Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
Everybody knows I’m a HUGE fan of the documentary, Jiro Deams Of Sushi, and why: Because I never saw anyone before this do a better job of commmunicating the importance and value of “Mastery”, both material and spiritual. At least, not with film.
Jiro beautifully and succinctly explained his philiosphy in this film clip on You Tube, about 29 minutes into the actual movie. Even if you never intend on renting this superb documentary, this little nuggest I’m sharing I think is insanely valuable in its own right, for anyone who has the smarts to take it fully on board. I hope it helps.
TRANSCRIPT:
Shokunin try to get the highest quality fish and apply their techniques to it.
We don’t care about money.
All I want to do is make better sushi.
I do the same thing over and over, bit by bit.
There is always a yearning to achieve more.
I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is.
Even at my age, after decades of work, I don’t think I’ve achieved perfection.
But I feel ecstatic all day… I love making sushi.
That’s the spirit of the shokunin.
When to quit? The job you’ve worked so hard for?
I’ve never once hated this job.
I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it.
Even though I’m 85 years old, I don’t feel like retiring.
That’s how I feel.
You can see my orignial riff on Jiro and Mastery here (one of my most important blog posts of the last year, incidentally); I’ve also now included it in Chapter 9 of “The Art Of Not Sucking” e-book. Hope it helps.
We have hardback books, we have paperback books, we have Kindle books, we have e-books, we have iBooks…
I’ve had some success with all of those, over the years…
But the format that has given the most joy over time, is the B-book i.e. the blog book.
The B-book is a book that starts life out as a blog post. My first book, “Ignore Everybody” began life that way, as did my friend, Austin Kleon’s delightful classic, “How To Steal Like an Artist”.
Sure, both became mainstream bestsellers later, but only AFTER their magic was already ignited all over the web. In B-book format, both have been seen by literally millions of people. “Ignore Everybody” has been downloaded well over 5 million times over the years, maybe 10 million. That’s an incredible number, really.
Whereas most blog posts get buried and forgotten within days, often hours, B-books keep getting discovered again and again, passed around again and again, forever. The original Ignore Everybody is almost a decade old, and it still gets read by thousands of people, every month. Most conventionally published books can’t say that, not even close.
The disadvantage is, of course, that it’s hard to get people to pay you for B-books. I never tired, frankly. I just assumed if enough people read them, I’d find a way to make a living from it in an indirect way, eventually.
And time proved me correct: a lot of people who first discovered me via Ignore Everybody went on to become gapingvoid art collectors and/or corporate clients. Same is true for the other B-Books I wrote.
True, the format may not be for everybody. I’m totally OK with that, to be honest. It’s an exciting medium that, although I’ve been working with it for almost a decade, I still feel like it’s new to me, it still feels like it’s a new world worth conquering. Like I said, it’s exciting.
I just finsihed writing my latest book, “The Art Of Not Sucking”. Rather than publish it as an e-book or regular hardback, I thought I’d just blog the whole thing, like I did with my first book, “Ignore Everybody”. Maybe I’ll publish it properly later down the road, but in the meantime, I wanted to make it available to as many people as possible. Enjoy:
INTRODUCTION
When I was attending University in the 1980’s, I went and got a suit-and-tie summer job in a large office in downtown Houston, doing white-collar drudgery for a big oil company.
It sucked.
That summer, I was also in a painful, Nowheresville relationship with a lovely young woman. That also sucked.
That year my college grades sucked, as well. As did my social life and financial situation.
The whole year sucked, frankly. I sucked, my job sucked, my love life sucked, my situation sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked.
Over two decades later, I’m frankly still quite traumatized by it. Ha.
Since then, I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy trying to figure out how to keep myself out of jobs, careers, relationships and situations that suck, how to keep life from sucking in general.
Learning how to NOT SUCK is one of our most important pursuits.
Sucking is the enemy. Indeed.
So when I was recently asked to give a talk to marketing students at Unibe University in the Dominican Republic, I decided that helping them learn “The Art Of Not Sucking” would be far more useful for them, or at least, welcome, than the usual textbook marketing stuff they have to read on a daily basis.
Let’s face it, “Success” and “Failure” are still too far away in the distant future to be truly tangible most young adults, they’ve still got way too much in front of them. That was certainly true in my case, and every other case I knew well at the time.
However, leaving the comfy surroundings of college life and hitting the adult world and finding out right away that you suck at everything? That everything is going to suck from now on? That’s a real burning issue.
“What if I suck?”
With graduation looming, that’s what college seniors are REALLY worried about. I speak truth.
College kids aren’t afraid of failing, they’re afraid of sucking.
The talk I gave to the kids was so much fun, I thought I’d spread the love some more, by turning my notes into a little e-book and sharing it with everybody. This is it. I hope it’s helpful; thanks for taking the time to download it.
[NB: Many of the themes in this book were covered before, in both my blog and my books, some points more than others. If you experience déjà vu, that is why. Secondly, to make it more fun to read, I did my usual thing i.e. randomly inserted some of my favorite recent cartoons in the mix, similar to how The New Yorker inserts unrelated cartoons into their pages.]
In this episode of the Gape Into The Void podcast, Hugh and Jason have a discussion with bestselling author, speaker, and marketer, Seth Godin. Seth has been an inspiration to many, including Hugh, and over the years gapingvoid has produced many popular images that were based upon, or included the words of Seth Godin. We even have a dedicated Seth Godin Store! Most recently, Hugh illustrated one of Seth’s three new books, “V Is For Vulnerable.
We hope you enjoy listening to the talk with Seth. If you like the show, please tell your friends about the “Gape Into The Void” podcast and leave us a review on iTunes.
We started off talking about the children’s book Seth and I made together, “V Is For Vulnerable”, but the conversation went way beyond that.
Seth, as always, was his very lucid self. As always, he’s pushing us to raise our game in the meaningful” and “creating art” departments.
My big takeaway was, that in spite of Seth being very successful and well-known in my circles, he really isn’t trying to reach “Everybody”, just the small few who are ready to hear it. It’s easy to think that everybody digs Seth’s message, that’s not actually true. Most people just aren’t ready.
But that’s OK. Though Seth fans are a definite minority, the good news is, that’s still enough people to make a huge impact.
We can all learn something from that…
Todd’s Show Notes:
1. “If Dr. Seuss wrote a book that would make a middle manager cry, that is what we set out to do.”
2. It is about being hopeful and brave again, like we were as children.
3. Making art is about being vulnerable to the world.
4. “If it is certain to work, it’s not innovation. And if it is not innovation, than it is not art.”
5. Too many organizations are afraid to say to the world “This might not work…” And that fear holds most back from creating art.
6. “Failure is something I look forward to, because it shows me I’ve gotten to an edge.”
7. “Work is love.” Or at least it should be.
8. Imbalance makes good things happen, and makes real, honest connection possible. And it’s that feeling of almost falling from imbalance, that you really begin to start feeling alive.
9. Hard work vs. Doing something that is hard, risky, meaningful.
10. How people apply “one-buttock playing” to their daily lives.
11. Hugh and Seth discuss the creative process in how they created this book.
12. “Surround yourself with people who are on a journey…and help them make that journey with more gusto. And to make more of a ruckus.”
13. Mattering, is more important than focusing on quality…And mattering, is doing something that cannot be specified…
Decades ago, before my first cartoons were ever published, I had this idea that my first published work would be a children’s book.
That didn’t happen, of course. After years in the cartoonist game, my first children’s book was only just published this month.“V Is For Vulnerable”. Check it out.
Though actually, it’s not a children’s book. It’s really a book for entrepreneurs, fiendishly disguised as a children’s book.
But Shhhhhhhh! Don’t tell anybody.
This is what I wrote in the dedication:
These drawings are dedicated to my nephews and nieces, all five of them. May these words resonate with you one day, and God Forbid that they never do. Lots of Love from Uncle Hugh
I meant every word to them, I assure you.
Heck, and it isn’t even my book, not really. My friend Seth wrote the thing, it was all his idea. I just illustrated it, long after the really hard work was already done.
That being said, I’m very proud of the work nonetheless. And even more proud that Seth chose me for the job.
There are many lessons about the nature of work, love and enterprise, that we are neglecting to teach our children…
… at our peril.
This must change, if we are to thrive long-term.
Hopefully this is a step in the right direction. Kudos to Seth for writing it, and to y’all for supporting it. Thank you.
In 2009, my first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY was published by Penguin Portfolio, the big New York imprint. The work originally began life five years before that, in Autumn, 2004 as an e-book, “How To Be Creative”, first published on ChangeThis.com. The e-book came out of a series of blog post I had written in the preceding months before that.
BACKSTORY:
“When I first lived in Manhattan in December, 1997 I got into the habit of doodling on the backs of business cards, just to give me something to do while sitting at the bar. The format stuck.”
Penguin Portfolio is the same imprint that’s published business-book rockstars like Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and John Batelle. The book went on to become a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and upped my career by a couple of dozen notches.
The premise of the book was simple enough: “So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years…”
And then I went down my list for the next couple of hundred pages, ticking off as many boxes as I could. A short book with lots of cartoons, a fun read you could get through easily in one sitting.
