I dig that.

Anyway, here’s the page for our conversation:

The competitive advantage of hiring artists, A conversation with Chris Ashworth

Despite the specificity of the title, we hit a bunch of topics in that hour of chatting. Listen in and hear me:

• railing against sick days
• pleading with businesses to question the rules of their workplace
• ranting about pricing your work
• wondering whether your art can be better instead of cheaper
• hollering “F permission”

and

• making my case for how Star Trek, positronic brains, human evolution and racism all relate to hiring.

1. Beware the justice of Nature.
2. Understand that there can be no successful human economy apart from Nature or in defiance of Nature.
3. Understand that no amount of education can overcome the innate limits of human intelligence and responsibility. We are not smart enough or conscious enough or alert enough to work responsibly on a gigantic scale.
4. In making things always bigger and more centralized, we make them both more vulnerable in themselves and more dangerous to everything else. Learn, therefore, to prefer small-scale elegance and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and glamour.
5. Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made.
6. Put the interest of the community first.
7. Love your neighbors–not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have.
8. Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us.
9. As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighborhood, and household–which thrive by care and generosity–and independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage.
10. Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well.

Discovered via Scott Walters.

And yes, if you’re viewing this in anything approaching a decent browser, those are real, non-standard fonts. Hallelujah!

EDITED on March 28th to add: And if by “poking and prodding” you mean, “redo everything except the font choices”, then: done and done.

Or: “So THAT just happened.”

Or: “In a few hours the circle closes and I am going to yell about it from my little rooftop because although it ain’t really all that huge — wow it sure feels huge to me.”

Warning: personal story ahead. And yeah, it’s kind of long. Skip it if you want. I don’t care. I’ll yell this to empty streets and feel damn fine about it.

Everyone gone? Cool. Alright empty streets! Just you and me now!

[Deep breath in.] Aaaaaannnd…..

August, 2004 — Swallowing the seed

In August 2004, I join my Actor’s Theatre Apprentice buddies John Catron, Jenna Close, and Bradley Wayne Smith as they take their newly-formed theatre company to the Edinburough Fringe.

We pass customs!

We roam the streets!

We hawk our wares! (Seen here: John Catron as the Smallest Full Grown Man Alive!)

We even put on a show!

I serve as light op, sound op, stage manager, and house manager. From inside a coat closet. A very, very small coat closet.

Audio runs from iTunes, on that laptop balanced precariously on a stool there in the middle. To the left: light board and audio mixer! To the right: script and wall switches! Not pictured: the furious concentration needed to run this (uncomplicated) show!

October 14 2004 — “I’m wondering…”

Later that year, John writes me an email. Says they’re doing a new show in January. Says a CD player won’t cut it. Asks if I know of a Mac-based application for running sound effects. I think to myself, “sure, I’ll Google one for you”.

Huh. Doesn’t seem to be a lot out there for Mac. Wasn’t expecting that.

I write an email to my buddies Jesse Kriss and Jen Wang:

Editor’s note: you should check out Cricket. It’s cool, and it does stuff QLab doesn’t.

Jesse writes back:

And, in perhaps the most loaded one-line email afterthought I’ve ever received:

And so it begins.

And when I say “it begins”, I mean “it begins from scratch”. To wit:

• We’d never used CoreAudio before.
• We’d never used XCode before.
• We’d never used Objective-C before.
• We’d never written a Mac application before.
• We’d never written a full application of any kind before.

Remember above how I said they needed something in January? And how it is currently late October?

October 17, 2004 — Who cares?! We’re young, we’re ignorant, and sketching interfaces is fun!

Jesse lobs the first sketch at me (click for larger version):

October 18, 2004 — Hello rabbit hole! Mind if we poke our nose in?

In an email entitled “i heart obj-c”, Jesse writes:

So I’m doing my reading and playing around a bit. Obj-C is pretty damned cool. And the Apple frameworks are pretty nice, too.

October 19, 2004 — Hey this thing makes noise!

