by Nathan Coumbe

The ladder is gone

Many of the greatest business and self-help books of all time are woefully outdated.

And I don’t mean the examples used in the books. The working world has changed so much that the underlying assumptions on which the books are based no long apply.

Work hard and get promoted. You’ll make more money.

Move up the ladder for more responsibility, greater impact, and a nicer life.

Specialize in a certain field or department. That’s how you win.

The problem is the ladder is gone. There’s nothing to climb anymore.

Middle managers on are the way out. You’re either a doer or a leader (and often both at the same time).

Specialists are getting replaced by AI. We don’t need as many of them anymore.

Hard work doesn’t really matter much anymore. A computer can work harder, faster, and cheaper than you.

What matters now are remarkable results, unforgettable impact, and connection with other people. And being able to use AI and all the other technology available to us as tools to achieve those three things.

It’s the rare person who stays with one company and gets promoted over and over, making more money each time.

More likely, you’ll bounce around to 15 different companies over your working life, becoming a generalist that can synthesize tons of different fields.

And before you know it, you’re making your own field, your own specialty job that combines everything you’ve learned into something new.

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by Nathan Coumbe

The mindset of the truly unbiased

“This is what I think in this moment… but I could be completely wrong.”

Being unbiased doesn’t only mean willing to hear another side of an argument. 

A more complete version of it is:

Being willing to change your mind in the face of new evidence.

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by Nathan Coumbe

You can’t control the weather. You CAN wear a coat.

Seth Godin wrote on Medium that knowing what the weather forecast is give us the illusion of being able to control it. 

Of course that’s not true. 

We seek control in our lives and settle for these illusions without actually being able to do anything about it. 

You can’t control whether or not it’ll snow, but you can prepare by putting on coats and boots.

You can’t control whether or not it’ll rain, but you can stick an umbrella in the car just in case. 

You can’t control whether or not a post you write will go viral. But you can write the post and ship it. And if it doesn’t, you can write another one tomorrow. 

In short, if you want to control something, you can control yourself. Your actions, reactions, words. 

But that’s all you can control. 

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by Nathan Coumbe

If you want to be a teacher…

Teach. 

Make videos. Write blog posts and articles. 

Host a workshop or a live social media “conference”.

Teach what you’re learning and you’ll get better at it. 

It’s a practice. And you don’t need permission.

(Though it helps if you know what you’re talking about.) 

The same holds true for just about any other practice or identity you wish to adopt.

“Just do it” isn’t a slogan reserved only for Nike.

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by Nathan Coumbe

My math teachers lied to me

All my math teachers told me growing up that I had to learn arithmetic, algebra, geometry, all these formulas… but for what? 

Their sole argument when I pressed them with “why?” Because I wouldn’t always have a calculator in my pocket.

Well, the joke’s on them. Not only do I ALWAYS have a calculator on hand (sometimes literally in the case of my smart watch), but it can do a lot more than basic arithmetic. 

The phone in my pocket, the watch on my wrist—both of these have scientific calculator qualities (real TI-84 stuff) built in. They can do just about everything but graph. 

But you know what else? I’ve never had to use that power for anything in the real world.

I’ve never once had to calculate the slope of anything. I’ve never had to use linear equations for my job.

What I have needed to do was quickly figure out percentages in my head to help a customer.

Use probability to make a decision.

Measure off a table and do complex fraction stuff to get the merchandising in an Apple Store as close to perfect as possible. 

None of this was learned in a classroom. I learned it all doing work in the real world. That’s why I always ask, “What’s the project?” when learning something new.

(And I still have that calculator in my pocket. I wonder what they tell students nowadays why they have to learn those seemingly abstract facts?)

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by Nathan Coumbe

No vote, no complaint

I overheard a couple of people from an older generation (you know which one) debating about why the country is falling apart. 

Their main argument was that Gen X and Millennials aren’t turning out to vote. 

They summed up their argument by saying, “if they don’t vote, they don’t have anything to complain about.”

That’s patently untrue. 

When the choices suck, you get to complain. 

When you feel like your vote doesn’t matter, you get to complain. 

When the system is so skewed toward extremism that no reasonable people get a say, you get to complain. 

When you have to publicly declare your allegiance to a roomful of strangers before receiving your “secret” ballot, you get to complain.

There are serious, systemic issues as to why people don’t turn out to vote. 

That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t vote. But it’s completely understandable why they don’t.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Bad marketing & yogurt

I was at the grocery store buying yogurt for my wife made by a well-known brand. I called her on FaceTime to confirm which flavors she wanted.

