- Raising good kids: be present, be patient, love them unconditionally, let them be.
- Staying married 40 years: communicate daily, accept them instead of trying to change them, do joyful things together, preserve your intimacy.
- Getting in shape: eat less and real food, move daily, lift heavy things, sleep enough.
The entire instruction set fits on a napkin. That's why they're hard.
There's no hack. No shortcut. No "one amazing trick." Just the same simple things, done repeatedly, even when you don't feel like it.
But simple doesn't sell.
So there's a $50 billion industry dedicated to convincing you these are actually complex problems requiring complex solutions.
The fitness industry doesn't make money from "eat less, move more." They make money from 200-page protocols, gut microbiome analyses, and metabolic typing assessments.
Productivity gurus turn "just do the work" into 12-week courses on neural optimization.
Management consultancies rake in billions writing unintelligible strategy docs and transformation frameworks.
They take something simple/hard and dress it up as complex/hard. Because complexity sells. Complexity looks like expertise. Complexity justifies the $1,997 price tag.
Now, some things ARE genuinely complex/hard.
Curing cancer. Building rockets. Proving mathematical theorems. You can't napkin those. They're irreducibly complex.
Most good companies push things from complex/hard to complex/easy (Mailchimp, Salesforce). Once-in-a-generation companies push to simple/easy (iPhone, Google, Stripe).
But some things will never be easy.
Starting a profitable business will never be easy.
Talking to strangers about their problems will never be easy.
Making the call to pivot or push will never be easy.
These require courage, judgment, persistence. You can't automate those.
So we're pushing business validation to simple/hard. Automate the dozens of variables that don't require human work & judgment.
Leave founders with only three:
- talk to customers,
- listen to what they actually say,
- make decisions based on real signal.
Simple and hard. That's where everything good in life actually lives. The instruction set fits on a napkin. The execution takes everything you have.
No framework to hide behind. No dashboard to blame. Just you and the work.
- Raising good kids: be present, be patient, love them unconditionally, let them be. - Staying married 40 years: communicate daily, accept them instead of trying to change them, do joyful things together, preserve your intimacy. - Getting in shape: eat less and real food, move daily, lift heavy things, sleep enough.
The entire instruction set fits on a napkin. That's why they're hard. There's no hack. No shortcut. No "one amazing trick." Just the same simple things, done repeatedly, even when you don't feel like it.
But simple doesn't sell.
So there's a $50 billion industry dedicated to convincing you these are actually complex problems requiring complex solutions.
The fitness industry doesn't make money from "eat less, move more." They make money from 200-page protocols, gut microbiome analyses, and metabolic typing assessments.
Productivity gurus turn "just do the work" into 12-week courses on neural optimization.
Management consultancies rake in billions writing unintelligible strategy docs and transformation frameworks.
They take something simple/hard and dress it up as complex/hard. Because complexity sells. Complexity looks like expertise. Complexity justifies the $1,997 price tag.
Now, some things ARE genuinely complex/hard.
Curing cancer. Building rockets. Proving mathematical theorems. You can't napkin those. They're irreducibly complex.
Most good companies push things from complex/hard to complex/easy (Mailchimp, Salesforce). Once-in-a-generation companies push to simple/easy (iPhone, Google, Stripe).
But some things will never be easy.
Starting a profitable business will never be easy. Talking to strangers about their problems will never be easy. Making the call to pivot or push will never be easy.
These require courage, judgment, persistence. You can't automate those.
So we're pushing business validation to simple/hard. Automate the dozens of variables that don't require human work & judgment. Leave founders with only three: - talk to customers, - listen to what they actually say, - make decisions based on real signal.
Simple and hard. That's where everything good in life actually lives. The instruction set fits on a napkin. The execution takes everything you have. No framework to hide behind. No dashboard to blame. Just you and the work.