fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Scale-up Leadership Lessons I’ve Learned Over 9 Years as HubSpot’s CEO
By: Brian Halligan
Tags: Business, Management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Startup

HubSpot is 9 years old. I consider that we spent our first 6–7 years in “startup” mode, where we got through product/market fit and got our customer economics to work. Over the last few years, we’ve been in “scale-up” mode, where we’re adding fuel into our engine and growing fast in a great market with nice barriers to entry. It turns out that many of the skills I need as the leader of a scale-up are much different than the skills I needed as the leader of a startup. This article attempts to lay out some of the skills and tools I’ve needed to develop in this scale-up phase.

Employee Net Promoter Scores as Manager Thermometer

For several years now, we’ve been giving all of our employees an employee net promoter survey with two standard questions. First question being, “On a scale of 0 to 10, what is the likelihood you’d refer HubSpot as a place of work to a friend?” Second question being, “Why?” The surveys are anonymous and wildly useful for a number of different reasons.

One way we use them is to evaluate the confidence any particular division within HubSpot has in its leader by cutting the data by division. More than once, we’ve had a particular division’s score go down. When that score goes down, we do the logical thing. We gather the historical trend data and commentary from the survey, present it to the leader, and ask them to put a plan together to fix it. Every time this has happened, the manager has put in good programs, but to our surprise, the score drops again the next quarter for that manager. We give them another try, and sure enough, it drops again. Crap! At this point, we usually try find a new role for that manager that is better suited to his or her skills. If the problem is deeper or there’s no role in which the manager would excel, we amicably part ways. Now, this exact pattern has happened to us four or five times, where smart, motivated folks weren’t able to turn their group’s score around.

After we find a new leader for the group in question, what do you think happens to the score? In all cases, it bounced all the way back up to its steady state the very next survey period. Wowsa!

OK, so here are my lessons from going through this cycle four times:

Once a team has lost confidence in its leader, it is nearly impossible to get it back. If you replace the leader with someone capable, the morale rebounds almost right away. Leaders have sweet spots where they thrive and then don’t thrive. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those leaders whose scores went down — they just shouldn’t be managing a giant team inside a scale-up. In fact, I’d be first in line to work with some of those leaders if I started another company. Management experience is something that I totally discounted in the startup phase, but is really important in the scale-up phase.

Questions for you:
“I was sued for sounding like myself”
By: Erik Devaney
Tags: Music, Business, Entrepreneurship, Music Business, Startup

Back in 1984, Michael Jackson had an idea. An awful idea. Michael Jackson had a wonderful, awful idea.

The idea: Drop $47.5 million (adjusted for inflation = $108.7 million) to acquire the rights to nearly all of the Beatles songs penned by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Jackson’s advisors and studio executive friends considered it an awful investment at the time, and essentially told the King of Pop that he should stick to moonwalking and leave the music publishing deals to the suits (business suits, not shiny red leather suits).

The idea was made doubly awful considering it was Sir Paul McCartney himself who introduced Jackson to the concept of investing in music publishing rights.

As the story goes, while hanging out with Jackson in 1981, McCartney pulled out a sheet listing all of the songs to which he owned the rights. There was Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes,” made popular by Elvis. There were a bunch of Broadway show tunes. And then there was the entire Buddy Holly catalogue.

This encounter with McCartney inspired Jackson to start building up his own menagerie of music. But in 1984, when Jackson pulled the trigger on the purchase of ATV Music Publishing — a 4,000-song catalogue that included 150+ Beatles tunes— Sir McCartney was none too happy about it.

Jackson and McCartney had been frequent collaborators up until that point (“The Girl Is Mine”; “Say Say Say”). But post-purchase, their relationship petered out.

Celebrity friendships aside, from a financial perspective, Jackson’s move to acquire the world’s biggest chunk of Beatles songs proved to be (surprise?) brilliant.

Today, the music catalogue that Jackson bought for $47.5 million back in 1984 is valued at around $2 billion. Although to be fair, that’s the post-Sony-merger valuation.

You see, back in 1995, Sony gave Jackson $95 million (adjusted for inflation = $148 million) in exchange for a 50/50 stake in what would become Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Today, Sony/ATV owns more copyrights than any other music publishing company in the world, boasting a collection of 4 million+ songs.

The Lennon-McCartney Beatles classics, no doubt, rank among the biggest moneymakers in the Sony/ATV catalogue. It’s estimated that the song “Yesterday” alone has brought in $30 million in royalties over the years.

Ultimately, Jackson wasn’t sure if he was getting a good deal when he decided to buy all those Beatles songs back in 1984, but he was sure of one thing: They were great songs.

As billionaire investor Tom Barrack put it, “Quite honestly, Michael didn’t know if they were worth $12 million or $18 million or $25 million. He just knew and anticipated correctly that over time the intellectual property was going to be worth a lot of money.”

