Lum’s Barbecue, Junction, Texas. This is where I normally stop for lunch when I drive between Alpine and Austin. Just over halfway.

That smoker’s been there over 3o years, they tell me. And the guy who smokes the meat has been there even longer.

One more reason to love living out here.

People were quite surprised when I moved out to Alpine, nearly two years ago. They had gotten used to me being from New York or London.

But I had always imagined ending up somewhere like here eventually. It was just a case of waiting for both the Internet and the ol’ art career to reach a certain critical mass. When that day finally arrived, the move happened rather quickly.

And it could not have happened at a better time. In the last few months business has gotten a lot more hectic. For reasons still unclear to me, the private commissions just started coming in faster and faster. Why now, I wonder? I don’t think I cold have coped with it nearly as well, living in a big city.

As I’m fond of saying, Success is more complex than Failure. This quiet, pared-down, unglamorous, low-maintenance West Texas life in the high desert seems to be my way of dealing with it.

What’s your coping mechanism?

[Backs­tory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twit­ter. News­let­ter. Book. Inter­view One. Inter­view Two. EVIL PLANS. Limi­ted Edi­tion Prints. Pri­vate Com­mis­sions. Cube Gre­na­des.]

[Thomas Mahon]

I’m currently working on the English Cut case-study for my upcoming book, “Evil Plans”.

EnglisCut.com was a blog I started with a Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon, back in January 2005. The enterprise proved tremendously successful– enough that the story has been retold many times in magazines, blogs, bestselling books and national media. Three years ago in London I gave a talk all about it– I thought it was now worth re-publishing the accompanying blog post I wrote at the time. Enjoy:

[Originally published here, September 21, 2006.]

I’m speaking today at the “Social Network Tools & Their Business Application” conference in London. The title of my talk is: “Case Study: Using Blogs to Create a Global Micro-Business”. I’ll be talking about English Cut, and how it transformed Thomas’ tailoring business and educated his customers.
The story of how Thomas, myself and later, New York PR maven Dave Parmet started working together was wonderfully re-told in Naked Conversations:

MacLeod says he “started filling Mahon’s head with Cluetrain and blogging stuff,” and slowly Mahon got interested. “We started thinking that if Mahon could talk about tailoring on a blog about the same way that Seth Godin talks about marketing, then the people who care will see it. Mahon wouldn’t try to sell suits on the blog. Instead, he would show his knowledge and love of the craft. He would explain the labor, and materials involved and why the cost of each suit was justified.” The idea was that the people who cared either about suits or how a master craftsmen creates them would find their way to the site.

My father remarked to me the other day, “I bet you had no idea in the beginning that the blog would work as well as it did, eh?”
True, I had no idea. But looking back, we had a few things going for us.

1. A great product. Thomas is one of the best tailors in the world. His suits REALLY ARE that good. If we were just selling commodified drek, I doubt if anyone would’ve paid much attention.
2. A unique story. When he started, Thomas was the only Savile Row tailor writing a blog, and this gave him a unique voice in the blogosphere. This fuelled the interest. Had masses of tailors already been blogging, it would’ve been much harder for his own unique “idea-virus” to spread. The first-mover advantage rule still applies.
3. Passion & Authority. Thomas has both in spades. That’s what kept people coming back. That’s what built up trust. That’s what turned his readers into customers. Which is why “Share what you love” is the best advice there is.
4. Continuity. He kept at it. He didn’t expect the blog to transform his fortunes overnight. As I’m fond of saying, “Blogs don’t write themselves”. Based on our experience, if you want blogs to transform your business, I’d say give yourself at least a year.
5. Focus. It was always about the suits. It was never about what he had for breakfast, Technorati rank or frothy gossip about other bloggers.
6. Thomas spoke in his own voice. Thomas is a straightforward, affable fellow, and the voice on the blog is the same as the voice you meet in real life. He never tried to misrepresent himself on his blog, nor try to create some over-glamorized image of his profession. He just told it like it is. And people responded well to that. As he once put it, “We’re so lucky we don’t have to create the brand out of thin air. We just tell the truth and the brand builds itself.”
7. Sovereignty. The only people we had to please were the two of us. No bosses or outside investors to keep happy. Bosses and investors like guarantees, but there aren’t any.
8. We were both broke when we started. Had we had masses of money at the beginning, we would have had a lot more options on how to get the word out. In all likelihood, these options would have been a lot more expensive and not nearly as effective. Sometimes lack of capital is a definite advantage.

