I did a Mixergy interview so bad they didn't even release it
robfitz.comWell, that was quite something.
> The funny thing here is that I'm 100% aware that our stories are wrong. Our own stories, doubly so. We back-fit narratives. Our minds rewrite what we remember ourselves thinking at the time.
What are some ways to break out of this mode, and look back upon the timeline for what it was? robfitz wrote 'The Mom Test', so they must know!?
> So our stories are wrong. But they still matter.
I guess cognitive dissonance is how most of us are keeping our world-view intact. Especially when you realise that nothing really matters in the grand scheme of things [1].
>What are some ways to break out of this mode
I would guess the best answer here is to write down everything. Keep a journal. Write down events as soon after they happen as possible, write down your thoughts about the event, write down your emotions and connect them to the events that generate them.
I think a somewhat decent mental model here is to think of our brains as write-only memory. Every time you remember something, your brain rewrites the memory. You, on some level, are experiencing the event/thought/feeling again. When you think about what you felt during a past event, you are mostly feeling your current reaction to the memory, and not as much tapping into past feelings as you might think.
One broad example of this is what people call "type 2 fun." This describes events that may not produce positive emotions in the moment, usually some kind of hard physical tasks/achievements. But, looking back, these events produce positive emotions when remembering the event and the accomplishment.
I always thought this happened because we don’t remember pain which is nice.
> type 2 fun
Great comment, and this phrase is going in my pocket.
> write-only memory
Could this be The Secret(tm) to transmuting base lead into gold? Rewriting the very memories that make up one's life.
For anyone else who isn't familiar, type 1 fun is where it's a fun experience and you have fun memories of it. Type 2 is a not-fun experience where you look back on the accomplishment fondly. Type 3 "fun" is a tongue-in-cheek description of something where you didn't have fun doing it, and also don't have fond memories of it.
Is there not a type for things that were fun to do at the time but are unhappy memories?
I have a few of those ;)
Team building events: type 3.
Ah yes, the suffering of Krav Maga...and the joy of it being done and remembered.
I don't have a proper answer (because it's a good and difficult question), but I sort of think of it as a context-dependant thing.
E.g., During a customer interview where I'm trying to understand what they've done (and predict what they'll do), I have vanishingly low confidence in their self-predicted behavior. So I prefer to try to look at what they've actually done in the past, talk to them to understand why they did it that way instead of some other way, tease out the invisible data (like what they tried or researched but didn't continue with), and then come to my own conclusion about how that's all likely to extrapolate.
But in terms of understanding and ascribing purpose to my experiences? Or understanding and empathizing with a friend or stranger? Or sending a message out into the world in a way that can stick and spread? In that case, it's kind of a subjective thing to start with, and it's all about the stories. (To clarify: not intentionally fanciful or fictional stories. Just "stories" in the sense of how we tie all these things that happen into something coherent and ordered.)
That was kind of a non-answer, and I'm sorry I can't be more helpful. I only understand a very, very small number of things. (Three, I think, although I'm working hard on understanding the fourth.) Apart from those few narrow domains, I'm just fumbling through it like everybody else.
Journalling. If you keep a record of your thoughts and feelings you can always go back and review them.
I've been working on some personal issues for a little while now and sometimes it's hard to tell where I've made progress due to this exact retroactive-perspective-shifting, until I go back and read my journal from those earlier times and the contrast becomes clear.
By the sounds of it, this happened before Andrew started doing "pre-interviews". Now he has one of his team members speak to the person to suss out their story. Andrew just just wrote a book about his interview process – it's called Stop Asking Questions, and I thoroughly recommend it. He shows you how to get interesting material from people, rather than platitudes like: "business is a marathon, not a sprint".
Ya, we went in cold after just a quick email exchange, so you're spot on there.
Still, I remember being quite struck by how authentically he was working to get to the heart of it and tease out some value from the mess I was making. It really felt like he was on my side, working with me, despite how difficult I was making it.
I grabbed a copy of his book a couple days back (which is maybe what reminded me of this little anecdote) but haven't gotten into it yet since the pile of interesting reading is just a bit too deep. Very much looking forward to it though, cuz nobody knows it better (except maybe Oprah, I guess?)