Or, as Michael Jackson put it:
Announcing Our Global WFH Festival 🎉
By: Product Hunt
Tags: Covid 19, Hackathons, Tech, Makers

Over the past several years, we’ve put on Makers Festivals in order to encourage makers to build, tinker and launch products in a short period of time. It’s like a hackathon, but always online and open to people from all backgrounds (not just software developers), all around the world.



With the proliferation of work from home mandates over the past few weeks, we thought it would be a great time to host a global, WFH Makers Festival that focuses on relief efforts (in any form) for the COVID-19 pandemic. At Product Hunt, we’ve already seen a ton of products launch that focus on helping people during this time, including things like a rational shopping list generator, a mask matching tool, a self-quarantine book club, a resource for supporting local businesses and database of projects looking for volunteers. We even launched our own Product Hunt Merch shop last week focused on WHO’s COVID-19 response fund.



We encourage you to think outside the box, whether that means building products around self-care, at-home entertainment, ways to combat the spread of misinformation or products for healthcare workers on the frontlines of the crisis. You can work as a solo maker or in (remote) teams, and you can work on any platform. We’d like to see both no-code and code-based projects!



The Festival will go on for three weeks, and submissions will close on April 16th. Then we’ll open up voting to the community, and winners will be announced at the end of April. We’ll be featuring all winners in our newsletter and on our social channels, and of course, a silver kitty trophy will be given to the overall winner.



We can’t wait to see what you build! 🎉

Register here.
Introducing Product Hunt’s first virtual Makers Summit
By: Ryan Hoover
Tags: Online Event, Tech, Product Hunt, Virtual Summit

Earlier this year we set a goal: Support 250 Product Hunt meetups around the world. Although we’re primarily an online community, IRL has always been a core part of the community so we started the year strong with a big kickoff on January 28th. We hosted a 1,000+ person event in Los Angeles alongside 72 community-led meetups around the world, including Barcelona, New Delhi, Cairo, Amsterdam, Kyiv, Lagos and many others. It was a great start… and then COVID-19 hit.

Of course, we canceled our meetup plans and discouraged the community from self-assembling. But fortunately, we came up with a backup plan.

On July 9th we’re hosting the first virtual Makers Summit. It’ll be online and free, so we can all participate from the comfort of our own home. You don’t even have to shower.

It’ll be a fun opportunity to connect with and learn from some amazing folks, from founders to investors to side hustlers. We’ll be serving up presentations and Q&As covering all the big topics of the year, including D2C, privacy and big data, remote working, no-code making, AI and automation, AR /VR, audio tech and more. You’ll hear from industry experts as well as indie makers on the rise.

We’re working with Hopin to replicate a physical meetup online. It’s more than just a livestream – we’ll also have “side stages” where you can video chat with other people from the Product Hunt community 1-on-1 or in small groups.

Reserve your spot. Register here.

P.S. If you’re interested in sponsoring the summit, let us know.
How a 6 Year Old Learned Her Father to Nourish His Inner Child
By: Daan Uijterwaal
Tags: Mindfulness, Beyourself, Happiness, Spirituality, Spiritual Growth

How a 6 Year Old Learned Her Father to Nourish His Inner Child

Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash | Logo by Today I Lived

“Dad!” The little girl yelled. “Will come and play hide and seek with me?” She ran towards her dad and stopped right in front of him. Waiting for him to put down the paper. She didn’t get a response. “Dad?” She asked again.

“I don’t want to. Go on and find some friends to play with. Don’t you have any new friends around here?” Her dad said. They were on a holiday. Visiting the beautiful country of Italy. Although the girl had made loads of friends, all around the campsite, she now wanted to play with her dad.

The girl stayed. Just looking at her dad. “Why aren’t you going away?” Her dad had a grumpy voice. For a small second, he puts down the paper, looks at the girl, and then continues to read. “Daddy? Can I read the paper with you?” The little girl asks.

“No you can’t this is grown-up stuff. Besides you won’t like it either.” Her dad replied stubbornly. The girl was sad. “Do you like reading the paper dad?” She asked.

“No I don’t, but it keeps me up to date with the world, which is important. Now leave me alone. I want to read.” Her dad said. The girl didn’t care. “But dad why would you read the newspaper if you don’t even like reading it?” She asked. Her dad sighs. The girl knew he wanted her to leave. “Dad?” She asked one final time. “Why would you do anything that you don’t like doing?” The little girl asked.

Anyone’s heart would have melted seeing the effort that this little girl put into this. Trying to get her dad to play hide and seek was hard work for the little girl.
The Best Thing I’ve Done for My Skin Face is Very Cheap
By: Lila Juno
Tags: Skincare, Happened To Me, Beyourself, Ayurveda, Beauty Tips

The Best Thing I’ve Done for My Skin Face is Very Cheap

Adobe Stock

After I completed 31 years old, all of a sudden I noticed that my skin changed.

