The Mmm...letter Podcast

It’s been a long time coming.

After my wife and I married, we hadn’t the funds for the all-inclusive, drinks-on-the-beach honeymoon we had hoped for. After admitting to having no honeymoon plans, on repeat, to everyone congratulating us on our recent nuptials, a pattern emerged. In place of a tropical beach vacation, our friends recommended we take a weekend trip to Saugatuck, Michigan.

They described Saugatuck as an oasis in our midwestern desert: cute shops, fine dining, and stunning views of Lake Michigan. If only we heeded their advice, but Saugatuck, too, found itself outside our paltry millennial budgets.

Instead, we found ourselves in Sheboygan, Wisconsin – the Coke Zero of cute midwestern getaways. But fate smiles on the patient. This past weekend, and one year later, we turned our Sauga-dreams into Sauga-reality. We rented a house along Paw Paw Lake, a mere 1-hour drive from our anticipated destination.

When we finally reached our beaming city of certain joy and over-priced cherry preserves, we were, oddly, met with some conspicuous sass.

When we arrived in Saugatuck in the late afternoon, we were famished, starving, and generally suffering from insufficient bodily nutrients. We had to eat.

The cutest and nearest place was on the corner, or at least that’s where Google Maps thought it was. Arriving at the footsteps of a converted home-turned-restaurant, a homesteraunt, we soon uncovered two conflicting bits of news:

* A sign reading ‘closed’ rested against the window and faced the street in clear view of all passersby.

* Inside, people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and migration patterns nibbled away happily at the bar, on canvas loveseats, and along the adjacent window, looking out at the peasantry as they passed by

Since both my wife and I subscribe to literacy as a concept and as a general practice, the sign indicated to us a shared understanding of reality: the establishment on whose footsteps we found ourselves was, in fact, inaccessible.

In most cases, such data, and none other, is sufficient to bring a malnourished married couple to one conclusion: find another place to eat. Ah, but that is where the second piece of news makes its dramatic entrance, stage right.

The very presence of people dining inside the establishment directly conflicted with our initial findings. How can an establishment both be inaccessible and yet serve so many?

As we were both of sound minds yet hungry stomachs, our mutually-shared interpretation of these conflicting observations was, thus, please be open; we are starving*.

Now, if the word ‘closed’ held any meaning in this reality, the door to this establishment would give not one inch to our feasting advances; but alas, it swung open. We entered.

As we attempted to attract the attention of a hostess, we met the side-eyed glances of a mob in the making. The disparate patrons scrutinized us as one does broccoli lodged firmly in the crown of a triple-Oreo milkshake.

The manager approached. By the looks of him, he is a put-together gay man in his early 50s. “Sorry, we’re closed.” Time stood still long enough for Larry David to jot down a few notes.

Closed? We hardly made out the word over the sound of people crunching, sipping, and carving initials onto their place settings.

Rather than use his next breath for popping the bubble of cognitive dissonance in which we now found ourselves trapped, he informed us, “we open at 5.” Sure you do, and I bet you go inside-out when the moon strikes Neptune.

As we hangrily hunted down our next meal, Simona pointed out that if a business owner reaches the point of frustration after repeatedly turning customers away despite the presence of a ‘closed’ sign, perhaps the customer isn’t the problem.

The short business moral to this long personal story is this: assume your customer is reasonably intelligent but somewhat irrational. A ‘closed’ sign is sufficient for a cold, calculating machine. To a person well motivated by their hunger or desire for your product, the presence of any conflicting information may result in further curiosity and, as a consequence, wasted time and avoidable mistakes.

Your customer does not like to be wrong, does not wish to be misled, and does not enjoy being blamed for the confusion you caused. Put up the ‘closed’ sign, lock the door, draw the blinds, and lose the attitude.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

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God speed.

As you may have guessed, I’m a free market capitalist. I know, mind = blown. Often, I find myself debating with others the merits of the poster child of free market capitalism: Amazon.

The conversation ultimately beats one of the many dead horses that are Amazon’s union-busting, local-business undercutting, job-destroying, competition-killing, company-guzzling, or otherwise Bezos-enriching tactics.

Let’s acknowledge that Amazon employs 1.7 million people and is a massive economic engine both on the ground and in the cloud with AWS. Nothing that large runs without a hiccup or two.

Amazon grew to this size, maintained two-day shipping, left enough direct-to-consumer brands alive for us to experience hints of consumer choice, and has yet to enslave humanity; that is a modern miracle.

