Getting Kinetic
NO. 07 · SEPTEMBER 16, 2026
| |
| |
|
Hi— Another confession this week. Like last week’s, but the opposite. There’s a voice in my head that isn’t humble: “Just let me get to work. I know what you need. Trust me.” And right now it’s loud. New customer, a problem we know cold, and I’m chomping at the bit. This time: he wants answers before we start, and the subtle danger of giving them. | |
|
A TENSION
That voice is exactly what Katie’s curtain designer was thinking. This guy keeps asking me do I think this, do I think that. I don’t know, man, but I have some ideas. Thing is, ideas can be wrong. What he wants is answers before he starts. But the answers he wants can only come out of the back-and-forth of doing the work. He wants clarity, and clarity can’t happen in a sales cycle. It isn’t a precondition of the work—it’s a product of it. The subtle danger: the sales cycle begs me to perform clarity anyway. Every confident answer I give before we’ve done anything together is a little “trust me.” And he’s nobody’s fool—every question he asks is forensic accounting on the last expert who performed certainty. The lesson isn’t patience. It’s to stop acting like ideas are precious and need a preface (or, gasp, a contract). In high school creative writing, the rule was show, don’t tell. Just show him. | |
| |
|
FROM THE WORK
The difference is what the first thing you show is for. A concept made to be reacted to—rough, cheap, obviously killable—is a question mark that starts a conversation. A concept made to be approved—polished, defended, expensive to unwind—is a period. It doesn’t invite a response. That same class taught me the fast-write: permission to think. Grammar, logic, flow don’t matter. Only ideas. Ideas are like seeds—you scatter a lot of them and only some bloom. But that is the point. They can’t all bloom. Nobody has ever been burned by a draft they were allowed to throw away. When we talk about decreasing the time-to-first-pixel, the point was never speed. A disposable first pixel is a fast-write in another medium—how somebody who doesn’t know you yet finds out your action is safe. So that’s the plan with my new guy: I’m going to show him something rough that we can talk about. He wants clarity. That’s the only place it comes from. | |
|
PUT IT TO WORK
| |
|
Tell me about that person who won’t let you start. I’ll respond, “How can you start anyway?” Then we’ll have the start to a real exchange. — JD and the Simple Focus gang | |
|
Want notes like this in your inbox? Subscribe. It's occasional, and you can reply.
|