Reading Time: < 1 min Years ago, Jerry Seinfeld told a joke about “night guy versus morning guy”. You can see the clip below, but he essentially says that when he stays up too late, that’s him as “night guy”, and he’s not concerned with what “morning guy” needs to deal with. Here’s a clip: I’m finding that I’m the […]
Writing with empathy
Reading Time: < 1 min Empathy is the key to great writing. If you can really understand the worldview of those that are reading what you write, you’ll tend to be much more effective. In her book “Everybody Writes“, author Ann Hadley shared two great quotes that go into this. First, she shares how empathy isn’t just something you have; […]
Run more parity checks
Reading Time: 2 min In computing, a parity check is “the process that ensures accurate data transmission between nodes during communication“. In other words, it’s a simple test that will help make sure that the data being sent is the same as the data being received and that nothing was lost along the way. They’re imperfect checks, but they’ll […]
10 Years of Meetup
Reading Time: 2 min Back in February of 2012, I attended WordCamp Atlanta for the first time (and that old site is still up!). During that weekend I met some incredible folks, but the most immediately impactful was Kathy Drewien. We kinda, sorta, vaguely knew each other, and were able to talk more there. She knew I lived in […]
You begin to fail when you deny your mistakes
Reading Time: < 1 min Mistakes can often be amazing. I’ve shared ideas from people like Thomas J. Watson and Niels Bohr that literally prefer people that have made mistakes. There’s an important caveat in there though — you must be willing to learn from them. This was summarized perfectly in Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset“, where she shared: “John Wooden, […]
I trust purple people more
Reading Time: < 1 min I was listening to a podcast from Gary Vaynerchuk a few weeks ago when he made a point that he tends to trust “purple people” more. In this case, “purple” refers to people that aren’t 100% red or blue when it comes to politics. I totally agree. I’ve said before that I gain the most […]
But that doesn’t scale, does it?
Reading Time: 2 min Automation can be a great thing. In a way, it’s the reason you’re reading this right now instead of me having to come over to your house to tell you in person. There are databases, algorithms, feeds, and various other things that help get this post out there. That said, I’ve been clear over the […]
Algorithms versus value
Reading Time: < 1 min As I’ve been working to improve my content on my LinkedIn profile over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about how their algorithm works. For a while I was trying to tailor my posts to better suit their algorithm, but I’ve learned to (mostly) ignore it and focus on providing great value. For […]
Deceit is a poor marketing tactic
Reading Time: < 1 min A while back I shared how you shouldn’t try to hustle those that you wish to serve. Taking shortcuts to try to reach people is rarely a good idea. For example, the below came in the mail from a local HVAC company, with the indications of a check (such as “pay to the order of”) […]
I change my mind. What do you do?
Reading Time: < 1 min The increasing propensity for people to refuse to change their minds, even when faced with irrefutable evidence, is baffling to me. I don’t like being wrong – no one really does – but being wrong means that I’m now less wrong than I was before. More importantly, as I’ve shared before, most of the smartest […]