The skin of my whole body lost vitality and elasticity. I was super scared with it. I know, I need to learn how to get old in peace but it takes time to get used with this idea.

For the skin below my neck, the daily use of almond oil used to keep it hydrated and with good aspects. The main problem was on my skin face.

I tried several creams that physicians suggested me. Expensive products that almost made me believe there was gold inside the packaging.

I can’t deny that I saw some improvements. I did, but most of them were very superficial. Touching my face I could still feel it with small acnes, dry and rough to the touch.

FYI I read about Ayurveda frequently

Reading Ayurveda books that I use to consume a lot, I saw a milenar practice that seemed to be obvious after I saw it.

"Why didn’t I do it before?"

My nose normally is very dry inside.

I know you didn’t give me this permission to talk about such intimate details, but I need to put it out. My nostrils were always bothering me. It’s painful. My facial sinus is very dry. Allergies, rhinitis, sinusitis among other -itis are usually surrounding me.

According to Ayurvedic medicine, vegetable oils are incredible ally for the body. And I can truly comprove.

Since I started using warm Sesame oil on my nose, my headaches and all discomfort reduced relevantly.

One drop for each nostril and a quick massage with the top of the finger is enough for me.

Then one day I read about the benefits of vegetable oils being used to massage the face in the morning, I thought to myself “Of course!”.

The ancient knowledge says that “it avoids premature aging and self-oiling (the whole body, including the face) takes the nutrition also for the inside."

So I started passing Sesame oil a little heated on my face everyday in the morning.

I spread it all over the face and make movements stretching it up and back.

After 5 days, I touched my face unconsciously while I was watching TV and the difference I felt at my fingertips made my mind focus on it.

I could not believe it. For a long time I didn’t feel my skin like that. It was not a baby butt but some elasticity came back. Not a small result, but relevant. It was really nourished.

I got up and went to the mirror. The correct word for it was "Awesome". I needed to check if what I was feeling would reflect visually.

And yes! My skin was more uniform, with less apparent "imperfections".

I didn't have any result with expensive products like I did with the vegetable oil on my face skin.

I wish I could post a before and after image but I didn’t think on it when I started trying and I didn’t register in pictures the Before state.
Case Study: CNN Indonesia app redesign to improve readability
By: Fildzah Zata Syauqina Izzati
Tags: User Research, User Interface Design, Redesign, Ui Ux, News Apps

Overview

This project is an exploratory project for UI redesign. In this project, I tried to understand the UX, dissect the appearance of the user interface in the CNN Indonesia app, create an information hierarchy, and redesign the user interface.

Role: UI/UX Designer

Tools: Figma

Timeline: 3 days

CNN Indonesia App

CNN Indonesia presents the latest news & selected information quickly & reliably. Various latest news can be accessed 24 hours a week & equipped with various interesting topics, such as Political news, world news, economy, modern lifestyle & football news.

With the new design provided by CNN Indonesia, we can explore various news categories more easily and quickly than before, simply by tap or swipe the news category you want to read. You can also enjoy CNN TV Live Broadcast for Free. Some of CNN Indonesia’s superior features include live streaming of CNN Indonesia TV, news focus, live reports, push notifications, night mode, and breaking news.

Design Process

There are several stages of process design including:

1. Understand the UX

2. Dissection

3. Make Information Hierarchy

4. Redesign the UI

Understand the UX

The first step is to know the UX on each page. In this project, two pages of the CNN application will be used, namely the home and article.
Level up your design career with skills, scope, and passion
By: Zi Yuan
Tags: Career Advice, Design, Careers, Growth, Skills

Illustration designed by pch.vector / Freepik

What does it take to level up your design career? Having grown my career over the past seven years as a Product Designer, here is some advice: build marketable skills, proactively seek impactful scope, and align your career path with passion!

Build marketable skills

The core technical skills of a designer include product thinking, interaction design, and visual design. Which one of these skills do you want to master?

My career at Facebook started with enterprise tools design. This allowed me to be skilled in product thinking. However, I wanted to refine my interaction design and visual design skills to be an expert in the industry.

Therefore, I intentionally transitioned into the consumer-facing world, even if it was beyond my comfort zone. I enhanced my technical skills by creating designs with pixel-perfect quality daily. To train my prototyping skills, I learned the Origami app during the pandemic. You can check out my journey and gain some insights here.

Your focus should be on building skills that fit the market demand.

Sample: I created a various visual designs of a button to find the best solution

Records of my first week of learning Origami Studio

Proactively seek impactful scope

Does your project impact the company metrics? What is the usage of the product you design? Do you own the project and make the final product decisions?

In my personal example, when working on enterprise tools, I had a significant role by fully owning and defining roadmaps for two tools. This wasn’t the case after transitioning to consumer-facing products — my role was diminished. Instead of designing entire tools, I oversaw features. Rather than having full control, I needed to share decision-making with more designers. The upside of this trade-off was my scope increased by 56000x more users.