I hadn’t intended to write a book at first; it came about because my then-boss told me to stop blogging about stuff related to my marketing day job (and what a crappy day job it was) or else he would fire me.
So, forbidden to blog about marketing or advertising (WTF was my boss thinking?) I had to find something else to write about. As I had spent many years as a cartoonist and an advertising creative, I thought I’d share what I had learned along the way. Simple.
Within a matter of weeks “How To Be Creative” became ChangeThis.com’s most downloaded e-book ever. At last count, it was read by more than five million people and if you add the number of people who have read the blog version, maybe double that. This stat alone pretty much landed me the book deal with Portfolio.
If my career ever had a break-out moment, it was that.
EIGHT YEARS LATER, I’m thinking a lot about how much had changed since 2004, how much I’ve changed, how much in that book still holds true, versus how much I might want to change, now that I’m older and wiser.
“GOOD IDEAS HAVE LONELY CHILDHOODS”
“Good ideas have lonely childhoods” was the main thesis of the book, really.
In other words, quoting the book, “The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.”
Good ideas take a while to nurture, before the world is ready to accept them. So you might as well “Ignore Everybody”, at least to start with, because for the most part, other people’s opinions won’t be that helpful in the beginning.
Some people thought I was just saying, “Ignore Everybody, just do your own thing and don’t give a damn what other people think.” Well, not really (Although there are times when you have to do that). I was more concerned that people understood the “lonely” part as normal, as something to be expected and embraced.
I think this is an important thing to remember, especially for young people just starting out on their career path. It’s easy to get discouraged; it’s easy to quit prematurely; it’s easy to give up on one’s dreams. If I can make quitting slightly harder for someone, I know I’ve done my job.
My other favorite thing to come out of Chapter One was this observation:
“GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.”
Very few people willingly give the kind of advice that will compromise their own social advantage over you. Especially good advice. Good ideas change the status quo. People like the status quo. Human beings are messy, even the ones that care about you. Nothing wrong with that, just something to keep in mind.
BESIDES THAT…
I’m pretty happy with the book, overall– I wouldn’t change much. What’s more interesting to me is, of course, the stuff I’ve learned SINCE then.
I read last week somewhere that 89% of phone apps are free, and of the few remaining that aren’t, 90% of those are under three dollars. With Amazon Kindle, e-books, blogging and other formats disrupting the traditional publishing model, I expect the book format to go the same way as the phone app i.e. free or dirt cheap for the vast majority.
A few published authors will get decent royalties– the J.K. Rowlings’ and the Malcolm Gladwell’s of the world– but for us mere mortals, we’ll have to find other business models. I’m totally OK with that. With no desire to write a proper sequel to Ignore Everybody, I thought maybe a little blog post or two would suffice. Hence.… this.
When I first lived in Manhattan in December, 1997 I got into the habit of doodling on the back of business cards, just to give me something to do while sitting at the bar. The format stuck.
All I had when I first got to Manhattan were 2 suitcases, a couple of cardboard boxes full of stuff, a reservation at the YMCA, and a 10-day freelance copywriting gig at a Midtown advertising agency.
My life for the next couple of weeks was going to work, walking around the city, and staggering back to the YMCA once the bars closed. Lots of alcohol and coffee shops. Lot of weird people. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simultaneously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat pocket.
[…]
An artist is quite a f*****-up thing to be, and to be honest I’m not sure if I would recommend it to anybody. Still, in my collection there are a couple of examples that, in some sick and twisted way, make the whole thing seem worthwhile. For the first five minutes, at least…
Anyway, for those who hadn’t seen it before, I thought it was worth sharing [Here’s the link again]. Again, thanks for all the love, and Godbless. Now I have some more cartoons to draw. Rock on.
[Yes. I know. We didn’t use my drawing style this time. The Factory is really about Social Objects, not about Hugh etc.]
One thing Seth and I always had in common, is that we both believe in writing short books. My personal rule is: All my books have to be short enough to be read on a plane ride between Miami and New York. And they are.
A book that makes you feel hopefully really inspired and really excited, that you close and put away satisfied, just as they’re dropping the landing gear, coming into La Guardia. It’s simple enough goal to aim for; certainly a lot less deluded than “Write the next ‘Sun Also Rises’ or ‘Ulysses’”.
Seth talks about his “short format” philosophy some more in a brilliant post, “Tracts and Books”:
The Communist Manifesto is 80 pages long. Certainly long enough to make an impact.
It has never taken me beyond a hundred pages to be persuaded. Sure, there are times when the pages after page 100 help me pile on, give me more depth and understanding. But a hundred (and usually fifty) is enough to get under my skin.
Or to steal heavily from George Bernard Shaw, “I’m sorry my last book was so long, but I didn’t have time to write a short one”.
It’s dirty little secret that most of my business-book author friends (and I have more than a few) will freely admit off the record: Most business books are lucky if people read more than the first hundred pages.
So why write more than a hundred pages? You tell me…
It’s never quite that simple, of course. There are as many ways to write a book as there are authors. If you want to spend the next seven years teaching junior college in order to be able to write the next Great American Novel in your spare time, that works too, go for it.
But if you’re just trying to get ideas to spread– if it’s the ideas that actually matter, not the book itself– I’d pay attention to what Seth is up to, very carefully.
Like I’ve said many times before about Media, we’re now living in the era of #CheapEasyGlobal. And thanks to that, I do honestly believe, it’s never been a more exciting time to be a writer.
Here we go. The insanely-bright Harold Jarche (who I really enjoyed meeting in Toronto a few months ago) gives a few reasons why/how blogging transformed his life:
1. I live in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada; population 5,000. Even our timezone is unknown to many people. Without my blog, nobody would ever have heard of me. This Spring, I have four speaking engagements out of town (Montreal, Ottawa, Washington DC, Rome). Without my blog, I am sure that IEEE and many other organizations would not have invited me to speak.
Bingo. “Big-city wages, small-town prices” is a damn fine business model: I did it myself for many years when I was living in Far West Texas.
I live in Miami. I have no clients here. They’re all in places like Boston or New York or Texas or California or London. Yet most mornings I hang out on the beach.
Blogging allows me to stay creative and mobile… and like Harold here, far from the madding crowd, if that’s what I desire.
As you probably already know, I wrote a wee book, “Freedom Is Blogging In Your Underwear”, which just launched. It is my little love letter to the blogosphere.
Please click on it — it’s more than just a page about the book. It’s a movement, or at least, I think it should be.
I know for a fact, that a lot of you reading this found a similar freedom that I found through the Internet and blogging. Like me, you found a voice, you found a platform, the rest is history.Your stories are beautiful stories, so I wanted to create some free social objects that help you tell your stories… cartoons, animated videos etc. Simple, fun, stuff.
This week, in honor of the sentiment behind the book, I’d love for you to share your story of how blogging or the Internet has given you freedom. Blog, tweet, post on Facebook or G+… share your story however you want, on whatever platform you prefer. All I ask is that you include the hashtag #FreedomIsBlogging and if you can, email me a link to your post at “Freedom@gapingvoid.com.” I am going to be creating a commemorative print for the book, and everyone who emails me a link to their “freedom” post this week will have their name drawn in the print. I hope you will use these tools to tell your story. There’s beauty in all this, there really is. Which is why I wrote the book, anyway.
I can’t wait to hear your stories! Rock on!
- Hugh
[P.S. I am holding a “virtual book tour” this Thursday, May 3, at 6pm EST. You can sign up and join me, for free, HERE]
In this era of everybody talking about the latest shiny app or the latest shiny billionaire, I decided to write a book about blogging, and why it matters: “Freedom Is Blogging In Your Underwear”.
[From the intro:]
In May of last year, my blog, gapingvoid.com, turned ten years old.
Having a blog, a voice, having my own media, utterly changed my life. Suddenly my career as a cartoonist wasn’t dependent on other people: the “gatekeepers” — publishers, editors, Hollywood executives, etc., etc.
Suddenly I had direct contact with my audience. They had direct contact with me. I could just do my thing, without having to wait for somebody else to give me the “green light,” somebody else to write a check. I didn’t have to wait around for somebody else to deem me “worthy” …
This gave me the freedom I spent most of my adult life searching for, the same freedom I believe we’re ALL searching for, in one way or another.
Careerwise, blogging gave me everything. Even in the early days, the benefits of blogging were so glaringly obvious to me that I couldn’t understand why more people weren’t doing it. Ten years later, I still can’t. So I decided to write a book about it; maybe I could help other people find this freedom, too.
Like I said, I’m a cartoonist. I don’t consider myself a “blogging professional.” I don’t consider myself a “social media authority.” That being said, I believe my experience as one of the very early visual artists to totally establish their careers via this wonderful new medium might help folks understand not only how powerful blogging is, but WHY it’s powerful and WHY it matters. And once you can understand this, I believe, your life will be quickly transformed, same as mine was.
[If you’re going to Twitter about it, please use hashtag #FreedomIsBlogging. Thanks!]
