I was talking to my Crash colleague Dave last night about the questions investors ask of companies.

They want to know what the problem is, how big the market is, why the time is now, and why you are the team to do it. That last one is my favorite because it’s the easiest for me to answer.

There are several ways to answer ‘Why you’? One is to demonstrate that no one in the world has more expertise in the area. You can show your unique skills and experience that make you the obvious choice to solve the problem. That’s not my approach because it’s not what I believe.

There’s someone out there better than me at everything I’m sure. There’s someone with a more impressive skill list or set of experiences or markers of expertise.

But there’s no one in the world with the calling I have.

I answer with the truth. Why me? Because I was born to do this, have been relentlessly pursuing it my whole life, and will do it until the day I die and neither you nor anyone else can stop me. And I will succeed one way or another. That’s why me.

My purpose in life is to help make people free. And the loss of freedom usually takes its first biggest step at that point when people are trying to figure out their careers. It’s the easiest time to get scared, give in to social status pressure, and take a passive posture where you set the tone for a life dictated by others instead of you. It’s too easy to do stuff you hate or float downstream just to get by because you don’t feel in control of the process of finding and getting a job.

But you are in the driver’s seat. Always. You don’t need anyone else’s bullshit credentials or status or approval. You are “Me, Inc.” and you can take control and learn what you want on your own terms, and create value in the market by boldly selling your skills, and craft a career one meaningful step at a time.

That’s why Crash exists. To help people discover and do what makes them come alive so they can live a little more free.

I’ve spent my whole life on this calling. It’s taken many forms as I’ve learned and tested and tried everything. And it will never stop.

I often feel like Frodo Baggins. All these powerful Wizards and Soldiers and Kings and Elves know there’s a big problem. I’m just a dude from the Shire with no particular expertise or weaponry, but I’m the one who’s gonna carry that effing ring into the fire.

That’s why me.

I will never stop beating this horse even when it’s dead.

Now is not the time to buy a third party stamp of approval. Now is the time to build a body of work that shows your skills and broadcast that signal to the world.

Proof of work > proof of paper. Build a better signal. Create value and find a way to prove it. Learn outloud. Work outloud. Build a campaign around your job hunt.

You are your own company so start taking charge and acting like it.

Here’s a bunch of stuff I’ve written on this:

View at Medium.com

 

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com

I was talking to my brother today about all kinds of crazy startup stuff, and how things can get stressful. He said he has a list he comes back to in this order:

Family
Health
Customers
Team
Investors
Other stuff

He said he does a mental rundown of this list to see if things are going OK. If the first few items are off, nothing else will really matter much anyway. If you’ve got the first few in a good spot, then move down to the next one, then the next. Don’t worry about the bottom as much as the top, and move from most to least important. On rare occasions, the list might click all the way down. Most of the time it won’t, but if you can keep those top three in a good spot, the rest is manageable.

I’m going to use this.

1. Discovery
2. Building
3. Launching

We use these as a framework for career launch at Crash, but it applies much more broadly. In fact, I think this is the best pattern for pretty much any kind of leveling up.

Discovery is the exploration phase. This is where judgement is a killer, competition and FOMO are unhelpful, and social status seeking will mess you up. This should be a raw, honest, fun, optimistic phase where you say ‘yes’ to everything that’s not a ‘hell no!’. You’re getting feedback from the world, not just by reflection, but my practice, more practice, then maybe a little reflection on your practice, then more practice. This is a narrowing process. You don’t start with a tight target, you test stuff until you whittle down to a small enough direction to take action on.

Building is where you go all-in on what you discovered. Don’t worry about it being perfect, just dive in and build the skills you need and a way to convey and communicate those skills with the people who are the best to work with. This is also a hands-on process, and one where you turn your interests and ideas into tangible artifacts that can be seen and shared. In this phase competition and gamification and specific challenges or progress tracking become valuable tools.

Launch is the operationalization of those specific skills you built. Once you’ve sold your ability to the right people, you win opportunities to put them into practice. Here’s the focus phase. Here is where you should tighten up and say ‘no’ unless it’s a ‘hell yes!’. This is where you get narrow and specialize and tune out the rest of the world.

I dream of reading

All day without distraction

When it comes it sucks

There are thousands of ancient structures that no one knows anything about.

From elaborate underground cities to buried megaliths, there are countless pieces of the past that no one knows who created, when, why, or how. We are utterly stumped. Hundreds of times over.

And that’s just with the stuff that’s been found.

New amazing things are discovered all the time. Not just little things that add detail to notions of the past. Things that make previous theories impossible.

Only twenty years ago, an entire Egyptian city declared by all the academic experts to be a myth, was found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Much like the city of Troy, it was found not by a “professional”, but a hobbyist who was more dedicated than any tenure-seeking conservative with little curiosity. A businessman from France raised the funds and spent years combing the seafloor while the academics sat on their asses. He found temples, statues, jewelry, pottery, canals, docks, and hundreds of ships. The find proved that Egyptians were seafaring and robust trade with Greece was ongoing.

