“Hey, could you share our podcast interview on Twitter? I drafted a Tweet for you with a clip I took from the show.”

That’s a thoughtful, respectful gesture.

Contrast that to, “Hey, can you promote our episode?”

Annoying, taxing, and presumptuous.

Asking people for open-ended action puts a ton of work on their plate. Even if the action of Tweeting is small, the existential overhead of needing to interrupt mental flow to formulate what to say isn’t. Judgement and decision-making consume a lot of brain calories.

When you make it easy by taking out all the guesswork, it shows respect.

A lot of people feel weird doing this. Their instinct is to leave everything up to the other person, because it seems more deferential, and therefore, respectful. Or they hit them with a raft of options. Both are sub-optimal.

Here are some common examples.

Example 1:

“Thanks to joining the event! You can book whatever hotel you want nearby.”

Open-ended and unhelpful. The recipient has to take on too much search cost.

Example 2:

“Thanks for joining the event! Below is a list of ten different hotels in walking distance. I’ve also provided a link to a review site where you can compare them. Some have airport shuttles, so you may want to consider that. I don’t know if you’re staying for the whole event, but feel free to book extra nights and we will cover. You can either send booking info to me for payment, or pay yourself and be reimbursed.”

Over-detailed and unhelpful. The recipient has to take on the time cost of reading and making sense of it, and the decision-making cost of choosing multiple things from a wall of options.

Example 3

“Thanks for joining the event! I’ve booked you a room at the Grand Hotel where most of the speakers are staying. Info attached.”

Incredibly helpful. Stress-relieving, no work to be done, info can be archived for later if needed.

What about when making things easy is the wrong move?

I was trying to think of times when making it easy is not the right move.

The first thing I thought of was my kids. Sometimes I do the legwork to make things easy and they are annoyed and offended.

“Dad! I get it! You don’t have to gas up and start the weed-whacker for me!”

These moments seem to be when my actions make them feel like I do not trust them, or think them incapable or inferior. Making things easy isn’t always best.

So which situations call for making things easy on the other party out of respect for their time and which call for throwing them in the deep end out of respect for their ability?

It’s not a perfect heuristic, but roughly: The party with the lower opportunity cost should take on the brunt of the work.

Kids or entry-level employees feel patronized when a parent or boss makes things easy (except maybe in first-time training) because they implicitly know that the value of other things that person could be doing is higher. For them to take time to write their email for them or start the trimmer is kind of a slap in the face. It’s feels like they’re saying, “I’ve got to delay my important work just to teach you idiots how to do your job.”

They may be intending nothing of the sort, but the higher-opportunity cost party needs to recognize the desire to be trusted and respected by the lower opportunity cost party.

Similarly, when you don’t make things easy on someone with higher opportunity cost (or at least higher in the specific domain of the activity), you signal incompetence and/or lack of respect for the value of their time.

You’re only as good
As what you create today
Always the next one

Some meetings leave you drained, depleted, and despondent.

Other meetings leave you energized, excited, and enlivened.

It’s the same for any activity. Some add to your sense of life, some subtract from it.

Paying close attention to these feelings (without getting bitter at or idolizing their causes) and learning the patterns and principles in each activity that leads to them is worthwhile. Once you can start to identify the stuff that makes you like your life less, you can start to reduce and eliminate it.

It’s important to distinguish life-giving from easy, and life-stealing from hard.

Lots of the best stuff is hard. Ever watch a kid do the really hard work of overcoming fear or lack of confidence to try something new like ride a bike? It’s brutal. But the glow on their face once they’ve done it is unmistakable evidence that energy was added by the action.

Lots of the energetically vampiric stuff is easy. Just going along with the flow, taking the path of least resistance will put you in life-sucking situations on the regular. Like taking that government job. Washington, D.C. is the worst city in the country because almost everything everyone does there drains life energy from them. Ride the metro at rush hour. Just being near it starts to drain your sense of life.

Without getting too frustrated on the one hand or self-righteous on the other, I try to dispassionately observe which kinds of activities and individuals are a net gain for my enjoyment of being alive. I try to learn why. I try to allocate more of my time there, and less everywhere else.