But what about all the squished malls and mom & pop shops that Amazon peeled off its boots? What’s exceptional about a free market is that, when maintained adequately, it clears out the old to make room for the new, and it does this regularly.

One hundred years ago, the department store sat in the privileged position Amazon sits in today; the department store lacerated the general store, and the wound was fatal. Sears, Montgomery Ward, and others created unparalleled shopping experiences that put tens of thousands of smaller stores out of business.

The people spoke with their dollars, and the department stores grew. And as they ballooned to success, these organizations grew weary and cozy. Instead of their typical three-piece suits, they started showing up to work in PJs and Pikachu slippers.

Then came a litany of hungry young Internet entrepreneurs ready to eat their lunch. Many startups perished, but Amazon survived. The department stores were forced to consolidate, shore up their defenses, and get trapped against the ropes.

So what happens next? In our lifetime, Amazon, too, will find itself on the ropes. In the past 20 years, western civilization rapidly relinquished its livelihood to the Internet. Shopping, socializing, and all sorts of selfish, hedonistic pleasures take place from the comfort of your smartphone.

Our pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding, novelty-driven animalistic subconscious gets sucked into phone activities far beyond any point an observer might consider normal. This is why I believe the Internet is an unregulated drug, and we have yet to determine what dosage, if any, is safe.

The downfall of Amazon, along with other tech giants, will come from the increasingly desperate need for real human connection and actual community. In a twist of irony, the local mom & pop shop is the David that will conquer this Goliath.

But it won’t be one store; it will be a death by a thousand cuts. Shop owners will soon realize they can offer one thing that Amazon can never replicate: a place for people to gather. Whereas bars fulfill this need, with questionable results, for romance, stores will satisfy the desire to belong to something and to meet like-minded people.

This is why we see traditional venues offer new and non-traditional experiences: boozy evenings at museums and wine tastings in restaurants. We’ve begun the slow and steady reaction to virtual reality’s lack of reality; to help that along, we must reconfigure our commercial real estate, rezone our buildings, and focus on building the community rather than merely selling to it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

Years ago, a CEO stared down a grim assessment of his hospital; intra-departmental cooperation lagged behind expectations, and the numbers looked rough.

And each department had a head, a vice-president, assigned to overlook their chiefdom and cooperate with fellow department heads.

The CEO found no behavioral problems among his 11 vice presidents in one-on-ones. In group meetings, all heads appeared to sign on to performance initiatives, action plans, and other corrective corporate similes for “plans;” plans to unite their efforts and improve the hospital’s bottom line.

And yet, month after month, numbers fell, cooperation fell, and no one came forward to identify the cause. That’s where you come in.

The CEO has tasked you with resolving this deficiency and is paying you handsomely.

You meet the vice presidents as a group. The atmosphere is tense but otherwise presents no apparent cause for tension. After meeting each vice president, the picture comes into focus.

All but one present the 11th vice president as a concern. He refuses to cooperate with the other department heads, is arrogant, and dismissive of his duties. He also happens to be the CEO’s brother-in-law.

“Oh.” You smell nepotism. What do you do next?

This is a question I faced as part of a workshop led by the consultant, Steven, who lived this story. Everyone in my group, myself included, who attempted to solve this led with the same foot: confront the CEO and present the findings.

In the roleplay, the confrontation would take the CEO aback, and he promised to investigate further. And in each roleplay, this strategy failed to relieve the problem.

To the best of my knowledge, here’s what Steven chose to do and what resulted.

Steven did not reprimand the CEO or his brother-in-law. Confoundingly, he advocated for the brother’s promotion. He convinced the CEO that his brother’s function deserved a special designation that worked directly with the CEO. The CEO agreed.

Within two weeks of his brother’s promotion, the VP was terminated. With his seat replaced, the departments began cooperating, and performance improved.

The politics fomenting at our country’s border in the past few weeks reminded me of this story.

When I first heard it, I recognized that Steven had deceived his client. He wittingly advocated for a change he did not believe in and fooled the CEO into going along with it, all to make a point.

Steven’s solution was undoubtedly clever, and it worked, but was it the right thing to do? Am I jealous that I didn’t think of it myself? Or is my moral compass so juvenile that I can’t distinguish a small wrong from a large?

It’s wrong to mislead your client or your customer. In Steven’s case, it was a morally questionable choice that led to a positive outcome, one from which the CEO, vice presidents, hospital, and community-at-large ultimately benefited. But it could’ve gone another way.

The brother’s promotion could have ingrained him further into the organization, like a tick burrowing its head deeper into the skin.