I love the purple cover… it’s kinda appropriate: It was after reading Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow” that the idea of writing books occurred to me. “That looks like fun, I can do that, I want a piece of that” etc.
The book is a love letter to the blog, of sorts. I think blogging matters, I think having your own piece of online real estate THAT YOU OWN YOURSELF (not Twitter, not Facebook, not Google+ etc), on YOUR OWN SERVER that YOU pay for, is important. But it’s an idea that’s kinda been lost in recent years. BLOGGING MATTERS.
Think of it a wee love letter to the blog. As everything and everybody gets swallowed up by Facebook, Google+ and other “Death Stars”, remember the importance of having one’s own piece of real estate to call one’s own…
It’s also very, very short. I was in Brevity Mode at the time. And I made sure to put lots of new cartoons in there, just like last time.
I also didn’t write it for the “social media pundit” yakkin’ crowd. I wrote it for your Cousin Al, something just to plant a seed in his head. Hopefully one day it’ll sprout something.
What’s really interesting to me about the book is the timing. In a year where you can’t turn on the news without some pundit asking, “Where are all the new jobs are going to come from”, this might hint at a good answer, of sorts.
Because the way the economy is evolving, the new jobs are going to come from people who are predisposed to blogging in their underwear, anyway. The people who quit their dead-end, pen-pushing jobs, got a second mortgage, turned their spare bedroom into an office and basically risked everything to pursue their dream. And started a blog to help get the word out.
The people who don’t have to wear an tie and go to endless boring meetings seven hours a day for a living.
The people who actually MAKE stuff. The people who actually create real, thriving businesses from scratch. Up and at ‘em by six a.m. Before they’ve had their first cup of coffee. In their underwear. Exactly.
And thanks to blogging social media, beginning that adventure is far less lonely and daunting a process than it used to be, THANK GOD.
Closely related, my regular Twitter buddy, Umair has a WONDERFUL little post over on the Harvard Business Review, “Create A Meanigful Life Through Meaningful Work” where he laments about how most “successful” people he meets seem to make a living these days. As usual, he pulls no punches– he suggests that maybe, just maybe our current depression is not an economic one, but a spiritual and psychological one.
I’ve been in Manhattan for the last few weeks. Hanging out in all the wrong places (read: painfully hip power hotels), I’ve had the questionable privilege of overhearing more than my fair share of Very Serious Conversations from the movers and shakers of the world.
And boy, have they been tedious: mostly, about eking out slightly sharper terms for deals for more yawn-inducing stuff (whether flicks, financial instruments, or kicks) that’s destined not to matter. So here’s a tiny hypothesis: maybe the real depression we’ve got to contend with isn’t merely one of how much economic output we’re generating — but what we’re putting out there, and why. Call it a depression of human potential, a tale of human significance being willfully squandered (on, for example, stuff like this).
Bravo, Umair! My thoughts exactly. Like the brilliant Guy Kawasaki once famously said, “Make Meaning”. That is where the action is, that is where the economy AND the future is going. For all of us, rich and poor.
“Treat it like an adventure. An adventure worth sharing.”
Whether we’re talking about a business plan, a career, or something far more important, something that actually matters… that’s what we’re here for, no?
The adventure.
To live it. And to be able to share it with others.
If you can’t do that, you’r not really alive. Not really.
Hell, you’re not even really marketing.…
“Treat it like an adventure. An adventure worth sharing.”
That’s what having an Evil Plan is really all about. That’s what gapingvoid is really all about.
[Official Blurb:] “Everyone has an Evil Plan, maybe it’s tucked away inside your mind or maybe you are developing one this very minute. But for the lucky few, we are executing it daily! Join us in this episode as we talk with the artist, innovator and evil genius Hugh MacLeod himself about the book “Evil Plans”.
“South-By” is pretty much over for the year. So what’s next?
gapingvoid is having its first “Evil Plans” salon on Wednesday evening, the 23rd of March at 7.30pm, just under a week from now. Downtown Miami.
It will be limited to 15 people. The theme of the evening will be “Unifying work and love”, a subject very dear to pretty much every gapingvoid reader alive.
If you’re in town that evening and want to attend, please RSVP my business partner, Jason Korman, for a slot: jtkorman@gmail.com. He’ll send you the details. Thanks.
This is going to be the start of something– something big, I hope. As much as I love SXSW, it’s gotten too big, Austin is too far away and it’s only on once a year.
I want to do something cool in Miami, about once a month. Something meaningful. Something where the cool kids can hang out and meet each other. A very miniature mini-conference, as it were, centered around our collective #EvilPlans. Rock on…
In March 2010, I traveled, sometimes with others, sometimes alone, coast-to-coast across the USA from Boston to Los Angeles. Our main method of transportation was the train – We chose to pre-plan our itinerary and to organise tweetups wherever we could in order to meet people and make new connections.
One of our goals was to visit the SXSWi festival in Austin TX via a more interesting route than direct flight nut primarily we wanted to see whether it could be done and what help our online social networks could be.
I learned that letting go of control of where we were staying and what we would do led to far richer experiences. Yes it was interesting and exciting to meet new people and those I’d only ever tweeted at but the highpoints of the journey included not knowing where we were going to stay in New Orleans until a friend of a friend lent us her house for four days or when I unexpectedly found myself playing ukulele with 25 Hawaiian-shirted senior citizens in Maryland.
South By South West is an annual pilgrimage for a lot of people. Lloyd likes to take that annual SXSW pilgrimage to an extreme. An annual spiritual search, as it were. “Austin as Jerusalem 2.0″, as it were. As opposed to just another trade show for handing out business cards, getting drunk and hanging out in strip clubs. It’s inspiring to see…
[Got a good #EvilPlans story you want to share? Feel free to ping me via gapingvoid@gmail.com, Thanks!]
I worked at IBM out of college (2007) in a cubicle doing software sales/order taking and sitting in death-by-Powerpoint meetings and I hated it. Actually, hate is a strong word. I tolerated it. And that’s even worse in a weird way. Comparing horror stories with my fellow recent college graduates, my job actually wasn’t that bad. But I knew after about a year of trying to play the game that it wasn’t for me.
So I hatched an evil plan and spent my nights creating a dietary supplement that prevents hangovers at www.drinkthc.com. The site is pretty bland and in the process of being redone now that I have investors and bigger plans, but I started with nothing more than a desire to get out of the corporate world, threw myself into the unknown and came out alive and much better off than I was before.
I’ve sold my product through the internet to 41 countries on six continents and am just getting started, with appearances on NBC and Thrillist.com along the way. In hatching my evil plan, I have developed skills they don’t teach in business school (SEO, internet marketing, etc.) that will ultimately allow me to continue working for myself without ever having to go get another corporate job, even if my current evil plan happens to stall.
All the best,
Anthony Adams
[Got a good #EvilPlans story you want to share? Feel free to ping me via gapingvoid@gmail.com, Thanks!]
Recently I interviewed Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of WIRED magazine. The whole interview was about the “lost decade” of his life where he spent pretty much his entire 20s travelling through Asia taking photos. No money, no job security, no career, no nothing. Just taking photos and hanging around. 30 years on, he showcased some of those photos, which are stunning, in a book called Asia Grace. The images are now available to view for free at www.asiagrace.com.
The reason I’m bothering you with this is because there was one phrase which Kelly used in the interview that really stuck with me — he referred to travelling as “a jolt to the soul”. And that phrase struck me as EXACTLY the sort of sentiment I might see in one of your cartoons. Isn’t that what we all need (whether we know it or not — or want it or not?) — a jolt to the soul?
I’d stumble in there late-at-night a few times a week. Great hamburgers.
Jeff would pour me a drink. Maker’s Mark on the rocks.
Jeff was a photographer. Nice guy. Great bartender. He liked my cartoons. I’d show him the new ones. He’d tell me which ones he liked.
I liked Jeff. We had a rapport. This was before I was ever published. This was long before blogging or Web 2.0.
This was when I was still unknown. A nobody. A goofball nobody in a tweed jacket, who would sit at the end of the bar for hours on end, doodling on the back of business cards for no reason.
So the Saturday I was in New York last week, I walk into The Corner Bistro, again.
Jeff was working; he’s still there. He’s married and has a kid now. He’s got a regular job doing something, but tends bar once a week for the hell of it.
He remembered me!
I give him a signed copy of Ignore Everybody [I had brought one with me, with the express intention of giving it to him], the book that was inspired by my days when I lived in New York– my lazy weekends in the West Village, my Saturday afternoons at the Corner Bistro, enjoying a drink, watching the cabs through the window, driving up Hudson, as Charlie Parker played on the best jukebox in Manhattan.
It as really good to see Jeff again. It had been over a decade. It felt like coming home. It was nice to be able to say to somebody from the old ‘hood, “Yeah. I made it. Finally.”
“Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs that crazy, out-there idea that allows them to ACTUALLY start doing something they love, doing something that matters. Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN that gets them the hell out of the Rat Race, away from lousy bosses, away from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate. Life is short.”
