Bumpers 1 - Introduction and the Gaps

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“If I poured the contents of this glass onto this plate and then got mad at the plate for not being a glass… who looks silly. Me or the plate?”

Short share as I’m writing the next Letter.

Nic

Another podcast episode with no introduction. None of them will have one, I promise.

The podcast, even though I think it’s called From the Mountain, is really a transmission from the valley. Because, man, I tell people this stuff all the time. I see it so clearly in other people, and then somehow fail to see it in myself. I’m sure you’re familiar with that feeling.

So here’s what I’m sharing. I do write from the valley, and I publish it on Amazon, just so you know. But I write it very slow. I actually published the first volume, and I’m not publishing the second until it has ten reviews on Amazon. It’s kind of a weird experiment I’m doing.

And then we have the From the Valley transmissions, like this one, which are going to be gated by the letter. Because here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll send out the letter monthly, and then three weeks later I’ll talk about the stories, and how often I violated it. Most of the time when I write a letter, I’m writing to myself. And it’s now aligned to the season, so it makes a good cadence.

So here’s what happens. I send a letter out. Three weeks later, everybody who gets the letter sits around and we just talk about how ridiculous we’ve been. The letter is from the mountain, clear-minded, a state of sobriety. The valley is like, yeah, okay. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

This transmission I’m doing right here will be much shorter, because I had a moment. The letter’s not live yet, so I’ll share it here. Finally, late last week, you know, that inspiration when you see everything clearly, it hit me pretty hard.

What I realized is the perfect model for me, given where I’m at, my skill set, what I enjoy, the scale, the product is good, is a combination of two things I did separately. It’s the letter, with the Arena tagged right on top of it.

It seems really obvious. We had the letter, and I love the letter. I had a partner, and we decided not to continue writing it, but I really enjoyed it. And we had the Arena, which I also enjoyed. But they were two separate companies, with two separate partners and two separate teams. And what happened is, it was a distraction. It diffused my attention. They were on different cadences. The Arena was talking about one thing, the letter was writing about another, and it became very difficult. I don’t have the cognitive horsepower to context-switch that much. Some people do. I don’t.

So that was probably over a year ago. Those two things just didn’t make sense because of the way it was structured. We wound them both down. And I spent the last year, two years, three years, trying to figure out: how do we best help people? How do we communicate, and how do we structure it so it’s enjoyable? How do we do it in a way where it can scale smoothly and not diffuse all the attention of the people involved?

So I worked on it diligently. The number of hours is insane. The hours I’ve spent talking to mentors, the hours I’ve spent talking to Claude, the hours I’ve spent undoing the damage Claude did. All that stuff.

And it hit me. Here’s the realization. The letter, with the Arena on top. That’s it. That is, for me, the best model by far. And I was already sitting on top of it.

That’s the point. I’m not telling you this so you know what I’m doing. I’m telling you as a reflection, that the best model for me was something I was already doing. Oftentimes, the best expression of your gift, your skill, your business, is hidden in something you already discarded.

Think about it. I have a friend, Brandon. Many of you listening will know Brandon. He’s been in insurance forever. We tried a bunch of stuff together, had a great time, and he finally found the sweet spot, the holy grail, the thing that’s perfect for him. And guess what it was? Insurance.

So if you find yourself wondering, seeking, trying to figure out how to do what you do in a way that you love, that’s scalable, where you make money and you help other people, I implore you to look back at what you’ve already done. The rearview mirror. Take the best of it and leave the worst of it. That will either be the product, or the seeds, the beginning of probably your best product.

And this is a reminder to myself as much as to you. I’m walking in circles, rambling, before I actually head up to the mountain, off-grid. So you’ll see it. The letter’s coming, it will have my full focus and attention, and the Arena will be plopped right on top of it. And I’ve got a wonderful human, much better than I am at this stuff, to be the president and the dean of the entire Foundry ecosystem, which is where the Arena lives.

You don’t have to sign up. It’s cool. You don’t have to listen to these. But I think it might be useful to look back at what you’ve done and go, wow, I really liked that. And it’ll creep in, where you go, yeah, I liked it, but I hated all these parts. Fine. Take out the thing you liked, remove all the parts you hated. There are kernels of brilliance in everything you’ve done. Everything else around it just needs to be cut away.

So that’s today’s message from the valley, before I head up to the mountain. I hope it was useful. I’m not going to market this heavily, so if you enjoyed it, go to iTunes and give it five stars. Or four stars. Or four and a half stars.

Subscribe, do your thing. Appreciate y’all. We’ll talk next time.

This is the other thing.

This is where I’m going to be raw and real about it. No intro, no outro, no polish — whenever I’ve got something, it goes here, exactly as it comes out.

It’s not that I don’t polish anything. I do. The books are on Amazon… done. The Foundry work is getting done. The letter goes out monthly…that’ll be done. That stuff is finished.

This isn’t. This is the part before it’s finished.

Here’s what I think is missing: a place for operators in the field taking live fire. People actually doing the thing, getting advice from people who are also doing the thing … or at least sharing the battlefield with someone else who’s still in it. Not commentary from the sidelines. The feed from inside the fight.

So that’s what this is. This is where I’m taking live fire.

It won’t be sexy. Sometimes it’ll be fun.

It’ll never be sexy.

That’s the show.

Subscribe if you want, don’t if you don’t.

— Nic

PS. The “From the Valley” artifacts can be found on Amazon. Start with volume 1 here.