Speedskull

Shotluck came to me in a local cafe and was built for local businesses. So it caught me a bit off guard that some conversations this week were with agencies. Two of them, from two directions. One came through someone who'd played Zen's game and liked it enough to put my name in front of an agency he works with. The other was a friend inside one of the big agency groups, who after only 15 minutes playing with it, could see where it could land with her clients. I'd been picturing one business, one game. An agency could run ten games for ten clients, all at the same time... suddenly the corner cafe idea has a much bigger space to grow into. Still early days, and still turning that one over.

In other news, I'm now an official paying member of the Newtown Enmore Business Community. Starting again in a new city means building a whole new circle, and a couple of years in I've realised it doesn't happen by accident in a city this big... you have to go and find it. The Carlisle Castle, a 150-year-old pub round the corner that reopened last month, has quietly helped connect a few dots. I'm on my way there shortly, in case you're wondering.

I went for my first short ride in three months this week, which did more than blow out a few cobwebs. Chronic pain is never just in the place it started. One of the unspoken challenges is mental. Speaking of mental, Roxie gave her first media appearance for 'Sick Dogs for Sick Dogs', a coffee-table book of Sydney's dogs and their stories... with every copy funding research into canine health. She made a few new friends at the shoot, didn't say much in the interview, but absolutely nailed the photo. And don't worry, I'll be spamming social media when it comes out in Dec.

The most valuable thing you can ask anyone for is their time. A business wants to be sure something works before it puts its name to it, and anyone scrolling wants to be sure a link's worth the tap before they give it a second. So this week I prioritised one-on-one time with real people... a few coffees, a couple of pints, five minutes casually across a table. Something new needs someone to vouch for it, and right now that's me. People trust people, which funnily enough is the whole idea behind Shotluck too.

Another mate was having a click around to see if it was right for his business and asked what players had to upload. "Your customers' photos, every month," I said, without even thinking. Five simple words, and it clicked straight away. I've now added that line to my marketing.

I also finished up my own site, karlsheridan.com. A simple one-pager with what I'm building now and a condensed mix of two decades' work. Not a greatest hits, but just enough to show how varied it's been. Oh, and my eyeball literally pops out, so have a poke around.

When I land on an idea I want it out there pretty much straight away. That's just how I work, and it's done me well so far. But Shotluck going live last week has really shown me how differently a thing moves once it's out of my hands and into everyone else's.

If you're a business, putting your name to something new is a real risk. You've got a lot more on the line than I have, so of course you want to see it working before you back it. I've spent a lot of this week talking to people about how those calls actually get made, and finding my feet in the business world I'm trying to be a part of. A quiet inbox used to feel like a no. Now I think it's usually just someone taking the time a proper decision deserves.

So I'm trying something different. Keep building away in the background, as much and as fast as I want, but let things out slowly, one at a time, so each one gets the room to land. None of that comes naturally to me, but it's the bit I want to get right.

Launch week. Shotluck's out in the world after nearly six months of building. It's taken me twenty years of working with pretty much every kind of business to see the common thread, and it's almost annoyingly simple... authenticity. People are smart. They know when they're being sold to, and social media has moved the same way, it rewards the real stuff. People are already posting photos of the brands and places they love, which is exactly the stuff every business loves to see. Shotluck gets those photos to the business, and everyone wins.

It's made me look at my own conversations too. If I'm building something on authenticity, I'd better be talking that way myself. So this week I've been trying to say what I actually mean, to clients and mates alike, without dressing it up or turning it into a pitch. It sounds easy. It's bloody hard. Notes like this are the hardest thing I write all week, which probably tells you something.

Anyway, that's the week. Next up, getting Shotluck into more people's hands, one real conversation at a time.

Big week getting everything ready for other people to use. Shotluck opens on 1 October, so most of it went into the business side. Any business can now sign up and run their whole game from one dashboard. Sign-in says business email or personal email everywhere, so nobody mixes up running a game with playing one. A business with no shop, selling online or through other stores, now shows up across the whole country instead of one town. Find Games sticks to one country at a time, so a prize is always in your own dollars. And after a chat with a brand owner in New Zealand, businesses can now send a short thank-you when they download someone's photo.

Paindriver had a big week too. The menu is now four plain words: Today, Diary, Share and Settings. You can run up to three activity plans at once, each with its own card on Today. The report you take to your doctor has been rebuilt around the measures pain specialists actually use. And the Report issue box at the bottom of every page now comes straight to me.

speedskull.com relaunched as well, redesigned from scratch with every product in one place and these notes alongside them. Everything here started as something I built for me. This week was about making it ready for everyone else.

Paindriver is out. It's a tracker for any kind of pain, and I built it for my own back. You log how bad it is, where it hurts and what you were doing, with sleep and medication kept on their own. This week I went through around sixty studies on what actually helps chronic pain and built from what the research backs. First out of that is the activity plan, based on a pacing sheet my physio gave me: find how long you can comfortably do something, start just under it and build up week by week. There's also a Resources page of free public pain services across Australia and New Zealand, a Diary showing each day's pain on a calendar, and a report you can save as a PDF and take to your doctor.

Shotluck got a lot closer to opening on 1 October. Every new business now waits for approval before it goes live, after a tester asked what stops someone registering a dodgy name. Testers can leave a note from any screen, and each one arrives showing the exact screen they were on. Sign-ups are open to businesses across Australia and New Zealand, it has a new typeface, and every "email us" link became a message box inside the app.

Two very different products, built the same way: real people using them early, and every note turned into something they can see.

I'm starting a weekly note. Most of what moves a project forward looks small in the week it happens: a rule decided, a screen redrawn, one email changed. None of it seems worth writing down at the time, and months later it's usually the stuff that mattered most. So once a week, I'm writing down what moved.

This week it was mostly Shotluck, which is live at shotluck.com behind a password until it opens to everyone on 1 October. The monthly draw went in, and it runs itself: every photo a customer plays is an entry, and one winner is drawn automatically on the 1st, so no business ever has to pick one. Every photo is checked as it comes in, and anything flagged is held for the business to look at rather than turned away. Businesses can now change their details and prize after they've set up.

Idea Download got tightened up too. Shared ideas are now for members, the words across the site were rewritten to talk about Idea Download itself, and new members get a short thank-you the day after they join.

Plenty moving at once, and I'm speeding fine.