This post is a riff on what it’s been like to be a solo studio / service business over the last four years (what I often refer to as “me-as-a-service”). At the bottom, I ask some questions that I’d love to have answered by you, the reader. 

In Yet Another Year in Review - Year 01, I wrote about being “Me-As-A-Service” saying:

The most important perspective shift I had to make in starting the Studio was recognizing that my business is effectively "Me-As-A-Service."...

The challenge for me was about converting [my] strengths and the things I wanted to offer into something that I could actually offer as a product/service - whether that's a talk, workshop, project, partnership or something else. Doing that required a lot more reflection and self awareness as I considered my own life rhythms, the ways I wanted to work with other people, the kinds of things I wanted to work on, and how I could talk about and sell that vision.
If you're considering an independent path, some of the questions I'd encourage you to reflect and write on are:

1. What is something that only you can do (or that you are uniquely qualified to do)? With that in mind, who should hire you, and why? What would that work look like?

2. What kind of work do you not want to do?

3. What do you want your days/weeks/months to look like? 

4. What activities do you need to make space for that will allow you to continue to do the work you're excited about and proud of? 

I haven’t revisited this idea until recently, as more people I know start to explore an independent path. However, almost everyone I see who starts down this path immediately turns to contracting – trying to do the same activities they did as a full time employee, but on a part-time basis for other companies. 

Thankfully, the world of being indie is far more expansive than that. I want to use this post to talk about some of the different ways of being I’ve come across and practiced and how I’ve seen them appear together. I’ll end with some questions I’m grappling with and would love your feedback on. 

Different Ways of Being

As I reflect on the different ways I’ve partnered with and served clients over the past four years, two meaningful distinctions in my work are:

1. Whether I was in service of individual people or a team/organization

2. Whether I was evaluated on deliverables or not

Looking at the world this way, you end up with the classification I drew for a friend while on a Zoom call (please enjoy the Figjam screenshot in all its messy glory). This classification highlighted a few different kinds of work:

• Courses 

• Training

• Contracting – “I’m told what work to do.”

• Consulting – “We agree on what work I do.”

• Fractional Leadership – “I’m hired to define the work to be done (and lead it).”

• Coaching – Helping people on their journeys, often because of your capabilities. (Does not necessarily mean that you’ve been on that journey before, IMO.) 

• Advising – Helping companies on their journeys, likely because you’ve been on that journey (or a similar one) before. Unlike coaching, you're evaluated on organizational outcomes. 

In any of these ways of being, you are monetizing your brain, ideas, and experiences, though often in different configurations. 

Most People Start in the Top Right

As I mentioned at the beginning, I often see people move into independent work starting with contracting. This makes sense for many reasons – the work is familiar to you, acquiring customers is (likely) obvious to you, you are used to trading your time for money, etc. But this is also perhaps the lowest ROI place to play on this diagram – both from intellectual nourishment and financial perspectives. It’s also the one that is least competitively defensible (there are probably many people who can do those same activities, so what makes you special). 

That said, not everyone starts there. People who are thoughtful about packaging up their skills (or even just a skill, practice, approach, etc), will often build trainings or courses. People who can find an audience that wants their guidance on journeys they are familiar with (especially organizations) may start their indie path by dipping into advising. I also see some people start with coaching, though I am usually skeptical of this because coaching is the most difficult of all these ways of being (and most rewarding), and what I often see people offer as “coaching” is really 1:1 training (where they are delivering a pre-set curriculum).

Experiments in Ways of Being

Over the last four years, I’ve experimented in every quadrant and with every offering except Fractional Leadership (at least in title). While each of the different ways of being is interesting, the blurring, blending, and boundaries of them are perhaps the most interesting to me (right now). 

Some of the different blended configurations I’ve experienced:

• Advising + Coaching

• Advising + Training (and the reverse sequencing)

• Training + Consulting

• Consulting + Advising

Advising + Coaching

This pairing feels like a common progression for advisors I know who are also open to coaching. These relationships start when someone is hired to advise a company and evolve out of that configuration in parallel or when that agreement ends but the point of contact on the company side wants to keep working together. 

In my experience, it’s often hard to be a successful advisor without some amount of coaching taking place. Organizations are made of people, and organizational changes involve people changing their perspectives or behaviors. In high trust situations, this kind of advising + coaching pairing feels inevitable (and good!). 

Situations where this can get messy are when the person on the organization’s side wants to keep working with the advisor/coach, but cannot do so given their own budget constraints. As an advisor, you’re paid with the company’s bank account. As a coach, you’re often paid by individuals, even if those people get reimbursed by their company. 

Advising + Training

Another common pairing is advising + training, which I’ve seen happen when the advising conversations identify an opportunity to develop or strengthen muscles within the organization through a structured training program (workshop, series, etc). 

One of my biggest challenges with delivering effective training is having enough understanding of the organization to ensure that the ideas don’t just make sense, but can be effectively implemented. The advising + training pairing is a great way to mitigate that problem, since you’ve developed an awareness of what does and does not work within the organization and can curate your training appropriately. 

The thing to be conscious of here is designing and delivering a training is its own activity. You want to make sure that you’re appropriately compensated for that kind of work (rather than it being rolled into the expectations of advising). 

Training + Consulting

Training + consulting often feels like a win, where you offer training and that relationship opens the door to future projects. While training can also lead into advising (where you’re often hired to help operationalize the ideas you trained people on), I find that the consulting pairing is a unique one because you’re being hired to do work, not just guide the work. I say this is successful because it means that you’ve shown a proficiency that is valued and are likely a person the organization would be excited to spend more time around. (I see this as an outcome when companies try to hire you for a full time role and you’re not looking for one, instead carving out specific projects that are intellectually stimulating and make sense for both parties financially.)

This pairing comes with some potential traps, because hanging around after you’ve done a training leaves you open to follow on conversations for those ideas (which you may or may not want to have and may or may not have carved out the time for). It feels important to figure out how you want to engage with the company at this point and what’s in/out of scope. 

Consulting + Advising

Similar to the training + consulting pairing, the consulting + advising is often a progression that results from a successful project, but a need for less of you (or just enough of you on a consistent basis). This pairing feels quite common in situations where you delivered a substantial project and there’s high value in being around for a while to ensure the follow through. (I’ve been trying to plan more of a cool off/wind down period for any sort of substantial project I do with an organization, largely based on experiences in this pairing.) 

The trap I’ve found myself falling into here is that I jump back into project-work very easily and can quickly start spending more hours than planned with a given client. I do know some folks who explicitly do “hands on advising” and plan for that kind of thing, but I find that I can be less good at the gear-shifting from deep project-based work to the lighter touch of advising. 

What the Work Actually Looks Like

As much as I am putting shape to and labeling potential ways of being, my honest experience is that most of these ways of being are the front door to deep, meaningful partnerships with people which morph and co-occur over time. I believe there are reasonable downsides to sku-ifying yourself, especially if you’re like me and appreciate getting invited into the mess. In my experience, the more trust that you build, the more you get to do work that looks like coaching – boundless, vulnerable, and in close contact with people. This is where I thrive. 

