Stop Playing the Refs
We are not nearly as vulnerable as we feel.
Most of what we fear isn’t real; it’s rehearsed by algorithms and adrenaline. We still have agency — just not in the places we’ve been told to look.
Damns Given: Nick Richtsmeier
We've spent a generation obsessing about efficiency only to realize the inefficiencies were load-bearing. For ventures to thrive they are going to have to rediscover the business of trust.
Talk to mePodcast
The Mass Decline of Digital Marketing and What It's Gonna Cost
Podcast Ep. 116: We live in a post-trust, post-authenticity world. Tactics continue to fail. Corrosive cultural forces are reshaping trust, commerce, and identity, scrambling what it even means to “market” something. Now for the good news...
"We weren't built for this" with Alexandra Pasi, PhD
Podcast Ep: 115: What if the reason work—and life—feels so off is because the very mediums we communicate through are bending us into shapes we didn’t choose? AI founder and mathemetician Lexi Pasi asks the big questions.
Newsletters
Jul 24
Who wants this to fail?
Growth is change. And everyone of us has reasons to fight change. The magic of growing your venture is knowing in advance where the fight is, and how to care for people through the process.
5 min read
Jul 09
Is your "good culture" holding you back?
I've watched hundreds of hours of cooking shows and seen some ingredients cooked so many different times and
4 min read
Jun 24
Don't Click Me
Lead-chasing through the old internet click maze is the greatest negative transfer of value from mid-market businesses to Silicon Valley ever conceived. It is a virus keeping businesses in the thralls of a long-lost fantasy.
And you don't have to do it anymore.
6 min read
May 30
How everything gets better
Changing our minds is an essential feature of commerce. If people can't retain the agency, then only very powerful actors with very deep pockets get to decide for everyone else.
The good news? The future outlook on getting our minds back looks pretty good.
6 min read
May 24
So what do you do now?
As the Open Web closes, an era of trust shortcuts and workarounds closes with it. And now you must begin on a new era of Trust-Made Growth™️ in a post-trust world. Here are seven jumpstarts. You can't and shouldn't do them all. But you can do one. Let's dive in.
5 min read
May 17
The Web-ending whimper
Doing business on the Internet used to be fun… and profitable. But in the last six months, the Internet's four foundational promises have been permanently broken. Now, ventures like yours have to pivot to a very different future.
14 min read
May 09
Chaos is a ladder.
In this week's FWD, we look at "Who benefits from the chaos?" We live in a time when chaos is a primary tool in driving ventures forward.
How do you benefit when the swirling chips of the game are constantly leveraged against ventures like yours?
6 min read
May 02
Segment... or die.
There is no growth plan for consultative ventures without properly built segmentation. You can't create content that matters. You can't show differentiated value to new prospects. You can't provide legendary service.
And, in all likelihood, you're on the path to obscurity.
7 min read
Apr 16
How to trust Gen Z and selling through a storm
In the internet era, little care is shown to putting your brand in the wrong place. In this week's FWD, brands are willing to throw billions of dollars at platforms that users themselves wish didn't exist, and the most popular growth engine in finance tends to produce the most unhappy clients.
6 min read
Apr 10
Wealth managers: Segment... or die.
There is no growth plan for wealth managers without properly built segmentation. You can't create content that matters. You can't show differentiated value to new prospects. You can't provide legendary service. And, in all likelihood, you're on the path to obscurity.
7 min read
Apr 09
Too early to celebrate?
The AI Sludge running down the mountain is immense, and sure to overwhelm the current web's already-feebled ability to act in trust.
And yet, there are signposts of a new internet rising and with it new generations who are on to the game being played.
5 min read
Apr 02
Hidden growth killers
Growth killers hide in plain sight. They are often treated as cultural quirks. And in many cases when I’ve challenged about them, the leaders treat them as isolated problems or communication breakdowns, not systemic issues. Willful blindness feels good, but it doesn’t make growth.
6 min read