A.I.
What Ableton taught us about AI and the future of coding
In 2001, Ableton turned bedroom producers into festival headliners. Now vibe coding is doing the same for software. The parallels run deeper than you'd think.
Creative Business
Lessons from starting things that worked, flopped, and taught more than any MBA. The messy reality of building creative ventures - decisions, mindsets, and the bits nobody warns you about.
I've started things that worked, things that flopped, and things that taught me more than any MBA could. These pieces are about the messy reality of building creative ventures - the decisions, the mindsets, and the bits nobody warns you about.
Start Here
The essential reads on creative business
Best of...
Making it in America: What international founders & creatives actually need to know
The cultural paradoxes, identity costs, and hidden rules nobody explains
Best of...
The Creative Technologist comeback
How a misunderstood role from the digital agency era is becoming essential for the AI age
Best of...
The McCartney Method: Mastering the Magic of Audience Connection
Paul McCartney’s secret to staying timeless: meticulous details, unforgettable fan moments, and a generosity that creates magic every show.
Best of...
7 ways to improve a conference speaking proposal
I’ve just finished evaluating proposals for SXSW 2025. Here are 7 things that separate the standouts from the rest.
Best of...
5 Founder Types
Which one are you?
How-To Guides
Practical playbooks for building your business
Creative Business
How to run a retrospective that actually works
Six months after a project you can barely remember what you learned. Here's a one-hour framework that fixes that - using conversation, transcription, and AI to capture the insights that usually vanish.
How-To Guides
What I've learned from evaluating 1000+ SXSW proposals
Every year, I find myself deep in proposal evaluation mode. Fortune 100 CEOs, ambitious VPs, indie strategists, even actors and
Future Of Work
An antidote to AI tinnitus
Sam Altman says agency and adaptability will be extremely valuable. But what does cultivating them actually look like?
Creative Business
Lemon automation: How Chick-fil-A processes 20% of America's lemons... and what it means for your career
The unexpected career insights hidden in a chicken restaurant's remarkable lemon-squeezing operation
Best of...
The McCartney Method: Mastering the Magic of Audience Connection
Paul McCartney’s secret to staying timeless: meticulous details, unforgettable fan moments, and a generosity that creates magic every show.
Creative Business
Two ways to define 'Good Enough'
Ever found yourself endlessly tweaking a project, chasing that elusive perfection? Yeah, me too. But here's a thought.
Battle Scars
Hard-won lessons from entrepreneurial endeavours
Building something creative?
Join Groove Theory for weekly insights on learning, creativity, and building things that matter.
All Posts
Everything on creative business and entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Going Solo? You’re still in the Rat Race
Many of us strike out as consultants, freelancers, entrepreneurs, or artists to
escape the rat race – to get away from
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Why we need to get rid of ideas
On this week’s episode of his Akimbo podcast, Seth Godin answers a listener
question about focusing – more specifically, how
Stage Left
Becoming a wizard
Regular readers may know two of my favourite podcasts are ’The Moment’ with
Brian Koppelman, and Seth Godin’s ’Akimbo’
Battle Scars
Empty Tank
On June 1st 2015 I broke out alone again.
This month marks the end of the fourth year as an
Coaching
Overrated Mentors, Underrated Coaches
Mentoring and coaching often get thrown into one bucket. On the surface they
sound pretty similar; practices that help people
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Bonus Content
TV shows, self-help gurus, car salespeople, and yoga certification courses all
offer bonus content of one kind or other.
Behind
Mindsets & Growth
Game Time: History Repeating
Here’s a quick game to play every so often with friends old or new.
Get each person to think
Coaching
What the music industry’s people need next
As the music industry’s resurgence continues, its people need support now more
than ever. There’s opportunity to further
How-To Guides
Question time: Getting booked to speak at conferences
A question (and often frustration) I hear pretty regularly is how to get booked
at conferences as a speaker.
There
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Gateway Drugs
Let’s start at happy hour, the mixer, the meetup.
You show up and contribute. Through a conversation, an idea,
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
The Creative Observer
Here’s a technique to help stimulate some fresh ideas.
In a group situation, try out just being a quiet
Coaching
Coaching: Preparing for job interviews
Job interviews can be nerve-wracking at the best of times.
There’s pressure, uncertainty, intensity; it’s a set-piece with
Resources
Introducing Coffee Notes: A template for better meetings
A big part of my discovery mission living in a new city was meeting people for
coffee. A lot of
Mindsets & Growth
7 Lessons from Jim Collins on The Tim Ferriss Show
> “I’m not really a business author; I just happen to have used companies as the
method to study
Stage Left
Hit Making: The Generation Game
One of the first things I learned working at a large talent agency was something
that helped fuel the success
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
Be Like Bowie
On a cold London morning in 2016, I headed over to the rarified climes of
Mayfair for a meeting.
It
Storytelling
The Crier, The Glue, The Word, and The Arrow
Go back a few hundred years and if you wanted to get the word out you may well
have chosen
Resources
How to articulate your vision in 4 post-it notes
Here’s an exercise I picked up at a dinner event I attended this past weekend.
It’s intended to