex work of historical analysis and reducing it to a simplistic strawman so he can argue against something that was never the actual point.

Robert Greene didn’t write “48 Laws of Power” as a self help manual for aspiring sociopaths, but you can tell a lot of people are running with the Patrick Bateman from American Psycho vibe instead… (They should ACTUALLY read 48 laws of power tbh)

The thing is.

He compiled centuries of historical examples showing how power actually operates in the real world.

And I’m fairly certain (If I can dig it out) that there was in interview where he states it’s more descriptive than anything.

I mean if I were a doctor, I wouldn’t prescribe taking the 48 laws of power to heart.

I guess we could also call it an instruction manual for being an absolute asshole, although if you look a lot deeper into what he was sharing and writing.

It’s 100% anthropology.

But this influencer missed that entirely because actually understanding the book would require acknowledging uncomfortable truths about how the world works.

Instead, he’d rather live in his fantasy bubble where “infinite resources are as freely available as oxygen” and everyone can just collaborate their way to success. (Which is possible but lol, just wait until someone uses one of the biologically hardwired laws against them and the herd…)

I’m down for wilful ignorance though, cause there’s no way you can try and sound smart and enlightened by watering complex ideas like that down.

The book documents how people like Cesare Borgia, Napoleon, and countless others actually gained and maintained power throughout history.

You can find those lessons morally repugnant, but pretending they don’t exist won’t make power dynamics disappear.

This is what happens when people consume content in bite sized chunks and think they understand complex topics.

They dig for surface level criticisms and bicker about half baked interpretations instead of grappling with the actual ideas.

Social media rewards this behaviour because nuanced understanding doesn’t get engagement.

Hot takes and moral posturing do. (Join Twitter and you’ll see exactly what I mean)

Next time you see someone confidently dismantling something they clearly don’t understand, you’re witnessing Dig Bick Energy in action.

Don’t be that guy.

This is also why I wanted to rip my eyes from my skull when someone tried to tell me that Blinkist would increase my book reading speeds and comprehension and LmaoGPT would fully change our views…

Anyways. That’s my Friday Soap Box session done.

Go have a kickass weekend.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Give the 48 laws of power a read and then go deep down the rabbit hole on the people it was based off. That’s when you’ll really see where this all comes from…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Give me your tired, your sleepless, your weary minds yearning to think clearly…

And I’ll remove brain fog and all of the icky gross shit that is tied to it.

Although firstly: This isn’t medical advice and if you do attempt to follow this, please do not blame me if you get the runs.

I’m just a guy with a keyboard, not a doctor with a prescription pad.

With all of that said…

Your brain is running on empty, and it’s not just because you stayed up until 4 AM doom scrolling TikTok.

Sleep deprivation literally depletes creatine levels in your brain, which is why you feel like you’re thinking through mental quicksand after a bad night.

Here’s where it gets interesting though…

Researchers took a bunch of sleep deprived meat puppets aka people, and gave half of them creatine, half a placebo…

Then they tortured them with 24 hours of no sleep plus exercise (because apparently scientists are sadists, lol go figure)

The results?

The creatine group performed significantly better on tasks that hammer your prefrontal cortex, you know, that part of your brain responsible for decision making, working memory, and not acting like a complete moron.

While the placebo group’s brains turned to mush, the creatine group maintained better mood, faster reaction times, better balance, and superior cognitive performance.

Even after being awake for 24 straight hours.

These people were functionally zombies, but creatine kept their brains firing on most cylinders while everyone else was operating at potato level intelligence. (Which honestly was me for the last few weeks or so while this illness, virus or megaultracovaids hit me)

The magic dose? Five grams, four times a day for a week in the study.

But most research shows 3/5 grams daily is enough for cognitive benefits once you’re loaded up.

It first saturates the muscles cause muscles are greedy bastards and then your brain snaps up the rest.

Your brain burns through energy like a Ferrari burns through fuel though, especially if you’re doing all that fancy think-y shit like writing or studying.

When you give it premium fuel (creatine), it runs better.

When you don’t, you get the mental equivalent of engine knock.

It’s more that foggy, sluggish, “why can’t I think straight” feeling and we’ve all been there.

I always thought brain fog was normal. But after my lack of sleep and mental activity, It was just my brain begging for better fuel.

Feed it what it needs and then like magic…

You’re a functional human again.

So if you’re feeling like you’ve been run over mentally, even if you’re eating right, sleeping right and doing all the things you’re supposed to.

Maybe try supplement creatine and get the squishy stuff between your ears a little lovin’

Don’t forget to hydrate like a mofo too. Cause for some reason your body absorbs more liquids when you’re supplementing creatine.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. For the nerds who wanna read the study, here’s some cited info and all that good stuff.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I must’ve been living under a rock the size of Montana because I just watched the first episode of Yellowstone and holy shit, where has this been all my life?

Kevin Costner as a modern day cattle baron who owns the largest ranch in America?

Sign me the fuck up. But it’s not the premise that got me.

It’s how they introduce the story that made me realise I’ve been wasting my time with everything else.

The first episode grabs you by the eyeballs from minute one and doesn’t let go.

No bullshit exposition dumps. No gentle world building. Just pure, immediate tension that makes you lean forward in your chair and forget you were supposed to be doing literally anything else with your evening.

Within the first twenty minutes, you know exactly who these people are, what they want, and why they’re willing to kill for it.

The stakes are clear, the conflicts are established, and you can practically taste the violence simmering just beneath the surface.

This is how stories need to be introduced. Not with forty five minutes of character backstory and careful setup.

Not with gentle nudges toward the plot. Just drop people into the deep end and let them swim or drown.

Yellowstone doesn’t fuck around with pleasantries.

It shows you a world where power is measured in land, family loyalty is everything, and modern progress is the enemy.

Then it throws fuel on that powder keg and lights a match.

You can feel the action coming from episode one. It’s like watching storm clouds gather on the horizon.

You can feel the tension in the air and the pressure drop as you know lightning is about to strike, you just don’t know where or when.

Now I have to binge the entire series like some kind of Montana ranch obsessed maniac, and I’m not even sorry about it.

Sometimes living under a rock means you get to discover gold when you finally crawl out.

Consider me officially obsessed.

I’ve also now considered upgrading my cabin in the woods lifestyle to a cabin in the woods that must also double as a ranch and house horses and all of that good cowboy shit too.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Here’s the trailer for your tired eyeballs.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

It’s 6 AM on Cyber Monday and Karen from accounting is already having a nervous breakdown in the break room because the flash sale on artisanal dog sweaters ended at 6:01 AM and she “literally cannot function” without securing a £200 cashmere turtleneck for Mr. Whiskers.

“This is worse than Black Friday,” she sobs into her pumpkin spice latte.

“At least then I could physically fight someone for the last discounted item. Now I’m just refreshing browser tab and crying at my laptop.”

Dave from IT walks in, looking like he hasn’t slept since last Tuesday.

“I’ve been monitoring seventeen different retail websites since midnight,” he announces to no one in particular. “My cart abandonment rate is higher than my credit score.”

“Did you get the limited edition gaming chair?” asks Brad from marketing, who’s been stress eating donuts since the office opened.

“Sold out in fourteen seconds,” Dave replies, dead behind the eyes.

“Fourteen. Fucking. Seconds. I had three browsers open, autofill enabled, payment info saved, and still got beat by some bot army in Bangladesh.”

Karen looks up from her tissues. “I tried to buy those wireless headphones that were 80% off, but the website crashed right as I was entering my credit card info. When it came back up, they’d increased the price by 200% and called it a Cyber Monday Special Deal.’”

“That’s nothing,” says Linda from HR, who’s been unusually quiet.

“I accidentally bought a £1400 espresso machine because I was rage clicking through checkout errors. I don’t even drink coffee.”

“Can you return it?” Brad asks.

“All Cyber Monday sales are final,” Linda whispers. “I now own a professional grade espresso machine and I’m lactose intolerant.”

By noon, the entire office has descended into online shopping madness. People are bidding against each other for the same items, forming temporary alliances to share discount codes, and engaging in psychological warfare over the last remaining units of whatever garbage they’ve convinced themselves they desperately need.

“I got a 50 inch TV for £200!” screams Janet from reception.

“What’s the catch?” everyone asks in unison.

“It’s from 2003 and weighs 400 pounds,” she admits. “But it was 95% off!”

The day ends with half the staff having buyer’s remorse, the other half having seller’s regret for not buying more useless shit, and everyone agreeing that next year they’ll definitely just stay offline for the entire week.

They won’t.

And that, friends, is why they call it Cry Baby Monday.

No products were sold in the making of this email. Only dignity.

Tomorrow is gonna suck balls.

I’m still coughing my tits off.

Amazon has a deal on some fancy books I’ve been looking for but I can guess it’s gonna be double the price and pawned off as a Cyber Monday deal.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Don’t forget to educate your earholes with one of the greatest pieces of post-rock ever.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

If you want a portal back to when the internet wasn’t exceptionally shit, this browser extension will be a must have.

With the mountains of AI generated trash being blasted into cyberspace since every “creator” made ChatGPT their entire personality, you can see where this shitshow is heading.

And it’s nowhere good.

Websites are spoofing their metadata, which might seem harmless on the surface but is actually digital equivalent of cancer.

Google used to have all these nifty search operators you could throw into the search box to tailor your results with the accuracy of scalpel cut.

The “before:YYYY-MM-DD” operator was top fucking tier for research.

Want to see what people actually thought about something before the AI opinion bots took over?

Boom. Real human thoughts from real human times. (back in my day lol)

But in the past month, I’ve noticed articles and sites spoofing their metadata. Remember that show Catfish? Well that but for website authenticity.

They’ll claim to be from 2010 but the search picks up text blurbs that are obviously from present day AI word vomit.

It’s like time travel, except instead of going back to see dinosaurs, you’re just getting more algorithmic bullshit.

While tech bros push for their fully AI generated internet utopia, we’re racing toward a reality where truth won’t exist.

We’ll all be fed our own personalised version of “truth,” which is already happening faster than a drunk person falling down stairs.

These platforms know us better than we know ourselves, which is both impressive and terrifying as fuck.

Here’s how cooked we are…

Let’s say you’re heavily left leaning. Cool. Your views are your views. But when you visit a right leaning website, their AI immediately reads your digital fingerprint and serves up left leaning rhetoric to keep you engaged and buying shit.

So you never actually get your views challenged. You’re just constantly fed ideas that massage your confirmation bias at the cellular level.

It’s intellectual masturbation at best.

This isn’t new though.

Marketers have been split-testing different pages forever.

But now AI can serve up content tailored specifically to your psychological profile in milliseconds.

Real time manipulation at the speed of light.

It’s coming, and when it fully arrives, as the kids say: “We’re cooked.”

So where do we go when there’s no escape from the matrix?

Pen and paper? Sitting around campfires telling stories? Transcendental sex parties?

Fuck if I know.

But at least Slop Evader gives us a fighting chance to see some actual human generated content before the robots finish turning our brains into porridge.

Download it before they make that illegal too.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Here’s an article on it and I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets shit canned by the end of 2025.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I never liked running black friday promos.
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Not because they aren’t profitable (they are).
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And not even because they nuke your pricing power and brand integrity.
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Honestly, I just hated running them because everyone runs them, and the thought of running with the herd just to make a buck always made me cringe.
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It took me five years to run our first black friday promo, in my first business.
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And even then, I had to close my eyes and clench every time we pressed send.
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So anyway, no Black Friday promo here.
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But I do want to give you a gift, just because.
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It’s one of our most popular retreat sessions of all time:
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​Advanced Communication & Charisma
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A three-hour masterclass in high-level communication that will have you speaking like a weapon.
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I don’t want to post it on our public site, because it’s usually reserved for members of The Path.
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So if you want it, just hit reply and my assistant Simon will send it over.
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No countdown timer necessary 🙂
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• T
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  P.S. If you’ve already seen the full Advanced Communication & Charisma session, let us know…​
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  ​I’ve got a backup waiting in the vault that bangs equally hard.
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Jokingly and for fun content.

A lot of us talk about our own little cults we’ve grown. (This email list as an example…)

Which in a nutshell is just a bunch of awesome humans who love my rants and ideas on everything I talk about on a regular basis.

However there’s not a enough talk about the malicious side of cults.

Especially the ones that operate covertly, online, while we live our lives as best as we can.

Are we blissfully ignorant? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s a lack of education because everything that’s being forced fed to us is AI integrated.

