THREAD OF MY THREADS I mostly post about business, marketing and systems - always practical, and always from direct experience. You will learn something from these

When things get chaotic in business I think back to a convo myself and @conortrains had 6 plus years ago starting out, when we wanted nothing more than to be busy. To have more than 1-2 clients, and actually have problems to solve, so it felt like we weren't just play-acting at business. Always good to remember where we started out vs where we are now, and feel a bit of gratitude for how far we've actually come in that time.

Wonder has anyone kept track of the "you have 12 months to make it or poor forever" guys Feel like there's been some variation on that going viral for the last decade or so

Been daydreammaxxing pretty heavy lately Just staring out the window or at a wall in breaks between work like I'm bored in school again The og meditation

Not sure if anyone is still running the one song playlist thing, but still think it's goated for a bit of laptop work. No need to classicalmaxx either, just banged out an easy few hours with No Quarter by Zep on repeat Saturday morning vibe youtube.com/watch?v=TSM0jj-h…

Mutual respect between Conor's in ecom at every level

I know opinions are divided, but starting a second biz has really forced my hand to delegate shit properly Only way I gave up any control was to actually not have the hours in the day to do it all myself Has made both ventures more successful + smoother running overall Might be retarded way of doing things idk

Growing to be a big fan of Greg Lav Good advice + seems to actually do cool shit with his money Breath of fresh air from the usual d2c cabal youtu.be/fGlDZCnPDqE?si=bHHh…

One of my biggest advantages in life has undoubtedly been that both my Dad and Grandad are extremely hardworking. Zero empathy for me sitting at a desk for 12 hours or a client issue or any other problem of that sort. Grandad retired at 89. Dad still going at 65, building another company after selling his last one. Never seen either of them complain about anything real in my entire life. Just head down and got on with it. Neither believe in retirement either, as my Grandad put it - "you stop moving, and your mind calcifies. Just keep working"

Been deliberately consuming far less information these days. No socials, business books, yt, little ai Just writing ads, tweaking/building systems, and letting the brain work on its own. Have never made more progress across 2x businesses + gen mind/thoughts never been calmer

AI gone so full circle now that it's calling previously generated work from an older Claude Model "AI-Slop"

Probably the only sport I would be hesitant to try again would be mountain biking Been on a tear of trying new sports last couple years like spearfishing, freediving, rock climbing etc but mtb is a different beast Ripping through trees + over jumps is genuinely the most adrenaline I've ever had course through my veins, ripping my hands open on the handlebars on a fcking pink bike Accidentally ended up on advanced trails and lasted a couple runs until I lost focus for half a second, spilled onto the rocks and ended up in the ER getting a tetanus shot, few new scars and an X-Ray of my now (lightly) broken foot 2 hours no mistakes, half a second and you're dust Respect to anyone who does it as their sport

If you hire and train well, agency life can be genuinely great. Compliments from clients, everything runs smooth. Corollary is if you hire badly, your life is nonstop "large-cliffs-near-me" territory Worst part is a new hire takes minimum 4-8 weeks to either make your life & team better or worse- which means if it sucks now, it's likely still going to suck 4 weeks from now even if you hire someone today. Few tips from my end: - Interview 3x minimum ideally 5 - anyone can be fake for 30 minutes, keeping it up for several calls means you should hire them, fake or not. - Constantly have interviews for new candidates booked in your calendar even if you aren't looking actively - Character & ability to learn & general charm/affability are more important than raw skillset - skills can be trained, character is much harder - Do not skip sample tasks in the interview process - If they must be client-facing and they don't impress on a call don't hire them - they won't generate trust - Give it the time it deserves and hire before you need the team Every bad hire we made this last year came from violating one or all of these and I personally paid the price by having to shore up the work. If there were ever a piece of advice I'd like any agency owner to take, it would be this

I get that electric cars need to look different to normal ones for differentiation But I've yet to see a single example of an electric car getting this right. Looks like a Hasbro interpretation of a sports car. Just make it look like an F40 and stick a battery in it

Big tip for managing teams - once it gets to 7/8 people, split them into smaller groups with a leader. We have 16 designers split into 2 leads, 4 seniors, 10 juniors in groups of 2-3 10 AM's in 2 groups of 5, with one lead each. Etc Decentralise as much as you can.

Ad account banned, started new one while waiting, re-uploaded winners only, now outperforms OG Have much newfound empathy for people running ads/creative agencies Better chance predicting when planning permission will go through

Worth buying a Mac Mini/Separate PC just to have good separation between deeper work and regular calls etc No slack, no email, no comms at all on the other PC, and you can have it running tasks while you take calls on the other one. Been a big unlock

Anyone actually using Cowork for anything interesting? Between code and chat, haven't really found a use case