My second book, EVIL PLANS launched today. Here are some notes:
1. EVIL PLANS is basically a meditation on “The Unification of Work and Love”. Something a lot of us strive for; something worth striving for. What does it take for somebody to be able to love what they do for a living? What has to happen? What has to be given up? What state of mind does one have to be in? Questions that never get old.…
2. Like I said earlier, the book doesn’t matter; the conversation matters. How people conceive and execute their own Evil Plans is a subject worth exploring deeply. All the book can do is help get the conversation going. Same with this blog.
3. The first line in the book is, “Everybody needs an Evil Plan”. That is my belief, that is my mantra. Besides drawing cartoons, Evil Plans is what my career has been about all these years– writing about them, discovering them, uncovering then, studying them, creating them, My own and other people’s.
5. This is only the beginning. I wrote the book to start a conversation about Evil Plans, not to be the definitive answer on the subject. Yes, I have some Evil Plans about Evil Plans. Funny how that works…
6. Thanks to everybody who helped make this happen, especially Jillian and Maureen over at Penguin, and my business partner, Jason, who had to put up with my nonsense for all those weeks. You guys rock.
[The EVIL PLANS print. Signed, limited-editon of 500 etc.]
[UPDATE: The offer is now closed. All 500 prints are gone. THANK YOU SO MUCH for your support! Seriously.]
As most of you already know, my second book, EVIL PLANS comes out on February 17th.
To celebrate the book launch, I’m offering a FREE, signed, 8″ x 10″ limited edition EVIL PLANS art print to the first 500 people who pre-order the book.
[Yes, you can get a signed print if you’ve already pre-ordered the book. Sorry, this offer is US-only, not international. No, Sorry, this offer is not open to Kindle buyers, hardback only etc.]
1. The first 500 people who order the book AND send their electronic receipt/confirmation number to EvilPlansBook@gmail.com will get a free, signed, limited-edition “EvilPlans” print like the one above. 8 x 10″. Limited edition of 500. Hand-signed by me.
2. Order the EVIL PLANS book from any one of these online booksellers:
3. Then please forward your receipt/confirmation number to this special email address: EvilPlansBook@gmail.com. You’ll receive a confirmation email with directions for submitting your shipping address within 24 hours.
4. This offer is limited to only the first 500 people who email us their receipts — I’ll post an update here to let you know if and when the special offer has been closed.
5. This offer is for U.S. ORDERS ONLY. Sorry, Global Sportsfans, but the logistics are just WAY too complex to ship them abroad. Long story. Ouch.
6. If you’ve already pre-ordered the book and live in the U.S., no worries, you can still get in on the deal - just be in the first 500 to send in your receipt, and I’ll happily honor it.
7. This offer is hardback only. Not for Kindle. Sorry.
8. Please do not contact me personally to get on this list — please just use EvilPlansBook@gmail.com.
9. Thanks Again, As Always, for your Love and Support!
[NB: I’ll be leaving this blog post on the top of the homepage for the next wee while, just to make sure people see it . Please scroll down for the new content etc.]
“Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs that crazy, out-there idea that allows them to ACTUALLY start doing something they love, doing something that matters. Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN that gets them the hell out of the Rat Race, away from lousy bosses, away from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate. Life is short.”
As the EVIL PLANS book-launch machine started to rev up, I was suffering from the same “Second Book Jitters” that every second-time author suffers from.
The “What If They Hate It” jitters. The “What If It Bombs” jitters. You get the idea…
For whatever reason, they prefer being “surprised” by stuff posted live on the web, rather than seeing it first through the usual backchannels.
Seeing how the idea works live on the web informs their initial impression etc.
1. We have the Rackspace cloud [Image 1.]. A nice, fluffy cartoon Rackspace cloud. Red, black and white– their corporate colors. Iconic. Easily recognizable at fifty yards etc etc.
2. Inside the cloud we insert the headline [Image 2.]. “Create The Future You Want To Believe In” [Image 3.] was the headline I wrote, but that doesn’t have to be the only headline.
3. In fact, it doesn’t have to be me who writes the headline, either. Feasibly you could even set up a website where people could create their own headlines. Or something.
4. The headline would express whatever strong beliefs about “The Cloud” are needed to be expressed, inside the Rackspace cartoon cloud device.
5. So Rackspace isn’t just saying, “Here’s why you should buy from us”. Rackspace is saying, “Here’s what actually frickin’ matters”, whatever that might be.
6. Putting one’s balls on the line always resonates far more than ticking off the “Reasons to buy” laundry list.
7. And now they have a fun, wee device that allows Rackspace to do just that.
And that’s the idea. Hope you like. Hope they like, too. Watch this space…
On February 17th– just under a month from now– my second book, Evil Plans launches. It’s pretty much the same format as the first book, Ignore Everybody i.e. 18,000 words or so, plus 100 or so cartoons. Like it says in the intro:
EVERYBODY NEEDS AN EVIL PLAN
Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs that crazy, out-there idea that allows them to ACTUALLY start doing something they love, doing something that matters. Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN that gets them the hell out of the Rat Race, away from lousy bosses, away from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate. Life is short.
Every person who ever managed to do this, every person who managed to escape the cubical farm and start doing something interesting and meaningful, started off with their own EVIL PLAN. And yeah, pretty much everyone around them– friends, family, colleagues– thought they were nuts.
Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier to have an EVIL PLAN, to make a great living, doing what you love, doing something that matters. My intention is that by the time you’ve finished reading this book, you will completely concur. More importantly, you’ll actually feel compelled enough to go and do something about it yourself, if you haven’t already.
Writing books doesn’t interest me, frankly. EVIL PLANS interest me. My own and other people’s.
The why and how of EVIL PLANS is a conversation worth having. That’s why I wrote the book. By no means the definitive answer, but a good place to start.
Like I said, it has never been easier to have an EVIL PLAN. Therefore, to not have one is almost criminal. It’s not like any of us are living as 17th Century Russian Serfs.
I believe that both our economic and spiritual future, good or bad, is directly related to our ability to unlock the latent creativity within us.
There. I’ve said it.
It’s been six years since I first started blogging what would eventually end up being my first book, Ignore Everybody.
The book didn’t really start off with a plan. Like I said at the very beginning,
“So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.”
That was it. One person’s ramblings. No big, authoritative volume with lots of practical how-to’s, case studies and academic citations.
Some people didn’t care for that. “I paid $23.00 for a hardback edition and I expect RESULTS, dammit!”
Results!
Ah. But I never said anything about results. There was no plan, you see. That’s because there is no plan. There never is.
Writing about creativity is a messy business because creativity is a messy business.
Even using the word “creativity” in conversation is going to get you in trouble from some quarters. Stick your head above the parapet for just a few seconds and watch the arrows start flying at you.
Yet somewhere in the back of our minds, we all know it’s too important a subject to ignore, too important a reality not to confront.
Why? Because when I first started writing Ignore Everybody, I was coming at it from a very personal angle. Confronting one’s existential need to be “creative”, to express oneself etc. Which is why the book did so well with teenagers, college students and young adults just starting out in the working world. That’s the time of life to be thinking about all that.
But now, six years later I’m a bit older and bit more experienced. Maybe a lot more.
And time and experience has led me to conclude that even if we hate the word “creativity”, even if it’s a nasty, annoying, sophomoric, hipster-dipster, New Age gagfest that really should have no place among the serious, results-orientated world of equally serious, result-orientated grownups…
It’s where all meaningful growth is going to come from, both internal and external, whether we like it or not.
I don’t believe creativity can be taught, not really, but I do believe:
That with a bit of prodding in the right places, individuals can train themselves to be more creative.
That with a bit of prodding in the right places, individuals working as a team can train themselves to be more creative.
That with a bit of prodding in the right places, companies and organizations can train themselves to be more creative.
That with a bit of prodding in the right places, societies can train themselves to be more creative.
And that if they can do this, the value they create will be off the scale.
I’ll say it again: I believe that both our economic and spiritual future, good or bad, is directly related to our ability to unlock the latent creativity within us.
“TREAT IT LIKE AN ADVENTURE. AN ADVENTURE WORTH SHARING.”
1. Now that Evil Plans is at the publisher’s and in production (Release date: February 17th), the newsletter and the art gallery chugging along nicely, I’m starting to think about my next adventure.
Some people live paycheck to paycheck. Some people live project to project. I prefer living “adventure to adventure”.
I reckon that if you can’t treat what you’re doing like an adventure, it’s not worth doing. You might as well be dead.
What’s my next adventure about? Haven’t quite decided yet. Something to do with Cube Grenades and the next book I plan to write. Plus the cartooning, of course.
It’ll all fit together somehow…
2. Here’s what I’ve always noticed about us humans: We all want the feeling of adventure. It’s just about the closest you can get to God while you’re still alive.
And often, we fail to heed the call. We’re too busy with IMPORTANT things. Cars to buy, bills to pay, people to schmooze and meetings to attend.
It’s not the American Dream if it kills you for stupid reasons. Sorry.
3. I wrote this little rant earlier today, while in a grumpy mood:
Fuck y’all.
You know who you are.
Your endless droning on about nothing, the endless tedium that is your career…
Well, it makes the CEO of your employer rich, but does little else.
