The DO Lectures - Fax Club

Let me run through my dumbest idea…

The imaginary Fax Club.

I had this dumb idea over two years ago. Everyone within the company I told had the same eye-roll response. In the end, I thought maybe they were right.

But.

Dumb ideas bob back up to the surface like a beach ball held under seawater.

This week it did exactly that.

So, I wrote down all the elements.

1. It was hard to join. You had to go and buy a fax machine. No one has one.
2. It would be a high ticket price. And it would go up each year. Guaranteed.
3. It was for only 100 founders. Never scale it.
4. It would ask one question each week.
5. The answer MUST be counterintuitive. They would go on a Slack channel. The community would be electric.
6. The one upvoted the most would then be the one that makes it into the forthcoming collaborative book.
7. No one would know each other’s names. Only the allocated number.
8. At the end of the year, we all meet in London for a 1 day ‘How do we launch the book in the most counterintuitive way’ workshop. Of course, we all wear our numbers on the specially made Fax Club badges. We finally get to meet each other.
9. There will be 100 authors. All profits shared equally. An equal share of the treasure.

As dumb as this all was, something felt nervously exciting about it. 

The bit that I loved the most was the power of learning counterintuitive thinking from other founders. A small gathering of pirates coming together to think different. Who wouldn’t want to join that club.

Maybe it wasn’t so dumb after all.

So yesterday, I posted something on LinkedIn.

Just sharing that within your dumbest ideas lies some hidden gold.

I wasn’t expecting the reaction that it got.

When we launched howies, we said we had to sell 100 T-shirts for us to go ahead.

We sold 3 in the first month.

We went ahead. 

It turned out to be a smart move. But the data was not there at the start.

This feels like that. There is something here. I can feel it.

THE. ONE. THING. I. HAVE. LEARNED. ABOUT. THE. DO. IS. THE. POWER. OF. COMMUNITY.

What does counterintuitive thinking look like?

This is the question I would be asking. And why does it matter?

Let me share some examples to kick things off.

Question.

1.  How do you create a culture in a call centre with a high turnover of people and low morale?

The belated Tony Hsieh was faced with this problem at Zappos. So, his counterintuitive thinking was after a month of training, he would devise a quit bonus.

He paid people to leave. The result was the people who stayed wanted to be there.

Morale vastly improved. It is better to get people to leave as quick as you can if they’re not into it. Because they bring the team down.

2.  Can you let your customer decide the price?

In 2007, Radiohead made a counterintuitive move when they released the ‘In Rainbows’ album. They let the fans decide what the price they would pay. 

“As a result, according to ComScore data, it showed 1.2 million people visited the website in the first 29 days, itself.

(The research I found is in dollars, but it makes the point.)

If Radiohead had sold this album through a recording company, price of this album would be about $14.99 and Radiohead would receive about 15% of this total ($2.25). Radiohead’s share would be even less ($1.40) if this album was sold via iTunes. 

Since, they opted with a customer decides pricing strategy, 38% who downloaded the album paid something, at an average payment of $6.

This resulted in an average payment of $2.26 across everyone who downloaded this album. 62% people opted to download for free.

Their profit margin increased as there was no middleman. 

(Source: Nidhi Titus)

Radiohead later mentioned that they had made more money through this album as against all prior albums put together.

-      This is the kind of thinking that changes things.

-      These are dumb ideas until they work.

-      Then they become maverick ideas.

The founder walks the plank when they put their dumb ideas out into the world.

It is sink or swim.

But this way of thinking is something we must learn if we want to stand out.

This is why I have decided to do Fax Club.

-      52 questions. 52 genius answers.

-      100 pirates.

-      1 book.

This may fail. This may succeed.

This is a true experiment. The result is not guaranteed.

But.

It could fly.

Maverick’s welcome.

Not for dabblers. And play it safes.

Some Questions You May Have.

When does it start? Give me the details.

Feb 2^nd. Friday 7.26 pm.

First question via fax.

And every Friday at the same time for 52 weeks.

London Workshop. Friday 7^th February. 2025. Cecil Sharpe House. 9. 30 am. 4.30 am. (We will do a live stream to those who can’t make it.)

What do I need to do?

Each week, you must submit your answer to the question with the most counterintuitive thinking you can muster.

This will be posted on the Slack Channel.

The one who gets the most upvotes will go in the book.

You can submit questions, too.

If you miss 3 weeks in a row, your fellow pirates will vote whether you get to stay.

There will be no refunds.

How much is the membership?

£444

This includes the London Workshop.

All-year access to the Slack Community.

One equal share of the profits from the book.

Who is this for?

-      Founders.

-      Business owners.

-      Company of ones.

-      Freelancers who want to charge more.

-      Maverick consultants.

-      Agency owners who want better clients.

-      Anyone who wants to get off the treadmill of thinking like everyone else.

-      Introverts who have awkward ideas.

-      Optimists.

Who this is NOT for?

-      Dabblers with a history of not following through.

-      Play it safes. There are no guarantees here.

-      Naysayers and cynics who see only the downside. 

The community.

This is why this will succeed. Or fail. If enough maverick thinkers gather around this campfire, there will be fire.

There will be thinking that stretches your thinking like nothing else. This will bubble. This will boil over at times.

You won’t know what anyone does; you won’t even know people’s names.

You will admire someone for their remarkable thinking.

By time you all meet each other, you will already know each other.

This is one of the most interesting experiments The DO Lectures has done.

Gatherings that learn together, stay together.

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

Rudyard Kipling.

Set your clock for tonight. (We have a global audience.) 

I know this is not for everyone.

But if this strikes a chord, places open at 7.26 pm tonight.

There are 100 places.

First come, first faxed.

We will send out a reminder email with 10 minutes to go.

Here’s to a gathering of the crazy ones,