Author / Nathan Coumbe

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Posts by Nathan Coumbe

My mission is to learn, inform, inspire, and improve. I am a passionate teacher, an avid writer, a leader of people, and a strategic thinker. Wherever I am, whatever the work I am called to do, my goal is the same: make my little corner of the world better for everyone in it. To do this, I ask better questions and solve more interesting problems for those I serve. Think deeply. Think often. Keep exploring. Always be curious.
by Nathan Coumbe

A trick to help you better enjoy work

There’s one tiny thing you can do to drastically increase the enjoyment and satisfaction you get from work.

When you learn something new – whether it’s related to the “job“ or not – share or teach it to someone you work with. 

I once learned that a tiny practice we did at the office wasn’t just for fun or recognition. It also had real financial benefits to the company. 

Scared as I was to speak up, I shared it with my small three-man team…and discovered that my boss didn’t know about it. I was able to teach him something new.

Don’t assume just because someone’s been working somewhere longer than you that they know everything about “how things are around here“.

Be generous with your knowledge. It will only pay you back. 

by Nathan Coumbe

“I can’t eat fries, right?”

Do French fries and pizza have a place in a “healthy” diet?

Well, I’m sad to say…

They absolutely DO!

I’m sad to say it because I’ll get a ton of hate from people who disagree. Or tell me that’s irresponsible advice. 

But what’s truly irresponsible is causing people to deprive themselves and triggering disordered eating patterns. 

If you tell yourself you can’t eat something, that’s a surefire guarantee that you absolutely will eat it at some point in the near future. Often in extreme, and gastric-distressing, amounts. 

You should absolutely eat French fries. And pepperoni pizza. And chocolate ice cream.

AND…

You should also eat lots of:

  • lean protein
  • colorful fruits and veggies
  • Healthy fats
  • Slower-digesting, higher-fiber carbs

One of my favorite meals is a grilled chicken caesar salad… with a side of hot, delicious, salty, crispy fries (dipped in ketchup, of course). And I can be strong, healthy, and happy doing so. 

So there you go. You now have complete, unconditional permission to eat whatever you want. 

Now, there are ways to do it so that you still hit your physical health goals. But that’s a discussion for another day. 

As my coach, Scott Quick, likes to remind me: 

“For the love of God, order the fries!”

by Nathan Coumbe

No effect, no opinion

Everyone seems eager to tell others that what they’re doing is wrong. 

“Don’t you know that it’s better to pay the minimums on your debt and invest the rest?”

“Why are you still renting? You should have bought a house by now… You’re just throwing your money away!”

“You can’t possibly know what you’re talking about because it’s not your job.”

“You can’t marry that person—it’s totally immoral!”

Well, maybe there’s a method to the madness…

Maybe you want those payments gone so you have total control over your income.

Maybe you’re still renting because you don’t know where you want to live yet. Or you don’t have enough money to cover repairs if something major happened. Or—GASP— you want to pay cash for a house! And renting is just buying you time until you’re ready. How crazy is that?

Or maybe you know exactly what you’re talking about, and you understand THEIR point of view too. You simply don’t want to live the same way as them. 

Here’s a rule I think more of us should live by: 

Unless my behavior affects you, you don’t get to have an opinion about it.

And the magic of it? This works for everything.

If you don’t approve of gay marriage, then don’t do gay marriage yourself. But that doesn’t give you the right to dictate someone else’s lifestyle. Because their behavior doesn’t affect you.

If you want to live a debt-free lifestyle, other people don’t get to tell you you’re an idiot because “that’s just not normal.”

And if you don’t want to wear a helmet when driving on your motorcycle, you do you. Your behavior is only going to kill you…

On the other hand, you can’t smoke in a restaurant or movie theater. Because your behavior affects my health, safety, and well-being.

You can’t dump your toxic waste in our waterways… Because by definition, it’s communal—it belongs to (and affects) everyone.

And you can’t text and drive. “Well that’s just my behavior – you can’t tell me what to do.” Actually, yes I can. Because while you’re texting and driving, you might smash into me at 70 miles an hour. 

You might be fine, but I’d still be dead.

So, the next time you feel the need to tell someone how wrong they are, ask yourself:

Does their behavior affect me?

If it does, say something. 

If it doesn’t, keep your mouth shut.