Surrounding yourself with the overpriced, plastic baubles you learned about from TV, like anyone actually cares.
And you’re raising your kids the same way, raising them to be the same fine specimen of nowheresville. Lucky them.
You are boring. You are boredom. And that’s what you peddle.
Every day. To anyone who is desperate enough to listen.
An empty life, followed by an equally empty death.
Fuck y’all and good riddance.
My definition of “Mediocrity” is: A Triumvirate of small minds, smaller hearts and even smaller deeds. Usually with some lame-ass, entitlement power trip going on. One rarely has to look very hard to find it; it’s everywhere.
To have an adventure, is to reject that.
4. The Cube Grenade idea is all about making drawings about other people’s adventures.
1. I’ve been working my ass off, all hours, seven days a week, for the last year and a half. And I was working pretty hard before that, as well.…
2. I recently sent off the FINAL edit of my second book, EVIL PLANS to the publisher. Besides checking the proofs, my part is done. It comes out in April.
3. With the book finished, I’m thinking I need (and deserve) a break. I’m taking some time off.
7. Besides the newsletter, my only other interest for the next while will be working on developing the Cube Grenade idea. That’s going to be my main focus of my blog and my business for the next while. If you see me post anything here in the next few weeks, it’ll most likely be about that.
8. Thanks for your support. See you on the other side. Cheers.
This weekend I sent the final, edited draft of “Evil Plans” off to my publisher. It comes out in April.
A few hours later, a couple of people were asking me, “Why aren’t you celebrating? I’d be hitting the bars right now…”
Heh. Finishing the book is really not that big a deal. All it marks is the end of a massive, fairly tedious, weeks-long editing and “polishing” session, LONG AFTER you’re done with the meaty, creative, fun part.
To me, there are four really big moments in getting a book out. Finishing the book isn’t one of them:
1. Coming up with an idea for the book. That’s big. A big EUREKA moment that cuts through all the clutter like a sharp blade. The big initial flash of inspiration that gets the ball rolling. That’s all very exciting, but you never know how long you can keep the momentum going. It all might die out after a couple of days, it might last until you get the thing published and it hits The New York Times Bestseller list. You never know.
2. Landing the publishing deal. That’s what every aspiring writer dreams of. It’s a HUGE moment, especially the first time, though the euphoria doesn’t last long. Once you’ve signed the contract and cashed the advance check, within nanoseconds all that excitement is suddenly replaced with the heavy weight of “Damn, now I have write the bloody thing.” And the better job you’ve done convincing the publisher what a rockstar you are, the heavier the weight is.
3. Releasing the book. Seeing it hit the bookshelves. All those months and months of work, put to the test. That’s quite thrilling, especially the first time, though if your book bombs (and if it bombs, it bombs quickly), that can be devastating.
But the biggest moment for me, happens about halfway between Numbers 2 and 3:
4. The moment you realize that your book isn’t going to be shit, after all. That moment when you realize that, “Hey, this is actually going to work, after all”. That moment when you realize that the publisher didn’t waste his money giving you an advance, after all. That moment when you first realize that all the work you’ve done up to that point, wasn’t in vain. The moment you realize that all the people who had put their faith in you in getting this book of the ground, also didn’t do it in vain.
That’s the best time to hit the bars, if you ask me.
Sigmund Freud once said that in order to be truly happy in life, a human being needed to acquire two things: The capacity to work, and the capacity to love.
An EVIL PLAN is really about being able to do both at the same time.
So how do you do both at the same time?
Easy. You love what you do.
How do you love what you do?
You make the decision to do so.
The earlier in your life you make that decision, the easier your EVIL PLAN will be to pull off.
The easier it will be to actually create something.
The longer you’ve been working, the more you see this: People in their thirties and forties, who have kind of hit the wall in their career trajectory, but somehow need the money more than ever.
You know, to pay for all that “stuff”. Fancy cars, nice houses in the suburbs, golf clubs, that kinda thing.
They hate their work, but they love their “stuff”.
They say they have no choice. They have children, mortgages, responsibilities, that kinda thing.
But they also have a lot of “stuff”, which requires ever more time and money to enjoy properly, to keep the veneer from cracking.
Because the older you get, the more time and energy is needed to compensate for the fact that basically, you hate what you do. That you never liked what you do. That all along, it’s always been about the “stuff”.
Those people always get crucified, eventually. Their bosses always get rid of them, eventually.
So please decide to love what you do, the sooner the better. “Death By Stuff” is really no way to live.
[Bonus Link: Comedian George Carlin’s classic rant about “Stuff”.]
The bad news is, the better your EVIL PLAN, the more people are going to hate it.
The good news is, the better your EVIL PLAN, the more people are going to love it.
In Flaubert’s great literary masterpiece, “Madame Bovary”, the narrator describes Monsieur Bovary (the husband that the main heroine eventually cuckolds) with the most damning description I’ve ever read of a fictional character: “He offended no more than he pleased”.
In getting us to identify with Madame Bovary and dislike Monsieur Bovary, Flaubert was very clever. He made sure that Monsieur Flaubert wasn’t evil or a sociopath, he just made him a conventional, boring, inoffensive, COMPLETELY UNINSPIRING member of the middle classes, completely aligned and beholden to 19th-Century, respectable French society. And we couldn’t help but despise him for it. Because he wasn’t pure evil, because he was just as human as the rest of us, he had just made a conscious decision to emasculate his own humanity for the sake of social standing– something we’re all very capable of doing ourselves.
Walk into any supermarket and you’ll see again a similar phenomenon. Aisle after aisle full of products that most people, frankly, don’t really give two hoots about. Sure, they might be a perfectly good brand of paper towel or breakfast cereal, but at the end of the day, like Monsieur Bovary, they offend no more than they please. And so how much do people care? Answer: Diddly squat.
And go visit these products’ corporate headquarters and you’ll meet their human equivalent. Aisle after aisle of people in cubes. Sure, they’ll be perfectly nice, polite and all, they’ll be efficient and good at their jobs and all, but how many people would care if one of them lost their jobs tomorrow? Answer: Diddly squat.
But once your EVIL PLAN starts getting traction, you’ll start noticing a much more polarized world start to emerge. People who LOVE what you do, and people who UTTERLY DESPISE it.
Why such strong feelings? Why the emotions? You’re just doing your thing, they’re just doing their thing, so what’s the big deal?
Answer: Because A LOT of people AREN’T ACTUALLY doing their own own thing. They’re just trying to pay their bills, living paycheck-to-paycheck, payroll-to-payroll, promotion-to-promotion.
To some of these people, your example will give them hope. “I may just be shlepping now, but ONE DAY I’ll leave this cubicle farm AND THEN go do something amazing!” Those people will love you and buy into your EVIL PLAN. Hell, some of them will even give you money.
But some people will hate your EVIL PLAN too, for no real reason. Envy? Jealousy? Of course. Your example is not giving them hope, your example is just making them more aware of their own issues and inadequacies. And maybe it’s easier for them to attack you, than attack their own demons.
In Internet circles, we call these people “Trolls” or “Haters”. They’re easy to spot, mainly because they’re everywhere.
Sure, the haters are a pain, especially at first, when you’re not used to this kind of treatment.
But they do serve a purpose. If you were just shleppping along like they were, they wouldn’t bother going after you, their sights would be turned elsewhere.
Ergo, they’re a sign that you’re doing something right. So you probably want to get other people to hate you eventually i.e. the right kind of people. They might actually end up helping you define your brand to others, more than the people who actually love you.
Since I got back home from SXSW I’ve been working on finishing EVIL PLANS, my second book.
I think I’m almost there, Folks. A few more days of obsessive tweaking to go, and then off to the publisher’s for the final edit. Hurrah!
Man, what a relief. Ever since I signed the contract last summer, I’ve been feeling the pressure. The first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY did very well– FAR better than I ever could have predicted. Beginner’s luck? Maybe.
Regardless, to do it a second time felt like a lot to live up to. It feels GREAT to have the hardest part of the process mostly over and done with.
EVIL PLANS will have roughly the same format as IGNORE EVERYBODY: 18,000 words, plus a hundred or so cartoons. Designed to be read easily on the john, or on an airplane. As I’m fond of saying, “This isn’t rocket science”.
Here’s how the Introduction opens:
INTRODUCTION: “EVERYBODY NEEDS AN EVIL PLAN”
Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs that crazy, out-there idea that allows them to ACTUALLY start doing something they love, doing something that matters. Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN that gets them the hell out of the Rat Race, away from lousy bosses, away from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate. Life is short.
Every person who ever managed to do this, every person who manged to escape the cubical farm and start doing something interesting and meaningful, started off with their own EVIL PLAN. And yeah, pretty much everyone around them– friends, family, colleagues– thought they were nuts.
Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier to have an EVIL PLAN, to make a great living, doing what you love, doing something that matters. My intention is that by the time you’ve finished reading this book, you will completely concur. More importantly, you’ll actually feel compelled enough to go and do something about it yourself, if you haven’t already.
