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

Use your plastic bottle for good

Did you know that more than 90% of the plastic we “recycle” ends up in landfills anyway? Despite what we think of as our best efforts, that revelation makes it all feel pointless…

But there is a way you can take your plastic bottles and put them to good use, even if they don’t get “recycled” in the traditional way we think about it. 

Make an Ecobrick—a used plastic bottle filled with all types of micro-plastics we consume every day. Things like:

  • Candy bar wrappers
  • Plastic wrap on frozen pizzas
  • Bags from chopped vegetables

It’s a great way to efficiently reuse all the little plastic we deal with every day. And these Ecobricks can be used all over the world to build things like raised gardens, play parks, and even solid walls for houses!

Check out this guide to learn how to make them yourself, and give your plastic bottles a second life.

by Nathan Coumbe

Stories sell

No one cares about the features of anything. What they want to know is how it helps them.

“What do these features do for me?”

A friend of mine was asking about the internet provider we use in our home. Naturally, I wanted to sell him on the service that we use because I think it’s the best.

So I told him, “You get up to one gig upload and download speeds.’

Then I thought about it for a second and realized this: most people don’t know what that means. More importantly, they don’t care. 

So I changed up my approach and told a story instead.

I told him that some of the projects I do each week for work have to be uploaded to Vimeo. “With our old Internet provider, I explained, “it would take me between 15 and 20 minutes to upload a single video. Now, with this new provider, it only takes me about 20 to 30 seconds to do the same thing.”

He was sold, right then and there.

Stories are how we humans make sense of the world. Stories are also what sells—anything and everything.

No matter what you’re trying to persuade someone to do, find a way to tell them a story about it.

by Nathan Coumbe

“Googling” is an underrated skill

If you spend any time coding, you’ll quickly discover that you don’t know, can’t remember, or never learned something you need to make your project work. 

Enter Google (or whatever search engine you prefer*). 

All you have to do is type in a few words related to the problem you’re trying to solve and voila! You’ve got your solution. 

Seth Godin says in his great talk, “Stop Stealing Dreams,” that there’s no longer any need to memorize stuff. And this is exactly why—if you need something, you can just look it up.

I would agree with him, but I’d also take that idea a step farther.

As you look things up and implement them in your projects (and not just coding projects either), they will eventually become muscle memory.

The important thing is implementation—put what you look up to use immediately so that it slowly becomes a part of your vocabulary. 

I think there are two points to this post:

  1. Learn how to get good at looking up the answers to your problems rather than staying stuck
  2. Memorizing things for the sake of memorizing is pointless—but memorization will come naturally as you IMPLEMENT what you look up

*Instead of using Google, I’d highly recommend you check out Ecosia as your new search engine. Here’s why:

  • Your search results are THE SAME as what you’d get on Google
  • Your information isn’t constantly sold to the highest bidder
  • You aren’t inundated with useless ads from the highest bidder instead of quality search results
  • Using Ecosia makes your searches CARBON NEGATIVE
  • For every 45 searches you make, Ecosia plants a new tree in a place where it’s needed (that’s every 11 days for the average person)

While you’re developing your “Googling” skills, consider switching to Ecosia today.

by Nathan Coumbe

He called me a “f@#*ing idiot”

I went to get my oil changed the other day at one of those quick-stop places that litter every metropolitan area.

As I pulled up, the gentleman at the computer started talking to me through my window to get my information. 

The man below my car (the one who would be doing the oil change), yelled up…

“Tell the idiot turn his car off!”

Okay… So I did. 

Then I was asked to pop the hood. I pulled the tab, saw the front of my car move a bit and heard a pop. I assumed that I’d popped the hood, and so did the person who’d just collected my information. 

We sat for a few seconds trying to figure out why he couldn’t open it—much too long for the gentleman waiting below. 

He stormed up the stairs, cussing at the top of his lungs, and started banging on my hood. 

That’s when I realized that I might have popped the trunk instead (all the buttons are right next to each other and my trunk doesn’t move when you pop the lock). 

So I hit the correct button. And I was greeted with the longest awkward silence of my life. 

The man looked at me, and through gritted teeth snarled, “You pressed the wrong damn button, didn’t you?”

Well, obviously I had. And he wasn’t happy—and things quickly got out of hand.

That man RAGED AND STORMED all over the garage yelling at the top of his lungs for employees and customers alike to hear.

“I’m so tired of dealing with F@#*ING IDIOTS like this!!!”

“I need these F@#*CKING IDIOTS to learn how to use their damn cars!”

“What the hell is the matter with these a@#holes today?”

He screamed, he kicked tools and tires, he sounded on the verge of murder…

After his tantrum, he stormed back down the stairs, cussing up a storm all the way. 

Now, I’ll admit—I was both angrier than I’d ever been and mortified beyond belief. 

I didn’t tip him (as I always do), but I paid my bill after the service was performed and drove away, fuming and on the verge of starting my own tantrum.

But after I’d been driving for a couple of minutes, a different thought entered my mind:

How bad had his day been to trigger a reaction like that?