That’s exactly why I write every day. It’s one of those activities that never fails to add more energy than it takes.

It’s time to tell you about my newest venture!

A little setup on the crazy journey from Praxis, to Crash, to Career Hackers, and now PartnerHacker.

And then I dive into WTF I would be doing a company in the B2B SaaS Partnerships space.

It’s way more interesting than you might think. We’re telling the story and creating the narrative for an emerging category – a decade-defining shift in the digital age.

Check it out on the podcast or YouTube.

I like to joke that the single greatest crime anyone can commit is being unfunny.

I’m only partially joking.

There is something about having a sense of humor that conveys a humanity others can connect with. It’s a litmus test for how human you are.

In an era filled with automation and weird AI-generated content, humor – especially satire – is an increasingly valuable signal of genuine humanity.

Arthur Koestler has an interesting book called, The Act of Creation, which is an exploration of human creativity. He focuses on the “Eureka” moment in science, art, and humor. New inventions and artistic masterpieces make sense. But humor?

Koestler describes the laughter-inducing moment of any joke as the intersection of two matrices of thought that are totally separate. When they unexpectedly collide, the moment of delight, realization, or shock produces awareness of some kind of absurdity in the human condition and we laugh.

Humor – especially satire – is an incredibly nuanced thing. Comedians make their mark by expertly observing things so universally agreed upon as true that audiences will immediately get it, but so universally hidden from everyone’s view that the act of revealing them is a surprise. That is a tough combo for AI.

AI is based on vacuuming up massive quantities of information shared by humans and emulating and repeating the structures and patterns. Humor is based on insights humans have about the things other humans don’t say – ideas, behaviors, and beliefs you didn’t know you recognized until someone said it. The source material is unseen insight, not shared data.

I’ve noticed more and more of the web is being eaten up by algorithmically produced content. Not only is it eerie in the subtle ways it’s just a bit off, it’s never unironically funny.

I’ve also noticed plenty of (I think?) real humans who are increasingly machine-like in their lack of humor.

Maybe we won’t turn AI into humanlike entities. Maybe algorithms will turn humans into AI-like entities.

If so, lack of funnyness would be the greatest casualty.

Companies have principles. Implicit or explicit, good or bad, they exist whether you want them to or not.

The principles come from the people, starting with the founders. What they embody, what they reward, and what they hold up as ideal will become company principles more than what’s written in a list or put on a poster in the lunch room.

The power of language should never be underestimated. The words used to highlight these embodied principles matter. A lot. So does the frequency and media used to do so.

Company principles are the kind of things that everyone on the team knows as phrases and quips always used in convos, slack channels, etc. The kind of thing you almost get tired of hearing, but you know isn’t phony because you also see it play out.

Explicitly putting these principles into words, pointing out when people embody them, and reflecting on them in memos and messages is a good practice. (As long as it’s not phony or done out of fear, panic, or damage control mode.)

I try to do this somewhat regularly in order to point to the standard. Publicly acknowledging who we are as a company helps me hold myself to the standard.

An example of a company principle I love and state frequently is, “I did” is better than “we should”.

Another is, Learn out loud.

Another is, Make them famous. (them being customers, partners, users, fans).

Here’s a slack post to the team yesterday about some other company principles:

—————–

Openness, generosity, abundance, and joy.

Those don’t sound like business principles, but they are. They are cornerstones, and allow for genuine growth and success.

If we approach our work and our market and our content and our events in a tight-fisted way, always ensuring we get enough credit, we will miss opportunity.

If we spend energy being threatened by what others do, we lose energy that could be spent doing something great ourselves.

We must always maintain a posture of openness, genuine joy at the success of others, a non-threatened demeanor, and a sense of playfulness and fun.

The day we get pulled into the muck of gossip and infighting, angling and posturing, fear and threat is the day we stop having fun. The day we stop having fun is the day we stop being fun. The day we stop being fun is the day we stop growing. The day we stop growing is the day we rot.

Above the fray is the only way!

I’m beyond delighted that this is our norm, our culture, and our default posture. Let’s always lean into that.

The easiest way to be deceived is by your own accomplishments.

