Stephen Walker – Opinionated Ad Man, Writer and Author

  • What fallout’s vault-tec taught me about the darkest copywriting truth

    Been binge watching the Fallout series and there’s this scene that made me pause mid bite of my sandwich. I mean it was a damn good sandwich and I rarely stop when I get going… Ella Purnell’s character Lucy. This impossibly optimistic vault dweller… …emerges from her underground paradise into the wasteland above. She’s been…

  • Breaking my macbook made me write better

    Sometimes the best productivity hacks come from pure accident and desperation. Just over 12 months ago, I did something spectacularly stupid. Closed my MacBook lid down on the charger cable. You know that satisfying click when the laptop shuts? Yeah, that turned into an expensive crunch as the screen cracked like a spider web. Fuck.…

  • It felt like the hunger games today

    Something was definitely in the water this morning. I wake up, grab my coffee, make the classic mistake of checking Facebook while my brain’s still soft and undefended. Big fucking error. It’s like I stepped into some alternate dimension where everyone decided today was the day to settle scores and flex their intellectual superiority. People…

  • Audiotape – Process Prolific

    As promised. I’ve always said I’m going to do some more quick audio snippets. So here’s the next short little ramble. It’s more about my process and how you can use it too if you’re interested. Go here if you wanna listen https://stphnwlkr.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/prolificnessness.mp3 If not. The regularly scheduled emails will continue tomorrow. I’m heading out…

  • Her stubborn Southern soul

    John Kennedy Toole put a bullet in his brain in 1969. Thought his manuscript was garbage. Thought the world didn’t want to hear about Ignatius J. Reilly… This sweating, farting, medieval philosophy obsessed manchild who rails against modern society from his masturbation stained bedsheets in New Orleans. (The rejection letters piled up) His mother, god…

  • Rock bottom is just the foundation for your comeback story

    I came across this quote and if you let it. It might slap you across the face and give you a different way of looking at things… “What a beautiful gift it is to hit rock bottom. To be stripped of any and all pride, ego and false responsibility. To be left with nothing but…

  • Headlines matter more than everything else (including audio)

    This is basically about how I accidentally proved headlines matter more than everything else. Which strangely also includes audio. So yesterday I screwed up so spectacularly that I accidentally proved the most important copywriting principle of all time. So I’m out walking, feeling inspired, decide to record a YouTube short. (Which is the new thing…

  • Five f’s that’ll save your sanity and your content game

    It’s rare that I get tonnes of questions but someone asked me today how I show up every single day without caring what people think about my content. Now it’s not like it’s some kind of superpower. It’s definitely not like I’ve transcended human emotion and achieved enlightenment through the mystical art of not giving…

  • You are me and I am you

    You are a detective. Your mission is to document and observe the world around you. As if you’ve never seen it before. Take notes. Collect things you find on your travels. Document findings. Notice patterns. Copy. Trace. Make rubbings… Focus on one thing at a time. Record what you’re drawn to. Don’t stop there though.…

  • James Gunn did it.

    That beautiful, demented puppet master actually fucking did it. The new Superman movie? Its felt like a religious experience. I mean it was basically Metropolis or whatever you want to call it getting turned into abstract art. Side note: Why is movie popcorn twelve dollars? Did they harvest it from the moon? Are the kernels…

  • Well, Shit. The Silly Goose Society Flies Again

    Pssst… Hey you. Yeah, you. Sitting there with your coffee or your bourbon or your coffee with bourbon (no judgment, we’ve all been there) Let me tell you a story about how I became the world’s most expensive idiot for approximately 72 hours. So there I was, feeling all high and mighty about my digital…

  • $500 mistake

    One thing I’ve become addicted to over the years is collecting domain names. Not to flip them. Just to collect them for potential projects in the future. Unfortunately today has been a very expensive lesson in not setting auto-renew on for a domain you’ve had for ages. That lesson cost me 500 freedom doll hairs…

  • The best bearded dude I know.

    This isn’t going to be a massively long email. I’m just giving a shoutout to the man whose book dragged me out of the darkest place I’ve ever gone to. I made it out and hey, life is not too bad. He’s started getting into YouTube and so if you can do me a massive…

  • Your world needs bouncers and velvet ropes

    You need rules. Real rules. The kind that make people uncomfortable. The kind that separate the wheat from the chaff and leave the chaff standing outside in the cold wondering what the hell just happened. Let me tell you about a rule that changes everything for me… Once you’re in, if you leave, you can’t…

  • Don’t take it personally…

    Whatever happens around you. Don’t take it personally. Nothing other people do is because of you. Deeply… It’ because of themselves. Situations might feel so personal. It honestly has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are only projections of their own internal thoughts. We all…

  • Seneca knew you were going to die and waste your time anyway

    My good pal Seneca once penned this… (I’ve studied a lot of his work) “Most human beings, Paulinas,* complain about the meanness of nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, and then because this spell of time that has been given to us rushes by so swiftly and rapidly that with…

  • From Stephen, with love.

