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The decisiveness advantage
David C. Baker writes in The Business of Expertise: “After looking at 1,340 examples of successful experts, the only consistent trait was that they were risk-takers. That means that they were wrong a lot — but that they were usually right about the important things. It also means that they always made decisions. They weren’t…
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“It depends”
In order for someone to give you an answer, they need to understand your question. That doesn’t just mean they’ll listen to your question; they need to know what you’re asking them. That’s why sometimes even with the most helpful of intentions, the answer is still, “It depends.” There are way too many facts they…
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Seasons
People who seem to get a lot done don’t make progress on everything at the same time; rather, they make focused progress in spurts on one thing at a time. These experiences can seem like seasons, though it can happen more than four times per year (i.e., quarterly planning). One perspective is microseasons. Another is…
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Stone soup
This is a classic fable about a group of travellers showing up to a village with an empty pot. The villagers are unwilling to feed the travellers, so the travellers put a stone in the pot and boil water. The travellers offer to share their stone soup with some of the villagers, though the soup…
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Value ≠ compensation
Opportunities present themselves in different costumes. Heuristics can be helpful, though only to a certain extent; sometimes good opportunities present themselves as bad ones first. You have to know what you want to get out of a project. Is there something specific that you want to learn? Will it be a case study for a…
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Writing culture
Remote companies are going to draw in the most talented people. As teams grow, they also need to spend more time maintaining communication. A team of 3 people needs just 3 lines of communication; a team of 11 people will need a whopping 55 lines of communication, and a team of 14 people will need…
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Painkillers, vitamins, and trophies
While I’ve worked with a lot of really great clients, I’ve also had some prospects tell me that my business’s services were way too expensive. In fact, some of them seemed to get offended when they saw Wonder Shuttle’s rate card, or when I told them the price over the phone. I’ll always remember one…
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Direct sales vs. branding
On average a podcast episode probably doesn’t generate that many direct sales of books, products, and sales, especially given the number of people that listen. If you’ve spent a dozen hours pitching or networking, and then another couple of hours preparing, and then finally one hour actually appearing as a guest, you might think that’s…
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Stir the pot
There’s a special type of luck that emerges just from taking enough action; enough shots at bat. You gather a hundred pieces of information. You take notes on a dozen of them, and they find your way into your brain. One of those notes enables you to understand people’s problems. You talk to dozens of…
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Ideas are cheap, good ideas are expensive
There’s a good idea inside you, you just don’t know if it’s the 1st idea or the 100th idea. You need to make 100 ideas in order to find out. You may be able to narrow it down to 10, and then struggle from there. You may need to ask people to help you pick…