Observations and Inferences

Last night, I found myself scrolling through Pretty Decent's Instagram feed. If there had been a microphone in my head at the time, I'm certain it would've picked up the rumblings of...

...well, to be frank, a hater.

"This looks like shit," I thought bitingly to myself.

Naturally, I then went and looked for all of the Instagram accounts in my industry who were clearly doing a much better job than me at branding. Their perfectly kerned text and color-coordinated feeds sneered at me from the other side of my phone.

I felt my body tense. I'm sure if I had done a scan at that moment, I would've noticed clenched shoulders, a tightened chest. One thing I know for certain: It didn't feel good.

Luckily, I caught myself before I archived my entire feed and decided to quit social media and give up on all of my hopes and dreams. As I decided to be intentional about my reaction, a single thought popped into my head:

"No, it's not as good as it could be. But it's good enough for now — and tha...

Earlier this week I sent out a poll on Instagram. 129 of you answered. Of those who answered, 73% of you said you want to be self-employed. You mentioned things like wanting freedom, independence and control over your schedule.⁣
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What's more: A whopping 98% of you agreed with the idea that "I have to learn to manage myself if I want to be my own boss."⁣
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When I asked what the challenges were with doing that, the answers rolled in for nearly 24 hours straight. The most frequent responses? Motivation, discipline and "knowing where to start."⁣
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So let me do what I do best: Give you a place to start.⁣
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It starts with an offer. It starts with knowing what you want to give to the world. How you want to help people. ⁣
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The trick is not just offering something — most of us spend our whole life offering things to people, be it love, admiration, labor, etc. The trick is to offer something that is scaleable.⁣
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Being scaleable means it's a product or service (or "productized service") that can be easily...