Being a Bricoleur

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Today we're gonna chat about what it means to be a Bricoleur. 

Bricoleur: someone who constructs things from a diverse range of available things 

Ever since a kid I’ve been a bricoleur.

When I wanted to make artwork, I’d find old supplies laying around in my parents’ garage, get some hot glue or duct tape, and make bricolage: sculptures, collages, robots, etc.

I found this way more fun than buying the supplies online and waiting for them to arrive. I always wanted to see “what can I create from nothing?” For that reason, I always loved sculptures in art shows that were made out of nuts and bolts and everyday items.

To me, these pieces of art tell a story. They’re beautiful but show their origins, like a poor man who becomes rich and still has his old habits. It’s like observing someone who was fat and is now thin but still is fat in their minds. There’s something about both of those scenarios that is far more heartwarming than people who were born wealthy or with perfect skinny genetics. They overcame something.

When you’re thinking of your content strategy, consider purposely being the underdog.

Don’t cover up your humble beginnings. Don’t delete your old tweets or videos, instead show people how far you came. Show them that you’re a bricoleur, a scrappy hustler, that you’ve progressed and built something from nothing.

Even if you’re still early in your creator career, people like to see your progress. Last week, I tweeted about how I have no college degree and couldn’t get a response on LinkedIn jobs, but I overcame that thanks to Twitter and now write for startups. The post got 8 retweets and 70 favorites. All I did was just tell my story. My piece Losing on the Internet for 10+ Years is my most-viewed blog and people frequently tell me that it inspired them to keep creating. All I did was talk about my failures and scrappiness.

Another tweet last week, I said there’s nothing more beautiful than seeing a famous creator’s old work and realizing it was utter shit. It reminds you that everyone had to start somewhere. Look at MrBeast’s old videos and it’s clear he lost on the internet for 10+ years. He was just a middle schooler making YouTube videos, probably getting bullied and made fun of by his peers. But he kept pursuing and creating. There’s something that is much more genuine about that than someone who is polished and perfect from the beginning. People love an underdog story.

Realizing this and purposely setting your content strategy to be the underdog helps you start projects before you feel “ready”. If you wait until you have the “perfect” logo or name or website or whatever, you’re never going to start. I had a friend in college who was a talented photographer, but refused to build a website or portfolio because "it cost too much". The truth is he was just extremely lazy. I cut him off from my life. That kind of energy is toxic for an entrepreneurially minded creator.

I’ve seen so many fucking questions on Reddit's r/entrepreneur of people asking how to start a project when they should’ve just spent that time starting a project. The truth is 99% of people like this and my old friend are phonies. They’re LARPing entrepreneurship. They’re fakers and are looking for anything to help them procrastinate the thing they’re afraid of doing. Whether that’s starting a marketing agency, a newsletter, or building up on Twitter, they’ll keep on waiting and waiting while the crafty bricoleur passes them by.

At first, it’ll look like the bricoleur has no idea what they’re doing or doesn’t have their shit together. That’s because they start before they’re “ready”. They publish their blogs before they’re perfect, they make $5 websites rather than spending thousands developing beautiful websites. The funny thing is that on a long enough time horizon, every bricoleur becomes a master at branding; they’ve iterated 100x more times than the guy who needed everything to be perfect to get started. They moved fast and broke things, the key to success in startups and creating.

I started my blog on Substack and named it Brain Blasts. Then I started a blog on Beehiiv about wellness-tech. Then I closed the wellness-tech blog and switched Brain Blasts over to Beehiiv. Then I switched the name to Cyber Patterns and developed the awesome Cyber Patterns branding you see today. If I waited until I had everything perfect, I would’ve never started. I wouldn't have spent the hundreds of hours practicing my writing that I did. Waiting for everything to be perfect is just an excuse not to practice.

The beautiful thing about making shit on the internet is that you can iterate and make shit prettier and better over time. For my personal website, I’ve gone from Squarespace to Notion and now finally Shopify. I didn’t have anything to sell until now, so I was fine with the cheaper Squarespace and Notion. Now that I’m selling digital products, I need the more expensive host Shopify. The website that people now see is like a fine oil painting; there’s dozens of layers from across years, domains, and platforms.

Yes, some of the earlier sites were sloppy, but it doesn't matter. The final result is great. And I'm sure in 3 years when I have a more expensive website, I'll be saying my Shopify site was sloppy. That's the entire point of bricolage. 

Don't wait for perfection. Build, publish, iterate, repeat.