I write:

I actually managed to get a little bit of other work done today (although I haven’t even STARTED the ten page paper technically due tomorrow! Wheee!!), but I couldn’t resist putting in a little time on this as well. I am now able to read, write, and play the following file types:

AIFC
AIFF
MPEG Layer 3
NeXT/Sun
Sound Designer II
WAVE
AC3
AAC ADTS

I’ve also been thinking about design choices and I hope to send along some sketches of possible design patterns and object models we could use in the next couple of days.

This is all just to say…ummm…”Cool. We’re making progress.”

Cheers,
Christopher

November 24, 2004

First test version sent to John! Sweet!

John tries it. And…it doesn’t work! Suck!

A few hours later, we figure out the problem. (Hi ZeroLink! A note from future me: you suck, and Apple later kills you because you suck. Just FYI.)

And finally: Off and running!

November-December, 2004

Bug report, fix, add, bug report, fix, add, scramble.

3AM iChat sessions with Jesse.

Homework be damned.

January 14, 2005

First show. IT LIVES! And it looks like this!

Winter, 2005

Exhaustion.

Oh, yeah, and school. Probably should work on that.

Spring, 2005

Man, school sucks.

I want something fun to work on. Hey, that sound cue project was pretty fun. Maybe I’ll dust that code off and take another look.

Summer, 2005

Write write write rip out write write delete write rewrite write rewrite sleep write sketch write.

June 14th, 2005

Hey Jesse! Look at this cool widget I just made!

December 29, 2005

First public beta release. Hey, theatre-sound@listserv.aol.com! Um, anyone here want to take a look at this thing I’ve been fiddling with?

Hi all,

My name’s Chris; I’m a new member of the list.

I’ve been working on a new sound design/playback application for Mac OS X, and I am looking for folks who can help me improve it.

[...snip...]

Theatre making is damn well hard enough, in my opinion, so I set out to build a new tool: QLab. After over a year of work, the first beta versions are ready for public testing. Here’s the address:

http://figure53.com

QLab is free, and will remain so. [Editor's note: yup, we've still got a really nice free version.] My background in theatre makes me hungry to improve it, and my background in computers gives me the tools to do so, but I look to you–those with a strong background in sound design–to help me know how it should evolve to serve you best.

Remember, this is beta software; I need your help to push it and poke it and learn how to make it better.

I hope to hear back from any of you who can spare a moment to give me some feedback.

best to all,
and (early) happy new year,
Christopher

Winter 2006

Wow! People are trying it out! And emailing me! This is so much fun!

Later Winter 2006

Wow! People are using it! People are using it!

Spring 2006

Wow…people are…really using it?

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

May 10 2006

Okay, okay, calm down. There are just a few people playing around with it for some high school plays and some community theater productions. It’s cool, it’s cool.

Huh, what’s this email in my inbox?

My name is [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] referred me to your software recently. After lengthy discussions and a good bit of testing I decided I could try using QLab instead of our tried and true Instant Replay Systems. While it might have been better to try it out on a smaller, less significant show; timing worked out that my rig was ready for operation just in time for a huge show, produced by one of our most important clients.

Although I was somewhat nervous to try the new technology on such a high profile event, the potential upside overshadowed my concerns. My ambition was quickly rewarded.

[...] QLab has changed everything. [...]

Thank you for such a valuable product. I would be glad to help in anyway you need to further develop this tool. Feel free to quote me on any of this and if you need any specific quotes or anything I’d be happy to help. I have also included a couple of pictures from the [REDACTED] Show.

Also, can I get a copy of the pro version?

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

September 16 2006

Okay, fine. Let’s do this thing.

Version 1.0.0. Base version still free. Pro features available for a small fee. Let’s see what happens.

And man, this is fun.

And it now looks, more or less, like this:

(Click for larger version)

And then, the blur

Things start to pick up steam. More and more folks start using it. More and more folks tell their friends.

February 11 2008

Last release of version 1. I duck into my mental bunker, and begin work on version 2.

April 7 2008

I officially quit my day job. I start working for Figure 53 full time.

More blur

High schools. Community theaters. Regional theaters. Then Broadway. Then the West End. Shows winning Tony awards.

January 30, 2009

Version 2.

My wife will tell you: I was literally shaking when I pressed the “Send” button on that email. Shay. King.

And as a present to myself, I bought a Wii. Thought I’d finally take a day off, play some video games for the first time in, well, years.