You are the driver in your career decisions. It is up to you to proactively seek impactful scope to maximize your skills to stand out in the job market.

Illustration designed by pch.vector / Freepik

Align your career path with passion

How can you compliment your career path with your passion? Do you wake up excited and motivated to design your projects? If not, what energizes you?

Choose a career that suits your passion will motivate you. If you have not found your enthusiasm yet, you can start by searching inside yourself. I am passionate about helping people stay connected. So I chose to work on social media.

Where do you spend most of your time? Fitness, writing, or continuous learning? Taking time to explore your interests will lead you to a career path that aligns with your passion.

I edited this illustration which was originally designed by Freepik

Summary

Build marketable skills, proactively seek impactful scope and align your career path with passion are strategies that helped grow my career. By applying this advice to your career, you can also level up!

Remember: You are the designer in your career path.
Widespread mistakes made in the creation and scaling of design systems
By: Dmitry Plotnikov
Tags: Uikit, Design Systems, UX Design, Design Strategy, UI Design

1. Creating a design system from scratch where it is not necessary.

It sounds crazy. But regrettably, this is the most common mistake made by teams starting on a product. They build their design system rather than buying an existing one. Considering that in some cases, they could have done with the UI kit at all.

Let’s try to draw a parallel. Now, let’s imagine that you are a beginning entrepreneur. You have start-up capital, and you need to decide how to house your employees. There is a 99% chance you will rent an office and do a quick renovation rather than buying your premises. This is the right thing to do, as spending a great part of your capital without prior validation of your business model is very risky.

Also, there is no reason to make this investment at an early stage with design systems. Moreover, if you buy real estate, you can immediately know the price, and when you create and maintain a design system, the cost is generally higher than you expected.

Consequences of the mistake:

Loss of a huge budget when you start the product work.

The unplanned deceleration in the process of your product creation.

The transition to a hybrid model of advanced UI whale during product development. Reorienting of staff also engaged in the creation of design system.

What can we do to prevent it?
Money Manager App Redesign-UI/UX Case Study
By: Rishabh Gagneja
Tags: UX Design, UX Research, Ux Ui Design Thinking, Product Designer, Ux Ui Product Designer

Disclaimer

This is a Personal project done for my portfolio

What is Money Manager

Money Manager is an app that can track your money efficiently which help you to control your budget and finances.

Why Money Manager

As most people say, if you want to redesign an app for a portfolio you need to redesign an app that you are using personally for a long time, because then only you know the pain points of real users

so I choose the money manager app because I have used this app several times but it does not meet my needs at all

the app tells you total income and expenses but it didn’t tell how much you save or how much money you left or how much total expenses you did this far

and also the UI of the app is not up to that mark, a lot of things need to fix in it

so now I guess you know why I choose the Money manager app

New Logo

Ok, so the first thing I did is to redesign its logo because it’s a fresh start and if the app got its fresh look then why not a logo

so I redesigned the Money manager’s logo.

Below is the Before and after logo
Getting started with creating 3D experiences for the Web
By: Himanshu Aneja
Tags: 3d, Web Development, Threejs, 3d Design, Getting Started

Due to my fascination with interactive 3D Experiences, I have always found myself exploring fields like Game Design, Mixed Reality, and 3D Animation. A few months back, I realized that we can use a language named “Three.js” to create these immersive 3D experiences for the web. To continue on my journey of exploring various 3D fields, I decided to give Three.js a try!

Three.js is a Javascript library based on WebGL that allows us to create 3D web experiences much more easily than native WebGL. I know you must be like, what the heck is WebGL now? So, WebGL is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. To put it in simpler terms, WebGL is what allows us to create these 3D experiences though it is pretty tough to learn. Three.js just makes the process of creating these 3D websites easier and more fun.

PS: You would need hundreds of lines of code just to make a cube rotate in native WebGL! So I would recommend sticking to Three.js only if you are looking to create 3D websites. 😂

Coming back to Three.js, it has a large community and one of the best documentation which makes the learning process a lot simpler than it seems initially. Don’t just believe me on this and explore its website on your own. You would be introduced to some great projects built with three.js and tutorials to getting started with your first project.
5 conditions for packaging design to increase sales at times
By: Moloko Creative Agency
Tags: Design, Graphic Design, Packaging, Design Research, Packaging Design

The exploration phase must not be missed

We talked to dozens of designers who have worked for various agencies. It’s an interesting fact that only 1 agency in 10 does research before development.

More often, after receiving the brief, work on the design and concepts begins immediately. And the research phase falls on the personal shoulders of the designer, who needs to quickly visually look at competitors and find inspiration to create a design for a client. We think this is fundamentally wrong work.

