Author: jrlsage

We can’t go back. Once the genie bottle has been opened, you can’t put it in the bottle again. Always forward.

Jeff Bezos said that the key to business is focusing on what doesn’t change. This way of thinking is counterintuitive since our brains focus on change.

It’s easy to focus on the foreground, especially since the background doesn’t shift.

I’d like you to join me in this thought exercise – ask yourself, what hasn’t shifted in the last year? Is it important? 

Write them down.

There I was, writing a sheet of music during an acting class. 

Music calms my nerves. When I’m anxious, it can function as a note from my subconscious to relax. 

What do you use to relax when it gets stressful?

Friction and tension are not your enemies. Sure, the internet has shown us the power of no friction. As Seth Godin notes in this phenomenal Akimbo episode, “it’s easier to get a date, meet people, and create… but the leverage is gone in these things.” 

That is 💯 correct, and I am not
Going to lay that out better than he does, so I suggest you listen to the full episode.

I want to take it in a different direction – a lack of friction also allows for fraud to take place. I think of We (known for WeWork), and the whole operation has been a textbook case of “no friction” due diligence. Read this piece from Scott Galloway for a background.

The CEO has mostly stolen his way to fortune and enriched his family in the process(700 million!), bilking investors who are just praying for a good IPO so they can break even. Then it’s up to John Q Public to foot the bill.

No friction, no minute to take a breath, and growth at all costs enabled this.

There are places in our lives where we are frictionless and allow for things like this to happen. Unlike WeWorks CEO you won’t make 700 million, you’re just hurting yourself.

So lets put the two concepts together.

Where should you start to add friction to think better and stop damaging your prospects? 

Older tech is still useful and often is worth the time to bring it to life. I spent about 40 minutes putting together an old Chromecast last night. It had been about four years since I used it. Why?

Not important.

What was is that I found a ton of utility from something that had been plugged in my TV so long it was caked in dust. I got a full night of entertainment for a few minutes of investment. Sometimes, we can make an evening out of something old and make it new again and more importantly, the yield far outweighed the work.

Another Saturday and another yoga insight. Sometimes all you have to do is show up.

This week we had a substitute teacher and she pushed us HARD. This was the first time I left class drenched in sweat.

This was also a week I had to wait for my sink to get fixed, had a really odd week (get me a drink and I’ll tell you about it), and a bum knee.

But I got through it. My ego was a little shot, much like last week, I didn’t hit everything right. I’m exhausted, yet afterward, someone walked up to me and said they didn’t quit because I didn’t quit.

Mind kinda blown there.

Sometimes all you have to do is show up and just by doing that, you’ll help someone else show up to.

The world comes to us in pieces. What we all have to figure out is if it’s worth collecting more or less of those pieces, or is it worth walking away. Sometimes ignorance bliss.

Some nights I’m afraid of the dark.

Not the darkness, but the dark. FOMO or fear of missing out keeps me awake and listening to YouTube.

 I don’t need a night light. Do I need some form of acceptance?

How have you beaten back FOMO? I’d love to know. 

We pay attention to the story that resonates with us.

Whenever you sit with a great copywriter, you’ll notice how the story changes when they just focus on who the customer is, and what can you do for them. Everything and I mean everything else is fluff.

All we want to know is how do you tell the story. We can figure out the rest.

In some sense, we all have the same amount of hours in a day, however, that is only one part of the story. While we do have the same “time” per se, we each have different multipliers due to wealth, societal privilege, etc. Sure, I have the same amount of hours in a day as some poor child in Southeast Asia, but is it, really?

It isn’t.

So I really wish I stopped hearing that and believing anyone who says that.

In some sense, we all lie. The measure of a person is how they understand and go about entertaining which lies matter and which lies don’t. When do you tell the truth even though a lie is more convenient?

I like writing on the Subway. Sure, it’s cramped, and I don’t know what to expect, but there is a certain peace to knocking out my morning routine on the way to work, instead of before or after. 

It also gives me a place to edit that’s different from where I write (no connection on the train so I am just content with writing blind)

I’ll see where this goes.

Marketing is about profit, and if you aren’t profitable with marketing, start there. That’s it. As the kids say, that’s the tweet.

If your marketing is costing you money, your first job is to find ways for it to make you money. Once you get there, then it’s about all the other cool things that you can do (turning profit into yield, real differentiation, fun product marketing, etc.). 

However, none of that means squat until you are making money with marketing. 

Peanut Butter Falcon is a good movie about friendship and dignity. I can relate to it in some ways, in a lot of ways, I have a brother with developmental disabilities. See it and shed a tear as I did. 

Competing theories are hard to wrestle with. We have an instinct to push towards one that we agree with, the one that will keep us feeling “normal,” or something that lets us off the hook.

But no.

If we want to stay sharp, we have to resist the feeling of ease. We have to march forward and wrestle with different information, find fellow travelers who are willing to take the journey with us and deal with the restlessness. 

We have to be better than comfort.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F Scott Fitzgerald

(Proud of you dad).

Product management changes on each level. Associates deal with singular, full PMs deal with multiples, Directors deal with strategy and reality.

Haven’t been a VP or CPO yet – I’ll report back.