Silly Christopher. You really thought you could tear yourself away from your computer on release day? Really? Silly, silly man.

Ze goggles, zey do nothing!

More colleges. More national theaters of foreign countries. More shows winning Tony awards. Then shows that are too big for me to be allowed to mention them. (Hint: do you watch TV? You’ve probably recently heard QLab.) (Edited later to add: The cat’s out of the bag.)

And using the momentum produced by version 2, Figure 53 launches into a new era: I get to invite my dear friend and code ninja Sean Dougall on board.

Closely followed by, yes, you guessed it, the guy who was there at the beginning: Jesse Kriss.

IS THERE A POINT OR ARE YOU JUST GOING TO BRAG AT ME?!?!?

Wow, empty streets, didn’t know you could vocalize.

ANSWER THE QUESTION, IGNOMINIOUS ROOFTOP YELLER!

Okay, fine, here’s the point.

Yes, I’m proud of this stuff, and yes the experience has repeatedly sent shocks of adrenaline through my system, and, god, it’s incredible to serve professionals of such deep intelligence and skill.

But right now all that stuff is just the context for my point. Which is a very personal one, and which is this:

A lot of milestones have come and gone. Except one. I’ve never been part of a show that actually used the damn thing.

Until tonight. Which, dear empty streets, is why I’m up here embarrassing myself with all this carrying on. Taking out the baby pictures. Talking at you until your eyes glaze over. Because tonight at Single Carrot Theatre the circle closes, and I’ll participate in a show run on QLab, and this has been five years in the making, and frankly I’m feeling a little emotional about it.

…

So, um…thanks.

….that’s pretty much it.

Thanks for indulging me, empty streets.

…which way down from this roof again?

Oh, and, Baltimore: maybe come see the show? It’d sure be an honor to have you there. Click below for tickets:

Some folks affect you disproportionately. Brian has been one of those. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. It’s probably silly for me to pull the word “hero” into the description, but I’m not sure I can really avoid the word either. Little things can confer that status on a young mind, and once conferred, it has a funny way of sticking.

My parents used to live in California. My dad’s a musician, and music was what brought them into a friendship with Brian and his wife Lynne. Music and, I suspect, a shared appreciation for goofiness.

Later on, my mom and dad moved to Kentucky, where dad started teaching at the university. Pretty soon they had their first kid, Cricket. (Actually, Chris, but until about 9th grade there was not a soul in this world who called me anything but “Cricket”. My oldest friends often still do.)

Anyway, Brian and Lynne stayed in touch, and visited a few times. I was five or six. Old enough to draw Lynne a picture of a rainbow, but too young to remember I’d done it. Then a few more years went by and we visited them. I don’t know exactly how old I was then, but it was old enough to remember. And remember I do. Because I was awestruck.

Brian worked at Apple Computer. And despite my infamously porous memory, the day he drove us over to see his office is not something I ever expect to forget.

The walls. The walls were made of white boards. All of them! Every hallway! I mean, you could just reach out and draw on the freaking walls! And you could see where engineers had stopped and talked and caught an idea right there without having to run back to their desks for paper.

I’m sure that many companies were doing something similar at the time, but I’m also quite sure I’d never seen anything like it and the idea of just walking over and writing on a wall was just mind-blowing to me.

Then there was…the hardware room. I have no idea what it really was, but I remember Brian leading us in. It was long, and it was not terribly wide, and on every surface lay a computer. Dozens of machines, with their skins off and their guts sticking out, and instruments for computer surgery sitting next to them. The room smelled of electronics and plastic. And everywhere, everywhere there were screens. Black and white screens, painted with the curious imagery of a dozen different screen savers. One in particular was burned¹ into my memory: animal eyes. Blinking, blinking animal eyes, staring out into the darkness of the machine room when Brian flicked off the lights and closed the door to leave.

When I trace back the thread of my interest in computers, that visit with Brian lies somewhere near the very beginning. And if you dig through my hard drive you’ll find an old text file where I managed to save a few emails between us. Not a lot, but over the years, you could see his generosity and kindness shining through. I once wrote him an earnest, almost feverish letter describing a vision I’d had for Apple’s business plan. Or I’d talk about my science fair project, and then he’d describe what hardware problem he was working on, which I eagerly read, and then responded with naive but well-intentioned ideas about things he might try.