That was probably my way of doing the pre-interview back then. Talking to the guest before we officially start.
I take full responsibility for not being able to tell the story well back then.
It’s my responsibility more than it is Rob’s.
It was January 2012. I was still learning how to coach the story out of my interviewees. I’ve done a lot of personal work over the last decade to get better and better at that.
I appreciate that Rob trusted me with such a vulnerable story back then. Rob, if you’re reading this thank you.
Aw, you're a star, Andrew. I really appreciate (and admire) the sentiment and thoughtfulness. (Although I still think that I dropped a bit of an unsalvageable mess on your lap!)
As a side note since you're here, I'm super psyched that you've taken the time to share what you've learned in your new book -- it's the next one up on my list for serious study, and I couldn't be more excited about it. Based on the reviews so far, it looks like you've written something really special and that I'm in for a real treat. Can't wait :)
I was listening to a lot of Mixergy some 10 years ago and I really enjoyed it but for some reason stopped. I was looking for something to listen to couple weeks ago and after spending some 20 minutes to remember the name "Mixery" I listened to couple of his latest podcasts. It feels so different now. I think the general attitude of Andrew towards his guests has changed a lot. He is so pushy now and it feels like the episodes are more about him, rather than the story of the guest.
Same. Mixergy 10 years ago was able to hustle a lot of interviews with really famous/interesting people, that helped Mixergy get traction and grow, despite the interviews themselves being pretty bland.
I'm sure with experience they have gotten better. Although to your point maybe Andrew is "bigger" than his guests now, changing the dynamic.
I haven’t listened in several years but I tried a few tonight and they are really good and feel like what I remember. Andrew seems to be better at asking the mid-interview questions early, which is more interesting. The guests are giving specific answers with plenty of detail.
Agreed. I'd say that happens to most podcasts or YT channels once professionalism, agendas and routine over excitement kicks in.
My own narrative and the accuracy or correctness of it was something that I thought about frequently. Then I had a child. It really helped put my experiences and my actions into context. I now find myself thinking more about the narrative of my parents, and previous generations in general. I feel like I give myself and my parents a lot more grace than I used to.
An important moment and transformation, well-described. Thanks for sharing it :)
Rob - if you're listening, I enjoyed reading this but I don't know who you are and nothing on your website neatly summarizes that.
Google finds several people with similar names. I presume you're a tech entrepreuner so I guess this is you: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/rob-fitzpatrick
Which leads me to wonder what Dexio is but the Crunchbase link leads to an domain squatter and according to Google it's a Pokemon. :-)
EDIT - your twitter bio was more useful. I missed that initially. Still have no idea what Dexio is.
Heya, thanks, it's a new site setup, so it's super helpful to hear about your experience with it -- I'll get that clarified. (I had nestled an about/bio link in the deep bottom-left sidenav, but it's admittedly very easy to overlook.) In the meantime, if you're still curious, the full bio thing is at: http://stuff.robfitz.com/about/
> There's a link in the deep bottom-left sidenav
How did I miss that?
Oh well. I suppose I'm a good test subject in that regard.
The user is always right ;). I'll keep working on it. Thanks again.
He's the Mom Test guy. Not sure why he makes it so hard to find that info. Could use a marketing intern (reply here if you want one)
The mundane answer is that there's some stuff that I worry about optimizing and other stuff that I don't, and this little personal site is the latter ;).
To a lesser extent, I also didn't exactly expect this to hit frontpage, so I'd sort of assumed that the only people who would see it were people who already knew me.
I'm still not sure about the answer to that, but this has at least prompted me to give it a proper think and decide whether I want to try to appeal to "the world" or just stay focused on my own little orbit. No idea where I'll end up, but it's an interesting question, and I appreciate you giving me the nudge to take it seriously.
If you're not cool enough to find it, you're not cool enough to read it. My bio page can only be found on mobile. Desktop users are too lame. You have to swipe up up down down left right on the correct page in order to find it /s
I could use a marketing intern.
And asking for a friend - how did you fix those guts of yours?
