Entrepreneurs, not contract laborers
You need a business not an "internet business." The first gives you a marketable asset you control and build. The second gives you a dependency on a system of software and apps that will seek to control you.
Latest
Smart as an AI edgelord, pure as a community potluck
Trust isn't solved by brand or by messaging or by cool customer experiences or even how you use your data. Trust is solved by your ability to soften fear, anxiety, doubt, and resistance
The real AI threat is what it's always been: distraction
More bad AI news that will lead to more handwringing... all the while you've got a business to build, and you need trust more now than ever.
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.
AI detection is the wrong fight, and it may cost us the one worth fighting
AI detection is the wrong fight. It’s a virtue signal in the midst of a war for the fundamentals of how to build an economy. A rainbow logo you roll out every June 1. And, it doesn’t work. The internet loves a virtue signal, obsesses over moral victories, but its true passion is a witch hunt.
The meteoric rise of DIY in B2B: Or what to do when the client is the competition
Sales is where we negotiate value. You have to make the case for your value not as a replacement of the in-house team, but as a compliment. Which will require two skills: The Art of Co-Creation, and Framing the Proximity Problem.
Solving for the ShitLOAD
When resistance is high (as I'll make the case it is... everywhere), likability, even transparency, or friendliness are unreliable signals, pointing to economic norms, long in our review mirror.
What is keeping founders locked up... and what unlocks it.
What is required is a subset of leaders who still believe that there is a world to make and our actions are multiplicative in making that world. That the job of a leader is to decide in the face of uncertainty.
What I want for my birthday and the conversation I keep having off-web
When I'm having these conversations about fear, we talk about how insecurity is the primary economic product of an economy built on distrust and addiction that is daily feeding on human vulnerability. The only way to be free of this is to reject its premises.
This one's not for everyone
Not knowing what to do will be a terminal condition for most of us and for most of our ventures. There's just simply too much of the past slipping under our feet to reconstitute anything recognizable as "normal" in the next twenty years. But the lesson is obvious: Lead anyway.
You are in a class war (whether you like it or not)
The "no politics at work" vibe (often the wise choice) has led many leaders to miss the socio-economic forces changing the culture of their teams. Subtle and strange battle lines are being drawn. And it's all about class—no ascension to Marxism required.
A Bit of Disagreement... and Staying in the Conversation
I had a real life experience of of resistance and how easy distrust is. This episode is about that experience, about disagreement, about staying a conversation when we're seeing the same thing in from two different sides, and learning to pay attention.
Org Design
A body of resistance, changing winds, and Justin Timberlake is here
I'm sensing a rising readiness to get back to growth, in the historic ways that people build, collaborate, and buy, an escape from click-chasing, clout-chasing, scale-chasing, and all that goes in its wake. The good news, the phenomenal news, is there is a way forward
Value Creation
Why They Like You But Won't Hire You: Selling in a Trust-Made Way
This episode is about why nice people get ghosted. Why saying "yeah, I can do that" on a sales call is a death trap. And why you're burning trust all the while they are telling you how much they like you...
Community
What would make it beautiful? Trust, place, and the best question I got asked this week (so far)
We will need leaders who have done the work to be oriented to expansion. So many leaders are in reaction or contraction. Or defense. But expansion, opening up the capacious places so that new things can grow, is the only way we can move forward together.
"Offset": Meta gets one word right, the long tech winter, and derisking ventures in the age of AI
Big Tech enters its pivot era (Don't call it a comeback) and expects the world to say, "Cool, seems fine. You definitely know what you're doing." How not to do that.
Positioning
Contrary to (some) marketing gurus...how trust works
It's another case of Marketers Ruin Everything™ as my colleague Lynn Swayze says. Marketing people are grabbing on to "trust" and dragging it by its tail through the savannah... let's discuss.
Culture
A Library of Trustmaking and Fighting Fire with Fire
Two critical and growing teams in this game of an economy we are playing, aren't getting what they need: Founders and Fractionals.
Value Creation
The Casino Nobody Warned You About: The latest AI chaos and fear-selling is back in vogue
A sh*tstorm of news from the AI front has settled in, raising the stakes on the fate of the universe, curing cancer, CEO avatars, and AI models so fearsome they dare not be mentioned. What's a CEO to do?
Culture
All I have to sell is scar tissue
This episode is what real venture change actually asks of you, and why it's not therapy, even when it feels like it. It's about why your marketing problem is almost never just a marketing problem. And it's about the only two things I've ever seen consistently move leaders forward.
The leader's modern dilemma: Surveilled but never seen, transcripted but never heard
Leaders are not being honest with themselves about the degradation of self-trust. They are being hollowed out by the sparkling lights of the online attention casino, extracting more and more from them with every click. I see it everywhere.
Positioning
How you think about AI has a lot to do with how you think about chaos
The long list of things outside your control feels like it keeps getting longer. The question is, how do you keep that chaos outside, so you can make strategic, trust-made, growth decisions on the inside? Surprisingly, this has everything to do with how you think about AI.
SSN: Giving a Damn about Disruption, AI Hype, and What a Building the Future Really Requires
Super Show Notes for Episode 2.03 of Damns Given Podcast Guest: Amy Carrillo Cotten Amy Carrillo Cotten is a technologist and Director of Transformation who grew up with a whiteboard in her kitchen and thought it was normal. She works at the intersection of engineering organizations and the humans
Culture
Gen Z, Philosophy, and the Best Minds of a Generation
Mistakes have been made by attributing the current economic standstill to AI. This degradation is generational. Trying to build a world of shortcuts, not solutions. Vibes, not value. Without a dramatic change in course, it will be the legacy we leave to the world.