greenmellen - MickMel

Your calendar must be telling the truth

August 8, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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I’m a stickler for my calendar. If I’m on a call and someone asks if I’m available next Thursday, I want the calendar to be able to tell me exactly how that day is looking. Problems arise when I fail to put something on there (“No worries, I’ll just remember that”) and then lose track of it in the heat of the moment.

I often will even tweak the calendar throughout the day to reflect what really happened in case I need to go back to it later, though my primary historical calendar generally lives via an interstitial journal in Obsidian (a running list of what happened as the day goes on).

In a recent episode of “The Long and The Short Of It”, host Jen Waldman shared a simple rule for her calendar:

“The way I think about my calendar is that it is a tool that has to always be telling me the truth. So if it exists on the calendar, it actually exists. And if it doesn’t exist on the calendar, it doesn’t exist.”

I love the way she put that. I work hard to keep my calendar accurate and I spend time each Friday making sure that the next week is ready to go. Knowing that my calendar is always “telling me the truth” makes things much easier when the day gets hectic and I need quick, accurate answers.

Everything is on there

Similar to my thoughts on adding people to my contact list, everything goes on my calendar. Rather than thinking “should I add this small thing on there?“, I just do it. If everything is on there, the calendar will always be telling me the truth, and the value of it rises exponentially.

It must be telling me the truth, and it almost always does.

Be willing to look bad

August 7, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Being willing to look bad, admit defeat, or answer a question with “I don’t know” are all difficult things to do, but they all ultimately can make you a better person.

As a “five” on the enneagram, this hits particularly close to home (here is more about the enneagram if you’re not familiar with it). In describing what a “five” tends to be like, I found this quote:

Fives collect knowledge. Knowledge and information of almost any kind (even the strangest information) provide Fives with a sense of control and a defense against feelings of inadequacy. Fives also collect information or knowledge because they don’t want to appear foolish or uninformed, or be humiliated for not having the correct answer.

I work very hard to say “I don’t know” when I’m unsure of the answer, but I also work very hard to have every possible answer so that I don’t need to say that (which is clearly an impossible goal).

In his book “Clear Thinking“, author Shane Parrish shares a quote from Lou Brock, saying:

Lou Brock might have put it best when he said, “Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.” In other words, someone who’s possessed by the social default is easy to defeat.

If someone is afraid to look bad, they’ll never grow. I perhaps see this most commonly with politicians — they feel that they need to have the right answer, on the spot, every time. To be fair, it’s not untrue. When a politician doesn’t immediately have the right answer to a given question, they’re seen as uneducated or ill-prepared.

The only politician that I’ve seen do that very well was our local Commission Chairman a few years ago, Mike Boyce. He was incredibly smart, but he wouldn’t shy away from “I don’t know, but I’ll find out and let you know” if that was the right answer. Also, to his credit, he always did find out and follow up, even if he knew it wasn’t a pretty answer.

Ugly answers

That leads to another part of what made Mike so great — he’d give answers that weren’t ideal in order to stick with the truth. He wasn’t afraid to look bad, which also earned him more trust. Because Mike was willing to look bad when telling the truth, I had far more faith that he was telling the truth when things looked good. This is similar to our local auto repair place turning down work (“that car part will last another 20,000 miles, so just leave it for now“), leading me to trust them when they say something needs to be replaced immediately.

Looking bad is hard to do, but can yield great results.

Founders shouldn’t be hireable

August 6, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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As GreenMellen has grown over the years, one of the challenges that Ali and I have faced is figuring out what our roles should be at various stages. Early on it was easy; she was the designer and I was the developer. Once those roles were filled by others, where did that leave us?

It’s a question that has no simple answer, and we’ve done different things over the years. In a recent episode of the “Founders” podcast, host David Senra shared this regarding Thomas Edison:

“Really, the way I think about a founder is like you’re developing skills that you can’t hire for. You’re gonna hire for everything else, but you shouldn’t be hireable. And Edison wasn’t.”

More specifically, Edison is quoted as saying:

“I can hire mathematicians, but they can’t hire me.”

Over time, I’ve worked to build skills are more valuable for the company, but also trickier to define. My role now consists of a bit of CFO, some HR, some sales, and various things to keep the company running smoothly. Ali has a very similar (yet very different) list of her own. That list of items changes quite a bit for both of us, as we hire out the hireable skills, and work to develop the more challenging ones.

Becoming someone who “isn’t hireable” is a bit nerve-racking, but is likely the best way to lead a company.

