What are rules? and laws? Made up probably.
Read MorePlanet Earth: land of the delusional truth stretchers
This email is part of my secret newsletter society.
Sep 7th, 2017
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In my young adult life I have noticed something unfortunate.
The phenomenon is that people of all walks lie to themselves and others through truth stretching to convince others they and their ideas are something they are not.
Moving to San Francisco, I was quickly disgusted by the blatant manipulation of numbers and statistics by marketers and founders.
In marketing, one friend of mine proudly repped his identity as a college dropout, despite having a bachelor’s degree. After getting his bachelor’s, he had stayed in school to finish a minor, then chose to not finish it and ensuingly branded himself as a dropout to sound techie and risk averse.
I knew I shouldn’t care, but it bothered me.
In SF, I consistently consulted companies.
“We work with an audience of ONE MILLION people” they would tout to advertisers. But when I looked at their numbers, 100,000 were known recounts, another 100,000 were known fake accounts and the remaining was manipulation of the data.
Really, they averaged 250,000 people in their audience.
This blatant falsification in both branding and analytics is rampant across marketers everywhere.
Unfortunately, this falsery is far more prevalent than in marketing.
For the past few weeks I have been hanging out on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League University ranked as one of the top five best schools in the United States.
I assumed this was going to be the real deal. Nope. Quickly while visiting, my close friends began to show how many notable entrepreneurs from their University had made entire careers out of connections and truth stretching.
They shared how every 30 Under 30 ranking is mostly rigged and how the selection crew mostly just picks their friends.
How’d they know?
“I have a friend from Penn and he literally just picks people from Penn who aren’t doing anything above average”
They showed me the campus newspaper that photographed three students on their start up being acquired by an undisclosed purchaser for an undisclosed sum.
My friends told me they knew the kids. The company failed and it was purchased by the father of one of the founders for $5,000.
There are legitimately 20–30 first-hand stories I could share about this from my time in the Valley, in media and at Penn.
In none of the above are these people lying. But, in my perception, this is intentional manipulation to build a facade.
This is the pursuit of ego and the lazy pursuit of impact.
These are people who want to win for themselves and do not want to work for outsized impact. They might want to do good, but they don’t want to work for it because what they crave isn’t delivering a single solution to a single person but rather big cool solutions that immortalize their name.
My argument is that we, my lovely readers and, myself included, need to be better than this. The world needs people who do real things, solve real problems and deliver real solutions.
It’s not my business to care, but then again, it is. My tribe is the human tribe. This entity we are a part of, the human collective, is just as much me as it is you. It is my role, and your role, to ensure entity operates with a sense of legitimacy.
It starts with one. You, me and the people we reach.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Hit reply and let me know!
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My secret newsletter society which has become the hottest spot on the web.
I talk shop. I draw pictures. I give shit out. We look into hard sciences like biology and soft sciences like psychology and start smashing them together.
Throw in some art. Everything goes boom.
The people start going crazy. Mom is in the rafters. Confetti is falling. Apple sauce is on the wall. Champagne is pouring. Einstein is on drums.
This is your last chance to get in before we bring back da Vinci.
You don’t want to miss da Vinci.
Sharing the spotlight & giving glory
in Case Study
This email is part of my secret newsletter society.
Aug 12th, 2017
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In life, people always talk about how if you give, it comes back to you.
It’s kind of this blind bet on karma and assuming that if you say, do an act of selflessness, then when you find $20, that is “karma coming back.”
That’s hard to believe in because we know that $20 is really just random chance.
However, sometimes, it is pretty clear that selfless X led to self win Y.
This last June I set up a meeting with Gary Vaynerchuk, a mega celebrity entrepreneur in NYC. It was a huge deal and I was probably going to end up on his YouTube show (which I did).
At the time of the meeting, I was visiting New York with a close friend of mine. He loved Gary Vaynerchuk too. While the meeting was set to be only 5 minutes and only booked for me, my gut knew I could bring my friend and all would be well.
I was at a crossroads. This was something I schemed and planned for 9 months and the selfish part of me wanted all of the glory. The other part of me said to invite my friend and to share the glory.
I thought about it for a while and decided to invite my friend. It seemed right.
As many American rappers say, “I ain’t winnin’ unless my whole team is winnin’.”
I invited my friend and karma was immediately served back at me, in a good way.
Apparently, my friend also had a meeting that morning with a next level NYC entrepreneur. Ecstatic, he reciprocated and invited me to join him in that meeting.
Attending that meeting, I happened to hit it off with this entrepreneur, we stayed in touch and he’s since invited me to join him on an absolutely ground-shattering project as a founding member.
I’ll never forget the decision I made to invite my friend to see Gary Vaynerchuk. Not only was it way more fun with someone else, but its a clear testament to what happens when you give first.
I hope this story comes to mind next you have the opportunity to share.
It sounds cheesy, but everyone wins.
Cheers!
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My secret newsletter society which has become the hottest spot on the web.
I talk shop. I draw pictures. I give shit out. We look into hard sciences like biology and soft sciences like psychology and start smashing them together.
Throw in some art. Everything goes boom.
The people start going crazy. Mom is in the rafters. Confetti is falling. Apple sauce is on the wall. Champagne is pouring. Einstein is on drums.
This is your last chance to get in before we bring back da Vinci.
You don’t want to miss da Vinci.
living out of a bag & questioning dairies
This email is part of my secret newsletter society.
Aug 12th, 2017
Ladies and gentlemen, boy and girls,
Happy Thursday.
If you've forgotten, I am Andrew Frawley, a writer, marketer, photographer and all around nutcase you probably found via Quora.
I haven't used my mailing much but it's become a new priority of mine, especially since you Quorans have bombarded me lately and are all around lovely people.
A life update from me: I quit my comfy job as the marketing lead for a software start-up in San Francisco, because, well, who wants to market software in their 20s.
Currently, now, I am living out of a bag for the next three months doing research for my next opportunity. Could be big!
None the less, it's a weird time. Homes are more fun than bags.
Today, I want to get you all thinking since that's how many of us connected.
My question for you is this: is it wrong to publish someone's diary after they die?
I've been reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius recently, which is a series of personal notes of the Roman Emporer written to himself.
About 30 pages in it hit me that reading his personal writings is not only subjectively wrong but goes against the personal beliefs of Aurelius laid out in the very writings.
The interesting paradox is that it is his writings on ethics that made it feel so wrong to crack open his private writings. However, this obviously makes me (and others) want to read more.
I started asking questions to Google for answers and found that there is hardly any discussion about this online.
We read journals to become more grateful and humbled, to understand the challenges of human life, but if the author never wanted it published, is it right to break their privacy and trust for our own gain?
This happened to Anne Frank. Anne Frank's family explicitly told publishers to respect her and not publish it.
They published it anyway.
Is this wrong? Should we be funneling our money to publishers who disrespected the final will of the dying author who we respect so much?
I'd love to hear what you all think. I will respond to everyone :-)
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My secret newsletter society which has become the hottest spot on the web.
I talk shop. I draw pictures. I give shit out. We look into hard sciences like biology and soft sciences like psychology and start smashing them together.
Throw in some art. Everything goes boom.
The people start going crazy. Mom is in the rafters. Confetti is falling. Apple sauce is on the wall. Champagne is pouring. Einstein is on drums.
This is your last chance to get in before we bring back da Vinci.
You don’t want to miss da Vinci.