    Your brain is a lying liar that lies… So I’m not gonna pretend that I know everything but there are some common things floating about the interwebs right now and there’s a little heaviness about which is not good. Life might feel like some hidden force is taking a steaming hot dump on your reality.…

  • You’re not hot enough for onlyfans

    …but your writing can still turn people on. Let’s talk about sex for a minute. And before you get all weird about it… No, I’m not suggesting you strip down and start gyrating at your laptop camera or whatever. Most of us don’t have the body for OnlyFans anyway. I certainly don’t. My belly looks…

  • Marketing is cooking steak

    And most of you are burning the shit out of it every single day. You don’t just throw a frozen hunk of meat onto a screaming hot pan and pray to the beef gods. That’s how you get leather. Sad, expensive leather that makes everyone hate you. (Incredibly well done steak makes me weep…) You…

  • O Captain! My Captain!

    The most magnetic thing on earth is liking your own energy. Or what the kids say nowadays; “Vibe” I’ll stick to energy though because it’s a lot deeper than that. Swami Vivekananda had similar notions in his teachings. That were along the lines of “If you don’t befriend your own inner state, it’s hard for…

  • Battlefield 6 is going to eat my weekends (and probably my thumbs)

    Quick confession… I’m about to disappear into Battlefield 6. Like, gone gone. Pulled under by the riptide gone. The kind of gone where the couch grows teeth and the controller fuses to my palms and the night blinks and suddenly it’s 3:11 in the morning and the parrot is judging me for war crimes I…

  • I was McShook

    Every now and then. Well… Every couple of months I treat myself to a filthy Mcdonald’s… Yes yes I know I shouldn’t eat that garbage but come on. I’ve been exclusively eating steak and eggs for ages now. So I’m allowed to treat myself on occasion. Truthfully, I don’t know why I put myself through…

  • Audiotape on sabotage

    It’s been a little while since I’ve done one of these audiotape type things. Some call it a podcast, some call it a random voice note. I’ll go with voice note cause I like sending them. Don’t worry It’s not the crappy $20 lavalier mic. That’s reserved for when I go for my long hikes/walks…

  • I’ve got a $20 lavalier mic and a dream…

    My buddy called me last night. Said something that stuck. “Just read your stuff out loud. Record it. Put it on YouTube.” I laughed. Told him I sound like a dying walrus having an existential crisis. He said that’s the point. This same buddy has nothing to do with the online space like I do.…

  • I ate steak and eggs every day for weeks and nearly died.

    Nobody talks about how boring consistency is. For weeks now, I’ve been eating steak and eggs. Same meal. Over and over. I’m so bored I could cry. Although it’s working… I’m not perfect. Maybe 7 out of 10 meals are just steak and eggs. The other 3? I eat whatever I want. This boring routine…

  • A little bit of prose for the weekend.

    We are not machines. We have souls. We need little bits of music and connections and sunsets with laughter. Those little pockets of joy… …we need to prioritise that. Your life depends on it. Life is not meant to be a cycle of stress and survival or flight or fight. Pause. Look up. Inhale. Sunsets…

  • Great Scott!

    Okay not so great Scott Adams (Author of Dilbert) went a little off the deep end a little while ago. I guess politics and other things just make people lose their minds and once they’re far gone, there’s no turning back. Unless turning back is dragging them behind an old 7 Eleven and delivering 2x…

  • The MMA fighter’s secret to beating creative exhaustion

    I’m no MMA expert or anything like that, so I’m not going to hit you with some crazy facts about the fighting world. I had a few mention to me that they just weren’t feeling any sort of “vibe” lately. Which is understandable… I know everyone is tired of those THINGS being mentioned. I think…

  • Stop feeding your brain garbage.

    Let’s talk mindset. Not the Instagram kind. Not the “manifest your matcha latte” kind. The real, ugly, under the fingernails kind. The kind your parents accidentally bent out of shape, out of love, sure, but still… (Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. It’s not your fault. Or maybe it is, but you probably meant well) I’ll also…

  • Oops wrong email

    Just kidding. But this type of tactic for lack of a better word seems to be popping up everywhere lately. I mean a lot more than usual. Wrong email, wrong link, wrong date… But there’s something that’s even more disgusting. The ones who say they’re hosting a workshop or whatever. You NEED to attend it…