Repetition is the foundation of clarity of thought

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In recently listening to the Founders episode on Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue for the last 37 years, they shared a simple sentence that tied together a number of ideas I’ve had.

The sentence was simply “repetition is the foundation of clarity of thought“.

One of my early posts in my daily blogging streak was about the very idea of improving my clarity of thought. Most of history’s greatest entrepreneurs were known for their incredibly clear thinking, and that’s something that many of us aspire to. Those entrepreneurs all love to read, but the ability to think clearly involves making use of that reading and knowledge to shape your thoughts.

The related piece is repetition, which is something that I’ve always struggled with. I’ve long felt that you should get your idea out there and then move on to the next, but I know that to be faulty.

I first saw the fault in myself when I was leading a middle school Bible study class 20 years ago. I had the lesson plan, but I’d be done in 10 minutes of the 60 minute class as I’d simply share each point in the lesson and move on. Of course, none of the students would remember it from the single point; it takes stories and parallels and repetition to bring it home.

The same is true for us. Robert Carnes encourages us to “keep sharing” from a post of mine a few years ago, and I gave a few more tips (mostly for my own benefit) earlier this year.

Clarity of thought is still something I will continue to strive for, and repetition is one great way to help get there.

What are you good at that other people find difficult?

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A few days ago I was listening to an episode of “Art of Investing” where they interviewed David Senra. David had a lot of great insights, largely about what makes his own “Founders” podcast tick, but one that stood out was this quote:

“There is something that everybody in here is good at that other people think is difficult. And you’re like, why do other people think it’s difficult?”

That quote really summarized what he does. Every week he reads a biography about a founder (many of which are quite long) and puts it together into a 60-90 minute show. It’s a lot of work, and he’s done it every week for around seven years.

It sounds difficult to me, and probably to everyone else reading this, but not to David. He loves it and finds it straightforward and rewarding to do that work. To point the question back at ourselves, what do we find easy that others think is difficult?

It could be a talent for design, or the ability to inspire others, or the enjoyment of consistently digging deeper where others would get frustrated. We all have things that we find easier than others, and making use of those is a great way to stand out.

Social media is an empty vessel

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Many people complain about social media, and often rightfully so. While it can be an amazing tool, there are significant downsides to it. We can talk about the pros and cons of each, but I think TikTok is a unique case among all others. It’s the most vilified by politicians, but it’s also the most accurate reflection of what we really want.

In a recent podcast, Gary Vaynerchuk summarized it perfectly. He said:

“TikTok’s a super empty vessel. Their business is very simple: we are going to build an algorithm that only give you more of what you’ve shown us you want. Period.”

All of social media is like that to a degree, but TikTok is easily the best example. Other networks inject more of what they want you to see, whereas TikTok focuses exclusively on what they think you want to see. While this is the best thing about TikTok, it’s also the worst, as that approach is what’s leading to such unhealthy obsession among many people.

Is TikTok really to blame? Users are providing all of the content, and users are deciding what they want to see. TikTok is just an empty vessel, collecting content from users and spitting it back out.

The next few years should be interesting, as other social networks appear to be trying to follow suit. Instagram and Twitch are both moving to a “content > followers” model like TikTok, and others won’t be far behind.

Are these empty vessels dangerous and/or problematic? Or are they just a reflection of exactly what we want to see?

The Sunday Summary: Outgroups, purple cows, and defaulting to love

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, August 19: What can we do to get out of your way?
“If you hire great people, get out of their way and let them succeed. Yes, give them the tools, but don’t do stupid things that make it harder to succeed.”

Tue, August 20: The identity threat of outgroups
“Our social identities push us unthinkingly to see people like us—what psychologists call our ingroup—as more virtuous and intelligent, while those who are different—the out-group—as suspicious, unethical, and possibly threatening. Social identities help us relate to others, but they can also perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice.”

Wed, August 21: The problem with the purple cow
The idea of Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow” is great, but companies can often take it too far and fail to do much of anything with their “Brown Cows”.