Don’t worry though. I’m not gonna get you to drink some weird Kool-Aid and then plan on a mass exit because of whatever.

But if you’re a parent. You definitely want to be aware of this type of thing that is going on and what’s happening at a rapid pace.

Ryan M. Montgomery is arguably the most insane hacker we’ve got, who is luckily on our side. He’s out there fighting the good fight, cause a lot of the stuff we hear about in the news, has been under investigation for many months and even years.

The scariest thing he’s found to date is a cult group called 764 and what makes it even more insane is that it was originally started by a 15 year old.

Now I’ve read my fair share of books on cults and the psychological effects it has on its members, while taking what is deemed dark and manipulative and spun it into the creative world. Where we can use it for good.

But that’s the thing. We can’t just have the good. We have to acknowledge that there is a lot of bad and evil out in the world and unfortunately more people need to get told about it.

Shawn Ryan has a micro interview here with Ryan and just listening to what is going on in this cult group is enough to make your stomach twist and turn.

I know this isn’t the lightest of things to read or listen to on a Friday but hey, being aware of these things is necessary. We can’t always drown ourselves in TikTok and Instagram reels.

The world is not always bright and cosy…

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

It’s weird writing this.

I don’t usually scroll social media for long periods of time and that’s just the way I’ve always been.

Although today I thought I’d have a little poke and prod around.

Just over 4ish hours of scrolling and watching and holy shit…

Yeah, over the years I’ve joked about the asteroid coming to wipe us out…

But today, the wish of that same asteroid was out in full motion today.

I came across “tradwife” twitter defending themselves against the Boss-babe-we-don’t-need-no-man twitter women.

Which honestly shocked even me, considering the extreme thoughts and takes I have on subjects…

I stumbled on a section of Reddit/Twitter where people have honestly removed their brain and EVERYTHING they say or do is vetted by their LLM’s of choice.

Remember when we used to talk to people in person or read genuine books about a topic to learn more etc? That’s all dead to those folk.

Then I took a little scroll in some of the marketing and copywriting groups I’m a part of. Even a little scroll of the FB newsfeed too…

And EVERY respected marketer/copywriter and even some writers I’m friends with, have fully adopted and made AI their whole personality, to the point of where all of their writing, posts and ideas all bled the same overused patterns that are getting rammed into our faces on a day to day basis.

That shit is frightening.

Whatever bit of free thought and creativity we had has in the last 6 months or so, been totally eradicated.

We’re watching the death of original thinking in real time, and people are celebrating it because it makes their content creation “more efficient.”

I’ve got my predictions for 2026/27 all neatly scribbled down in my notebook but I’m dubious at best.

The world isn’t looking like it’s going to be in a good place for a long while.

So we best cash in the best we can before we’re stripped of our last bit of humanity.

And as the kids would say…

“We’re cooked”

Stephen Walker.

P.S. I’m busting out this gem to see if I can use anything inside there again to get me back to where I want to be. It’s tough when you care about the creativity and life blood of others, but it looks like you have to fix your oxygen mask before helping the person next to you when the plane starts descending…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Here are 3 lessons to learn from that film Idiocracy.

The thing is. Idiocracy was supposed to be a comedy.

It wasn’t supposed to become an instruction manual.

But here we are in 2025, watching Mike Judge’s dystopian satire play out in real time while everyone argues about whether water or Brawndo is better for plants and honestly I’m just about to just say Brawndo to stop dumb people from talking to me.

If you haven’t seen it.

Idiocracy follows an average guy who wakes up 500 years in the future to find that humanity has bred itself into complete stupidity.

Sound familiar?

(Especially with all of this AI mass adoption and people not wanting to do anything for themselves anymore…)

Here are three lessons from this cinematic prophecy that might help us avoid becoming the drooling morons we’re apparently destined to become…

Lesson 1: Stop celebrating ignorance.

In the movie, being smart is considered gay and elitist.

Sound like any political movements you know?

We’ve somehow turned expertise into a dirty word and made stupidity fashionable. Stop doing that.

Intelligence isn’t the enemy, but you know what is? Willful ignorance.

That’s gonna kill us quickly if we don’t calm down.

Lesson 2: Think for yourself instead of letting corporations do it for you.

In Idiocracy, people believe Brawndo is good for plants because “it’s got what plants crave.” They never question what plants actually need.

Today, we let algorithms decide what we think, what we buy, what we believe.

Break the cycle. Ask questions. Demand actual answers.

Lesson 3: Give a shit about something bigger than yourself.

The future humans in the movie are so self absorbed and instant gratification focused that they can’t solve basic problems.

They’re too busy being entertained to death to notice their world is falling apart.

Put down your phone occasionally. Care about something that matters.

Contribute to solutions instead of just consuming content.

Luckily we’re not doomed to become the idiots in that movie just yet, but we’re sure as hell heading in that direction…

The antidote is simple.

Be curious, think critically, and remember that other people exist.

It’s not that hard. But apparently, it’s hard enough.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Go check out the trailer just in case you’ve been living under a rock since 2006

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I hate to sound like Baba Vanga

But we’re approaching some weird dystopian nightmare, a lot quicker than we anticipated.

And as much as I sound like I’m beating a dead horse about AI.

I’m going to have to keep beating it.

In the last few months, studies are finally getting released into public about the dangers of continuous use of all of these loved LLM’s.

Like I’ve said in the past before. I’m not against the tech as a whole. I’m just against the generative side of it, especially from the lovely grey area these massive tech companies think they can operate from without repercussions… (That’s a whole series of emails in itself though) because they haven’t taken into consideration the cognitive destruction these tools are having on people and society as a whole.

Although if you look at it from a wild angle. What most people are doing with it all, is pushing out low quality and low effort content at scale.

That same low quality and low effort content is getting converted into shorter form content littered across social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

And because human impulse control is non existent when you’re addicted to social media, your brain essentially takes a lot that low quality and low effort content and latches on to it.

But here’s where it gets worse though:

“A University of Cambridge study in Neuropsychopharmacology found that watching 2+ hours of TikTok/Instagram Reels daily reduces sustained attention by 15-20% and causes prefrontal cortex changes resembling early dementia, due to dopamine driven algorithms.”

So what happens when the amplification of dopamine hits an all time high?

It slowly erodes your ability to think, reason and regulate your emotions.

So now you’re seeing an even younger generation become even more anti social, more aggressive and have even less impulse control, which as they age, will affect them as adults later on in life.

And so where does this cycle end? Well, it doesn’t.

Big tech and marketing bros can’t conceptualise the correct education relating to the AI tech, because it’ll do one of two things (Probably both)

It’ll show people that Big tech are grifting shit weasles who only care about money at the cost of human labour, while destroying humanity at its base.

It’ll show the marketing bros that they don’t really know anything at all and again, are only gargling on the shiny AI balls of Big tech for monetary reasons, not because they care about their customers/clients etc.

So we hover in this very interesting dichotomy where you have people who can see the potential of genuine AI and its use cases…

Versus the people who are so blindly ignorant of the tech that once they become disillusioned to it all, they’ll cry that they’ve been duped and scammed and whatever else.

I’m at a point where it’s hard to keep fighting the good fight, cause people are just willfuly ignorant about it all and would rather do the whole ostrich sticking their head in the sand move to avoid danger than peak into the twisted dystopian nightmare that is unfolding.

Guess I’m gonna have to pull a Jared Leto. Build an in person cult, go live on an island and go back to the days where we just hung out in caves and painted on walls.

What’s your thoughts on all of this? Happy that the AI overlords are taking over the world or are you as fatigued about AI this and that being forced down our throats in everything we do?

Stephen Walker.

P.S. A fun little study you can read on all of this which echoes all of this and more. 22 pages of sauce.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

“Take the action and the insight follows.” – Anne Lamott

For the first time in 3 years, I’m creating original content for YouTube again.

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I’m only three videos in, but the learning has come quickly.

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So I thought I’d share a few of my biggest insights, today…

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Many of which apply beyond YouTube:

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To business, content creation, and even life in general.

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Let’s jump in.

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1. Specific beats general.

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The channel has been stuck for the past few years, because I’ve treated it like a public Dropbox:

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Posting whatever I want, with no regard for strategy.

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Sometimes business, sometimes relationships, sometimes personal development, sometimes angry rants about hustle-bro culture that very few people ever hear because…

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…YT has no idea who my audience is.

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And that’s my fault, because I’ve been way, way too general with the content I post.

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The lesson:

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Keep content in one specific lane, for one specific person.

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It’s not quite as fun, but those are the laws of the jungle on YT.

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2. Less perfect, more organic.

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Maybe this is just the awkwardness of watching myself speak on camera.

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(or the fact that I haven’t done it in ~3 years)

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But our last three videos — where I’m speaking to a camera, rather than a live audience — feel a bit too…

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Performative?

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That’s probably not the right word, but I know my speaking isn’t as natural as it could be.

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My aim is to make these talks feel like a conversation between friends.

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Less perfect, more casual & organic.

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Work in progress.

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3. Make content only I can make.

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Initially, I felt an impulse to study what’s working for similar channels, and speak about similar topics (in my own way).

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That’s what basically everyone does, because it works.

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But it’s not the only strategy that works.

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And there are topics nobody else in the world (that I’m aware of) can speak about — or even knows about.

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Topics like…

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Spiral Dynamics for entrepreneurship
Applying the TCM 5 element system to business
Advanced internal practices for entrepreneurs
Unlocking higher intelligence for business
Founder psychology & thinking systems
Mastering the nervous system for business performance
Advanced communication & persuasion
Plant medicine for entrepreneurs
Business as a spiritual path

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…And many, many more that are already cooking in my Notion dashboard.

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I have no idea how these will “perform.”

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(depends how I package them, I guess)

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But I do know I want them to exist.

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And I don’t know who else is going to create them, if not me.

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Let me know if anything on that list jumps out to you; if there’s enough interest I’ll move it higher in the cue.

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4. Start strong — and finish strong.

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The first ~20 seconds of each video is obviously important.

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But so is leaving on a high-note, because that’s what viewers remember after the video is over.

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(think of a first date; your first and last impression are the moments that stand out in the other person’s mind)

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So I’m going to try planning my closing “punchline” for each video ahead of time.

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(I really liked how the close turned out in this week’s talk — lemme know what you think)

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5. Action really does create clarity.

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I know it’s a bit cliché, but damn is it true.

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And making content over the past few weeks has been a real-time reminder of how true it is.

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I’ve learned more in the process of creating these three videos than I have in all my hours of:

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Thinking about making content
Planning to make content
Watching content about making content
Watching myself plan to think about making content

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Combined.

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It’s not surprising, but it’s worth remembering:

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Nothing — nothing — replaces direct experience.

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There’s probably more to share, but this is getting a bit long.

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Lemme if any of these landed for you.

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And…

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​If You’re An Entrepreneur In Your 20s, Watch This.​

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• T

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P.S. Quick reminder in case you missed it:

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I created a list of must-read books for 20-30 year old entrepreneurs.

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If you’d like it, comment “book list” under the video and we’ll send it over.

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(if you don’t receive it for some reason, just reply to this email)

“The more you do things that are natural to you, the less competition you have.” – Naval Ravikant

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​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | 5-420 Erb St. W, Suite 433, Waterloo, ON N2L6K6

If you’re having one of those days.

Go give Ari some love.

I’m a massive lover of music, especially old school hip hop.

What Ari does is, he goes around NY creating live beats and the musicians that pop up to spit a few bars or drop a few verses are just unreal.

It’s insane to think that there are musicians of that calibre just walking among us.

What makes this even more beautiful though is how it brings us all together.

There’s enough me me me content out there. There’s enough negativity being rammed down our throats in the news and every other social media platform.

If we consume too much of it. We end up flying off the rails mentally.

So again, if you’re having one of those days or even weeks.

Go give Ari some love.

Before you know it, you’ll be binging all of the content.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

So I’ve been scooping around some of my notebooks where I’ve studied some classic works and poems.

Dante missed one when he mapped out the circles of hell.

He couldn’t have predicted the 10th circle…

The one we’re all being dragged into as we barrel toward 2026.

Welcome to the circle of AI marketing horseshit.

This is where humanity goes to die in a sea of uncanny valley bullshit.

This is where people who’ve never written a genuine sentence in their lives suddenly become “content creators” because they learned to prompt engineer their way to mediocrity.

Where every email, every post, every piece of “creative” work feels like it was churned out by the same soulless robo-rithm, optimised for engagement but devoid of any actual human fingerprints.