They were messages full of youthful, impractical energy. A less generous soul might have labeled them stupid.

But Brian was a sweet and generous soul. And he never, ever made me feel stupid.

Brian passed away yesterday at 6:45 pm. Cancer. A mysterious cancer that the world’s best doctors could not understand or, ultimately, treat. He fought it for years. He fought it with incredible humor and good will. I’ve been told that a couple of days ago, when he came home from the hospital, his daughter Mika asked him if he needed anything. His reply? “I could use some hair.”

A few years ago my parents and I met up with Brian and Lynne in Tennessee. He was there to see a doctor. My dad was nominally there for a music workshop, but more importantly we were there to see Brian and Lynne. We took a hike down some gorgeous trails, and we found a rock formation that we thought looked like a throne. Brian hopped up and gave us a regal pose:

Brian’s Apple employee number was 32. ² He was one of four people on the original Macintosh team. He once mentioned that, as far as he knew, he was the oldest continuous employee of Apple. Not Steve Jobs. Not Steve Woz. Brian.

The world is down a creative and generous soul today. A gentle soul with no time for self-pity but all the time in the world for a geeky kid with big, silly ideas. And maybe it’s impossible to trace the causes of a life, but I suspect I might not be doing what I’m doing if not for Brian.

So here’s to you, man. Here’s to your kindness. And here’s to Lynne, too. And here’s to high tea at Tea on the Mountain. Here’s to all those discounts on new Macs you got us when I was growing up. Here’s to listening to kids and treating them with respect.

Thank you.

Edited to add: The Mercury News did a really nice story on Brian. It’s the only place I’ve seen that did.

1- I suppose that’s ironic.

2- “When I forgot my badge just last week, the Building 5 receptionist did the time-honored wait-for-rest-of-the-digits pause.” – Commenting on his ID number in an email from January 16, 2008

So heeeeyyyeeeeeere I am. Top of the morning to you. I’ve got a date with the farmers’ market in about an hour, so let’s do this quickly, shall we?

Is your rage an innie or an outie?

Ha ha! Yes, it’s true! I’ve suckered you into reading another blog post about Outrageous Fortune. Oh, come on, you knew it was coming. Well, all you theater geeks knew it was coming.

Yes, back in December, I too, a C-list theater blogger, was offered a free copy of the ol’ O.F. In a bit of simple but effective marketing, I, along with every other far more worthy theater blog in existence, was given a chance to light up my little corner of the interweb with my own two tiny cents about this little bombshell of a book.

For those of you reading this from a position comfortably outside the bubble, here’s the skinny: the contents of Outraaaageous Fortióne are the scandalous topic of the whole darn theater world right now. If you read about theater on the Internet, you have read about this book. Isaac Butler even organized a team blogging effort to dissect the thing. (Currently in process.) It’s also leaking out into the broader media landscape, via outlets like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

So what we all really need right now is my take on it.

In which it is revealed I am a liar

Ha ha! I’m such a kidder! You need my opinion on this book about as much as you need the salary earned by an American playwright. Which is to say, I guess it could conceivably be useful for something, but the face value approaches zero in a suspiciously asymptotic manner.

So, as it turns out, this is not another blog post about Outrageous Fortune. Which is handy for me, since I haven’t actually read the thing.

Let me stress that

I have not read Outrageous Fortune. I want to be clear about that. I do not own a copy. I do not plan to own a copy.

And I’ve only barely managed to skim a handful of the ten thousand blog posts devoted to the book.

But this is the Internet, which never said “no” to someone who thought he had something to say.

And I do think I have one little, small thing to say.

It’s not even a snarky thing.

Oh, I admit it. I’ve been sorely tempted to snark about this book. Something along the lines of “NEWS FLASH: ARTISTS GET PAID SHIT.”

But I get that the point here is (probably) more subtle. (Again, remember: haven’t read the book.) I get that there’s a conversation going on here about the artistic ecosystem, and how in a team sport like theater, we’re shafting the playwrights even harder than we’re shafting everyone else, which is already a significant amount of shafting from the start. And I get that, if this is a conversation about the health of our national artistic ecosystem, this kind of exploitation of the fountainhead of our art form might be kind of like the global warming of theater: slow, steady, and ultimately devastating. Not to mention fucking unfair to all those playwrights.