Thu, August 22: The virtuous cycle of enlightened hospitality
It’s easy to say “the customer comes first”, but if the customer comes before your team you’ll struggle with retention and create a worse situation for everyone involved — especially the customer.

Fri, August 23: What the web is versus what we want it to be
When it comes to our clients at GreenMellen, we work to get results regardless of how things “should be” (within the realm of morality, of course). Personally, though, I’m more interested in how the web could be versus trying to extract ever more from the web we have.

Sat, August 24: Default to love
When it comes to things that are hard to understand, you have two choices. You can struggle to understand and show hate, or you can struggle to understand and show love.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Default to love

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I was having lunch with a friend recently and we got on the topic of the response to the LGBTQ movement and many related topics (transgenderism, sports, etc). There’s a lot going on, things are changing quickly, and it’s hard to keep track of everything. The guy I was with is much more educated on all of this than I am, but even he said “it’s hard to understand all of it”. I agree.

Out of the “hard to understand” you have two choices. You can struggle to understand and show hate, or you can struggle to understand and show love.

It seems like a very easy decision, but there are a shocking number of people (even “good” people) that choose hate. I don’t understand that reaction either.

If you’re not sure of how to respond to a situation, default to love.

What the web is versus what we want it to be

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In recently listening to a podcast from Gary Vaynerchuk, I realized how differently him and I see the world. While I respect what he does, and I follow a lot of his advice, it comes from a different direction.

In particular, Gary provides a ton of great ideas on how to generate increasingly large amounts of content. In the episode linked above, Gary says:

“I want to be right. I’m not talking about this because it’s how I’d like it to be. I talk about it because it’s how it is.”

When it comes to our clients at GreenMellen, I’m the same way. We work to get results regardless of how things “should be” (within the realm of morality, of course). Personally, though, I’m more interested in how the web could be versus trying to extract ever more from the web we have.

Our podcast and Meetup are both called “A Brighter Web” because that’s what we’re pushing toward, and I often share about technologies like RSS and owning your content that help bring more control back to users. It’s similar to Jay Acunzo and his idea of escaping the content hamster wheel to build more resonance with those that you reach.

Both?

There’s certainly a place for both. Jay’s approach is worthless unless you have some degree of reach so that people can see your ideas, but I think Gary goes a bit far into “50 posts per day is better than 40 posts per day”. He’s not wrong, given today’s landscape, but the ever increasing hamster wheel of content is a stressful and depressing future.

Thankfully, AI is likely going to kill that. In the short run, AI will just make the hamster wheel spin faster. Instead of 50 posts, you can do 500, or 5000. It’ll quickly become untenable for everyone, and humanity will find a place at the top.

Jay has a great two-part series where he talks about his dream for the future, and it’s a future that I’d love to see. Even better, you don’t need to wait for “the future” to start doing it; you can start right now, and you’ll likely find yourself in a great place when the hamster wheel inevitably catches on fire and burns out.

The virtuous cycle of enlightened hospitality

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Danny Meyer (who I mentioned a few days ago) has a philosophy about who everyone at his restaurants should be focused on. He calls this this the “virtuous cycle of enlightened hospitality”, and it goes in this very specific order.

  1. Team
  2. Customer
  3. Community
  4. Suppliers
  5. Investors

As he shares during a podcast with Adam Grant, this isn’t intended to leave the investors out to dry. In fact, it’s the opposite; by focusing on the team first and going from there, the business is likely to be more successful and provide even better returns for the investors.

You can really look at this list from the bottom up. The investors are happy because of the items above them, all of which trickle down from the team.

It’s easy to say “the customer comes first”, but if the customer comes before your team you’ll struggle with retention and create a worse situation for everyone involved — especially the customer. The idea that “the customer is always right” is short-sighted and has likely led to a lot of great employees leaving companies over the years.

If you want your customers to be treated well, start by putting your team first and everything else will fall into place.

