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Don’t worry. No soap box rant today.

Although I’ll probably be fast asleep after hitting a massive caffeine and stale cookies crash by the time you read this, so if this email makes even less sense than usual, that’s why. (Thank God for automation that isn’t bullshit)

Let’s roll…

You need to do the complete opposite of what every marketing “guru” is telling you to do right now.

And it’s not even cause I’m some contrarian edgelord who hates everything popular.

It’s more because they’re wrong.

Like, fundamentally, chronically, hilariously wrong.

These people.

The ones deemed as social media experts, the growth hackers, the woo woo crystal worshipers who promise you’ll 10x your business if you just manifest harder…

They’re all living in the same delusional bubble.

They’re chronically online.

They don’t appreciate what’s going on in the real world. They sit behind their computer screens or iPads, punching away in their own little echo chambers, completely disconnected from how actual humans actually behave.

They’re optimising for metrics that don’t matter at all. Similar to how new copywriters slide into my dm’s and ask about how they can improve open rates…

They’re now focusing on, Engagement. Followers. Virality. Going viral on TikTok. Building a “personal brand.” Posting seventeen times a day because “consistency is key.” (Christ, on FB that shit is wild right now…)

Meanwhile, out here in the real world where people have jobs and lives and aren’t scrolling social media fourteen hours a day, none of that shit translates to actual business.

And it’s weird cause they don’t really know what’s happening in the real world.

It’s about solving problems. Building relationships. Doing good work. Making offers that make sense. Treating people like humans instead of engagement metrics.

Yeah yeah, It’s revolutionary, I know.

But the gurus can’t sell courses on “just be good at what you do and don’t be an asshole.” That’s not sexy. That doesn’t scale. That doesn’t promise overnight success with their seven step framework and a $50k a year mastermind (lol)

So instead they sell you on tactics that work in their weird online ecosystem but fall completely flat when they hit actual reality.

The anti-marketer playbook is simple in that respect.

Stop posting for the whatever AI/Algorithm or Billionaire says you gotta do. Start creating for humans.

Stop trying to go viral. Start trying to be useful.

Stop obsessing over follower counts. Start obsessing over whether people actually want to work with you.

Stop doing what every other marketer is doing because “best practices.” Start doing what actually works for your specific situation with your specific people.

The gurus won’t tell you this because it doesn’t sound impressive. It doesn’t have twelve steps and a catchy acronym. It can’t be packaged into a $997 course with a countdown timer.

But it’s what actually builds businesses that last beyond the next change or platform collapse or trend cycle.

While these clowns play a game that doesn’t exist outside their screens.

And always, you don’t have to play it with them.

Do cool shit.

Make buying from you fun and a great experience.

Rinse and repeat.

It’s that easy.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. The caffeine crash is hitting hard now. It’s around 15:30ish when I wrote this… Point is this: Trust yourself over the gurus. Trust what you see working in reality over what they say works in theory. And maybe don’t survive on stale cookies and coffee. Do as I say, not as I do. Okay bye.

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

Here’s one of my favourite poems from my favourite poets…

Roll the dice by Charles Bukowski:

if you’re going to try, go all the

way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the

way. this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs and

maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or

4 days.

it could mean freezing on a

park bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean derision,

mockery,

isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of your

endurance, of

how much you really want to

do it.

and you’ll do it

despite rejection and the

worst odds

and it will be better than

anything else

you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like

that.

you will be alone with the

gods

and the nights will flame with

fire.

do it, do it, do it.

do it.

all the way

all the way.

you will ride life straight to

perfect laughter,

it’s the only good fight

there is.

The TL;DR if you skipped all the way?

No matter what it is you’re going to do. Go all the way and if you’re not even going to go all the way. Just don’t bother.

Food for though, eh?

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you want a hard hitting book of poems even if you don’t like poetry, this collection of his is great…

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

Every blue tick wanker on Twitter and Facebook has suddenly become a rage bait merchant.

And trust me. You’ve seen them.

The verified accounts posting the dumbest, most inflammatory takes imaginable just to farm engagement.

It’s especially popular on Twitter because engagement of any sort = I can get monetised for my stupidity…

Although on Facebook. If you scroll for a few minutes you’ll see;

The “entrepreneurs” saying women shouldn’t vote.

The “marketers” claiming anyone who eats vegetables is a pussy.

The “thought leaders” posting deliberately wrong information just to get people arguing in the comments and I remember towards the back end of 2025 this shit was all over LinkedIn.

These clowns have figured out that the algorithm rewards outrage.

