Strands of Genius: 10 Reasons to Go (or Not to Go) Freelance , Modes of Persuasion, Spirit Airlines Makes a Ton Of Money (Even With Your Hatred )
plus: our thoughts on routines and rituals, US airline rankings, & the glory days of airline safety videos
WRITING FROM | Greenville, SC
WORKING ON | the School of Stolen Genius (we can’t wait to tell you more!)
LOOKING AHEAD
Jan 1-Feb 3: Greenville, SC
Jan 18-20: Charlotte, NC (Rosie)
Feb 3-17: Nashville, TN
Feb 17-28: Beersheba Springs, TN
Feb 29-March 15: Nashville, TN (Rosie)
March 1-15: London, UK (Faris)
March 4-6: London, UK | Big TV Festival
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We’re coming to the end of our time in Greenville so we are especially grateful for Mike&Rachel [and Stella&Chase] for having us for a month. The hoverboard arrived! Requires practice. When does it get warmer? It’s unusual for us to be in the same time zone long enough to experience seasonality.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Greenville yoga, especially Liz & Deb & Matt & Ali & Kimmie & Jill, quick flow water bottles, Airpod pros, a relief from rain, communal living & cohabitation, Rachel & Mike, Stella & Chase, Aquaphor chapstick (that sh*t is the best!), face masks, Picard, Schitt’s Creek, and a trip to the movie theatre to see the new Star Wars (finally!). Whole30 is almost over, what to (ch)eat first... (I’m guessing halva cake that Rosie is making for our yoga teachers…)
:: THE LINKS ::
IF EVERYONE HATES SPIRIT AIRLINES, HOW IS IT SO PROFITABLE?
The ever interesting Rob Walker [author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are] just published this nuanced piece about the business model and branding of the hated, but still very popular low cost airline. (It’s come up for discussion after The Wall Street Journal released their annual airline scorecards, and people were surprised to see Spirit outrank JetBlue, Frontier, United & American.)
According to Rob Walker, the Spirit CEO said, “Businesses that look at what people say,” he argues, “don’t do as well as businesses that look at what people actually do.” And so often, we don’t *know* why we act the way we do. So we might say we’d act one way when Spirit cancels our flight, but the next time around when it’s $350 less than the next ticket, we don’t act in fury but buy in order to save money. Unfortunately humans are not not always the best predictors of what we’ll do. And if you’re really lamenting your experience flying? American Airlines ranks as the worst airline in the US, while Delta takes the lead as the best. (The Marker)
10 REASONS TO GO FREELANCE (AND 10 REASONS NOT TO)
We get asked a lot about how to go out on your own, as a free agent, to freelance or consult. It is a very different existence to being salaried, and freedom comes with risks, but it is also the most amazing feeling to own your own time. When we have conversations with people considering the jump, we try to be brutally honest about the costs and the benefits. The best thing we’ve read for agency folk considering the jump is from legendary planner Merry Baskin: ten reasons to go freelance and ten reasons not to. (IPA Ireland)
MODES OF PERSUASION
Faris recently published this updated article considering how persuasion works in advertising, pulling from Aristotle and neuro-linguist George Lakoff. Each mode is a proven advertising approach, demonstrated with examples. It also features a rare recruitment ad that legendary copywriter David Abbott wrote for “account men” at DDB. (Medium)
If you’d like to sponsor a future edition of Strands, and reach 9,000 creative thinkers around the world, shoot us a note - hello@geniussteals.co - and let’s talk.
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: RITUALS & ROUTINES ::
When we first started our nomadic existence, we struggled with the constant movement. We talked to a therapist, and she suggested we needed more routine in our lives. But it would be impossible, we argued, for our lives to have routine. And not just that, but if we were to set a routine and then failed at following it (which we would inevitably do), we would feel guilty about what would otherwise be natural ebbs and flows in our lives. We didn’t end up continuing sessions with that therapist, but a couple of months later tried talking to someone else. Her first suggestion? You guessed it. Routine. I barely let her finish before explaining why it wouldn’t work.
“Let me reframe it,” she began. She pointed out how our problem with routine stemmed from our constant travel with pesky time zone changes and work commitments at odd hours. And then she suggested an alternative to routine: ritual. We didn’t need to set a time of day, or frequency, or even settle on a single activity - but to create a commitment to something that would ground us.
We started using the meditation app, Headspace, meditating for a minute one day, two minutes the next, building ourselves up to a full 30 minutes. And we started going to yoga, beginning with a commitment to do yoga once a day for 30 days (a minimum of 20 minutes) and writing about how we felt at the end of each day. While we only did the lite-journaling for that first month, seven years later yoga is the ritual that we use to give ourselves and our always-chattering minds some time and space to breathe.
Sometimes we fall out of practice. We’ve gotten better at staying places for longer and managing time zones, but occasionally we have to trade ritual for life’s ebbs and flows, and that’s OK, too. Instead of giving ourselves a hard time, we acknowledge that we miss it, and pledge to give ourselves that self-care when our schedule will allow. Or we find a compromise: Instead of an hour yoga class, we’ll do a 10-minute meditation.
A ritual could be a gratitude practice (name 3 things you’re thankful for each day, or trade texts with a friend if you want to have some accountability); it could be a mantra or meditation; it could be listening to a song that puts you in a good mood; it could be taking the time and cooking a meal for yourself, or even taking a bath. When we’re trying to build an additive habit, we opt for alarm reminders and/or an app like HabitBull. (And when you’re first starting out, focus on one thing at a time, for at least a month on its own before adding in something else.)
:: AND NOW… US AMERICAN AIRLINE RANKINGS ::

Here were the 2019 rankings from The Wall Street Journal, using scorecard criteria like on-time arrivals, canceled flights, extreme delays, tarmac delays, mishandled baggage, involuntary bumping, and complaints.
:: PLUS, REMEMBER WHEN AIRLINE SAFETY VIDEOS WERE ACTUALLY GOOD? ::
Thanks to our friend and fellow nomad, Matt Haze (he also happens to be @30RockTree on Twitter) for reminding us of the glory days of airline safety videos.
Dear Virgin America, We’ll always love you forever even if you folded into Alaska and lost all your swag.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Getting to meet like-minded folks is one of the best parts of living nomadically, so please let us know if you see if we'll be in a city near you :)
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
Know someone who could use some inspiration in their inbox? Send ‘em our way!

It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)
SPEAKING
We're currently booking speaking gigs for the year.
Check out full descriptions and key learnings from our talks on here:
http://bit.ly/TalkDescriptions2019