Pre-development research should include a series of blocks. The first block is the analysis of competitors. Here it is important to find out what competitors use in packaging design, what they bring to the fore, what colors and fonts they use, if there are graphics and illustrations, how they work with the back of the packaging. All this data will allow understanding how to make product better taking into account the competitive shelf. Moreover, such research helps not only designers, but also marketers who will work on product promotion afterwards.

After research, it is important to systematize all the information and draw conclusions so that nothing is lost. Otherwise, there will be no effect from the work, and without conclusions that will be clear both in the agency and on the client’s side, it will be difficult to work further.
How I made over $33,000 on the Figma plugin without writing a single line of code 👈
By: Matt Wierzbicki
Tags: Design Systems, Passive Income, Figma, Creator Economy, Figma Plugin

Figmaster Sales up until now

I’m a product designer and I specialize in creating design systems and component libraries in @figmadesgin. Design Systems are becoming so popular because they make products more consistent, accessible, improve their usability, and reduce design decision-making.

After a great success of my previous products www.antforfigma.com and www.systemflow.co I decided to create an educational resource to teach people how to design such systems. I wanted to show my way of doing this step-by-step.

I had this idea of a plugin for Figma, a workbook that will teach people how to build their own modern design system from scratch.

But why not a video course? Video courses are so popular in education! You may say.

I often find that when I watch a lesson I forget most of the things the author mentioned in the long video. Another problem is jumping between the video player and the software I’m learning. It distracts me a lot. That’s why in Figmaster everything happens in Figma — without jumping between 3rd party apps/websites, without pausing the video, etc.

OK, cool! I have an idea that I think is great.

But how do I know if people will like this form of learning? How do I know if my audience wants to learn how to build their own design system? 🤔

I had to validate it somehow because I didn’t want to write all lessons without knowing that!

👉 I wanted to have at least 500 people on the email list to launch the pre-order.

👉 I wanted to have at least 100 pre-orders to start working on a full course.
Is digital product design a good career choice for you?
By: Filip Grkinic
Tags: Career Advice, Design, UX, Careers, Product Design

Illustration by Anna Magura

Before you decide if product design is a career you want to be in, it’s helpful to hear from someone who is doing it.

What’s it like to be a product designer?

A product designer needs thick skin and sometimes humility. Product designers don’t design to please their own tastes or our bosses’ tastes, for that matter. We’re all about the end users. Sure, we may have to compromise UX to better serve current business goals. But even in such scenarios, we’d better fight for the end users.

As you gain experience, your confidence will grow. You’ll need that confidence to stand up for your UX and design choices. Eventually, you’ll stop doing what people tell you to and start doing the opposite.

We’re thinking from the user’s perspective, first and foremost. We represent our users proudly.

This is our “true” portfolio. It’s how many times we’ve fought for the users and won. How many times we’ve defended their voices in front of colleagues. An experienced product designer has fought tough battles, lost some, and hopefully, won many.

Designing digital products isn’t just about the design.
Goodbye from PS I Love You
By: P.S. I Love You
Tags: Relationships, Poetry, Fiction, Ps I Love You Newsletter, Writing

Photo by Maksym Tymchyk on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, we were informed by Medium that they would be pulling their funding for PS I Love You. This was not all too much of a surprise, given the larger changes that have been happening around editorial at Medium. Still, it sucks. And after some difficult conversations among our team about how to proceed, we’ve decided we have no real choice but to shut down the pub. Our last day publishing new stories will be June 30.

A few notes before we go. We loved running this publication; we loved the talented and inspiring writers we worked with; we loved our readers. We’re going to miss all y’all deeply.

At the same time, we’re also immensely proud of what PS I Love You has become, the niche it carved out at Medium, and the stories we published. We’ll be re-sharing a bunch of those stories over the next month. We invite you to read them with us over some whiskey and perhaps through a few happy tears.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who contributed to the pub over the years. From day one our goal was to support writers, who’ve always been most responsible for making this publication what it is. Thank you, too, to everyone who’s ever read a PS I Love You story. We hope they brightened your days, and perhaps compelled you to go hug your mom.

The editorial team is still figuring out our next steps, but we’ll continue running new pieces and working with writers through the end of our contract; we still have a few more weeks on it. We also will not be deleting the pub, just closing it to new subs; the stories we published will still live here, unless writers decide to pull them and put them elsewhere, which they are of course totally able to do. We are likewise still figuring out what the future holds long-term, for example, whether PS will continue on under a new editorial team one day, or not.

Feel free to reach out to us at any time if you have questions or just want to shoot us a line. We’d love to hear from you.

Thank you again. For everything. We had a great run.