If that had happened, the hospital would have been worse off than before they hired Steven. Revealing the recommendation as a ruse would have damaged Steven’s reputation and failed to correct the problem, putting him further behind than where he started.

Judging the quality of a decision by its outcome is known as resulting, which justifies or vilifies a decision ex post facto. Roller-blading my overweight 13-year-old helmetless body down a flight of cement stairs was a terrible idea, and it wasn’t made any better by the fact that I survived it: I still did something stupid.

However, Steven did not create the problem he was hired to solve. The person who made that problem was the CEO, who hired a family member without first vetting the appointment.

Over the past year, approximately 2 million migrants were detained crossing the border into the country; unaccounted others made it past the border patrol. These people believed they would find work, prosperity, and open arms in America–a strong justification for undertaking the deadly trip up the western hemisphere.

Open borders they met; prosperity, not so much. Our government relocates these people to small southern towns by the busload. They treat each migrant as a refugee and allow them to roam the country with impunity while they await their trial.

There are few jobs for them, many are likely homeless, and the towns where they reside lack the resources to care for them. And so, a handful of Steven-like governors took it upon themselves to bring the problem to those responsible for creating it.

They relied on deception to coerce migrants onto buses and chartered aircraft destined for cities such as Chicago, New York, and Martha’s Vineyard. Doing so forced the advocates of open borders, who typically live far from the border and in deep blue cities, to face the music.

I like that tune, but should I?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

Patagonia CEO Yvon Chouinard is a self-hating billionaire.

When he saw his name listed among Forbes’ wealthiest individuals, he recounts in an interview with The New York Times; he was overwhelmed by nauseating disgust.

Typically, a self-flagellating billionaire will get the red carpet rollout at The Times, but what he had to say next earned him even more political brownie points.

In his stomach-churning words, “the Earth is now our only shareholder.” He meant that Patagonia would redirect all of their profits–and we’ll return to this claim later–to a non-profit trust responsible for fighting climate change.

As a billionaire looking to profess your hatred of wealth and commensurate love for the planet, maybe you would donate to an organization beyond reprieve, one whose unyielding track record of environmental activism was well-recognized by others and beyond the influence of your bank account.

And if that’s what you think happened, I welcome you to The Mmm…letter, come for the spilled tea, stay for the cookies.

2% of Patagonia shares, and voting control of the company, will remain in Chouinard’s family. The remaining 98% of the shares will also remain in Chouinard’s family.

98% of the shares are now owned by the Earth-loving hands of a 501(c)(3) named The Holdfast Collective. Don’t bother looking them up; all you will find is what Patagonia printed in their official press release.

The Holdfast Collective is a toddling environmental non-profit with no track record owned and operated by the Chouinard family. The self-hating billionaire gave away his billions… to himself. Slow. Clap. For. You.

Suppose you think this is fine and we can trust this wealthy, virtue-signaling family to adhere to their societal promises. In that case, I remind you that the Trump family used similar non-profit schemes to enrich themselves.

Will Chouinard’s family buck that trend? Only time will tell, but there was one obvious way to resolve that massive conflict of interest. Yet, they opted against it and refused to acknowledge the billionaire-sized elephant in the room.

And that’s just the first problem with this marketing campaign, and yes, it is absolutely and undeniably a marketing campaign. Patagonia will see a spike in sales courtesy of white guilt and the renewed enthusiasm of self-hating rich liberals.

As I’ve written before, there’s strong evidence that corporate philanthropy discourages personal philanthropy and encourages consumerism–which is, allegedly, the very thing we’re told to reduce because our largesse is the preeminent contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and globally-rising temperatures, n’est pas?

The consumer (not me, by the way) who bears guilt that may spur them to climate-fighting action now has another opportunity to swipe their burdens away at the cash register. The consumer wins, Patagonia wins, and the Earth wins… Wrong.

As others have pointed out, there is no reality in which Patagonia functions without contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and, ipso facto, global warming.

In nearly all forms, consumerism relies on the prolonged use of fossil fuels. Patagonia relies on global transportation, petroleum-based polyester, electricity, and a host of middlemen, culminating in a net addition to heat-capturing gases.

On its surface, any thinking person understands this but is willing to catapult that reality into the overheated stratosphere in exchange for getting fleeced for some fleece.

I’ll take a billionaire who admits to being an asshole over one who claims moral superiority and insults my intelligence. And the last bit of tomfoolery is in the donation itself (emphasis mine):

Each year, excess profits—money we make after reinvesting in the business (including money we want to save for unforeseen events, like a pandemic)—will be distributed as a dividend to the Collective to be used for its work.