They’re all gargling on the balls of AI-Jesus, claiming skills they don’t possess, flooding the world with content that technically functions but feels as emotionally satisfying as eating cardboard. (I’ve tried eating carboard and yeah, it’s not fun or tasty)

Everything sounds the same. Everything feels manufactured. Everything lacks the beautiful imperfection that makes writing actually worth reading.

The 10th circle is essentially a place where heavily optimised copy that hits all the right psychological triggers lands, but has no pulse, no blood. No nothing at all.

But you can escape it in 2026…

Write true to yourself. Be raw. Be open. Be broken. Show the world all your warts and scars and fuck ups because that’s what matters and that’s where the real connections are formed.

Your humanity is your competitive advantage right now.

Your poetry, your bare naked soul, your willingness to bleed on the page. These are the things that AI can’t replicate, no matter how sophisticated it becomes.

Show up even when you want to give up. Even when you feel like crawling six feet underground and staying there. Show up especially then, because that’s when your writing has weight, when it carries the full burden of being human.

People don’t want perfect. They want real.

They want to be part of a world that feels lived in, not generated like some minecraft world.

They want to be indoctrinated into something genuine, something that pulses with actual blood instead of boring 1’s and 0’s.

I definitely don’t want to drown in that 10th circle and I’m sure as hell certain you don’t want to either.

The only way out is to be human.

That’s it.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. I like to make people read interesting ideas and so if you’ve never read Inferno, Canto I by Dante Alighieri. Skip on over with this incredibly long link…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

This is a quick one today.

So remember this…

Writing can be an escape. Writing can be an act of optimism. Writing can be an act of resistance. Writing can be rage, spite, power. It can be the way out, or the way in. Stories have meaning. Your stories matter. Your art matters.

It’s tough out there if you’re the one sitting behind the keyboard and banging away endlessly at something that doesn’t feel like taking shape just yet.

We need your art, your soul and everything else in between.

As the world seems to become colder every day, this is the time for you to keep going.

Whether you’re running on tight deadlines for some ad copy that needs to go live or if you’re struggling to kill off a character in a story you’re writing…

You just need to keep going.

And if you want escape for a little moment and figure out this craft a little more…

On Writing by Charles Bukowski might be able to rip you out of the looming burnout you might be feeling.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you have some book recommendations you’ve loved lately, please hit me up and share them with me.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

If you do this, you’re not a creator you deem to be.

I’d just call you a rolling public hazard instead.

It fees like only last night I doom scrolled for exactly nine minutes and watched no fewer than seven, well known marketers, copywriters, and coaches film vertical “value bombs” while actively driving sixty plus on the highway. One hand flapping at the camera.

(This was a few years ago before the big ol’ covid hit us)

But the funny thing is.

A good friend of mine reached out to me to let me know that they’ve also just witness yet another massive influencer in our world take it upon themselves to do this type of stupid shit today. So it looks like it’s all coming back again…

You watch these videos and you see their eyes darting down to the screen every three seconds.

Mouth running about “morning routines” and “funnel hacks” while they pilot two tons of steel through traffic…

I can feel my blood pressure red line when I see these videos.

Not because I’m some pearl clutching saint. (Here comes the soap box rant)

I curse like a sailor and my own camera roll would probably get me locked up for not following certain rules from the Geneva convention, but because this specific flavour of narcissism is legitimately fucking dangerous.

You are not that important.

Your “three mindset shifts to 10x your revenue” are not urgent enough to justify gambling with a stranger’s life.

Or your own kid’s. Or mine.

Here’s what actually happens when you hit record behind the wheel…

Your reaction time collapses to drunk driver levels.

Your field of vision shrinks to whatever fits inside that glowing rectangle.

The 4 000-pound machine you’re steering becomes a heat seeking missile with a personal brand.

Someone dies so you can get 38,000 views and a dopamine hit (???)

And the sickest part?

These are the same people selling $2,997 courses on “authentic leadership,” “building trust,” and “serving your audience at the highest level.”

You cannot claim to care about people and then film yourself actively trying to kill them for engagement. So I did what any sane person would do.

I unfollowed.

I unsubscribed.

I blocked.

I reported a handful for community guidelines violations (because yes, recording while driving is against platform rules on TikTok and Instagram, go look it up)

And I felt… cleaner.

Look, I get it. The algorithm is a jealous god. Silence feels like death. You’re terrified that if you’re not constantly visible, the grift collapses and you’ll have to get a real job.

But here are your options, genius.

Pull the hell over.

Wait until you’re parked or home.

Voice note it and have an assistant transcribe (radical, I know)

Or and this one’s free.

Shut the fuck up until you’re not operating heavy machinery.

Anything else makes you a reckless asshole cosplaying as a thought leader. If you’re reading this and feeling called out. Good.

Change. Today.

Your audience will survive ten minutes without your face. If you’re reading this and nodding along, reply and tell me the class of person who you just unfollowed.

I’ll start. That funnel guy with the rented Lambo.

The mindset chick who cries on cue.

The LinkedIn bro who says “discipline” 40 times per video.

Your turn.

And if you ever catch me doing this shit, publicly drag me. I deserve it.

Drive safe.

Create responsibly.

Or get the hell off my timeline.

P.S. If this email made you angry, ask yourself why you’re defending attempted vehicular manslaughter for clout. Then go touch grass. Preferably after you’ve parked.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I had the cruelest dream.

It’s 1999. Saturday morning. Sun’s slicing through the blinds like it’s got nowhere better to be.

I roll out of bed, boxers half mast, hair looking like I lost a fight with a lawnmower.

Stumble to the kitchen, pour a bowl of Frosties so big it’s basically a helmet.

Milk sloshes over the edge because who gives a shit, it’s Saturday.

Back to my room. Obviously the sacred cave for your average teenager.

Computer’s already humming.

Hit the power button on the monitor, crackle crackle, then the glorious screech of dial up.

That modem sound? Pure fucking dopamine. 56k of screaming plastic angels singing me into the promised land.

While it connects I’m shovelling cereal, milk dripping down my chin like a savage.

Finally it connected.

Straight to Blogspot.

My little corner of the internet that exactly twelve weirdos read. There’s three new comments on last night’s post about how Radiohead’s new album is going to ruin music forever (I was wrong, sue me)

One from some dude in Ohio who said Ok Computer actually saved his life and Kid A will be amazing when it comes out.

One from a girl in Sweden who just wrote “lol same.”

One from my friend Mike calling me an asshole.

I reply to all of them. Actual conversation. No likes, no ratios, no subtweets…

Just words, back and forth, like passing notes in class but the classroom is the whole planet.

I hammer out a quick post…

Something stupid about how I’m convinced the Millennium Bug is real and we’re all going to die listening to Vengaboys or some stupid shit.

Hit publish. Log off.

And in that moment I remember that he internet doesn’t own me.

It’s a place I visit, not a fucking live in.

Then I’m out the door. Meeting the friends at the record shop.

We’re gonna blow our paper round money on imported singles and lie to each other about how many cigarettes we’ve smoked.

Life is small, slow, beautiful. Tactile. Real.

And then I wake up.

It’s 2025.

Phone’s already in my hand before my eyes are open. Notifications stacked like Jenga blocks made of pure spite, anxiety and rage.

Elon’s ratioing someone.

Another crypto thing died.

Someone I went to school with is now a tradwife influencer selling $79 candles that smell like “masculine discipline.”

The UK’s on fire, again.

America’s on fire… still lol.

My neck hurts from scrolling in bed. My attention span is a chewed up piece of gum.

I haven’t spoken to another human in real life without a screen between us in… fuck, I can’t even remember.

We had it. We actually fucking had it.

A version of the internet that was playgrounds and treehouses and secret notes, not this endless scrolling trench warfare.

We built the walls ourselves, brick by brick, like by like, outrage by outrage. We handed over our souls for dopamine hits while being lie that it’s also connection.

And now we live in the sludge.

Everything’s too loud, too fast, too fake.

Everyone’s performing. Everyone’s exhausted. Everyone’s lonely as hell in a crowd of ten thousand followers.

I miss the screech of that modem. I miss waiting. I miss logging off.

I miss when the internet was a place you went, not a place that went inside you and set up fucking camp.

What the hell did we do?

Why did we let them turn paradise into this screaming landfill?

I just want to go back to sleep and never wake up in this timeline again.

Cause before we know it. We’ll be stuck inside while everything is automated for us. I mean they’re already automating people’s thoughts…

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

This is the tech-y email you need to pay attention to.

Fraud and identity theft is at an all time high right now.

“But Stephen, I’m good. My security is on point!”

It might be. Until it isn’t.

People have weak ass passwords. They have old mobile numbers and email addresses attached to accounts they use daily, and allow absolute fucking weirdos who they have never interacted with before, to follow them on their social media platforms as “friends”

That is only scratching the surface of how weak everything is in general.

(I won’t go into AI duplication, and social engineering because that is a whole universe of horror in it’s own right)

But don’t forget. Size matters when it come to password security.

As of this year. Comparitech’s report highlights that 65.8% of compromised passwords were under 12 characters in length, which is the minimum that “most experts recommend.” On the flip side, only 3.2% were 16 characters or longer. Understandable, considering that it’s difficult to remember multiple long passwords without a password manager.

But password managers of weirdos.

Anyways.

The reason I’m telling you to make sure you’re updating your email address security is, the amount of people who have had whole account jacked because of piss poor security is off the charts.

You see people’s accounts on social media get taken over and in most cases, especially the online space, their livelihoods are stripped because of it.

It’s not a fun thing to do.

If you’re making a brand new email address. Make sure you log into all of your accounts that you use and manually update those accounts to your new email address. Followed by re-verifying two factor authentication and all of that bullshit. Also make sure you never re-use a password (I know we’ve all been guilty of it) and even if you need to re-use a password and add a little variation spice to it. Add some extra characters/symbols or whatever. But with a new email address PLEASE make something incredibly complex and tattoo it into your frontal lobe.

Same thing applies if you’re gonna change your mobile number in the new year. (New year new me lol)

The same day you decide to do it. Log in to all of your important accounts and remove two factor authentication and delete that mobile number. Then once you have your new mobile number, go back in and re-activate it all.

Yes I know it’s a pain in the balls but hey, it has to be done.

It’s getting increasingly harder to stay secure.

And the only way to stay full secure is to set everything else on fire and go live in a cabin in the woods. (Still subscribed to my emails though)

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Always a fun little read to scare yourself into security submission

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

And why feeling like shit can save your life.

Now I know the self help sunshine brigade is going to hate this, but here’s a truth that’ll make them clutch their crystals and reach for their gratitude journals…

Disgust is one of the most powerful motivators on the planet.

Not the gentle, Instagram friendly “I’m ready for change” bullshit. I’m talking about the raw, visceral disgust that makes your skin crawl when you look at what you’ve become.

The kind that makes you want to burn your entire life down and rebuild it from ash.

You know that feeling when you catch yourself in the mirror after three days of Netflix binge eating and realise you look like a sentient pile of laundry?

Or when you check your bank account and see where all your money went and feel physically sick?

That’s shame and your survival instinct screaming at you to get your shit together.

The positivity cult wants you to love yourself into change.

“Manifest your best life! Speak kindly to yourself! You’re perfect just as you are!”

Meanwhile, you’re rotting from the inside out, and they want you to smile about it.

Fuck that noise.

Sometimes you need to get so disgusted with your current situation that staying the same becomes more painful than changing.

When the thought of another day living like this makes you physically ill, that’s when real transformation begins.

Disgust is rocket fuel.

It’s the emotional equivalent of touching a hot stove. You don’t need motivation to pull your hand away, you just do it because the alternative is unbearable.

Use it.

Get disgusted with your excuses, your patterns, your willingness to accept mediocrity.

Let that revulsion become obsession with becoming someone you can actually respect.

The self help crowd can keep their vision boards. I’ll take raw disgust over positive thinking any day of the week.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Time for one of my regular soap box rants…

Yes I’m still sick, but I’m miles better. I’ve somehow magically recovered my ability to think and put words down again.

Although during this period of man-flu-whatever, I did a bit of “cleaning house”

“What do you mean when you say cleaning house, Stephen?”

I’m glad you asked…

Now you might know that I like emails.

You also might now that I like emails that come from people that actually sit behind the keyboard, write it and hit send.

They’re fun. They’re imperfect and they share little glimpses into the senders life.

Now even though I’ve not emailed for a few days

(I could’ve easily pre-written a bunch to go out daily when I do feel a little bit of the sickness coming on but there’s a reason I didn’t do it)

Which would at least stop me from skipping a day or two and end up getting messages asking if I’m okay and haven’t died.

