Virality, at its core, is asking someone to spend their social capital recommending or linking or posting about you for free.
You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.
In June 2007, I finished up school for the year. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was done with college forever. By the end of the summer, I had dropped out and would not return.
Dr. Drew Pinsky changed my life.
Understanding how the media actually works is critical. Because editors depend on ignorance and media illiteracy to ply their trade. The fact that many readers expect fact checking, editorial oversight, and ethics actually makes it easier for the media to be lazy.
Because we make ourselves deaf to feedback, because we overestimate our abilities, because we become consumed with ourselves, we end up subjecting ourselves not just to the inevitable stumbles or difficulties of life but catastrophic, painful failures.
We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.
Understanding how the media actually works is critical. Because editors depend on ignorance and media illiteracy to ply their trade. The fact that many readers expect fact checking, editorial oversight, and ethics actually makes it easier for the media to be lazy.
I have a pet goat.
One of the ironies of being with someone you really love for a long time is becoming completely incapable of handling stressful or difficult things by yourself.
Growth hackers are typically computer engineers that build great marketing ideas into the product during the development process.
Public relations and marketing are something companies do to move product. It is not meaningful. It is not cool. Yet because it is cheap, easy, and lucrative to cover, blogs want to convince you that it is.
Writing the perfect paper is a lot like a military operation. It takes discipline, foresight, research, strategy, and, if done right, ends in total victory.
In Los Angeles and other cities, being around immigrants is inspiring. They are touching the American Dream and reminding you how much you take it for granted.
Here’s the thing I’ve learned about ideas: It’s your job to have them.
The best kind of marketing messages are the ones that don’t seem like marketing messages. Because it means that the viewers’ defenses are down.
Growth hacking is a mindset, and those who have it will reap incredible gains.
There has to be something about your business that gets you excited. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t have spent your precious – irreplaceable – time on it.
The problem with a lot of marketing advice is that the examples they use are not exactly typical. It’s hard for businesses, particularly smaller businesses, to relate to the bold innovations of companies like Apple or Tesla.
I have a pet goat.
It angers me to see armed defenders at the bottom of Lost Cause statues, adding a renewed threat of violence to icons that are themselves part of an ideology of violence and intimidation.
The reality is that the economic situation for millennials is not a good one.
If you need to fudge the facts a little bit to make your narrative work, there is nothing anyone can do to stop you.
Growth hackers don’t tolerate waste.
Growth-hacking is about scalability – ideally, you want your marketing efforts to bring in users, which then bring in more users.
The primary occupational hazard of blogging is this: it’s easier when you yourself take on some of the traits of insanity. It’s a job that requires the doer to be selfish, self-absorbed, and superficial.
The essential idea of Stoicism in my interpretation is, you don’t control the world around you, you control how you respond. At 19, that’s very empowering.
The news as entertainment is the real danger, because the truth or accuracy of what it is reporting becomes irrelevant.
People love stories; they use stories to make sense of the world.
My advice to young people would be this: Don’t move to New York. It is not where you will find yourself.
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