A few decades ago in Turkey a site was found 50 times larger than Stonehenge. It’s still 95% buried, but what has been uncovered is a complete knockdown of all previous textbook history. It looks to be nearly 12,000 years old and way more sophisticated than anything that age is supposed to be. Nobody really understands it.

Also recently discovered was the largest yet crater from an apparent asteroid strike under the ice in Greenland. This thing was bigger than the one thought to have killed off the dinosaurs, but appears to have occurred much more recently.

This is just scratching the surface. How many places under the ocean or buried in earth are there? Whale bones have been found in the Sahara. Virtually none of the Sahara has ever been explored or excavated. What else could be there?

We know so little about our own history, let alone the history of plants, animals, and the climate of this planet. Accepted history covers a laughable sliver and does a laughable job even of that. I’ll never forget when I worked in the Michigan state capitol and would see various events and protests. The next day I’d read coverage in the newspaper. More often than not, the coverage described (and sometimes even depicted with fudged photos) events that were nothing at all like what I witnessed firsthand. That was one day later, from a source of the same language with a shared culture in an age of internet access. And still, what was printed was accepted by the majority of Michiganders yet it was woefully inaccurate.

Remove any ability for counter-narratives. Throw in different, even dead languages. Throw in radically different cultural contexts and ways of describing things. Oh, and add not a few days or weeks or even years, but centuries or millennia.

The idea that history paints an accurate picture or that archaeology can map out the details of the past is beyond ludicrous.

Of course we must try! But we should be humble enough to see these as best guesses given current information, never as “consensus” (a word that does not belong in a serious and ongoing intellectual discipline, but to religions and dead lines of thought).

A curious mind should rejoice at all this mystery. Somehow the most credentialed are almost without exception threatened by it. They gave up the journey of discovery when they got on the road to status and tenure.

Stay curious and hungry. We don’t know anything yet! Perhaps someday I’ll go full Indiana Jones and explore some of this stuff.

Alright I’m gonna have to do today’s post from my phone again. I’m sitting in SLC waiting to board a flight home to CHS.

I was supposed to be here two more days then to San Francisco for 11 days to finish up the 500 Startups program I’ve been in all summer with the Crash team. It culminates in Demo Day, and I love pitching!

But it looks unlikely I’ll be able to.

The past three weeks have been hellish physically. I noticed a small painful spot on my thyroid and some swelling. Then I got a nasty virus in my respiratory system and my lymph nodes ballooned up like crazy. I’ve been waking up every night at around 3 and not falling back asleep. Sweating, chills, and my mind racing. Startups can be stressful but this anxiety was like something else.

The virus subsided but my throat kept swelling to the point where it hurts to swallow. I decided I’d get a thyroid checkup after SF.

I flew the family back to SC Monday. Turned around Thursday for SLC then SF. On the flight I almost passed out and my heart was going crazy.

I landed, ate, and slept a few hours. It was worse when I woke up so I went to the ER. It was a good thing.

My thyroid is producing way too much thyroxin. Hence the shaking, sweating, anxiety, lack of sleep, and heart pounding.

They got my heart rate down with beta blockers and told me get to an endocrinologist ASAP to figure out what the lumps are causing it. Toxic nodules most likely. Likely very treatable but pretty rough until treated. They said I should get home and get it fixed and not risk two more weeks in SF.

I was discharged and went to bed. Slept badly but beta blockers kept my heart rate to a reasonable level.

I decided to give the talk I came here to give. I got oatmeal, filled my prescription, and felt like shit. But when I entered the room for the talk, it lifted my spirits. I gave the talk and enjoyed it and forgot about my health for an hour. It was awesome. It boosted my morale.

I was frustrated about the last several weeks being so disrupted. I did 25 meetings but all I could think about was sleeping. I’m frustrated about not finishing up the 500 Startups program. I’m frustrated about so much distraction and unknowns and cost and all of it. And I’m tired of feeling crappy.

But giving a talk about creating a career that makes you come alive made me come alive. Great questions and chat afterwards from a great audience helped a ton.

So thanks to everyone who helped get me thinking about something else!

Time to board. Hopefully before long I’ll be back in a normal routine.

Probably my single hardest post to get out in 7 years of regular blogging.

Someday I’ll be proud of this one.

I’ve been dealing with pretty bad health the last three weeks and it’s made me realize just how much my mind demands of my body.

I’ve also been wrestling through a lot of pretty intense and stressful stuff on the mental side. Startups are like that. When my health is sub-par, my brain has to work a lot harder, like an engine without enough coolant. My sleep is all messed up, and I find my mind racing like crazy. I have to try to eat and rest and create conditions for my brain to do its processing, and it kinda takes over my life.

When working through really tough problems and a web of decisions big and small, my brain basically needs the rest of me to serve it. I have to figure out what it needs, deliver it, and get out of the way. It’s a big pain and not very fun.