I often evaluate the success of any of my work by the degrees of freedom with which I’m given to engage with people besides my primary point of contact. The more that I’m trusted to do the work around the work without having to pre-define it, the more successful and impactful an engagement is. 

That said, definitions and boundaries can help. I try my best to identify the different ways I can partner with and support a person or organization up front, and often start doing the work I think they need before we agree on the scope itself. I learned this from Casey Winters, who said he usually takes 2.5 meetings before he talks with a company about an advising agreement. This gives him time to see how they engage, how they react to feedback, how quickly they take action, and so on. I’ve found that not trying to sell a specific service up front, even if the client comes to me with a specific request, is the best way to be helpful over the long term (which is the time frame I care about most). 

I ended Yet Another Year in Review - Year 03.5 with the following, which still rings true:

“The projects that I’ve shied away from are those where I’d be more of an extra set of hands, whereas the projects I’ve been excited about (and the ones I’m looking for) are where I get to be an extra brain alongside those hands. I can tell what’s going to be a potentially good project based on whether we’re talking about activities (bad) or outcomes (good). The best partners I’ve had trust me to shepherd them to a destination with less concern and oversight for the path that we take.

As I’ve looked ahead to 2024 and beyond, I still feel that I don’t want to do many consulting engagements, but that’s because I’ve realized I want to do more deep work — which often takes time. The work that I find myself drawn to is very much in the realm of helping people improve the way they work and work together – a unique blend of hospitality, service design, and organizational design that I love.

While I still believe that illegibility is an asset and am grateful that friends come to me with loosely defined “Behzod-shaped problems,” I do think I’ll more actively reflect on what (else) makes a good project and partnership for me in the coming year (for internal clarity, if nothing else).   

Things I’m Thinking About 

While I wrote a lot more than I thought I would here, there is still a lot to discuss. A big thank you to Tom Critchlow for poking and prodding at a very loose draft of this and being a great sounding board on my indie journey.

I also owe a huge thank you to Elena Verna, because our conversations and her writing over the past few years have been wildly helpful here. She has gone (much further) down a similar path and actively writes about being independent. 

From her post “Is Solopreneurship Right For You?”

“Solopreneurship is about treating your brain as a product and building a one-person company with a predictable, sustainable, and competitively defensible growth model. This requires identifying the following:

1. Product-market fit for your brain on the market

2. Unique value positioning for your brain

3. Growth model to acquire, monetize, and retain customers

Sound familiar? Because it is - starting your solopreneur journey is like starting any other business. So, you can use the skills you learned at your job to help grow you.”

I think a lot about how many of these activities feed into each other (my advising gives me space to help companies implement ideas → which often become stable enough to become a part of specific training → which I can then operationalize into courses → which opens the door for more advising…) but I think I could be smarter about this. 

I’d love to hear from you, the reader, so I’ll leave you with some questions:

1. What did I miss? How could I think about this differently? What other models are there?  – Please push my thinking here. 

2. I’ve left out newsletters and podcasts here, largely because I haven’t explored them. Where do they fit and why? 

3. What configurations have you seen work well (or work poorly) in your own practice? 

4. How do you think about portfolio construction across those activities given the different energy required for the different ways of being, the different audiences, and different rhythms? 

5. What are the shifts necessary from one quadrant to another? I started doodling about this in the Figjam file, but figured I’d save it for another time. 

6. For those of you curious about moving into independent work, regardless of the quadrant, what concerns do you have? How can I help get you started?

One of the best kinds of messages I receive these days is a photo from two friends in New York who text me whenever they hang out together.

Six months ago, these two had never met, even though they are both important people in my life and have been for years. They were introduced at a birthday dinner I had, where I sat them across from one another. While I thought they may get along, there was no real agenda. "Get along" has turned out to be an understatement.

This has been something I've tried to do more of recently, with great success. One of the ways I've celebrated my birthday in the past few years is renting a big house and inviting a group of close friends and their partners to come hang out. The goal is that they spend enough time together that they can see what I love and appreciate about each other without me having to point it out myself.

Those birthday celebrations (and similar activities) have led me to believe that introducing friends is something that all of us would benefit from doing more often. If you have people you are willing to spend time around, they are probably people that others will enjoy as well.

For those of us in good orbits, perhaps the most valuable thing we can do is alter gravity in such a way that creates more collisions.

Over the last few weeks, I've had the same conversation with a number of friends who are involved in end of year planning cycles. All of them inevitably say something like "[NAME] just doesn't understand why this is a priority."

While the common point of frustration is a misunderstanding, I think the deeper issue is that person can't translate what's being said into something they understand.

Each discipline/department within an organization has a currency in which they primarily transact. For sales & finance, it's revenue. For design, it's the user experience. For product, it's features.

Effective prioritization requires establishing exchange rates between these different currencies.

Doing this allows the trade offs and tensions within a roadmap to be converted into understood units, unblocking people to actually debate about an investment, rather than argue which of their currencies is worth more.

People who are earlier in their career often are unaware of these other currencies because they only transact in their own. As you get more senior, you are not only aware of these other currencies, but you make sure that your understanding of exchange rates is correct so that you and your partners view opportunities or priorities with the same lenses.

This tweet from Jonny Miller lives rent free in my head:

For the last year and change, when I’ve run into problems, I’ve found myself asking “Is this like sleeping?”

When I ask myself that question, I’m asking “Can I make this thing possible on my own, or do I need to focus on creating the conditions by which this thing can emerge?”

In some cases (like exercise), the best way forward is through — I go down to the gym and start moving, and the workout often appears. But in other cases, like relationships (romantic or otherwise), things look a lot more like sleeping.

What I love about this question is that it’s very similar (and related IMO) to the famous Jerry Colonna question “How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?”

Once you realize that the way forward is about the design of an environment/conditions, you can more clearly interrogate where are you getting in your own way.

Anyone who has signed up for a dating app knows the struggle of trying to reduce themselves down to some number of pictures and prompts as they fill out their profile, in hopes that these will be hooks to invite a conversation and ultimately help them meet a partner.

Yet, as easy as it is for us to recognize how much signal gets compressed and nuance is lost about our lives, it feels as those many of us fail to extend others the grace that we so clearly hope they will extend to us.

We are, all too often, swiping on maps, then ultimately dating territories.

A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

— Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, p. 58

The idea that "the map is not the territory" is a helpful concept that articulates an abstraction of a thing often resembles that thing, but it is not the thing in itself.

When we see a dating profile, we have limited information. It's a map, not a territory, as it represents part of a person. The words and images create a frame through which we see a selection of their life, which, as Kenneth Burke points out, is both a reflection of reality and a deflection of reality.

But we engage with each others' maps because it's what is afforded to us. We look at the 35,000 foot view and imagine the territory below, often with an optimistic perspective. Yet if we end up matching with that person, the map starts to gain fidelity as we are able to engage with the territory itself — the person.