Are you asking who decides what percentage of profits are ‘excessive’? Yeah, me too. Here’s the thing about profits.

Profits accrue to those who provide a desirable good or service at a margin that enables them to grow their operation. They do what they do well and what they do is in demand.

Non-profits, conversely, accrue wealth by maintaining a positive reputation with an ever-growing base of donors and use only a fraction of the wealth donated to satisfy their mission.

This is necessarily true as the communities who benefit from non-profits are rarely, if ever, the same communities who fund their existence–if they were, they would be financing a for-profit organization.

But at least in the case of an independent non-profit, there is a fraction of accountability demanded by the donors themselves. In Patagonia’s case, The Holdfast Collective is guaranteed yearly revenue regardless of its performance.

And you know this doesn’t bother Chouinard because he knows precisely what that money will do: help elect political radicals to congress who, much like himself, lack even the faintest clue how to reduce humanity’s impact on climate.

Donate how you wish, vote how you want to, but don’t pretend that by shifting money around, you’ve become any less of a billionaire, in fact, I think that’s one of the qualifications… 🤔

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

Here’s something you wouldn’t have guessed about me: I love musicals. My favorite musical is The Book of Mormon, but by a narrow margin–I’ve seen more than I can recount, and I love most.

We saw The Notebook at my wife’s behest. It’s a musical inspired by the romantic book and movie of the same title by Nicholas Sparks.

I had few expectations. Simona, who grew up on Ryan Gosling “hey girl…” memes, had all the expectations.

The movie, which Simona forced me to watch early in our dating career, is, regrettably, decent. But the musical is phenomenal.

If you are unfamiliar with the premise, think 1940s middle-American summertime Romeo & Juliet, but instead of youth and poison, it’s retirees and Alzheimer’s. Allie, the female love interest, suffers from the condition. Her husband, Noah, reads aloud the story of their lives to ignite Allie’s memory and return her to Noah, metaphorically speaking.

The narration guides the audience through biographical vignettes, exploring Allie’s life, Noah’s, and that of their children, family, and friends at critical moments.

They must have cut the Chicago cast from diamonds because it’s nearly flawless apart from one wrinkle. As a possible artistic decision, the oldest and first iterations of Noah and Allie introduced on stage are race-swapped with their younger counterparts. The couple is mixed race: Noah is white, as in the original telling, and Allie is black. But as senior citizens, Noah is black, and Allie is white.

The directors may have purposely done so to confuse us. It’s a red herring that leaves you questioning whether old Noah, whose name is deliberately withheld at the beginning, is reading his own story or someone else’s.

This was a poor choice because the slight bite of ‘a-ha’ we taste after discovering that all three actresses represent the same woman and all three actors represent the same man is a morsel tainted with the disbelief that a wide-eyed blonde teenage boy needs only 50 years to become John Beasley, a black and weathered baritone.

Thankfully, the players’ dedication to their exceptional performances saves this woke casting choice from tanking the entire program. The work is excellent, so you forgive its momentary lapses in judgment, of which there are several. Yes, I will poke fun at each one.

In the original story, Allie’s fiancé, Lon, is a successful and influential lawyer from the city. His career path defines the sharp and literarily one-dimensional difference between himself and Noah. Noah takes over his father’s lumber yard and works primarily with his hands in the countryside.

The musical found Lon’s original career of choice bourgeoisie and transformed him into a thriving public defender… If you’re rolling your eyes, it’s because you know the first thing about public defenders, something the musical’s authors do not or perhaps refuse to acknowledge.

The first thing everyone knows about public defense attorneys is that they are broke. They couldn’t cut it as paid lawyers and so lack power and are overworked. After painting Allie’s parents as elite, erudite traditionalists who want “what’s best” for Allie’s future, it’s hard to believe that wife-of-public-defense-attorney is what those two Ivy Leaguers had in mind.

But Allie didn’t want that upscale big-city public defender life; she wanted to be a painter. Early on, we see that she had a raw, youthful talent that her parents stymied when they separated her from Noah.

In a tucked-away comment by older Noah, we discover that Allie returns to painting after the two marry and move into the house that Noah built for them. Allegedly, Allie’s painting career was so successful that it supported her, her doting and broke husband, and the two children they raised together.

I can’t speak for you, but I will when I say that; yeah, we get it; it’s that one friend who raises an entire family in the country by painting landscapes. Who doesn’t know someone like that?

