AI can now easily (8 seconds) change the identity of someone in a film or video.
Multiple services can now scan a few hours of someone’s voice and then fake any sentence in that person’s voice.
Open publishing on platforms like the Kindle means that there’s no gatekeeper to verify the source of what you read. Perhaps there’s already a fake Kindle book by “Malcolm Godin” and “Seth Gladwell”. I wonder if it’s any good or if someone simply wanted to fool a search engine?
Don’t buy anything from anyone who calls you on the phone. Careful with your prescriptions. Don’t believe a video or a photo and especially a review. Luxury goods probably aren’t. That fish might not even be what it says it is.
But we need reputation. The people who are sowing the seeds of distrust almost certainly don’t have your best interests in mind–we’ve all been hacked. Which means that a reshuffling is imminent, one that restores confidence so we can be sure we’re seeing what we think we’re seeing. But it’s not going to happen tomorrow, so now, more than ever, it seems like we have to assume we’re being conned.
Sad but true.
What happens after the commotion will be a retrenchment, a way to restore trust and connection, because we have trouble thriving without it.
September 4, 2019
Small business is a resilient backbone of the modern world. Choosing to not simply be the day laborer or the gig worker, but someone who actually owns something.
You might own a permission asset–the right people, offering you their attention and trust. You might own a lease or a patent or some other form of property. And you might own a reputation, one that earns you better projects and a bigger say in what happens next.
As we begin a new season, it’s worth considering what you own, and far more usefully, what you can build on your way to owning even more leverage. If we are all shopkeepers, what do you have in inventory? If you own nothing but the next eight hours of your time, for sale to the highest bidder, you may be disappointed in the bids you get.
I just got a note from an Akimbo workshop participant. She said, “Today I got my first project where I will be getting not an hourly rate but an equity stake in the product. I’m doing the happy dance and thanking Freelancer’s Workshop.”
That’s why we keep showing up. So that you can show up and get paid what you’re worth. Even better, so you can make a difference you’re proud of.
On September 10th, the third session of the Bootstrapper’s Workshop begins enrollment. Find out more and sign up for updates right here. We’d love to have you join us. It’s time to own something.
September 3, 2019
It’s possible (not easy, but possible) to be a dispassionate observer. To have a sense of what the market wants, of what’s likely to work, of what quality looks and feels like.
But not when it’s our work.
When it’s your work, the moment you commit to it and own the outcome, you can’t help it. None of us can. We start to shave/bend/ignore the truth.
Some make a mistake by downgrading the work, lowering expectations and trash-talking the output of all that hard work. Probably to protect ourselves from the doom that we fear is right around the corner. This makes every criticism nothing but confirmation of what we say we already knew.
And some make the mistake of persuading themselves that their taste is universal, their talent is off the charts and that their effort is greater than anyone else’s. And so every criticism is seen as a personal attack.
The reality is nothing like this.
The reality is somewhere in between.
And it’s worth developing the skill and guts to see it.
September 2, 2019
Here it is, tested, effective and worthwhile:
Stop chasing shortcuts.
Personal finance, weight loss, marketing, careers, beating traffic, relationships, education–everything that matters to someone often comes with heavily promoted shortcuts as an alternative.
Fast, risk-free, effortless secrets that magically work, often at someone else’s expense.
But if the shortcuts worked as promised, they wouldn’t be shortcuts, would they? They’d be the standard.
A shortcut is not an innovation. It’s not a direct path, either. Those work, but they require effort, risk and insight.
If you can’t afford the time and effort to do it right, you probably can’t afford to do it over after you realize that the shortcut was merely a trap.
September 1, 2019
Everyone else also thinks it’s about them.
Everyone else is in a hurry.
Everyone else is afraid.
Everyone else wonders if they’re being left behind.
Everyone else is tired.
Everyone else isn’t sure, either.
The good news is that everyone else also has unused potential and the ability to make an impact.