While maps (and some exposure) are the what leads to the first date, when we're on the date, it's all territory. We're in the wilderness for the first time, and we will become acutely aware of the degree to which the map in fact resembles the territory.

(Read Year 01)

May 16th, 2022 marked two years of being “independent,” which seems strange when I write it out. It feels like that paradox of time, where two years both seems too long and too short. I — and the studio — have grown and changed tremendously, and yet I feel I like I’m just getting started. Both things are true, of course, and it’s that duality that makes the work so interesting.

Over the last year I’ve done work I’m proud of with a number of people and companies I respect, and the work itself has transitioned significantly. While I can trace the roots of my practice to my early projects, the path ahead looks materially different. Here I'll share three of the biggest realizations about my work as an independent, then spend time looking backwards before talking about what’s ahead.

Infinite Games, Flow State Questions & being an Intellectual Lion

A lot of people have asked me if I’m interested in going back to work for a company full time, and my answer each time is “no” because being an independent — at least for me — is getting to play an infinite game, professionally. I’ve previously written about how the studio is a vehicle for me to get to experiment, and this past year has reinforced that experimentation is a necessary condition for what I’m trying to do. I get to work with people I respect on projects I’m excited about, and I can’t think of a better orientation for work (for me), even if I feel like I have an illegible job at times (my response to "what do you do?" is often a tongue in cheek "I'm Behzod-as-a-Service").

As I’ve had this conversation, the follow up is about how I choose my work, and I think that my criteria has sharpened tremendously in the last year. I orient myself to “flow state questions” — questions/challenges/problems that are not so obvious they have an easy answer and not so difficult that I see them as insurmountable. They are questions I want to struggle with (Brie Wolfson calls these “Fires I Run Towards”). This realization came from conversations I was having with friends about our definition of wealth, inspired by Khe’s tweet. I think that true wealth is choosing your stress, and I feel wildly fortunate that, by that definition, I am professionally wealthy beyond measure (the vast majority of my stress is not only chosen, but welcomed and embraced).

This framing of infinite games, flow state questions, and wealth has clarified why I’ve preferred to grow the studio through collaboration rather than headcount. I’m approaching work with an abundance mindset where I’m focused on outcomes rather than ownership, and I want to invite others into this game I’m playing, hoping that they’ll change it for the better.

The last realization I’ve had over the past year, thanks to conversations with the incredible team at Balsa, is that I function like an intellectual lion — I’m "lazy" most of the time, but when something catches my attention, I’ll use all the energy that I have to chase it down. This framing was helpful for me as it has impacted the way I’ve structured my work — balancing the the rest and the chase (or the compressing of the spring and the leaping forward).

While this has been a meandering set of reflections, hopefully there’s a spark in here somewhere for you — or at least a bit of context on where my head is at. With that said, let’s look back at the last 12 months.

Year 02 Highlights

While there’s a lot of different ways to make sense of what happened in the last year, I’ll start with brief highlights:

• Talks I did

  • “Building Organizations that Learn” for the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering UX Speaker Series

  • “Going Solo” — A 7 Part Series on Learners about being an independent consultant

• Essays/Posts I contributed to

  • “The Research Mentality… and how to adopt it for product-led growth” with Jennifer Li at A16Z

  • “How to Really Measure NPS” for the Reforge blog

• Books & Other Resources

  • The Maze Question Bank

  • UX Leadership Playbook - Democratizing Research to Deliver Impact at Scale with Maze

• Podcasts I appeared on

  • “Democratizing UX Research in Your Organization” on Product with Panash

  • In the Loop with Maze

  • “A Talk With Behzod Sirjani: Scaling and Democratizing Research | ADPList x Maze” for the UX Leadership Playbook launch

• Other Things of Note

  • I’ve done enough interesting work at HmntyCntrd to be worth it’s own post, and I am so grateful to Vivianne and Alba for that opportunity.

  • I just crossed 500 people in the live User Insights program at Reforge

  • I contributed to The Builder Report with Balsa, a look at the experience of building and shipping software today

  • I joined El Cap as a Venture Partner and Contributor

When I stop and look at the highlights, it’s easy to be grateful for what was accomplished over the last 12 months. The thing that I’m most proud of here is that the work continues to push on a trajectory towards helping organizations or all kinds and sizes shift the way they learn with and from the people they’re trying to serve, whether or not they have any formal “researchers” in their organization. I can imagine that some of these things look unrelated, disjointed, or even chaotic — but as John Cutler points out in his newsletter title, sometimes it’s “the beautiful mess” that we need to spend our time in to make magic.

Looking at this highlights two things for me:

• I continue to be in good orbits. All of the items above were done with people I respect and have learned from, whether that’s Jennifer Li at a16z, the team at Maze, or the incredible folks at Reforge (among many others).

• More of my work has been one-to-many that I had expected. I thought that I’d be working tightly with small teams, but writing, talks, and teaching has taken up the bulk of my time — all of which have been to large audiences. As an introvert, I realize that one-to-many behind a screen is a safe medium, and doesn’t feel much different from one to one sometimes, but it’s come as a surprise as I looked back on the year.

Looking Back

Not because of the rule of three, but in looking back, I wanted to spend some time talking about three places I spent time that I’m particularly proud of — Balsa, Reforge, and the UX Leadership Playbook with Maze.

Balsa

I spent a large part of 2021 working with the team at Balsa, doing a mix of org design and market research in partnership with Nicole Zeng. It’s hard for me to choose the right words to talk about my professional relationship with Nicole, but I will say that projects we do together have the highest chance of both pushing me and resulting in something I’m deeply proud of.

Our initial orientation to the partnership was "build our own version of Xerox PARC" at least at a two person scale. We wanted to do work that was intellectually meaningfully and could be shared with the broader community. The Balsa Builder report, among other work, fits that description well. This was the rare primary research project I take on and it was one of the first times I’ve gotten to work with others to build a full website to host our findings. Even if you’re not a software engineer, I imagine you’ll see things that resonate with you about work and workplaces.

While the organization has shifted (as startups do), I'm both proud and grateful of the work we did and always excited for another opportunity to partner with Nicole.

Reforge

I've just crossed two years of being involved with Reforge — first as a program partner, and now as an Executive in Residence — and it's easy to see Reforge as being an inflection point in my professional life in many of the same ways that Facebook was.

Many people ask me what it's like to be an EIR at Reforge, and I've found myself leaning on a story that Mark Zuckerberg told us during an all hands (at least the story as I remember). The abbreviated version is:

Zuck was at a dinner somewhere and one of the guests was Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. There was a chessboard sitting out in the house they were dining at and Carlsen invited Zuck to play a game. Zuck accepted on one condition — that Carlsen would explain every move to Zuck before he made it. Carlsen agrees and the game begins.

Some amount of time passes and Zuck realizes that all the guests are watching the game and he and Carlsen are holding up dinner. He asks the other guests if they should stop so everyone can eat and one of the other guests says something to the extent of "Why would you stop? How often do you have someone who is the best in the world at something explaining it to you?" Zuck went on to mention that he didn't realize this was such a novel feeling, because it's what he felt like working at Facebook.