The best way to lose this deceit is through suffering.

Suffering strips away the illusion omnipotence.

I’ve met many people on a rapid upward trajectory with a very high likelihood of achieving success in business. They have confidence, swagger, and an unshakable belief in their own genius. Their eyes show little sign of suffering. They are not yet acquainted with sorrow.

I’ve also met many people who have achieved massive success in business. People who have built billion dollar empires from nothing. Most of them are humble. Even though they are proud of what they’ve done, they deflect credit for their accomplishments and have a genuine, “I don’t know exactly how I did it” demeanor. Their eyes reveal a deep familiarity with suffering.

If you’re a motivated, driven person, it’s easy to get high on your own bullshit. This isn’t all bad. As an impetus for taking action, belief bordering on delusion is an asset.

But when you begin to retroactively ascribe your own genius to all your success, removing the myriad variables you can’t predict or understand, you set yourself up for problems. Not only that, you will lack a deeper understanding of your own and your fellow humans condition.

If you’ve been through a multitude of sorrows, you are unable to maintain such surety of your own brilliance. You understand the extent to which “All is meaningless under the sun”, and you humbly seek to do your best, listen, observe, and learn.

I don’t know if there’s any way to achieve this proper form of humility and wisdom except through suffering. I also know suffering alone does not guarantee it. Sometimes suffering is so great people don’t bring anything back with them.

But I know that when I look into the eyes of someone acquainted with suffering, there is a strength, humility, and mercy. There is a power they possess without trying.

I can’t seem to quit daily blogging for long.

I’ve been doing more writing than ever with the new gig at PartnerHacker, but it’s not quite the same as showing up to the blank screen on the personal blog and hammering something out.

So, here goes again.

As always, I have no plans, goals, ideas, or directions.

I’m just going to write.

If you want to make fun of hipsters (and who doesn’t?) there’s a lot of low hanging fruit. But there’s also something redeeming and much needed in the hipster ethos.

When hipsters do something, they DO it.

If they’re going to make coffee, they make the shit out of that coffee.

If they’re going to eat a sandwich with a pickle, they craft a work of art.

If they’re going to send a party invitation on homemade paper made from sawdust in the shop where they whittled a spoon and written in calligraphy with ink from a squid they caught and a quill they hand-plucked, well, you know.

My wife and I were driving by a new housing development recently. The houses were well-designed and lovely. Except they were oriented in relation to each other, the road, the rising and setting sun, and the natural slope of the land in the most absurd, brutalist, ramshackle way imaginable. If there’s a word for anti-feng shui, it was that.

I commented on the tragedy. A developer took the time to build new, lovely houses, but gave no care or attention to the layout of the neighborhood.*

This is where hipsters are right.

If you’re going to do something, put care into the craft. Learn and know the principles undergirding the craft. Have pride of ownership. Take joy in the details.

If you’ve ever been through a neighborhood built on the principles of life-giving design, you’ll know it immediately. Your soul will feel safe and at home. You won’t feel conflicts between your natural tendencies and the lay of the land. It’s the feeling of a beckoning, winding path, framed with foliage. The opposite of running from the blazing sun in an open parking lot.

You can get away with not caring.

The market is broad enough and bustling enough and enough consumers don’t mind. You can throw together a mediocre version of a house and in a decent market it will sell.

But you can get away with caring too.

And the extra time, effort, and money tends to pay off in the long run. People who thought it was silly when just a theory suddenly start wanting to live in the lovely neighborhood, or eat the artisan bread, once they’ve experienced it. The market rewards care, craftsmanship, and production based on sound principles.

If both can work, why do the one that brings less pride, joy, and fulfilment to yourself and the world?

Just a touch of hipsterdom can elevate the daily grind.

---

*In fairness to developers, it is often damn-near impossible to create lovely stuff in the face of the ham-fisted, idiotic illogic of government regulations, planning boards, inspectors, and pretend-environmentalist bureaucrats.

I’ve had some interesting conversations lately around the terror of funnels.

Companies love them, because they make it easier to manage things and justify projections.

Customer hate them, because they can smell when they are being shoved down one and being widgetized isn’t a fun or natural experience.