Say something stupid enough, offensive enough, or wrong enough, and people can’t help themselves.

It’s like they have to respond. They have to correct you. They have to tell you how dumb you are.

It’s worse than Cunningham’s law.

The wild thing is that every comment, every quote tweet, every angry response feeds the machine and pushes that post to more people.

So now everyone’s doing it.

Every mediocre marketer with a blue checkmark has abandoned actual strategy in favour of “say inflammatory bullshit and watch the engagement roll in.”

And you know what? It works. For about five minutes.

Then people catch on. They realise you’re not interesting. You’re just annoying.

They realise you don’t actually believe half the shit you’re saying. They realise you’re the digital equivalent of a toddler throwing a tantrum for attention.

(ever see a little kid in the shops drop its ass to the floor and flap about because you wouldn’t get it a new set of lego?”

That’s you when you do it.

They tune you out. Or worse, they start associating your brand with being a disingenuous rage farming dickhead.

And here I go again on my ol’ soap box, cause these blue tick wankers don’t understand…

Attention isn’t the same as influence. Engagement isn’t the same as trust. Getting people mad at you isn’t the same as getting them to buy from you.

You know what actually works? What’s worked for decades and will keep working long after the rage bait trend dies?

The fundamentals that Drew Eric Whitman lays out in Ca$hvertising.

Not algorithmic gaming bullshit. Not engagement hacking. Not pissing people off for clicks.

Real marketing stuff.

The sauce.

The kind based on actual human psychology instead of platform manipulation.

Whitman talks about Life Force 8, which is the core human desires that drive every purchasing decision…

Survival. Enjoyment of food and beverages. Freedom from fear and pain. Sexual companionship. Comfortable living conditions. Superiority. Care and protection of loved ones. Social approval.

Notice what’s not on that list?

Getting into pointless arguments with strangers on the internet.

People don’t buy because you made them angry. (I mean rage buying could be a thing)

They buy because you tapped into something they actually want. Something they need. Something that makes their life better, easier, safer, or more enjoyable.

Rage bait might get you attention, but it doesn’t build desire. It doesn’t create trust. It doesn’t make people think “I want to give this person my money.”

It just makes people think you’re an asshole.

The blue tick strategy is a race to the bottom.

Everyone’s competing to say the most outrageous thing. To be the most controversial. To generate the most angry responses. And the end result is a feed full of performative bullshit that nobody actually cares about beyond their initial rage fuelled response.

Meanwhile, the marketers who understand actual psychology are the ones who know how to tap into real human desires and fears and aspirations and are quietly building businesses that last.

They’re successful for being effective.

They’re using the principles Whitman teaches by understanding what people actually want, speaking to those desires in compelling ways, and making offers that feel like no brainers.

That’s what will reign supreme.

And it’s not trendy. It doesn’t game the algorithm. But because it’s based on how humans actually think and make decisions, which hasn’t changed in thousands of years and won’t change no matter what Elon does to Twitter next week.

You can try and build a business on rage bait if you want. You can become the person everyone loves to hate. You can generate endless engagement from people who would never buy from you in a million years.

Or you can learn actual marketing. The kind that persuades instead of provokes. The kind that builds loyalty instead of animosity. The kind that makes you money instead of just making you infamous.

One of those strategies has staying power. The other one burns out the second the algorithm changes or people get tired of your fuckery.

I’d probably say choose wisely but I can guarantee some people are going to go down that route cause some dumbass on LinkedIn or Facebook has created the Rage Bait Bible for $997 and well, let’s get another shiny object innit?

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you haven’t read Ca$hvertising, do yourself a favour and grab a copy. It’s not sexy. It’s not trendy. It won’t teach you how to go viral. But it will teach you how to actually sell things to humans, which turns out to be pretty fucking valuable when you’re trying to build a business instead of a circus act.

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

So this weekend I have to embark on a journey.

The journey is deep.

Not as wild as Shackleton’s famous advert for an Endurance expedition:

“Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey

Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”

But deep nevertheless…

I have to study WD Gann.

And the reason I’m dreading it is cause he touches on topics that have given me some sort of PTSD (not too serious tbh)

The tome is 232 pages and inside I’m going to discover the following gems:

William Delbert Gann or WD Gann, was a finance trader who developed securities trading technical analysis methods. Gann’s market forecasting methods are purportedly based on geometry, astronomy, astrology, time cycle analysis, and other esoteric means.

The two words that are making me rage internally is: Astronomy and Astrology. Don’t even get me started, but if you stick your head out of the window a few moments after receiving this email and you hear someone shouting in the distance. That’s me.