While I've felt this way to various degrees throughout my career, I've never felt it as strongly as I do at Reforge, where I have a front row seat to some of the best operators in the world across a range of fields. I've mentioned that Elena Verna has the highest rate of "insights per minute" in conversation of anyone I've met, and I could say similarly kind and true things about so many of the other incredible people I spend my time around. I'm open with most people that I plan to "never leave," though I imagine that my engagement will shift over time.

The User Insights for Product Decisions program launched in Spring 2021 and I recently facilitated it’s third cohort, which just crossed 500 people in terms of live participation (not including self-paced programming). Reforge plays a lot of different roles in my life, but one of the best things that it’s done for the studio is take all of my inbound requests for “how to do research” training. Instead of paying me more than what Reforge costs, people who want to level up their individual (or small group) practice can join Reforge, go through the UIPD program, and then come back to me with that knowledge so that we can operationalize it for them and their organization (not to mention joining Reforge gets you access to 15 other programs, a ton of other content, and an expert network). This has (obviously) reinforced the value of having a “product” to sell that isn’t your time, though given the quality of Reforge’s team and content, set a ridiculously high bar for me in terms of other things to produce.

Reforge is both incredibly intellectually satisfying and also aligns very strongly with the intellectual lion laziness I described earlier — it takes up a lot of my cognitive energy during the live cohorts I lead in Spring and Fall, but outside of that, a lot of my involvement is shaped by the intersection of where I can be helpful and what I'm excited about. I'm incredibly grateful to Brian and the team for continuing to let Reforge be a home.

Democratization Playbook

The last thing I want to talk about is a project that was deeply gratifying in ways I couldn't imagine — the UX Leadership Playbook that I launched with Maze and ADP List in April.

I’ve been an advisor to Maze for two years now and have continued to learn from and partner with so many fantastic people at the organization, both in terms of org and product strategy as well as on their other resources [1], [2]. I’ve spoken with a number of people at Maze about releasing something related to democratization during the course of our relationship, and then a few months back, things really kicked into high gear.

From my perspective, the process was incredibly smooth — which speaks to the where and how I was involved, as well as the caliber of the Content Marketing team at Maze. I had a conversation early on with Elena Luchita, the Content Marketing Lead, about the principles I think are important for building organizations that learn, and followed up in a Notion doc and with a few Looms to answer her questions, push on ideas, etc. Then about three months later, I got a note from Giada Gastaldello, a manager on Elena's team, letting me know the playbook was done and they wanted me to write an introduction. They sent over a copy of the draft and I was blown away by the energy and thoughtfulness that went into the book and the voices and stories included.

When I say that this project was gratifying, I'm speaking to the quality of the execution in the final product and the incredible partnership with Maze. But I am also moved by the fact that nearly two years ago, when I wrote "Democratization is our Job," the idea that we can and should be helping others with research and research-like activities seemed like such a controversial - if not taboo - topic, and in the time since then, our discipline has had enough people exploring and reflecting on different ways to open up our practice to such a degree that we could put together a playbook of 30+ voices.

I'm thankful for everyone who contributed to this project, and I hope that it may truly provide a blueprint for others who are starting to explore shifting their companies towards being organizations that learn.

Looking Forward

I've recognized that the last year, especially in a macro sense, has been quite chaotic, and that the path forward will continue to look different for me. The two biggest changes I'm acknowledging are the shift toward more of an "advising" practice and an opening up of the practice in more ways.

The Shift to Advising

While I reflected above that a lot of my time was one to many, something that’s also shifted significantly in my work is that I function more like an advisor to the companies I work with — partnering directly with senior leaders as they identify and build good research practices within their organizations. This work has been incredibly enjoyable, but takes a very different shape than prior engagements.

Instead of a lot of surface area with an organization for a short-ish period of time, I’ll have a lighter engagement (often weekly or bi-weekly) over a number months. This feels like it honors the rhythm at which the organization can take metabolize our conversations and act on them, and also gives us time to build intentionally without creating too much thrash within the organization.

If this is something you're interested in exploring, please reach out. I still have some capacity in the fall/winter and would love to hear from you.

The Collective (opening up the practice)

Over the last year, I've had a few trusted friends in "Yet Another Backchannel" on Slack to share about our work, get feedback on how we practice, and work on writing and talks together (originally inspired by what Tom Critchlow has done with !& on Discord).

I want to expand that conversation moving forward to share everything I know with other people who are excited to contribute to a body of work that will help companies improve the way they learn with and from the people they are trying to serve. I'm still working out the details of this, but I'm been thrilled with the success of YAB so far and seen enough positive momentum with this experiment to be willing to take the next step.

Since I'm not trying to scale the studio through headcount, this is not meant to be people being a part of my practice so much as all of us having a space to share our own perspectives and our practices in a deeper way than Twitter or a mailing list allows. Again, if this is interesting to you, let me know.

The Outro

I want to wrap this up with a note of gratitude — so much of this is possible because of the the wonderful people who have invited me into their games and joined me in mine.

I’ve described the different buckets of work I do as “vehicles for the conversations I want to have” and that implies that there are other people willing to enter a dialogue with me. Fortunately there are (for now, at least :sweat_smile:). I appreciate all of you.

I tend to be a pragmatic optimist. That is, I’m often looking for the reasons to be excited about something, acknowledging full well that there are challenges, obstacles, or other things that can go wrong/prevent the ideal outcome. 

With people in my life — especially over the last few years — this has played out in a specific way: I’ve become an appreciation maximizer. I look for every opportunity to let someone know that I appreciate them, ideally in very specific terms, no matter how small the reason is. 

Part of this was influenced by conversations I had with friends about how few orbits we likely had with so many people that once made up the fabric of our daily lives. My close friends from high school, many of whom I still talk to, I will see only a handful (or few handfuls) of times in person throughout the rest of my life - simply because of life circumstances. Each of those moments (like every moment ideally) should be cherished. 

In addition to that person feeling valued, loved, seen, etc, this behavior has led to a number of other positive outcomes:

1. I’m regularly looking for things to appreciate. As my undergrad advisor often reminded me, “if you want to see something beautiful on your commute, you will.” (He used to walk to work with a camera and had a keen eye for finding beauty anywhere.)

2. I’ve become more public with my appreciation for others, whether that’s small +1-ing via Twitter replies or dedicated Instagram posts.

Both of these have created their own positive flywheels. Looking for more things to appreciate means I’m looking at more things, which helps me find more things, which helps me appreciate more things, and so on. Appreciating things about the people in my life (especially publicly) leads to others adding on with their own perspectives, which both makes me appreciate that person in new ways AND makes them feel more appreciated. 

None of this is to say I’m unaware of the no good, very bad time (TM) that we’re living through or what we need to do to course correct, but I am firmly in the camp of giving people their flowers while they can still smell them. Having lost too many friends at this point in my life, I’m confident that not doing so is one of the things I would truly regret.

This is Yet Another MAEKAN Briefing Intro.