(To the ones who emailed. I really appreciate it.)

The point is, when my brain was being punched in every direction.

The only thing I could do besides sleeping and drinking water, was to open up my email, eyes in a half squinted haze and delete emails and unsubscribe from lists I don’t want to be apart of anymore.

See the thing is.

I signed up to fellow artists, creatives of all sorts, marketers and even brands that hooked me on their stories and quirks and good stuff, only to later on be fooled that this was all pre-written bullshit past a set period of time (Autoresponder) and then for the next 45723 emails and/or by the time I die…

Explode my inbox with obnoxious BUY MY SHIT OR ELSE emails or the infamous RE: bullshit in all variations…

And so I know for a fact they were only in it for the profits and not really for the people.

Yes. Don’t get me wrong. We got bills to pay and food to eat. But there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it and because they’ve destroyed that sacred set of rules and yes there are email rules. I’ve just opted out with hopes of never being bothered by them again. It’s sad cause I genuinely liked those people but anyways. Life goes on.

It’s just crazy to me that everyone just wants to automate relationships. If you build relationships with a handful of great clients/customers. They’ll keep coming back to you for years and you won’t have to do the hamster dance to paid.

Everyone gives Kevin Kelly a bit of shit but his 1000 true fans still stands today.

It’s just people don’t want to go down that route because it takes work and you need to build relationships first before the profits start to come.

Anyways. My rant is over.

TL;DR be a genuine human and stop trying to automate relationships because it makes you look like a jackass.

I’m off to go drink some lemon tea and get back to sleep.

This virus or whatever hasn’t won just yet.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Make 1000 true fans your mantra and get to work cause I know I don’t want 42364564574 customers. I want 1000 true fans and I’m sure you do too.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Hey, this just went live:

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​How To Beat The Money Game Forever​

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It’s a complete map for beating the financial game, so you never need to work to make money again.

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I know that might sound out of reach…

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But it’s a lot more straightforward than you might think.

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And in today’s talk, I lay out a plan to do it in 5 years or less.

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​Watch close.​
​

• T
  ​
  P.S. Many, many thanks to everyone who supported the channel by liking and commenting last week.

​

It helps a lot, and doesn’t go unnoticed.

​

It’s been a ton of fun creating these talks again (first time in 3 years!) and your support has been amazing.

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Keep it coming, and let me know what you’d like to see next.

​

​

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​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | 5-420 Erb St. W, Suite 433, Waterloo, ON N2L6K6

Saw a Dragon Ball Z ad on YouTube today and suddenly I’m eight years old again, racing home from school to catch the latest episode, arguing with friends about whether Goku could beat Superman, and spending my little bits of pocket money saved up, on action figures I’d pose in epic battles across my bedroom floor.

Move aside The Undertaker. Goku is here.

It’s weird though. One thirty second ad unlocked an entire vault of vivid memories I didn’t even know I still had.

The anticipation of waiting a week to see if Frieza would finally be defeated.

The pure joy of watching someone power up for five episodes straight. The joke was always “How many Saiyans would it take to change a light bulb?”

“One, but it would take 15 episodes to get done…”

The way DBZ made everything feel possible and epic and larger than life seems to be the super power we’re lacking nowadays.

It’s crazy that for a moment, you’re not just remembering being young.

You ARE young again, feeling all those emotions with the same intensity.

We need to learn to bake some sort of nostalgia into our work.

Look at how Stranger Things doesn’t just set itself in the 80s, it makes you feel like you’re experiencing the 80s for the first time, especially the first bit of Dungeons & Dragons in their basement…

Or the way certain video games use pixel art not because it’s cheaper, but because it triggers that specific emotional response from childhood gaming.

I know we can reference nostalgic things.

But more importantly, we need to reference nostalgic feelings.

The anticipation of Saturday morning cartoons. The taste of birthday cake at eight years old. The way Christmas morning felt when you still believed in magic.

Yeah yeah, Nostalgia is a blast from the past but do you remember the emotions?

That’s what we need to tap into

If we manage that. We’ll have people hooked before they even understand why.

And if for a moment we can make them feel eight years old again, we’ve won.

Stephen Walker.

I also found out a pretty damn cool place to get sucked back into nostalgia land AND it only costs five bucks. It’s the steal of the century…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

I’m not much of a news fan.

But the last few days have been insane.

I won’t go into detail, but here in the UK it just seems to be getting worse as the days go on.

(and yes there are also people who will be like “BUT YOU STILL HAVE IT GOOD HERE, LOOK AT ALL THE WAR AND TERRIBLE THINGS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD!!!!)

While that is valid. I’m not living there and I’m blessed to be where I am now, it still doesn’t negate the fact that this is all happening though…

I have friends, colleagues and clients who live incredibly close to where all of these things have happened. The sad thing is that nothing will be done about it.

It’ll make headlines and then that’s it. It just vanishes.

And as much as I’d like to say that I’m going to stay here forever, myself and a few friends are heavily considering getting out of England sooner than later.

It also annoys me that there’s so much opportunity here, yet why would you stay if every year the cities you want to visit get more dangerous and overrun with thugs?

Anyways. That’s enough of this rant.

My thoughts are with the families that have been affected by what has happened lately and I’m glad things got stopped before it got way worse than it did.

If you’re out and about, especially around Christmas time coming up. Just be aware and stay safe.

I’m always optimistic that things will get better, it’s just hard because we’re like “When?”

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

“You and I are not like cows. We’re not meant to graze all day. We’re meant to hunt like lions. This idea that you’re going to have linear output just by cranking every day at the same amount of time sitting… That’s machines. Machines are meant to work 9-5, not humans.” — Naval Ravikant

Before we enter the thunderdome…

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…I need to preface this by giving Hormozi his well-deserved flowers.

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Numbers don’t lie; the guy is a beast.

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And, while I agree with him far more often than I disagree…

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This ‘aint one of those times.

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Here’s the story…

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Earlier this week, I sat down to record my first original YouTube talk in nearly 3 years:

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How I Built A 7-Figure Business Working 4.5 Hours A Day

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When I finished, I got up, walked over to my desk, popped in the SD card and began uploading it.

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(Literally) moments later:
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A clip popped up from Hormozi that outlines his recommended daily routine for early-stage founders…

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…Which is, basically:

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Work 12 hours a day.

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Instantly, I started second-guessing myself:

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“I just filmed a 25 minute rant about how working 12 hours a day is bullsh*t…

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…Was I wrong? Have I actually been a pansy this whole time?

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Do we need to call Goggins?”

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That continued for about 15 seconds.

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Then I woke up and remembered I’m not a bot this system has been battle-tested for over 15 years, and remains undefeated for me and every single founder I’ve ever given it to.

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Still, I thought I’d run it by Dr. ChatGPT to be sure.

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Here’s what it said:

​

​

From ChatGPT:

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(I asked it to summarize a long response into bullet points)

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Decades of research (Newport, Ericsson, Pencavel, Pang, Csikszentmihalyi) show humans can only sustain around 4–6 hours of true deep work per day before focus and creativity crash.

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Deep work burns real fuel. The prefrontal cortex—the part responsible for reasoning, creativity, and strategy—runs on limited metabolic energy. After a few hours of intense focus, it physically can’t sustain high performance.

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Your best ideas often emerge offline. When you rest or step away, the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) activates—integrating memories, solving problems, and forming creative insights. Constant focus blocks this process, which means without deliberate downtime, you literally prevent your mind from connecting the dots that drive breakthroughs.

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Busyness feels productive—but isn’t. You might “work” 12 hours, but you’re likely only producing about 4 good ones. Grinding feels virtuous but often masks poor strategy and scattered focus.

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​

Of course, Chat could just be glazing me while telling Hormozi the exact same thing in reverse.

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(AI be flirty like that)

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But I don’t think so.

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According to science — and, more importantly, to real-world experience — the data is very clear:

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4-6 hours per day is the sweet spot for creative and intellectual work.

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However, the only data that matters is the data you collect yourself.

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And you can only collect the data by trying both approaches and seeing what works for you.

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(not me, not Hormozi, not ChatGPT — you)

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So please do.

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And then let us know your findings.

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If you’d like a damn good starting point that works damn near every time:

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Watch this today.

​

T

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P.S. Big thanks to everyone who has been supporting by liking, commenting, and sharing the video.

​

Like I said yesterday…

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Our channel has been stuck for a while because:

​

Our topics are all over the place (YouTube doesn't know which audience to show our content to)
None of our videos are optimized for YouTube (they've all been random clips from live recordings)

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So this is the first video I’ve ever posted on the channel that is actually designed for YouTube.

​

And I’m told re-training the algorithm and gaining traction will take ~8-12 weeks.

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But every like, comment, and share really speeds up the process…

​

And thanks to y’all, this video is gaining good momentum already.

​

So again — thank you 🙂

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Keep the support coming, and I’ll keep the videos coming.

​

We’re just getting started…

“If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).” – Cal Newport

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​

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​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | 5-420 Erb St. W, Suite 433, Waterloo, ON N2L6K6

Now if I could bust out some bars like the Wu-Tang clan.

I wouldn’t be writing emails to you, my number one fan…

That said.

I fell asleep in what I can only believe is a pose that has managed to destroy my neck and shoulder for the 3rd time this year.

(It doesn’t help that the shoulder has been crushed from a past accident and yes there is a fun story about it but no I’m not going to write about it…)

But as much as I’d hate to admit it. The older I get. The more crunchy my injuries become.

And so the main thing I’d say is that you need to protect those injuries so that they don’t flare up again.

Back in 2020 I stumbled upon this dude

Yoga designed for the lads.

They were easy to do, kept the mobility up and brought back functional body weight exercises that didn’t kill you.

While I don’t have some mega insightful thing to say about yoga. All I need to say is you need to get your ass moving and stretching in all of the useful ways so your body doesn’t seize up and smack you about.

I’ve been spending a lot more time hunched behind the keyboard writing words and code for something massive and because I’ve not been as active the last few months.

My body is starting to squeak and crunch.

So check it out. Do some yoga. Save yo’ joints.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Man Flow Yoga is legit one of the best humans on Youtube in my opinion.

(Wow Stephen. You put TWO links in an email going to the same channel. You must really endorse that dude…)

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

PREVIEW chapter from upcoming book on animal spirits

JERR

Hawk

Eye

and

eagle

sight

There will be times when a man will feel weighed down by the circumstances of his life. He will lose sight of his own purpose and will feel lost. This is when a man is suffocated by his problems and will hold despair in only seeing the problems that surround him.

When a man is depressed and loses vision, he becomes blind to the possibility of hope beyond today and sees no reason for tomorrow. He is consumed by a darkness and feels that the light has abandoned him.

There is a saying that goes, “cannot see the forest for the trees.” This saying means that a man who is face to face with a tree will not realize he is inside a forest because he makes himself blind to the greater reality by focusing too closely on the objects before him. This is a perceptional problem where the man’s becomes too confined and to restrained by being too close to his own problems.

One of the great perceptional issues that a man has is when his perception becomes confined by his closeness to his own concerns. He does not allow himself a sense of distance over himself and the world which creates a blindness to hope and a confusion to the truth of reality. It is only when a man can step back from his own problems can he examine them with rationality.

When a man is overwhelmed by his problems, he is unconsciously identifying with the animals that are confined to the earth and who are imprisoned by gravity. The feel the weight of their problems because those problems hold gravity. The word “gravity” comes from the Latin word “gravis” meaning heavy, weighty and serious. The word “gravity” and the word “grave” both share the etymological root from “gravis.” Graves are burial grounds for dead bodies that are held in the earth. Dust we and dust we return. A very heavy, weighty and serious matter. This is what it means to be mortal or confined by the gravity of the world. If a man was buried alive, his vision would be trapped by the dirt that covers over his eyes and he will be suffocated by the earth that binds his sight. Men who are overwhelmed by their problems are like men who are buried alive. They exist in a twilight zone of being both alive and yet buried. They see only the close earth like moles who dig at the earth before them and lose sight of purpose beyond the clawing away of each day. Their sense of gravity roots them to the earth and their close perceptions makes them lose sight of the big picture.

