Josh Allred's Blog

We build cases to win.

We gather data and present the facts to win an argument. 

But what if instead of building cases to win, we built cases to better understand.

Because…

Understanding leads to better knowledge. Better knowledge leads to better empathy.

Someone doesn’t have to lose in order for you to win.

When the goal is to win then we no longer want to hear what the other side has to say.

We only see and hear inconsistencies to build a stronger case, ignoring the opportunity to gain a better understanding.

Our first reaction is to say, “I’m not good enough.”

So, instead of building shoes, we go to school to get more education, seek a job for more experience, look for more clients on Instagram, ask for more money so we can have more time…More, more, more…

More is another form of hiding.

We forget, that if you want to become a shoe designer, all you need to do is to start designing shoes.

You don’t need to find a million followers and then begin designing shoes. No, find one person and ask if you can build a shoe for them. And if it’s good, the idea might spread if she tells 10 friends.

Here’s a question, why would someone buy shoes from a designer who has never even designed one shoe?

Of course, the same is true about producing films or writing code or baking gluten-free desserts.

Tinker Hatfield wasn’t Tinker Hatfield until he realized he could apply his background in architecture with shoe design.

He just sort of started. And there is no reason you can’t too.

How did Thomas Eddison improve the lightbulb?

He just kept coming back to it. 10,000 times in fact.

You know how Pivot Adventure started?

It started by googling, “how to start a business”. Then “how to get a FEIN.” And then “applying for a business license.”

When tasks seem too big to finish, the best answer isn’t to do it all at once. No, merely show up. Every day.

The same can be said about med school or with writing a book or doing something that has never been done before…

Keep coming back to it. Until, one day, you find some way to make it work.

10 years ago, Marble Hornets released its first entry on YouTube. At first, it confused the audience.

Was this real?

When is the next entry?

Of course, it was fake. But in the early days of YouTube, it took a minute to get the joke.

To date, the channel has been now viewed over 100 million times. Their budget? The first 26 episodes were done for $500, 5 actors and a couple of handheld cameras with a really good idea.

The question is, what more do you need to do your best work?

Sure, they weren’t planning for this show to become the standard for YouTube series. That’s not the point.

You don’t need a 100 million dollar budget to make a great film.

We use excuses from not enough time, we need better tools or more education and experience as another form of hiding.

The cost of failure for Marble Hornets was zero. If it didn’t work, they simply could have moved on.

Everything to gain, nothing to lose.

When we venture into the unknown, the journey out feels a lot longer than the ride home.

It’s true when you go hiking and it’s especially true when you do things that have never been done before.

Starting your second business will be more efficient than the first one.

Publishing your thousandth blog is much easier to do than when you start.

And giving a speech in front of the class/board is less frightening with practice.

Everything takes longer when you don’t know where it is to go.

200 years ago, there weren’t a lot of choices on where you could live, what your vocation could be, who you could marry, what you could eat, what you studied…

That all changed with the explosion of industrialism. This was amplified again with the invention of the internet and Google.

Today, we have more choices available than ever before in human history.

So many, in fact, that scares us from choosing anything. Because we can imagine the other options available and it leaves us unsatisfied.

When choices were limited it was easy to push responsibility. Be responsible for the choice you made because there weren’t very many options left.

Here’s the thing, you can’t have choices without freedom, but you can’t have freedom without responsibility.

We’ve grown so used to having so many choices that when we are not sure what to choose, we follow the pattern of the last two centuries and demand more choices.

The answer going forward isn’t to keep wishing for more choices. We have plenty now. (Not everyone, of course. But for those reading this blog, we have enough choices.)

More choices are not going to make us happier.

Choose your love and love your choice.

[It isn’t just industrialism that opened the flood gates of choices. It took a few to have the guts to stand up against injustice. A few that stood out and said, “Follow me.” Follow me…we could use more of that type of courage in our culture today. Happy 4th of July.]

Ever been frustrated trying to file your taxes online?

Were you completely stumped the first time you used an Instapot?

How long did you sit there trying to figure out where the leftover screws go in the bookshelf you just built from Ikea?

Oddly enough, even the smartest among us can feel inept trying to figure out how these things work.

It’s easy to blame ourselves for not knowing, but, in fact, the opposite is true. The fault lies in bad design.

As Donald Norman has pointed out, bad design is everywhere.

Human beings spend an enormous amount of time designing systems to operate in. On top of that, we build security systems, backup plans, standard operating procedure manuals to insulate these systems. Then, we are confused when players misbehave in the system we have built.

We will not look at ourselves but blame the character of others. “If only they would just…”

Again, the fault doesn’t lie in poor character but in bad design choices.

The design should be laid in the simplest way so that anyone could walk up and understand it. But, too often, the signals we send are often misinterpreted. We don’t consider things like lock-in, natural mapping, discoverability, understanding…all things that must be decided beforehand.

If you are not getting the behavior you are seeking, build a better system. Make the guardrails more visible. Quit pretending that we are all rational actors and that everyone else should do it the way you see it.

As Sasha Dichter has pointed out, things that feel like forever don’t actually last forever.

A 30 day cleanse feels like forever.

Being stuck at a dead job feels like forever.

Waiting for lab results feels like forever.

Forever isn’t the problem.

We are.

Most problems don’t last forever.

Don’t assume that the feelings you feel now are going to be the same in five minutes.

There is always going to be someone more qualified, with more education, with more resources that could do the thing you are about to do.

But none of them see what you see.

Making a difference takes grit, generosity, guts…intangibles that can’t be quantified on LinkedIn or on your permanent record.

There were plenty of others that were more qualified to provide clean water to the world but none of them stepped up. It took a 20-year-old night club promoter to start charity: water.

Jim Ziolkowski was a vagabond before starting buildOn, a non-profit making a difference to youth in inner cities and those without access to education all over the world.

So if you are feeling that you are not good enough to start something that could change things…

Find a new way to measure.

Say Yes to watching Game of Thrones.

Say Yes to this new phone or a new car.

If you are saying Yes to this, what are you saying No to?

When is the last time the world was encouraging you to say Yes to starting a non-profit?

Or saying Yes to writing a book?

Or taking a year off to serve in Peace Corp.?

The world continues to seel us on playing it safe. To dumb down your dreams. To be realistic.

The question is, what are we trading in by saying Yes to the pressures of the world?

If you didn’t say Yes to these things, how would that change your posture?