I’ve become a regular at a nearby restaurant thanks to my friends' recommendation and my subsequent visits, where I've tried to bring anyone who would let me. When I say "visits," it means at least once a week for the last 8 weeks, so not too bad.

Besides the food — which is excellent — the thing that keeps me coming back is the people who work there and the relationships that we've developed. I'm greeted by name and can greet most of the front of house staff by name as well.

We recently had a friend's birthday dinner there, originally making a reservation for 6. A few more people joined, so I called and asked if there was room to expand, bringing us to 9. Later, even more joined, so I went early and apologized profusely for being those customers. They took it in stride (probably because they are professionals), and turned the tables on me, asking more about who else was joining and how they could help us best celebrate.

Last week, I went for a solo meal and was feeling terrible after something I had eaten for lunch. Noticing I was in weaker spirits and the terrible look on my face, the waitress brought me a house-made digestif, unprompted.

Both of these experiences left quite an impression. This restaurant and these relationships have been a constant reminder that businesses are just people — which should be obvious to someone who is a single-person business, but alas. It's encouraged me to look for the humanity in all of my interactions, whether it's adding a smile to the end of the thank you, or letting the new tailor know how well-loved she is on Yelp.

These little things (being a good person?) seem to go a long way, especially as many of us crawl out of the anti-social COVID cave and have to learn how to engage with others again. But I recognized how easy it was to write off any organization as a faceless group and how I really don't want to live my life that way. We have limited time here and there's really no reason not to make it a little better for everyone you interact with.

This is Yet Another Maekan Briefing Intro (Thursdays’ Briefings are for subscribers).

There's something magical about a well-worn object. The wear marks tell a story about its life; where it has been and what it has done. Patina — to me — is a visible indicator of love. The more worn, the more appreciated.

If you pick up your favorite book, the pages it naturally opens to are probably the ones that have been read the most. The spine and creases acknowledging the importance over time. But what does that look like in a digital world? We don’t see the wear in files the way we do in books.

Perhaps that's okay, because the file is as good now as it was when it was created. But are "favorites" or "date last modified" really helpful proxies for how much something is loved or referenced? What's the digital equivalent of a torn page?

In some ways, I wish my files wore down, reminding me of their age and their use — letting me know that they've been seen and appreciated. I know this is a silly thought, because it's the physical hard drive, not the file, that actually wears down and in many ways our files outlast our devices.

I wonder how this disconnect between the physical things we use and the digital objects that we rely on impacts our psyche when it comes to our perspectives on what we own, collect, and discard. Given that it's nearly impossible to modify an iPhone to survive multiple (software) generations, have we been conditioned to treat our digital access points as temporary goods but the digital goods themselves as eternal? Have we all become digital hoarders? Looking at the stack of hard drives next to my desk, I know my answer is yes.

This is Yet Another MAEKAN Briefing Intro.

This month, I've rejoined Nitzan Hermon's Critical Business School (I originally participated in January) and during our first session had a fantastic discussion about resilience - for many definitions of the word - which inspired today's intro.

In the conversation, one of the definitions of resilience that was used was "the capacity to navigate uncertainty" and I posited that resilience is very much contextual. While we describe people as "resilient," we often mean emotionally resilient, financially resilient, physically resilient, or some combination of these and more. As we talked, I realized that resilience in some ways can be a double-edged sword, both helping you deal with difficult situations that arise, as well as shielding you from the friction around you.

If you're incredibly resilient and the "impact" of something is very low, you may not even register that an event occurred, compared to being not as resilient and being dramatically shocked by something. We wade through many of these "low impact" moments during our weeks, often thanks to resilience, but by ignoring them, can't prepare for the effect of them compounding.

Case in point, I'm in decent physical shape, but I'm absolutely terrible at stretching and mobility work (there's no Family Form in Seattle... yet). Running a 5K here and there doesn't impact me much physically, but running a few of them in one week really took its toll recently. It was a good reminder to be more intentional about interrogating where my own resilience may be "protecting me" from opportunities to grow or be more self-aware. It's also a good reminder to stretch a bit more - both my body and my mind.

Wishing you a week of resilience as a shield from unnecessary difficulty, but not growth.

This is Yet Another Maekan Briefing Intro (Thursdays’ Briefings are for subscribers).

I always appreciate the thought that artists and creators put into the presentation of their work. Whether it's a chef with good plating or a writer with a well type-set and laid out book, I love knowing that they thought about how I would engage with their creation.

One of the places that I was initially a curmudgeon about this, but have since come around, is with fragmented photos on Instagram. I'm talking about those half-cut photos where you have to half swipe over and hold your finger there so that you can see the whole image. (If you aren't familiar with these, here is an example from @photo.pace or check out the Series App on iOS.)

When I first started seeing these, I was pretty annoyed that my viewing experience required a half swipe and a hold, and that I had my fat fingers blocking part of the image. But then I was able to step back and check myself, realizing that the people who were doing this were controlling the experience of how their work was being viewed by forcing me to pause, swipe, and hold the image in the frame. 

This forced viewing wasn't a disruption, it was an invitation and a subversion of the typical one image per frame norm that we see on Instagram. Recognizing this quashed my grumpy attitude, helping me to see that this was, in fact, part of the viewing experience. It also caused me to step back and ask where else I may have written off an experience as frustrating, when it was actually a new (to me) form of meaningful friction.

Now when I see these fragmented photos, I get excited because there are two layers (or more) for me to engage with - both the photos themselves and the presentation. I feel silly that it took me this long to come around, but c’est la vie.

Deep Gratitude (An Introduction)

I've told many of you that starting Yet Another Studio is one of the best decisions in my life. While the first year (May 2020-2021) was chaotic and terrible on so many dimensions, it's with great privilege that I recognize what a bountiful first year the Studio had, thanks to many of you reading this. 

This "year in review" will be a broad and deep look at where things started, where I'm at today, and where I'm hoping to go. I hope that in reflecting about these things, they may be helpful to those of you considering similar paths. 

Year One

In Yet Another Newsletter - Issue 001 I asked and answered "What is Yet Another Studio?"

I hope the honest answer to that question, at least over a long time horizon, is something that mattered. I chose the name “Yet Another” because I want to acknowledge that the Studio is one of many options and because I want clients to think critically about what they are making in a world of excess and planned obsolescence.

The truth is the Studio is a vehicle for me to help drive the kinds of changes I’m excited about seeing in the world. Right now, much of that work is focused on research and how research is practiced, but I have hopes of expanding the scope as I go. I’d love to bring on talented people I respect as collaborators, and leverage our skills in areas where they can be impactful (more on that later).

What I didn't realize then, but have since articulated much better, is that I deeply believe that researchers (and the research process) is much valuable far earlier than companies usually hire for it, and I wanted to start to work towards testing and proving models of how researchers could play in that space. In taking a portfolio approach to my work, which I talk about below in "Me-As-A-Service," I've been able to chip away at different ideas, engagement models, and partnerships. 

