Product & Startup Builder
DOW Plunges After Trump Tweet
It's really quite hillarious watching cable news try to decipher the ramblings and tantrums of a psychopathic 5 year old man-child like it's business as usual and there's some rational strategic through-line to analyze and discuss. The world is on fire and they're still sitting in front of fake backdrops with pressed suits sporting shit-eating grins having a casual chat
Mutually Assured Destruction - Me vs Wife Edition
Her: "I can't find my favorite socks!"
Me: *joking* "That's because I threw them out. Now that we're married I can reveal all my weird and abusive behaviors. I like to keep you on your toes"
Her: "Oh yeah? Have you tried looking for your favorite sweater?"
Me: *beat* "That's an unnecessary escalation"
Things I Want To Teach My Kids
These are good basics. I'd add a lot to the list starting with...
- If you're confronted by something that seems wrong, consider there might be something new to learn
- If you learn something new, be curious and dig deeper
- If you love something, share it
- If you see something broken, fix it
- If you're upset, figure out precisely why and change it
- If you feel like you don’t deserve it or are afraid of it, lean in and take it anyway (That's the only way you grow and level up)
- If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands
FOCUS
yes, Yes, YES! Stop covering (and reacting) to bullshit and focus on the things that affect people. Who cares if he made an off-handed remark about being the chosen one (it was a totally benign brain fart about a specific issue with China) and FOCUS!
Tell Your Own Story
I come across a lot of startups who have a go-to-market strategy predicated on sales and marketing partnerships with partners.
The reality is, however, that in an early b2c business, If you can’t sell your own sh*t then it’s unlikely a partner can do it for you.
Partners are usually a great way to spend endless hours in negotiation and ongoing alignment struggles only to see a middling success when the partnership is executed.
Even then, all they usually do is magnify your own process. So if your process produces poor results then a partnership will just multiply that out. 0 x 10 is still Zero.
Instead, figure out how to tell your own story with a gorgeous website, explainer video, self-serve onboarding and training flow and more. Then figure out how to scale it with low hanging fruit like ads, content marketing, mailing lists, etc.
Then, and only then, lightweight co-marketing partnerships might be useful to supercharge these activities. Deep integrations should typically be left until later.
Google Docs
Sometimes it seems like 50% of my advisory work is convincing people to use Google docs.
Inspirational Speeches of Trek
People may dismiss it or scoff at it, but this show has an important message and it has shaped my morality, perspective and ideology. It broadened my horizons and helped make me who I am. I’ll be watching it until I die and along the way I’ll show it to my children and their children. It’s important - now more than ever.
Manipulating Speech
It continues to be amusing to me that people want to blame Facebook/social media (a neutral place for speech) when there are leaders and companies *dedicated* to manipulating that speech. Focus people.
The Democracy We Think We Live In
Another episode of the most important political news shows I know of. This and Vox. In this episode, they rightly highlight the general media’s culpability and fox’s leadership in the hate
Deciphering the White Power Movement
This episode is important and is the kind of the coverage that should be on CNN instead of the sarcasm and snark and political theater of debate panels
America's Mass Shooting PTSD
A nation and a generation of psychically scared people
Optimizing The Happiness Algorithm
Unhappiness is caused by the gap between your expectations and your experience.
If you expect coke and you get water you'll be unhappy. If you expect great service and you get bad service you'll be unhappy. If you expect loyalty and you get betrayal you will be unhappy.
The trick, then, is to calibrate both your expectations and your experience to minimize the distance between them.
In many ways this is a large part of the work of becoming an effective and successful adult who is in control of their emotional and practical journey.
Further, I find that, not only is my happiness inversely proportional to the size of the gap, but I also get a great deal of extra happiness in playing a little game of gap optimization. It gives me extra joy when I manage to make the gap consistently smaller though intentional work over time.
How?
I intentionly and continiously work on both sides of the equation. Expectation and experience.
On the Expectation side:
- Maintain good perspective and empathy about people's strengths, capabilities and incentives. This includes remembering that everyone is the hero or their own journey and going through their own internal emotional roller coaster ride that I can't possibly understand.
- Avoid people who consistently fail to meet my minimum bar expectations
- Avoid conflating my ideals and my "what I would have done" with what I actually expect to happen
- Quickly and consistently recalibrate my expectations based on the actual experience I'm having with someone or something
- As a last resort, I recognize that my expectations are still too high and simply lower them
On the Experience side:
The only way to consistently improve your experience is by effective communication and execution in the world. This includes (but not limited to).
- Pick the right people, projects and processes. Pay more if you have to. That's half the battle.
- Clearly communicating and getting alignment on my expectations with others. This includes clear contracts and project management tools
- Ensure incentives are aligned (recognizing that people will usually act in a way that they believe is in their best interest)
- Take ownership of my part in any failure
- Breathing and pacing yourself - having patience and endurance with yourself and others
- Quickly learn and adapt based on the feedback I'm getting from people and processes
What did I miss? How do you maintain your happiness?
Edit: It's interesting how many people have replied to this post arguing that you can only control the expectations side of this equation. The reason I wrote the post is precisely because I think too many people are ignoring their complicity with the experience side. By "just lowering your expectarions" you're essentially blaming others for "not being good enough" and you are not taking enough responsibility for your management and participation in an experience.
What Game Theory Teaches Us About War
Uncanny Ability to Make Friends
While having breakfast at the hotel restaurant...
Random lady to my wife: "See you later" *big smiles*
Me: "Who's that?"
Wife: "My friend!"
Me: "What!? When did you meet her?"
Wife: "Over there" *points to the buffet* "She was picking things and I was picking things so I said hello and we became friends"
There's no one my beautiful wife does not immediately connect with. One of the many things I love about her.
America Is Built On Back Of Slaves - Still
It used to be chains and cotton fields, then it was segregation and Jim crow, then the drug war and prisons, and now its psychological warfare. The goal? Maintain an oppressed slave class that is too scared and disempowered to fight back while the massive transfer of wealth and power continues.
We've Democratized Vanity
We've Democratized & Popularized Commentary, Performance & Vanity
Breathtaking Institutional Failure
A while ago I declared American democracy to be over. At the time I wasn’t aware of this. Further shocking evidence. The scope and scale of the institutional failure is breathtaking and tragic for us all.
Boris Johnson Will Be UK's New Prime Minister
The world continues to move to the right with populist demagogues winning elections. How does this play out? Who wins, who loses, where is safe to live? Where is the opportunity to make money?
Forrest Gump Explained
This is a fantastic analysis. I hadn’t recognized these amazing themes. They are exactly how I try (and often fail) to live my life. Yes, and. Being curious about opportunities. Open to receive. Did you see these themes? Do you agree with them?