Dogfooders #2

8 min readOct 16, 2022

Hello to this 2nd edition of the new newsletter.

Every month it will explore the world of habits and behaviour change. And how these things can be applied successfully to personal growth and business development.

The aspiration, outcome, objective, end-game of the this? To help us all live Happier, Healthier, Wealthier Lives.

That said, this edition of DogF0 will be slightly different than those to come, because to kick off, I’d like to give some background and context why I’m offering this resource every month.

Here we go:

Why are we called d0gf00ders?

I used to read too many newsletters, mindlessly snacking on the must-click links provided, going down too many fruitless social media rabbit-holes, and when I did surface felt illuminated, informed, but queasily unsatiated. (See ‘Information Action Fallacy’.)

I’d learn about endless What’s, Why’s and ‘This-Is-Oh-So-Cool’….., but discovered very few How-to’s.

The well-minded sharers assuming that the information alone would change my behaviour. They’d tell me about something, but not how to then go and actually do the thing they had shared.

(And don’t even get me started on the rampant snake-oilers, bullshitters and mis-Leaders rampant on the web, who we, (me included) often take as gospel…until we try them out with invariably poor results.)

Bombarded by articles about ‘How to Grow….., get better at INSTANTLY..…., 10x your ……finally… SMASH….BECOME.….SECRET SYSTEM….

Maybe you’re like me and have the uneasy experience of wondering if the people sharing all these great results/breakthroughs/epiphanies actually had these results/breakthroughs/epiphanies in their own lives before passing it on to us?

Or is their thing more akin to “Do what I share, not what I do”.

Too many newsletters, blog posts, updates and shares waste our time, with shiny new links to brand new stuff, untried stuff.

I prefer burnished, proven, patinated stuff that’s stood that test of time, but is possibly new to you, or if not new to you; deserves a second look, or has made a timely return to your awareness, just when you might need it most.

Which is where Dogfooders comes in.

Apple were onto this over 40 years ago:

On February 1 1980, (4 years before their legendary 1984 Commercial), Apple Computer President Mike Scott circulated an internal memo, the following bit of copy nails what the d0gf00ders newsletter is all about:

“Let’s prove it inside before we try and convince our customers.”

Typewriters were, at the time, the biggest competitor to the Apple II, an 8-bit home computer that was one of the first successful mass-produced microcomputer products.

In the memo, Scott stated:

If word processing is so neat, then let’s all use it!
Goal: By 1–1–81 No typewriters at Apple.
(Ken, get rid of the DEC word processor ASAP)
Brownie Points: Typewriter users giving up their machines in favor of Apple II-Apple Writer Systems will get first priority on new Apple high performance systems.
We believe the typewriter is obsolete.
Let’s prove it inside before we try and convince our customers.

The memo was titled “YOU ALL BETTER READ THIS.”

Let’s all party like it’s 1:9:90.

That’s not a date btw: It’s a ratio.

I remember reading about 1:9:90 in the early days of social media.

It’s probs still valid today.

Essentially, it postulates, (or do I mean posits?), that out of 100 people who see a piece of content, a post, an update online; 1 person, of course, would create it in the first place; 9 would comment, like, share etc, and 90 social souls would simply ‘consume’ it. And after that do bugger all.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

It was also called Social Media Theory.

For a long time, I was a proud member of that 90% just watching the social media world go by from the sidelines.

But here’s the interesting thing, when you hang out more in 9%land, with a comment, like, share, what-have-you, things often get a bit more interesting and rewarding.

And when you actually post content, from scratch, that goes down well, you don’t just feel like 1 in a 100, you are 1 in a 100.

Particularly if it’s actionable ideas that the reader can try out in the service of that happier, healthier, wealthier life.

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Should a Newsletter have a patron saint?

This one has.

George Plimpton was deadly serious about not taking life too seriously, I hope this newsletter lives up to that too.

As I touched on earlier, too many newsletters are written from the sidelines, too much What and Why readers should do things, and not enough How the heck can they get themselves to do them.

I also think far too many newsletters are little more than distractive link-porn. Where the writers have little, if any, actual personal experience or expertise about what they are writing about.