But how do you create a mental model/map that’s more accurate AND more useful?

It’s a lot harder than you’d think.

I explore why in this article, a sort of shot across the bow to get ecosystem-focused people thinking and talking about how to visualize their view of the world in a way that makes building and managing a company possible.

Check out the article.

This was an incredibly fun conversation.

I often do writing and editing with other people. And I’m not very picky about style, approach, or tone.

I’m very opinionated and I’ll definitely root out needless words or what seems to be flabby writing.

But in terms of the content, if someone thinks it should open a different way or go in a different direction, I’m usually pretty amenable and relaxed (unless it’s a truly terrible idea).

I was asking myself why today. Why am I not more stingy about exactly how a piece of writing should be done?

It’s because I don’t know the best way to write. Nobody does.

There are a lot of ways to be a good writer. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

If you’re looking for the formula, you won’t find it. The way to get good is to do a ton of writing consistently, and double down on the stuff that starts to feel really good and genuine for you.

The way to do bad writing is to copy mediocre writers or spend too much time trying to find formulas.

Just because there are lots of ways to be a good writer doesn’t mean good writing is common or easy. But it’s uncommon and difficult in the exact same way being in good shape is uncommon and difficult.

It’s the steady, consistent act of doing the work. It’s not some secret sauce or unreachable genius.

People dramatically underestimate the power of words in business.

Words are the building blocks of narratives.

Narratives constrain and expand what lenses and frameworks are possible.

Lenses and frameworks are the boundaries for ideas and conversations.

Ideas and conversations determine strategies and tactics.

Strategies and tactics drive action.

Action drives outcomes.

It all flows downstream from words, and the ways they are arranged into narratives.

The wrong vocabulary leads to the wrong narrative which is the ultimate limiter on everything that follows.

If you think this is an exaggeration, read George Lakoff’s “Metaphors we live by”, or dive into research around the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and similar phenomena.

Words are what separate humans from every other creature on this earth. It’s no wonder we’re also the only ones who make tools and build businesses.

It starts with words.

I got this framework in my head several years back about three dominate motivation types: average, elite, and ascendant.

It was a way to work through and explain patterns of behavior I observed in people, and some paradoxical things like how low ambition people seemed to have more in common with the absolute highest, almost effortless achievers (though not always in visible ways) than with those who appear at or near the top but strived really hard.

Tim Grover’s book about athletes, Relentless, helped spark the a-ha moment and gave me some tools to play around with. So I decided to do a sort of serialized book, writing articles one at a time focusing on how these three types played out in specific contexts, and by the end, have something like a full picture.

I intended to write maybe 50 of these and publish a full-fledged book. But after the first several, my writing took me too many different directions, both work and personal, and I never returned to the job.

I recently stumbled on these articles again, and rather than try to resurrect the full book project after all these years and with the ideas no longer fresh and burning in my mind, I decided to just put what I had together into an ultra-short booklet so they’d at least be contained somewhere.

(I asked participants at Praxis if anyone wanted to take on the task of putting it into a PDF, and four people volunteered! Thanks to all four. I ended up using the design by Benjamin Bramblett – huge shout out!)

This video got me thinking.

Every company I’ve started, website I’ve built, book I’ve published, or project I’ve launched began without any measurement or attribution or automated funnel or sophisticated lead capture.

They began with me talking, writing, podcasting, learning out loud, creating a digital body of work, community, and vision around a certain set of ideas, products, or services.

None of that stuff can really be measured. It’s “influence” or “brand”, which sounds fluffy and silly. But it has been everything in these endeavors.

The more sophisticated stuff is great. Once you have some traction, slapping some science on the reach and customer journey helps improve conversions at the margin. But the bulk of the work isn’t at the margin, it’s at the foundation.

The unmeasurable stuff is the dynamite that blows the rockface to bits. The automated, attributable stuff is the cleanup crew combing through the rubble and sorting the results into appropriate buckets for processing.

You don’t make a bang or create a category with finely tuned marketing stacks.

You do it by building reputation and trust in a relevant ecosystem through content, social capital, and value creation.