Most Successful New Year’s Resolution Ever?
2024 was a busy year for me:
Three successful Kickstarter campaigns
Two world records
Being on the BBC
Going viral
The end of one business
The start of another
World Record #1
It started with an off-the-cuff new year’s resolution to break a world record.
I wrote about that on the 14th January and at the time I had no idea what record I’d even try and break, let alone how or if I could do it.
A week later I chose to attempt to make the smallest ever deck of playing cards.
Just over three weeks after that, I’d completed a short Kickstarter campaign and had a plan to make the tiny cards and ship them to 100 backers around the world.
On 31 March I officially attained the world record for the smallest deck of playing cards at 5.0 x 3.6 mm
Public Commitment
One thing that experience taught me is the power of a public commitment. I initially said I wanted to break a world record at a new year’s eve party in front of my friends. And then I wrote about it here which I then shared on LinkedIn. By sharing the idea I felt accountable to lots of people beyond myself, and it really motivated me to succeed.
I did a similar thing a decade ago with my first ever Kickstarter project. That was sparked by a blog post I wrote about razors being ugly. I then decided I should put my money where my mouth is and do something about it. So I designed a razor and started a razor company.
World Record #2
My second world record was more of an accident. Right after the first record, I’d started working on my next regular product launch, which was going to be a deck of playing cards all about beer. (Those have since launched and funded on Kickstarter too.)
For that project I was going to be working with a beer expert and while we were kicking off the idea I thought I’d also be able to squeeze in another world record.
So I ran a short Kickstarter campaign to create the world’s largest playing card. That was particularly fun because it wasn’t just a record-breaking playing card, it was a collaborative project. The design for the centre of the playing card was made up of a mosaic of photos sent in by all my Kickstarter backers so a few hundred people all came together to help me make it happen.
Guinness World Records HQ & Being on the BBC
After I created the world’s smallest cards, I offered a deck to the team at Guinness World Records. It followed that they then took an interest in my world’s largest playing card.
I kept them updated with the project and I ended up delivering the finished product to Guinness World Records HQ in London. They’re still kindly looking after it until I can find a permanent home for it.
Shortly after my visit I was contacted by the press team at Guinness World Records to say that the BBC wanted to interview me about my cards.
I went back a few days later and spent a couple of hours with a BBC team filming and talking through both world records.
And then I was on TV! All very exciting.
I was subsequently interviewed twice on BBC radio and just this morning visited Spotify Studios to be part of a podcast about record breakers.
Going Viral
I really have to thank the team at Guinness World Records for making all that happen. As well as the press appearances, I also got lots of attention on social media. I suppose ‘going viral’ is a relative term, but when one of my posts got a million views on Instagram I was pretty chuffed with that. It also got a thousand times more likes than my previous post!
The publicity was a really fun ride, but frankly one of the most interesting parts of it was how little commercial impact it had on my business. I’ll write more about that next time so don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter.
Out with the Old
In 2024 I took the decision to close down Ockham Razor Company. The Ockham Razor was my first ever Kickstarter project and really the first proper product I’d launched from scratch.
Ending it was a sad thing to do, but also the right thing to do. I wrote more about that in this blog post.
What’s on the Cards for 2025
The end of the Ockham chapter was partly a response to a new chapter I’m starting. That new chapter is a start-up called Windfall Energy that I’ve co-founded with Ashley Grealish.
Electricity costs vary wildly throughout the day but it’s hard for people living in smaller homes to take advantage of that. At Windfall Energy we’ll make products that will help you use energy when it’s clean and cheap, whilst reducing your use of fossil fuels.
If that sounds interesting, you should sign up to our newsletter at windfallenergy.com.
This year’s resolution
So it looks like 2025 is going to be a busy year too. I’ve always been one to read two books at once, so although I’ll be primarily focussing on Windfall Energy, I’ll still keep the playing cards going on the side.
And I also think I have room for a new year’s resolution - to write a book.
Or more accurately, to finish a book I’ve been working on for a few years now. Finishing projects is always the hardest part.
There, I’ve committed to it publicly so I’ll have to do it.