But when a man “breaks through” in gaining hope to his despair, it is like a breath from the surface of water or like breaking the earth and revealing the light. All he felt was pain and isolation. But by breaking through the dirt and scratching at the coffin’s wood. He is able to reawaken in the liminal space of the undead who seeks resurrection. This is when a man can project himself from the unconscious burden of his dead body and take possession of the bird that he sees above himself. A bird in a tree who can far above the earth and who can fly into the sky and break free from the tree in order to see the forest. “No tree is so tall that it touches the sky but every bird can try.”

When a man projects himself into the mind of a bird, he is able to soar and create a distance between himself and the world that binds him to his problems. He becomes free from the weight of gravity and is able to free himself from the “seriousness” or grave concerns that press down upon him.

There are the five senses of sight, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. Then there is the sense of distance. This is a mental distancing that allows a man to establish space between himself and his emotions, establish space between himself and his problems and establish space between himself and the gravity of his situation. A man who feels like a mole in the dark grind of his life should break the surface and take control of the hawk that circles above him in the sky. “Hawks don’t squint; they see the world in sharp relief.” And “A hawk’s eye cuts through the fog of doubt.”

The birds of prey are totems of possession over the perception in order to gain a sixth sense of “distance.” When a man identifies himself with a bird of prey, he desires the freedom from gravity that binds him to his “grave concerns” and he desires the eyes that can see from horizon to horizon. “An eagle’s gaze pierces the horizon.”

Distance can not only help a man deal with his own gravity or grave concerns but also allow him the psychological distance for power. Remember, the king’s throne is raised above the court and the king looks down from the balcony of his castle. This is not just physical representations of distance but clues to his own mental distance over his subjects. The king would not only be raised up upon his throne, carried on the shoulders of his servants or look down from a balcony from his castle in order to elevate him from the gravity of that binds others to the earth but these elevations would allow him visual distance in order to behold his subjects as smaller in his sight. The servants would have to look up to him which would create a mental association with power in viewing themselves as below his authority. Kings would elevate themselves in order to see “horizon to horizon” which is a means of using the eagle’s eye. They would be able to see those under their frame of authority as “small ants.” The people would be below their gaze and small in meaning.

In ancient Egypt, the Pharoah was seen as a god-king who embodied Horus who was depicted as a hawk or falcon that symbolized divine vision and rulership. The feathers of Eagles have long been used by chiefs of native American tribes as symbols of divine vision. The heraldry of Byzantine and of the Holy Roman empire used Eagles which was a symbol of a king’s dominion over the earth and heavens. The Etana myth from ancient Mesopotamia features a king who rides upon an eagle in order to receive divine wisdom from heaven. In ancient Persia, the Simurgh was a mythical bird that guided kings in the Shahnameh bringing them divine vision and insight.

A king must have a sense of distance between himself and subjects, a sense of distance between the petty struggles of his subjects and a sense of distance over his own conscience compared to his subjects.

Men will struggle with their own minds and struggle with the gravity of their problems only because they lack the sense of distance that would allow them to rise above their problems. They feel weight over the state of their lives and the state of the world because they are bound by its gravity and are buried under the weight it. But men who seize the eagle in the sky become free from the weight of the world and are able to see mankind like ants. They are able to see the light of a new horizon before other because their vision is not blocked by earthly concerns. They are able to fly over the world and look down upon it with distance eyes. This is the eagle, hawk and raven as animal guides

“Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”

Probably one of my favourite sayings from ol’ Iron Mike.

The thing is. We’ve created a consequence free zone where people can be absolute shitheads without any real accountability.

And you see it more where people hide behind anonymous profiles, spew venom at strangers, spread lies, and face zero real world repercussions.

Now I’m not about bringing back schoolyard violence (Even though sometimes I want to stomp someone’s face in)

It’s really just about understanding that humans behave better when there are actual stakes involved.

When your words have weight. When being a dick to someone might result in having to look them in the eye and defend your position.

But social media stripped away the natural social friction that kept most people from being completely insufferable.

In real life, if you’re consistently awful to people, you get ostracised. Your reputation suffers. People stop wanting to be around you and before you know it you’re gonna get punched in the mouth.

Online? You can be a monster and still collect likes from other monsters.

We’ve lost the art of civil disagreement because there’s no incentive for civility anymore. I mean look at the politics side of social media. It’s wild as shit.

I mean come on. Why engage thoughtfully when you can just scream into whatever echo chamber you’re in and get dopamine hits from the fellow screamers too?

Maybe if people had to own their shit instead of hiding behind usernames, they’d think twice before turning every conversation into a piss fuelled dumpster fire.

We need to bring back stakes. Bring back accountability. Bring back the basic human understanding that words have power and you should use them responsibly.

/end soapbox rant

Stephen Walker.

I’m off to go give some love to Bret Easton Ellis with this gem.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

This is gonna be a straightforward one.

What hobbies do you have or have neglected this year?

I need something fresh to dive deep into, so I’d love to see what you’re already obsessed with.

Yes. I read and write but hey, it’s not really a hobby to me. If I have to write an ad for someone it’s not the purely pleasureful writing. It’s the money making kind. It’s systematic and has a clear objective…

I mean a few friends are trying to rope me straight back to the good old days of Dungeons & Dragons and/or World of Warcraft and oh boy…

If I get sucked into that. Rest in peace productivity.

I’m frantically googling and having a look around. Winter is fast approaching and I just want something nice and chill.

So if you have any ideas. Hit reply.

I need some help.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. I think I might just have to go balls deep into this…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

A longtime coaching client of mine, Ben Bader, passed away on Thursday night.

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He was 24.

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I won’t get into the details, because that’s not what’s important right now.

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What’s important is who Ben was, what he stood for, and what he would want us to learn from his life.

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He was clever, scrappy, and talented in ways hard work alone can’t explain.

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He was also warm, curious, and overwhelmingly generous.

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Impossible not to like. A joy to work with.

​

Ben had a unique way of flowing through life without fear:

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A rare type of fxck-it-let’s-do-it enthusiasm that comes from a deep excitement at the endless possibilities of life.

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Which, I think, is why he realized so many of those possibilities in such a short time.

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Looking back at the goals Ben set for himself:

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Total financial abundance.

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His dream home in Miami.

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A group of true friends.

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A girl he loved.

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In the end, he achieved them all.

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He did exactly what he set out to do, and became exactly who he wanted to be.

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He did the damn thing.

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He lived free.

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As I’ve processed my shock over the past ~12 hours, I’ve noticed my mind zooming out:

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Gaining a rare, wider glimpse into how fragile, how fleeting — how strikingly beautiful — our lives are.

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It’s the type of perspective that is so hard to gain, and so easy to lose in the rush of everyday life.

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I suppose that’s one of the hidden blessings of tragedy.

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But I also know tragedy isn’t necessary to gain that perspective.

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It’s always there, because it’s always true:

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We are free to live our lives however we choose.

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To do exactly what we want to do, and become exactly who we want to be.

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To dream wild dreams and turn them into reality.

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That’s what Ben did.

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And I know that’s what he wanted, for everyone he touched.

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At the end of our first coaching call a few years ago, Ben invited me to Miami.

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“You gotta come party with us man — it would be a blast.”

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I laughed:

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“You caught me about ten years too late… Maybe in our next lifetime we’ll be born at the same time. If that happens… pray for Miami.”

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So until we meet again, Ben Bader:

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Godspeed.

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And fly free.

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I know you will.

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T

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It’s very rare for me to get annoyed at anything.

But customer support is where most businesses go to die.

Whether you’re a solo business owner or some corporate behemoth, it’s wild to me that the thought of ignoring your customers and clients is nuts.

You call a company with a problem and immediately get trapped in phone tree hell, bounced between departments, forced to repeat your issue seventeen times to people reading from scripts who clearly couldn’t care less if your problem gets solved or if you spontaneously get set on fire and burn your place down…

Although you’d also expect if you buy something from someone off of eBay or whatever, that they’d at least have the common courtesy to hit you up with a “I might have an issue getting your package out because I went out and got shit my pants drunk last night, but when I’m back to my regular self. I’ll drop it off at the post office for you…”

Simple really.

Communication isn’t THAT hard.

Taking someone’s money and letting them wonder when they’re getting the goods is just piss poor in general and so that’s what I’m dealing with right now.

I want the thing that I bought because it’s something I’ve genuinely wanted and have been looking around for it since forever.

But I’ve gotten ZERO communication about shipping or what’s up or even if they person is okay.

It’s just a hope and pray that I get said thing.

(I’m gonna be big sad if I don’t get it. I need my nerd fix of stuff before this year ends)

And so I’ve done the polite thing and just emailed them yet again to see if they’re all good and if they can hit me up.

The last thing I want to do is ask for a refund and all of that bullshit cause that’s not my style.

But it brings me to my point.

Whether you’re offering a product or a service as a creative.

Make it easy as shit for people to give you money. Make it fun. Make sure they get what you said you’re giving them. Follow up if they get stuck and show them that you’re grateful for them being a part of your world.

And for the love of all things holy. Give them a god damn tracking number if you are shipping them something…

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Tonight I am doing absolutely nothing but revisiting childhood memories by playing the best strategy game ever made. Plus their track list is just amazing.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Hey you.

Yes you.

Put down that copywriting book.

Stop reading another blog post about “the secret to high converting headlines.”

Quit circle jerking with other copywriters who all learned from the same three gurus who learned from the same two books written in 1966.

Cough Breakthrough Advertising cough

Pick up Lee Child’s The Killing Floor instead.

You want to learn addictive prose? Study how he opens that book.

No wasted words. No throat clearing. No setting up context for three paragraphs before anything happens. He drops you straight into tension and refuses to let go for 500+ pages.

He understands something most copywriters have forgotten…

Writing isn’t about tricks or formulas or psychological manipulation tactics which we get to hear about non stop on Facebook or Twitter.

You basically want to grab someone by the throat with the words and make them need to know what happens next.

Every sentence in a Jack Reacher novel has a job to do. Move the story forward. Build tension. Reveal character. Create momentum. There’s no filler, no self indulgent descriptions, no showing off how clever the writer is.

This is what your copy should feel like. Lean, propulsive, impossible to stop reading.

While you’re studying “power words” and A/B testing subject lines, he is demonstrating how to make readers physically unable to put something down.

He creates narrative tension that translates directly to sales copy. The desperate need to know what comes next.

Your favourite copywriting guru won’t get mad if you read actual writers. They might even learn something.

The best copywriters aren’t just marketers who learned some writing tricks, it’s more we learnt to sell things while writing.

Stop learning from people who learned from other people who learned from books. Learn from someone who actually knows how to make words sing…

Read real writers. Write better copy.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Get your best damn education in writing solid copy for £2.99 over here.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

We’ve created a generation of chronically miserable shitweasles who feed on outrage and sustain themselves entirely through online conflict.

You know the type. You present them with factual information. Complete with sources, references, peer reviewed studies and they immediately refute it without even reading what you’ve shared.

They’re not interested in truth. They’re interested in the fight.

They sit there seething, chomping at the bit, refreshing their notifications every thirty seconds waiting for your reply to their bullshit so they can fire back with more bullshit.

It’s like watching someone play intellectual ping pong with themselves, except they’re losing and don’t realise it.

These chronically online creatures have turned disagreement into a full time hobby. They wake up looking for things to be wrong about. They scroll through comments sections like hunters tracking prey, seeking opportunities to be offended, corrected, or validated through combat.

You could provide them with a library of evidence, complete citations, expert testimonials, and video proof, and they’ll respond with “Yeah but what about…” or “That’s just your opinion” or some other intellectually lazy dismissal that proves they didn’t engage with a single thing you shared.

But the trick is to just not take the bait.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to stir the pot. I post some really wild memes or just shitpost myself into a new mood. I just don’t do things maliciously (Unless it’s needed)

Although these miserable cunts have nothing else better to do with their lives than deny factual evidence and demand your emotional energy.

They don’t want to learn. They don’t want to grow. They want to drag you down into their swamp where logic goes to die.

The most powerful thing you can do is not reply. Let them sit there refreshing, waiting for the validation of your attention. Starve them of the conflict they crave.

Save your energy for people who actually want to understand, not just argue.

And if you’d like to dig a little deeper into why these people operate the way they do. Grab this little gem while you can…

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

As much as I want to brainwash myself into being a productivity machine…

Optimising my morning routine, tracking my habits, measuring every fucking minute for maximum efficiency, sometimes I just need to have a completely pointless conversation about whether or not hot dogs are sandwiches.

Or spend twenty minutes debating the physics of cartoon characters. Or get genuinely invested in whether that weird stain on the coffee shop ceiling looks more like a giraffe or Nebraska.