DAVID: What was the motive behind writing the book [IGNORE EVERYBODY]? I mean, I know how little money these things make, but do you want it to help other people better their lives or is it just another evil plan?
HUGH: I certainly didn’t expect to make any real money from it, and how much it would “help” other people is pretty debatable. But sometimes in your life you have these defining moments, where you draw a line in the sand and declare to the world, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what’s important to me.” I think we all need these moments at some point, to make us better understand who we really are. Writing a book is a good way to force these moments to the surface. That was really the key driver, here.
And “forcing these moments to the surface” was the key driver with EVIL PLANS, as well. The book is not a how-to book; it’s not an instruction manual. It is a personal rant about something I’ve been pursuing all my adult life: to somehow find a way to unify both Work and Love.
i.e. To do what you truly love, and somehow get paid for it. Again, conceptually this may not be rocket science, certainly, yet it’s still something that eludes most of us. Most of us still have to schlep for a living.
Personally, I think most of us would rather not have to schelp. I think most of us would rather have an EVIL PLAN. I think most of us would much rather find a way to unify Work and Love.
Which is why, of course, I wrote the book. Wish me luck with it, anyway. Thanks…
[EVIL PLANS is scheduled to hit the bookstores April, 2011.]
Sigmund Freud once said that in order to be truly happy in life, a human being needed to acquire two things: The capacity to work, and the capacity to love.
“EVIL PLANS” is really about being able to do both, at the same time.
This is my tenth year blogging. I’ve done a lot of stuff since I started. Published cartoons, sold wine, sold suits, pimped Microsoft, sold art, written e-books, ranted on endlessly about marketing and all sorts…
But looking back, I realize it all served a served a common purpose: to unify work and love.
Then I notice, the people who read my blog the most avidly, and the bloggers I tend to read most avidly, hell yeah, they’re mostly trying to do the same thing too, in their own way. It’s a definite pattern.
To unify work and love. Are you one of these people? If not, don’t you think you should be? I mean, after friends and family, what the hell is there?
The Hunger will give you everything. And it will take from you, everything. It will cost you your life, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
What do I mean by “Everything”?
Well, pretty much what I said. Anything worth doing takes forever. And if time is all we have have, then QED, time is “Everything”.
With the deadline for the finished draft only a few months away, I’ve started working again on the next book, “Evil Plans” in earnest.
Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs a way to get the hell out of the RAT RACE. Everybody needs to get away from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate, and start doing something they love, doing something that matters. Life is short.
Every person who ever managed to do this, every person who manged to escape the rat race and start doing something that matters, started off with an EVIL PLAN.
My EVIL PLAN for the next couple of months is to work on the book first thing in the morning, 500 words a day. Afternoons I’ll work on the Cube Grenades. Evenings will be drawing new cartoons for the Newsletter.
From my end, it’s pretty sustainable, so I’m happy.
Let me tell you a story:
About twelve years ago I was living in New York City, busting my ass, working in an ad agency. One day I decided to go down to Houston to visit my family. While I was there, my sister and I decide to drive up to Austin to visit some old college buddies.
Instead of our usual route via I-10, we decided to take the slower but more scenic Route 290, through the Texas Hill Country. A lovely drive of about 150 miles.
At about the halfway point we pull into Chappell Hill, Texas, a sweet little town of maybe three hundred people. We stop for some gas.
Right next to the gas station is this small storefront, called the Chappell Hill Meat Market & Cafe. A traditional lunch diner taking up most of the building, and to the right, a tiny little grocery store.
Turns out this hole-in-wall grocery store sells some of the best Texas sausage and jerky you ever did come across. They have their own smoke house in the back, and everything is prepared right there on the premises. My friends in Austin are having a barbecue that evening, so we buy about forty dollars worth of sausage, brisket and jerky for the party. We eat some of the jerky in the car– Outstanding!
We have a great time in Austin, seeing our friends. Everybody LOVED the meat we brought for them. On our way home to Houston, my sister and I like the Chappell Hill Meat Market so much, we decide to stop in again, and buy some more sausage for my dad and his wife.
As I’m paying for the food I compliment the person serving me, the owner, a nice lady named Cissy.
“This is a great little place”, I say. “I LOVE your jerky.”
“Why, thank you,” says Cissy, in her very polite, Texan way.
“I bet you sell a lot of this stuff,” I say.
“Sure do,” says Sissy. “About a thousand pounds of meat…”
“A week? Really? That much?”
“No, Darlin’. A thousand pounds, every day.”
BOOM! Moment of clarity. A tiny little hole-in-the-wall in Nowheresville, Texas. Selling three-and-a-half TONS of world-class product a week. Doing the math in my head, assuming they’ve got a decent enough margin, that’s a lot more money than me or any of my other New York cronies were making (or probably ever going to make). For a lot less hassle and overheads, to boot.
Now, I never wanted to go into the meat business, but since that day in Chappell Hill, Texas, I have always aspired to have a business model as simple, elegant, profitable and low-key as this one. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting close…
And that, My Friends, is what “EVIL PLANS” is really all about. Exactly.
i. The Book. Sometime on Sunday I finished the first draft of “EVIL PLANS”. Sent it off to the publisher yesterday. Now begins the editing and the production. It hits the bookshops January 2011.
I’m already thinking about a third book…
About mid-December I had this big ol’ panic attack; thinking I’d better get to work on EVIL PLANS or else I’d miss the deadline I’d set for myself. So I buried myself in the office and pulled my hair out for a couple of weeks. All this while the Holiday Season was kicking in– more hair pulling there as well, but that’s a story for another day etc.
Ok, so the deadline was met in good time, but I’m a nervous wreck now…
“From early January, 2010, I’m starting a newsletter for you guys. The plan is to e-mail y’all a new, free cartoon every morning at 6am, New York Time. I may include other stuff along with them– written observations, tips, useful links etc– but regardless, I’m hoping it’ll be something that starts your day off with a chuckle.”
Daily Cartoons and the occasional long “Crazy, Deranged Fools” written piece. I hope you’ll sign up, Thanks. I’m hoping that launches any day now.
iii. Ummmm… Did I mention that I’m a nervous wreck now…?
Have a story. And make sure it’s a good one. A DAMN good one.
I have a very old, dear friend in New York, call him Andrew.
Andrew is about forty, and a pretty successful film director. One of his films aired on HBO recently. He also has a thriving corporate video business, which he works on when business in Hollywood is going slow that month. He’s not famous, but he’s done very well.
When I first met him he was in his late twenties, working as a bartender. Back then he had a vague idea of getting into the film business some day, but I didn’t know how serious he was, to be honest. A lot of twenty-somethings in New York blether on about getting into film, one tends to mostly ignore it.
But how he eventually broke into the film business is one of my favorite tales.
In the very late 1990s he finally decides that he’s serious about breaking into the industry. So he goes out and buys himself a small video camera, a sound recorder, a new Macintosh computer to do his editing, a few lights, some microphones, that kind of thing.
So the good news is, he now has all the gear he needs to get started.
The bad news is, having spent all his savings to acquire the gear, suddenly he needs money in a hurry. New York is expensive, and he’s broke.
But because he had pretty much zero experience in the film business at that point, he soon realizes that it’ll be a while before anyone in the traditional New York film industry will hire him for the kind of money he’s looking for.
He can’t afford to wait that long. So how does he pay the rent?
He decides to go into porn.
But not just any kind of porn. He does PERSONALIZED porn.
Let’s say you and your Significant Other want to create, shall we say, a special memento [*cough*] of your love [*cough*], and want something a bit more upmarket [*cough*] than just the normal, amateur, single-angle, unedited video from a camera [*cough*] that’s standing on a tripod near to the bed.
That’s right. You’d give Andrew a call. And Andrew and his sound man would come over to your apartment and shoot you and your significant other [*cough*] going at it. With proper edits, lighting, sound and camera angles. You and your loved one in the full throes of passion [*cough], with Andrew and his sound man hovering around you in silence, getting the perfect shot.
After he had shot the video, he would then take out his computer and edit the job right then and there, on the kitchen table. So before he left your home, he’d have already given you the SINGLE and ONLY copy that existed of the video. He and his sound man would then exit with nothing i.e. with no backup copy on his computer, so there was no chance of the footage ending up on the internet. At least, not from Andrew’s side.
He charged a few hundred bucks for his services. The average shoot only took an hour or two. He’s often do two or three shoots a day. Damn good money for an ex-bartender. A lot more money than I ever made in New York.
Business was brisk from Day One, to say the least. When he first told me what he’d been up to, back around 2000, I liked the story so much I pitched the idea to a journalist friend of mine. Andrew ended up being featured in a pretty high-end magazine soon after, which raised his profile even more. Within no time the phone was ringing off the hook, with all sorts of interesting people, both inside and outside the film industry, wanting to do business with him.
Great story. There’s only one catch:
I was talking to Andrew on the phone yesterday, wishing my buddy a Happy New Year’s. I asked him if he minded me using his “Personalized Porn” story for a chapter in EVIL PLANS, as a possible case study for interesting and original business models.
“Sure, Hugh, go right ahead,” he says. “Just one thing. None of it is true.”
