The World According to Zandland - Issue #4
What "Winning" Looks Like in 2026
It’s now three weeks into the new year, which is usually when people have either broken or completely abandoned their resolutions. I’ve already broken mine, as this newsletter is 8 days later than I planned.
So consider this my slightly late, but hopefully more considered: Happy New Year. And an opportunity to make some public resolutions on behalf of Zandland that keep us accountable.
It all started on a holiday over the Christmas period. Whilst holed up, recovering from not being very good at snowboarding, I was trying to wrestle with what feels like the most basic — and most terrifying — question any person who owns a business can ask themselves:
What the hell should we actually do this year?
Fast-forward to yesterday, and I pulled our entire team into a meeting room to answer that question together. I laid out where I think Zandland needs to go in 2026, how we’ll measure it, and how I think we could work to get there. It wasn’t just a presentation, it was me making a pitch to my own company about what we’re building, why it matters, and how we’ll hold ourselves to it.
That sounds simple, but it isn’t. Behind it sits a bigger set of questions about what kind of company we want to be, what kind of work is worth doing, and what kind of future we’re trying to build.
Ultimately, it’s a question of focus, and over the past few weeks I’ve also become obsessed with one word above all others: clarity.
Not clarity as a slogan or a vibe, but clarity as an actual reality we can create:
knowing where we want to go,
having real metrics to tell us whether we’re getting there, and
empowering the people around us to make good decisions in service of that direction.
Zandland has big dreams and ambitions, and clarity is the only way to get there. So here is where we netted out…
Complete Independence
Zandland is, first and foremost, a fully independent company.
We are not an arm of another broadcaster, we don’t have big money investors, and I sadly, am not yet a billionaire. We are fully backing ourselves, creatively, financially, and strategically.
Our mission is not just to make great documentaries — but to be truth-seekers who make sense of the world with our audience alongside us.
We are uniquely good at getting access, investigating, asking questions, and having fun while we’re at it. So everything is built around putting that to use, and helping to solve a global problem.
The world feels louder, more chaotic, and more confusing than ever. There is no shortage of information, but there is a real shortage of meaning, context, and truth. So, Zandland is a filter, an interpretation of the madness and a place to belong.
A small team, doing a few things exceptionally well
We are a small team of exceptionally talented people, and that means there is a finite amount we can do.
This could be a weakness, but it needs to be our strength.
We should be doing fewer things, brilliantly, rather than many things averagely. Scale for its own sake doesn’t make better work; focus does. And focus requires saying no, protecting our capacity, and being honest about what we can — and cannot — take on.
As an overly ambitious, optimistic guy, this has been one of the hardest things to accept. But if we’re going to build something that lasts, we need to be realistic about our size, ruthless about our priorities, and disciplined about our lane.
Our goals in 2026 are twofold
1) To build a community that people actually want to pay to be part of.
That means working to provide:
better access to our thinking,
deeper conversations around our films,
behind-the-scenes insight into how stories are made, and
a physical space where curious people can talk, argue, learn, and think together.
Not a paywall for the sake of it, but something genuinely valuable, worth your time and attention.
2) To create incredible, major, premium projects with big partners.
The kind of films and series that can only exist because of the scale, reach, and resources of major streamers and brands, but that only Zandland could have made. These will be culture-defining shows that make noise.
In short:
We want to make work that reaches millions and build a community that knows exactly why that work matters.
Why clarity matters now
Over the holiday period I read a lot of books in a way authors probably hate… I jumped in and out of different things and didn’t really finish a lot of them. BUT, they were great, here are some if you want to also partially read some great books and annoy some authors (they are genuinely very useful books):
No Rules Rules.
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.
Cultural Strategy.
Focus on What Matters.
Getting to Yes with Yourself.
The A Method for Hiring.
Shoe Dog.
Building a StoryBrand.
The Membership Economy.
The Psychology of Money.
The Great CEO Within.
They’re all different, but they kept circling the same idea: organisations (and people) don’t usually fail because they lack ambition — they fail because they lack clarity.
That thinking is what shaped the meeting I had with the team on Monday.
So for 2026, we’ve simplified our priorities around four things:
Runway — building a financially sustainable, self-supporting company that backs itself and has editorial freedom.
Brand clarity — being unmistakable in what Zandland stands for.
Audience ownership — deepening our direct relationship with you.
Operational discipline — doing fewer things, better.
Everything else is secondary.
Choosing our lane in practice
That also means everything has to feed everything else. Everything has to sing from the same hymn sheet.
Here are our content priorities:
One strong Zandland original film per month.
Not scattered output. Not volume for volume’s sake. One piece of work we genuinely believe in, released consistently.
A new Zandland podcast (launching soon).
A space for slower, deeper conversations with people living inside the worlds we cover — less hot takes, more thinking.
Zandland explainers.
Our way of interpreting the world through explainers from our films, podcasts, and reels on social media.
A clearer relationship with our audience.
If you watch, listen, or read our work, it should be obvious how you can be part of it — through subscribing to the newsletter, engaging with our content, and membership.
Premium projects that tie into the whole.
Projects that feed our aim of being a lens for an audience of young, curious, and passionate people who want to understand the world, investigate it, and be entertained.
This isn’t about being bigger. It’s actually the opposite — it’s about being clearer.
How we’re working differently
We’re now saying no more often so that our yeses mean something.
We’re also being more intentional internally about culture, encouraging honest disagreement, clearer decision-making, and shared responsibility for outcomes. That can be uncomfortable, but it produces better work.
If you follow Zandland in 2026, you’ll see:
a clearer, more recognisable Zandland voice,
longer, deeper conversations through the podcast,
more direct engagement with our audience,
bigger, bolder collaborations with streamers and brands — on projects that feel distinctly ours.
I don’t have everything figured out. But I do feel clearer about the direction — and that’s the point of this year.
Why this matters
The world is full of content and misinformation. There is a desperate need for work that is both meaningful, true and commercially viable.
If we get this right, we get to keep making ambitious documentaries that don’t normally get made — on our own terms, as an independent company, for the long term.
That is the mission for 2026.
Thanks for being here, for paying attention, and for holding us to a high standard.
Speak soon
Ben