The lesson is this though…

Sometimes we have to do the things we hate. We gotta suck it up and crack on. I’ve got just over 100 people who want to see what my thoughts are on his work and how it affects how they are looking at the markets from a purely technical point of view. So that’s my fun for the weekend prepped.

Anywho.

In all of our creativity pursuits. We have to suck it up and do what we hate. Even if we have to do it in secret, we have to do it anyways. Who knows? Maybe our stubborn hatred will teach us something when we do the thing…

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Did I pay nearly £70 for a book? Of course I did. Now let’s see if I can learn something that’ll win back that £70 and then some in the markets.

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

“Leaps forward are often preceded by desperate, regressive leaps backward.” – Don Beck & Chris Cowan, Spiral Dynamics

We’re two weeks into 2026, and I’ve spent most of the year so far creating YouTube videos.

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And honestly, they’re driving me nuts.

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I’m in that awkward stage of the creative process where I know what I want to say, but I’m still figuring out how I want to say it:

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That unique combination of messaging, editing, and delivery that stamps my creative fingerprint and separates my work from the rest.

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And I haven’t found it yet.

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This is when most creatives and founders throw in the towel, because they mistake their growing pains as a sign the process isn’t working.

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But it’s the only way the process works.

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Every idea begins unformed, like a block of raw stone that must be hammered and shaped until the imperfections are chipped away and the finished work reveals itself.

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The creative process is comfortable for no one, and the only way through it is to create:

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To make something, publish it, learn from it, and then make something else a little better than the last.

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Then repeat that process until the stone is gone and a polished diamond sits in its place.

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If you’re in the awkward in-between (or the even more awkward still-getting-started), remember…

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It’s not:

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Think → think → think → think → think → do.

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It’s:

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Think → do → think → do → think → do.

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​Here’s the latest iteration.​

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• T

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You know what keeps me from losing my shit completely when everything’s going wrong?

Gratitude.

I know, I know. It sounds like something a wellness influencer would say while selling you a $47 journal with motivational quotes.

Although it’s 2026 now, but hear me out.

When January’s trying to kill me and everything’s breaking and people are acting insane and I’m one minor inconvenience away from a full meltdown…

Having to force myself to find something to be grateful for is the only thing standing between me and complete psychological collapse.

A little bit of gratitude goes a long way.

Not the fake, toxic positivity bullshit where you pretend everything’s fine when it’s clearly not. (Insert Katy Perry I’m Fine meme)

Not the “just be grateful and your problems will disappear” garbage that makes you want to punch someone or something.

I’m just talking about practical gratitude. The kind where you acknowledge that yeah, things are fucked, but there’s still something in your life that doesn’t suck.

Maybe it’s stupid small. Coffee tastes good. Your dog’s happy to see you. You’ve got a roof over your head. Someone texted you something funny. The sun came out for five minutes (lol England)

Doesn’t matter how small it is.

Gratitude is cool cause it interrupts the spiral, even for a few minutes, hours or days.

When your brain’s in catastrophe mode, it wants to find more things to catastrophise about. (Is catastrophise a word??)

It’s looking for evidence that everything’s terrible and always will be terrible and you should panic harder and breath shallower and then your chest explodes like that poor due in Alien…

Gratitude is like one of those Ginsu knives from the early 2000s, which can cut through almost anything.

It forces your brain to notice something that isn’t complete dogshit.

Small shifts are good for the soul.

Gratitude doesn’t fix your problems. Your bills don’t magically get paid because you’re thankful for your morning coffee. Your broken plans don’t un-break themselves because you appreciated a good song.

But it keeps you sane enough to deal with those problems without completely losing your mind in the process.

Like you don’t have to be “everything’s fucked and I can’t handle this” it’s more a “okay, things are rough, but I’ve got this one good thing, so maybe I can figure out the rest.”

That’s the secret sauce.

The people who make it through the hard shit without becoming bitter, angry husks of their former selves? (nearly me)

They’re not the ones who never had problems. They’re the ones who found ways to stay grateful even when things weren’t going their way.

And I’m not saying you need to be grateful for the hard shit. Fuck that. You don’t need to be thankful that January’s trying to murder you or that your plans imploded or that everything’s harder than it should be, but you can be grateful despite it.

Grateful for the people who showed up. The skills you’ve built. The fact that you’re still here fighting instead of giving up. The small wins mixed in with the losses.

If I was selling insanity insurance. That insurance would be gratitude.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s still good stuff mixed in with the garbage. But we’ve survived worse before and I’m sure we’ll survive this too.

