The Writer’s Dilemma

The upper office at Moose Lodge

I’ve been giving this idea a lot of thought lately as I've sat up at night reading posts on X (formerly Twitter). I spend long hours in my office working and switch between advisory work and writing. As I sit here, I ponder the writer’s dilemma that so many advisors and writers face.

To begin with, I've never chased stats when I write. I never think, "Wow, this will be popular!" I write what interests me, regardless of audience size, and I’m far more interested in connecting with people in the arena of ideas, even when we disagree. Sometimes what I write is very popular, and sometimes it's not. In fact, I often write in opposition to the status quo.

Sometimes I'll answer one question on Quora and it will have half a million views, and then I'll give a lot of thought to another answer and it will have only a few hundred. I probably care more about the answer that had so few views because, if you know me, what matters most is getting it right, even when ultimately I'm the one in error.

I have one underlying objective when I write, and that's to break things down into facts as much as I can while leaving room in case there is new information, proving that my thinking may have incomplete data and thus a flaw. For example, in business, my points of view have changed over time. In my early entrepreneur days, I mistakenly thought every employee could be saved and that nobody should ever get fired. Over time, I understood the greater mission and the responsibilities of any company, regardless of ownership, and how firing someone is to the benefit of those who remain. My views evolved; however, I still dislike having to fire anyone.

I sometimes feel like the odd man out when I write because too often I'm taking an opinion that runs counter to popular culture. Some may argue that I'm not changing with the times, when I'm using experience to argue that the idea doesn’t work and I’m explaining why from direct experience. People tend to believe what they want to believe. Right now, if you spend time on X, you'd believe that it’s in fact the seatbelt light that causes air turbulence because it always goes on before it hits. There is so little critical thinking about anything these days, and it's everywhere. This lack of critical thinking is both alarming and an opportunity at the same time. This is where it gets interesting.

There is a major upside when you buy a company where the core assumptions held by leadership are wrong. This is where Elon Musk has upside with X. Much of what leadership assumed about operating Twitter was in error prior to his acquisition. As an end user, the platform is much better.

When I'm on X, I seek out the opinions of contrarians because they are more interesting, and often they are right. This is where CEOs miss a massive opportunity. Talk to your critics. You don’t have to follow what they say, but hear them out. The last three companies I turned around all opposed my ideas until they worked. This is the writer's dilemma. It’s hard to find work unless people agree, and when they don’t, that's where opportunity often exists.

If I were to define a pattern in my readership, it has to do with ideas and readers who tend to think on the very edge of conventional thinking. That's where individuals hang out. It's where I live. We don’t write in the confines of mainstream and go-along-get-along thinking, because it's boring and it doesn’t change things for the better. It's not pushing the boundaries in any way. It would be like working out to the same routine and the same reps and then wondering why you're not advancing.

I’ve tested a theory that the more provocative the post on X, regardless of its stupidity, the more views it receives. It's that simple. I could gain massive popularity if I just said dumb enough stuff or just threw shit-posts at people. Some people do nothing but that all day. Look at what people watch on TikTok!

I have wonderful stats on the E@RTC blog site "Newsy," and it’s all because it's humor on the ragged edge of appropriate, and the humor is often innuendo, yet my readers get it. It’s why they keep growing, year after year. It’s difficult to write humor, and it doesn't write in real time. If I think of something funny, it may take me twenty minutes to turn the sentence into the right comic timing, or sometimes I have to let it sit to determine if I went over the line. A blog post there can take eight hours to write. Here, I can write a post in about an hour. On the E@RTC blog, I'll write something I think is funny, and an hour later, it’s not funny anymore, and I dump the sentence and start over.

It, too, is a constant balancing act between pushing ideas or following conventionally accepted norms. Do I want an authentic audience, or do I want everyone to like me? I'd rather be authentic with results any day.