(Unless they’re asking for your opinion, of course). 

by Nathan Coumbe

But do people care?

One of the keys to successful businesses and fulfilling careers is solving interesting problems.

Solving problems creates value, and value creates wealth.

But there’s a catch: other people have to care about the problem you solve. And they have to care enough about it to pay for it.

One of the first problems I solved for people was based in the music world. 

I knew people wanted to learn the drums. The problem was there wasn’t an easy-to-find drum teacher in the area. 

There were scores of drummers who taught, and I was nowhere near the best one. But… no one knew how to find them. 

So my solution was simple: I made business cards and left them on the counter at my local music store. And it worked: I got a lot of inquiries and a number of students. 

Another problem I wanted to solve (which I, at least, thought was interesting), was the massive littering issue at the park near my home. 

I had the idea to buy lots of cheap garbage cans and place them all over the park. In doing so, I thought I’d make “the garbage can is too far away” excuse moot. 

But I soon realized the idea wouldn’t work for one simple reason: no one else at the park cared about littering. It was the furthest thing from their minds.

Sure, I might have been able to persuade a few people through extensive marketing efforts (maybe), but it would truly have been a lost cause.

Finding a problem to solve is the first step. Next you have to figure out if other people care about it.

by Nathan Coumbe

Choose the harder path

No original thought from me today. Instead, a piece of wisdom I came across from Paul Graham:

“Start by picking a hard problem, and then at every decision point, take the harder choice.

***

If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you’re trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you’re even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what’s the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it.”

Choose the harder option and watch your quality of life explode.

by Nathan Coumbe

3 meaningful moments

One of my coaches taught me a new exercise this week, and I felt I should share it far and wide.

It’s called the “3 meaningful moments” exercise.

The gist is to think back on 3 different moments from major periods in your life—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—then write about them in detail.

Once you have this done, you are to distill your experiences into a single word that ties the threads together.

I’ve included my response to this exercise below

***

I was 9 years old, enrolled at an arts school in my city, and required to read a certain number of books each term to get Advanced Reader points. On a whim, I picked up a book that had a picture of a soldier on it— a “Dear America” book entitled The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins, A World War 2 Soldier.

The opening scene described in graphic detail the D-Day landings at Normandy, France in 1944. From that moment forward, I was hooked on history.

I begged my mom (and she acquiesced) to take me to the library, which became almost a weekly occurrence, and read as many books (many of them well beyond what a 9 year old should have been reading) on that topic.

My interest soon spread out to encompass all of WWII and then history in general. Eventually, my bookshelf at home was FULL of books on just about every topic imaginable, and my library has only grown since then.

When I was 14, my parents bought for me a bass guitar. I’d been studying violin and piano from the age of 7, so I was not without musical skill. But I proceeded to teach myself how to play the bass.

Then I picked up my mom’s acoustic guitar, and taught myself that too. My brother got a set of drums, and I picked up the sticks and taught myself that as well.

That became my focus—I was decent at everything else, but I focused on drums for the next 10 years, taking lessons and eventually getting a bachelor’s degree in jazz studies with an emphasis in percussion.

Giving me that first instrument led me on a journey through every type of music imaginable, and taught me extremely valuable skills such as deliberate practice, diligence, patience, listening, empathy, and more.

At 27, I’d been working for Apple for about a year, when I was offered the chance to become a Creative. In that role, I served as a teacher, workshop facilitator, troubleshooting expert for customers, and a coach of sorts for employees on how to use all our technology.

This was the first time I’d been working when I felt that feeling of flow. Teaching came more naturally to me than just about anything else. Being in front of a group of people, helping them learn and master new skills—this felt more natural than just about anything else I’d ever done before.

And I was GOOD at it.

I had regular customers who’d wait and wait for my classes just so they could work with me. And I learned so many skills: how to sell, how to speak in public, how to present, adapt teaching styles on the fly. And I loved what I did.

Not only was I good at it, but it gave me the chance to learn so many new skills—drawing, computer coding and programming, music production, photography, videography, and all-around creativity. The only reason I left that job was because I wasn’t making enough money to support my family while doing it.

I’m trying to think of a word that ties all of these threads together. “Learning” is the first one that comes to mind. But then “curiosity” came to me. And that feels right at the moment. I truly think curiosity has defined my life and been the underlying reason for both my insatiable desire to learn new things, but also my ability to become proficient at so many disparate things as well.