You’ll be shocked to discover that in the original telling, Noah supports Allie’s artistic career through whatever modest means he can employ, not the other way around. This is typically true of any spousal pairing in which one partner is a starving aspiring artist, let alone an artist disconnected from major cities where curators can make their career a profitable yet improbable reality–maybe she got into NFTs.

Thankfully, the feminist and woke daydreams injected into this story fail to undercut its core and rather conservative message. This story, and its leading man Noah, are compelling to both male and female audiences because of Noah’s commitment, dog-headed determination, and absolute certainty.

After meeting Allie, he decides in fewer than two months that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. Full-stop. After she leaves his town and he goes off to war, he returns to buy and renovate the house he promised her when they were teenagers.

He spends five years building furniture and mending a house in a town that she no longer lives in because he has a terminal if-you-build-it-she-will-come belief in himself and her.

That level of certainty intoxicates a generation of kids raised on moral relativism and Facebook’s Maybe button. Noah knows he loves Allie more than I know two plus two equals four.

Even though there are no soul mates in real life and the story muddies commitment with serendipitous fate, we still come away with a powerful message. That message is this: dedicate yourself to another, have faith, build a life with that person, and when it’s time to walk through life’s fires, you will have someone you love to hold your hand.

Does that always work out? No. Is that a guarantee? Not at all. But it’s a north star axiom worth pursuing that lives in the heart of every person, regardless of how much cynicism and selfishness are caked over it.

Today, this message is evaporating from the public domain. Girls choose careers; boys choose instant gratification. We’re pulling further away from commitment and diving deeper into transactional exchanges.

We’re told, and my mother was one such proponent, that we don’t need to marry nor have children to have fulfilling lives. We should have few or no children because they’re expensive and consume fossil fuels. I am done with that, and I wish I had done away with it sooner.

I don’t believe that marriage or commitment are patriarchal values imposed on society to subjugate women and empower men. I don’t even think marriage was invented at all.

I believe it is a deep, biological, and practical desire that faith organizations only codified later, and civilization then twisted and perverted through time. But it endures and will continue to do so as long as people believe in the kind of powerful human commitment on display in The Notebook.

It’s cheesy, predictable, tear-jerking, and I loved it. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

Is there a more tempting question to ask than this: “what is the key to your success?”

Blogs, books, and research are dedicated to harvesting the secrets of success from the presumed successes.

Doubtless, you’ve read, even from this column, tips to reach your goals. But there’s a problem with this advice.

When you ask, “what makes you successful?” you purchase a ticket to a freak show of half-truths, outright lies, and fantasies cut from whole cloth. And here’s how you know that’s the truth.

First, success is highly personal. What you perceive as success, much like perfection, is merely a set of observable outcomes that appeal to you, such as status, wealth, or owning two PS5s. Invariably, these perceptions differ between people.

Meanwhile, the presumed successes are on the precipice of failure. The clock starts ticking when they buy into the idea that they are an unqualified success and others need their guidance. It’s a matter of time before the public writes them off and relegates them to the indices of history.

So they buy into the premise and begin to answer the question. Whether they’re incredibly fit, popular on social media, or have a high-value business, the modest will thank the people around them and the luck they found along the way.

But the dangerous individuals will prescribe us a step-by-step process to become them. We, the unsuccessful, who clamor for such answers, will follow their guidance. We believe that by repeating their behaviors, we gain their rewards. My client is one such person profoundly sick with this mental illness.

He looks to organizations 100x his size and mimics their behaviors. They use this color scheme, and so will he. They use this copy, and so will he. They have this feature, so must he offer it. Rather than outmaneuver his opponents by employing his unique gifts, he attempts to beat them at their own game, a game in which they are the clear frontrunner.

This practice is poisonous because success rarely understands its nature to the fullest extent. And the observer, studying exclusively the observable traits of the successful, fails to account for the Invisibles.

And while we fall prey to this mimicking practice with games of the mind, we rarely do with games of the body. How many people watch an Olympic gymnastics routine and think, “oh yeah, sign me up, I can do that.”? In physical performance, all machinations are visible: we see muscles at work and the body in continuous and harmonious motion.

Furthermore, it’s common knowledge that the world’s best athletes are born with genetic advantages and compound them with intense training regimens. Top athletes are both born and made.

Yet we pop onto social media, see someone with a million followers smiling in their profile picture, and think, well, I need to post 2x a day and write once a week, and I’ll have a huge following, and I’ll be rich. Preposterous, I know, but thousands of us think thoughts such as this each day.

