On heartbreak, love and cognitive dissonance
Three days before the election, I went on a first date. I go on a lot of first dates. But I was enthusiastic enough for this one that I vacuumed my car, thinking that I might drive her home after dinner. In the week since that first date, we’ve since spent more time together than […]
How to fast
A friend of mine is embarking on his first 4-day water only fast, so I sent him a voice memo with all of my lessons learned from fasting over the last few years. Then, I realized it’d be useful to write this up. First, my bonafides. In 2024, I didn’t eat for a total of […]
Know the difference between practice and performance
As an undergraduate, I studied learning. Specifically, I became obsessed with the impact of variable practice on motor learning. Many of the classic studies in the field are done with basketball. Here’s a simple example: Two groups of people with no prior experience are given the task of shooting hoops. The first group, the control, […]
Just do something
I hit a point – ten meetings or a hundred email into my day – where anything I try feels like failure. I can’t think clearly enough even to decide what to do next. That’s past time to do something different. When my best friend feels stuck she has trained herself to take some kind of action. […]
This is how to change behavior
In the final weeks leading up to Responsive Conference, I hit an impasse. Since the beginning of 2024, I’ve written a weekly article about selling. I love sales, selling, and persuasion. But I was doing a lot of sales. In those final weeks, I was taking 15 minute calls 10 hours a day in order […]
Go deeper
Like most entrepreneurs I have the unfortunate habit of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. In just the last decade, I have started and then quit a lot of businesses: Started and then left behind a business working with kids with autism Started Robin’s Cafe, which I sold on Craigslist Started […]
Discipline isn’t hard
A few weeks ago, someone told me I was the most disciplined person she knows. That feedback was disconcerting because, growing up, I was often told that I lacked discipline. I’ve never been particularly good at forcing myself to do things that I don’t want to do, which is how I’d always defined discipline. Discipline […]
Finding the right balance
When I first read the Responsive Org Manifesto in 2015 I liked it because it was not prescriptive. The manifesto does not say that if you pull levers in a particular order you will be able to build a perfect organization. Instead, it outlines the tensions that every organization has to balance. The right amount of experimentation. […]
Do things that leave you feeling good
I have a philosophy of addiction. I’ve never done drugs, been addicted to porn or video games, or struggled with alcohol or cigarettes. But I am prone to addiction. My grandfather was an alcoholic. My uncle died of alcohol and pills. The things that I am addicted to most people don’t think about (sugar) or […]
What have you been avoiding lately?
Two months ago I moved into a new house and promptly bought myself something that I have been lusting after for at least 3 years – a commercial cold plunge. I grew up jumping into ice covered lakes in the High Sierra. (There’s a infamous story in my family where, at 5 years old, I […]
A moment of creative insight
In the early 1970s, Bill Bowerman, the legendary track and field coach and co-founder of Nike, was determined to improve his athlete’s performance. Frustrated with the heavy running shoes of that era, Bowerman wanted lightweight shoes with better traction. One morning during breakfast, Bowerman looked at the waffle iron on the kitchen table and he […]
We all hate sales people
A well-known businessman recently started offering workshops. My Facebook feed has been flooded with advertisements. I attend business workshops, but more than the specifics, I was interested in their process of running, collecting my contact information, and the script they would use to persuade me to buy. The system worked flawlessly until I got on […]
How to get leads
Last week I discussed Alex Hormizi’s $100 Million Dollar Offers, a book about making offers so good your customers feel stupid saying no. This week, I’m applying his next book, $100 Million Dollar Leads to the same accounting firm Zander Media supports. Your offer matters. The pitch you make about what you do and the value you provide […]
How to sell bookkeeping & accounting
For the last year Zander Media has been on retainer with a firm that provides bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services. While most of what Zander Media provides for this firm is narrative strategy, content creation, and content distribution, at various points I’ve also stepped into a more active sales role, as well. Because who doesn’t […]
Maximum stoke
As I do every July, I spent last week with my family and a few close friends hiking in the high Sierra. Each year, I hike up Mt. Conness, a 12,500 foot peak with a lot of hard scrabbling and some pretty terrifying moments before you arrive at the summit. When we reached the top, […]
A letter from the Responsive team
None of us on the Responsive Conference organizing team have had a conventional career path. From circus acrobat to lab technician, culinary magazine editor, performing artist, founder, and startup executive – each of us has worked in a variety of industries with many different kinds of teams The common thread, however, is a focus on people. Individually, […]
Shame and humiliation won’t kill you
My first job out of college was bussing tables at a fine dining restaurant called La Mar Cebicheria Peruana. It was a great first job out of school. The restaurant was just about to open and I was among the first employees. I had traveled in Peru, spoke Spanish, and loved the Peruvian food we […]
That one decisive moment
Howard Hughes was a deeply troubled, eccentric billionaire. He was also an undeniably successful businessman. From his earliest boyhood he was overprotected by a mother whose letters reveal that she was constantly worried about his health. She wrote concerned missives to his summer counselor expressing concerns about whether her son would be fairly treated by […]
How to learn persistence
When you follow up you demonstrate your character and your trustworthiness. And, anyway, we can all benefit from a few reminders. The value of persistence Few things contribute more to getting what you want than consistently showing up, courageously overcoming your fears, and asking for what you want. When you get rejected, try again. And […]
Don’t just follow your passion
For many years, I believed that “following your passion” was the best way to discover where you excel. Thus, my career has included everything from circus to management consulting; restaurants to kids with autism. One thing that has been consistent throughout my life is my love of movement. Where most people struggle to get to […]
Are you focused on the process or the outcome?