Much, much love,

Dan, Kay, Tre, and Scott
One More for the Road
By: Kay Bolden
Tags: Kay Bolden, Goodbyepsily, Relationships, Writing, Self

One More for the Road

Image credit: Ira Nesbitt on Pixabay

We’re drinkin’, my friend

To the end of a brief episode

So make it one for my baby

And one more for the road …(Frank Sinatra)*

My mother used to tell the story that, when I was about 3, she was late picking me up from my aunt. Auntie B was late for her own job — the 3–11 shift bartending at the local American legion — so she scooped me up and took me along. I spent a lovely afternoon sitting on the bar, drinking Shirley Temples, and learning to flutter my lashes. When my mother finally arrived, she said, I was tossing my braids and singing Come Fly With Me along with Frank Sinatra on the jukebox.

It was the last time Auntie B was allowed to babysit.

But … I’ve carried that bar with me, ever since. That feeling of belonging and camaraderie, with great music in the background, and people lifting each other’s spirits. That magical sensation in the air … that promise of something exciting about to happen, any minute now.

And when I stumble onto that feeling in other places — at a crazy job, or in a new city, or on top of a mountain — I pull up a bar stool, baby, and I stick around.

For over two years, PS I Love You has been that bar, that music, those friends. It’s been the place where I could write about hard stuff like racism, and aging, and burying a parent. And where I could write about fun stuff, like silly travel adventures, and talking dogs. Plus, I could read, read, read! Stories by writers I love and admire.

And the other folks behind the bar, pouring me whiskey and singing off-key … well, they’re just the greatest, most generous peeps I’ll ever know. Dan and Tre and Scott— the next round’s on me.

I’m very proud of what we’ve done in these years — that we’ve lifted up Black women, and writers of color; that we’ve amplified LGBTQ voices and feminist voices; that we’ve published wild-eyed poets and literary fiction; that we have writers of every generation and every faith; that we’ve talked about mental health and kids and death and love and drugs and sex and friends and all the things that go wrong … and all the things that go right.

So many things go right, doncha know.

Thank you, friends, from the bottom of my whiskey glass. Thank you to all of the readers and writers who dropped a few nickels in the jukebox, and sang a few songs with us here at PS I Love You.

I’ll carry this place with me, too, wherever I go.
The Great Has Been and The Ruined
By: Tre L. Loadholt
Tags: Swan Song, Music, Goodbyepsily, Poetry, Life

Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

Musical Selection: Queen|Another One Bites the Dust

The Great Has Been and The Ruined

An Audio Poem

Crack goes the whip and

every order or demand that

can break a camel's back —

thrown at us under a

noon day's sun and just

like that, the fun . . .

is done.

We've been asked to

pack our things, close

up shop, retire, put things

to bed and not wake up and

well, if you know us . . .

you know we're not going

quietly.

Funny how money can shift

a mountain of growth

or how it can sharpen

the hardest edges especially

when the underdogs begin to

climb too high.

The Powers That Be say,

“Drag them back down,”

and as we fall, they clap

and hoot and holler and

throw confetti in

the putrid air

juddering around their

safe spaces, laughing

at the marks we've made.

“It's been a nice run,”

they'll say.

“You've done well, but

we have other plans

in mind and you're not

in them,” and we knew

the hammer would come

down, it was only a

matter of time.

We were hanging on to

hope.

It's hard to say goodbye

to family, to friends.

We've built a castle,

invited the village, and made

merry with thousands, and

now . . . that castle is

being demolished.

Here comes the wrecking ball.

These walls are being Jerichoed

right before us

and there is no time

for tears, we must gather

our pride, tuck it neatly

alongside our egos, and zip

the contents up . . .

Shut it down.

I wish there was another

way of saying and I don't

want to go, but the great

has been and the ruined

are two different things and

I'm having trouble recognizing

which one we are.

Today is the first day

of not being angry or hurt

or sad because business

is business and when

business is business, words

do not matter.

I have nothing but love for this publication. As a writer, it is home to so many pieces of mine. As an editor, it was a place I shared in growing with others. To say that I will miss P. S. I Love You is an understatement. It is pressed deeply into my spirit and I will carry it with me forever. Peace and blessings, beautiful people. Thank you.

©2021 Tremaine L. Loadholt
If You Want to Have Sex, Listen
By: John Gorman
Tags: Love, Sex, Relationships, Self Improvement, Feminism

You want to know what the perfect partnership is? The perfect partnership mostly makes us feel safe, but sometimes thrills us. People enjoy feeling safe most of the time, and thrilled some of the time — yet only if we’re ready for it and wanting it.

I can expand on this further for you if you like, yet, since I’m the kind of long-winded prick who dropped a 327-minute read last week, of course I’ll continue.

The perfect partnership is actually four things:

Two people who really, really enjoy hanging out with each other. Two people who like each other the same amount. Two people who express their love for each other in the way the other prefers to receive it. Two people who enjoy fucking each other immensely.

That’s all we’re all looking for. Maybe that didn’t take. Let me frame it in something else we all crave besides, and even more than, sex: let’s use food as an example.

