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- this email will change your life. the end.
this email will change your life. the end.
Dan Pope
March 27, 2026
11.49am. Black bruised eyes. He woke up in the strangest of places. His 4 kids haven’t spoken to him since that day. That was 16 years ago.
The vapid vanishing, so crushing, the weight of waiting, so heavy.
The weight of waiting:: a heavy ghost stalking his soul every. single day. A ghost of thick, heavy clotted cream pain. Here, There, Everywhere - haunting, haunting, haunting.
Matthew Jones is the founder of Bread Ahead Bakery. Matthew’s life is a Wild West Opera. Ambition. Drive. Drug Addiction. Creative Freedom. Discipline. Car-crash-carnage. Gargantuan success. Spectacular failure.
Looking deep into Matthew’s eyes ::: dark-chocolate pits and spinning kaleidoscopes of relentless ambition and drive.
In the frothing crazy seas of crazy unpredictability he found peace and predictability in pastry. A man in Need is A Man in Knead. Baking his sanity anchor in oceans of insanity.
The Master of Kingdom. His Doughnuts stand tall like well-oiled, well-drilled, well-groomed marching bands.
Bread Ahead birth sugary, fat, pudgy, portenous globes of yum. Filled with a smatterings of different voluptuous fillings. El Dorado Gold Honey Comb, Some doughnuts ooze sumptuous splodges of Regal Red Raspberry. Others a light and delicate milk chocolate.
Leondaro Da Vinci said “Simplicity is the Greatest Sophistication”. His doughnuts are put simply, sophistication.
Our conversation swung and sailed and oozed and grooved round many chinwag-roundabouts. We peeled off and took a sharp left down the winding roads of literature.
Hemingway specifically.
“The best books about advertising have nothing to do with advertising” - Rory Sutherland.
Hemingway provides bucket load of wisdom for challenger brand founders and business leaders.
Some of his amazing quotes with my two-penneth attached.
1. “Courage is grace under pressure”
Wing it.
Smile and Wave.
Smile and Waaaaveeeeeee.
2. “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”
Lean into mistakes.
Lean into failure.
Build Anti-Fragility.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
3."Never mistake motion for action”
Action > Everything.
Motion = meetings about meetings about meetings.
Motion = bitching about colleagues.
Motion = complaining.
Motion = fear and endless worrying about trivial things.
4.“Write the truest sentence you know”
Always communicate the truth to your team, even if it’s hard.
Any meeting or gathering - start with the hard truth.
What’s the hard truth you’re currently running away from?
What’s the difficult conversation you’re avoiding?
5."A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
Resilience.
Never give up.
Never back down.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Keep on, keeping on.
6. “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
Leaders, give your team trust from the jump.
Let employees lose your trust.
Simple heuristic.
7. “No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
Be VERY FUCKING careful when hiring “experienced” corporate CEO’s/CMO’s/CFO’s.
They often don’t grow wise, they grow careful.
Careful kills creativity.
Careful kills challenger brands.
The amount of founders who get burnt hiring curmudgeon careful corporate types.
8. “Never confuse movement with action.”
Too many brands spend too much time being busy.
Busy is lazy.
Busy is “movement”.
Busy doesn’t move the needle
FOCUS. FOCUS. FOCUS.
80/20 The fact Rule it bro.
What actually moves the needle?
What actually makes tingz happen brah?
As Abraham Lincoln says “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe,
Anyway chiefs…
Scran Doughnuts. Scoff Hemingway.
Yaaaaaa bish?
Popey xxx
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