I’ve interviewed and managed over 2,000 people.

Here are my 55 contrarian observations about humans.

A thread...

(1/x)

After about 3-hours socially (18 holes of golf; an NBA game) of 1-1 time with you, people will feel they know you well enough to trust you with money.

Some people will tell you they want to be entrepreneurs but never will be.

They never get past the perceived risk.

People who choose distorted self-portraits for their social media profiles always have distorted worldviews.

Companies perform better when they have an enemy, real or imagined.

If your company doesn’t have one, you need to invent one.

After I put Tech Rats 🐭 on @opensea last week, I got a lot of questions/DMs asking how I did it.

I taught myself/Googled everything but here’s my guide:

✨Generative NFT Art Collections 4 Dummies✨

Step by step instructions on what I did as a non-technical beginner

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert. There’s probably an easier way to do this, but this is what I could find online and do with my limited skill set :)

STEP 1: Decide on what kind of project you want to work on. I was inspired by Pudgy Penguins but you don’t have to stick to animals.

STEP 2: Start creating all the layers for your pieces.

I used Adobe Illustrator for this. You can use other programs as well, but Illustrator worked the best for my concept.

What do I mean by layers? Here’s an example breakdown:

Layer 1: Background
-10 colors

Layer 2: Animal Body
-5 colors

Layer 3: Head accessory
-10 items

Layer 4: Face accessory
-10 items

The random combination of these layers results in thousands of unique images.

In this case you’d need to create:

- 10 images of 10 background colors

- 5 images of your animal in 5 different colors (transparent background)

-10 images of head accessories (just accessories nothing else)

-10 images of face accessories (just accessories nothing else)

1/ How (and why) to buy your first NFT—even if you’re skeptical. 🧵

2/ Buying NFTs is easier and less risky than it seems. I’ll walk you through with clarity.

3/ It’s OK to be skeptical. Look at it like this.

Potential downside: you “waste” a small amount of money
Potential upside: you make a life-changing amount of money

What’s guaranteed: NFT ownership, community access, and learning about this incredibly promising technology.

4/ Let’s go.

Most NFTs are bought and sold on the Ethereum network. That means you need to buy ETH.

The simplest way IMO is via the @coinbase app.

-Download and set up your account
-Tap the exchange button
-Select ETH
-Buy a small amount—this is a test run

5/ You can’t store NFTs on Coinbase. Time to install a digital wallet app that we can transfer your ETH to. I use @rainbowdotme.

During setup, you’ll get a “seed phrase.” This is an additional password for added security. Write it down, store it somewhere safe.

Never share it.

Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that undermine the quality of an argument.

THREAD: 20 common logical fallacies to learn, identify, and avoid:

Ad Hominem

Latin for "to the person" - an attack of the person rather than the argument.

Instead of addressing the argument and its points and merits, the offender attempts to refute the opposition on the basis of personal characteristics.

All-too-common in politics.

The Texas Sharpshooter

A Texan fires a gun at a barn wall and then paints a target around the closest cluster of bullet holes to create the appearance of accuracy.

Selecting and highlighting evidence that supports the conclusion while ignoring evidence that may refute it.

The Bandwagon Fallacy

An assumption of truth on the basis of the majority of people believing it to be true.

"Everyone believes X, so obviously X is true."

Typically offered without regard for the qualifications or ability of the people in question to validate the claim.

Straw Man

The offender ignores the actual argument and replaces it with a flimsy, distorted, easily-refuted argument (a “straw man”).

By replacing a strong argument with a weak one, the offender can create the illusion of an easy, swift victory.

To outperform, you need serious problem-solving skills.

Fortunately, these skills can be learned.

THREAD: A simple, powerful mental model for thinking clearly and solving complex problems:

When solving problems, the human mind is wired to think in linear, logical, forward terms.

But as the problems get increasingly complex, this forward, logical process often fails.

Enter our simple, powerful mental model: inversion.

What is inversion?

Inversion is a mental model and thinking tool used by some of the world’s greatest thinkers and problem solvers.

