Essays

“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Dwight Eisenhower One of the primary frameworks I use in my work is something I call the business production function. It’s a diagnostic tool that lets me quickly look at the four big categories of business and asks: which one of these is the current limit? Which of these, if improved, will make the biggest impact on the … [Read more...]

  In his book, Average is Over, economist Tyler Cowen argues that marketing, not STEM fields is the most important skill set for the future. “It might appear that a masseuse is not much affected by computers, at least provided you are skeptical about these robots that now offer massages. Nonetheless, masseuses increasingly market themselves on Google and the internet. These masseuses fit the … [Read more...]

What is the optimal business strategy for your company? What is the next project you should work on? The answer, of course, is “it depends.” Your business strategy is dependent upon the stage of the business, it’s industry, and macroeconomic factors outside your control. But, I think that there are frameworks that can help you figure out the next step. The framework I've found most helpful … [Read more...]

Communities can maintain themselves based on intimate acquaintance up to groups of about 150 people, often referred to as Dunbar’s number. However, once a group passes this number, social dynamics change. You can’t run a thousand-person business the same way you run a one hundred-person business. You can’t run a one hundred-person business the same way you run a ten-person business. And you … [Read more...]

Tl;dr: The way to have creative business ideas is to live on the edge of the Overton Window. "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things" - Rene Descartes When Muhammad Ali died, he was lauded as a great American, a great athlete, a great man. Bill Clinton, Billy Crystal and Bryant Gumbel offered … [Read more...]

My favorite movie on marketing is You’ve Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The movie teaches one of the most valuable marketing lessons I've learned: what happens when speed of implementation meets the law of shitty click throughs. All you need to know about the movie is this: in 1998, people were excited to get email. Marketers who were using email marketing in 1998 often saw 90% … [Read more...]

“Unless you are breaking stuff, you aren’t moving fast enough” — Mark Zuckerberg Zuckerberg’s line is the most well-known example of a common piece of advice on how to get ahead at work or how to get ahead in life more generally: “move fast.” There is a tradeoff: move fast and break things or move slow and don’t break things. There is no move fast and don’t break things. If the answer is … [Read more...]

  If you’d like a copy of the documents I use to run my mastermind, you can download them by entering your email below An online mastermind group is a small number of trusted advisers who meet regularly with the goal of improving each other’s lives or careers. The collective brainpower of the group—otherwise known as a “mastermind”—is turned towards a single problem. A mastermind … [Read more...]

tl;dr: Learn how to plan your day and get organized. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.” – Annie Dillard How do we do our best work? There are two elements to understanding how the best work is done. First, there is identifying and understanding our personal strengths – finding the work only we can … [Read more...]

  Man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do … [Read more...]

  Two years ago, I was looking for a new project. I had read all the books on product market fit and finding your niche. I had grown a B2B eCommerce by over 500%  in the last two years, so I was at least competent at marketing. Great, I thought, marketing is the product then. I understood the importance of operating in fast growing markets, that a small market which was rapidly … [Read more...]

  Planning timelines have been getting shorter and shorter across every industry over the last couple decades. Companies that used to make ten-year plans now make five-year plans. Companies that used to make five-year plans now make three-year plans.  Slowly, individuals and organizations are giving up the Luddite Hope - “that it is possible to enjoy the benefits of non-zero-sum … [Read more...]

In January of 2015, I wrote an article on How and Why I’m writing a book in 2015. In July of the same year, I released that book, The End of Jobs. Here’s a brief breakdown of what happened in the first six months of the book's life: 5000 copies sold in the first month (Over 30,000 copies in circulation within six months) #1 Amazon Best Seller in the Kindle Business and Money Category. … [Read more...]

    What's been the value of The End Of Jobs so far? Money? Authority? Connections? Recognition? The experience of writing? That was the conclusion to an email a friend sent me last week. In truth, I'm still not sure what the full implications are, but my ego thinks it’s all been pretty cool. My hope was to sell five thousand copies by the end of the year. Thanks in large … [Read more...]

“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” – Charlie Jones I have no formal business credentials nor have I taken a single class on business in my life. My business education has been a combination of my own experiences and the books I’ve read. I am continually amazed by, and grateful for, all the authors who have written … [Read more...]

  “Thank God for the French Army” Churchill announced confidently in early 1939 to the British people. The Maginot Line, established along the French/German border, mirrored the same strategy that kept the Germans out of Paris for the length of the First World War. Equipped with state-of-the-art fortifications, it was impenetrable from tank attacks and air raids. A few months later, … [Read more...]

  That aunt and uncle that you haven’t talked to in five years are smiling. A pair of dark spaces fragment their not-so-toothy grins. Your parents are smiling. You’re wearing a medieval-styled dress with colored sashes covered in Latin. You can feel the pride and excitement in the air. The promise of the future. You ascend the raised platform and walk across the stage, deftly hiding … [Read more...]

    How often have you said: “No I haven’t read it. I’ve been meaning to though!” I started making a list of books to read my junior year in college in Evernote. “What a useful tool. I’ll start a list of books to read here and just delete the note after I’ve read them!” As of last night, that list is now sitting at a cozy 527. I was doing my New Year planning this week and … [Read more...]

    In April 1916, Robert Updegraff published his first ever article in the Saturday Evening Post. Titled “Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Businessman,” the article was converted into a book and heralded by the New York Times as “the handbook for the young man who is going to seek his fortune in the advertising business.” Jack Trout, author of the New York Times … [Read more...]

Ever get the feeling nagging at the back of your head that there’s something you’re supposed to do, but you can't remember what it is? Or you know you're supposed to ask something specific to the person you're talking to? Or you've got so many open loops in that you aren't sure what the logical next step is? I used to. I don't very much anymore. I've always been a bit of the absent minded … [Read more...]

Optionality is an idea advanced by Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile. At the most basic level, optionality just means having lots of options. If you develop a skill with many possible job opportunities, you have more optionality than someone who develops a skill that only has one or two job opportunities. The advantage of optionality is that as the world grows increasingly difficult to … [Read more...]

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle By forming good habits, we can free our minds to advance to really interesting fields of action. - William James, quoted in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work I have an admittedly cultish obsession with personal productivity systems, daily habits to the point of staying up late reading about the daily … [Read more...]

How To Write A Standard Operating Procedure I read a post from Dylan Hassinger on a private entrepreneurship forum I'm a member of that compared business to software at some point last year. That analogy has stuck with me ever sense. I don't have a software background, though so I like to envision businesses as manufacturing machines. You put something in one end and then it goes through all … [Read more...]

I flew into Bangkok on a Wednesday. It was not somewhere that I thought I would ever go a month prior. At the time, I was working at an online marketing agency in Memphis. I stopped writing to focus on some more monetizable side projects, but the majority of my energy and focus were going into my work. I was relatively happy with my situation. I didn't particularly want to be in Memphis, but … [Read more...]