So just do one thing a day. Doesn’t have to be profound. Doesn’t have to be life changing.

Just something that made today slightly less terrible than it could’ve been.

And in my case. Today my heating and hot water has finally been fixed cause it’s been fucked since the 25th of December.

Cool thing is. If you do this enough. The hard stuff doesn’t disappear, but it stops feeling quite so suffocating. You get a little breathing room. A little perspective. A little sanity.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. My gratitude practice isn’t fancy. No journal. No morning routine. Just a mental check in before bed. What didn’t suck today? Sometimes it’s a good conversation. Sometimes it’s just that I made it through without completely losing it. Either way, it counts. Try it. Also this Youtube video is one of the working parts that stops be from ending up in a padded cell…

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

January is a cursed month for me.

I don’t know if it’s the moon, the stars, Mercury in Gatorade, or Cthulhu himself waking up cranky, but every January things go sideways.

Shit breaks. People lose their minds. Plans implode. The universe decides to test exactly how much fuckery I can handle before I snap.

And this January? Right on schedule.

Luckily I have a little re-frame which helps me from going postal and that is: WCYD

What Can You Do?

That’s it. Four words. Simple as hell.

When things go wrong and they will, constantly, especially in January apparently…

I’ve got two options.

Option one: Blow up. Go absolutely batshit insane. Rage at the SkyDaddy. Have a complete meltdown about how unfair everything is and how nothing works and why does this always happen to me and fuck everything forever.

Option two: Take a breath. Look at the situation rationally. Ask myself what I can actually do about it. Then do that thing.

The second option sucks less.

Does it feel good when things don’t go your way? Fuck no. Is it annoying when plans fall apart and you have to scramble? Obviously.

Would I prefer if January just skipped itself entirely and we went straight to February? Absolutely.

But the one thing and only power you have is how you respond.

That’s it. That’s the whole game. No secret $997 course with a $30k yearly mastermind and the soul of your next child.

You can’t control what breaks. You can’t control when people lose their shit. You can’t control the universe deciding to throw a wrench in your plans just for funsies. But you can control whether you make it worse by crashing out (as the kids say), or whether you take a breath and ask yourself…

What can I do right now?

Sometimes the answer is “fix the thing.” Sometimes it’s “wait it out.” Sometimes it’s “pivot completely and try something else.” Sometimes it’s just “survive today and deal with it tomorrow.”

But there’s always something you can do. Even if that something is just choosing not to make yourself crazier than you already are and I mean in generally we’re all crazy enough.

That’s the power in WCYD.

Not toxic positivity bullshit where you pretend everything’s fine when it’s clearly not. Not some guru nonsense about manifesting better circumstances through vibes.

Just a simple, practical question that pulls you out of the spiral and puts you back in the driver’s seat…

What can you do?

It works when clients flake. When tech breaks. When plans implode. When January decides to be January and everything feels like it’s held together with duct tape and spite.

You can rage about it and sometimes you should, briefly, just to get it out, or you can ask what you can actually do about it and then do that.

One of those options keeps you sane. The other one doesn’t.

I’m not saying I’ve mastered this. I’m still white knuckling my way through January like everyone else. But WCYD has kept me from completely losing my shit when every instinct says to burn it all down.

So if you’re having one of those weeks or months or where nothing’s going right and you’re about three bad days away from a meltdown and a self destructive habit or 3.

Stop. Breathe. Ask yourself what you can actually do.

Then do that thing.

It won’t fix everything. But it’ll keep you moving forward instead of spiralling.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. January ends eventually. That’s what I keep telling myself. Eighteen something more days and we’re free. Until then… WCYD. What can you do? Usually more than you think, and less catastrophically than your panic brain is suggesting. And if you click this obnoxiously long link. You’ll be sent through to a set that has some very good vibes to get you through the rest of this hell month.

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

This is gonna be quick.

A friend of mine runs a group teaching economics and market movements to a hyper niche audience.

Smart guy. Knows his shit. But today he asked me how to make his presentations more interesting.

And in soap box fashion I shared this:

Melt your entire personality into what you’re teaching.

Every hobby. Every interest. Every weird obsession. All of it gets folded into the economics lessons like you’re making the world’s most interesting burrito.

The fastest way to do this? Metaphors and analogies.

Connect market movements to his favourite fictional characters. Explain economic concepts through movies he loves. Use sports analogies. Music references. Whatever the fuck he’s into and make that the vehicle for the lesson.

Hell, he can even go there with the taboo shit. Politics. Religion. Sex. The stuff everyone’s too scared to touch. Because when you connect dry economic theory to something people actually have feelings about, suddenly it’s not boring anymore.

