Good morning, dear friends /strategyMany of you will know Kevin Kelly’s pretty famous 2008 blog post, A 1,000 True Fans. He argues, “To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers,…
Dear friends Let us start today with some whimsy. These occasional starting segues may seem like a distraction, but, in truth, they’re an expression of an important truth: everything is easier when we intentionally add beauty and joy to our…
Dear Friends For several years, I have told you to buy Banele Vakele’s Tembela wines. Despite my wine vocabulary consisting of yum, meh and never again, it appears my advice is worth considering: Banele was recently named the overall winner in…
Dear Friends Thank you for your generous messages after last week’s letter. If you enjoyed it, you might also appreciate The Power of the Powerless, Self-Doubt and Success or Being Good at Being Lost. Today’s letter is a bit…
Good morning, dear friends You may find today’s letter a little heavy, so we’ll start with two babies to make you smile: a Cape leopard cub and a rescued orphan hippo. If they don’t work, then Bouwer Bosch and Themba…
Dear friends I am revisiting Laozi’s Book of Dao, through a recent translation by one of my favourite authors, Ken Liu (a Christmas gift from my parents who have graciously fed my book habit for over fifty years). This extract…
“A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us”Summertime, J.M. Coetzee Dear Friends Success always seems so neat, coherent and, in its perfection, unobtainable. We look at Arundhati Roy’s global acclaim, not knowing of her…
Life is what happens to youWhile you’re busy making other plansJohn Lennon, Beautiful Boy Dear Friends You are young and life is longAnd there is time to kill todayAnd then one day you findTen years have got behind youNo one…
Good morning, dear friends Summer has eventually arrived on Africa’s southern tip (although can Cape Town’s wind take a breath? Pretty please). One of my favourite distilleries, Pienaar and Son, has just released their brilliant South African spin on Yuzushu…
Good morning dear friends If you liked last week’s quotation from Joanne Joseph’s Children of Sugarcane you might enjoy this one from Wole Soyinka. Today’s letter draws lessons from Zohran Mamdani’s victory, a 10-year-old chess master and Nobel laureate JM Coetzee. /strategyA few…
Last week’s letter about Jeff Wicks’ The Shadow State: Why Babita Deokaran Had to Die is, thus far, 2025’s most read letter. It displaced Stephen King and Strategy, and Culture That Works from the top spot. Thank you for your…
Good morning friends Thank you for your feedback on my evolving LinkedIn strategy. I appreciate your time and support. Please feel free to give me input at any stage; it is an ongoing process of refinement. I love dictionary people,…