Or is it?

Okay. Here’s the thing. And I say this with a heart full of love.

Getting shafted as an artist starts with you.

You signed up for this. I don’t know specifically why, but you did. You made a choice. And we need to start there. I’m not saying this pejoratively. I’m not saying this with the condescending tone of someone who thinks you made the wrong choice. I only want to stress very strongly that a choice was made.

Or, no, that’s not actually it. What I want to stress very strongly is the question: “You actually did make that choice, right? You’re not sitting here getting shafted under the impression that you had no other choice, right?”

Because in the full consciousness of that choice, we can legitimately and constructively talk about dealing with the results. We can recognize a powerful artistic system that some people subscribe to for the opportunity of its momentum, but which may need to be redirected before that momentum carries the system off a cliff. We can have that conversation, and it will be a conversation without whining, because we’ll know that the people in that system looked around, saw a universe of possibilities, and decided, yes, this system is where I can best spend my creative energy.

But what I see instead, over and over and over again, is something very different. I see people wandering across a landscape in the muddy, trampled path of the ones who went before, eyes staring feverishly forward, always forward, at the choices made by someone else.

Look left! Goddammit look left and see that field of flowers!

Roads work so damn well. They take you directly to a pre-determined destination. And that’s very often what you want.

But dammit, not always.

I only tell my own story because it’s the one I know the best.

Seven years ago I spent ten months in the Acting Apprentice Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville. And although I met some of my dearest friends there, I can’t really say it was an unmitigated joy. In ten months, we got two guaranteed days off: Christmas eve and Christmas day. (Although, in practice, we usually got Mondays free as well. And technically speaking, I actually didn’t really get Christmas eve or Christmas day off.) We got no free housing. We got no stipend. And we certainly had no time for a job on the side. We all lived on our meager savings and the generosity of our families, and many of us (myself included) got some extra help from food stamps.

At the end of that ten months comes the Next Big Step, in which the Apprentice Company organizes a showcase in New York to which they hope a million agents will come, and maybe one of them will be looking for you, and that will ease your transition into the great New York jungle where lucky actors will supplement their income with a lucrative soap commercial.

And I just. Could not. Do that. Wanted no part of that. None. I felt crushed by it from the very beginning. Getting crushed on the first step did not, it must be said, seem like a promising way to begin.

So I looked left, and over there to the left was this lovely green hill rising up toward a computer science degree. I didn’t really know what lay over the hill, or if the terrain beyond could curve back toward theater, but I did have some kind of base unformed instinct that a paycheck and health insurance was a lovely foundation on which to reach out toward theater from an as yet undetermined angle.

It took almost seven years to clear the brush on that path. It took a completely unexpected direction. And several times I found myself scared that I had really fundamentally trekked off to where I would never make direct contact with the artistic part of my life again. That was not a comfortable feeling.

But last summer, the path broke through: a theater company in Baltimore gave me a chance to make theater again. And you know what? It worked out. And I won’t claim that I’m especially good at it, but for whatever reason that initial chance has led to other chances. Maybe I’m not completely incompetent as an actor. But it can’t hurt that I also bring my own paycheck, my own health insurance, and my own completely flexible schedule.

Whatever the reason, I’m making art again. Art I’m fundamentally proud to be making. With people I truly respect. And I don’t have to give two flying farts about the average salary of actors in American theater, or how the hell can I afford health insurance, or how will I find the energy to work two jobs and still have something left to give to the creative process of making a play happen.

And that? That’s not just liberating. That is fucking fun.

Crap, this got long.

I’ve blasted way past my self-imposed time limit on writing this post. I need to get to the market and pick up some milk.

So here’s the deal.

My path is not necessarily your path.

And their path is not necessarily your path.

And I believe that intelligent people are saying intelligent things about a set of well-worn paths which have been no doubt thoughtfully mapped in this book Outrageous Fortune. And I think that’s cool.