Simply put, it says that when problems become challenging to solve forwards, they may be more readily solved backwards.

Inversion as a general thinking tool has been around for millennia.

Stoic philosophers had premeditatio malorum - “the pre-meditation of evils” - an exercise in which they would imagine the worst case scenario ahead of time.

It allowed them to make plans to avoid this outcome.

The formal mental model was popularized by German mathematician Carl Jacobi in the mid-1800s.

When faced with difficult problems (which happened frequently in his field of elliptic functions!), he had a strategy: “Man muss immer umkehren.”

Translation: “Invert, always invert.”

This is my 5 year story about becoming a far better storyteller.

Goal: Tell a story as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson.

It started with me podcasting to share stories with friends. Every time I spoke, however, I sounded lifeless like a stressed-out amateur.

Why?

I tracked down great storytellers to learn from them.

Unexpectedly, even the best could only articulate *some* of the ingredients that make them great.

There was something intangible underneath their explanations that they couldn’t address when pressed.

That sounded like a treasure hunt to me:

Collect the hidden ingredients needed to tell a remarkable story charismatically.

I would finally become a storyteller.

Because these ingredients were hard to identify, I used the process of “learning by inversion.”

This is where you learn how something works by studying its bad examples. Then you do the opposite of them.

So I watched a lot of bad storytellers on YouTube.

Thanks, TED.

It became clear that there are two ways to tell a story:

1. In whatever way suddenly comes to mind
2. *Strategically*

Which bootstrapped startup founders inspire you?

I'll start 🧵

1/ @sab8a, CEO & Co-founder @veedstudio

Mastering Twitter is hard work.

So I made it a bit easier.

Here are 13 advanced tips for using Twitter so you can 10x your growth:

Tip:
Measure success on engaging with other accounts

How:
Use Advanced Search to see your interactions w/ another account.

Measure the quality of your responses, whether you were replied to, likes, etc to determine efficacy.

Example:
(from:heyblake) (to:naval)

Tip:
Find the top keywords for your topic

How:
Use Advanced Search to narrow down a topic to the absolute viral hits.

Look for patterns in format, secondary keywords, and writing.

Find inspiration and add to swipe file.

Example:
startups min_retweets:3000

Tip:
Turn your best standalone tweets into threads

How:
Your best single tweets may be great seeds for a deeper thread.

Find tweets that had questions in the replies and deserve to be expanded upon.

Use advanced search to find these.

Example:
from:heyblake min_retweets:300

Tip:
Repurpose old tweets when you have a bigger audience

How:

Look through your old stuff.

Edit the writing, make them simpler and better.

Re-post the new tweets to your new audience and see if it works even better.

I recently asked my audience: What is the most genius marketing campaign of all time?

I got 2,000+ responses.

THREAD: 20 of the most iconic marketing and advertising campaigns in history:

De Beers “Diamonds are Forever”

Arguably the most iconic, controversial, and impactful marketing campaign in history.

Created the massive, global diamond industry.

(Note: This will be the subject of a future thread…)

Coke vs. Pepsi Superman Battle

Pepsi ran the Halloween ad on the left. Coke responded with the ad on the right.

Game, set, match.

h/t @perfexcellent

The Original Apple iPod Campaign

“1,000 songs in your pocket”

Simple, intuitive, genius.

Starbucks Wrong Names on Cups

Starbucks employees writing the names of millions of customers in hilariously wrong ways to get them to post the images across social media with Starbucks branding.

For free.

h/t @SleepwellCap

I've been building websites with 0 lines of code and hosting them for $0 💸 for a long time now.

Here is a list of tools that you can use.

Web development is changing, It's time to work smarter not harder. 😉

// Thread 🧵

1/ @carrd - Simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything.

Features:
✅ Widgets + Embeds
✅ 3rd Party Integration
✅ Free for 3 sites
✅ Responsive
✅ Pre-defined templates

2/ @softr_io - Build powerful websites, web apps, and client portals on Airtable, in 10 minutes!