I tried a bit of everything, and I did it all at the same time, so it's hard to pin down causation. The only thing that had to happen was to shift my diet away from being primarily composed of alcohol, coffee, and tabasco. Apart from that, a high-end probiotic thing may well have helped, and a good chiro/nutritionist acted as a sort of accountability coach to keep me going.
Also, getting serious about reining in the drinking acted as an anchor habit that led to a bunch of other positive lifestyle changes. (I still probably drink far more than almost anyone would consider acceptable, but it's down to a level where my body appears able to keep up. So still a work in progress, I guess, but at least my energy is back up.)
I mean - alcohol is like violence... and xml. If it doesn't solve your problem you aint using enough.
Funny. Working with XML often drives me to violence and alcohol.
Consider yourself fortunate. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of a YAML binge.
I sometimes struggle to condense my thoughts while speaking, which can make for some uninteresting long-winded stories if I’m not careful.
But it does get better with deliberate practice. Knowing the issue is half the battle.
To be candid, even this blog post was on the wordy side. I understand where the author was trying to go with the piece by the end, but it might have been more engaging if reduced to half the length or less. Being concise is important for making specific points.
This is semi off-topic, but I normally write books, which I work pretty hard to edit down into the shortest versions of themselves.
As a weird side-effect of that, I noticed myself starting to hold all of my writing to that same standard, which was stopping me from putting out anything more off-the-cuff.
So part of my motivation with this site (which is only about a week old) was to frame it in a way, at least for myself, where I felt comfortable sharing the stuff-in-progress without worrying too much that it wasn't a finished book.
Which I guess is a long way to say that the rambliness is an intentional decision, since otherwise it wouldn't be doing the job (for me) that it was designed for. I already spend 20+ hours a week doing fairly utilitarian writing for my books, so this little site needs to be something different if I hope to stick with it. And in an ideal world, maybe a few other people will happen to enjoy some bits and pieces along the way :)
More often than I admit, I think about this quote by Mark Twain: "I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one." You have to think about who's going to hear or listen to you, it's not just about being precise and descriptive.
"Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Einstein
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Da Vinci
I had been exploring this idea in my codegolfing. For example: https://www.dwitter.net/d/15323
lol, codegolfing is the opposite of simplicity.
Although to be fair, the code you linked to is much more readable than I had anticipated.
well, you do bring up a good point. perhaps codegolfs are more succint rather than simple. the idea is more with less
I would love for the author to delve more into what made the interview so bad, with specific examples.
It was the difference between a wikipedia article vs. a biography (i.e., a collection of facts vs. those same facts, but arranged around a narrative).
A specific example came up while trying to explain my first company's pivots through three products (trying to figure out a social/UGC ad stack before Facebook did). If you looked at the business model, our value prop, customer segment, etc. all of that stayed the same. Which was the unifying thread, and which I can now articulate at least semi-coherently.
But when I was describing it to Andrew, it came out as three completely unrelated products, and that we were just wildly changing plans without any coherent vision or direction. I remember that moment due to his look of profound confusion, where he was really trying to figure out how these three things I had just described were related.
As a sailboat owner I really want to hear the story of how you sank the boat...
It's far less dramatic than you'd hope.
I left it moored up at a port along the canal for winter (when the canal gets too shallow to traverse), the folks who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it didn't, uncharacteristic winter storms were blowing rain and muck all over the place, the cockpit drains got clogged, the cockpit filled with water, and things went downhill from there ;)
It was sitting quite happily on the shallow riverbed when I returned, but the inside was a swamp, and I had to tear out and trash the whole interior. At least it was fresh water, so the engine (mostly) survived.
@robfitz, not related to the content as I couldn't get to that on Firefox 95
Opening the website returns:
NS_ERROR_NET_INADEQUATE_SECURITY
By a cursory glance, it looks like some misconfiguration (supporting HTTP/2, but no presenting TLS1.2 at the same time .. even that it looks available).
SSL Labs results may help you diagnose [1]
[1] https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.robfitz.c...
For what it's worth, I can open the web site fine on Firefox 95.0.2 / Windows 10, uBlock Origin, multi-account containers.
Slight side note, I am surprised how Mixergy/Andrew has almost zero social media presence. There are no social icons on their site and there is no engagement with fans on Twitter (or anywhere else?).
