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Reversing Medium’s brain drain problem
After 10 years of leading Medium, CEO Ev Williams is stepping down. Medium faces a lot of challenges—I am sure Williams will reflect on many—but to me the main one is basically a way worse version of the problem that Substack currently faces: brain drain, a term used to describe “the emigration of highly trained…
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Yeezy as a turnkey luxury brand
Building a luxury brand is difficult. But luxury brands are the way of the future (better margins, stronger branding, improved longevity, cultural relevance, increased desirability—I want to explain this more in another piece!); every business will need to be or own an upscale brand, the same way that Toyota has Lexus, and Honda has Acura.…
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Instrumentalizing creativity
Creativity is best played as an infinite game; winning means you get to keep playing. This stands out in contrast to the convention of playing a game as a finite game; winning means you get to declare victory over your opponents, and stop playing. For creators, here are some elements to enable you to play…
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Creativity as an infinite game
Writing a book was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The next-best decision was to write something I wanted to make. That may sound dead simple to you, but to me, it wasn’t. I experienced what my friend Hamza Khan calls “marketing brain”, which he describes as, “We think about the product, we…
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Your work and your friends
A few days ago, Paul Graham tweeted, “Ron Conway just discovered my essays and stayed up late reading them. We’ve been friends for 15 years but apparently he’d never read one. Made my month.” It reminds me of a passage I’d read or heard somewhere (and can’t find) that as a creator, you shouldn’t expect…
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I was wrong about audiobooks
In my 20s, I refused to listen to audiobooks. For starters, to me, it didn’t count as actual reading. I also loved, and still love, paper books. To experience an audiobook felt like a betrayal to this admiration. On top of all of that, I also thought it’d be incredibly slow, and I wouldn’t be…
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Quantity? Quality?
My latest at Medium. I never would’ve imagined I’d know so much about this topic. It all just kind of happened!
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My story on Pusha T in Trapital
If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Pusha T’s work (exhibit 1, 2, 3). To me, Push is one of the few artists still focused on quality and on developing his category. Push isn’t afraid to sell fewer records; that doesn’t mean he’s making any less money, which is…
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Creative Doing on the Ideas Into Action podcast
I had a great time a few weeks ago recording an interview with my friend Hamza Khan. Hamza’s a global keynote speaker and bestselling author of The Burnout Gamble and Leadership, Reinvented, and he hosts a podcast entitled Ideas Into Action. I actually joined him back in April 2019 for episode 11: And I was…
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How is it priming your brain?
Our brains are easily primed, which then dictates our actions, which then changes how we think. Before we realize this, we’re just swimming in water without knowing what water is. Now that we’re aware of it, we can actively train our brains (we each only have one, so training it in one part can affect…