A blog is a great way to build one’s own personal “global microbrand”. As the Job-For-Life no longer exists, as the value of the social “position” erodes and the value of the “project” takes its place, personal brand development becomes far more important to one’s career. Blogs are a good place to start.
Hey, if a Savile Row tailor can do it, what’s your excuse?

[Backs­tory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twit­ter. News­let­ter. Book. Inter­view One. Inter­view Two. EVIL PLANS. Limi­ted Edi­tion Prints. Pri­vate Com­mis­sions. Cube Gre­na­des.]

[A cartoon I did for Deborah Schultz back in 2007.]

Yesterday on Twitter, I wrote:

“There are roughly 20 people in your space who matter. They’re either reading your blog, or they’re not.”

I don’t know what industry you work in, but I do know that the number of people who “own the conversation” in your space is very, very small.

When I worked with English Cut, a Savile Row tailor [$5000 hand-made suits], the number was about twelve. When I worked with Stormhoek in the UK wine business, the number was probably even smaller [80% of the wine sold in the UK is from the same four or five large supermarket chains].

And by the time we were done, all the people who mattered to us in both these businesses were reading our blogs. We saw to it. We made sure it happened. We made sure “the conversation” was interesting enough that they really had no choice.

I would suggest that right this minute, you make a list of the twenty or so people in your space who matter. Then ask yourself, who on this list is actually reading your stuff, actually follows what you’re up to, actually knows that you exist?

If most of the people on the list are reading you, the others will follow. If they’re not, then you’ve got a wee bit of a marketing problem.

But at least now you know what that problem is…

[UPDATE:] I like what Gary Walter said in the comments below:

This […] goes right along with my phi­lo­sophy of life. I nee­ded the remin­der though. As my blog has got­ten more popu­lar, I’ve found myself wri­ting to the exten­ded audience. Howe­ver, if I’m not wri­ting to/for my core, then nothing I write is worth the elec­trons that carry it.

Exactly.

[Backs­tory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twit­ter. News­let­ter. Book. Inter­view One. Inter­view Two. EVIL PLANS. Limi­ted Edi­tion Prints. Pri­vate Com­mis­sions. Cube Gre­na­des.]

Seth Godin and John T. Unger, two voices I listen to very carefully, recommended me this Global Microbrand, independently of each another: Best Made Company.

Best Made make customized axes. Like it says on their webpage:

NOTHING WITHOUT AN AXE:

Every high-rise condo, luxury office, executive suite, ranch house, and farmstead must have an axe in it. We know that axes shouldn’t only be in the hands of lumberjacks: anyone and everyone should have an axe in their name. Put it in your cubicle, give it to your niece as a graduation present, or your dad for father’s day (or better yet mom for mother’s day), bring it to the company picnic, carry it to the door next time Jehovah’s Witness come knocking, or just lean it up against your living room wall and admire. An axe is indispensable and sublime, the epitome of self-reliance and independence, a perfect design object, a timeless instrument.

I swapped emails with one of the company’s founders, Graeme. Turns out he and his business partner, Peter, like myself, spent their teenage summers canoe-tripping up in Northern Ontario, where believe me, a good axe is both an indispensable and highly revered piece of kit. So that’s where the love comes from.

I’ve held one of their axes in my own two hands– beautifully made, lovely to hold and to look at.
Good luck to these folk, I say…

[Backs­tory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twit­ter. News­let­ter. Book. Inter­view One. Inter­view Two. EVIL PLANS. Limi­ted Edi­tion Prints. Pri­vate Com­mis­sions. Cube Gre­na­des.]

It’s been almost four years since I first posted “The Global Microbrand Rant”:

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.

[Bonus Link:] “Ten Thousand People: The Antidote To ‘Chasing Gigs’”.