The first year went very differently than I had expected. I did fewer speaking engagements and workshops and far more embedded work with companies. I'm happy about this outcome, since I imagined the embedded work would be harder to come by. Thankfully, there's a lot of folks who believe in me (thank you!) and I'm grateful for the range of projects I've gotten to work on. 

The Work Itself

I'm learning that I still have a pretty wonky elevator pitch, or at least an abstract answer to the question "What do you do?" (which - very fortunately - hasn't become a problem given my clients come almost exclusively from referrals, but it something I should be better about). At the highest level, all of my work is oriented towards helping organizations make better decisions and learn more effectively - and the work itself is a mix of playing and coaching.

In the past year, I've run research for organizations and on organizations, planned research (but not conducted it), given feedback on research (that other people did), helped teams build a decision roadmap off of their product roadmap, taught people how to conduct research, built hiring roadmaps and written job descriptions, suggested and evaluated tools for an organization, wrote performance feedback for clients (that gave me warm fuzzies) and a range of other things that typically get lumped into the name of "strategy." All this to say... whatever it was that would move the client forward. 

One reason I'm so open to many activities is that I invest a lot in vetting my clients, because I prefer to work with people, not for them (this is a 100% semantic statement). I call my clients "partners" because in many cases I look like an extension of the team, albeit one with the freedom to play the fool. For many of them, billing on a monthly or per-project basis removes the need for people to ask if it's okay to reach out to me, worried it'll count as billable hours. The goal is more open lines of communication so that I can contribute however is necessary and have more visibility and transparency in the organization to be proactive about how I help. 

Since Tom reminded me to keep track of things I'll want to remember in future years, here's a quick snapshot of the who and what in Year 1. 

Partners: 

• Figma

• UXRC/Learners

• Asurion

• Reforge

• Dropbox

• Balsa

• Nearby

• HmntyCntrd

Projects & Partnerships:

• 10 total

• 2 Open-Ended Partnerships

• 3 Speaking Engagements/Workshops

• 5 Fixed-Term Partnerships

Writing:

I wrote two extended essays and three issues of Yet Another Newsletter:

• Democratization is our Job

• The Organizational Appetite for Research

• YAN 001: What is Yet Another Studio?

• YAN 002: Being in Good Orbits

• YAN 003: Modern Miracles & Moving Forward

Year Two (and Beyond)

Beyond the kinds of work that I'm already doing, I plan to lean into the Yet Another moniker and expand it into a full alphabet. I started the Studio to give myself a vehicle through which I could experiment, and as I've started to connect with more folks outside of my main orbits, I'm increasingly excited about collaborating on other things. I'm hopeful that throughout the rest of my career, I'll continue to fill out this alphabet, so we'll have not just Yet Another Studio (S) and Yet Another Newsletter (N), but perhaps Yet Another Book (no idea the topic), Yet Another Camera Strap (why not?) etc. I enjoy freedom within a framework, and what better way to shape my career by giving myself a structure within which I can continue to play...forever. If you have an idea for making yet another [something] together, let me know. 

Lessons Learned

This next section is pretty self-explanatory based on the title, but I wanted to take time to share conversations that I've regularly had about the journey so far. 

Starting Warm

One of the first things I want to reflect on related to year one is the importance of "starting warm" (as opposed to "starting cold"). 

When people ask me how I was able to transition away from Slack and into the Studio, I'm honest about the fact that I had job offers (or offers in process) from other companies which I was excited about (in terms of the work), but knew I wasn't ready for (in terms of the work commitment). I shared these feelings with the respective hiring managers, explaining what I wanted to try with the Studio (as best as I understood it then) and asked if we could scope out a partnership that covered some of the potential work. I'm wildly grateful to Cristen Torrey (and the team) at Figma for taking a chance on me and being the best first partner I could ask for. 

If you read other advice on how to start a new thing, there's often some version of "do something to de-risk it" which could be moonlighting, splitting your time, etc. In my case, I was already helping friends navigate the kinds of problems I do with the Studio, just for free and in my spare time. Towards the end of my time at Slack, I received increasing interest in help, and it was much easier to let go of one thing when I already had my hand on another. 

Related to the idea of de-risking things, one policy that I have is "everyone gets one meeting." I am happy to talk to potential partners and even jam with them in ways that may look or feel like the work that we could do together to allow both parties to evaluate the fit of the partnership. I'm not in a rush to sign a contract and I want to make sure both of us know what we want out of the relationship. 

The last thing I'll say here is that in addition to starting warm from a client perspective, I also "started warm" financially — I saved up and set aside ~ 9 months of living expenses. If I hadn't found work in 6 months, I'd start interviewing for jobs again, with a 3 month window find one. This massively reduced my cognitive and emotional burden to say yes, which I'll talk about towards the end. 

Me-As-A-Service

The most important perspective shift I had to make in starting the Studio was recognizing that my business is effectively "Me-As-A-Service." I talk about the Studio in "we" terms in various places (for a number of reasons), but people are (at least right now) hiring me. This is as terrifying as it is empowering. 

Let's start with the scary — it's all on me now. I'm responsible for finding work, doing (good) work, getting paid, and all the other aspects of running the business... not to mention taking care of my health and sanity. I went from a situation where I had teams of people taking care of each of those things to having all the responsibility. That part can be scary, not to mention that those of us who battle with imposter syndrome are about to have that cranked up to 11. 

But, when I'm really honest, it's been much more empowering for me. I think that imposter syndrome is not my favorite framing for the experience of being in an environment where you have not yet leveraged your strengths, because the reality is that you're not an imposter anywhere you go — you're you, and you're the only one who can be you. When I take that perspective, I feel empowered to ask myself "what is it that I want to offer?" and do this from a place of strength and self-awareness. I am fortunate that I started working with a coach for months prior to starting the studio who helped me identify things that lay at the intersection of what I'm good at, what I find energy doing, and what other people ask me to do to build the core offering of the Studio. 

The challenge for me was about converting those strengths and the things I wanted to offer into something that I could actually offer as a product/service - whether that's a talk, workshop, project, partnership or something else. Doing that required a lot more reflection and self awareness as I considered my own life rhythms, the ways I wanted to work with other people, the kinds of things I wanted to work on, and how I could talk about and sell that vision. Very thankfully, I'm friends with many of the kinds of people I'd love to work with and for, and many of them were incredible sounding boards as I worked through these ideas. 

The final piece here that I'll share is the idea of "choosing your stress." So much of my work is oriented around the kinds of challenges that I want to take on. I know that not every partnership or project is going to go smoothly all the time, but as much as possible, I want to be facing challenges I'm excited about, not ones that are going to wear me down. 

If you're considering an independent path, some of the questions I'd encourage you to reflect and write on are:

• What is something that only you can do (or that you are uniquely qualified to do)? With that in mind, who should hire you, and why? What would that work look like?

• What kind of work do you not want to do?

• What do you want your days/weeks/months to look like? 

• What activities do you need to make space for that will allow you to continue to do the work you're excited about and proud of? 

As a footnote, one thing the above questions helped me realize is that some of the ways I wanted to contribute to companies were better fits through angel investing or advising. This allowed me to say no to things that looked like a good fit, but weren't. 