But I also know, simply on the face of it, that I just don’t care about that path. I don’t have to care about that path. And I can accept that some people will care about that path, and I’m glad they do. And I wish them the best of luck.

I just hope, hope, hope that people don’t unthinkingly cede their fundamental power to create to a system that might kill it. Not without first looking left. And right. And up. And down.

And I’m excited, as I skim the ten thousand blog posts on this book, to see this basic idea bubbling in the soup.

What rules will you break today?

My life fundamentally changed the day I started working for myself. There was no company policy book. I was the company policy book. I was the system. No option was arbitrarily off the table.

I cannot stress this enough. This shift in perspective transformed everything. I’m convinced it is the secret source of power of the entrepreneur: knowing in your bones that the limits you encounter will be the ones that really exist. And that the definition of what it means for a limit to “really exist” is usually up for debate.

Rands recently said:

Unfortunately, progress is equal parts consideration and rage.

Rage can be good. Rage helps you break fake rules.

So I’m glad to be reading about the rage. I think we need it. All I ask is that we give our rage access to all constructive outlets.

And now, the Milk.

Or my wife is gonna kill me.

The checkout lady (who loves to gab and give advice) grinned and asked if I was in it. I guess buying four copies is a give-away. I mumbled yes, which sent her diving into the stack, ripping a paper out of the pile, throwing it open, and running around to all the other cashiers, waving the article at them and proudly proclaiming “his big article, yes!”.

She then instructed me to buy another copy for my parents, and another for my sister. “You have to show off to her a little bit.”

I love that checkout lady.

Anyway, as you’ve now gathered, the business section of the Baltimore Sun has a great article today about Figure 53. (Coincidentally, we have a brand new website up today. Just in the nick of time!)

The Sun reporter, Gus Sentementes, also posted more notes from the interview (complete with video!) on his blog.

Thanks for being interested in my little company, Gus!

It is therefore with mild horror that I now realize at least a handful of people are actually, um, reading this blog. I remain (intentionally) ignorant as to exactly how many times the server is spitting this text across the Internet, but blogs I respect and admire have done me the kindness of putting in a good word with their readership, so I must assume a few people are at least giving it a shot.

To you adventurous new readers I say hello, welcome, lovely to have you here, and if I may I’d like to introduce you to the rules and principles by which I sculpt this blog.

Rule 1: HOLY CRAP I HAVE NO RULE NUMBER ONE I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF I HAVE A CONSISTENT TOPIC

Not even a consistent topic? Not even. Or to put it another way:

This blog has a location, not a name.

Somewhat unfortunately, since it doesn’t have a name, the location becomes the name. (Location: ChrisAshworth.org Name: Uhhhhhhh…that blog on ChrisAshworth.org, aka “Chris Ashworth’s blog”).

Nice work, douche. Can’t you name it and put the focus on your topic instead?

Um, well, you have a great point, but again: I wasn’t expecting you to actually be here reading this. I didn’t install Wordpress because I had a topic, I installed it because I needed somewhere to respond.

I do stuff on the Internet. Sometimes I need a place to do it. Result: website. I used to have photos hosted here. Used to have a resume here. Used to put grad school homework assignments up here. They got stale. They’re gone now. (With one exception.)

This blog has no name because it has no theme. No theme except: junk I’ve been a-thinkin’ about.

Will I be writing about theater, small business, marketing and those other things that might have brought you here? Yes. I’m face-deep in all those things right now, and will undoubtedly need a place to explore more ideas on those topics.

But just so’s ya know, you’re liable to run into other stuff around here too. Software design, or politics, or personal grooming, or, hell, the intersection of politics and personal grooming.

I’m not trying to scare you off. God forbid. I’m totally stoked you’re here. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts. The greatest part of blogging is that I already disagree with half the stuff I’ve written before. Smart people called me out on things I got wrong.

All I wanna do is let you know: I’m not locking this thing down to one theme. I can’t do that. I can’t make stuff like that. Sorting my energy into themes just kills me. It kills me that when I went off to grad school for computers, everyone thought I’d given up theater. I wasn’t giving them the category they understood, so my life in theater, as they understood it, was dead. I hated that. That urge to force people and topics into a category. Their eyes would glaze over, and their categories would slice right through my life, and leave me in two pieces. I think that’s why this blog has no name. Names are powerful, and important, and manifestly necessary. But what makes them powerful and important and necessary is how they change and capture and fence in an idea. It’s very useful to fence something in, except when it isn’t. Sometimes the cage kills the thing you’re caging.