[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
If you walk around Alpine, Texas (my current home), you might start seeing the “Dream Big” bumper stickers everywhere, the ones I made for Stormhoek.
Alpine only has about 6,000 people. We’ve distributed around 1,000 bumper stickers so far. Plan to do many more. Do the math.
Why can’t a small town in west Texas “Dream Big”? Ditto for a small winery in South Africa.
“Dream Big, Alpine, Texas” isn’t rocket science. But it seems to resonate with folk.
Yes, the bumper sticker is a “social object”.
Watch this space…

For years now, I’ve been riffing on “The Global Microbrand”, something I’ve always wanted to create for myself:

A small, tiny brand, that “sells” all over the world…The Global Microbrand is sustainable. With it you are not beholden to one boss, one company, one customer, one local economy or even one industry. Your brand develops relationships in enough different places to where your permanent address becomes almost irrelevant.

And from what became glaringly obvious early on, a lot of my fellow bloggers had the same idea. To which I’ve always said, “Hurrah!”:
So then the next question is, when does your microbrand become TRULY global? Where is the tipping point?
Your guess is as good as mine, it really all depends on your definition of “global”. Although this blog has had readers from all over the planet for many years, most of my actual, paid business over time has come from the UK and America. So it never felt THAT global to me.
Then last week I shipped an order of signed prints to a client in Brazil…
And then today, somebody from Mainland China purchased a Purple Cow print. We’re talking “Mainland”. Not Hong Kong. Not Taiwan. Mainland.
Something interesting is happening, I can feel it…

[The “AgenciaClick” prints being signed and numbered…]

[The “Wolf vs Sheep” prints, freshly signed and numbered…]
I’m in Miami for the weekend, mainly here to sign some more prints and do some more drawing…
Drawn in Alpine, Texas. Printed in NYNY. Signed in Miami. Sold all over the world, via the Internet. A global microbrand, if ever there was one…

One of John T.‘s “Great Bowls Of Fire”.
From March, 2006:

Chris Carfi points to John T. Unger, an artist and regular gapingvoid commenter who has used his blog and the global microbrand idea to carve out a nice wee career for himself (for more money than his last day job paid him, I hasten to add).
Go read John T’s take on it here. Very uplifting.

John and his girlfriend left Alpine, Texas this morning. We hung out and drank beer, and I got to take him to my favorite Mexican place in town, Alicia’s. Since I first wrote about him a a few years ago, we’ve become great friends.
John’s checking out Texas. He’s had enough of Michigan winters. He’s looking to buy land down here and build another studio for his sculpture. Alpine is on his short list of possible locations.
I may have coined the term, “Global Microbrand”, but John has actually lived it to the full. Now it’s my turn to play catch-up. Rock on.

[Me signing the “Bluetrain” prints earlier this evening…]
Dear Crazy, Deranged Fools,
Ok, so that’s the Bluetrain edition signed. Tomorrow I take them to the art packer’s, in order for them to be packed flat and shipped via UPS to their new owners.
From here in Alpine, Texas, to London, Hong Kong, Boston, Paris, New York, Austin, Seattle… all 100% enabled by our little, evil friend, The Internet. This is EXACTLY what I meant when I talked about The Global Microbrand, back in 2005. All happening for me now etc.
For those of you who have ordered one, please expect to receive an embedded PayPal button in an email from me, during the next couple of days. We were first waiting to see much an actual print weighs when fully packed, so we’d know how much to charge y’all for shipping. Thanks.
Yes, it has its complicated moments, but it’s all very exciting… I hope y’all feel likewise.
Thanks Again for Your Love And Support,
Yours in Crazy, Deranged Foolishness,
Hugh MacLeod
[PS: Check out the latest limited edition coming out: “We Need To Talk”.]
[PPS: Sign up for The “Crazy, Deranged Fools” Newsletter here…]

For the greater part of the last decade, I have been using the internet to build what I’m fond of calling, “The Global Microbrand”.

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.

Here are some more thoughts, in no particular order of importance:

1. I think in many ways, the artist is the ultimate global microbrand. She just does her thing from wherever; if she’s any good and fortune favors her work, her stuff is suddenly being seen, read or heard all around the world, without her having to leave her studio too much. Nice work if you can get it.

