Welcome to the Action Digest, where excuses are exiled and progress reigns supreme.

A glimpse at the action we’re bringing you this week:

• 🎸 We learn why one of the most prolific rock music producers owes his career to a lesson from his Mother.

• 💛 We’ll explore a principle for overcoming our biggest obstacles from a dating app founder who used creative hacks to beat the odds.

• 💥 Scott Belsky reveals the logic behind the surprising strategy he uses to build winning teams.

• And more!

P.s., you can check out editions 1-39 here in case you missed them, including insights such as the mindset that helped an entrepreneur build seven different billion-dollar companies, how Steve Jobs cultivated great creative taste, and a brainstorming strategy recommended by Stanford professors.

1. A single dose of initiative can be life altering - apply generously

Glyn Johns produced and engineered some of the most iconic rock albums of all time. 

He worked with world-famous names including The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and the Eagles.

Yet, as with so many of our trajectories in life, Johns’s music career almost never happened. 

After receiving disappointing grades, Johns’s sister helped him land an interview with a recording studio. The problem was that Johns had no experience or interest in music and so failed to answer every single one of the technical questions that the manager asked him.

As Johns remembers, the manager said that “there was nothing available right then but the next time there was a vacancy he would certainly consider me for a job.” Johns returned to work at his local department store assuming he would never hear from the studio again.

“This would almost certainly be true if I had been left to my own devices,” Johns admits. “About six weeks had passed since the interview when my mother suggested to me that, as I had heard nothing, I should call Mr. Stagg and jog his memory. I argued [back], saying that, after all, the man had said that he would consider me at the next opportunity. Fortunately my mother insisted on my making the call, pointing out that I had nothing to lose. So I rang Alan Stagg, and having reminded him who I was, he said that one of the senior engineers at the studio had handed in his notice that day, and that this would create a vacancy at the bottom of the ladder for a trainee, so when could I start? I am convinced that if I had not called that day I would never have heard from IBC again and would probably have not got involved in music as a career at all.”

Johns’s mother understood the importance of initiative—a trait so powerful that single dose can be life altering. 

Most actions move us forward in small, incremental ways. Occasionally, a single atomic act of initiative can open doors you didn’t even know existed. That’s why cultivating a bias for action matters: it positions you to seize the pivotal opportunities that can change everything.

But while small acts can certainly have an outsized impact, some projects dare us to amp up the intensity of our initiative… 

2. Increase the boldness of your action until it exceeds the boldness of the challenge in front of you

In 2014, Whitney Wolfe Herd launched a project that most people viewed as doomed to fail. 

She launched a new dating app.

This decision seemed head-scratchingly foolish to most people given that Tinder already had a two year head start.

Setting this fact aside, dating apps come with an onerous catch-22: how do you get your first few users to use a new dating app… when you don’t have any users? No one wants to use a dating app that no one else is using. 

Overcoming this formidable barrier seems even more difficult when everyone is using a popular competitor like Tinder. 

So how did Herd manage to get her dating app, Bumble, off the ground? 

“We’ve done things that are ridiculous,” Herd reveals. “So I remember we would make these signs that had the big X's, and they said, ‘No Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no Bumble.’ This was week three of Bumble and we would post those all over the universities so there was this association where it was—‘Wait, I can't do the things I really want to do? I want to sit in class and Snapchat. I want to sit in class and Instagram… What the hell is Bumble?’—and so we were essentially seeding this psychological curiosity. Then we were actually sending young women wearing Bumble shirts into classes, 10 or 15 minutes late, interrupting a class of 300 people and saying, ‘oh sorry, wrong room,’ but everyone's looking at this young woman or young man, whoever it was, wearing a Bumble t-shirt, so we were seeding curiosity in this, ‘Why is Bumble everywhere?’ type of thing.” 

In addition to these acts of creative initiative, Herd also: 

• Devised a launch video with three women jumping out of an airplane combined with the caption "if we can jump out of a plane, we can send the first message" 

• Targeted marketing campaigns at sorority and fraternity houses simultaneously to overcome the cold start problem

“A lot of people think, ‘I can just go start an app and I'll just buy some Instagram ads and I'll just be successful,’” Herd says, “but if people only knew the fraction of the insane everyday little hacks that I did and our team did to bring this to life.”

“Insane everyday little hacks.” ← That’s how. 

It’s surprising how many impossible things become possible when you simply focus on increasing the boldness of your action until it exceeds the boldness of the challenge in front of you. 

Sure, not every project is as difficult as launching a new dating app—but doing a great job at anything is hard. 

The success of your project hinges on how you greet those obstacles that will inevitably come your way. 

Do you view them as a sign to quit? 

Or do you view them as a sign to get more creative? 

Never forget that the latter response is the ultimate competitive advantage. 

And if you ever spot someone with this kind of initiative, you should probably hire them…

3. Initiative > experience

Scott Belsky recently took to the stage in San Francisco to share a goldmine of insights focused on “Making and Leading Products People Love” from his journey building Behance and leading product at Adobe. 

One dilemma that Scott has run into throughout his career is, in his own words: “do you hire the experienced all-star, or the inexperienced hustler willing to do whatever it takes to learn?”

Given that job applications are dominated by “minimum number of years of experience” requirements, you’d be forgiven for thinking that experience is most important. 

But “I think a lot of people have learned this the hard way,” Scott explains, “or in some cases the easy way when they hire someone because they can’t afford the experienced people. They hire the people with initiative and those people just come on and do amazing, amazing things beyond your expectations—it’s because they had a history of taking initiative on what matters to them.” 

For Scott, this realization slowly crystallized into a short-hand heuristic:

The bolder the journey ahead of you, the more you must hire for initiative than experience. 

“The determination to figure something out—and the patience to build the team into the team you need to solve the problem—is what ultimately makes the difference,” Scott concludes. 

But how do you showcase initiative when you’re a candidate? 

And how do you recognize it in others when hiring? 

A program that pays students to drop out of University has some helpful suggestions…

4. Dozens of high-performers have these two things in common

We’ve now studied the creative process of dozens of people at the top of their field together.

Actors, musicians, writers, architects, leaders, athletes, scientists—you name it.

What do they all have in common?

A lot!

But two things stand out:

1. They think deeply - they explore many more ideas and possibilities on average before taking action.

2. They act boldly - when they’re done thinking, they organize their ideas, become crystal clear on their next move, and act fast.

The tricky part is that these two “modes” of creativity are naturally oppositional.

It can be tough switching back and forth between them efficiently.

That’s where the Action Book comes in handy.

It’s designed to mirror the way high-performers think and streamline the both sides of the creative process.

How?

By separating them.

• On the left, a space for deep, unfiltered exploration. Sketch, doodle, mind map, or jot down every thought that comes to you. No rules. No constraints. Just a place to let your ideas breathe.

• On the right, a place to focus. To consolidate. Here’s where you bring clarity to your vision. Break down your next steps into clear, actionable tasks. Check them off one by one and watch your ideas come to life.

It gives you the freedom to think without limits—and the structure to turn those thoughts into bold action.

Elevate your creativity and order a fresh copy today.

We’ll leave you with this…

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