Know, respect, trust

August 5, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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We’ve all heard the saying that we buy things from people that we “know, like and trust”, and I agree with that. I’d much rather purchase something from someone that I know, who I find likable, and who I trust.

In recently reading the book “How Clients Buy“, the authors worded it slightly differently every time they said it, by saying “know, respect, trust” instead. It was clearly an intentional choice of words, so it got me thinking about why they chose to make the switch.

Like vs Respect

The words “like” and “respect” certainly overlap a lot, but there are some key differences. I think the big difference is in how you prefer to interact with someone. You can like someone for being fun and enjoyable to be with, whereas you respect someone for their capabilities, integrity, or accomplishments.

As I was trying to think about specific people in my life related to this, pretty much all of them fit both words; I like them and enjoy spending time with them, and I also respect what they do and how they think.

I had to go outside of my immediate circle to think of folks that only fit one criteria, but I see it like this:

There are politicians that I respect what they do, but I don’t really like them.
There are people I know that I really like because they’re goofy and funny, but I don’t really respect them.

It’s a fine line, for sure. I certainly will work to gain the “know, like and trust” from those around me, but swapping out “like” for “respect” makes it just a little closer to what it’s really all about.

The Sunday Summary: Rising standards, big egos, and accumulating little notes

August 4, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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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, July 29: Our standards are rising
It’s easy to think that the world is falling apart, and while there are certainly many things we need to improve, things are really going pretty well. Crime is down, medical care is always improving, and even things like sex trafficking are far less pervasive than we’re led to believe.

Tue, July 30: Creating “zero click” content
Since companies are leaning into zero click content (where users get their information immediately without having to click a link), it might be worth focusing more on it ourselves.

Wed, July 31: Big egos that look small can be super valuable
“When we’re thinking small, that’s another thing we’re always on the lookout for: big egos. You don’t have to have a small ego to work here, but you’d better know how to make it look small, or you might wind up in trouble.”

Thu, August 1: Accumulating little notes
I’m finding increasing value in adding small notes about books and people into my database, because they can add up wonderfully over time.

Fri, August 2: What will AI collide with?
There are many technologies that we use today that will be greatly changed by AI. Whare are some that you see changing the most?

Sat, August 3: The algorithm can make social media really weird
Social media posts are almost never in chronological order anymore, and the people you follow matter less and less to the algorithm. It might be “better” in some ways, but it’s getting kind of weird.

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.

What will AI collide with?

August 2, 2024 by greenmellen 2 Comments

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I was at a recent event where Rich Beaudrie posed an interesting question: what will AI collide with?

There are many examples of collisions from the past. At one point 15 years ago, we had cell phones with large screens + 3G networks + compact GPS chips and Google Maps was born.

Or you can look at things like early social networks, which combined the fact that everyone had a computer at school + the internet really taking off.

So what’s next?

Rich talked a good bit about what AI might collide with, and he sees a big intersection between AI and AR/VR technology. His role involves digital learning, and to be able to learn by conversing with an AI that is tuned to you in a VR world would be miles ahead of watching a generic video and answering questions. I think he’s quite right about a future there.

On a lighter side, I see AI coming to more video games. I have the new “College Football 25”, and it’s fantastic, but the announcers are still just dreadful. At this point, it seems that it would be fairly easy to train an AI on the voice of someone like Kirk Herbstreit and have it generate the in-game announcing on the fly. They’re still doing the process of “record 1,000 phrases and we’ll stitch them together”, and it shows. Given what GPT-4o can do with voice inflections, I could see AI working quite well for something like this.

If nothing else, Rich’s presentation has me pondering what else AI will “collide” with in the near future. So far we’re seeing it stuffed into products in rather predictable ways, but some big collisions are certainly coming.

What are some AI collisions that you think we might see in the next few years?

Accumulating little notes

August 1, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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I recently shared the question of whether meta work is worth the effort. It’s certainly situational, but I’m finding that it often can pay off quite well in the long run.

In that previous post, part of the thought was around tracking books from lists that people suggest. Similar to the list that I shared last time, I’ve started adding the books mentioned in the new podcast from Adam Walker and Jeff Hilimire called “Who as time to read?” to my database as well.

I respect the opinions of those two guys quite a lot, so adding those insights into Obsidian seemed like a wise thing to do. After each episode, I pull their list of books and add them all in. I’ve read some of them previously, I plan to read others, and I plan to skip some of them, but it’s helpful to put all of them in there for reference.