2. The good news is, so far it’s gone extremely well for me. The bad news is, it has taken me forever to this point. Better late than never, I suppose.
3. I’ve had the most success helping to build Global Microbrands for other people, most notably, English Cut and Stormhoek. The idea that I should start applying what I know about this world to my own, commercial products, didn’t really kick in till earlier this year. Though business has been busy enough so far [and getting busier by the day], it’s still a strange feeling for me. Seems like it’s easier to promote other people’s stuff than one’s own stuff. You don’t take it so personally, somehow.
4. Being an artist has three main components– 1. Making the actual work 2. Running the business and 3. Promoting the business. It’s REALLY hard to do all three at the same time. It’s EQUALLY hard to find people who can take over some of the duties and responsibilities of 2 and 3. Good people who actually know what they’re doing are rare and expensive.
5. I made my best work when I was relatively cold, hungry and desperate. This kind of experience tends to make one very unapologetic, years later, when the “success” eventually arrives.
6. Having a global microbrand is not about being “famous”. It’s about having a serious, almost tribe-like connection with a number of people who want to buy into what you’re doing. If you’re selling $5000, hand-made suits like Thomas Mahon, that number only needs to be a hundred or so. If you’re selling $20 books or music CDs, that number needs to be much larger. I’m somewhere in the middle, because my work has a lot of price points– from the $16.29 price tag of my upcoming book, to the x-hundred-dollar prints I’m working on, to the five-figures I plan to sell my large paintings for [Yes, I’ve already been offered that for “DesertManhattan”, even though it’s still far from completion]. Somewhere early on I decided 10,000 people for me was the magic number. I may be wrong on that, though…
7. I don’t believe in overnight success [mainly because it has yet to happen to me, or anyone I know]. I believe on building my “tribe”, one person at a time. I also think that having a definite number in mind re. how large you want your tribe to be, is extremely helpful.
8. Results may vary depending on who you are and what you’re selling, but I have always found it easier to find one tribe member willing you give you $1000, than it is to find 1000 tribe members willing to give you one dollar. The downside to that is, the more expensive and exclusive your product, the harder it is to scale further. Somewhere in there lies the sweet spot. If you find it, let me know.
9. You see this a lot, in the blogosphere particularly: People with great products but no tribe to speak of [Daniel Edlen of VinylArt fame springs immediately to mind], and people with large tribes, but no real compelling product to speak of. Again, it’s all about finding the sweet spot.
10. I didn’t really start building my tribe till I was well into my thirties, when blogs and Web 2.0 came along. It was a medium “I just got” right away. Man, how I wish the internet came along twenty years sooner; it would’ve made my life a lot easier in those early days.
11. Though I didn’t have the term for it back then, back in college I always knew a “Global Microbrand” was what I wanted eventually. I always knew I was never cut out to be the corporate, office-worker kinda guy. I gave the latter an honest try, and it was a complete disaster. Like I said, better late than never.
12. If your Global Microbrand succeeds, it’s not because of the brand’s functionality per se, it’s because what you’re doing gives the end user something to believe in. To me, that’s always been pretty obvious, some folk still find it a difficult idea to process.
[UPDATE: Just added this blog post to “Evil Plans”.

It’s been almost two years since my “Global Microbrand Rant”:

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.

Though a lot of the personal details have changed since then, it still holds up pretty well.
That’s one of the main reasons I started this website, back in the day. I saw it as a ticket off the treadmill. Not exactly sure how it all happened, but for the most part, my evil plan worked.
I’ve noticed that building a Global Microbrand, whether you’re a tech consultant or a maker of hand-built guitars, is a lot like learning how to teach oneself to be a cartoonist i.e. you need the same three basic ingredients: Talent, stamina and discipline.
Like any good Kung Fu master will tell you– There are no secrets. There is no magic formula. Just a lot of hard work.

[A riff on the Blue Monster cartoon. Recently commissioned by Microsoft etc.]
Recently I’ve been busying myself with a new series of cartoons I’m doing for Microsoft. The cartoon above is one of them.
Microsoft is awash with both [A] complicated products and [B] complicated ideas, so they often use my cartoons internally to communicate them in a more, shall we say, digestible form.
I’m also talking to other large companies about doing the same kind of thing with them. The work suits me. I like the challenge, I like the mental algebra, I like being able to interface with hardcore, real-world problems. And it can all be done in Alpine, Texas, Cumbria or wherever via the internet, without me having to book an airline ticket and hotel.
If this is something that would be useful for your company, feel free to drop me an e-mail.
Thanks.
[I’m still doing the public speaking and appearance gigs, of course. More info here. Thanks Again.]

