Hey Reader,
Shout out to the 21 new folks who joined us this past week. We’re now a community of 690 folks using our careers to take big swings at hard problems to help humans and nature flourish.
I’d love your help growing to 1,000 good people by the end of March. Please send this newsletter to a friend who might enjoy it.
I’ve got eight episodes of the podcast in the bag. I’m working on the trailer to preview the show for you in collaboration with my friends over at Podcast Royale. Maybe the most fun of all, I got the podcast cover art back from my friend and designer, Felice Della Gatta, this week.
Ready for it?
The cover art is a reflection of my commitment to myself with this project: be unapologetically me. More about this concept in my mini essay at the end, but what you need to know for now is that I f***ing love this cover. It represents so many things I love – hope, sports, fashion, J’s, nature, bears, the Braves, snow, comfort in my own weirdness, and more.
Perhaps it’s interesting and useful to share my thought process behind the art (if not, skip ahead to the normal content).
Here’s how I partnered with Felice to arrive at the concept:
1. The practical: basically all business podcast covers look the exact same. A photo of the host with text of the title. Doing something that stands out was a motivation from a positioning and branding perspective. (I’m a marketer by background, I can’t help it.)
2. The meaning: bears have always been my spirit animal. Probably because bear and Barrett are homonyms but also because one meaning of “Barrett” is “spirit of the bear.” I love nature and wildlife, so the art ties into that. The hat is representative of where I grew up. The J’s and general style represents my basic daily uniform.
3. The future: I hope this show gets big. Not because I need it to but because I hope it inspires and resonates with people in a way that makes them want to share it. While I’d love my ideas or interview style to be well respected and known, I don’t have a desire for my face to be well known. So the art gives a sort of mascot buffer between me and you, at least on the cover.
Ok, enough inside baseball. Let’s get to it…
A quote to make you think from a book worth reading
“In a time of crisis, like the leadership crisis we are now in, if too many potential builders are taken in by a complete absorption with dissecting the wrong and by a zeal for instant perfection, then the movement so many of us want to see will be set back. The danger, perhaps, is to hear the analyst too much and the artist too little. ”
– Robert Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader
…
Robert Greenleaf is credited with the creation of the concept of servant leadership. In this short 60-page treatise, he outlines the core argument for service as a model for leadership in communities, teams, and organizations.
This quote in particular stands out to me for the time we’re in. There is a great need for analysis in looking at the problems we face and how we can solve them through entrepreneurship and service. AND there is a great risk that we will lose our hearts and the artists within us in the process.
We need both analysis and creativity… head and heart to solve the greatest problems of our time. Good work requires both.
[You’ll notice this is a rare Amazon link. It’s the only place to find this one and it’s only available on Kindle.]
Three links to encourage deep thought and breakthrough growth
1 The Techno-Industrial Revolution by Packy McCormick | Read time: 19min
“The category alternately called hard tech / deep tech / frontier tech / atoms-based / American Dynamism is on fire. The things that these companies are able to do and build boggle the mind.”
This newsletter is for people working to solve hard problems as founders and execs. If you’re already working on those problems, this essay might feel obvious.
But I know that there are plenty of people here who want to work on hard problems and contribute to something bigger than ourselves through our work. This essay (and the one below) are excellent overviews of the next big frontier in technology startups (and the funds who fuel them).
Question to consider as you read: If you had to start a techno-industrial startup, what industry would you start it in? What problems in the world of atoms bother you to the point of incessant frustration? Who might you team up with to break the problem down to first principles and imagine potential companies to start?
2 A Brief History of SaaS and What’s Next by Andrew Cote | Read time: 12min
“The coming golden age in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, additive manufacturing, space systems, longevity and more are all built on the commodification of powerful, robust and mature software and digital infrastructure built up through past periods of growth, speculation, and frenzied over speculation.”
This essay takes on similar themes from Packy’s above, but builds on top of a powerful mental model for technological progress from a 2002 book by Carlota Perez, an award-winning British-Venezuelan researcher.
The essay gives us a model for understanding how every progressive technological shift moves from radical change to consolidated economic value to base layer for future change. As technology moves through this progression, it becomes less profitable AND more essential to the next wave of change.
If you’re thinking about companies to start, or how your company fits into this next wave of change, this is an excellent framework.
Question to consider as you read: How have you seen the software wave create a new baseline in your industry? What does software enable in your business that wasn’t possible 20 years ago? What new businesses are now possible given the software layer we take for granted?
3 Your Flaws Matter Less Than You Think by Dr. Gena Gorlin | Read time: 13min
“A high-agency individual might rightly choose to invest time and energy in overcoming a given flaw. But she might also rightly decide that there are higher-leverage ways to invest her time and energy.”
I’m prone to focusing on how to resolve weaknesses. Anything that feels like a barrier to achieving my potential is likely to get my attention — often for good reason.
In this essay, a fellow executive coach and therapist makes the case for why it’s sometimes better to focus on extending our strengths than fixing our weaknesses.
This isn’t true across the board of course — sometimes a psychological barrier from the past really is preventing us from reaching our goals. But sometimes, the answer is to surround ourselves with people and structures that complement our strengths and weaknesses so we can go faster and with less worry.
Question to consider as you read: What are your biggest weaknesses that might be holding you back? How have you tried to improve on them? What might it be like to allow them to exist and focus instead on extending the power of your strengths?
An idea sparked by my client work to help you lead better
One of the most consistent patterns I see in my work as a coach is the search for the answer to a single question: Who am I?
Who am I as a leader? Who am I as a parent? Who am I as a founder? Who am I as a friend? Who am I as a person?
There is no definitive answer. Any answer we come up with is stale by the time it lands. We’re constantly becoming new people as we integrate experiences, relationships, and ideas into our lives.
It is possible to understand the experiences, relationships, and ideas that have shaped us up to this point. In fact, this is the basis for the interviews I’m doing on my new podcast — helping talented people share the person they have become and the person they see themselves becoming.
Here are a few questions that help generate a sense of grounding and presence in who we have become up to now:
- What are the key moments of hardship or challenge that forced me to make difficult decisions? How did those moments shape me?
- Who are the people that have most influenced the way I view the world today? When did they enter my life? What actions did I observe in them? What Ideas did I learn from them?
- What books, podcasts, films, travels, classes, or other source material have most shaped what I believe to be true about the world? Why? What areas of expertise and ignorance do those influential sources reveal?
- What have been the greatest moments of joy or triumph to date? What does that reveal about my values and aspirations?
As you learn who you have become up to now, you can develop a stronger sense of confidence in who you want to become going forward. You can be rooted in self today and aspirational about what is to come.
From that rooted place, what do you want to create? How do you want to lead? How could you shed the people pleasing tendencies or the protective aggression or the _______ that damages your relationships and teams? How could you lead and create from a place of trust and alignment?
When you know who you are and how you have become that person, you can make more space for simply being you.
It might seem like that would threaten the people around you or make less space for them to do the same. In fact, I’ve found that the more my clients (or I) have settled into being unapologetically themselves, the more tolerance we have for others to do the same.
If we can sit in the vulnerability of being unapologetic about who we are, together, we can team up to find the overlap for tackling hard problems together with more impact than we could have alone.
The best work I see my clients produce always comes from being unapologetically them. My new podcast is that for me. The same goes for this newsletter.
What company would you found… what would you make… how would you lead… how would you love… if you knew it was 100% ok to operate from the wholeness of who you have become?
Have a great Sunday! I hope this week is filled with optimism, ambition, and the pursuit of a good quest.
Much love and respect,
If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a founder friend. You can also recommend me to a founder or creator as a coach.