Which goes back to the subject line: We don’t know what we don’t know.

But we do know the things we’re obsessed with. Our hobbies. Our passions. The shit we think about in the shower.

And when someone teaches us something new by connecting it to something we already love? That’s when learning stops feeling like work and starts feeling like a conversation with someone who actually gets it, which is pretty damn magical if you think about it. Just look back on the days when you were taught things in school. Dry and boring and that’s probably why we’re all as mentally deranged as we are now…

Anyways…

The only thing your audience really needs is you being you. I’m talking about bringing your whole weird self to the table. Make the connections nobody else would make. Teach economics like you’re explaining it to your best friend at a bar. (Famous copywriting idea tbh)

That’s how you make economics or anything interesting.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you’re teaching anything. Writing, marketing, woodworking or underwater basket weaving. The same rule applies. You don’t want to sound like everyone else in your field. You want to be interesting and entertaining while talking about your field. That’s a massive paradigm switch and it works like magic.

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

We’re accelerating toward a culture where people take everything on the internet literally and it’s fucking terrifying.

I’m not talking about your aunt who believes every Facebook post about how microwaving your phone charges it faster.

I’m talking about a wholesale collapse in people’s ability to detect nuance, context, sarcasm, hyperbole, or any communication more sophisticated than a traffic light. (And even then people don’t even know what the amber light signals…)

Everything is literal now. Every joke needs a disclaimer. Every exaggeration gets fact checked by someone who genuinely can’t tell the difference between “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” and an actual plan to commit equine cannibalism.

And it’s getting worse.

But my eye is twitching…

Why?

Look what’s happening in the tech industry right now.

We’ve got AI chatbots that can’t understand context. Social media algorithms that treat everything as equally true or false with no room for interpretation.

Content moderation systems dumber than a box of rocks that ban you for obvious satire while letting actual harmful shit slide through.

We’re building technology that reinforces literal thinking.

That trains people to communicate in the most basic, unambiguous, lowest common denominator way possible because anything else gets flagged, misunderstood, or turned into a viral outrage mob.

The platforms are training us to be stupider. And we’re complying.

People don’t read anymore.

They scan for keywords to get mad about. They don’t interpret or anything they just react. They don’t think they pattern match against whatever tribal checkbox they’ve downloaded into their brain meats.

Critical thinking is dying. Reading comprehension is circling the drain. The ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time without your brain short circuiting? Practically extinct. (Insert every type of political view)

And I don’t know how to fix it.

I really don’t.

You can’t educate your way out of this when the infrastructure itself is built to reward smooth brain takes and punish complexity.

You can’t argue someone out of literal thinking when they’ve been trained by the algorithm and conditioned to see everything in binary.

Part of me wants to say “read more books” or “get off social media” or some other obvious advice that roughly zero people will actually follow.

But that’s pissing into the wind at this point.

And we all know that this was no accident.

Literal thinkers are easier to manipulate.

They’re easier to advertise to.

They generate more engagement because they get mad faster and argue longer.

They’re the perfect user base for platforms that make money from keeping you scrolling.

Tech companies have accidentally or maybe not so accidentally, created a financial incentive to make everyone dumber.

And it’s working.

We’re watching human intelligence get optimised for engagement metrics in real time, and the results are about as depressing as you’d expect.

I keep thinking about solutions. Education reform? Good luck. Media literacy campaigns? Who’s gonna pay for that? Regulation? Have you met any congress across the main countries? They can barely operate a PDF.

The only thing I can think of, and I’m not even sure this works, is to be aggressively, obviously human in your communication.

To use nuance. To be complex. To refuse to dumb yourself down for whatever flavour of the week bullshit is getting peddled.

Will it reach fewer people? Probably.

Will some of them misunderstand you and get mad? Definitely.

But maybe you’ll find the people whose brains still work. The ones who can still read subtext and appreciate a well placed metaphor. The ones who haven’t been completely lobotomised by their feed.

And yeah, I said lobotomised. Because that’s what it looks like from here. A generation getting their critical thinking surgically removed by apps designed to make them dumber and more reactive.

Except we can’t bring back actual lobotomies to fix it, because apparently that’s “unethical” or whatever.

So here we are. Watching the collective IQ drop in real time. Building technology that makes it worse. And I’ve got fuck all for solutions except “don’t participate in your own intellectual demolition.”

Not exactly inspiring stuff.

But if you’ve read this far and understood that I’m not literally advocating for lobotomies, congratulations. You’re in the minority now.