Some people call it “The New Marketing”. Some people call it “Marketing 2.0″. Whatever name you care to give it, I get asked about it a lot. Here are some random thoughts, in no particular order.
1. “The New Marketing” came about because of two unstoppable forces: [A] The invention of the internet and [B] the beginning of the demise of what Seth Godin calls the “TV-Industrial Complex”. Thanks to the internet, as Clay Shirky famously stated in 2004, “the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.” While this was going on, large companies found out that people were starting to ignore their ads. We have too many choices, too many good choices, and we’ve gotten too good at ignoring messages.
2. Seth Godin is quite rightly the world’s most respected writer on marketing. That being said, a lot of people haven’t heard of Mark Earls yet. They’re both friends of mine, so I don’t want to compare them too much. Seth is a master of taking complicated ideas and presenting them in a way that any Average Joe can understand. Mark is more of a Marketing Geek’s geek. His stuff makes uncomfortable reading for anyone in marketing who hasn’t been stretching himself lately.
3. The most important asset in The New Marketing is “having something worth talking about”. This makes certain marketing people squeamish. A lot of us grew up in an era of flashy commercials for rather uninspiring products, and something in our DNA makes us believe that’s the proper way to go about things.
4. If I had one big insight from the last year, is how The New Marketing has everything to do with how your product or service acts as a “Social Object”. Kudos to Jyri Engestrom for turning me on to it.
5. My second big insight from this year was learning that, even with a fairly everyday product, you can create social objects simply by using your products to make social gestures. That’s what we did with Stormhoek. The message wasn’t, “Here’s why you should buy our wine”. The message was, “We think you’re kinda cool, and we like what you’re doing. We’d like to be part of it, somehow.” And much to everyone’s surprise, it worked rather well.
6. Blogs were the big story for 2005. YouTube for 2006. Facebook for 2007. What’s the big story for 2008? I have no idea. Nor do I think it matters. For the big story, really, is always going to be the same. Websites comes and go, but “Cheap, Easy, Global, Hyperlinked Media” will be with us forever, save for Nuclear Holocaust.
7. A lot of what fuels The New Marketing is quite simply, the most important word in the English Language: “Love”. It’s hard to get someone to read your website if you’re not passionate about your subject matter.
8. I’m trying to train myself to avoid “Microsmosis” i.e. mistaking of a microcosm for the entire cosmos. If you got all your news from blogs, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there are just two phone companies– Apple and Nokia. But Sony, Motorola, LG and Samsung sell a lot of phones, too. Just not to our friends.
9. My Definition of “Web 3.0″: Learning how to use the web properly without it taking over your life. I’m not holding my breath.
10. Why is it so hard to explain The New Marketing to large companies? Because the people who work there are simply not prepared to relinquish the idea of control. Live by metrics, die by metrics etc.
11. I find all this more interesting when I don’t take it too seriously. Like all things internet, it’s far too easy to get carried away.
[UPDATE:] Robert Scoble leaves an interesting comment:

Friends are going to be the big story in 2008. Here’s a post about why it’s wrong that I’m a gatekeeper between my friends and you.

After I found myself permanently exiled from the advertising business in late 2004, I found myself with only a single, unpaid gig remaining i.e. this website, gapingvoid.
Luckily this unemployed phase didn’t last long. Sure, I had a month or two of being poor and desperate, but then English Cut came along, then Thingamy, then Stormhoek, then the consulting, then the Blue Monster, then the paid speaking gigs. Within two years or so I had turned the ship around quite nicely.
But somehow gapingvoid got lost in the mix. Even though the plan has always been to keep gapingvoid at the very epicenter of what I do, in the last 18 months or so it seemed to get increasingly pushed to the margins.
I guess that’s not surprising. With so much going on it’s hard to make a small cartoon blog [with equally small advertising revenues] the main focus of one’s business.
But of course, without gapingvoid, my own personal global microbrand, the other stuff would never have been possible. Therein lies the rub.
The last three years has been without question the most exciting period of my career, but My God, it has stretched me thin. I’m worn out.
So this last week I’ve been telling people I work with, I’m changing the game plan. I’m going back to basics. From now on building “the gapingvoid brand” will become my first priority. Yes, I will still be working with the same people and projects I’m working with now, in much the same way, but in a much less involved capacity.
Time to regroup. Indeed.
I’m thinking now would be a good time to thank everybody who reads gapingvoid on a regular basis. Without you, the last three amazing years would never have happened.
Thanks, Everybody. You guys rock.