Imagine the perfect dish. It contains a flavor profile: Savory, salt, sweet, bright (sour, citrus), spice.

Two people who enjoy hanging out with each other? Well, you’d want to savor your time with them, no?

Ever over-salt a dish and it makes you recoil in disgust? That recoil is avoidant attachment. Ever under-salt a dish and wish it could be more than what it is? That’s anxious attachment. Secure lies in between … perfectly salted.

Ever express your love for someone in a way they prefer to receive it? Wow, that’s mighty sweet of you. Ever receive love from someone who expressed it in the way you wanted it? That’ll brighten your day. Sweet-and-sour.

Great sex? Guess what … that’s the spice.

That’s what we’re all after. That delicious, nutritious, satisfying recipe that you can make, and eat, over and over again — day after fucking day. And whether you’re a man, woman, transgender, intersex, queer, straight, bi, pan or really, really into Nickelback … that’s what we all want.

Only straight white males seem to have the audacity to write certain scrolls denying certain flavors to women (and, also, to men … since we don’t seem all that interested in securing a safe, loving partnership — at least on the Internet)— that’s not to say misogynoir isn’t a very real thing, or that there isn’t an epidemic of South Asian men committing domestic violence, but it’s not my place to speak on these, because if there’s only one cardinal rule for men like me, it’s to never punch down on the bullshit Colonial hierarchy of personhood. I acknowledge it, but, let’s be real: I’ve never read a seduction article written by anything other than by a white dude. And, yes, I’ve seen Hitch, but, let’s be real again: That’s not an actual how-to guide, I wasn’t taking notes, and that movie’s forgettable as fuck — all due to respect to Will Smith.
A Measure of Love and Grief
By: D Abboh
Tags: Love, Grief, Moments, Memoir, This Happened To Me

A thousand kisses

I hum a melody. Nostalgia pulls me in closer than lovers do, painting me over until I’m misty blue. I sing the hook ‘so kiss me…’ —on repeat in between more humming. I’m trying to retrieve the other lyrics that are hiding themselves in a dusty corner of my mind.

Just like that, I’m back in St Lucia watching the sun slip beneath the oceans waves. Its been a long time since my lungs were filled with air like that, clean air that I could breathe.

There I was with a sweet guy sitting beside me, his arm draped around my shoulder as electricity fizzed between us. In the distance, a sound system blares out the lyrics of that melody — ‘kiss me, beneath the milky twilight…’ —and I’m wishing that this islands son would hurry up and hear my body calling him on. Soon enough, I got my wish, over and over and over again.

We were two — twenty somethings, holding onto our own piece of paradise. Melting ice cubes across each others skin as the night simmered and we became part of its symphony. We threw our heads back and tried to stretch out every moment, counting backwards from infinity as we fell up to the moon.

Even though there is no such thing as us anymore and I never knew it at the time; we shared kisses and traded pieces of soul that would find a home of their own. A version of forever, beyond any measure of his or mine.
Early Signs They’re Not “The One” for You
By: Kelly Eden
Tags: Love, Online Dating, Dating, Relationships, Self Improvement

Early Signs They’re Not “The One” for You

Photo by Gian Cescon on Unsplash

It’s their second date and Sienna has her legs pulled up under her, a scowl on her face, and her full attention on her phone.

When Matt’s flat-mate arrives home the tension in the room is noticeable.

“I thought you were going out tonight?”

Matt rolls his eyes towards Sienna, sitting across the lounge from him. “She had a bad day.” He shrugs and his flat-mate offers a sympathetic nod.

Four weeks later, Sienna is still in a bad mood. Even a wrong look from Matt sets off an argument and sends their date into cold-war zone.

Matt’s friends could see from date number two that Sienna wasn’t the right girl for him, but it took him over a month to break it off. Like many of us, Matt is feeling lonely and, in his mid-twenties, he’s keen to find “the one.”

The problem is the longer you spend dating the wrong one, the more time you waste. But loneliness is hard, so you stay in relationships you know won’t last. You stay because they’re attractive. You stay because you’re worried there won’t be anyone else. You stay because you’re sick of being single. All the while missing out on opportunities to find a better match.

Give people a chance (first impressions aren’t always right!), but be aware of the early warning signs that your date is wrong for you:

Your Early Dates Turn Bad

We put our best selves on display in the first few months of dating. It’s not pretending to be someone you’re not. It’s a normal reaction to meeting any new person you want to be accepted by. We do it with new friends, bosses, workmates, or when meeting our partner’s family for the first time…

There’s a team development theory that calls this the “forming” stage in any new relationship. Everyone is a bit happier, friendlier, more polite and positive in this stage. When we like someone romantically, it’s supercharged. Just being near them puts us in a good mood and makes us want to be our best selves.

If you want to know if your date likes you, sexual psychophysiologist and neuroscientist, Nicole Prause, Ph.D. says you can tell by their behavior whether or not they’re feeling any chemistry.