“Huh?”
“I made the whole thing up.”
“What?” I say. “My favorite story about you ever, the one I’ve been telling folks with glee for the last ten years, was a total lie???”
“Yes.”
“Man, you’re a good bullshitter,” I say.
“You knew that about me already,” he says.
“Wow.”
“Look,” he says, “Back then I was just one of thousands of young wannabe film knuckleheads in New York, trying to get my foot in the door. I needed to have a story to tell people. One that was interesting. One that was different. One that got people’s attention. One that made me stand out from all the other knuckleheads. One that didn’t require me having a massive showreel. Hey, it worked. That story got me my first few editing jobs in the business. And since then I’ve been nothing but successful.”
He pauses for a second.
“A little present-tense success, forgives a lot of past-tense failure,” he says, chuckling with delight.
“DON’T WORRY IF YOU DON’T KNOW ‘ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING’ BEFORE STARTING OUT.”
That’s probably the last thing you need…
A lot of people massively postpone their EVIL PLANS, for the simple reason that they don’t have an answer for every possible contingency.
They don’t know enough about the industry. They don’t know enough people in the industry– especially the A-Listers. They don’t know enough about where the market is going to be in five years. They don’t know enough about what could possibly go wrong. They don’t know where EVERY SINGLE LAST POSSIBLE LANDMINE is buried.
So instead of getting on with it, they spend the next few years keeping their Nowheresville day job, whilst spending their evenings surfing the web, scouring the trade magazines, researching everything like crazy, trying to get a thorough, small-time Outsider’s view about what the big-time Insiders are currently up to.
And then they often compound this by also trying to get a handle on the even bigger stuff. What will happen to the American/Asian/European/Brazilian/Whatever economy in the next 2/5/10/25/Whatever years, and how will these BIG things affect their tiny, obscure niche.
They want to have ALL the answers, before ever risking getting their feet wet. Hell, before even getting their little toe wet…
Agreed, a wee bit of prudence and informed circumspection are lovely virtues to have, but overdoing it can be ultimately unproductive, for a variety of reasons. Here are my four favorite ones:
i. Being an Outsider with too much Insider Knowledge, makes it even more likely that you’ll make the same mistakes as everybody else.
When Google– the most successful advertising business in the history of the world– started their company, their founders knew practically nothing about the inside workings of Madison Avenue. Sergey Brin and Larry Page most likely had zero inside knowledge about famous advertising titans like Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Lee Clowes, John Hegarty or Claude Hopkins. They were just a couple of twenty-something Stanford PhD students, who were far more interested in Internet search engines than they ever were in Nielsen Ratings, Proctor & Gamble or The Clio Awards. Which helps explain why, when the normal, mainstream, industry-obsessed kids of around the same age were just landing their first East Coast internships or junior executive positions at advertising blue-chips like McCann’s, Lintas, DDB or Saatchi’s, Sergey and Larry were already well on their way to becoming billionaires.
When I started my fine-art print business in late 2008, I didn’t wait for the acclaim of the big-city gallery scene, or a favorable review from the New York Times art critics before I took the plunge. [A] Those elite votes of approval were VERY unlikely to happen anyway, and [B] Even if did happen, it would have taken years and years. I just reckoned instead that [A] my blog readers already knew and liked my work, [B] a lot of them had disposable incomes and [C] a lot of them had a lot of wall space that needed filling. That was all the incentive I needed to get the ball rolling.
So I just put the idea out there on my blog to see if any fish would bite. And they did. A lot of them even liked the idea enough to put up money in advance, before I had spent a single penny. As a result, the business has been profitable since Day One, without me having to gain an encyclopedic knowledge of the big New York, London and Shanghai art galleries, the current career trajectories of all the artists they represent, or the recent auction prices at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Too much of that stuff would’ve just slowed me down, big time.
[Other, Far Better Examples Than My Own:] Before they launched their car companies, Henry Ford and Karl Benz didn’t decide to first spend a decade trying to win the approval of prominent horse breeders or railway magnates. Same goes for the Wright Brothers.
I love this story about Bill Gates: Some years ago, when the company he founded, Microsoft was at the height of its powers, he was giving a lecture to some college students. When the the Question & Answers came along, a keen undergraduate asked the question, “What advice would you give to a young person like me who wants to make a lot of money some day?”
Gates’ answer was as wonderful as it was short: “For Goodness’ sake, don’t do what I did. That money’s already been made by me.”
ii.“Events, Dear Boy, Events.” –Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister 1957 – 1963, after being asked by a young journalist, what is the most likely single factor to blow any government off-course.
If it’s pretty much impossible for the smartest people in Washington, Wall Street and Silicon Valley to predict what the big, bad world is going to do next, what chance does a guy wanting to open a small, highly-specialized, hand-built EVIL PLAN bicycle operation have, from his small storefront in Brooklyn?
Trying to micromanage the Macro, from the comfort of your wee bike shop… Seriously, your time is better spent trying to manage what you CAN control. Like being nice to customers, keeping your word, staying cheerful, positive and focused, completing a task cheaper, faster and better than you had originally promised, working harder and smarter than the next guy, fighting hard to keep your ideas fresh i.e. all those good, small moves that Grandma told you about decades ago.
To get some very lucid, hardcore perspective on this, I recommend that you read Nassim Taleb’s excellent and highly readable “Fooled By Randomness” (W. W. Norton & Co., 2001). Nassim’s thesis is childishly simple: That the bigger the historical event, the more random and unpredictable the event was to begin with. Nobody saw 9/11, Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of JFK, Lincoln or Archduke Franz Ferdinand (and the subsequent outbreak of a four-year World War), the Atomic Bombs being dropped on Japan, the 1923 collapse of the German Deutchmark, the Barbarians sacking Rome in 410 A.D., The Bubonic Plague of the 1300’s, or Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union coming down the pike. Ditto with Detroit not seeing the threat of Japanese cars coming after 1945, or IBM not seeing the threat posed in the 1970s by Microsoft and Apple. Everything just happened when it did, everybody was shocked completely, and everybody just had to deal with the MASSIVE AND UNPREDICTABLE consequences afterward. Not too much fun at the time, but there was no other choice. Nassim makes a damn good case.
So if your EVIL PLAN is to open up a two-person internet software company, or a mom n’ pop fancy cheese shop in North Chicago, there’s little point in first waiting to see if, sometime in the next two decades, whether or not India and Pakistan decide to launch nuclear missiles against each other.
iii. Interesting destinies rarely come from just reading the instructions manual.
Yes, Louis Pasteur did say, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” On one level, he was right. That being said, the stuff you learn beforehand will never be one-tenth as useful as the stuff you learn the hard way, on the job. All the former can do is help train you to deal with the reality of the latter. The real truth is always found in the moment, never in the future. Sadly, not everybody is cut out for thriving in the present tense. Life is unfair.
iv. “Sometimes Paranoia’s just having all the facts.” –William S. Burroughs.
I’ve been in a few businesses in my time: advertising, marketing, fine art prints, greeting cards, phone sales, animation, magazines, wine, corporate consulting, English tailoring, and now, book writing. Take it from me– if I had known ONE HALF about these businesses that I know now, I doubt I would’ve bothered in the first place. Instead, I would’ve just gotten an MBA or law degree somewhere and landed a mid-level position in a bank, law firm, corporation or whatever. Maybe joined the local country club while I was at it. Lucky Me.
You were given a gift by The Creator, God, The Universe, Whatever. Until you have returned the favor, Life will have a certain, feckless emptiness to it.
So sooner or later you’re going to have to explain to your friends and family EXACTLY why you decided to quit your stable 401K job and go off on some long-term ACT OF LUNACY i.e. your EVIL PLAN.
I don’t know what exactly you’ll tell them. I do know, however, that somewhere in the back of your mind will be a feeling that you have something you want to give to the world, something that you haven’t given yet, something the world needs but doesn’t quite know it yet.
Yes, you have already learned how to make a living and pay the bills…
But you know that’s not enough.
I’ve had my fair share of crappy jobs, as have we all.
You know what? I never hated a job because of what it took from me– ALL jobs take a lot from you, especially the best ones.
I hated a job because it never allowed me to give enough to the world..
That’s all I ever wanted: My best self, playing my best game. Being an advertising hack never allowed that, somehow. But I can now do that as a cartoonist. I’m damn lucky to have found that out, even if it did take me a painfully, embarrassingly long time.
I’m not the world’s most talented person at what I do. Neither are you. That doesn’t make the gift we have to give less valid.
Giving the gift is an act of love. And Love is the only thing that matters.
That’s why we have an EVIL PLAN. Because it matters. Because Love matters.
I’ve spent most of the last week working on my second book, EVIL PLANS. I’m hoping to have the manuscript finished and ready to send to the publisher by the end of January.
I’m perfectly happy with the idea of being known as an artist; the idea of being known as an author as well is still a wee bit alien to me. Still, I’m new enough at this game to find the whole thing pretty darn exciting.
Cormac McCarthy was once asked by a young, aspiring writer, what advice would he give to a young, aspiring writer?
Cormac answered, “Don’t do it unless you have to.”
Now that my October travels are over, I’m sitting at my desk again, working on my second book, EVIL PLANS. Here are some notes:
1. The definition of an “EVIL PLAN” is, quite simply, a great idea that the world isn’t quite ready for yet, or at least, doesn’t think it is. Think of all the world-changing ideas that met resistance when they first came out. The motor car (“What’s wrong with a good horse?”). The telephone (“Hey, if someone wants to speak to me, they can damn well come and visit me at my office, or write me a letter.”). Universal Education (“We can’t have commoners learning how to read– it’ll give them all these fancy ideas they have no business thinking!”). Personal Computers (“The world is perfectly happy with $5 million mainframes, Laddie.”). Women’s Suffrage (“Women? Voting? But they’re not mentally stable enough to choose a good leader!”).
2. Everybody needs their own EVIL PLAN. Because that’s our ticket off the treadmill, the nine-to-five, the working for The Man. Being a wage slave in the post-industrial world sucks. Besides, the latter doesn’t pay very well.
3. Everyone needs to find meaning in the brief time they’re living on this planet. Besides Love– friends, family, babies, your fellow man etc– I believe the best way to achieve that is to find a way of making a living that (A) pays the bills and (B) creates something that you can believe in. We are happiest when the work we do fulfills a sense of purpose. This isn’t rocket science. This is just an EVIL PLAN to get our sorry asses out of the salt mine and on to doing something that matters.
4. EVIL PLANS are not really “Evil”, of course. Maybe “Impish” would be a more accurate term. But calling it “Evil” is really pretty “Impish”, so hey, it works. There is something rather mischievous about having something up your sleeve that will surprise everybody eventually– something that will carry “the joyfully unexpected” to a place it wasn’t before.
5. My good friend, John T Unger once said, “Probably the easiest way to create good in this world, is by starting a small business that makes cool stuff.” I totally agree. That’s how I’ve chosen to spend my life; the point of EVIL PLANS is to reach out to those who have done the same. There are MILLIONS of us. It’s damn exciting.
6. “It’s not just enough to make money. One needs Personal Sovereignty as well.” My Scottish grandfather was poor as dirt his whole life. But he died a free and proud man, and loved by countless many. One thing Grandpa didn’t like, was being told what to do by other people. Especially bureaucrats. “Wee Mannies”, he called them. Small men who used their State-given authority to push bigger men around. They never really pushed Grandpa around, though– frankly, they weren’t that dumb. As I get older, the more I realize how much I take after Grandpa MacLeod. Which is why I own my own business, which is why I would never do well in a large corporation. I don’t like having bosses. I don’t like being told what to do. Again, there are millions of people out there who feel the same. Again, it’s exciting.
7. I’m not writing a “How-To” book. A library of How-To books won’t tell you as much as the following sentence: “Work your ass off for twenty years and THEN, JUST MAYBE you’ll finally get a frickin’ clue.” Like my first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY, I’m just compiling a list of all the stuff that has helped me over the years. But it’s true– a little talent & a good work ethic goes a lot farther than a lot of talent & a poor work ethic. As a lot of my hapless, talented-but-lazy friends found out far too late.
8. I’ve been an artist, I’ve been an entrepreneur. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference– they’re far more similar than the popular myths would have us believe. A fortysomething musician sent me an email recently. He told me that, although his life for the most part has been a happy one– good health, lovely wife, great kids, good friends, nice house, etc– his career has always been a bit foggy for him, like he was never sure what would happen next. I replied, “No worries, your situation happens A LOT with creative people, even among the super-creative-successful types. The never-ending fog of being an artist.” Whether we’re talking art or being an entrepreneur, “The Fog” is always with us. There is no cure, there is only building up a tolerance. And a good sense of humor helps, as well.
9. I think human beings inherently want to do “Something That Matters”. I think it’s in our DNA. I think the people who say they don’t want do something that matters are liars. I also think having an EVIL PLAN constantly in the back of our minds– quitting our day job and opening a bar, writing the Great American Novel, whatever– is also in our DNA. EVIL PLANS is a meditation about finally waking the hell up and going off to do something meaningful.
10. Life is an adventure. EVIL PLANS is my way of proving the preceding sentence correct. And the people who want to prove me wrong? They’re welcome to try– even if they’ll probably fail. Screw ‘em anyway.
I was quite amused by this, in a weird kinda way.
A few days ago, some groovy cat in Japan spotted my book in a bookshop in some town I’d never heard of before.
And he went and took this picture of Page Sixty Four. Why Page Sixty Four? I have no idea. I guess that’s what intrigued me.
[I saved the photo right then, I went back to try to find the link a few days later but couldn’t find it, sorry…]
Some random dude in a Japanese bookstore. Some random cartoonist in West Texas, with an equally random book serving as asocial object in a now hyper-connected world.
I told a fellow author the other day, “If your book isn’t a social object, your book isn’t selling. End of story.”
He scratched his head for a minute, so then I filled him in all about “Baked-In Sociality.” He got it, then.
And the Internet makes all this far more apparent than it ever was before, of course.
The rumors are true. I’ve landed a second book deal.You can go see the details here. Same publisher and editorial team as my first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY. The title of the second book will be called, you guessed it, “EVIL PLANS”.
EVIL PLANS had an interesting genesis. I was just tooling around with some ideas on the blog, which all ended up being collectively piled onto the EVIL PLANS page, just like what happened with the original web version of IGNORE EVERYBODY. Somebody at my publisher’s saw the blog page, got really excited by it, printed it out, and went to show everybody else on the Editorial team. Next thing you know, my agent gets a phone call from them.
Up until that point, I hadn’t submitted any book ideas to anyone– not even my agent– mainly because I didn’t really think I had any to submit. This was only a month or so after IGNORE EVERYBODY had come out in June 2009, and I was planning on giving myself at least another six to twelve months before giving another book idea much thought. Events proved otherwise.
I remember when IGNORE EVERYBODY was just taking shape as a book idea, and me thinking, “Wow, I think I can do this.” It was an exciting feeling. I’m glad it still feels that way.
Thanks to Adrian, Jillian, Will and Maureen over at Penguin/Portfolio for giving me a crack at it. Thanks to my agent, Lisa, for negotiating the deal on my behalf. Rock on.
A small, tiny brand, that “sells” all over the world.
The Global Microbrand is nothing new; they’ve existed for a while, long before the internet was invented. Imagine a well-known author or painter, selling his work all over the world. Or a small whisky distillery in Scotland. Or a small cheese maker in rural France, whose produce is exported to Paris, London, Tokyo etc. Ditto with a violin maker in Italy. A classical guitar maker in Spain. Or a small English firm making $50,000 shotguns.
[…]
Frankly, it beats the hell out of commuting every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city, something I did for many years. Just so I could make enough money to help me forget that I have to commute every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city.
There are thousands of reasons why people write blogs. But it seems to me the biggest reason that drives the bloggers I read the most is, we’re all looking for our own personal global microbrand. That is the prize. That is the ticket off the treadmill. And I don’t think it’s a bad one to aim for.
As I’ve been working on my next book, EVIL PLANS, it suddenly occurred to me, THIS is what I’ve been doing all along with gapingvoid these last eight years– trying to build my own global microbrand, and trying to help others do the same.
Like my old French buddy, Laurent Haug told me while we were sipping beers in Geneva, not long after I’d written the Global Microbrand Rant:
“You nailed, it, Man. You’re set for life.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Global Microbrand. You coined the term, now you own that conversation.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
“Everybody wants one, Hugh. That’s what we’re all chasing after.”
Laurent had a point. Looking back, it seems so glaringly obvious now…
Eureka. EVIL PLANS just got slightly more evil. Rock on.
[Click on image to enlarge/download etc. Feel free to use badge for your own needs etc.] [Follow my #evilplans on Twitter.…]
Three years ago, Stormhoek, the South African wine I’ve been associated with for the last four years, sponsored some geek dinners. They were a huge success.
We’re ready to get back at it, as part of my EVIL PLANS etc.
This time, however, we’re going to sponsor Tweetups. If you’re one of the people following me on Twitter, are based in TEXAS and are planning on having a Tweetup in the next wee while, drop me an e-mail, and let’s see if we can’t get some wine sent there for the evening. Even better, if you have one near to where I’m heading on my Evil Pans road trip, I’ll try to attend. Rock on. LESS IS MORE: One of the points I’m trying to make with this exercise in futility is that yes, you can do interesting stuff on a tiny, tiny scale and still make a big impact. So the smaller the event, the better. I’d rather attend a dozen tweetups with five to ten people, than one tweetup with a hundred people. I’d rather attend a tweetup in somebody’s back yard, than a tweetup in a fancy, big-city restaurant.
Sure, a fancy, big event every now and then is fun, but that’s not the main point of this…
[For those of you outside the loop, a “Tweetup” is a spontaneous, self-organizing social gathering of fellow Twitter users, usually organized on Twitter itself. Usually food and drink are part of the equation etc.]
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[Anthony Adams was a recent college graduate working for IBM. Now 
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