So welcome to this blog, a place where this guy named Chris does some writing. I’m completely thrilled you’re here. I can’t wait to talk to you. I just can’t tell you what we’ll talk about, because I honestly don’t know.

Hello world! I’m pissed.

Today a Senate panel rejected both proposals for a public option for health care.

As they did so, you could hear the health care industry breathe a collective sigh of perverted relief. It puts those douchebags one step closer to keeping their current business model: providing health care only for the healthy.

Because you know what? No health company will ever make money off my wife. Why? It’s not because she’s made herself unhealthy. She takes excellent care of herself. She exercises regularly. Eats right. Sees a doctor. She does everything right, and has for a long time. But for mysterious reasons no one understands, as a teenager her body stopped producing insulin. And because her body can’t do it for her anymore, she must cut her body open every day to test her blood and then inject an appropriate amount of artificially generated insulin. She does this many times a day, every day. Has done for years. And will do it for, most likely, the rest of her life. It’s not a perfect system, but it lets her live relatively normally. Without modern medicine she would have died long ago.

No company can make money off my wife’s health. Insulin, test strips, needles, insulin pumps, pump supplies, and doctor visits: they cost a lot of fucking money. And a pure free market system will leave her to die.

I mean, let’s not fucking beat around the bush here, right? I know they will leave her to die because I called them and asked. Two years ago I was trying to start working for myself full time. Tried and, initially, failed. Because there exists no private health coverage for someone with type 1 diabetes. After several calls, one nice lady was at least honest enough to put it bluntly: “Honey, no one is going to sell you a plan. No one.”

Shall I pull out that old political phrase everyone likes to use? Shall I? Shall I at least put some English on it? Sure thing. Can do. Here you go:

LET’S BE FUCKING CLEAR.

The free market would kill my wife. And the point of a public health option is that, presumably, we think my wife might actually be a nice person to have around. You don’t even have to love her to think that. She’s a highly educated, productive citizen, and a registered nurse. She works every day to save and care for the lives of others. She’s pretty fucking handy to have around.

When we’re talking about health care, we’re talking about a problem that the free market can’t solve. Can’t do it. Sorry. Can’t.

Do I think the public option is the only solution? No. Thank god, no. We could, for example, set some better ground rules for the private market. We could say:

1. You have to accept everyone who applies.
2. You have to offer your plans across the entire country.

Or something like that. The point is that those of us who are healthy need to shoulder some of the cost for those of us who are sick. And to all you pure-blooded libertarians out there I say: pack yourself a backpack, move to an unclaimed island, and best of fucking luck to you.

We need to fix health care. I love me my conservative friends, and, seriously, I genuinely respect your discomfort with a large government program. But. The government has got to get involved here. Somehow. The free market doesn’t cut it this time. And if you guys stand for nothing but tweaking the current system, I am telling you now: I take that very, very, personally. And it is not okay.

P.S.: By the way, I was eventually able to start working for myself full time. The result? My company saw massive growth and hired during the recession. It would have been nice to contribute that productivity to the American economy earlier, but hey, I wouldn’t want to get in the way of the profits of the fucking health care companies.

I love it. If you’d asked me five years ago if I had any interest in business, I’d have said “No. Hell no.” But five years ago I didn’t have the first clue what “business” meant. The word felt vaguely dirty, tainted with self-interest and full of mysterious people called “managers” who, if they had any function at all, were (I assumed) perversely situated to obstruct the people who actually accomplished things.

I don’t pretend now to have more than the second or perhaps the third clue about business, but I’ve made it far enough past my first impressions to feel a kind giddy delight at escaping that nonsense. The creative forces in play are in every way peers to those that inspire designers or engineers. The satisfaction of elegance and efficiency is the same. To manage complexity well is a thrill, whether the complexity is built out of people or electrons.

This post was about marketing, right?

Right. The point of all that intro was to make it clear: I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve only been at this for a few years. I reserve the right to be wrong in what I’m about to say.

