Rebranding to "Just thoughts"
Book launch reflections, turning a chapter, structuring focus and starting anew.
The content in this article is “Handwritten” - only co-piloted with Grammarly’s tune copyediting & spell-checking. The content is free to read; if you want to support my writing work, buy my Poetry collection on Gumroad here.
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Product Feature
Additionally, I cover a few thoughts on Docue in this article I use for contract creation. Use the following code for a 30% discount to try it out!
Discount code: TDWYEHYXXL
Talent Spotlight
Furthermore, Luciano Dolenc is moving to Helsinki, Finland, and looking for a position as a Data Engineer. AWS certified and has a few open-source contributions tools built; he is an asset if you’d like to create something from scratch in-house.
In this article, I share some reflections on my book launch and talk about the exploration I’ve done on the side of it regarding what House of RadicLs “Media” could be. Additionally, I share some conclusions from my yearly reflection exercises and why I deleted all writing I’ve had on Medium.
Furthermore, “RadicL Thoughts” is “Just thoughts.” Now, with a double meaning intended, it aims for a more personable writing style and removes the focus from “Radical.” The underlying vision for House of RadicL is not gone; we are just toning it down and waiting for the right time to bring the big picture back into focus with maybe a completely different brand.
I’m reserving time to be able to publish once a week, aiming for Sunday mornings. I am bringing you “Just Some Thoughts” that have crossed my and other’s minds the past week. I’ll refrain from defining topics, but I aim to hone on suitable structure when I spot trends in my thinking.
Headlines in this week’s edition of Just Thoughts;
Book Launch: Leading by Example
Launch Process: A Discovery process
Outcomes: Family, Friends and Fools round
What’s next: Contracting
Product Feature: Docue
Book Launch
What started as a poetry collection evolved into something else over the years. I picked up poetry writing again after my divorce in 2021. Writing was an outlet for feelings. I started thinking I wanted to publish a book that could be simply a poetry collection. However, my friends and former colleagues likely believed it could be more than that with all the writing I had put out on Medium.
In early 2022, my friends pre-ordered my book as a birthday present, as I’ve been talking about it for a while. However, at the time of this honor, I couldn’t find the right words, so when everyone was anticipating a speech, I only said, “They are all going to be written in the book.”
At first, I thought, “Why would anyone buy my poetry?” So it needs to be more than that. I started exploring “what is art in the first place” and how people value it. Open AI released chat-GPT as time passed, and the question became even more intriguing: why would I try to write poetry if a computer could release something that could sound exactly like me? Well, the simple answer is nothing sounds like my poetry if I’ve never written it in the first place. However, I dwelled deeper. The writing work became a journey of writing about my experiences and the implications of what I believe the technological changes would be in creating art. Furthermore, I aimed to help the reader understand how they value art in the first place, as otherwise, any critique of the work wouldn’t be as valuable.
Almost two years passed, and I only dwelled in writing when I felt like it. Then, I started to see the finish line and wanted to publish the work. It included creating podcast content (audio visual) to create a following, combining the thought process for imagining the “House Of RadicL.” I came across an intriguing obstacle. In the startup world, you have accelerator programs, incubators, and the like, but where do you find the same for a no-code- and no-physical product solution?
As the starting costs are so low, there is not necessarily a demand for starting capital, but most content likely ends up being something nobody is interested in consuming. The journey to exploring possible solutions began at the beginning of the year, with Teemu Lemetti deciding to run alongside me for a while. We dwelled down the line of media companies and media publishing, finding
We also found Max Pog’s work on Startup Studios an exciting benchmark, asking us what a startup studio for media ventures would look like. We enlisted the help of Long-time media industry veteran Pauli Kopu to help us understand the media world and its relation to the startup world. As businesses based on “no-code” and “no-physical products” are essentially consultancies, we talked to several consultancy-based businesses and startups that had built communities and media content around their product.
The exploration so far can summarized as follows:
Suppose startup studios can create ventures 33% faster on average. In that case, a pure media venture should be even faster if you follow modern creative strategy processes over what seems like a waterfall model. See the explanation below.
The lowest-hanging fruit for business cases is consultancies with underutilized pre-existing content as they struggle to figure out how to leverage LLM’s best to upskill their workforce and effectively the work being done. Additionally, they struggle to create strategic relationships with their customer base to add stickiness to their services. The leading consultancy-based companies are nailing these (at least in Europe). An analysis of a Finnish example here behind a paywall; if someone has a similar asset in English or a global example, I'd be happy to see it in the comments.