I wonder why this is.
I’m surprised that not being on social media is a surprising thing to people.
for a regular person sure, but for a show generally you want grow your audience and engage a bit with existing listeners.
Why does mixergy have a photo of Gary Vaynerchuk on the home page.
Interesting - is this a personal site built on https://circle.so?
Yes, you can see a link to Circle if you follow the privacy policy.
Critique about the writing: BuzzFeed/Twitter-style 1 sentence per paragraph made me stop reading after the 2nd paragraph.
Curious, what boat model is that?
Westerley Centaur 1972 bilge keel, 7.9 meters, with interior layout A: https://sailboatdata.com/sailboat/centaur-26-westerly
Was the most popular British-made small boat of all time, and some of them have successfully circumnavigated.
Sturdy thing with only 0.9m draft, able to ride into shallow waters and sit happily on its keels when the tide goes out, and surprisingly spacious for its length. Good boat.
Those are pretty popular on Waddenzee, because of their ability to just set down without falling over when the tides go out.
Exactly. Really opens up some beautiful coastal areas to explore where the tides are big.
It's also quite nice to know that if you happen to run into an unmarked sandbank, you'll only have to sit there, and not sit there sideways ;)
Aw, fuck. Now I want a boat.
And I want you to get one ;)
Sailing had always been on my "someday bucket list," but I kept putting it off since I could never make the time to take the week or two off to do the course.
But once I started learning, it was so much more deeply satisfying than anything else in my life, that it immediately became a top focus. Before I'd even finished my captain's license, I had already hit "buy it now" on an ebay listing (admittedly reckless and not recommended, but I couldn't wait).
That being said, boats are floating money pits (the rule of thumb is that you spend half the boat's price again, every year, in maintenance and mooring) and take a ton of upkeep, so I think it's only viable if it's a major piece of your life and you're willing to devote considerable time o it. Otherwise, it just sits there, losing money while accumulating chores.
I sold mine during the first lockdown, but I'll absolutely get another someday, once I'm ready to wrap my life around it again.
I literally bought a book about buying boats. I was really hyped about buying a boat before I read it. Still no boat years later.
I think the key is to get a modest sail boat like a sunfish similar size. The cost are way more manageable.
Yeah, I looked at trailer sailers (although I wanted a cabin), but it wasn't really viable for the types of travel I wanted to do. Now that my life and location are slightly more predictable, a 7m with a small cabin that could go on a trailer would be ideal. (Although I'm sure I won't end up making that sensible choice.)
Hey, You only live once.
As a software developer and team lead who's worked from and lived on a sailboat for the last two years, I'd agree with others here and encourage you to give it a shot. My wife and I both work remotely as software developers and we've been able to put thousands of miles under the keel, traveling from Mobile Alabama, to as far north as the Chesapeake Bay with multiple stops in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas, all while keeping our full-time software engineering jobs. It's been a really great experience and I highly-recommend it to anyone with a remote role.
I’d love to hear about the logistics of how you do this because it’s something I’ve considered trying, at least for a period of time. I keep running into the idea that without consistent, reliable Internet, not to mention the other niceties of productivity like a workspace and monitors, it simply wouldn’t work for more than a few weeks.
Not OP, but this couple has written a bit about working on tech projects while living on a sailboat: https://100r.co/site/working_offgrid_efficiently.html
Ever been to Antigua and Barbuda?
We haven't, but it's on the list! We've mostly stuck to the US coast and Western Caribbean, visiting the Keys, the Bahamas, a bit up North, and the stuff in between. Currently anchored in Biscayne bay (Coconut Grove), but will probably be headed down to the keys in a month or so.
Be forewarned. My favorite quote about boats: "they are holes in the water that you throw money in".
I'm reading this on board my boat, getting nice warm feelings of empathy about single handing long flights of locks, and then Rob has to go and spoil the happy thoughts by talking about diesel spills and sinking :D
I googled Mixergy and found out about a pretty interesting smart hot water tank.
Edit: being downvoted for a silly joke, I get it, but it's true. That Mixergy is placed way better than the startuppers' little bubble interview website.
I still don't know what Mixergy is.