I practice handstands everyday. The goal is a 60-second one arm handstand. But I’m less interested in that goal than in practicing towards that goal. By contrast, I recently lost a big sponsorship for Responsive Conference and it knocked me off of my stride. I felt like a failure for several hours. These two things appear to […]
Own your faults
I’ve always loved the story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s first meeting. Holmes is in the laboratory testing a new technique for testing the age of dried blood, when Dr. Watson is ushered in by a mutual acquaintance. They are each looking for a flatmate. Holmes begins by listing out his faults. He’s eccentric, […]
A few things I know at 38 that I wish I knew at 18
Today’s my birthday. This time last year, I wrote 37 lessons. Instead of trying to come up with another 37+1 lessons, I thought I’d expound on some of my best ideas from the last year. Fall in love with your craft I’m on my quest to achieve a one-arm handstand. Someday, I’ll get there and then […]
If you don’t ask, the answer isn’t no
There’s a common idea that “If you don’t ask, the answer is no.” The problem is that when we don’t ask, it doesn’t feel like rejection. The consequence is silence and inactivity, which feels less bad than an actual rejection. Thus, we are reinforced for not asking. I’m still nervous when I quote my hourly […]
How to Reframe Failure
There are a lot of things about being an entrepreneur that I avoid, but one of the silliest is opening physical mail. When I was starting Robin’s Cafe, I got a lot of mail – plans from the San Francisco planning department, legal documents, food permitting, alcohol permitting, pest control notifications, more. I was so busy figuring […]
Unconventional Advice to Improve Your Relationships
What’s the old joke? “Why do my parents push all my buttons? Because they installed them!” In 2019, at 33 years old, I spent 4 weeks traveling with my mother in Africa. And as much as I love my mother, she also can drive me crazy. Whether in our personal relationships or at work, here […]
Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former head of People and Culture at Wikimedia, on Immediacy and Resilience
My guest today is Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former head of People and Culture at Wikimedia (the parent company behind Wikipedia). These days Gayle is very politically active and consulting with a select group of executives on organizational and culture change. I’ve known Gayle since she spoke at the first Responsive Conference in San Francisco […]
Memento Mori: Remember Death
How would you live your life differently if you knew you were going to die tomorrow? We’re all so busy rushing through our lives that we sometimes forget to pause and remember that we have fleeting time on this earth. Watch this short vlog for a reminder to be grateful for what you do have […]
Reflections on Morocco and Culture
To celebrate my 30th birthday, I spent five weeks in the spring of 2017 with my family traveling through the Kingdom of Morocco. I have fantasized about visiting Morocco ever since I was introduced to the character T. E. Lawrence through the movie Lawrence of Arabia at eleven years old. I was entranced by Lawrence’s […]
“Florida Priming” and Simple Tools To Trigger Improved Performance
There’s a concept in cognitive psychology called priming. In its most abstract, this means that if we are given a reminder of a stimulus before being presented with that stimulus, we are more likely to behave favorable towards that stimulus. People who are shown pictures of money before being asked to calculate the cost of groceries […]