Why would anyone buy these services from us unless we can’t apply the same practices to our work? Additionally, as someone who took Smartly.io’s leadership practices to heart, I thought one needed to “lead by example.”
1. Creative strategy meets startup studio activities.
The above depicts startup studios’ activities and involvement in a venture as described by Max Pog. We looked at this and thought, that looks awfully a lot like a waterfall model. We’ve worked in the ad tech industry, so in a world with ever-increasing levels of complexity, why couldn’t it look like this instead?
First, you concept your content. You launch your no-code content, build a community, increase dialog, create content based on dialog, package it, and re-launch. Once you have a stand-alone business, you can take that community to figure out a code-based or physical product solution. I’ve covered the notions in my previous post here.
2. Leveraging existing communities
The input says “SMBs”; however, leveraging existing knowledge intense businesses whose core business is based on leveraging knowledge. In other words, consultancies would benefit the most from this operating/incubation model, based on the current macro environmental challenges they face. Additionally, they have an existing customer base and significantly “smaller” consultancies rely on personal relationships that work in favor of a community endeavor. Larger consultancies and their customers may have difficulty forming a community around their business relationships if the relationships have not been built on that premise.
The outcome says 6-15 “Media” a year, but I’d imagine “communities” would be a better word for what one hopes to achieve. Also, imagine they are less labor-intensive than a traditional startup venture, one “launch team” essentially being a demand generation expert and the other a community management wizard with some generalist skills. Additionally, “RadicL Studio” needs fundraising capabilities and stakeholder management work. That being said, a team of the right four people could collectively handle the operations and output described.
Testing
If you’ve read this far, you’re likely wondering how we digressed here for the title book launch. While searching for answers to where and how media ventures are launched, in addition to Max’s and Erik’s already mentioned content, we found Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formula,” quite a few friends kept referencing Alex Hormozi’s writings. As profit-driven as the content is, the core message is “just launch,” keep learning, keep distilling the pain, and keep pushing the subsequent iterations. Hence, I thought, well, let’s put this into practice with the book first.
Launch process
I listened through Jeff’s and Alex’s content but used chatGPT and respective GPTs to make the process faster. It was anything from a flawless process to spending more time on the content and structuring the flow.
Additionally, I made a few prelaunch questionnaires about people's social media usage and content consumption preferences. The insights from the 20 people who answered were that everyone would like to try a new app if they can find like-minded people there, and the most used tool every week is Linkedin. Hence, I aimed to launch the community on equel social because of its built-in features for international community building, like in-feed language translation. However, with no one joining (not even the founder), I decided to revert to LinkedIn groups, as I use daily, and everyone who answered was also on that. (Now, you can join a LinkedIn group if you subscribe to my subscription or buy one of my books.)
During the launch, I made four live broadcasts and could’ve essentially made one more additional life when “opening the cart.” Also, the broadcasts weren’t focused solely on selling the book's content; they were also to educate on the topic. Hence, the feeling of FOMO was missed to some extent.
If you’re curious about the live content, the recordings can still be found on Linkedin;
PLC nbr 1; Discussion with Joao Barguil, Head of Innovation at Opus Software, and a Ph.D. in computer science.
PLC nbr 2: Showcasing my process in a monologue. Daunting talking to a screen live, not knowing who’s listening.
PLC nbr 3: Discussion with Lars Lydersen, Investor & Advisor at Whiskey Capital, with Ph.D. in quantum cryptography.
Last hour of Launch: Discussion with Daniel Dolenc, pro-athlete, and member of Finland's men’s national basketball team.
If you can watch only one, listen to the last one at 2X the speed. Talking with my brother, Daniel, about our experiences in Life and Leadership was heartfelt.
Communication was a bit off since I was playing it by ear. Doing it differently, I’d prewritten all emails and pre-planned all content with at least two more lives during launch. The warm vs. cold lead creation was almost wholly neglected. Additionally, I didn’t list all of my WhatsApp groups, mailing list opportunities (emails, e.g., Gmail contact list), and the wider LinkedIn messaging. I had time to engage maybe 5% of the total potential reach within my network. That, however, would’ve resembled a shotgun approach instead of combining what platform and channels I have connected with the pain point the book aimed to address among readers.
I decided to use Gumroad as the platform for the publication and realized how powerful it would not be if I could use a multitude of affiliate deals. You could 1 000 000X the speed and reach setting up that properly with enough time.
