Sixian

The positive thing is that once you solve the first and second sale for one large corporation, you often have enough demand to solve the chicken-or-egg problem and attract supply because the company should represent 100’s or 1,000’s or 10,000’s of buyers. This lets you methodically build toward critical mass and start benefiting from a network... See more

This kind of taste is hard to signal with a positioning statement. To develop this trust in someone without actively working with them before requires a strong understanding of the person’s point of view and vibe, which is why sharing your point of view in depth matters.

"Doing the work that your parents then do for your spirit or for your character. But there’s an aspect of it that I like: It led me to think about what I do as a kind of two-way, generational reparenting. On the one hand, caring for these bygone thinkers, while at the same time imbuing the present generation with their hand-me-down wisdom and their... See more

Historical Inflection Points

..strong opinions are what distribution is made of. Every independent consultant should be working in public in some form - it’s how you generate awareness, clients and visibility.

Becoming 'multi-temporal', rather than multi-cultural: it used to be a very big problem for historians that they supposedly could not divide themselves from the outlooks and interests of their own age. I think we are approaching a situation where the outlooks and interests of our own age make very little sense. They just don't bind us to anything... See more

According to Fisher, the diametrical opposite of the fan is the troll. “Trolls pride themselves on not being fans,” he explains, because they see fandom as naïve or pathetic. The grinchy troll maintains a “posture of alleged detachment, this sneer from nowhere,” always “at the edge of projects it can neither commit to nor entirely sever itself... See more

Developing a point of view is a long journey, and it’s not easy. But it’s a more forgiving path than specializing.