Britt Gage

Most projects have a right size and technology and communication networks have changed the best ‘right size’ for many organizations. If you’re struggling, it might be because you’re fighting the laws of organizational physics. Radically transforming the size of an organization changes more than we would think. We can begin to right size by asking... See more

These passion job organizations are burnout factories. Every year, a new crop of eager recruits comes in, grateful to have landed a job doing work “they love” — and every year, a significant percentage of the existing workforce churns out. Some have been there that single year, others for five. They leave not because they’re not good “fits” for the... See more

Everyone wants to be connected

But we hesitate to be the connector.

Everyone wants to be trusted, but we hesitate to trust.

And everyone wants to be respected, but we often fail to offer our respect.

What an opportunity.

When talking to people, look for two things: pain and pull . Pain tells you there’s an opportunity to solve a problem. Pull tells you that you’re actually solving the problem.

Here’s what pain and pull look like in practice:

1. People pay you money: Several people start to (or offer to) pay for your early product, ideally people you don’t have a direct

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This has been the core question I’ve sat with for the last decade—how to balance money and meaning on the entrepreneurial path. And there are three archetypal ways that I’ve seen people approach the question:

• The deferred life plan


• Being bivocational


• Choosing to integrate

There should be Retroactive Public Goods Funding for those founders crazy enough to try something truly new that failed as a business but succeeded in creating useful mutations, maybe even ticker tape parades, and certainly not derision.

Earn people’s trust, again and again

In a world of factory farmed unicorns that boom, bust, and let their customers down in the process, we have to show that we are committed to sustainability and longevity.

What else has been hidden by summary? What thoughts must we resist abridging? Those giant sequoias echo a reminder to ask ourselves, what are the unseen things today that could be growing?

And maybe that’s part of the problem, trying to be legible to everyone. The tug of war of wanting to water things down for mass adoption versus building something I want for myself and trusting the others will come.