Features:
✅ Use airtable as a database
✅ 60+ building blocks to choose from
✅ Authentication & User Management
✅ Payment Integration

3/ @PoryHQ - Built website using Airtable

Features:
✅ 30+ Customisable Blocks
✅ Built-in analytics
✅ Support Search, Filter from Airtable base
✅ 3rd Party Integration

4/ @unicornplatform - It's a sexy landing page builder for startups and nocode makers.

Features:
✅ Pre-Defined templates
✅ Edit pages online with the visual builder
✅ 3rd Party Integration
✅ Add Custom Code

Vaughan house on Lagos Island. Circa: 1987
The Vaughan’s are one of the prominent Families of Lagos. In 1805, their Patriarch Scipio Vaughan (1784- 1840) an Egba indigene, along with other captives was shipped from Velekete Slave market in Badagry to the Americas.

He was bought by Wiley Vaughan, a white Slave owner in Camden, South Carolina. As per the prevailing tradition, he took on the surname of his master in addition to his given name; Scipio, as Scipio Vaughan. Scipio was an intelligent and skilled craftsman who eventually

became a free man. It was Scipio’s dying wish that his sons Burrell and James leave America and return to live in Africa.
In keeping with his wishes, his sons enrolled with the American Colonization Society as emigrants to Liberia.

They left Camden in 1852 and sailed to Liberia in 1853 to start a new life. They lived there for two years before accepting an offer of employment to go with Thomas Jefferson Bowen, a Missionary with the Southern Baptist Convention to Yoruba land to spread the Baptist religion.

They came to Nigeria in 1854 and went on to Ijaye to work as builders in 1855. During the brutal Ibadan-Ijaye War, James was taken captive. He escaped, took refuge in Abeokuta and served as a military sharpshooter.

The Ife Primary Education Research Project (1970-1983).

aka

The Ife 6-Year Primary Project.

In 1970, as the Director of the Institute of Education of the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife), later Dean Faculty of Education, Prof. Babs Fafunwa & his team embarked on one of the most groundbreaking research projects in education for Yorubaland.

The aim of the project was to test the hypothesis that the best instructional medium for good concept formation at a very tender age is the mother tongue.

This was bolstered by the observation that “of all the continents and peoples of the world, it is only in Africa…

…that formal education is offered in a language that is foreign to the child.”

So, Yoruba was to be used & tested as an exclusive medium of passing information or instructions to a set of pupils.

The project was based on the premise that:

(a). the child will benefit culturally, socially, linguistically & cognitively.

(b). the child’s command of English will be improved if he is taught English as an entirely separate subject by a specialist teacher through the 6 years.

I spent 2 years looking at 100s of “systems” to help my businesses run better.

I found 7 that are the best at solving the problems every business has.

They have transformed my businesses, career, and life by allowing me to focus 100% on pleasing my customers.

Here they are!

PROCESS/STRATEGY/VISON/ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
- EOS/Traction
- Cost: $17.99 for a book.

It is a very practical guide that solves all of these for an SMB.

Think of it as "business by worksheet."

Guides you from a 10-year big vision down to what you're doing each week.

MARKETING
-Storybrand
-Cost: $12.99 book.

What EOS does for its areas, Storybrand does for marketing.

Think of it as "marketing by worksheet."

It uses the same Hero's Journey (think Star Wars) that resonates with everyone.

Then turns that into highly effective marketing.

HIRING TOP TALENT
-Topgrading
-Cost: $14.99 book.

This is the "contrarian's hiring methodology".

It takes all the common, broken ideas in hiring and does the opposite.

You get a process that only high performers get through.

(Caveat: great ideas but some a bit dated.)

PERSONALITY ASSESSMENTS
-Culture Index
-Cost: Thousands/yr (sorry)

Unlike Meyers-Briggs, DISC, etc -- it's scientifically backed.

So you can use it in hiring.

It's also valuable as you try to "meet your employees where they are."

We're all unique special flowers after all :-)

20 Websites that offer free ready to use HTML & CSS website templates

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