We cannot observe the machinations of mind games, so we ignore their existence. We reduce success to a rational, school-like series of procedures that anyone can mimic and, in so doing, reap the predictable reward.

But that is like watching someone perform a personal branding quadruple axle and thinking, “yeah, strap me in; I’m ready to do that.”

I don’t know what it takes to succeed because no one does. Please don’t ask me. But here’s something I would like you to ask yourself before hunting for tips: what does success look like in a world without idols?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

This column is like a baby; it needs tender care to survive. But publishing this post may drown it in the bathtub.

If you unsubscribe today, know that I understand entirely but will be saddened. No trigger warning here, but buckle your seatbelt because I am about to get political.

Here’s the question I want you to confront today: are your politics holding you back? I could rattle on about the growing cultural-political divide, but that’s not my area of expertise.

I presume you perceive the divide in your life and the media you consume and see the divide growing in Western society: the left pulling away from the right, and vice-versa.

But does it make sense, financially or personally, to dismiss those who disagree with us? In some cases: yes.

What’s great about our society is that we do not compel businesses to perform services for everyone. If a political organization requires assistance from the marketplace, players within the market may refuse to help the organization on ideological grounds.

I argue that extending that policy to individuals and apolitical organizations is bad for business but great for fostering civil war. Must we be allies in politics before we are allies in commerce?

In my opinion, no, and here’s where I come from.

In one of the bluest towns, inside one of the bluest districts, cradled within America’s bluest state, my parents raised me as a dyed-red conservative. My hometown of Glenview was so blue that in high school, my U.S. history teacher comfortably and openly mocked me during class for my support of George Bush; it was a challenging experience that emboldened me.

My friends, predominantly liberal or apathetic, refused to leave me be as right-leaning–they frequently accosted me for the beliefs I held, yet they remained my friends, and I theirs, some to this very day.

After university, I moved to San Francisco for my first job and, later, to Los Angeles–throughout, my politics gradually leaned further and further left as I encountered the people right-wing pundits criticized so harshly. Today, I find myself correcting my course again, and if you must know, I am center-right.

Why do I dare admit this to you?

I’ve lived, befriended, and worked with people who held beliefs vastly different from my own. I cooperate with people across the aisle, which we demand of the United States Congress, yet infrequently of ourselves.

And there was a time when I felt confident in being a lone dissenting voice, knowing that opinions alone could not put an affirmative end to my relationships.

Today, I feel many draw firmer and farther ideological lines in their sand. The divides grow deeper and the echo chambers louder; I fear speaking my mind, and the fear suffocates.

If you’ve read me at all, you may be surprised to learn that I hold back a lot in this column. I fear losing readers, my reputation, and, worst of all, my friends in the process. That I’ve expressed even this much gives me cause for concern.

People I love and respect read these words, and most haven’t the faintest clue of what I believe. I keep many thoughts close to my chest and remain a good, open person, especially when I engage with someone with a different perspective.

I do this because it is better to learn than to shy away from others and because I fear they will not extend me the same courtesy. Yet, the interactions with those I disagree with brought me to the center.

Being open to other opinions and empathizing with their circumstances gave me access to new perspectives. That practice is a devout liberal tenant, or at least it once was.

Ideological purity, which is, at best, a precise way to think, is now mistaken for an accurate way to think. Devoting yourself to a political party is duct-taping your mind and business to a thought rocket guided by people with greater blind spots than your own.

You merely nestle quietly at the base of the ideological projectile, but the leaders live at the distant tip, so high in the atmosphere, they remain comfortably buffered from opponents.

By cutting off business and relationships with people who share few of our beliefs, we deepen the already profound cultural divide, foster us-vs-them-ism, and, worst of all, leave good money on the table.

Is it worth it?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

🎧 Strap on your headphones for bonus music and sound-effects. This column is better heard.

I’ve been thinking about promoting myself on social media 🤢. I know.

But I write this column, so I’m definitely into the concept of minor-league fame. Where I falter is creating content that reaches. I stumbled across a guy who posts on social media for a living.

He teaches people how to grow their following, and ipso facto, their businesses.

And let’s put aside the fact that someone who grows their audience for a living is both promoting his business and doing his job at the same time; if your success were directly related to how many likes you got, you too would marry your LinkedIn profile.

The guy’s high-level plan to grow a 100,000-large audience is effectively this:

* Post a long read weekly

* Post two times a day

* And target a microniche audience

You read that right: micro-niche.

