It's a big day here (sorry about August)
Tomorrow years of work becomes real in a way I didn't imagine. And I want you to be a part of it.
Listen, when the "post constantly" police finally have the way and run the world (maybe they already do) I'll certainly be put in some kind of jail, but until then, I'm here.
And I missed you.
I haven't missed a month newsletters since... maybe before Covid and so I'm sorry about August. Genuinely. One of my favorite things to do is to hang out with you all and share good ideas that bust up old bad systems that keep founder leaders from doing cool shit.
When do we get to do the cool shit???
Well, soon. I promise. Maybe right now? If we're watching the headlines (Zero stars, do not recommend) then war rages, we're apparently getting paid now to vote for certain politicall parties (this is pending, stay tuned) and the AI guys need more money so they can stop themselves from doing what ... I don't know... just stopping would probably solve?
But who am I.
Just a guy whose book comes out tomorrow. Yeah that's right. It's D-Day. GD-Day Give-a-Damn Day. And I honestly can't believe it.
What the book cost me and (I hope) what it's worth to you
I was catching up with an old colleague recently who generously asked me to share how I got around to writing this book. I wanted to shake my first and cloud and grab my stone tablets and and shout about the revelation revealed to me that the shitshow algorithmic, trustbroken economics have inflicted business owners and giveth my Thus Sayeth the Lord about all that is wrong and then I put it into words and a book launched from Zeus's (my) forehead.
That is not, dear reader, how things went down.
I wrote the first draft of The Damn Rules in 2021. As a manual, a guide for a team that was floundering in their ability to help our clients get free from pointless growth-isms that had been bequeathed to them by the guru-gods. Unfortunately the team was well-versed in repeating platitudes by people who should know better.
After some very tough business choices and the scar tissue to prove it, I started to take the ideas behind The Damn Rules and build it into a unified way of teaching our clients how to grow without the constraints and confines of the so-called "best practices" (which were just back doors into being extracted and extended to exhaustion rather than serving good clients doing good work making good money.) That source code became Trust-Made Growth® which we now have used to build dozens of ventures and stretch leaders past their system produced growth ceilings.
But the book, the rawness of it was still in me. So I hired a book coach (the great and good Anne Janzer) and got to work. That's when the shit hit the fan.
This book did not want out of me. I avoided it. I dodged it. I BSed my homework for Anne. I became an excuse factory. I even talked to my therapist about it.
Me: "Jake, I gotta get this done. I'm on my last deadline or I just need to give it up."
Therapist Jake: "You know, Nick, how you write the book becomes what the book is."
Listen, Temu Dalai Lama... (just kidding, I love Therapist Jake) Not. Helpful.
But of course it was helpful.
Therapist Jake (continuing, unprompted): "How much of you is in this book? Why are you writing it?"
Me: to be helpful, I don't need to be in it, Anne says its going to be good for me... and other stuff I didn't mean.
I got off the call and felt my stomach churn. I knew I had to come to the Rules in a fresh way. How were they helpful? Why did they need to be in the world? What would they cost? And then... I saw them through the lens of my own life. Not just the ideas as they'd ben formulated over years, but he choices, the consequences, the painstaking moments that had rewritten me as a leader and had prepared me to be the person who could and should write this book - the book that called out the slickness, the smooth-brained-ness of all that we'd been offered as business founders, and all the ways that the systems we'd been offered had come up wanting.
What was required instead? What was the heart of how we might lead our way through this trustbroken economy? What was the unified thread among the rules? And this was when the subtitle was born.
Vulnerability. Inefficiency. And love.
And then the book made demands of me. "If you're going to write a book about vulnerability, then you are going to need to be vulnerable in it." And I rewrote the book that hopefully will be in your hands this week.
People saying nice things on the internet
Months later, early readers are validating that decision, and I'm so grateful.
It should be required reading for anyone who is trying to build a trust based business in the world today.
Richtsmeier puts words to tensions I've felt for years but couldn't properly express.
The Damn Rules is the first business-related book I have ever read that was so rich with insight and depth and heart and care that after finishing it I immediately wanted to read it again because it was that damn good.
I wanted leaders and founders to receive a framing for the trust breaking and extraction they were finding at every turn, at every attempt to grow their businesses in value-forward and ethical ways, and I wanted them to have the clear path that a lot of hard business years had taught me. A way to get economically free from the trustbroken economy.
And so when early readers were saying that I'd put to words years of their experiences they'd never found words for, it was like what I'd put into the universe found its way to the right people. I hope that continues to be true.
Apply The Damn Rules and build a business you can be proud of
Maybe you're a book person. Maybe you're a doing person. Either way, I want to meet you on this journey of building value-forward businesses with deep ethical roots, run by leaders who aren't dying in 80-hour weeks on a techno-treadmill.
If this resonates for you, of course, you can start with the book, but if you want to move faster... I've got two other spots for you. 100% built as applications of The Damn Rules for leaders of expertise businesses.
And for those ready to dive in and do the work together, we're launching our fall cohort for new founders or sub-million new businesses to teach you the Rules and then directly apply them to the venture you wanna build: We call it VentureStock.
Check out to see if its for you:
Give a Damn.
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