What did he have going on in his life that made him HURT like that?

Because I realized (from plenty of past experience) that the only times people act that way are when they’re feeling some unbearable pain inside. 

I realized very quickly that it had absolutely NOTHING to do with me (or at least very little).

As Zig Ziglar would say, “Someone had been kicking his cat. All. Day. Long.”

I think that’s the lesson of this story:

It’s not about you.

Something else (possibly lots of things) happened before I ever showed up. There might have been trouble at home. He might have had an angry boss. Or a jerk for a customer that treated him the same way just a few minutes before I got there. 

When people act out like that, they’re hurting, insecure, scared… And emotional. 

Aren’t we all?

by Nathan Coumbe

Codecademy gets education right

I’ve been spending an hour (sometimes more) each day learning to code for the last couple of weeks using Codecademy. 

And from the beginning, I noticed something different about this learning experience…

It works.

Codecademy gets it right because it’s project-based, self-directed learning. 

I don’t sit through lectures and get quizzed on my ability to recall information. I don’t memorize a bunch of facts only to forget them half an hour later. 

Instead, I work out specific coding problems; I build projects using the coding languages I’m learning. 

In short, I’m building and practicing skills. 

We don’t learn by accumulating and regurgitating information. We learn by developing skills through constant, sometimes mundane practice.

That’s how da Vinci did it. It’s how Mozart did it. It’s how Steve Jobs did it. 

How can you work projects and problem solving into your education?

by Nathan Coumbe

Act “as if”

Acting “as if” is the only way to change. 

Reading, studying, thinking—none of that will create change without action. 

People are afraid to take the actions necessary because they don’t feel like they’re “THAT” type of person yet.

But you don’t become “that guy” until you start acting like that guy.

So act as if.

…As if you ARE patient, kind, and understanding.

…As if you ARE lean, strong, and healthy.

…As if you ARE a confident entrepreneur.

…As if you ARE a loving spouse or parent.

Acting as if, a little bit each day, will eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

by Nathan Coumbe

Remember your founder’s roots

It amazes me how many companies still require their prospective employees to hold college degrees before they’ll even CONSIDER talking to them about work…

Especially because so many companies are founded by college dropouts, straight-D students, and vocal critics of modern education.

With so much information and easily accessible methods to build the skills necessary to do competitive work, college is quickly becoming a handicap more than anything else.

It’s four years spent in a classroom accumulating information rather than developing skills, building projects, and doing actual work. (And yes, I’m a college graduate who’s criticizing EXACTLY what I went through).

Never will you be required to sit through hours of lecture and regurgitate information on tests in your working career. But that’s what I’d estimate 90% of college is.

How does that help a company looking to hire for a role? Obviously it doesn’t.

I’d like to see more companies embrace what Apple, Google, Amazon, and other big tech companies are doing:

Value competence and proven skills over accreditation and papers.

Show you can do the work and forget what your “education” was all about.

Hopefully more companies will remember their founders’ roots and get out of this antiquated industrial mindset.

by Nathan Coumbe

Start with a rough draft

It’s much easier to make your work better if you have something to work with.

You can’t edit your blog post if you haven’t written it yet.

You can’t make your new song swing if you don’t record the demo.

You can’t grow your business if you don’t start by landing one paying customer.

Trying to make things perfect before you put the work down on paper is futile.

Get the rough draft finished. Then go back and make it better.

by Nathan Coumbe

Inconvenience sells

I was leaving the gym this morning when I started checking my pockets for my car keys. 

Then I thought, “Why don’t women’s clothes have pockets?”

Since I see the world through the lens of marketing, I came up with a theory:

Maybe women’s clothes don’t have pockets so industrialists could sell more purses. 

Before there were purses, there were pockets in everything. You needed to be able to carry your stuff around with you.

I’m sure that didn’t sit well with the people who made and sold purses. When presented with a fancy new bag, I’m sure customers thought, “Why do I need a heavy, expensive bag to carry my stuff when I have pockets?”

But if you get rid of the pockets, you make things inconvenient. You’ve created a new need—the need to have something to carry your stuff around in.  

(Let’s not even get started on all the accessories sold simply to carry around in a purse…)

If this is true, it goes to prove a great (potentially immoral) marketing point:

If you don’t have a problem, make one up, then sell the solution. 

Marketers do this to us all the time. We need to be aware of it.

Are you actually being inconvenienced, or did a sly marketer make it that way?

by Nathan Coumbe

Build your way forward

Imagine a web designer sitting at her desk.

There’s this nasty problem plaguing her current project. For the life of her, she can’t figure it out…

What does she do? She sits and thinks and thinks and thinks until she comes up with a solution.

Right?

Wrong!

She’s a designer—she builds her way forward. 

She writes a line of code and runs it. Does that fix the problem? No. Did she fail? NO! She just learned something about her code. 

So she writes another line and tries again. She builds her way past the problem one line of code at a time. 

Maybe we should approach more of our problems like designers. 

Instead of trying to think our way forward, we build.