Playing vs Playbooks

I'm a framework and process person, which is great in some situations and absolutely miserable in others. Trying to operationalize something that's still being formed makes a lot less sense than simply putting up guardrails and helping it move more effectively in a direction. It was important for me to hold on to the idea that every client, project, and partnership would look different for a while as I learned my own rhythms and honed in on what I wanted to contribute and how. 

While I had ideas about what the work would look like, the reality is much messier (and thankfully, much better). I tried my best to not lock myself into ways of thinking or ways of being early on, instead reflecting regularly about what was and wasn't working, what felt good (or didn't), and what I was drawn towards. I shared thoughts with friends, solicited feedback from partners, and wrote regularly to have a one-directional time machine to refer to. 

One of Balsa’s core values is the idea of "planning versus plans," and in learning from them, I've co-opted their idea into playing versus playbooks. I've had to recognize that every situation is unique, and bringing an open mind and ways of being into a situation, rather than things to do, yields the best results. This isn't to say that I don't have consistent patterns in the work, but that force-fitting them into a situation is a fool's errand. 

If nothing else, a principle to remind you to keep looking at things in a new way and asking what else may be possible is a good thing to keep you from being complacent. 

Saying No

One of the most difficult things (for me, and probably many of you) is learning to say no. I tend to be reasonably good at holding an abundance mindset and fighting off scarcity, but that took a lot of work (thank you, Sunil) and continues to be a muscle I have to exercise. 

As I mentioned in "starting warm," setting up a financial buffer to work from gave me immense privilege in looking for the right kind of work. I know that saying yes to the wrong projects can become a downward spiral of resenting the work, then doing poor quality work, then not getting the kinds of things you want in the future, and so on. On the flip side, saying no to projects that aren't the right fit opens you up for the work that will be. 

Many projects sound good at the beginning, especially as they are being pitched to you. Part of my rule of "everyone gets one meeting" is allowing me to get past the optimism of the pitch and understand what I'm signing up for with more clarity. There are lots of projects that have come my way where the first meeting allowed us to realize one of a number of things:

1. I'm not a good fit for the project.

2. The project is actually a different scope than the client thinks.

3. The project, as it's written, is not worth doing (though maybe another one is).

4. One meeting was all they needed.

In most of these cases, I'm happy to help (within a reasonable degree) in steering them toward a better partner (if I know one). This means everyone goes home happy — I'm not doing work I shouldn't be, and the client gets what they need. 

Derek Sivers' framing of "Hell Yeah or No" is a succinct guide to how I feel about projects. If I'm not stoked, I probably pass. Related, one fantastic exercise I did early on was make a list of "dream clients." I refer to this often and occasionally reach out to some of them where I think there may be a fit. Doing this pushed me to dream bigger and think about what's possible, not just in front of me. 

Other Things of Note

One of the great questions I've been asked as I talk about the first year of the studio is "What would you have done differently?" (thanks Justin). 

While "not start in the middle of a global pandemic" is a bit tongue in cheek, I also think it's almost completely wrong. I was planning for things to be difficult (in a very different way) and I think that learning how to operate in a difficult environment has been incredibly valuable (time will probably be the best just there). 

Something I do think I would have done differently (and have started doing) is planning vacations well ahead of time and irrespective of my current/potential clients. If I'm going to run the Studio in a sustainable way, I need to make sure that I'm taking care of myself and know how to put on my oxygen mask before helping others. 

Another thing I'd like to have done better is get other people involved. I'm very excited about how I'm opening up the practice, and I'm really looking forward to carving out more projects that allow me to bring on and learn from other talented friends. I'm in the process of redesigning the Studio website and look forward to more prominently sharing Friends of the Studio that I'd encourage everyone to partner with. 

Thanks

If you've read this far, thank you. If you were hoping for more tips about how to start as an independent, I have a short video series coming out with Learners soon called "Going Solo" (which I'll link to and update the tense of this sentence with when it's ready). I really see the Studio as a vehicle by which I get to be myself, professionally, and I want that for more people. If I can help you do that in any way, please let me know. 

Finally, there are a tremendous amount of people in my orbit with whom I could not made it this far. While I could write essays about each of them, I do want to acknowledge them here, so a massive thank you to Jim Lee, Kevin Hanaford, Kunal Tandon, Parteek Saran, Max Di Capua, Sunil Arora, Tom Critchlow, Eugene Kan, Vivianne Castillo, Alec Levin, Lena Blackstock, Colette Kolenda, Jan Chipchase, and everyone who hired me. I'm so grateful that I've made it to year two with your help.

The Moral

Community is about empowerment.

Good communities not only make space for who you are today, but they help you see and realize the person that you want to be tomorrow. In all of the talk about "communities" on Twitter, so much is missing about the fact that communities are not simply about people being in the same space... even for the same goal.

Community is about the energy that we put into each other and into the united "us," owning a part of that story and adding our voice to the collective narrative, rather than trying to assimilate everyone to the same perspective or way of being.

The Story

Intro

The following is not anything close to a history of the rich and extensive Seattle local music scene (Kelly Mason is probably a much better historian and, on an unrelated note, her "Myspace Profile Songs" playlist is a gem). This is merely my own reflection of the incredible and transformative experience I had being a fan, friend, and musician from 2003-2013 in one of the most accepting and lowest ego communities I've ever encountered.

This entire reflection was spurred by a dinner I had recently with a college friend and her new husband, whom I discovered was the front man for a band I grew up watching with reverence, as they had the respect of the artists I knew and loved.

I deeply believe that the Seattle local music scene, especially around these years, was a special place. If nothing else, I hope this post pays tribute for so much of the good that came from it for me (and many others).

Verse 1

To set the scene, it's important for me to acknowledge that a tremendous amount of my emotional education came through music. I started playing piano (poorly) in the fourth grade, eventually switching to clarinet and saxophone, and finally falling in love with drums. While I'm sure many of you will laugh, I look at Linkin Park as a gateway to many of the different genres and bands whose music and lyrics would become part of the rhythm of my life. Their blend of emotions and range of musical styles made it possible for me to go in so many different directions as I matured.

I also need to acknowledge Jim Lee and Josie Ng as two of my musical spirit guides, especially as it relates to Seattle music and the entire emo/indie genre. Jim lived with me and my family in 8th grade, and opened my eyes to Thursday, Yellowcard, and Saves the Day - three groups from different parts of the music spectrum who would all become mainstays in my CD player (and eventually iDevices). This foundation made it possible for Josie to indoctrinate me into the local scene two years later, seeing Gatsbys American Dream at El Corazon (then Graceland) and going to my first small venue to hear Danger:Radio, Blaine, and This Providence at the Kirkland Teen Center.

Verse 2

When I try to explain what was so special about the scene, I always talk about the people. It was a collection of low ego misfits - for the most part - who were there for the music and each other. The venues and audiences were spread across the Seattle area, ranging from Edmonds and Mukilteo in the North, to Kirkland, Bellevue, and Redmond on the Eastside, to Seattle proper, and even down South in Tacoma. It wasn't uncommon to see the same people week after week at different venues, even though some nights you drove 15 minutes and others over an hour. Everyone came to support their friends and the artists (often the same people) and be in community together. Conversations in line would be as lively as the parking lots after the show.

