7 Elements of a Balanced Day
A good day has a good balance of the activities that make up being and becoming. My best and most balanced days have most if not all of these seven elements: Work – you’ve got to get out there and create value […]
Ideas for Leveling Up Your Marketing Team: #1 – Share (Almost) Everything You’re Doing
Being questioned is hard. When other departments or employees in a company start to question our marketing teams, a natural response is to curl up into defensiveness mode. We assume that other teams just don’t understand us or our brilliant plans, […]
Don’t Be Afraid of Failing. Be Afraid of Failing Your Coworkers
It’s natural for young professionals to fear being fired. When we first start out, it seems like the end of the world – a black mark that will follow us forever. That’s probably an overblown fear. Plenty of people get fired and […]
5 of the Best Little Things About Returning Home
1. Hometown radio stations This might be the first bit of home you pick up as you drive down the last stretch of interstate before home. The song choices, the DJs, even the ads are all reminders of days spent […]
Curiosity Is the Enemy of Conceit
I am a selfish person, but occasionally my selfishness helps to temper my conceit. In a room full of strangers, my default mode is the curious interviewer. I ask people about themselves, about their plans, and about their experiences. If […]
Re-Earn Your Credibility As Your Company Grows
It’s easy to assume is that your credibility you’ve built in your work so far will continue to have purchasing power as your company scales. This is wrong. As frustrating as it is, professional reputation doesn’t transfer easily across work contexts and […]
5 Things I Do To Recharge After Long Workdays
Nights and mornings are times for me to both reset from long work days and prepare for long work days to come. As I grow further into my work, my evening recharge times have become precious. If you’re going for it during the […]
Question the Way Things Are Done, Then Do It Again Next Year
There’s an old saying that assuming “makes an ass out of you and me”. But assumptions in a business can make an ass out of a whole company if not examined carefully. This is why smart companies question the way they […]
To Make Better Startup Decisions, Tolerate More Pain
If your company gets a negative review, or a journalist pans your company, or a customer stops using your business, it’s going to hurt. In a small company, people notice these things even more. It’s no small matter for a […]
A Tip of the Hat to Moms Everywhere
Dear mothers of the world, You are complete badasses. It takes complete badassery to bring more human beings into the world. First, you have to put up with everyone patronizing you for your entire pregnancy, while you struggle to keep down the […]
Think Like a Good Capitalist (and Become More Generous)
Capital goods, n. – goods that are used in producing other goods, rather than being bought by consumers. Good capitalists realize the capital potential in everything. All of the things you own have – in some situation or for some person – the […]
Creative Constraints at Work in “The Lion King”
If the Lion King was made today, it would probably be much worse. When Disney created this film (which I recently rewatched for the first time in years) in the early 1990s, it didn’t have the plentiful, powerful CGI available […]
Beware the Internet Bystander Effect at Work
When I was getting certified for CPR*, I learned that a big no-no is just calling out to the general area around you for help. If you expect to get help, you have to look and be specific (and maybe […]
Idealism Is Different From Ideology
Some people and organizations feel they have to make a choice between idealism and dry pragmatism. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of them is the false equivalency of idealistic behavior and ideological behavior. To be […]
Tips for Avoiding Startup Miscommunication Disasters
Miscommunication is about as common as dirt in startup companies. Just as its the main source of conflict and plot in comedy, misunderstanding from miscommunication is one of the main sources of conflict between coworkers. If you want to keep the comedies […]
Beware the Emergency Excuse: Urgent Work, Multi-Competency, and Core Responsibility
Startups and big companies probably experience emergencies at about the same rate. The difference is in how those emergencies feel. Big companies have complex structures to reduce risk and absorb the impact of catastrophes. They have policies and escalation paths […]
“Avengers: Infinity War” Is A Cosmic Battle of Individualism vs. Collectivism (SPOILERS)
WARNING: this post contains spoilers. “Whoever destroys a soul [of Israel], it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life of Israel, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” – The Talmud One of the […]
Startup Scaling Takes Startup Peacemakers
Scaling a startup involves a lot of hiring. If you’re doing it right, you’re hiring intelligent, experienced, independent, and strong-willed people. If you are doing it right, many of your current people (including you) will be giving up control to those […]
Ignore Artist Drama and Enjoy Good Art
So there I was, listening to a ________* song as one does, when the Spotify’s app Genius integration decided to give me the backstory on one of the songs: “By now, everyone’s heard about _______’s beef with _______ and _______.” “OH, […]
“Cobra Kai” Is a Masterful Symphony of TV Tropes
I have on ongoing love affair with 80s culture, so unsurprisingly I’m a fan of the new Karate Kid sequel series Cobra Kai. This new series picks up decades after the first Karate Kid movie, with antagonist kid Johnny now […]
The Boring Truth About How To Get People To Do Things
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” I’ll grant that this folk saying has some wisdom, but it doesn’t quite match my experience. In my experience, you *can* make a horse drink. You just […]
This Job Is Going To Be Legendary: How Archetypes Keep Showing Up In Work
No normal kid has ever wanted to be a marketer. I certainly didn’t. I grew up reading legends and stories of monarchs, knights, adventurers, and wizards. If you’re anything like me and many kids, these were *our* ideal roles. It’s why many of […]
Meditation is Selfish
To really meditate is to acknowledge that – at this moment – nothing is more important than experiencing your own existence through your breath. That’s an astonishingly selfish* thing to do. And I think it’s great. We are surrounded by […]
Why You Need Multiple Ways of Seeing At Work
I’ve written before about how important it is to hold your metaphors loosely. This is especially important when you go into work. The metaphors you use to define your work and your workplace relationships will end up defining how see work and work […]
Grocery Store Rotisserie Chicken: the Savior of a Fast, Healthy Diet
I’m no health expert, but I am pretty experienced in eating bad diets. If you’re like me and your ambition is to get healthier in your eating – through moving away from carbs and toward a higher protein/fat mix* – […]
How I’m Detoxing from Darkness
I’ve been dwelling a lot on the darkness in the world lately. If you study history, study people, and study yourself, it’s hard to go very long at all without realizing the extent of human violence, lust, greed, laziness, and […]
Accountability GIFs – or “GIFcountability”
I’m a simple man. When I need accountability, I turn to Graphics Interchange Format files. My friends and I have a running group chat in Facebook’s Workplace app. We use it mainly to coordinate our weekly mastermind accountability meetings, where we discuss […]
The Heartbreak of Startup Scaling
Growing a business successfully is a lot like raising a child. It’s also a little like raising a *ton* of children. If you’ve ever felt ownership and kinship to your work, you know what I mean. The product you built […]
How to Get Young People to Take Good Advice
Young people have a very hard time taking good advice for two reasons: Most good advice is based on delayed gratification, which requires a long time horizon. Most young people do not have long time horizons. Remember back to when […]
Empathize with Victory, Not Just Suffering
Empathy has a reputation as a “bleeding heart” emotion. That’s probably right. But I think associating empathy only with suffering only provides half the picture of what empathy can be. When we have empathy, we can see imagine life through the eyes and […]