Gumroad served the purpose quite well, albeit as a content distribution platform. I’m a bit confused about where they want to take it. Connecting the platform to community engagement platforms like Discord and Circle is gold, as opposed to the features Substack has created. Still, trying to compete directly with Substack on newsletter-type content and mailing list outreach seems to need some focus, as that would have to come with content structuring features that span all content types, which is a whole different ball game. Substack is far ahead on that. On this subject, Mediums text to the audio feature should be matched on Substack immediately, as well as auto-translation with a click button for “send to a translator.”
Outcomes
I describe the book launch as a family, friends, and fools exercise. However, I’m grateful that those in that category are exceptional individuals. During the launch process, what became abundantly clear was I needed to erase everything on Medium;
It was a construction of art; if you’re an artist, you’ll always be able to create more. Hence, respect the artist and not the art.
You’re only as good as your last gig. My book is that.
For the book to have more value and for my handwriting to become more valuable, there must be less of it in the world. Less is more.
I needed to remove availability for the full version of my book and erase it from existence as far as I could;
The only point of writing the extended version was to say, “Human-created poetry has value in a world where AI can generate an abundant amount of it because a computer can’t sound like you if you don’t first create something yourself,” and…
My poems come from actual human experiences. From real feelings. My feelings.
Remove ego from the equation. Giving the power to the people who got the book to share it increases the likelihood of it becoming viral if it was ever meant to be that. If it wasn’t, it might’ve just been another tree that fell in the forest, and nobody cared. I’m at peace with either outcome.
The eradication also promotes the question, “What is the value of digital content”? Can you ever truly erase it in a way you could “burn a book”? Additionally, I write that is what I do; you can’t rob me of that skill; I don’t do it for any other reason.
Writing is a practice where I find flow.
If the meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose is to give it away.
If I’m forced to limit myself to one activity to make a living, or if I could choose whatever activity without restriction, it would be writing.
Finally, I don’t need to be “Radical,” and my next challenge is to be consistent in my writing regardless of what else I choose to do. If you miss the content I’ve created, stay tuned for more here on Substack and check the following assets;
Slush’s Redefining Entrepreneurship whitepaper on building the next generation of entrepreneurial endeavors.
Smartly.io’s old Leadership Handbook for better leadership practices. Shoutout to Mobal.io, whom I’ve also helped form their principles.
Climate Business Cast for next generation Climate positive solutions.
Mimir Fellows for science-backed solutions for driving positive change.
Talk with Marianne Vikkula. Slush was her show. I was just a supporting act, helping her make it work. (Saying this as Medium had quite a few stories from that time). Here’s her most recent interview. (only in Finnish)
In this publication, in the future, regard what I write as thoughts, “Just Thoughts.” They will range between anything and everything; however, if you want to share your thoughts, don’t hesitate to reach out!
What’s next
Teemu Lemetti, who worked with me for a month, decided to join the Antler program! There is no bad blood; if you get him as a Co-founder, I’d be jealous.
I’m continuing the journey of the community building incubator by contracting on the client side for a while. There will be more about this next week.
I’ll be writing so that you’ll get a weekly newsletter on Sunday mornings. I also aim to continue broadcasting live conversations every week shortly.
Product Highlight
I started using Docue a while back for contracting purposes. Usually, one gets a layer to run some contract templates for you. If you have more cash in the bank, you have them vet all of your significant contracts when you don’t have the resources and have at least some basic understanding of contracts. The likes of Docue level up your game significantly.
There are likely similar tools for each country, but you’ll find everything contract type you could imagine for Finnish legal work. Content now also includes contract templates for the German and UK markets in their respective languages. You can use the chat function to get a layer to comment on your contract draft when in doubt.
It can substitute your need for having a separate signing provider, even if the likes of Dropbox have this functionality built in. You can also upload your existing contract for signing, and more importantly, you can use strong identification like banking credentials for signing the contract. All in all, I’m pretty satisfied, even at times you think the 230€ monthly fee for full service feels a bit hefty. It’s minor compared to the substitute.
Finally, their referral program should be benchmarked. This makes it easy to save costs on products and services one chooses to use, and these types of programs help mitigate the risk of thought leaders in your product space feeling used by the product. If you utilize my quotes and my referral in your marketing, one should expect to see an opportunity for monetary benefit if it has an economic gain. That is a “Just Thought”. Nonetheless, sometimes, you may want to support an endeavor because it aligns with your purpose or you regard it as a meaningful volunteering endeavor.
This is because Docue removed the need to create proprietary employee contract templates for startups. With a tool like Docue, a VC could provide the subscription for free for their portfolio companies.
That being said, use the following code for a 30% discount to try it out!
Discount code: TDWYEHYXXL
Get a copy of my poetry book from Gumroad to support my work. Here!
Thank you for reading! Until next week!