In times like these, I fantasize about being a hermit. But really these times aren’t sustainable anyway. I think there’s probably a ten year window where I can sustain a lot of these brain-sucking phases, and I’m halfway through it. Since I started Praxis, probably a third to half of the time I’m in one of these taxing times on mind and body. I would say I’ve learned to deal with it better, but the intensity ratchets up every time I learn to handle one level smoothly.

I suppose if my brain was bigger it wouldn’t have to work so hard. Or I don’t know, maybe it would have to work harder. The amazing thing is 1) that the answers are usually buried in my head somewhere, and, 2) that they are not readily accessible and articulatable.

It’s crazy how many things in life we have the power to solve, and it’s just about unearthing and articulating that latent power.

I couldn’t be more excited to announce a new CEO for Praxis.

Read the announcement here.

I’m flying my family back to Charleston, SC from San Francisco. Yes, traveling with four kids is pretty crazy.

I’ve got a few minutes of WiFi left and a small window with kids sleeping or occupied. Trying to keep current on Slack and emails so tomorrow isn’t too crazy!

Decided to pop into my WordPress app now and hammer out today’s post. I’ve gotta say, I am really, really looking forward to finishing this summer SF experience and getting back to a sensible routine and EST so I can sit down with a cup of coffee and my Moby playlist and start the day right with a decent blog post.

I’ve been squeezing in some pretty lame excuses for posts. Still, feels better than quitting. Keeping some semblance of daily commitment consistent amid all kinds of events and calls and travel and craziness helps keep me grounded.

Ok. Time’s about up. Tomorrow I’ll be back in SC. Then a few days later in SLC. Then SF for a week and a half. Then SC again hopefully for a long while!

Heard of a saint who

Called his body “brother ass”

Right now I relate

We’ve been spending the summer in San Francisco (or as rich people would say, “summering”). Here’s a few assorted observations:

1. There are almost no children here.

2. There are tons of dogs and no one cleans up after them. But the dogs never bark.

3. The only old people here are either homeless or in Chinatown.

4. It is a very quiet city for its size.

5. There is unimaginable filth on many sidewalks and no one seems to care. I can’t imagine if the weather here were really hot, what would happen to all that foul filth.

6. No one honks their horn or drives aggressively.

7. No one jay walks. Ever. Even when there’s no traffic at all.

8. The people are pretty socially awkward.

9. There are no bugs.

10. Few lawns, but where there is grass it is never mowed.

11. It never rains.

12. People wear winter jackets even when it’s sunny and warm.

13. The police here are by far the most relaxed and humane I have ever seen in any city. Their presence is minimal. No traffic cops. Rarely see police. When you do they are generally being somewhat commonsensical dealing with a crazy person.

14. There is lots of parking. We never really have trouble finding a spot even on the weekends.

15. Every single corner market no matter how crappy makes good deli sandwiches.

16. Neighborhoods less than a mile apart can differ several degrees in temperature due to elevation and fog.

17. There is no Wal-Mart and really no nice big clean grocery stores of any kind. Shopping here with a family is a pain.

18. It’s awesome to be able to walk everywhere (once you acclimate to the hills).

19. Walking a mile or two is often better than taking an Uber because every street is a stop and the drivers herk and jerk and make you carsick.

20. Uber and Lyft drivers don’t know how to get anywhere despite the city being incredibly logical and easy to navigate.

21. People here think the rest of the country hates or envies them. In reality most of the country doesn’t know anything about the Bay Area or have any opinion on it.

22. A surprising number of people here grew up here and never left.

23. People here all pretend to think recycling is really important to them even though a) the slightest common sense and research reveals it’s a net resource loss and b) no one actually does it. There are multiple bins labeled by type of garbage but they all always have everything in them. Everyone secretly knows no one is sorting this stuff and it doesn’t matter anyway but everyone pretends it’s a really big self righteous deal.

I’ve come to appreciate rituals more.

I have never been sentimental or cared much for ritual or tradition. And I still do less than the average person. But as I’ve gotten older, I have come to appreciate life transitions more and understand the profound mental struggle that can come with it. I have found rituals useful, meaningful, and even necessary to close out one chapter and open another.

I think humans still don’t know how to use language. We can write and speak, but our brains contain so much more than we know how to process verbally. Symbolism becomes necessary to process what we cannot with logic and language.

I’ve learned to let myself celebrate wins more, take a minute to process losses more, and even engage in symbolic actions to make a kind of ritual out of big transitions of all kinds. Even if I don’t fully understand why, it works to make my life better.

I’m a pretty radical guy. I’m comfortable having ideas that a lot of people disagree with.

Still, I sometimes find myself slowly slipping into trying to build stuff everyone likes. This is dangerous. If it’s not polarizing, it’s not transformational. If nobody misunderstands or dislikes it, it’s not doing enough.

A good reminder.