She told me the flavors, and I found them – strawberry, mixed berry, and vanilla. 

Strawberry was red. Mixed berry was purple, red, and blue. Vanilla was a yellowy-cream color.

Later when I got home, my wife informed me I’d also bought lemon and black cherry (both of which were disgusting). 

The black cherry was a mixture of the same colors used for both strawberry and mixed berry. And the lemon was a lighter shade of the yellow that was on the vanilla yogurt.

Not only were the colors too similar to distinguish between them, but they were all stacked on top of each other in the refrigerator. Naturally I saw one flavor and grabbed all the ones in the same stack, assuming they were together for a reason.

Now this could easily be the fault of a merchandising person, but I don’t like to think that way. 

I’d like to argue that it’s the fault of bad marketing.

Marketers have a responsibility to distinguish between their products. 

Putting products in the same metaphorical “boat” as other products, then letting customers assume they’re the same, or solve the same problem, or have the same purpose? That’s terrible marketing. 

This is misleading to you, the customer. And when you bite into the lemon-flavored yogurt (thinking it’s vanilla), you’re in for a nasty, unpleasant surprise. 

That leads to anger, frustration, a bad experience, and a literal bad taste in your mouth. It’ll prevent you from doing business with them in the future.

Making product lines nearly indistinguishable from each other is a good way to confuse customers and prospects, frustrating them when it comes time to make a decision. 

My favorite case study for this issue (apart from yogurt) is Apple.

Most of their iPhones are indistinguishable from each other, with only the most minor differences between them. These are differences only an expert in photography, mobile device design, or someone with a lot of spare time on their hands would recognize. 

Their computers suffer fro the same issue—minor “improvements” that, to the average person, make no difference whatsoever in how they use it, what they get out of it, or why they should spend more (or less) money on it.

The solution is to make products that are remarkable, radically different from what’s come before. 

That way there’s a reason to buy one or the other. When customers have lots of options—and they can’t tell the difference between them—often the simplest solution is to buy the cheap one.

Or… Walk out the door.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Marketable skills

The Music School at University of North Texas has a list of what they call “marketable” skills that each of their degree plans develop. Skills include:

  • Performance communication
  • Excellent memory capability
  • Command of music computer programs
  • Pattern understanding
  • Improvisation and analytical capabilities

Now, as a former full-time musician myself and current corporate employee, I can safely say…

No one has ever paid me for any of this. Which is the supposed to be the definition of “marketable skills”—things worth paying for.

If you take Seth Godin’s definition of marketing to heart (which I do), then marketing means creating change in another person. And to take it a step further, it means creating a change in them that also prompts them to “pay” for your skills in some way.

You will then see that none of those skills do anything like that. However, they may give you the ability to accomplish that goal.

Those skills might allow you to:

  • Move another person so deeply that they become a raving fan of your music
  • Leave someone in awe of your stage presence and artistry (so they’ll come to more concerts and buy your albums)
  • Create a piece of music so astounding that someone tells 10 of their friends (and they tell 10 more…and on and on it goes)
  • Hypnotize an audience with intricate rhythms and on-the-spot creations so outrageous they beg to “know the trick”

All of these outcomes from your skill development lead to similar results: obsessed fans who tell other people and support your art because they can’t live without you.

The skills aren’t marketable.

But what you create with them and put into the world is.

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by Nathan Coumbe

How will you measure your life?

Is it by the number in your bank account?

The amount of influence you have over people and events?

What about your job title and the status it brings?

All valid options. But is that what you’ll want to think about as you take your last breath?

Or maybe you’ll use a different measuring stick.

The amount of art you created.

The number of people you changed for the better.

How well you raised your children… And what tremendous people they became.

You get to choose.

*This post was inspired by the book How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen et al.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Art hardens you against feedback

I spent years of my life being criticized (often brutally) by teachers and peers during my time as a musician.

It hurt—a lot. For a while, anyway.

Eventually you realize something:

It’s not about you. It’s about the work.

Even when the comments seem personal or exceedingly harsh.

You realize there’s this other thing you’re trying to bring into the world (in my case, a piece of music). And there are ways to do it that are creative and wonderful… And ways to do it that are just plain wrong.

At some point, the musician realizes that the people they’re making art with all have the same goal: to bring to life a beautiful piece of music in the way it needs to be.

And when you’re all working toward that shared goal, it makes the feedback easier to bear. You learn to separate the self from the art.

It’s not about you—it’s about the work.

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