Stop Acting So Small

"Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion."

— Rumi

If you have been following me this month, you will know my modus operandi for the month is big thinking. If you have been following me for longer than that, you will know I absolutely love quotes.

I got so frustrated over the years when I couldn't recall them from memory in my writings and conversations that I started to properly collate them and write them down somewhere (a knowledge base for the geeks amongst us).

That obsession led to me adding them everywhere: to my newsletter (here), to my home page (see what my home page looks like here, as per my gamification article).

And another place I probably did share a while back, but I'll share again, and that's the place I saw this week's quote serendipitously. Or by accident; perhaps it makes no difference. I definitely needed the reminder to stop thinking and acting small, regardless.

That's in my journal app, my weekend zen garden project. I show up on a Saturday morning, change some things and iterate, and it's become something I use myself. I would love for other people to get the same value I get from it, so I am unashamedly talking about it here.

grattitude.space

First thing in the morning, jot a few thoughts down on gratefulness or anything else you have in your head, see some beautiful art for your creativity, a quote to sharpen your mind, and some perspective that you probably do have a lot to be grateful for.

Then come back in the evening and score your day.

Reluctant content creation

It might make sense to read the What I'm Experimenting With section first and then come back here. Or stay here; that's also OK; there are no rules.

In my line of work, building out or improving on sales processes for owners and founders, they will often mention the big names of the business content space.

So, to avoid lawsuits from the American incumbents, I won't mention specific names, but you can probably figure out who they are. Some of these people are the real deal; many are not.

The formula seems to be, mostly: build an audience, sell to your audience. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that if you are adding value, but I have met people who are in a state of perpetual training and coaching, being milked by these people's businesses, akin to multilevel marketing in some cases.

So as to not bang on about this, I will get to the point:

"You know who the best managers are? They're the great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager, because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them."

— Steve Jobs

I am applying this to content. If you or I do not like what we see in the content space, and building an audience in 2026 and beyond is something we need to do, then we cannot sit back and let solely the malevolent produce content. We must reluctantly produce content of our own.

Yes, I will sell to my audience if and when it's built, but not in a manipulative way. I'll also share a ton of hopefully insightful knowledge nuggets too. What I do not plan to do is say I am the expert. But as a knowledge worker, I consume enough books, essays and content, try it out on my own life and business, and report back to the world my findings.

So my mission is to steal views from the guru types to me, some bloke from Coventry, England, who is trying his hand at making something of himself and not doing too badly so far.

I've hired a social media manager for TikTok and beyond.

What I mean by the beyond part is that what works for me must also work for my clients. As someone who once ran a video production business and sold the benefits of marketing videos to clients, I have been making shamefully low amounts of content for my own business until now.

The will was there, so was the intention, but there were blockers: mental, financial, logistical and otherwise. But there always are blockers, and there always will be. It's our job to problem-solve, apply both lateral and frankly quite obvious thinking, to unblock the blockages.

I'm not saying I am an expert here, but I am putting my money where my mouth is, learning this in real time and doing what I tell my clients to do myself. Otherwise, I am just another of the plethora of people who are "do what I say and not what I do", and my aim is to get to what I say and what I do. Or I report back that I tried it and it didn't work; don't bother. Also rather valuable.

All I have done is a simple system of:

Grab my DJI camera first thing in the morning

Upload content to the cloud

We have a Notion page for me to review

Social media manager picks it up from the cloud, edits and posts

That's it, that's the system; it's pretty simple. The biggest blocker was me. I thought I had to edit and post, but I don't. Obvious advice, but I was a bit slow to catch on.

You can find the results, good and bad, at tiktok.com/@matthewbcn.

Anyway, I will keep you all updated. I am enjoying it too, by the way.

I love Wes Anderson films. A couple of years ago, when working with Tailor Store, I had the opportunity to create a WA-inspired ad for their shirts, and since doing that, and running a media production company, I became ever more interested in how films are made, and specifically how WA films are made.

As The Artist's Way talks about, if you are going to put your own creative works into the world, you will have to consume and be inspired by other creative works, at least once a week.

To paraphrase the marmite-like footballer John Terry on José Mourinho: he came into the dressing room, set clear goals, stuck a picture of the trophies on the wall, spoke about how we were going to destroy the opposition, and I loved that.

Brilliant documentary into the mind and way of working of current Real Madrid manager José Mourinho. Should his tactics be applied in the business world? Probably not. Might we be incorrectly drawing causal links from his behaviours? Also likely. But on mentality, to operate at that level, there might not be a better example. Worth a watch.

One of my clients this week asked me for any book recommendations I have; naturally, I have a multitude. As I'm still reading the same books I shared last week, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach and Everything Is Predictable by Tom Chivers, this week I thought I would share three books that I would recommend to someone starting out.

There is no fiction here, but I have written about that before. Reading fiction might be a more interesting place for self-development. The following books have helped me quite a lot and have been akin to a software update for my brain.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson. Easy to skim, lots of insightful thoughts, split into health, wealth, and I think wisdom is the third section; I can't remember, I don't have it in front of me, nor will I go and check (I'm on a tight deadline to finish my newsletter). This book improved the way I read, the way I think and see the world. For that reason, it's probably my number 1 recommendation, and likely a gateway drug to anything else you will end up needing to read.

I did check it in editing, and it's Wealth and Happiness. Memory is fallible; listen to the podcast Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss: obvious choice to some, laughable to others perhaps. I've read it three or four times. I only got results when I started to apply the advice. It took me until the third time around reading to do that. (I can be slow in heeding life's lessons, but I get there eventually.) Structure, systems and non-linear thinking are what this book gave me. Do not take its title literally.

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. I heard the entrepreneur Derek Sivers talk about this book and the concept of maximising or satisficing. I've written about it before in earlier newsletters, so all I will say here is this. You are probably trying to maximise many areas of your life that you don't need to be, both in business and in your personal life. As they say in England, give your head a wobble and update your thinking a bit to change that. You will be happier as a result, make better decisions, and make them much quicker too.

That's everything for this week.

Matt

Work with me on

Closing bigger deals. Founders who need to sell. The mental game of revenue generation, or even getting into the industry in the first place.

Hit reply if any of that relates to you. Always happy to talk.

www.mbarton.co.uk · Long-form, monthly, on Medium