🎧 Listen to the podcast version of this email here. Ever heard this phrase? "When everybody zigs, zag" I wish I had come up with that line. It comes from brand strategist Marty Neumeier. It’s also one of the simplest explanations of how to stand out. I mean, look around you: when everyone is moving in the same direction, copying the same patterns, the easiest way to become visible is to move differently. AI is about to make this even more obvious. Because AI accelerates sameness. Give a...
17 days ago • 3 min read
🎧 Listen to the podcast version of this email here. I saw a LinkedIn post today by someone complaining about AI bots commenting under his posts. Apparently "the comments were generic, robotic, and completely missed the point". His solution? He built an AI bot that helps people write better comments. The irony made me smile. Let me be clear. I use AI all the time. I use it to structure my thinking for newsletters like this one. I use it to track my exercise and calorie intake. I ask it for...
24 days ago • 3 min read
🎧 Listen to the podcast version of this email here. For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing some proper tidying up of my brands. I started this as JoeriCreates. A bit of experimenting. A bit of figuring things out in public. Over time it evolved, and recently I decided to rename it The Solo Sauce because now I have a much sharper idea of who I’m trying to reach and what I’m actually helping with: I help experienced solo professionals stand out, get found & win better clients through clear,...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
What’s better? A doctor who looks you in the eye and says,“This is what’s going on and here’s what we’ll do about it.” Or a doctor who says,“I’m not entirely sure yet, so let’s try this. Let’s see how it responds. Then we’ll reassess.” About ten years ago my dad was diagnosed with cancer. The bad kind. During his treatment, we saw two very different GPs. One was decisive; reassuringly so. There was always an answer. A clear next step. A sense of control. The other was more tentative. “Let’s...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
🎧 Listen to the podcast version of this email here “Hey, the Solo Sauce podcast is live,” I told my wife. “Have a listen.” I press play. Within twenty seconds I hear myself coughing. "Huh? That's odd," I said. Then I heard a few retakes. Some mumbling. “Oh for f***’s sake!” I had uploaded the unedited files. The raw ones. All my outtakes were still, you know, intakes. Obviously, it’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things. Not like sending your unedited drafts to a paying client. Nobody...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Two weeks ago, I shared a few short emails about distraction and focus. One point I made was this: You probably already have enough. Your years of experience, the work you've done, tough lessons learned along the way. You have the battlescars to show. My guess is you don’t need more tools, frameworks, courses, and such. Rather, check your fridge and make use what you already have. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. A few people replied with the obvious question: "What do you do with all that then?"...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
There’s a mental image I can’t shake. A bed of nails. Thousands of nails. Same height, shape, and colour. Perfectly aligned. Now I've never tried, but some people say it’s surprisingly comfortable. Not because it’s soft, obviously, but because there’s no single point of pressure. Everything is evenly spread out and nothing stands out enough to hurt. That’s the important part. The moment one nail sticks out, even slightly, the whole experience changes. You feel it immediately. Your body...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
So, to bring this focus week to a close. We started with the idea that this isn’t about discipline or willpower. Most people I know aren’t short on effort. They’re already trying. Often too much and too hard. Then we looked at goals. Or rather, the way we tend to pile them all together even though they are quite different. More business, more clients, more money, more time, more freedom. All valid, but all different. And all pulling your attention in different directions if you don’t stop to...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Let’s be honest for a moment. You probably don’t need more tools.You probably don’t need another framework.You probably don’t need that new self-help book, a new community, or another twelve-week programme. Pretty sure you already have more than enough to get cracking. You have enough Which makes the more interesting question this one: Why aren’t you? For a lot of people, the answer isn’t lack of resources or information, nor that they don’t understand the problem well enough yet; it’s that...
2 months ago • 1 min read