Looking at Business as an Asset, Not a Job
One thing I’ve noticed about entrepreneurs who run larger businesses than me ($10mm and up) is that they don’t look at their companies like those of us running smaller companies do.
When I was just getting started, I thought about my business like I did a job.
When there was a problem, I jumped in to figure out how I could solve it. I looked at my job as working on anything that would hopefully increase revenue and my team was mostly support staff that took care of individual tasks I didn’t want to do.
As I’ve met more founders working on businesses an order of magnitude larger than mine, I’ve realized that they look at things much more like an investor would. The really successful ones run their companies off spreadsheets, and don’t look at how they can solve the problem, but how they can hire people to solve the problem.
So, now I’m trying to adopt this same method of thinking. It’s hard because I like to roll my sleeves up and solve problems, but I know that I need to let my team grow by doing more.
Business
Why Packback CEO Says Evolution Fuels His Purpose Discovery
Great piece from my former boss, Mike Shannon: "My purpose evolved again—and kept evolving. At some moments in the nascent days of pivoting, I’ll admit that my truest purpose was 'Don’t let Packback go bankrupt.' That was a pretty good first purpose."
No News Is Good News
While interesting, the constant stream of mainstream news is rarely meaningful to your daily life and often a source of unnecessary stress.
How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881 million
"This is a mix of problems that economists call “adverse selection” and “imperfect information”...Any time that you’re working with imperfect knowledge and trying to operate a business on a large scale, you’re likely to run into this kind of trouble."
Technology
How to Write Persuasive Technical Content
Persuading software engineers or engineering leaders is essentially no different from persuading writers and businesspeople, but writing persuasive technical content is really hard. But, persuasive technical writing is incredibly valuable because it’s so rare.
What everyone's getting wrong about bootcamps vs degrees - DEV Community
"It is a fool's errand to pressure people into getting degrees when they don't know what they want to do...It is like a pyramid scheme that we bully people into taking on debt to buy their way into a middle-class life when increasingly a degree does not guarantee it."
Leadership
Be Good To Your Mentors
"Plenty of junior people I talk to seem to focus on the ‘how’ of mentorship — how do you find mentors? How do you get mentorship within the company you’re in? Less people seem to talk about what a good relationship with a mentor actually looks like."
Why People are Quitting their Jobs Instead of Going back to Office
“You can't put the work from home genie back in its bottle. 60% of people surveyed would rather quit than go back to the office. We've seen this in practice as we're able to hire really great people at a discount simply because they want the flexibility and free time working remotely allows.”