Welcome to the resistance. There’s dozens of us.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If someone screenshots this email and gets mad about the lobotomy joke without reading the actual point, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. And I’ll be over here, cackling and also please tag me in your Facebook/Instagram/Twitter post.

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

Everyone’s sprinting.

Hustle culture.

Move fast and break things.

Ship it yesterday.

Grind until you collapse.

Speed speed speed.

That shit is exhausting.

And you know what all of this generally gets you?

Burnout. Shitty work. Mistakes you have to fix later. And the creeping sensation that you’re running full speed in the wrong direction, which always happens.

The thing is slow wins. But slow doesn’t sell. There’s nothing cute or sexy about it.

Being deliberate and intentional will stop you from turning your brain into day old Oatmeal.

I’m not saying deadlines don’t matter.

I’m not some zen monk telling you to abandon all structure and let projects marinate until the sun explodes.

Deadlines are what separate people who ship from people who talk about shipping. Without them, nothing gets done. Ever.

But there’s a universe of difference between having a deadline and letting that deadline turn you into a panicked rat on a wheel.

(Spend a few hours on LinkedIn for a week and you’ll see EXACTLY what I’m talking about)

Slow means you breathe. You step back. You ask yourself if you’re actually headed in the right direction or if you’re just falling forward because movement feels productive.

Sometimes the most important thing you can do is stop, look around, and make sure you’re not building a ladder against the wrong fucking wall.

(I’ve done a lot of this in 2025 and when you realise you messed up. You just need to course correct…)

Slow means better work. Rushed jobs are shit jobs. Always. You know it, I know it, your client knows it even if they’re too polite to say it.

When someone pressures you to cut corners and deliver fast, what they’re really asking for is mediocre work they’ll regret later.

Don’t give them that. Don’t give yourself that.

Slow means you stay sane.

Slow means saying no to artificial urgency. Most “urgent” shit isn’t actually urgent.

And every time you let someone else’s panic dictate your pace, you’re teaching them that you’ll drop everything and scramble.

Stop teaching people that lesson.

The best work, which is the stuff that actually matters, that lasts, that you’re proud of years later, doesn’t come from white knuckling your way through at breakneck speed.

You need to take it at a pace that you can manage, where you get to think and iterate and to catch the mistakes before they become disasters.

To build something solid instead of something held together with duct tape and desperation.

There’s always gonna be a power move that most of the guru’s are against, however…

Being the person who delivers quality work on time without losing their mind in the process.

Being the one who doesn’t burnout every six months and have to rebuild from scratch.

Being the one who’s still standing and still creating, while everyone else is face down in the dirt wondering where the shit hit the fan, will truly set you apart from the hustle culture weirdos…

Deadlines are your framework. They keep you honest and moving forward.

And slow will keep you sane. It’s what keeps the work good and your brain intact.

Work at the speed of sustainable. Not the speed of panic.

On the plus side. I’d like to be around for a few more years, so I don’t want to kill myself by rushing around while creating shitty work.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Next time someone tries to rush you into cutting corners or delivering garbage work faster. You just need to remember that their shitty emergency isn’t your obligation.

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

Part of my plan to take over the world this year involves going full caveman with my phone situation.

I’m talking dumb phones, baby.

The shitty little Nokia bricks that can barely send a text message without setting on fire.

The ones where typing out “meet you at 7” takes forty five button presses and the patience of a monk.

I used to do this back in the day whenever I wanted to drop off the face of the earth and become uncontactable by humans.

I’d swap my smartphone for a phone dumber than a bag of hammers. Just calls and texts. That’s it. No apps. No notifications.

I’m bringing that energy back to 2026.

There’s one small problem though…

The UK is completely nuking its 2G/3G infrastructure this year, which means my beloved vintage Nokia is about to become a very expensive paperweight. (Which is cool cause I still write things in notebooks and on paper like a caveman)

So I need to throw a whopping fifty bucks at a “modern” dumb phone that can actually connect to the 4G/5G networks.

And in the grand scheme of things. Fifty bucks to reclaim my sanity seems like a bargain.

But going dumb has it’s benefits. I mean if you look at the insanity that’s been at play last year and even now as 2026 starts. Dumb has its benefits.

Firstly. You’ll murder your dopamine addiction. No Instagram. No Twitter. No endless scroll of garbage designed by Stanford PhDs whose sole job is making you as addicted as a lab rat pressing a cocaine button. Your brain gets to remember what it’s like to be bored without immediately reaching for what I believe is the digital equivalent of crack.

