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Why Ye should not start his own social media platform
After Ye got suspended from IG, French Montana wrote that Ye would make his own social media platform. It’s an interesting idea, and he definitely could! It’d also be a risky one. Here’s why: The main benefit to mainstream social media is visibility. Ye makes headlines in mainstream press every time he posts, which perpetuates…
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To bolster your confidence, work on your positioning
Yesterday I read something that connected a lot of dots for me, so much so that I wanted to share it the excerpts at my blog right away. For starters, there are two general hunches—or “myths”—that I’ve been trying to untangle and unpack amongst many others. The first is: Confidence, innate or manufactured, creates an…
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5 Sentences about Ye on Failing
One of the things I admire most about Ye is his how he’s reconciled his perfectionism with the failure that comes with innovation. At his since-deleted blog post from 2008, Ye wrote, “It’s either pass or fail! A+ or F-!” In his interview with REM in 2013, half a decade later, Ye says, “If everything…
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How to distribute your writing
A friend approached me a week ago or so with a really great long-form article he’d published. 3,000 words, really in-depth, oozing industry expertise. I wasn’t even part of the industry and I enjoyed it. He asked me for suggestions, and my main question was: What’s the plan for people finding this piece? Our minds…
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Focus on what makes an experience matter, not the experience itself
All the myths, lore, and backstories that you appreciate were crafted carefully and thoughtfully and improved through time, just like products and businesses and relationships. In The Wisdom of Life, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer writes, “The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it, and so…
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The rise of celebrity-based courses
There’s a course started and being taught by Yassin Alsalman (probably better known as recording artist Narcy) at Concordia University entitled, “Kanye vs. Ye: Genius by Design.” It’s the latest in a continuum of popular music studies. From a brief search there is a: Kid Cudi course at Penn State from 2021 Kanye course from…
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Executives who can execute
Some companies need their executives to merely make good decisions; they take in information, influence budgets, and hire. These same companies—usually huge ones with tens of thousands of employees—are the ones who max out their headcount and hire contingent workers and freelancers, agencies and services companies, and research companies, to actually do most of the…
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Scripted, or unscripted?
A director leaves a corporate innovation lab to join a rapidly growing competitor, only to rejoin two months later as a VP. The reason for the boomerang wasn’t just the title (a happy bonus for both sides, as morale waned at the innovation lab after a leadership departure), the new VP had actually found that…
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When idea becomes solution
At first glance, it’s obvious that we don’t need more ideas. Everybody has ideas. Ideas are cheap. Ideas don’t matter. So they say. Yet the ephemeral thoughts we label as “ideas”—other words include insights, complaints, challenges—are the fundamental raw ingredients to solutions. Ideas are the soil for solutions to emerge. When you express an idea in…
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Why I stopped calling myself a “freelance writer”
Several years ago, the CEO of a prominent product development services company approached me to help out with copywriting and publicity. I had started my own editorial studio, Wonder Shuttle, and gave myself the job title of creative director. That didn’t matter much, because most of my network still knew me as a freelance writer.…