Strands of Genius: Is Amazon a Retailer, Immortal Agencies, How To Be Angry
Plus: Kids haven't seen The Matrix
WRITING FROM | Chattanooga, TN
WORKING ON | positioning, proposals, prose
LOOKING AHEAD
March 10 - April 11 | Chattanooga, TN
April 11 - 15 | Nashville, TN
April 15 - 19 | Chattanooga, TN
April 19 - 26 | Beersheba Springs, TN
April 26 - 30 | Miami, FL
April 30 - May 18 | Worcester Park, UK
May 18 - 20 | Nashville, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We had a very busy week hosting old friends at the house and new friends for dinner. Happy St Padraigh’s Day if you celebrated it on Sunday Funday! We hope you don’t regret it today, but frankly by the time you’ll get this it will be Tuesday so…
Spring is springing and all that sort of thing, unseasonable warm no longer means anything, but Monday is always Monday. It’s March, this is Strands, you are doing great and working harder than people appreciate. Everyone is fighting a hard battle, be kind, even if being kind if hard since you too are fighting a hard battle.
I (this is Faris) have been feeling a lot of Beckett of late. I’ve always found it darkly funny in a very Beckettian way that part of this quote has been extracted and turned into a Nike style motivation mantra. Context matters.
First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all.
In other round up news, twitter is not a video platform, the mantra of individualism dismantles the collective power of the working people, Zoe Kravitz roasted her dad’s love of see through shirts, and apparently there is some Royal drama involving AI/bad photoshop, well known infidelity and the consequences on succession, which is in some ways the least interesting thing that could possible consume a news cycle. Am I republican (small r not the American kind) that is passionate about the dismantling the Monarchy? They are an anachronistic embarrassment but hey people in the UK seem to enjoy paying for them and having them as landlords and I guess that’s up to them. Interestingly, since I have been a permanent resident in USA for more than 15 years I can no longer vote in the UK, nor the USA since I’m not a citizen, so my democratic opinions no longer matter.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Ashleigh & Matt, Emily, awkward conversations about why the American name for the drink with a shot of Jamesons/Bailey’s in a pint of Guinness isn’t very cool for those of us who lived through it, St Padraigh’s Day, Guinness of course, green things, Yoga Landing, the raccoons & YOU.
:: THE LINKS ::
MAYBE AMAZON ISN’T A RETAIL
At least not primarily. We’ve all noticed - and we all use Amazon - that shopping on Amazon is weird and broken, with AI generated brand names attempting to dropship the same Chinese products and a general sense that quality is no longer being controlled in any way at all. Yes in many ways this is classic Enshittification (Doctorow) but in another way it’s because you don’t want to be a store you want to be the entire marketing, taking a cut on every transaction, in lots of ways. Retail has very small margins. "If you understand Amazon as an aspiring megascale infrastructure company — a provider of systems, services, capacity, and labor — its junkification makes sense. Amazon hasn’t been acting like a store for a while."(New York Magazine)
IMMORTAL AGENCIES
Faris did a podcast with the lovely Robin who runs Codefinery, which provides agency consulting services. Yes, we do too! Yes we can all be friends and learn from each other. It’s cool. The episode starts with the challenging question as to why agency life CAN suck so much, and why it sucks even harder when you are senior leadership. “In this episode, Robin is joined by author, thinker and Genius Steals Co-Founder, Faris Yakob. Famed for his ‘digital nomad’ lifestyle as much as his insights, a LOT of agency people ask him about how to go freelance.
HOW TO BE ANGRY
While we’d love for our days to be filled with all happiness and contentedness, occasionally anger slips in to our days. You’ll be familiar with that intense feeling of displeasure or frustration, and likely a corresponding desire to lash out. And while most of us don’t lash out, we still experience the provocation. Dr. Ryan Martin studies anger (he wrote Why We Get Mad and How To Deal with Angry People) and promises that it’s both normal and healthy to be angry — so long as it isn’t the primary emotion we feel. In this article, he dives into why we experience anger and how it can be used for good. (Psyche)
Want to chat, comment, question, compliment?
:: AND NOW :: CULTURE IS TRAPPED IN NOW
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)
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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. We have a distributed team ourselves, an accounting team is based in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, 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 :)
Ha if I had a quid for every time I saw those Beckett lines in Nike creative reviews of old. Also, your Robin podcast was grand!