You’ll fix your TikTok brain. You know that feeling where you can’t focus on anything for longer than eight seconds? Where reading an actual paragraph feels like climbing Everest? Yeah, that’s TikTok brain. It’s rotting your ability to think deeper than a puddle. A dumb phone forces you to sit with your thoughts like a normal human.

You’ll actually think again. Real thinking. The kind where ideas marinate and develop instead of getting interrupted every four minutes by some notification about shit you don’t care about. The kind of thinking that built businesses and wrote novels and created things worth creating. Which believe it or not, is fairly easy to do with what we have at hand. But clowns on social media gotta peddle you different ideas.

You won’t become an AI personality cult member.

You know these people…

They lurk around us…

…the ones who’ve made ChatGPT their entire identity. Who’ve replaced actual skills with prompt engineering. Who’ve become the hollow husk of whoever they used to be before they outsourced their brain to a chatbot.

They’re everywhere now, and they’re insufferable. Don’t be them.

You’ll be unreachable, which is a fucking superpower.

The world doesn’t end when you’re not available 24/7.

Actually, the opposite happens. You become more valuable because your time and attention aren’t free for all commodities that anyone can grab whenever they want.

I’m not saying throw your smartphone in a river and go live in a yurt. (The Yurt is a pretty damn cool idea though)

But having a dumb phone as your escape hatch for when you need to actually focus, actually create, actually think without your brain being hijacked by engagement bait and people pretending to be stupid for clicks, seems to be the best thing as we ease into 2026.

Fifty bucks.

That’s what it costs to opt out of the dopamine hamster wheel whenever you want.

Which imho is the best investment you’ll make all year.

Now if you’ll excuse me. I’ve got a Nokia to order and a world to take over.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you email me while I’m on dumb phone mode and don’t get a response, now you know why. I’m busy thinking thoughts longer than a tweet and remembering what it feels like to be bored without immediately needing to fix it.

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

There’s this scene in True Romance.

Alabama. Bubblegum popping, Elvis worshipping, sweet as American pie Alabama…

Sitting her ass down across from a mobster who’s about to turn her face into hamburger meat because she knows where the stolen cocaine went.

She could cry. She could beg. She could piss herself and pray.

Instead? She spins the most beautiful bullshit story you’ve ever heard. She’s just a girl from Alabama, fell for the wrong guy, innocent as fresh baked cookies on Christmas morning. She doesn’t know shit about cocaine. She’s practically a Disney princess.

The mobster? He doesn’t buy it. (Obviously not. I mean he’s a mobster…)

But there’s always the bit in movies where it gets interesting.

Although the lesson here is that it doesn’t really matter.

Mainly cause Alabama commits to that story like it’s gospel truth. (Flat earthers anyone?)

She tells it with such wide eyed conviction, such authentic charm, that even while this psychopath is beating her bloody, some tiny corner of his brain wants to believe her.

She makes herself impossible to hate, even when he knows she’s lying through her pretty little teeth.

That’s the marketing lesson everyone’s too scared to tell you.

Your audience isn’t stupid. They know you’re selling. They know you want their money, their email, their precious attention span. They can smell the sales pitch from three miles away.

But if you tell your story with real conviction?

If you show up as an actual goddamn human being with personality and authenticity and charm?

They’ll buy from you anyway.

Not because they’re marks. Because they actually give a shit about you.

Alabama didn’t win that scene with superior tactics. She didn’t out think the mobster. (RIP James Gandolfini)

She won because she was so authentically, undeniably her that even her enemies couldn’t help rooting for her a little.

Your marketing doesn’t need to be polished. If anything. Overly polished marketing now just reeks of AI piss.

It doesn’t need some guru’s seventeen step funnel horseshit. It needs to be human enough that people connect with the beating heart behind the sales page. Your sales page does have a heart right?

And the thing is. These marketing guru’s keep wanting to push people into cosplaying as a faceless brand. (Obviously cause of AI and the AI shit they’re trying to sell you)

What I’m suggesting is you should Start being Alabama. Who is charming, real, impossible to ignore, even when everyone knows exactly what game you’re playing.

And the marketing cliché that reigns supreme?

People don’t buy products. They buy from people they like.

And Alabama? Everyone liked Alabama. Even the guy literally torturing her.

That’s influence. You won’t read that in any Robert Cialdini book. But you’ll learn about it by spending 2 hours watching True Romance.

Plus. It’s 2026. Time to stop being boring and start being unforgettable…

Stephen Walker.

P.S. I should’ve probably written discover instead of learn but hey. Influence innit?