The artists themselves played every show as if the 15' x 10' stage at Ground Zero was the main stage at Warped Tour. They poured their hearts into their guitars and their souls into the microphones. Instead of hanging out in green rooms, waiting for their turn, almost all the artists were out watching, cheering, and singing along to other acts. They had guitars ready if something went wrong and probably helped each other with load in and load out. You left every show simultaneously energized and exhausted.

Breakdown

When I finally started a band with my friends Andy, Riley, and Kevin (who would go on to have a much more successful music career, in addition to his real one), we were limited only by our imagination and will. We'd been to enough shows, and helped others load in and load out enough times, to develop relationships with our then-heroes and booked Oceans in Oblivion, Lizzie Huffman, and Blaine at our first show (which we opened). In some regards, we had no business playing with the caliber of musicians we did, but, true to the scene, no one cared. People loved that we cared about the music and put in the work, so they supported us. That's what made Seattle special — everyone wanted you to be the best you could.

Verse 3

After going to college and coming back to Seattle, I was fortunate to make my way into a different local music scene - hip hop. Instead of Danger:Radio and Blaine, I found myself regularly supporting and hanging out with Brothers from Another, The Physics, Blue Scholars, and many other talented emcees. In that world, I found a similar dynamic — less ego and more support. The older generation of artists were regularly carving out space for who came after, guest appearing on tracks, inviting them onto show bills, and showing up at concerts to support them. It made me think that it wasn't just the indie scene of the 2000's but something about Seattle music that brought people together in true community (#townallday).

Whether it was listening parties, music videos, or just a bbq, people showed up for each other and to celebrate each other. Every individual win felt like a win for the city, and we were all there for it. For me, it was incredible to feel that same raw energy I did in high school, half a decade later in different venues to different beats.

Outro

To borrow from "Yes, This Is About You"... where's the fucking chorus? I don't know. It's hard to know what the anthem or repeated lines were across this special place in the corner of the Northwest. I know that there's magic here, because as I sat at dinner last night reminiscing with someone who was a generation before me musically, it was clear that we both had lived it.

Song Notes

While I recognized some of the people who started me on this journey, I also want to recognize so many folks who contributed to those years. I feel so thankful for Danger:Radio (Andrew, Marvin, Nico, Spencer, Matt, Elan), Blaine (Chris, Paxton, Chip, Rory), From Aphony (Jake, Jacob, Mike, Keef), Lizzie Huffman, Oceans in Oblivion, and everyone else we got to share the stage with. I am grateful to the guys in Surrounded by Lions, Gatsbys American Dream, Portugal: the Man, and Forgive Durden for putting on such incredible live shows and proving that you could write atypical songs in a way that was true to you and be not just accepted, but loved. I want to thank The Physics and Blue Scholars for investing deeply in the community and opening doors (literally and metaphorically) for others. I'll never forget your open studios. A huge thank you to Hollis for being a true friend and contributing to my musical and emotional education, long after we've both left Seattle. Finally, thank you to James for giving me the ability to dive back into this rich history and tap into a part of myself that I haven't sat with for a long time.

This is Yet Another Maekan Briefing Intro (Thursdays’ Briefings are for subscribers).

With record-setting temperatures here in Seattle, I’ve found myself spending quite a bit of time at the lake. My newest companion is one of Outlier's latest experiments, the grid linen beach hole (yes, that’s its name) — a blanket that converts into a bag of sorts. 

I'm not a minimalist, but I do appreciate and seek out objects that not only do their core jobs well, but also invite me to expand my understanding of how to use them. I think beyond the idea of being “well-designed;” I instead consider these things to be “intellectually honest.” Two of my favorite examples are Acronym’s JacketSling and the drawstring in Outlier’s New Way Shorts.

Both the Acronym jacket and Outlier shorts do their jobs incredibly well, unhindered by the (arguably necessary) additions, while simultaneously helping the wearer realize that every prior version of a similar object lacked the recognition that an alternative future was possible. A better future.

You know what’s better than carrying your jacket? Slinging it across your back. You know what's better than wearing a belt (most of the time)? A drawstring.

In some ways, this honesty is empowering — what an incredible thing to have objects (and their makers) that see more in themselves than you do and invite you to realize their full potential. But in another way, it’s a damning indictment of the many other things out there which are strictly worse on so many dimensions.

Just like the double zipper before them, the JacketSling and drawstrings have set a new standard for what I want in my clothing.

If you have any friends or follow anyone in NYC, especially single people, you know that “nature is healing.” People are out and about, mask mandates in the states are being relaxed (rightly or wrongly), and we’re starting to move towards a post-pandemic reality — whatever that means.

There's a lot about the pre-pandemic world that was broken, and while the last 18+ months have done incredible damage — especially to already marginalized communities and peoples, I'm optimistic that we'll rethink so much of what we do and how we do it as we move forward. One of those things, for me, is the way I engage with people.

As an introvert, I draw so much energy from my time alone. Caveating a ton of privilege, the necessity of being indoors throughout this crisis has helped me develop a newer, more sustainable relationship with myself, especially as I renegotiate my time and relationship with others.

In that vein, I came across an amazing post from my former colleague Kat Vellos on "microdosing friendship" — a call for us to intentionally weave these moments of engagement back into our lives as the world opens again. I'm a big fan of her work, including her suggestions for better questions than "How are you?" and her recent book on developing adult friendships “We Should Get Together.”

Besides friendship, what relationships have you reconsidered, redesigned, and redefined over the past 18 months?

Yet Another Maekan Briefing Intro.

Over the last few weeks, I've had wide fluctuations in my energy. Some days I've struggled to focus, other days the world has melted away and I've forgotten to eat for hours as I tunnel into the work. 

Initially, this was frustrating and hard to deal with as I tried to balance work, friends, family, and my own needs. I was hoping that energy would align to the events on my calendar and that I could summon my attention when I needed to. It just so happened that I caught up with a friend during the same period who had also struggled with this earlier in his life, similarly in a switch away from a corporate role into an independent career. 

This friend happens to be surfer, which led him to share the advice I needed to hear: "You have to ride the waves you're given." He reminded me that while there are definitely things we can do to better manage our energy, lots of things are outside of our control. Some days - especially over the past few months - we get news that throws us off course. Or some things just don't click. Other days we're in flow when we want to rest. Rather than fight it - or trying to surf a wave that isn't there - he encouraged me to harness it. To breathe in the present moment and do the work that was in front of me. 

While hearing that - and saying it to myself over and over - was helpful, it hasn't been easy to put into practice. I'll regrettably want to make progress on a project, only to find myself with too much physical energy at my computer and choosing to run instead. 

As I learn how to be a better energy surfer, I'll pass on the advice to you, in hopes that it may help with the current tides in your life.