This Is Working
Our new Director of Shared Services, Anthony, and I try to grab lunch once a month to talk about building out that side of our business (and it’s an exciting area of growth for Permanent Equity). Walking back from one of those (delicious late-season tomato sandwiches at the Fiercely Independent Bakery…we didn’t dare to try to order more than one each), he mentioned that he was enjoying reading these daily whatever-they-ares and that they helped his onboarding. But he was curious how much time I spent writing them and what were other benefits to our business?
Curiously, Brandon had that morning asked the same thing. Because he was thinking about writing one and while it would be cathartic, he didn’t know if it would be worth it.
Man, I thought. The world is really skeptical of how I spend my time. And can’t catharsis be a business case?
Anyway, some readers may recall that this project started as a New Year’s resolution to find something interesting to say every day. And it’s evolved into a two-part process – find something interesting; say something about it – that takes about 30 minutes.
If you’re skeptical of that estimate (like Anthony was), the reason is that my pattern recognition has gotten better the longer I’ve been doing this. For example, one reliable source of “interesting” is replies. That’s because if I wrote about something that I found interesting that you found interesting enough to reply to, odds are the ensuing conversation will also be interesting. So that’s an idea-gen hack.
As for the “saying something” part, while it’s still puke and clean up, a recent upgrade has been hiring AI as an assistant janitor (metaphor officially tortured). Now, in the morning, I’ll spill whatever I have onto the page before I go running, but also give it to a ChatGPT project trained on this stuff. When I get back, it’s interesting to see what it came up with relative to what I did, and iteration with it gets these finished faster.
Now, the business case. Permanent Equity runs on three pillars – capital, opportunities, and people – and we need durable, longstanding, high-trust relationships in all three areas to make our approach work. This is why we write. Our content aims to attract the right potential partners and repel the wrong ones. It also scales conversations via shared language, so when decisions need to be made, people can move forward faster and more confidently.
And while it’s on a small scale, I think things like emails from Brandon and engaged questions from Anthony show that it’s working.
– Tim
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