***

If you have the time and desire, I’d love to hear about your “3 meaningful moments” in the comments below.

by Nathan Coumbe

Making a GOOD living

Most of us read that phrase and think it means “earning a lot of money so we can buy nice things, go to fun places, and have a life of ease.”

But what if we took it literally?

Maybe it means making good things to make others’ lives better. Or perhaps making “good” (the concept) part of your life and modeling that to others. 

Maybe it just means making the world a good place. After all, we do live here.

Work is how we express our gifts, our skills, our selves. It’s how we contribute to society. Hopefully doing well at our work will let us be compensated well (while also allowing us to both enjoy our time here and be generous blessings to others). 

But I don’t really think money has much to do with good living. At least not after a certain point.

That’s my definition. What does “making a good living” mean to you?

by Nathan Coumbe

Love ends because life ends

The Stoics have a practice known as memento mori. It translates (loosely) to “remember you will die.”

I’ve thought of death just about every day that I can remember since I began to understand it as the ultimate destination of life. 

But it became more real to me when I fell in love and got married. Because I realized a bittersweet truth: 

I signed up for devastating grief. 

My marriage was, eventually, going to end in death, either my own or my wife’s.***

And that’s a sobering thought. But it also serves as a constant reminder of just how wonderful love is. You can’t have one without the other. 

All love, eventually, ends in sadness. 

Teenagers break up. Adults get married, then someone dies… Or leaves. Family members lose each other slowly… Or sometimes all at once.

Ultimately, love ends because life ends. 

But maybe that’s why it’s such a powerful element. Because we willingly dive headfirst into it knowing that it will end in the most painful way possible. One way or another. 

I never really voiced this thought out loud until I came across this quote from Nick Cave:

“It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”

And it’s totally worth it.

***For those of you who say, “But your marriage could also end in divorce!”, you clearly don’t know Theresa or me. 🤣

by Nathan Coumbe

Everything is a tool

When I was in marketing, I defined myself as a marketer. But I hated that title because of what people expected of me (sleaziness). And because of the jobs that were available—they contrasted with the type of marketing I wanted to do. 

When I was a musician, I defined myself as much. And I burned out. I got tired of the expectations placed on me because of how other people viewed the music world and careers within it.

As I’ve put some space between me and these fields, I’ve had a revelation.

They are just tools.

Marketing is a tool to make change happen. Music is a tool to create emotion in, and connection with, others. 

My fellows in both fields didn’t see it that way. Marketers told me that social media and spamming were the only ways to make things happen in business. 

Musicians told me, “you must focus only on percussion. If you try to play other instruments, you’ll be mediocre at best. No piano, guitar, or voice lessons for you.”

And I believed them. And missed out on some wonderful experiences in the process. And I eventually quit both.

The lesson here is to adopt the “tool” approach, so you see things for what they are. That way, they don’t become your identity. 

I know now that I focused on percussion in college because that area of music was a tool for me to use in that moment of life. To express what was inside of me at the time. It wasn’t who I was. 

And marketing is just a tool, like a hammer. You don’t have to “become” a marketer. You can simply use it as a means to make a change you want to see in the world. 

Separate yourself from the tools you use. 

by Nathan Coumbe

Every day is New Year’s

Today starts a new year for me.

A new year of Precision Nutrition coaching, that is. 

I’ve done it three times now, and each time I’ve had a different (yet fantastic) experience.

But as I was completing my lesson for today, I realized that it isn’t a New Year in the normal sense. It’s the middle of 2023. 

The thought hit me: you can have that New Year feeling any day you decide to commit to something or make a new decision about how you want your life to look.

But there’s an added benefit to starting something new in the middle of the year: it doesn’t feel new.

It doesn’t feel like a New Year’s resolution—that feeling of anticipation mingled with dread. Because you know those resolutions only work for 3% of the people who set them. 

Instead, starting something BIG in the middle of the year (or on a random Wednesday in April) feels like… just another day. 

That overwhelming feeling of, “I don’t know if I can do this,” shrinks a bit. Or goes away entirely. 

Because it’s not a New Year. It’s just a different day, and you’ve decided to try something new. 

How can you make a new year for yourself starting today?