Jeff Bullas

In 2009 my business collapsed and my marriage ended, in the same year. I was 51. The job market wasn't interested in someone my age. Nobody was coming to offer me a new role. So I stopped waiting to be chosen and decided to choose something myself. I didn't know yet what it would be.

Share something you made this year. A blog post, a painting, a product, a garden, a song. I'll read every reply and tell you one thing I noticed about it. Making things in private feels safe. But feedback from other people is what helps your work get better.

Zyrro, the AI startup I'm building, grew out of my Freedom Code: the steps that rebuilt my life after my business collapsed. So it can't stop at finding a direction. A direction you never act on, or work you never share, sits in a filing cabinet. Zyrro's job: find it, make it, get seen.

My last 27 days on X: 867,562 impressions, +1,083 net follows. Daily impressions dropped from 45,930 to 17,157. I made this video from my analytics export with ReachRecap by @joelcomm. Make yours for free at artificialintelligence.studi…

Harvard professor Teresa Amabile studied about 12,000 diary entries from 238 people at work. Their best days had one thing in common: progress on work that mattered to them. Progress beat praise. Feedback from real people helps because it makes the work better.

In 2006, researcher Jakob Nielsen described the 90-9-1 rule. In most online communities, about 90% of people only read, 9% join in now and then, and 1% create most of what you see. The 1% aren't more talented. They hit publish. Which group are you in?

Round two of my free 7-day X visibility test starts this week. It's not a marketing course. It's 20 minutes a day of practice at sharing what you make, so the right people find it. In round one, one tester's reply got 15,800 views, his best in 16 years on X. Reply "in" and I'll send it.

AI has made creating almost free. You can write a blog post, build an app or make a song in an afternoon. It hasn't made being seen free. Work nobody sees changes nothing, not even you. You end up in an echo chamber of one. Find your direction. Make something. Share it.

Telling people your plans can make you less likely to follow through. In a 2009 study, psychologist Peter Gollwitzer found that people who announced a goal often worked less on it. Being noticed felt like progress. Don't announce your plans. Share your first draft.

My Freedom Code comes from what rebuilt my life after my business collapsed in 2009. Five steps: create, publish, share, monetise, amplify. Only the first three are essential. Money and growth are optional. Most people want to start at step four. Many never get past step one.

On a wall in Saint-Germain, Paris, someone has painted a whole poem by Arthur Rimbaud. He wrote nearly all his poetry before he turned 21, then stopped for good. I stood there wondering how someone so young could see so much. Who saw the world clearly long before you did?

Agree or disagree? Your 50s are when you stop trying to impress people and start trying to be useful.

Following the same topic as 10,000 people doesn't make you part of a community. What turns a crowd into a community is older: a shared story, a place to meet, rituals, give and take, a cost to belong, and a shared past. Online we mostly get the topic.

Honest question for anyone over 50. When you want advice on something new, who do you ask: people your age, or people much younger?

I'm 69, and my life has been a series of exits. I left teaching at 27. Later I left corporate sales to start my own business. When that business collapsed in 2009, I started a blog. Now I'm building an AI startup. Every time I left something, my world got bigger.

In Paris I spent an evening at the Ritz bar talking with a descendant of Hemingway and an American woman I'd just met. After weeks of travelling alone, it reminded me of something. Solitude gives me room to think. Conversation lets another person into that room.

For five years I got up at 4:30am to write before my day job. Was that devotion or obsession? I'm still not sure where the line is. How do you tell the difference?

Sunday question. What do you do purely because you love it, with no plan to make money from it?

Standing in Westminster Abbey once brought me to tears. Kings, poets and scientists, all buried under one roof. Some places are much bigger than you. At 69, I go looking for that feeling on purpose.

Agree or disagree? Most people change careers only when they're forced to, not when they first know they should.

What's one thing you believed at 30 that you've completely changed your mind about?