Whereas, I hope this one is more like think-porn that spurs you/helps you into action.

Which brings me back to George Plimpton.

George was different, he was one of us.

He didn’t just write about boxing, he got into the ring with the World Light Heavyweight Champion, and then wrote about it. In fact, he once had his nose broken in the line of duty. (Only once?)

A literary adventurer, also described as a participatory journalist, he tried out, then wrote about boxing, car racing, lion taming, stand up comedy in Las Vegas, acting in a John Wayne movie, you name it, George checked it out for himself first, and only then, shared it with others in his world with witty, insightful prose.

There’s a great documentary film of an extraordinary life and man here:

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Should a Newsletter have a house ad?

This one has.

Well, it’s a borrowed one.

From Apple. 1997. (Mike. That’s enough Apple stuff. Ed.)

(Ed. I heard if you are going to borrow, borrow from the best. As you can see. Mike.)

It sums up what I think it means to be a DogFooder:

Trivia Footnote: The actor Richard Dreyfuss did the voice over in the Ad. Yet right up until the morning of the first air date a Steve Jobs version of the spot was going used. But at 11th hour Jobs decided to go with the Dreyfuss version, stating that it was about Apple, not about himself.

How I became a D0gF00der:

In 2015 my Accountant told me I’d made a total profit of £67.00.

It had been a bad year. (You can say that again.)

OK. It had been a bad year.

The year before hadn’t been too clever either. But the year before that, and the year before that had been very good so I wasn’t stony, but I wasn’t exactly rolling in it either. I had to up my game.

By accident or design I don’t know, but luckily I started reading Steven Pressfield’s books. Actually devouring is a better word. Do The Work, War of Art, Turning Pro:

Reading them voraciously, but still not actually Doing the Work.

This had been a recurring theme in my life up until this point, thinking that finding, buying and reading lots of great books on the subject I’d actually, by some miracle, change overnight, waking up the next morning transformed simply by reading a book. (Little did I know then that I’d fallen into the ‘Information Action Fallacy’ again that I referred to earlier.’)

Then I got two lucky breaks.

One day serendipitously I found this image online, it’s message a profound message and effect on me.

I don’t know who wrote it or where I first saw it, I just know that I downloaded the image, printed it out, stuck it on my wall, folded a copy in my wallet, saved it on my phone home-screen, referring to it constantly, everywhere I looked.

It got me clear, on getting clear.

On having a plan.

Finding out for myself what worked for me, in my life.

(Not what worked for Elon Musk, Tony Robbins, Jurgen Klopp or the latest annoying 21 year-old-billionaire. )

And once I knew what I wanted, working on it consistently, and for the most part happily-committed to the Plan.

My second lucky break:

2017: I was asked by David Hieatt to be the curator and creative director on a new Do Lectures publication, The Side Project Report.

A project that came at just the right time, and changed the game for me forever.

It took 3 busy but glorious months to write. I got to research and interview dozens and dozens of creatives, entrepreneurs, writers, start-ups and agencies around the world: Dogfooders all.

While writing it and learning from all these amazing people who’d decided to show up in life and get in with actually doing stuff that lit them I up, I had a ‘Meta-Moment’.

I decided I’d turn writing something called the Side Project Report into an actual Side Project of improvement in my own life.

I called it The Side Project Project. I got an early draft of designer Joby Barnard’s beautifully simple cover art and stuck a piece of masking tape over the title changing the word Report to Project to prompt me every single day.

The Fogg Behaviour Model.

One of the people I wrote about in the Side Project Report was Stanford University Professor BJ Fogg.

Writing about him and researching his work was my Epiphany Moment.

In a long and reasonably successful career in advertising, nobody had ever told me with any degree of certainty, how human behaviour really worked.

But BJ knew.

And so did/do the super-successful companies in Silicon Valley and innovative firms around the world who he trained to apply his successful models and methods on a daily basis.

I’ll informally share more about my experiences with BJ’s work both professionally and personally in later newsletters.

But for now, check out BehaviorModel.org for more.