August 31, 2019
Online marketing has become a messy mix of direct marketing, seo, tricks, tips, code and guesswork. It’s an always-moving target and it’s mostly focused on tactics, not strategy, because tactics are easy to measure.
Marketing online, on the other hand, is what happens when the work to serve our audience arrives in an electronic form. Marketing online is simply marketing–the act of making things better by making things–aided by a mouse and a keyboard.
Careful not to get stuck focusing on the wrong one. You need both, but one drives the other.
August 30, 2019
“It’s just politics.”
No one ever says, “it’s just governance.”
Politics is organized sparring about power, without much regard for efficacy or right or wrong.
Governance is the serious business of taking responsibility for leadership.
Over the last twenty years, the mass media has shifted, from “here’s the news,” to, “hey, it’s just media.” As a result, a system has been built in which situations, emergencies and bad news have been packaged and promoted twenty-four hours a day.
In the face of that maelstrom of noise, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the world is more dangerous and unstable than it has ever been.
When we have a chance to speak up for governance, we can strike a blow against politics.
Because even though it doesn’t make compelling TV, the long-term challenges ahead of us aren’t going to respond to politics.
Dedication, resilience and concerted effort have saved us before and they can save us again. Except once again, it’s on us to speak up and do something about it.
August 29, 2019
Someone has to win the lottery, it might as well be you.
Buying a lottery ticket is economically irrational and emotionally rewarding for some. Because while someone has to win, it’s probably not going to be you.
There are examples of lottery logic in our daily work as well. It’s clear that someone is going to be the next Taylor Swift, the next George Clooney or the next Will Smith. But it’s probably not going to be you. Someone is going to raise a $40 million seed round, or get picked to be the next big thing. But it’s probably not going to be you.
It’s tempting to decide to follow the path that leads to mass-market stardom, the top of the charts, the fame and fortune that comes to the person who wins a media lottery. It’s tempting to build a mass-market podcast or a general-audience news site. It’s tempting to be the sort of vanilla-but-attractive actor who can play just about any role…
But it’s far more productive to focus on stepwise progress for the smallest viable audience instead. It might not make headlines, but it’s far more likely to work and more rewarding in the long run.
August 28, 2019
Arithmetic is true. It’s true because
1. we accept the terms for what they mean
2. it’s timeless, past and present and future are the same
3. it’s testable
In every fourth-grade classroom, the statement, “9 is bigger than 7” is clearly true. We can count out nine marbles. We have a mutual understanding of what “bigger” means in this context. From this shared understanding of the axioms and vocabulary, we can build useful and complex outcomes.
On the other hand, “Cheryl is a better candidate than Tracy” might be true for some people, but it presents all sorts of trouble if we look at it through the same lens of “truth” as a term we learned in arithmetic. We know who Cheryl is and we know who Tracy is, but it’s not clear what “better” means in this case. Are we describing who will win an election in two weeks? That’s awfully hard to test in advance.
And ‘words as building blocks of truth’ gets even more complicated when the ideas intersect with both science and culture. The statement, “The theory of evolution is our best explanation for how we all got here,” is demonstrably true in the realm of science, but for people with a certain worldview who value cultural alignment more than verifiable and testable evidence, this statement isn’t true at all.
The words matter. It matters whether we’re talking about ‘arithmetic true’ or simply an accurate description of what works for part of our culture.
August 27, 2019
How’d you perform on the sales call?
It was great.
How do you know?
They bought.
How did you play?
Super.
How do you know?
We won.
Actually, that’s selling your potential short.
Even if the chip shot went in the hole, it doesn’t mean you hit the ball properly.
It might simply have been a positive variance. Next time, it could easily bounce the other way.
In order to improve our performance, we need to model our preparation, our effort and our form against a standard, not base it on the outcome. Because outcomes aren’t always guaranteed by our work.
Just because you won doesn’t mean you did a good job (and vice versa).
August 26, 2019
