Category: Creator Confidential
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Pivot sooner and slower
My friend Jason Shen writes in his new book, The Path to Pivot: “If your startup isn’t working, don’t wait until you’ve got just a few months of runway left to make a desperate gamble on a new direction. Instead, think about pivoting sooner, and slower so you can make the best decision and bring…
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Delusions and evolutionary fitness
Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler write in Useful Delusions: In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have shown that the human brain is designed to make a number of errors in perception and judgment. These “bugs”—distortions, shortcuts and other cognitive cross-wiring—produce slanted pictures of reality. They exist for a reason: Evolution found that, on average, the…
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Entrepreneurship isn’t a job title, it’s a mindset
Some words from Satish Kanwar came to mind today, which is a lesson he learned after selling his business: The truth is, it took me longer than I care to admit to realize that I had been thinking about my identity the completely wrong way. Being an entrepreneur wasn’t attached to this business. It was…
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Preparation enables presence
Whether you’re playing in a competitive sport, appearing as a speaker, or attending an important meeting, showing up prepared will set you up to be more present.
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Notes-based meeting prep
Earlier this week, my coworker and I had a 1-1 meeting and she was delighted to see that I had brought a small index card and pen to the meeting. We spent a few minutes chatting about it. Here’s what I said: Before every meeting, I prepare a 4×6 index card. If there is a…
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The case of the stolen smell
I recently saw James Blake tweet, “The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.” Then, a couple of days later, I read this story: In the days of old Yedo, as Tokyo was once called, storytellers told wonderful tales. Many of the stories were about the wit and wisdom of Ooka Tadasuke. Ooka…
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Big fish in a bigger pond
In Lucky Me, Rich Paul writes: Now I have to help guys in the league who used to be stars, but can’t let go of their ego and accept a new role. Then there are my young clients coming into the NBA; every one of them was once the star on their high school or…
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David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way
I recently came across a great quote from David Chang, “Just because we’re a casual restaurant, doesn’t mean we don’t hold ourselves to fine dining standards. We try to do things the right way. That usually means doing things the long, hard, stupid way.” David has elaborated on this quote: When your back is turned…
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Expensive and cheap information
Stewart Brand has said, “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have…
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Volunteering
People don’t like risk. They usually commit to the option that they trust more, or at least feels less risky. It takes time to build this trust. Job interviews, social media updates, phone calls, blog posts, demos—all of these are ways to demonstrate that you are trustworthy. When you ask a person to get paid…