What is your reaction?
Serenity now!
How do you react to things? seems like a simple question, but is actually a very good guiding principle for both the rigors and boredom of everyday life and work.
I can explain why I’m going all stoic freshman philosophy major on you. I recently did a guided meditation and the teacher said: “Your experience of the world will be the totality of your reaction to it, your judgment of it, your satisfaction or disappointment with it.” Your reaction to it really resonated with me. And because this is a small business newsletter, it felt very relevant to life here at Three Point Four Media. We onboarded a new client earlier this month. Two weeks into the project, some things changed. Pretty drastically. Not necessarily negative, but the scope of work and responsibilities changed in a way that could have nuked the project for either side. But the Three Point Four lads reacted calmly and with solutions. We made it work. We’re back on track. Everyone’s happy. That’s the Three Point Four Media experience of the world.
Even keeled here at TPF. Onto the links.
An article
I’ve always been fascinated by skateboarding, but too clumsy, risk averse, and accident prone to try it. I broke my collarbone cross country skiing; the last place I belong is on a skateboard near concrete ledges. So I really enjoyed this Times Magazine story about recreating a legendary Philly skate spot in Malmo, Sweden, that is also a meditation on aging, urban planning, and municipal parks departments.
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A project
We just wrapped up a big messaging project. Over the years, we’ve done more and more work that isn’t public facing but is still all about storytelling. This project involved working with the principals at Acumen America to redefine their story. We boiled it down to four key messaging points, each supported by a succinct story you could tell at a cocktail party, relevant statistics, and successes from their portfolio companies. They now have a living document (we’ll continue to evolve it as the company and story changes) employees can reference ahead of calls, conferences, events, and potential interviews with the press. It’s good to have your story codified.
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A pitch deck
We’ve made it known how we feel about the pitch deck (necessary evil, a format that is familiar to some and foreign to others), but duty calls and we updated ours. You can download it here. Send it to your friends (and enemies, if you think they could use our services).
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A playlist
Some old stuff, some new stuff, all fall adjacent. Listen if you like: Stacking firewood, what playoff baseball does to your blood pressure, the smell of decomposing leaves in the forest in late October, music created in a lab for a straight white male in his 40s.
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A motel
I went to a wedding in the Catskills last weekend and stayed at the lovely Roscoe Motel, which was the subject of a recent TPF Q&A with its proprietor
. Roscoe (the town, not the motel) is a terrific little fishing village on the Beaver Kill River. I highly recommend the Roscoe Motel, not just because Rachael is a friend. It’s affordable, right on the river, crystallized in time (see: phone booth above), and has everything you need (air conditioning, a fridge for beer and cold brew, view of the river).***
A basketball game
I played basketball for the first time in 25 years at the aforementioned wedding (Garmin has a basketball feature, does a physical activity really happen if it’s not on Strava?). When I mentioned to Noah I was slated for a big game of hoops he texted me, “why god why” (see: “clumsy, risk averse, and accident prone”). My big fear was some sort of catastrophic non-contact injury, like an achilles tear trying to grab a rebound I have no chance at. I phoned a friend who is a professional basketball coach and he provided some sound advice: “Activate! And take it easy. Don’t try to do too much. Spot up. Two-to-three dribble limits and pass.” I took his coaching tips and got in a healthy dynamic warm-up and moved the ball around a lot. I got destroyed in the paint by my cousin who is a real athlete, but my ligaments survived.
Another Q&A for you next weekend, in the meantime a fantastic interview about the state of documentary filmmaking with Andrew Helms.
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