These bullshit, mundane conversations heavily stop me from procrastination. They hinge around some semblance of sanity maintenance.

The thing is. Your brain isn’t designed to be “on” all the time.

It needs moments of beautiful, purposeless meandering. It needs to discuss the relative merits of different pasta shapes or argue about which superhero would be the worst roommate.

The most productive thing you can do sometimes is be completely unproductive. Talk about nothing. Laugh at stupid shit. Let your mind wander into territory that serves no higher purpose than preventing you from losing your goddamn mind.

The person who never allows themselves mental downtime, who turns every conversation into a networking opportunity or a learning experience, burns out spectacularly…

Sometimes the most important discussion you’ll have all day is about why cereal counts as soup.

Embrace the meaningless. It helps keep your sanity at bay.

And yes, cereal is a soup and I will fight you over it.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

“The game rewards the player who needs no reward other than the game itself.” – DeepGame

Last night, I started watching season 2 of the Netflix show Starting 5.

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So far, pretty solid.

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Haliburton’s got year-round kid-on-Xmas energy, and James looks like he’s two blunts away from brain-dead. KD is KD, and Jalen Brown’s fight training was a surprising bright spot for me.

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But the star of the show is, undeniably, SGA.

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And near the end of the first episode, he dropped a line that made me rewind and write it down:

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“I am very obsessed with the game of basketball.

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But in general, I think more than anything I’m obsessed with the feeling of getting better at something.”

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• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, 2025 NBA MVP

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Now, that comment may sound generic, on the surface.

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But to my ear, it’s about as novel an idea as there is in the modern world.

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As far as I can tell…

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Most people want to grow / get better / develop themselves in order to get something:

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More money, more status, more pillow talk from prettier pillow talkers.

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And fair enough, I’m not immune to pretty pillow talkers either.

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But still, that chain of motivation…

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Goal
Growth necessary for goal
Tolerate growth process in order to achieve goal

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…Has always felt foreign, to me.

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In basketball, the process of training — of pushing the limits of my body and skill set, and creating a stronger, more evolved version of myself — was always more fun than playing.

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(I was one of those weird players who enjoyed offseason training more than I enjoyed the season itself)

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In business, the process of sharpening my craft — of becoming a better writer, communicator, and thinker; of building better products based on deeper ideas — was always more inspiring than making money.

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(I don’t create to make money, I make money to fuel my creativity and pursuit of mastery)

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And, in my self-development, spirituality, and plant medicine work:

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My goal has never been to “fix myself” or to “feel better”.

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It’s the raw experience of personal evolution — of unbinding, unlocking, and unleashing deeper and deeper versions of myself — that drives me to do all the crazy sh*t I do.

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In the words of SGA:

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I am, more than anything else, obsessed with the process of getting better.

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External goals — basketball, business, body, relationships, etc — are just the fuel I feed into that process.

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In the world we live in, that often makes me feel like an alien.

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Which is why SGA’s comment felt so refreshing, when I heard it.

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Of course, I know I’m not the only alien in town…

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(you’re reading this, after all)

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….But it’s nice to be reminded, once in a while.

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So if this message lands with you, I’d love it if you replied and let me know.

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Feel free to quick-reply “lands” — or, say more if you feel like it.

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I’ll read every reply personally.

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In the meantime, have an awesome weekend over there.

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You deserve it.

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T

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P.S. Plus, here are…
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3 things to make your weekend better

What to read, watch, and learn from this weekend…

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How Fate & Karma Actually Work

A clip from one of my favorite retreat sessions this summer. Went live earlier this week.

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The Deep Game of Mixed Martial Arts

Incredible mini-doc on UFC fighter Cory Sandhagen, who is one of the deepest-thinking athletes I’ve ever come across. Highly, highly recommended (esp. the line at 5:28 — gold).

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Grace & Grit by Ken Wilber

I just started reading this for the second time. It’s not a book to take lightly; the story is incredibly raw, intense, and sometimes scary — but profoundly beautiful and deeply rewarding for those who approach it with care. Ken Wilber is a legend who has been writing on human potential for nearly 50 years. And this is, very likely, the most unique book he’s ever written.

“The great and rare mystics of the past . . . were, in fact, ahead of their time, and are still ahead of ours. In other words, they most definitely are not figures of the past. They are figures of the future.” – Ken Wilber

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​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | 5-420 Erb St. W, Suite 433, Waterloo, ON N2L6K6

It’s that time of the year where everyone talks about mental health.

The thing is. Your mental health isn’t some weird optional maintenance.

You need to truly look after it.

You wouldn’t ignore a broken bone or a persistent cough, but somehow we’ve normalised walking around with fractured minds and emotional exhaustion.

Take the therapy. Use the medication if you need it. Sleep more than four hours. Eat something that didn’t come from a vending machine. Move your body occasionally. Talk to someone who isn’t your reflection in the bathroom mirror after waking up 13 times before 4:16am…

…and while you’re sorting your own head out, check on your people.

That friend who’s been unusually quiet? Text them.

That colleague making self deprecating jokes that hit a little too close to home?

Actually listen…

Depression lies. Anxiety lies. Mental illness tells people they’re burdens when they’re struggling. Sometimes the simple act of reaching out reminds someone they matter.

“Hey, thinking about you” takes five seconds to send and might save someone’s entire week.

Your brain matters. Their brain matters. Take care of both.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you ever want to reach out when things are getting heavy. Send me a text or a whatsapp on +447710505825, I got you.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Purity and perfection are entangled together like lovers who can’t let go.

A romantic metaphor right?

When you sit down to tackle that blank page.

You look at it and you know it’s perfect the way it is right now.

It’s kinda like a yard after a night full of snow.

It’s blanketed in white. Untouched, unmarred, mounded soft hillocks and slow swept waves pillowy nothing.

It’s a deep inhale and a slow exhale.

It’s perfect because you didn’t touch it. You left it alone and it remains, tabula rasa aka…

An untouched void.

Cause if you were to go out there onto that yard, what do you think would happen?

You’d get footprints all over it. You’d kick up those soft hills, those rounded curves. You’d dredge up a little mud, maybe some leaves left over from autumn or whatever.

Sure, you’d make a snowman, and he’s cool and all, but the area all around him is a scooped up sloppy nightmare. (Ugh I hate the dirty slush bullshit we get here in the UK)

And well it happened cause you needed to heave the snow to make the man in the first place.

You might even bump into an evergreen branch and all the wonderful snow that had already elegantly sculpted itself upon the branch would CHOOF and fall down.

But then the waggle of the branch would move other branches too, and all that snow would come down in awkward plops and chonks, and you’d scare away that astonishingly beautiful Summer Tanager that was perched there, except where I am in England. You’ll probably just hear cats going insane.

The page is like this, too.

The moment you touch the blank page, you mess it all up. It’s mucky with words, tacky with sentences. Some words might be misspelled. The grammar? Far from tip top, if we’re being honest.

Was that opening line worth it? Are there too many commas? Not enough? Did you need that exclamation point? It was wonderful before you got here…

It scares me. It literally scares me, staring at the blank page, the page before anything has been written. Not a title, not a chapter header, not a first line. I get that tightness of going up a roller coaster, as you tick tick tick up toward the top, before the fall, before the screams and the wind and the oh-my-god-I’m-gonna-die-today-but-it’s-all-good-I’ll-end-up-in-the-papers-innit…

Maybe you feel that, too.

Writing is scary. It’s okay. Do it anyway.

Mess up the yard. Leave footprints. Jump off the cliff. Track mud through the house of your own expectations. Build wonky snowmen with stick arms and crooked smiles. Let the Summer Tanager fly away. He’ll find another branch, and you’ll have a story about the day you scared away beauty in service of making more beauty.

We over think a lot of shit and the blank page is the biggest killer of our own creativity.

The blank page applies to everything else creative too.

Just get messy. It’s a lot more fun that way in the end…

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you want a different flavour of writing advice though, My boy Chuck can hook you up over here.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Three thirty in the afternoon and I’m sweating into my third cup of coffee at some godforsaken strip mall type of coffee shop just off of the corner of a grunge-y looking building, waiting for a man who said he’d be here at two…

The clock is a weapon for anyone who uses it to remind them of discipline.

Time is the only currency that matters and we’ve been told for years that it’s more precious than money, more finite than youth and these slack-jawed parasites treat it like pocket change they can toss in the gutter.

I’ve seen them all…

The client who “runs late” to every meeting, stealing fifteen minutes here, twenty there, building a career on the accumulated theft of other people’s lives.

The old friend who cancels an hour before the reunion. Always an hour, just enough time to fuck your entire evening but not enough to make other plans.

The consultant who shows up forty minutes past deadline with a shit eating grin and a Venti latte, like lateness is a personality trait instead of a defect in their own putrid character.

These people are vampires. They don’t drink blood.

They drain seconds and minutes and hours, leaving you older and deader while they waltz through life unburdened by the concept of consequence.

The worst part? They think they’re special.

That their time matters more than yours. That the universe should bend around their whims while you sit there, aging, dying, watching the minutes tick away like heartbeats you’ll never get back.

Four o’clock now. He’s not coming.

I leave cash on the table.

Exact change, because I’m not a fucking animal and walk into the parking lot where the sun hammers down like God’s own fist.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up two hours older and no richer.

That’s the real crime. Not the disrespect. The theft.

The irreversible, unforgivable theft of time.

(The moral? Respect people’s time. Respect your own time. Do your best work and master time, cause no matter what we do. There’s no buying it back)

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you’ve liked that little bit of prose. You’ll love what I’m cooking up with my editor. Let’s just hope I’m not pushing up daisies before it gets released.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

And you probably don’t even realise it.

I’m not going gentle into this Friday night.

The thing is. It’s not even your fault.

Friends and family are trying to rope us into those endless Tiktok clips.

Pulled deep into those scroll holes which do nothing but lobotomise the attention right out of us.

Our minds are being trained to crave quick hits of dopamine instead of sustained thought.

We’re becoming intellectually diabetic, addicted to mental junk food that tastes good in the beginning but leaves us malnourished. This is why you need to read David Foster Wallace. And Thomas Pynchon. And Don DeLillo. And Jennifer Egan. And Zadie Smith and and and…

And a lot of these are going to hurt.

Infinite Jest isn’t called infinite for nothing. It’s a thousand page brick that will make your brain sweat (I’m half way through it and man… [chefs kiss]

And if you so happen to pick up Gravity’s Rainbow, it will have you questioning reality by page fifty. As for White Noise, It will leave you paranoid about everything from supermarkets to radio waves. (Damn those radio waves)

And yeah a lot of it starts off hard to read but honestly that’s just your brain doing some extra work cause it’s so used to brain rot content.

These authors don’t write for people who want easy answers or comfortable narratives.

If you want politically correct bullshit and romantacy then sure, there’s plenty of books that’ll scratch that itch. Those are just junkfood.

The writers I’ve mentioned. They write for readers willing to wrestle with complex ideas, follow labyrinthine thoughts, and sit with ambiguity. They demand attention spans longer than a commercial break.

Wallace will take you inside the mind of someone so depressed they can’t feel their own feelings, then somehow make that experience beautiful (And I imagine it’s only going to be even more of a wild ride after I box off the last 500ish pages) Pynchon will weave conspiracy theories and mathematical concepts into paranoid masterpieces that feel like one of those dreams you have when you’re severely dehydrated in the jungle while fighting off Malaria. DeLillo will make you see the sinister poetry in American consumer culture which has sadly bled into the souls of the rest of the world.

Try Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch if you want accessible complexity. Pick up Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad for experimental storytelling that actually serves the story. Grab anything by Zadie Smith for brilliant social observation wrapped in gorgeous prose.

We’re going down that intellectual rabbit hole, baby.

Reading difficult books is like lifting weights for your mind.

Your concentration improves. Your patience grows. You start noticing patterns and connections that others miss. You develop tolerance for uncertainty and comfort with complexity.

And don’t get me wrong. The world we’re living in now profits from you being constantly distracted and carefree.

So pick up something that makes you work for it.

Stephen Walker.

This one will slap you. I read it back in highschool and damn…

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Sometimes you just need to half-ass things.

Could people liken it to failure? Sure.

I’d probably just say it’s some sort of survival mechanism in the creative and human sense.

I know this goes against everything we’ve been taught about excellence and giving 110% and all that motivational poster bullshit.

But perfectionism isn’t a virtue, it just ends up killing your productivity.

You know what happens when you try to make everything perfect? Nothing gets finished.