It’s not enough to write about obscure toy trends from the 90s, you need to target readers who owned a rare Quackers The Duck Beanie Baby, and who suffer from early-onset Myocarditis; this is, and don’t be fooled, a highly-lucrative affinity group.

Despite the mockery, I see the value in his approach. Find people you can write to, have them follow you around the Internet, and then sell them stuff that solves their unique micro-niche problems.

In some cases, this strategy will work because people in affinity groups can experience common issues.

For example, suffering from Myocarditis is a problem solved with medical treatment, and selling your old duck-shaped stuffed animal can earn you the quick cash you need to pay for those treatments – I’m happy to help you do that, and I’m calling my service Quacks for Carditis.

But here’s the rub: affinity groups may not share a common affinity-based problem, let alone one you can solve. And when they do share a unique struggle, it may be so unique to them that your business model is handcuffed to your genetically-modified test-tube niche.

Finally, to find a microniche for which you may provide value, you really need to be a part of a group that you understand – and for me, there is none. Aside from my family and close friends, I’m an affinity group of one.

I don’t hang out with writers, coders, actors, marketers, or other Stanleys. I don’t have a niche or microniche affinity, I just have me: a nanoniche. But I can experience problems, solve those problems, and hope others find those solutions valuable. So here’s a problem I’m trying to solve.

While working at Shrimpy, I was provided with a corporate Google account. This account became an addition to my personal Google account and Office 365 account.

As you may know, each of these accounts comes with a calendar. As part of my job, I provided my availability to coworkers so they could schedule meetings with me. But my corporate calendar had no awareness of my other calendars.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem because most people clear their 9-to-5 working schedule for, well, work.

But remote work environments enable employees to blend their personal and professional lives, which leaves the old system of 9-to-5 openness a little broken.

When asked to meet at such and such time, I checked multiple calendars before confirming – and I still got it wrong. Being aware of and providing your actual availability to others is now a meaningful challenge remote professionals face.

I am solving that challenge with a baby product I’m calling Clarity.

Clarity’s mission is to be the best (ha ha ha) way for remote professionals to know and share their actual availability.

Clarity will help you synchronize events from one calendar to another, between two accounts (Google, Office 365), within the same account, or any combination thereof.

This enables you to build a master calendar that knows about every playdate, every workout, and every upcoming meeting-that-could’ve-been-an-email, providing once and for all, a clear view of your actual schedule.

See what I did there? I’m so clear-ver. 🤢

And since Clarity sounds like a brand new drug, I am obligated to list the side effects — cue pleasant music and b-roll of a middle-aged woman going about her day smiling at flowers, a book, and a book about flowers.

Side-effects of Clarity may include:

* Wasting less time flipping through your calendars

* A significant reduction in double-bookings

* And saying, ‘I can do 10 AM,’ and actually meaning it

⚠ Clarity is not recommended for women who are nursing, pregnant, or expect to become pregnant – they should ask their doctor about our leading baby-safe product: Sorry, I Can’t Make It.

If you’re interested in Clarity, I would love to keep you updated – follow me on LinkedIn for updates as I post my progress.

And yes, you did just read the very first self-promotion on The Mmm…Letter – (sniffles) these newsletters grow up so fast.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

Before I entered the Zone of Give-Upness™; I connected with a marketing professional for career advice. And I’ll never forget the tragic advice she gave.

She held a series of marketing positions since college and worked her way up to VP at reputable organizations. She was kind enough to lend a shoulder; so I explained my situation: I felt defeated and had no clue where to take my career.

Her advice? Quit chasing dreams and find a career you can tolerate.

That response crushed me, not because I took her advice, but because she so clearly had. As we spoke, it was evident she found no joy in marketing and refused to acknowledge her creativity, yet she remained in marketing roles for over two decades.

In fewer words: she settled.

But I can see two powerful reasons why one may live by her advice. Statistics show that very few people are happy with their careers, and who are we to become outliers?

And then there’s that one pernicious, gooey zeitgeist that reminds everyone “your work does not define you.”

Together, these points present an air-tight case for keeping whatever career–objection, your honor, the plaintiff has clearly given the f*#k up.

Those two reasons are the same reason: finding a meaningful career is hard. Fact: no one has ever lived their ‘best life’ on accident – you cannot expect the universe to hand you a meaningful life without putting in the work and making a sacrifice because it is precisely those acts that give it meaning.

If someone served your dreams up on a silver platter, they wouldn’t taste like your dreams at all because you weren’t the one working the stove.

We lay the foundations of a meaningful life with hope-filled bricks and bloodied mortar; hands must be dirtied.