Couples who are into each other laugh and smile more, sit close, and want to touch each other. They make more eye contact and even their voice changes pitch. This can last for months. Unless, that is, your date’s not feeling it.

Sienna wasn’t having a bad day, she just wasn’t feeling the chemistry with Matt. She didn’t care if she made a bad impression or not. Perhaps she was dating him for the same reasons he was dating her: loneliness.

Someone who feels chemistry with you will:
How to Make $17,000 a Month in Passive Income from Udemy Courses
By: Scott Stockdale
Tags: Passive Income, Remote Working, Work, Creativity, Marketing

1. Why Udemy?

Udemy is like YouTube, but instead of scattered content, teachers structure videos into courses. Many of these courses are priced at $59.99 or above. However, with Udemy’s year-round promotions, most sell for $9.99.

Anyone can upload a course, and if it sells, you get half the royalties. Udemy collects the other half in exchange for promoting your course. If you want to market courses yourself, you can use referral links and receive 100% of the profits from each sale.

As Louise pointed out to me, Udemy doing all the marketing is the best and worst thing. Here’s why.

Lots of online courses sell for hundreds of dollars, and these are often self-hosted. In other words, the course creator will have their own website, run Facebook ads, and deal with customers. This can bring more stress but potentially a greater reward.

The Udemy model, however, means you might sell courses at a much lower price point, but you also might sell a greater number of them.

“Which option is best depends on what your goals are,” says Louise. “Personally, I wanted my course income to be passive, and that's what Udemy gives me. I also want them to be mass market, and I enjoy that my courses are affordable to anyone in the world.”

Having created over 40 courses to date, it just so happens Louise gets the best of both worlds: Passive income and lots of it.
How to Get Your Startup’s First Customers
By: Aaron Dinin
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, Startup, Product Management

I was asked to speak with a group of entrepreneurs participating in a startup accelerator program. The person who invited me — the leader of the program — explained that all the companies had products, but most of them were struggling to get customers. He wanted me to give advice on how to acquire customers when first entering a market.

These types of struggles aren’t unusual. In fact, most startups follow the same pattern. They launch a product, can’t figure out how to sell it, and then fail. While it rarely feels good for the struggling entrepreneurs, it does help them learn an important lesson: “Just because you built something, it doesn’t mean anyone will use it.”

Unfortunately, I don’t have any tricks that can magically help startups get their first customers. However, I do know most startups make this same mistake, and it’s usually caused by the same issue. So I agreed to speak with the group and share my thoughts. A few days later, I was standing in front of the 100-ish founders in the program. I started my conversation with them by asking the following question:

“What factors influence a customer’s buying decision?”

Here were some of their answers:

Price

Quality

Features

Brand recognition

Reviews

Advice of friends

Research

Marketing/promotion

Past purchasing

I agreed with them. Everything they said was a relevant factor. I’m also sure they missed some, but, by and large, I think they got the big ones. So then I asked a follow-up question:

“Of those factors, which is most important for startups?”

The majority of people said price, while a minority of people congregated around features. Once they’d finished explaining their choices, I gave them my answer:

“You shouldn’t have been able to choose one,” I told them. “It’s a trick question. It depends on the kind of product you’re selling and who you’re selling to.”
BitClout: Is It a Scam or The Future?
By: Scott Stockdale
Tags: Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Technology, Bitclout, Content Strategy

BitClout: Is It a Scam or The Future?

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels

There’s tension in the world of BitClout.

With the price of $CLOUT plummeting, one critic posted the “BitClout Scam Is Falling Apart”.

But supporters of the platform are resolute in their defense. Some cite this graph as evidence.

All screenshots by author

Others point to Bitcoin’s early existence:

With this being said, I’m not here to bash BitClout. Nor am I here to defend it. I just want to share my findings.

I joined BitClout 47 days ago. I enjoy using the platform and post 3–5 times a day. It’s been fun making new connections.

However, I’m not emotionally attached. If the platform was to die today, so be it. I’m also not going to pretend I understand its development.

I’m just trying to look objectively from a content creator’s perspective.

Here’s how I see BitClout right now.

Quick Summary: What is BitClout?

According to the BitClout White Paper,

“BitClout is a new type of social network that lets you speculate on people and posts with real money, and it’s built from the ground up as its own custom blockchain. “Its architecture is similar to Bitcoin, only it can support complex social network data like posts, profiles, follows, speculation features, and much more... Like Bitcoin, BitClout is a fully open-source project and there is no company behind it — it’s just coins and code.”

Its design is similar to Twitter. However, unlike the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, BitClout is decentralized and fully open-source. There’s no company behind the platform.

This being said, there is a team of core developers. The leader of this group goes by the name of DiamondHands.

Creators can make money on BitClout in a number of ways. Here are the main four: