Skip to main content

step up or get out

step up to your highest and best use for the movement, or get out of our way. no tourists. no spectators.

the problem we are correcting​

We have spent too much of our time being likable. Wealthy people have gotten away with a lot in our orbit because the ambient social incentive is to keep the door open "in case something comes up." We know better now. The thing that is coming up is already here, and we are building it. Optionality around us is no longer a gift we give for free.

The pitfall: you let a rich person linger in your circle because they could be useful someday. You burn weeks of your energy making them feel welcome. They never commit. They drain you in slow, polite increments. Multiply that by ten people and you have spent a year being professionally hospitable to people who were never going to show up.

We are done with that.

everyone in our orbit is either a patron or a pathway to a patron​

This is the operating frame. It sounds cold. It is actually clarifying and honest.

  • A patron is a person who writes the checks that fund the movement.
  • A pathway to a patron is a person who knows and influences patrons, and whose conviction moves their network toward us.

If someone in our active orbit does not fit one of those two roles, they are not in our active orbit. They can be a friend. Friendships are fine. We have plenty of friends. But "friend" is a different category from "person whose relationship with the movement justifies our scarce time."

The scarcest asset any of us has is our time and our energy. We are going to defend it like the asset it is.

be human while being transactional​

The fair pushback: where does the human part go?

The answer: the people we are talking about are already transactional. They do not pretend otherwise. They operate in explicit exchange. Pretending we are not also in an exchange with them does not make us more human. It makes us less honest. Being clear about the role we are each playing is the most human thing we can do. It saves everyone's time, and it honors the real relationship instead of the performed one.

When we meet an excited builder, a young student trying to get involved, a creative with real soul, the humanity is automatic and abundant. Those are our people and we give them everything. When we are across the table from someone with power, taste for transactions, and deep pockets, we honor them by being equally direct about what this is. Nobody is being used. The alternative (small talk plus optionality plus vague optimism) is what is actually disrespectful.

no tourists. no spectators.​

Tourists and spectators take space. They take energy. They take money (we end up underwriting their presence in the room). They drag down the signal density of every event and every thread. They train themselves to feel like they are part of something without actually contributing to it.

We are closing the door on that.

Practical tests:

  • Someone says "I owe you a text" and then ghosts for a month. That is the answer. They are not about it.
  • Someone says they would love to help and never follows up. That is the answer.
  • Someone never takes the call. That is the answer.
  • Someone has been hanging around long enough that the ambient kindness of our team has become their default access. That is the answer.

We have to be willing to get through several people being surprised at how seriously we are taking this before we land with the ones who actually are about it. That discomfort is the filter working correctly.

the rich young ruler principle​

The Bible has a story about this. A young rich man approaches Jesus and asks how to inherit eternal life. He has followed every rule. Jesus tells him to sell all he has, give it to the poor, and follow him. The rich young ruler walks away sad, because he has many possessions.

The lesson most people take is that the rich young ruler was wrong. The lesson we are taking is that Jesus let him walk. The ask was the ask. The answer was the answer. There was no negotiation to keep the rich young ruler half-in.

Applied to us: we are going to talk to a lot of rich young rulers. Many of them will not give up anything for their salvation, their protection, their place in the mission. We let them walk. That is how the room stays clean.

the walk-away is the negotiation​

Negotiation rule one: you do not have a negotiation if you cannot walk away. If there is any scenario where you would say yes regardless of the terms, you are not negotiating. You are acquiescing.

Applied to the ecosystem: if we meet a senior tech executive with millions of dollars and his clearest highest-and-best-use is to fund the mission, and he does not fund the mission, we stop spending our time on him. We like him. We respect him. We let him go do the next thing in his life. We do not keep him as a buddy for optionality.

This is not a rejection of the person. It is a refusal to confuse categories. A friend is a friend. A patron is a patron. A pathway is a pathway. Pretending a non-contributing person is in one of those slots degrades the slot and makes us worse operators.

joyful warriors, not delusional and not defeated​

The mindset we are holding is specific and it is easy to get wrong in either direction.

  • Delusional optimism ignores where the world actually is. It rounds everything off to "it'll all work out." It does not sharpen. It does not protect the people we care about. It is a form of laziness disguised as positivity.
  • Low-spirited doomerism sees clearly and then collapses. It produces check-out energy. It is a temptation right now because the world is providing a lot of reasons to check out. We feel that pull. We are naming it on purpose so we do not drift into it.

The path is joyful warriors. We see reality clearly. We act decisively. We carry high spirits while doing the hard work. We are both realistic about the season and joyful about our purpose in it. False binaries (optimistic vs realistic, joyful vs serious) are noise. We refuse them.

This also means: we expect many of our plans to get foiled. Crazy things will keep happening. Our job is to be foil-proofed by being redirected quickly and by keeping the work grounded in theses that are going to prove more accurate than people wanted to believe. Plan. God laughs. Adjust. Keep moving.

meritocratically exclusive​

Inside our circles, we run on our own principles. We are not meritocratic in the world's sense (performance on someone else's scoreboard). We are meritocratic on the movement's terms. What does this person contribute to the movement? How aligned are they with what we are building? How do they behave when the ask is direct?

That is the meritocracy. It is exclusive because the mission demands it. It is honest because we are transparent about it. It is generous because anyone who steps up gets in.

the line​

Step up to your highest and best use for the movement, or get out of our way.

No tourists. No spectators. Everyone is invited to their highest and best use. Almost nobody is invited to loiter.

  • the discipline: the daily practice that produces the spine this doc requires
  • not starstruck: a companion posture for meetings with high-status people
  • readiness: why state of being beats credentials in our evaluation of people
  • supernatural favor: the deeper test beneath all the human ones
  • absorption: how we pull aligned people in once they have stepped up