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March 5 - July 14, 2018
In other words, the most obscure, under-selling book, song, or idea is only one click away from the best-selling book, song, or idea.
One of the many new innovations serving the true fan creator is crowdfunding.
Read Small Giants by Bo Burlingham for some fantastic examples of companies that choose to be the best rather than the biggest.
you have true fans, it’s your responsibility to consider (and test) higher-priced, higher-value options outside of the $10 paradigm.
You do not have to sacrifice the integrity of your art for a respectable income. You just need to create a great experience and charge enough.
When we pitched a blogger without a relationship, less than 1% even responded. With introductions, our success rate was over 50%.
Questions are your pickaxes. Good questions are what open people up, open new doors, and create opportunities.
‘Why are the banks loaning money to people who can’t possibly pay it back?’
“You seem very confident now. Was that always the case?”
“When you do X [or “When Y happened to you”], what does your internal self-talk sound like? What do you say to yourself?”
We All Begin with Suck
What we’ve found is that the first version always sucks. I don’t mean this because I’m self-effacing or that we’re modest about it. I mean it in the sense that they really do suck.”
Same thing with software engineering - that is why we have refactoring!
“All of this came about because there was a new translation of The Iliad, by Robert Fagles, and it was in verse form. The thing is, I couldn’t read it. So this woman at a dinner said: ‘Don’t read it, listen to it.’
I definitely need to do this with Iliad.
For several years, Ed listened to Teaching Company lectures every day during his commute:
Because they think of art as learning to draw or learning a certain kind of self-expression. But in fact, what artists do is they learn to see.”
“When You Complain, Nobody Wants to Help You”
This is somewhat... True.
you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people.
“If anybody is going to go out and pitch investors, my advice is to make your first 10 meetings with investors that you don’t really want funding from, because you’re probably going to suck in the beginning. I sucked for a really long time.”
The motto of the Shin Bet is “Magen veLo Yera’e,” literally “the unseen shield,” or “defender who shall not be seen.”
This effectively means] that every single thing in your company breaks every time you roughly triple in size.
“His hypothesis is that everything breaks at roughly these points of 3 and 10 [multiples of 3 and powers of 10].
Read the following paragraph for better context.
You should constantly, perpetually be thinking about how to reinvent yourself and how to treat the culture.
the job I was going to do hadn’t even been invented yet. . . . The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up.
“So Gabe goes, ‘If I gave you $100 million, what would you guys go build? That by building it, there’s no value for anyone copying?’
“Valve: Handbook for New Employees” from Gabe’s company.
Hold the standard. Ask for help. Fix it. Do whatever’s necessary. But don’t cheat.”
‘What context does this person even have, and have I provided appropriate context?’ . . .
Am I basically being unfair because I’m operating from a greater set of information?’”
The Second Law. “It was written by an Oxford physical chemistry professor named P.W. Atkins.
“My parents always taught me that my day job would never make me rich. It’d be my homework.”
“Money is a great servant but a horrible master.”
This is a great reminder that, for anything important, you don’t find time. It’s only real if it’s on the calendar.
“The Who book [by Geoff Smart, Randy Street] is a condensed version of Topgrading, and I learned of it at Mint, where the founder was using it.”
Noah is known for his copywriting skills, and he recommends two resources: The Gary Halbert Letter (also The Boron Letters) and Ogilvy on Advertising.
Strong and flexible are not mutually exclusive.
“Every time I left the house, my dad would always say, ‘Remember who you are.’
This is deep.
Giramacristo’s Puzzle. I made that word up beforehand. I made sure there was no such thing on Google. I made a website that had the right solution, but it recorded everybody’s IP address.
Clever, and cruel!
because usually I would start explaining something, and in the first sentence he would say, ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ and then I would try to find another way of saying it,
This is basically just an act. Essentially, I was being unclear about what I was saying, and I did not fully understand what I was trying to explain to him.
Ha! The indirect-love kind of a mentor.
He really taught me to think deeply about things, and I think that’s something I have not forgotten.”
Think you’re doomed because you’re outside of the epicenter of your industry? See if you can find benefits, as there might be some non-obvious advantages.
“Great men have almost always shown themselves as ready to obey as they afterwards proved able to command.”
!!!
most recently Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way,
Let’s flip it around so it doesn’t seem so demeaning: It’s not about kissing ass. It’s not about making someone look good. It’s about providing the support so that others can be good.
Well put.
Franklin was playing the long game, though—learning how public opinion worked, generating awareness of what he believed in, crafting his style and tone and wit.
He thrived on what was considered grunt work, asked for it, and strove to become the best at precisely what others thought they were too good for.
"... What others thought they're too good for". Boy, I know I'm guilty of this.
If he wanted to give his coach feedback or question a decision, he needed to do it in private and self-effacingly so as not to offend his superior.
Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room—until you change that with results.
You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road.
Because if you pick up this mantle once, you’ll see what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating: The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.
