Creative bulletin n.184

The above is a graph of Sefirot's market positioning. Among our main competitors, in addition to manuals, courses, chatGPT, we also included "talent" 😂

Let’s talk about competitor analysis. There are two big mistakes one can make when it comes to competitor analysis: the first is not doing it due to laziness, lack of time or an excess of enthusiasm (at times one can think «This project is so cool!» and the analysis goes in the backburner); the second mistake is to think that you don’t have competitors («Nobody makes tools for creativity like ours!»)

Important 👉Everybody has competitors: a competitor is anyone or anything that solves the same problem we are trying to tackle. In Sefirot’s case we are going to look at manuals, courses, coaches, free frameworks, YouTube videos, and yes, even talent («I don’t need Fabula, I know how to write already!», «I don’t need Cicero, I’m great at public speaking» etc.) This last part was particularly useful to keep in mind, because it made us think about the fact that we want to be helpful both to those who are struggling to do something, but also to those who already know how to do it and want to enhance what is already there. In short, we want to be facilitators and supporters of talent 🔥

🐈🐈🐈 What we’ve learned this week

The other day the creative team handed me assignments that I called “unfeedbackable" (i.e., it didn't even make sense for me to waste time giving feedback) and out of frustration I lost it during the call. The work was mediocre, and I asked if they were going to continue like this or if they were finally ready to excel.

🌈 Creative takeaway: if we put ourselves into it, everything is creative.
I’m the one handling the team, it is my responsibility, so what I really did the other day is yell at myself: for months I've been letting it slide, telling myself «It’s not great but it’s alright» so I failed in inspiring the love for excellence.

There are two ways to work: you can do a good job or not. And we often justify a mediocre job by saying that we didn’t really care about it much, there wasn’t enough time, etc. These are excuses, but beyond that, the real problem lies somewhere else: if we’re distracted when working, we are also distracted with ourselves, we give ourselves away and that ends up corroding us and weakening us. If on the other hand we work carefully, giving it all our attention, we’ll be proud of the result (yes, even if the job is boring) and that will nourish us.

I don't think there is a way to convince someone to work well, but maybe there is a way to convince them to dedicate themselves to a task, or a job. Working mindfully (and this is even more true for those doing creative work) allows one to measure one's limits and grow. Doing one thing well gives us the confidence to do other things well. Today, the team said: «We’d like to do something more creative».

And that’s the whole point: if we dedicate ourselves, body and soul, with intensity and care, everything can be creative 🚀

With ❤️,
Matteo

*** Sefirot’s Creative Bulletin ***

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