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

My homeboy Mike from Peaceful Profits, aka the only non-ai infected ghostwriting and training place left on the web (Probably) dropped this absolute banger of an email and so in good old fashioned homage. I’ll be sharing some of it here…

Grab a drink. It’s another meaty one and I agree 200% what he is putting down in there.

"There are conversations on the “book” side of Reddit going on right now about whether you should use AI to write your book. 



Some people say it’s okay. 



A quick scroll through pretty much any thread reveals what the other 90% of commenters think: 'Why would I bother reading if they couldn't be bothered writing it' 



As the “upvotes” (the arrows) show there ^^, 82 people agree. 



Here’s a comment from that same thread: 



“A lot of people think “AI” is just conjuring stuff out of thin air…they don't understand that it relies entirely on pre-existing work created by humans.” 



– Reddit user, r/books 



In other words: 



If you’re an expert, and you’ve ever read a book written by someone in your industry and thought: 



“Hmm, I disagree.” 



Or: 



“I’d do things differently.” 



Or: 



“Well, I know from experience that’s just plain wrong.” 



…Then writing your book with AI will make it impossible to add anything new to your industry’s thinking. 



Which also means: 



It will be impossible for YOU to stand out amongst your industry’s sea of experts. 



That has always mattered in the world of books, but it’ll matter a whole lot more going into 2026. That’s because our second prediction for the year is: 



Prediction #2: Thought Leadership Will Matter More Than “Information Dumping." 



As an example, let’s take two imaginary books. 



The first, “Ten Ways To Lose Weight”, was written in an afternoon by AI. 



The second, “The 5 Day Diet”, was written by an actual dietician with 2 decades of industry experience. 



Which is more likely to sell? 



While there are no guarantees, our experience from working with over 1500 authors has shown us time and again that it’ll be the second option, The 5-Day Diet. 



Why? 



Because The 5 Day Diet tells the reader promises a system, a set of step-by-step instructions, and a new idea they’ve never tried before. 



The author is exercising (no pun intended) their thought leadership in a way that makes it easy for the reader to get results. 



It tells them what to do and what to not to do, and importantly, why. 



You can jump onto ChatGPT and ask for it to create a weight loss plan for you…but would you really trust it? 



Would you trust it against the dietician who has 20 years of experience under their belt? 



Would you trust it to give you a plan that’s safe, effective, and useful…rather than some random approach spat out by a computer just to make you happy? 



Judging by the commentary online, most people wouldn’t. 



The fact is: 



Books Built Around A Framework Almost Always Do Better Than Those Without One. 



So what exactly is a “framework”? 



It’s a structured way of solving a problem that makes it the obvious approach for your audience to take. 



It makes your approach feel intentional, tested, and hard to replace. 



Instead of saying “here are ten things you could try…” 



A framework says: 



“Here’s the method I use, here’s the order it works in, and here’s why this works better than the alternatives.” 



Deep down, what people are looking for is someone who has “figured it out”...whatever “it” might be. 



Weight loss. 



Marketing. 



Life. 



The reader isn’t looking to be lectured to or have their brains filled with facts. They want someone who can say, “do you have this problem? Here’s how I solved it, and here’s how you can too.” 



…And nothing says, “I figured it out” more than a book built around a framework. 



Here’s How To Find Your Book’s Framework… 



First: Look at the process you follow, the order you do things in, and the mistakes you help people avoid… 



Then: Ask yourself where people usually get stuck, confused, or frustrated (and how you’ve learned to work around those roadblocks…) 



Finally: Give that approach an “un-Google-able” name that makes it unmistakably yours, something that no one else can lay claim to. 



That way, the only way that people can learn about your approach is to go right to the source. 



Keep in mind: 



You’re not just “making up” an approach and giving it a fancy name. 



Instead, you’re codifying the knowledge that’s already in your head into something tangible that your readers can learn, apply, and benefit from. 



And when they do, your book’s success becomes inevitable. 



That ties into our third and final prediction about book marketing for 2026 (and how you can use it to turn one book sale into 100 more). 



More in our next email. 



To your success, 



The Peaceful Profits Team" 

The TL;DR version:

AI generated bullshit is going to be bullshit either way and make you look like a complete ass going into 2026 if you’re trying to use it to share your thought leadership (God, I hate that phrase) and there is a framework you need to follow if you want to get something non-fiction out into the world that absolutely slaps and gives people results/hope etc.

Go give Mike and the crew some love and if you ever want to have something professionally written. You can either pay me an obscene amount of money to do it for you, or a less obscene amount of money to Mike and his team because they are awesome.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Go give ’em some love.

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