And then there’s the mantra of those who’ve thrown in every possible towel: “your work does not define you.” This takes on other forms as well, such as, “your job is not your life,” work-life balance, and similar drivel.

If you read it broadly, it’s the body-positivity movement of labor: an escape hatch from accountability to your life’s purpose.

When you claim that life is what happens between Friday night and Monday morning, you’re crafting a psychological get-out-of-jail-free card for when you begin questioning everything–it’s a philosophy that buoys in youth but cripples in middle age; that is unless you plan to rage well into your 60s.

But if you’ve read this far and remain unswayed by arguments philosophical, perhaps you’ll consider the arithmetical.

If you work 40 hours a week beginning at age 18 and ending at age 65, presuming a generous two-week vacation per anum, you will work 94,000 hours.

You’ll have 4 hours of free waking time every weekday, and 12 hours throughout retirement, which leaves you with a total of ~132,800 hours of adult free time to rage, knit, or rage-knit

As a consequence, you will spend 41% of your waking adult life at work, and nearly another third of that adult life in a rocking chair. But if we exclude retirement, work then consumes three-fifths of your able-bodied adult life or nearly 60%.

But that number actually creeps higher. Remember those 4 free hours you get Monday through Thursday? When you have a shit career, you will dedicate plenty of that time to recovering from the previous 8 spent at work, and Sunday nights are complete write-offs.

So by my numbers, you’ll spend less than 40% of your able-bodied time actually living; and there’s a word for something that isn’t alive half the time: dead.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com

Last week, the OnDeck organization announced a restructuring; looking for the buried lede? Mass layoffs.

Several of OnDeck’s former members and staff read this column. And if they’re anything like me, they are reeling from their loss.

These souls, like the tens of thousands relieved from their responsibilities in the past quarter, were ladled into an overflowing pot: the job market is brimming with talent, yet lacking in opportunity.

The folks at OnDeck have been really good to me, and I hope that with my words, I can return the favor during these trying times.

So here goes.

F&#k.

Last week, you began the same journey I did in June as a cautiously optimistic, unemployed professional. But between you and me, you’re better off.

Your resume probably reads like a steady ascendance of steps up a career ladder that reinforces your skillset, whereas my resume reads like the lunch menu at The Cheesecake Factory. You got me beat on specialization, but in case you’re still struggling a few months down the line, here’s something you may find helpful.

I’ve learned that the more I pursue something, the harder I try, the less I get. For a while there’s no progress, I may even fall backward. And around that point, I start to lose hope. That’s when I enter: The Zone of Give-Upness™.

Funny enough, in the zone of give-upness is precisely where something great happens, something I fail to anticipate. And I doubt the zone works exclusively for me.

I believe the zone works because our desires turn into thirsty clamoring for specific outcomes, and those desires inhibit our discipline.

Racing toward the next job right after your previous one is like telling yourself, “starting today, I must score a three-point shot.” But the three-pointer is among the most difficult shots in basketball, and you’re out of practice.

You grab your ball and throw boulders, missing 99 out of every 100. Soon, you begin taking fewer shots. Then you start skipping Mondays, then Tuesdays, then all days.

It’s a predictable path, and here’s how you got there: you were so caught up hitting the three-pointer that you failed to do everything else required of on-court greatness: you never exercised, you never dribbled, you never practiced layups, passes, rebounds, or defense – all you did was throw three-pointers because that’s all you thought mattered.

And now you’re in the zone of give up-ness; thankfully, that can be a good thing.

What’s great about being in the zone is that as long as you still have faith in yourself, you can begin to focus on the other elements of your game. Deep down, you still want to play basketball, just as you want to contribute to a meaningful organization regardless of how many rejections you face.

You stop mashing the apply button and start reading, upskilling, opening yourself to new opportunities, and becoming a better professional.

And that is why in the deepest, darkest corners of the Zone of Give-Upness™, you may discover The Wellspring of Serendipitous Potential™.

The Wellspring presents itself exclusively to those who refuse to be claimed by despair, who continue to believe in themselves despite the mounting odds, and who can, above all else, relax.

I gave up learning a satisfying skill in college, then found software.

I gave up my acting career, then found new ways to entertain.

I gave up on finding “the one,” then found my wife.

So if you’re still struggling two, three, or even six months from now, take a deep breath, forget about the points, and start focusing on the game.

And when you land that next job, email me so I can send you my bill.

P.S. is it legal to write ™ if you haven’t actually trademarked something? Asking for a friend

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mmmletter.com