The problem with the purple cow

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21 years ago, Seth Godin wrote a short (and very popular) book called “Purple Cow“. If you’ve not read it, here is a very quick snippet that explains the premise:

“The world is full of boring stuff—brown cows—which is why so few people pay attention…. A purple cow… now that would stand out. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing.”

It’s good advice, but it can be taken to bad places and I think we’re seeing a lot of it with Google. In recent weeks, they’ve unveiled some very impressive “purple cow” ideas, like they do every year. The problem is two-fold:

  1. They often bring these new ideas at the expense of more effective but less flashy improvements.
  2. Most of these new things just don’t last (or maybe never even come out). For example, in 2017 Google showed an impressive demo of removing a chain link fence from in front of an image, and seven years later it still hasn’t been released.

If you use Google products, you’ve seen the core issues with things like Google My Business (often too difficult to “claim” your own business) or the overcomplexity of Google Analytics 4. It wouldn’t be exciting for Google to announce that they’ve added more staff to help with business profiles, or that Google Analytics was now more streamlined for the average user. Instead, they chase the purple cow at every turn, and then quietly move on once the hype has died down.

I’m not against purple cows, but if you’re bringing them out at the expense of your brown cows, you’re eventually going to end up without any cows at all.

The identity threat of outgroups

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As another election draws near, the bifurcation of our country continues to grow. While that’s ok to a small degree, as we should believe in what we believe in, it generally goes much further than it should.

A big reason for this is the creation of ingroups and outgroups; either you’re like us or you’re not. In his book “Supercommunicators“, author Charles Duhigg explains it like this:

“Our social identities push us unthinkingly to see people like us—what psychologists call our ingroup—as more virtuous and intelligent, while those who are different—the out-group—as suspicious, unethical, and possibly threatening. Social identities help us relate to others, but they can also perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice.”

How are these outgroups created? Often from people intentionally trying to distance themselves. From the book:

But there was one behavior, in particular, that consistently made people uncomfortable and upset: If a speaker said something that lumped a listener into a group against her or his will, the discussion would likely go south. Sometimes speakers would assign listeners membership in a group they didn’t like—“You’re rich, so you know most rich people are snobs”— and the listener would be offended by the insinuation they were snobbish. Sometimes a speaker would deny someone membership in a group they esteemed—“You didn’t go to law school, so you don’t understand how the law actually works”—and the listener would be insulted by the accusation that they were uninformed.

It’s like the event I went to last year where the speaker made a point to create an outgroup of much of the audience, which was a very foolish thing to do. These situations sometimes happen by accident, but are often intentional as a way to draw closer to those that are a part of the ingroup.

Ultimately, these situations can cause identity threats to the people that hear them. Lastly, again from Charles’ book:

In psychology, this is known as identity threat, and it is deeply corrosive to communication. “When someone says you don’t belong, or they put you in a group you don’t appreciate, it can cause extreme psychological discomfort”.

It feels to me that these kinds of situations are most often intentional, and not just to help with their ingroup, but to intentionally push out other people.

Fight for what you believe in, but be a good human to everyone.

What can we do to get out of your way?

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I’ve shared a bit about Danny Meyer (founder of Shake Shack, among other restaurants) before, as he has some amazing insights on leadership. In a recent podcast with Adam Grant, he shared a few more gems.

One in particular was a quote about hiring. Danny believes in hiring great people and then allowing them to be great. Specifically, he says:

“If you hire great people, get out of their way and let them succeed. Yes, give them the tools, but don’t do stupid things that make it harder to succeed.”

It’s easier said than done, but it can be fantastic. It’s very similar to the idea of never managing people who don’t need to be managed. If you hire someone amazing, then managing their every move seems like an awful idea. They should follow the core processes and procedures that you’ve set in place, but beyond that they should have the freedom to just get things done.

If you’re hiring someone for minimum wage at your fast food restaurant, then dictating their every move might be a good plan. However, if you’re paying a generous salary to an amazing employee, anything other than letting them be amazing is just going to hold everyone back.