Hi 

We'll never survive unless we get a little crazy.

Heard Seal singing these lyrics on my run on Saturday and had 2 thoughts:

1. This isn't a running song really, and 

2. He has a point.

Because I spent a few days in Poole this week at a most unusual conference, and that lyric felt like my key takeaway from Creator Day distilled into nine words.

So let me tell you about what Creator Day wasn't, because that's actually the point.

Creator Day didn't have a single talk on AI. There wasn't the usual avalanche of tools, tactics and business cards. I was more likely to end up in a karaoke duet than in someone's funnel. I didn't come home with pages of notes or a list of 17 things to implement.

What I came home with from the seaside was something harder to name. A kind of recalibration and remembering.

The golden thread running through every aspect of the event was community. And not community as a strategy per se, but as a way of being. Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is a concept I grew up with in South Africa that roughly translates as "I am because we are". The belief that our humanity is interconnected and we thrive through collective compassion and shared purpose — that our humanity is bound up in each other's. It's woven into my DNA and in my work, and Creator Day was a reminder of why that matters.

On Friday morning, ubuntu looked like standing on a beach in Dorset at 7.30am repeating to myself "the sea is your happy place" as the freezing cold water stabbed me. 

I got in anyway, because I was doing it with others. There's something magical - super-gluey - about doing something like this with others. When we're being a bit brave and a bit vulnerable.

(Can you see me jump for joy in this pic by Anja Poehlmann?)

Moments like that in the water, and singing karaoke, and laughing and feeling along through the talks ... they stack up and they are what will stay with me most from these few days... a different kind of key takeaway from a conference.

The main thought for me is that we are very, very good at fitting in. At making ourselves palatable and acceptable. At smoothing off the weird edges and presenting the version of ourselves most likely to be accepted.

And the world is genuinely worse for it.

In business, this looks like safety. Safe content. Safe opinions. Safe offers. Watching what everyone else is doing and doing a version of that, slightly adjusted, just in case, to make it "ours".

But safe is not where the good ideas live.

The best ideas — the ones that actually move things, change things, connect people — come from looking inwards. They come from the weird connections, the unexpected combinations, the moments when someone says the slightly uncomfortable true thing and the magic when someone says "me too" or "yes and" or "why".

They come from people who are, to borrow a phrase from Seal, a little crazy. (Yes, I know this word is loaded, but let's go with this 1990s lyric here for a minute.)

The world right now — the actual state of it — needs that from us. It needs actually new thinking (not the same thinking with slightly nicer branding). It needs people who are willing to show up as themselves, risk being a bit much, say the thing, ask the question, make the weird offer, start the strange conversation.

That's not recklessness; it's courage with decent intentions.

And you don't have to do it alone. That's the whole point of ubuntu. That's the whole point of community. That's the whole point of being alive, actually.

So this week, I want to ask you something.

• Where are you playing it safe when you could afford to be a little crazy?
• What's the idea you keep almost having and then talking yourself out of?
• What would you do if being unlikeable wasn't a risk?

You don't have to answer me (though I'd love it if you did — just hit reply). But answer yourself. 

Because we'll never survive unless we get a little crazy...

Photos of the week

1. Great slide at Creator Day
2. Pulling to get to the stationery shop during National Stationery Week
3. Lots of cricketing at the moment
4. Barketing assistant tucked in for a cold night in May

Do Crew doors are open until Friday

On the subject of community and getting a little weird with your marketing — Do Crew doors close this Friday (we even have a manifes-DO so you know what you're letting yourself in for).

If you've been umming and ahhing, this is your nudge. It's a warm, no-nonsense group of small business owners tackling marketing together. 

We keep each other accountable, share what's actually working, and make marketing feel considerably less lonely.

Considerably less terrible, too, if I'm honest. 

Picky Bits

📸 How to use the new Instagram Instants feature (I don't have it yet - do you?)

🔎 12 ways to improve your search ranking (I rolled my eyes a bit when they called these easy tips and the first one is literally to build a 'well-designed, attractive website' ... not sure that's easy!?)

🤠 49 ways to have fun right now

Hope you have a great week, and think about how you can bring more YOU into all you do this week!

Karen

PS. Work with me!

1:1 marketing support (coaching + strategy) - available from June

Power hours - next availability on 10 June