People

To back up a bit, I add every person that I come across in meetings and readings into Obsidian, leading to having around 3,500 people in my Obsidian database so far. In adding them, I’ve found it best to keep it simple — friends, authors, athletes, astronauts and everyone else all go into the same bucket. It’s similar to the idea of Multiplexity that I keep for my phone contact list; one big group is easier than trying to split things up.

Jeff Hilimire is a great example of that. I know him personally, so he might be a “friend”. He’s also runs a great agency, so he’s “business”. He also hosts a podcast (and has been on mine), so “podcaster” could work. He also has written a handful of books, so “author” would be accurate as well. At the end of the day, trying to put him in a single bucket would be impossible, so he’s in the same list with my coworkers, friends, Abraham Lincoln, Seth Godin, and Michael Jordan. People are people.

Books

I do the same with books. If a book gets mentioned in my notes, it gets a note all to itself for the benefit of future cross-linking. For example, “The War of Art” mentions Homer’s “The Odyssey”, so I added that book in there. It’s just a stub of a note right now, but maybe it’ll grow over time.

Looking at “The War of Art”, it started as a stub note years ago when Seth Godin mentioned it in a post and also referenced it in his book “The Practice“. It later showed up in a list of “100 books you need to read before you die“. I’ve since read the book, and I just recorded a podcast that will be published on Stacking Knowledge in the coming weeks. Over the years, that simple note has become quite robust.

Perhaps “The Odyssey” will stay as a mostly empty note forever, or maybe it’ll someday be built out in a huge note with many references and ideas. I can’t see the future, so I’m finding it helpful to just add every book that I come across in there and see where things go, and save myself the slight mental cost of determining what should go in there and what shouldn’t.

Those little notes can really add up, and I love it!

Big egos that look small can be super valuable

July 31, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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It take a big ego to run a big company, but most people aren’t fans of those with big egos. The solution? Keep your ego in check.

In an episode of the Passion & Pain podcast, they had David Senra on as a guest and David put it this way:

“I don’t think that you can build a great company without a giant ego. However, your ego should drive you, but should not be on public display.”

He was loosely quoting Walmart founder Sam Walton, who famously said:

“When we’re thinking small, that’s another thing we’re always on the lookout for: big egos. You don’t have to have a small ego to work here, but you’d better know how to make it look small, or you might wind up in trouble.”

Those with big egos will always be pushing hard, which is a great way to grow a large company. I tend to think my ego is fairly small, and that’s led to running a 9-person company after 15 years. Others have gotten much bigger, and some have completely flamed out from pushing too hard, and we’re quite pleased with the company we’ve built.

I agree with David that a big ego is likely necessary to build a big company, but the big ego can cause big problems if it’s not properly kept in check.

Creating “zero click” content

July 30, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago, a growing problem with Google is the number of “zero click” searches on there — searches that don’t lead to another click, because Google answered the question for you. It’s generally a good thing for users, but it’s a bad thing for companies wanting to get more website traffic.

In the case of Google, there’s not much you can do. In other cases, though, it might be best to just lean into this trend. Most social media sites quietly penalize posts that have links in them (hence the silly and annoying “link in comments” that you see so often), so it might be best to simply forego the link and just let people see your content.

This video from the Content Marketing Institute (which I briefly shared last week) talks about this very subject about halfway through:
https://www.linkedin.com/events/7204588791657869312/comments/

No links?

For what I’m trying to accomplish with this blog, a lack of links is fine. I don’t care if you read this on LinkedIn or Medium or Substack or whatever, because I’m not trying to sell anything.

For many companies, it’s the same. If their content simply gets shared and viewed more often, it’s a win.

However, what about posts like this one? If you’re reading this on LinkedIn, I didn’t ever link back to my original blog post (trying to go “zero click”), but I still had to include some links to make the content more valuable. Telling you about that video and then making you go find it yourself would be frustrating, so I included a link to it. However, LinkedIn and other social platforms literally encourage content creators to make their content less valuable (with zero links) in order to get more exposure for it.

I get it, because their goal is to keep you on their site so they can make more ad revenue, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.

At the end of the day, the “zero click” content approach might be a solid idea. In the video above, Rand Fishkin tells a story of an agency owner that changed up their marketing, watching their digital metrics (website visits, etc) plummet, but saw their sales rise. While it feels kind of broken to do it that way, all of us would be happy to have a similar outcome.

Moving our clients to “zero click” will take some time and some testing, but it’s something worth trying out.