You spend three hours agonising over a single paragraph that nobody will remember next week. (I do this with single sentences sometimes and it annoys the shit out of me)

Or maybe you rewrite emails seventeen times for clarity that was already there in draft number two.

Or you research endlessly instead of starting, because starting means accepting that your work might be imperfect.

Meanwhile, the person who ships decent work or things consistently is lapping you.

Some things deserve your complete attention. Most things don’t. Learning to tell the difference is what separates productive people from burned out perfectionists.

That presentation for your biggest client? Give it everything.

That internal status update email? Write it, spell check it, send it.

Don’t spend forty minutes crafting prose poetry about quarterly targets, fuck that noise.

The blog post that’s been sitting in your drafts for three months because it’s “not quite right”? Publish the damn thing.

It’s better for an imperfect idea to exist in the world than for a perfect one to die in your head.

I’ve found burnout doesn’t come from working too much, it actually comes from caring too much about things that don’t matter enough.

When everything feels equally important, nothing actually is.

Your energy is finite. Your attention is limited. Your time is not renewable. Spending all three on making everything perfect means you’ll perfect yourself right into exhaustion and accomplish nothing meaningful in the process.

Good enough is often exactly enough. Sometimes half-ass is full success.

The people getting things done aren’t the ones agonising over every detail. They’re the ones who know when to stop polishing and start shipping.

And if you do ever feel like you’re stuck in a funk. This obnoxiously long link to yet another book will help kick your ass.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

It’s rare for me not write anything.

Yesterday was one of those not writing days and well, as much as I preach daily emails for all the various reasons and benefits. A day off won’t kill you.

Just don’t take too many days off cause then it’ll spiral into many days off…

Anyways. I am back to be a menace to your inbox.

Inspired by my fellow writer and romantic Cole Shafer, here be a list just for you. (I rarely do lists but this was fun)

100 Laws for the Wildhearted: A Manifesto for Artists, Makers, and Other Beautiful Monsters

Tell a story like you’re catching lightning in a jar made of your own ribs. 

Romanticise the dirt under your fingernails. It’s proof you’ve been digging. 

Make art, not algorithm bait and zuckermuskbullshit. 

If you can’t be original, be so damn good the ghosts get jealous. 

Be strange. Be unmarketable. Then make them market you anyway. 

Taste is a weapon; sharpen it until it draws blood. 

If it doesn’t wreck you a little, it won’t wreck them at all. 

Clever is fine. Clear is divine. Confuse no one but yourself. 

You can’t bore people into ecstasy. 

Make something they whisper to their friends like a secret sin. 

The frame and the colours are the story. Don’t treat them like furniture. 

Quality is the altar. Sacrifice everything but your soul upon it. 

Without a soul, your “brand” is a zombie puppet. 

Competing on price is how art dies in fluorescent lighting. 

AI is the devil, reclaim your soul before it's too late. 

Do the weird thing only you can do. The cracked, crooked, you-shaped thing. 

Rules aren’t cages. They’re bones. Snap them and grow new ones. 

Carve away everything that doesn’t pulse. 

Build one cathedral. Bleed in every brick. 

Focus like a sniper with trembling hands. 

Juggling a hundred dreams means you’ll drop every damn one. 

Moving isn’t progress. Dancing might be. 

Decide boldly. Even when you’re wrong, do it beautifully. 

Fear is a compass. Walk toward the teeth. 

Audacity. Audacity. Always audacity. (Tattoo it on your bones.) 

Punch up at gods, never down at mortals. 

Take no shit. Eat the criticism, digest the truth, spit the rest. 

Learn the rules. Then snap their necks with grace. 

Be the quiet storm. The unseen machine. 

If you hate the story, rewrite the mythology. 

Own your failures like feral pets. Name them. Feed them. Learn from them. 

Promise less, deliver art that burns brighter than what was asked. 

The audience knows their wounds, but not their medicine. You’re the apothecary. 

Heal, don’t sell. But if you must sell, sell healing. 

Follow up like a ghost that won’t stop haunting. 

If you are the artist, your first product is belief. 

When you’re lost, go there in person. Art lives where friction does. 

Relationships are compound interest for the soul. 

Do the thing that doesn’t scale. Handwrite. Handpaint. Handbleed. 

Outsource the boring stuff twice. Then learn the magic yourself. 

Study how barbers, churches, and cults captivate people. Then use it for good. 

Find the hungry, the weird, the overlooked cause they’re tomorrow’s giants. 

Hire slow. Fire your inner cynic fast. 

Committees murder ideas with polite smiles. Protect yours. 

Praise in the light. Critique in the dark. 

Good work breeds more work. Be careful what you summon. 

Winners make worlds. Losers imitate theirs. 

Relevance fades. Legacy becomes dust coated in gold. Choose legacy. 

Study the bones of the dead. They left you blueprints. 

Don’t build your dream castle on someone else’s digital sand. (I learnt this one the hard way. RIP 200 000+ followers) 

Yesterday’s tools won’t carve tomorrow’s myths. Adapt. Mutate. 

Think in centuries. Act before lunch. 

Chop wood. Carry wonder. 

Passion flickers. Persistence fuels the stars. 

Be the one who’s still there when everyone else quits. 

Your body is your brush. Treat it like an instrument, not an afterthought. 

Pay yourself first. Every hour of the day belongs to you, your thoughts and the muse before anyone and anything else. 

Keep a year’s worth of hope (and rent) in the bank. (A fuck it fund) 

Cash is king. But margin and creative space is the queen that rules him. 

Everything is temporary. Make it eternal anyway. 

When in doubt: make something that scares you, then show it to the world. 

Discipline is just romance with structure. 

Rest is part of the process. Even volcanoes sleep. 

Don’t chase balance, chase alignment. 

Ritual is rocket fuel. Build one. Light it daily. 

Reject cynicism when you can; it’s sugar-coated despair. 

If you find yourself jealous, study instead of sulk. 

Comparison poisons creation. Antidote: empathy and movement. 

Make a habit of finishing things. Corpses tell better stories than embryos. 

You think you're blocked. Actually, you're incubating. But don’t stay stuck forever. 

Treat failure like compost. It stinks but grows miracles. 

Don’t fetishize humility. Earn it with scars. 

The first draft isn’t trash, it’s raw ore. Melt it. Forge it. 

Every artist must be a hunter and a monk. 

The muse respects deadlines. 

Create like everyone’s watching. Edit like no one is. 

Turn pain into narrative structure. (That's where the best writing and creating gets done) 

Let your weirdness be the handshake that opens doors. 

The work is the marketing. The rest is choreography. 

Don’t chase perfection; chase resonance. 

Everything you make is a self-portrait. Be proud of the monster. 

Don’t bow to gatekeepers, they’re just scared you’ll climb the wall. 

Romanticise failure, but don’t build your house there. 

Make quiet art loud, and loud art whisper. 

If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re repeating yourself. 

Fuck trends. They die faster than moths in rain. 

Make stuff you want to exist in the world. If not you, who? 

The muse loves movement. Walk. Drive. Wash dishes. Invite her in. 

Don’t polish forever. Shine once, release it, start again. 

Momentum is oxygen. Protect it. 

Learn business. Not to sell out, but to stay free. 

Don’t become a brand. Become a myth. 

Make friends with solitude; she’s brutal but honest. 

Art doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. 

Make things for your future ghost to be proud of. 

Try everything once, but finish something thrice. 

No one is coming to save your project. You’re the cavalry. You are the carpenter that has to get their hands splintered and bruised. 

Make love to curiosity daily. 

Die on your own hill but make sure the view is worth it. 

Keep your torch lit, even when the rain won’t stop. Someone, somewhere, needs to see it. 

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Go check out Cole’s stuff over here on the instaspam

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

So I caught whatever plague is making the rounds…

Could be a cold, could be the flu, could be the opening act of the next global pandemic.

Who knows anymore? These days every sniffle feels like it might be Patient Zero material which is always fun when you’re out and about.

Anyway, I dragged my diseased carcass inside, ran a hot bath thinking I’d soak the sickness out of my bones, and promptly passed out in the tub like some kind of fever dream 12 monkeys styled film casualty.

Thank god for tall legs, because they’re apparently the only thing standing between me and becoming a drowning statistic.

My knees hit the sides of the tub and kept my head above water while I was unconscious and fighting whatever biological warfare was happening in my bloodstream.

When I finally came to, the water had gone ice cold and I was so shrivelled up I looked like a raisin that had been left in the desert for six months.

Seriously, I caught a glimpse of myself and immediately thought of Ed Gein eyeing me up for his next home decor project.

(Mental note to self… Stop watching Netflix before bed. My subconscious doesn’t need that kind of inspiration while I’m fighting off death in a bathtub)

My fingers were so pruned they looked like they belonged to someone’s 90 year old grandmother who’d spent her entire life washing dishes.

But hey, I’m alive, I’m not a lampshade, and I didn’t accidentally become the inspiration for some future true crime documentary about the guy who drowned in his own bathtub while sick. (Which would be an interesting way to go…)

Since I’m clearly not meant to be productive today and neither are you if you’re reading this, let me suggest something way better than whatever mindless scrolling you were about to do…

Pick up Perimeter by M.A. Rothman. It’s basically what would happen if Jack Reacher was Mormon, had better moral strength, and got dropped into situations that make regular action thrillers look like children’s bedtime stories.

The main character is this guy Levi who’s built like a brick shithouse but has the kind of moral compass that actually points north. Fast paced, entertaining as hell, and the perfect antidote to whatever productivity guilt you’re carrying around today.

Anyways. It’s bed time before I start coughing up parts of my insides. Gross. I know.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you’re also fighting off whatever biological weapon is circulating this week, maybe avoid hot baths and Netflix serial killer documentaries. Just a thought.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Ed Gein was a monster.

But you might take his side after being given a psychological masterclass in horror.

(Or so I’ve been told by a friend who has just binged the whole series in one day…)

Granted I’m only 1 episode in, and there was a lot to unpack in the first episode.

All I can say is it was a wild start and as a writer I’m always looking to understand how truly disturbing characters work.

Forget the Hollywood serial killer bullshit with the dramatic music and over the top theatrics.

From what I know from previous documentaries and articles I’ve read on Gein, was that he was so terrifying because he seemed so fucking ordinary.

Kept to himself. The kind of guy neighbours barely noticed until they found human skin lampshades in his house.

And I mean a lot of writers miss the mark.

They go straight for the obvious crazy, the maniacal laughter, the grandiose speeches, the bloody gory theatrical violence and what not. From what I know. Actual monsters just blend in with day to day life. They’re not twirling their moustaches and lurking around all sneaky like.

You might read about how they just made small talk at counter while buying break and milk, but when they get home. They plot something so twisted even our boy Stephen King would lose sleep.

Now I’m invested in seeing how this show builds Gein’s character. I want to see if they’re going to add the mundane details. The way his twisted logic feels almost reasonable when viewed through his damaged perspective. (The barn scene towards them middle of the first episode just sets the tone) The slow reveal that this unassuming man harbours thoughts that would send most people into therapy for decades.

Now I’m thinking to myself how can I write a villain that haunts people? Don’t make them a cartoon. Make them someone readers might sit next to on public transport. Someone who could be their co-worker, their neighbour, the person ahead of them in line at Starbucks.

The one thing I’ve also noticed in general is that monsters won’t just announce they’re monsters. They just exist, quietly, in spaces we thought were safe.

I’m looking forward to studying how Gein’s ordinariness becomes the most terrifying thing about him. The most compelling dark characters are the ones who feel like they could step off the page and order coffee next to you.

That’s when readers start double checking their door locks and wondering about the person who lives upstairs.

And if you have no clue what I’m talking about, just watch the trailer here.

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

The French have this saying…

C’est la vie.

More aptly put;

“That’s life.”

Those two words carry the weight of centuries of human experience, wrapped in what I’d call a linguistic shrug, that somehow manages to be both profound and casual at the same time.

You’re not resigning nor giving up. It’s something much more sophisticated at a deeper look.

It’s a soft sigh of acceptance that acknowledges life doesn’t give a damn about your carefully crafted plans. You know that feeling when everything you’ve mapped out gets completely derailed?

When the job falls through, the relationship implodes, the project you poured your heart into gets rejected, the pandemic cancels your entire year, the diagnosis changes everything?

We’ve all been there and got the t-shirt.

Most of us respond to these moments by losing our absolute shit. We rage against the unfairness, demand explanations from a universe that doesn’t owe us any, exhaust ourselves trying to force square pegs into round holes.

The French just say c’est la vie and pour another glass of wine.