Then why are you wasting my time?

Well, I don’t think I am. I think I may want to revise some of these ideas later, but I’m comfortable with the core.

Why?

These ideas are working for me.

Define “working”.

Also, here’s a very incomplete list of where this product is used.

Alright, you’ve got, like, seven minutes.

Thanks.

Okay. Here’s what I know about marketing so far:

Fuck Sexy Umbrellas

Not like you’re thinking, sicko.

Half my background is in theater. Specifically, acting. At some point back there I had an audition class for TV commercials. A class where they told us to pick a noun and an adjective out of a hat, with the instructions to say that noun to the camera in a way described by that adjective. I picked: “sexy” and “umbrella”. Then I got 10 seconds to go say “umbrella” at the camera in a sexy way. All in the name of honing those money-earning, commercial-shooting skills so I wouldn’t flat-out starve trying to make a living as a piss-poor actor.

Fuck that. I used to think I hated marketing. You know why? Because of sexy umbrellas. Sexy umbrellas represent everything I hate about modern marketing. I don’t want people to buy shit they don’t need. I don’t want to lie to people for money. And I don’t want anyone else doing that to me.

I’m pretty sure most ideas I have about marketing are a reaction against sexy umbrellas. It leads directly to rule #1, which is:

Trust is the trump card.

It’s not hard to find information anymore. But it is hard to find information you can trust. Almost everyone is trying to sell you umbrellas, which means almost everyone is lying to you.

If I can trust you, you are special. If I can trust you, our relationship will last.

Discover ways to be surprisingly trustworthy.

Make your mistakes visible.

You know how you can tell if someone can be trusted? Because you see them making mistakes.

An exceptionally trustworthy person will even bring a hidden mistake to your attention—one you might never have known about. Telling the truth even when you don’t have to is good evidence that you’re trustworthy.

It hurts to do this. Get over it. Focus on why you’re doing it. The pain is temporary. The trust is long-term.

Your customers are your sales force.

View every interaction as a chance to recruit a new salesman. Surprise is a good tactic for this: “What can I do here that would be literally remarkable?”

I provide startlingly good customer service, and I let my customers tell their friends. That’s about it. Aside from my website, that’s my marketing.

Do not “make” a sale.

You can make a product. You can not make a sale. You can bully a sale, but you can not make one.

A pressured sale is a mediocre sale at best, and a disaster at worst. I have customers who have used a free version of my product for years. For professional productions. Some of them will never need to purchase an upgrade. That’s fine. They’re still my unpaid sales force. Others will, one day, need an extra feature. In that case, it’s not even that they’re on a fence; they’re floating over my yard. They’ll drop right in when the time is right.

Conference booths are not worth what you pay for them.

In other words, they’re not worthless, but they’re not even remotely worth what they’ll cost you. People will come to you if your software is compelling. If your software isn’t compelling, no amount of gasbagging at a conference booth is going to help that.

Will there be exceptions to this rule? Sure. But be damned sure you know you’re paying for an exception.

Do not advertise.

Advertising is a cousin of brainwashing, and we all know it. I’m not saying brainwashing can’t work. I’m pretty sure it does. But I’m also pretty sure you’re not the Coca-Cola company, which means you’re not big enough to brainwash anyone. So don’t mimic the brainwashers. Even if you’re big enough to try: don’t mimic the brainwashers. Your money is more powerful elsewhere, building something truthful and trustworthy.

If you don’t count some ill-advised trips to conferences, I have spent zero dollars on advertising. I have paid Google no money for search results. No SEO has optimized my website. I have no plans to advertise, ever.

It’s always personal.

The illusion of companies has died. We’re not fooled by that idea anymore. We know a “company” isn’t a real thing. We know it has no point of view. It has no wishes. It has no feelings. A company makes nothing, accomplishes nothing, cares about nothing, and can provide you with nothing. “Company” is a stand-in term for a specific group of people. And it is those people, not the illusory “company”, that make things, accomplish things, care about things. Only a human being can have a perspective. And we’ve figured this out.

The illusion of the company as a living creature with an “official” point of view is a lie. We’re going for trust here. Drop the lie. Be personal.