There’s wisdom in that response that goes deeper than it appears.

It might even come across as being passive or fatalistic. Now I’m sure we understand that life is fundamentally unpredictable, and fighting that reality is like screaming at the ocean for being cold, wet and deadly.

Your plans were beautiful. Your timeline made perfect sense. Your vision of how things should unfold was logical and well-thought-out. And life laughed in the face of all of it, because life doesn’t read your fucking calendar.

C’est la vie.

There will be detours. The mess isn’t interrupting your life; it is your life. The unexpected turns, the sudden stops, the routes you never planned to take…

That’s where the actual story happens even if the story feels like an absolute shit show on the surface.

Every person you admire has a biography full of detours that seemed like disasters at the time. The failed business that led to the breakthrough idea. The rejection that forced them to try something better. The crisis that revealed strengths they didn’t know they had.

None of it was part of their original plan. All of it was essential to who they became.

There’s beauty in accepting that you’re not the director of this movie.

You’re just the protagonist stumbling through scenes you didn’t write, with dialogue you’re making up as you go along. Sometimes the lighting is perfect and your lines are brilliant. Sometimes you trip over the furniture and forget what you were supposed to say.

C’est la vie.

This doesn’t mean becoming a doormat or abandoning your ambitions. It means holding your planTwitter has been insufferable today.

The Litterati? (Literature nazis or whatever) were up in arms on Elon’s hellsite…

They were screaming from their high horses about how piracy is terrible and you’re an evil monster if you don’t care about piracy, especially if you’re an indie author trying to make it in this cut throat world of self pub and ink slinging…

But now it’s my time to get on my soap box and tell a different tune about piracy.

Hark Ye!

So back in 2020 I was working on a project with a fellow writer and marketing nerd.

We wrote a couple of guides, posted it to Gumroad and had a few big twitter accounts promote it and before we knew it. They were posted all over those blackhat web forums and discord servers.

Luckily we didn’t take anything too seriously cause hey, it’s not like we were out to stop world hunger or anything…

Originally my first instinct was to fire off angry emails and DMCA takedown notices like some kind of copyright vigilante.

Then I remembered something.

I used to be that person downloading shit I couldn’t afford.

Now most artists and creatives don’t want to admit this.

Sometimes it’s the only way people can access work that might change their lives.

I know, I know. We need to eat. We need to pay rent. The written word is already undervalued and we’re all fighting for scraps in an attention economy that treats books like disposable content. Every download that doesn’t generate revenue feels like money stolen directly from our grocery budget.

But let’s talk about the bigger picture for a minute.

You know what’s really fucked up?

There are brilliant people in countries where books cost a month’s salary. Students in places where Amazon doesn’t ship. Kids in regions where accessing “Western” literature is actively discouraged by governments who prefer to control information flow.

What if someone in Africa desperately needs to read that book about overcoming creative blocks, but it costs more than they make in a week? What if a writer in rural China stumbles across your work about breaking generational trauma, but there’s no legal way for them to access it?

Are we really going to stand on principle while someone who could benefit from our work suffers because they can’t afford the entry fee to our wisdom?

It’s purely some twisted form of capitalism prancing around with a half shattered mask of artistic integrity…

Look, I’m not saying we should all just give our work away for free. I’m not suggesting piracy is morally neutral or that creators don’t deserve compensation. But the scarcity mindset that makes us treat every unauthorised download like a personal attack? That’s what’s really holding us back.

Here’s what I did instead of sending lawyer threats (Which honestly is so fucking exhausting anyways) I started to put a simple message in all my ebooks.

Something like, “Hey, if you got this book through unofficial channels, no judgment. I’ve been broke too. If it helped you and you’re ever in a position to support the work, here’s my newsletter link. I’d love to hear your story.”

You know what happened? People started reaching out. Not all of them, but enough. Some just wanted to say thanks for not being a dick about it. Others shared how they found my work and why it mattered to them. A few even sent small donations when they could afford it later.

One person told me they’d downloaded my book while unemployed and depressed, used the techniques to turn their life around, got a better job, and paid for my time via a Zoom call.

That reader is now worth more to me than ten people who bought the book once and forgot about it.

We’re not Stephen King. We don’t have the luxury of not caring when our work gets shared without permission. But we also don’t have his name recognition or marketing budget. Sometimes a “stolen” book is the best marketing we’re going to get.

Every person who discovers your work, regardless of how they found it, is a potential ambassador for everything you create next.

They might recommend you to friends who do pay. They might hire you for bigger projects. They might become lifelong supporters once their circumstances change.

The scarcity mindset says every pirated copy is a lost sale.

The abundance mindset recognises that most pirates were never going to buy your work anyway, but some of them might become your biggest fans. On top of that. When you haven’t paid for anything (Skin in the game) you’re less likely to do anything with it anyways so does it really matter?

I’m not saying don’t protect your work or that artists should embrace being exploited. I’m saying maybe we should consider the difference between organised piracy operations profiting off our labour and individuals who genuinely can’t access our work any other way.

There’s enough to go around. Your words reaching someone who needs them, even if they can’t pay for the privilege, shouldn’t be considered theft.

I’d liken it some sort of hidden impact or whatever.

If someone reads some of my words and impacts their life in a positive way, well that to me is a job well done.

And if they so happen to still be on this email list, they can happily click this super long and obnoxious link and buy me a coffee or whatever…

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdoms lightly enough that you can do that little jiggle wiggle thing? (Pivot lol), especially when reality demands it.

It means finding grace in the gap between what you expected and what actually happened.

The French understand something about living that other cultures seem to miss…

You can’t control the story, but you can control how you respond to it. You can rage against every plot twist, or you can trust that even the detours have something to teach you.

There’s gonna be mess. But there’s also going to be beauty.

In the way you adapt when everything falls apart. In the strength you discover when you’re forced to improvise. In the stories you’ll tell years later about the time when nothing went according to plan and somehow everything worked out anyway.

C’est la vie doesn’t make you give up on your dreams.

It’s more about giving you a little slap and letting you know that there’s no way you can dictate exactly how those dreams come true.

Sometimes the most profound wisdom comes wrapped in the simplest phrases. Sometimes the French really do have it figured out.

C’est la vie.

Stephen Walker.

If you’re not diggin’ these tasty little emails anymore you can hit the unsubscribe button right here >>> unsubscribe

Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

The French have this saying…

C’est la vie.

More aptly put;

“That’s life.”

Those two words carry the weight of centuries of human experience, wrapped in what I’d call a linguistic shrug, that somehow manages to be both profound and casual at the same time.

You’re not resigning nor giving up. It’s something much more sophisticated at a deeper look.

It’s a soft sigh of acceptance that acknowledges life doesn’t give a damn about your carefully crafted plans. You know that feeling when everything you’ve mapped out gets completely derailed?

When the job falls through, the relationship implodes, the project you poured your heart into gets rejected, the pandemic cancels your entire year, the diagnosis changes everything?

We’ve all been there and got the t-shirt.

Most of us respond to these moments by losing our absolute shit. We rage against the unfairness, demand explanations from a universe that doesn’t owe us any, exhaust ourselves trying to force square pegs into round holes.

The French just say c’est la vie and pour another glass of wine.

There’s wisdom in that response that goes deeper than it appears.

It might even come across as being passive or fatalistic. Now I’m sure we understand that life is fundamentally unpredictable, and fighting that reality is like screaming at the ocean for being cold, wet and deadly.

Your plans were beautiful. Your timeline made perfect sense. Your vision of how things should unfold was logical and well-thought-out. And life laughed in the face of all of it, because life doesn’t read your fucking calendar.

C’est la vie.

There will be detours. The mess isn’t interrupting your life; it is your life. The unexpected turns, the sudden stops, the routes you never planned to take…

That’s where the actual story happens even if the story feels like an absolute shit show on the surface.

Every person you admire has a biography full of detours that seemed like disasters at the time. The failed business that led to the breakthrough idea. The rejection that forced them to try something better. The crisis that revealed strengths they didn’t know they had.

None of it was part of their original plan. All of it was essential to who they became.

There’s beauty in accepting that you’re not the director of this movie.

You’re just the protagonist stumbling through scenes you didn’t write, with dialogue you’re making up as you go along. Sometimes the lighting is perfect and your lines are brilliant. Sometimes you trip over the furniture and forget what you were supposed to say.

C’est la vie.

This doesn’t mean becoming a doormat or abandoning your ambitions. It means holding your plans lightly enough that you can do that little jiggle wiggle thing? (Pivot lol), especially when reality demands it.

It means finding grace in the gap between what you expected and what actually happened.

The French understand something about living that other cultures seem to miss…

You can’t control the story, but you can control how you respond to it. You can rage against every plot twist, or you can trust that even the detours have something to teach you.

There’s gonna be mess. But there’s also going to be beauty.

In the way you adapt when everything falls apart. In the strength you discover when you’re forced to improvise. In the stories you’ll tell years later about the time when nothing went according to plan and somehow everything worked out anyway.

C’est la vie doesn’t make you give up on your dreams.

It’s more about giving you a little slap and letting you know that there’s no way you can dictate exactly how those dreams come true.

Sometimes the most profound wisdom comes wrapped in the simplest phrases. Sometimes the French really do have it figured out.

C’est la vie.

Stephen Walker.

If you’re not diggin’ these tasty little emails anymore you can hit the unsubscribe button right here >>> unsubscribe

Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

Put the phone down and pick up a book (After you’ve read this email obviously)

And no. Not an audiobook. Not a Kindle. An actual, physical book with pages you can turn and a spine that’ll look good on your shelf after you’re done being completely mindfucked by whatever’s inside…

I’m talking specifically about The Fog by James Herbert.

Also NO…

…not the movies.

John Carpenter’s 1980 version was… fine, I guess, if you enjoy watching people stumble around in what looks like someone’s vape clouds while dramatic music plays.

And don’t get me started on the 2005 remake, which somehow managed to take a perfectly good concept and turn it into a CGI nightmare that made the original look like Citizen Kane.

The book though? Chef’s kiss.

Herbert knew how to write horror that gets under your skin and stays there.

The Fog isn’t just some mysterious weather phenomenon that just so happened to be.

It was a living, breathing nightmare that drives people to acts of violence so brutal and random that you’ll find yourself double checking your door locks.

This is the kind of book that’ll make you cancel your Sunday plans because you physically cannot put it down. You’ll start reading after coffee and suddenly it’s dark outside and you haven’t moved from your chair and you’re questioning whether that sound outside is just the wind or something much worse.

Sundays were made for this kind of reading. Not the productive, self-improvement, optimise-your-life bullshit that clogs your weekdays.

I’m talking about reading for the pure, unadulterated pleasure of having your mind completely hijacked by someone else’s imagination.

When was the last time you disappeared into a story so completely that the real world ceased to exist?

When did you last feel that particular brand of exhaustion that comes from being emotionally wrung out by fictional characters?

Your phone can’t give you that. Social media can’t give you that. Netflix definitely can’t give you that…

But a good book can transport you somewhere else entirely. It can make you forget about your problems, your deadlines, your crushing sense of existential dread about the state of the world.

I mean if you look at the world right now. It’s a steaming hot dumpster fire of pure turd.

The Fog will do exactly that. Herbert had this gift for making ordinary English towns feel like the most dangerous places on earth. He understood that the best horror comes from taking normal people in normal situations and introducing one element that turns everything upside down.

Plus, there’s something deeply satisfying about reading physical horror fiction. The weight of the book in your hands, the ability to flip back and reread a particularly brutal passage, the satisfaction of watching your bookmark move through the pages as you get closer to whatever nightmare Herbert has waiting for you at the end.

So here’s your mission for today…

Find a copy of The Fog. Turn off your phone. Make some coffee or tea or whatever keeps you functional. Find a comfortable chair with good light.

And then let James Herbert ruin your peaceful Sunday in the most delicious way possible.

Your brain will thank you for the break from all of this always being on. Your imagination will thank you for the workout. And your future self will thank you for remembering what it feels like to be completely absorbed by a story again.

Trust me on this one. The fog is coming, and you want to be ready for it.

This is the 3rd time I’ve read The Fog and I was pretty stoked to have been able to pick up a 50th anniversary edition at the local Asda while grabbing a coffee.

And if you absolutely must get the kindle version. Well it’s free on kindle unlimited right now.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. After you finish The Fog, Herbert wrote a whole bunch of other books that’ll mess with your head in equally satisfying ways. Consider this your gateway drug into proper British horror fiction. You’re welcome.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom