Devon Anderson’s Career Journey

Cornelius McGrath: So, Devon, really appreciate you joining us guys today; we’ve got Devon Anderson from Farnam Street. I really appreciate you jumping on. I’m afraid he’s in a much warmer climate than I am, but we’re both rocking our FS thinking caps, which is pretty dope. So, Devon, you are a man of mystery in many ways.

Cornelius McGrath: Couldn’t find much about you [00:03:00] online. I’ve seen an incredible amount of content from you guys at Farnam Street. We’re just talking right here. It seems like you’ve had a pretty unique career. Always been an entrepreneur. I’ve always been doing my own thing. Can you give me and the audience a bit of context on where you started, how you met Shane and how this whole Farnam Street thing got started?

The Evolution of Farnam Street

Devon Anderson: Yeah. The real quick version of the story is I wanted to do my own thing. I started a window cleaning business in high school. And I did some tour guiding in Las Vegas for Japanese tourists. I speak Japanese. So, for about a year and a half, I did tours throughout Las Vegas and all of the surrounding parks there, like Grand Canyon and Zion’s.

Devon Anderson: And things like that. So that was a blast. And then, after that, I just went from one thing to another. I was always interested in advertising and marketing and found myself in several different industries a lot of different sales. types of jobs. And I just really enjoyed that.

Devon Anderson: I don’t [00:04:00] necessarily love sales very much, but I really love person to person connection. And that’s always been the, I guess, the common denominator and everything that I’ve done. I just really like people and then I did an event. Called tough guy. In England. I don’t know, are you familiar with it?

Cornelius McGrath: Yeah. I know Tough Mudder. That’s separate, right?

Devon Anderson: No. Tough Guy is what started it all. Tough Guy is run by a guy in a little town outside of Wolverhampton. And yeah, he’s just this crazy madman. An old guy who’s been doing this crazy mud run every winter for the last 20, 30 years, however long it’s been.

Devon Anderson: Anyway, the short version of the story is I did that event. I totally fell in love with it. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. It’s not like a tough mudder or anything like that. Like it’s ratcheted up big time., it’s done in January. So, it’s really cold, and it’s just look it up.

Devon Anderson:  It’s at the seat anyway. So, I fell in love with that, and I wanted to do something like that in the States. This was before Tough Mudder and [00:05:00] Spartan and all these other companies. The short version of the story is I worked on some things with his name Billy Wilson to try to bring to the States.

Devon Anderson: And at that time about, it was around that same time, all of these other events started popping up, and I started a, an event called cahoots, which was an event we did here in Phoenix and then I got involved with, I’m a big fan of electric run and some of these other big types of fun run types of things.

Devon Anderson: I really enjoyed that space for a while. And I did that for several years and I did some consulting on some other events like that. Yeah. And then, yeah, the climate changed, and I got tired of that space. I think a lot of regulation and things like that kind of changed. What the future of the sport looked like or at least in that space.

Devon Anderson: So, I shifted back towards marketing and sales, and that took me into copywriting. I started copywriting for a handful of companies, and I ended up writing for Ramit Sethi Ramit [00:06:00] introduced me to Shane, and about that time, Shane was mentioning to Ramit that he was looking for a full-time copywriter and marketing guy.

Devon Anderson: And I had been reading Farnam Street for a little while at that time. So, I knew Farnam; I knew about Farnam Street. I hadn’t known much about Shane, but yeah, we hopped on a phone call. We chatted for just. I don’t even think we talked for an hour and in that time, I just really felt like this is where I wanted to be.

Devon Anderson: I really love what we do at Farnam Street. Shane is an incredible guy to work for. And yeah, I don’t know, I, that kind of brings us to where we are today. I’ve been there for about two years now.

The Art of Copywriting

Cornelius McGrath: So talk to me, how do you think about the role of a copywriter? We always hear about the wonderful writers, and the authors behind the books, but there’s an amazing team that goes into this process.

Cornelius McGrath: One that I think you guys documented really well in this. But if we can focus on your role for a second and what it means to be a copywriter at Farnam Street, like how do you think about what you do?

The Unique Approach of Farnam Street

Devon Anderson: The [00:07:00] thing I love about being a copywriter at Farnam Street is that Shane and I have a very way of communication; how we want to communicate to people is very aligned.

Devon Anderson: What I mean by that there are a lot of copywriters and a lot of copywriting positions. And frankly, that I could. I could be writing in and writing for companies. I could be writing about that. They don’t, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of a tactful way to say this. Farnam Street is very, we’re not about the churn and burn.

Devon Anderson: You know what I mean? There’s a lot of copywriting philosophies out there that the idea is just completely revenue-based. It’s let’s get as many people in the top of the funnel and squeeze them out. Use a lot of scarcity, use a lot of. Pressure tactics to scare people into buying something or to make them feel like this is their last chance to change their life.

Devon Anderson: You know what I mean? And there’s a lot of ways that you can do that. There are a lot of companies that I guess, right that way [00:08:00] and treat their customers that way. Farnam Street is, has always taken the long approach, which is. One of the reasons why I wanted to work here and work with Shane particularly is because if you listen in on any of the conversations with Shane, he’s very much not about maximizing whatever we’re doing right now for the dollar today.

Devon Anderson: Like he, he talks about five-year, 10-year timelines. Nobody does that, right? He talks about Farnam Street being a major media brand in the future where people can learn about mental models and change their lives in a meaningful way. So we’re not just looking to find a customer today and then throw them out and find another customer tomorrow. And then we try to reflect that in our communication with our readership.

Cornelius McGrath: And does the same mentality exist with the team? So like the internal team?

Devon Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Cornelius McGrath: Because it makes so much sense, right? Of build a community, build a family, people who understand one another at a [00:09:00] certain level and monetize, but build a brand over 10, 15, 20 years.

Cornelius McGrath: But especially in the writing world of today, where a lot of writings unpaid. Operates for the New York Times pay 120 bucks a go. And the only real monetization strategy outside of that is ad revenue, which is just completely flawed in certain ways. So, I’m interested as you guys think about what it is that’s so unique about Farnam Street.

Cornelius McGrath: There’s one piece, its longevity, and I certainly feel that in the sense that you’re not trying to teach people how to speed read, it’s realizing value over the 25 years. But the second thing is just also your content is really damn good. So how, what’s your process there? I’m fascinated by that.

Cornelius McGrath: I know it must take a shit ton of time to produce something like this and also put out the weekly newsletter and everything that comes with it. So, what’s your and Shane’s process from a content curation perspective?

Devon Anderson: From content. I’m not taking any credit for the content. In my writing, I specifically deal with [00:10:00] strategy, and when we have launches or any type of sales emails or anything like that’s my domain- the domain of content.

Devon Anderson: And even that book is largely Shane and Another team member, brilliant writer Rhiannon, I don’t know if I don’t know if we’ve mentioned her from time to time. I know that she’s you’ll see her name when you buy the book on Amazon, but yeah, she deserves a ton of credit as well.

Devon Anderson: She is a brilliant thinker and an integral part of the team as far as the content is concerned. Between Shane and Reed, that’s where most of the content from the blog and the content in the book comes from. I’m very much more of messaging and positioning.

Devon Anderson: I’m consulting in that regard; we’ll look at some of the content and just make sure that the flow is good and that it’s I don’t know, easy to consume and things like that. But as far as like the content of the ideas and the writing, it’s those two completely; I’m not going to take any credit for that.

Cornelius McGrath: Got it. I did [00:11:00] see Rhea online. Is she a Brit, by any chance?

Devon Anderson: No, she’s a, she’s Canadian.

Cornelius McGrath: She’s Canadian because I saw she attended two British universities. So I was wondering if there might be a connection there.

Devon Anderson: She and Shane are in Ottawa.

Cornelius McGrath: That’s awesome. So, talking about messaging and positioning and making sure things are simple, what does that mean?

Cornelius McGrath: The book reads it beautifully, right? There might be some complex ideas in there. But it’s still down in a really beautiful way. So I’m interested in how is it that you position something, make it simple, make it consumable, even the email that announced the book. I was rereading that today.

Cornelius McGrath: It was clearly a lot of time spent framing that. And I love how you just eliminated this huge bureaucratic process of people ordering more than fine books. And By just saying, Hey, we trust you guys. So I just love those. Could you bring me into that? And the whole, the pre-release of the physical copy for Amazon, I think that’s fascinating.

The Launch of Farnam Street’s Debut Book 

Devon Anderson: Yeah. What do you want to jump into first?

Cornelius McGrath: I’m sorry. I ask a ton of questions. Whatever [00:12:00] you feel like is best.

Devon Anderson: As far as clarity in the book, we had an awesome team, and we had obviously Reed and Shane but there was a design team. There was a great editor.

Devon Anderson: We had a lot of good help. We had an idea of what wanted it to look like. And again, when I say we when it comes to the process of this book, I don’t want to take a ton of credit. Like, I gave some ideas, I popped in from time to time and produced some notes in the Google doc, but man, I tell you, we had a great team to make sure that that the look of it was right.

Devon Anderson: The feel of it was right. And when it all came together, we all knew that it was going to be a special thing. It’s, it is, it’s gorgeous. Shane’s had several people comment and say, Man. I think he even posted one on Twitter the other day that’s from a publisher who’s done a ton of books.

Devon Anderson: And it’s, man, I got to really rethink design when I see this book because it really is a thing of beauty. And the content is really good as well. And I think that’s the main thing is the content and how it’s [00:13:00] changing people and the way that they look at the world and the way that they.

Devon Anderson: They interpret the things that they see in the world. So what this book does is it covers the it’s the grey mental models, and then it’s the general thinking concept. So it covers nine mental models that we feel have the most universal application across most situations. You can apply these nine thinking tools or mental models, and you’re going to make better decisions.

Devon Anderson: It’s going to improve your outcome, whatever your outcome, whatever outcome you’re looking for, applying these nine filters of these nine tools to the way that you think and the way that you look at the world is going to improve that outcome. So that’s what we believe. That’s why we think these books are important. This is the first of five.

Cornelius McGrath: And yeah, so completely sold out at this point, right? You completely sold.

Devon Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. We did a limited run, and maybe we should have done more. We’re seeing that now. Cause, we did a limited run just because we are self-published, which means we paid for everything [00:14:00] upfront.

Devon Anderson: And when the book came out, we, we did 3000 of them at first, and we thought, Let’s make them available to our learning community first, and the timeline of this is tricky because we self publish, there’s so many times That the release date got shifted and late last year, we promised the learning community.

The Trust Between Farnam Street and Its Community

Devon Anderson: And this is, this kind of leads into a little bit of how we did what we did, why we did what we did, I guess is a better way to say it towards the end of the of last year, we told the learning community what we were that this book was coming out and that we were going to make it available to them before we made it available to anybody else.

Devon Anderson: And for those of you, maybe who don’t know, the learning community is a private community. I believe you remember, correct? So it’s a private community where we dive into the concepts a little bit deeper, and it’s more of a community to help each other.

Devon Anderson: Talk about things books that we read help, maybe sharpen up our tools, our methods. So [00:15:00] we told the learning community, and I don’t know if you remember this, but we made a big deal about it towards the end of last year because we thought that it was going to be released around November of last year. We thought that it would be a great Christmas present.

Devon Anderson: And then, we ran into some hiccups that postponed the release of the book. And so when we finally did have a new release date. Two things happened. The first was that we sold the audio rights to the book, and in doing that, we were prohibited from selling any other form of the book for six months.

Devon Anderson: They had six months of exclusivity. So, after that happened, we had a conundrum because the learning community and you mentioned this in your email, or when you referenced the email, we, we have a really good relationship with our community members, and that’s something that we really take seriously.

Devon Anderson: We want to hold onto it; we don’t want to do anything to [00:16:00] damage that relationship. So having a six-month exclusivity meant that we couldn’t sell the hardcover book for six months. So the idea was, can we find a loophole that will still allow us to get into the hands of the learning community so we don’t have to break a promise to them?

Devon Anderson: And still, keep our word that we wouldn’t sell anything for six months outside of the audiobook. So what we did is we made the book available for free for anybody who bought the digital copy, whether it was a Kindle pre-order or an audiobook, and then we would send the book and it’s sold out in two days, maybe.

Devon Anderson: Yeah, we sent the email, and then they were gone. And so we thought that we were doing a good thing. We hope that we still think that we did a good thing, but yeah, we ran out of supply so fast. There were some people who were understandably a little upset that they didn’t get their hands on a book. [00:17:00]

Cornelius McGrath: But it sounds like this is going to be the first of maybe a few. And there’s also an element of when you do create demand like that, it does leave people wanting more. Like you’ve had a bite, and you want to go a bit further.

Devon Anderson: It’s funny because we got a handful of emails. More than a few where, and this is what’s interesting when you talk about, like earlier on in the conversation, we were talking about what makes us different and the ethos of Farnam Street and how we treat our customers and our readers and just the way that we do our messaging, it was really interesting because people are like, okay we know that this was just.

Devon Anderson: A marketing ploy, okay, you got us, you sold out, and when can I get my book? You know what I mean? I’m like, no, seriously, we really did sell out. And so many people thought it was just a marketing ploy, just like false scarcity. And when we said that this is how many we’ve got, and we’re selling these books and when they’re gone because I think most people their inboxes are filled with that kind of messaging.

Devon Anderson: All of this false scarcity it’s a really popular thing [00:18:00] in copywriting and in marketing; if you and it’s effective, don’t get me wrong. It’s an effective way to sell something. If you say, you only, we only have this many, available, then people are going to, people are going to act, but it’s funny because people are also conditioned nowadays, you don’t really mean it.

Devon Anderson: When you say there’s only. However, many left most companies don’t really mean that, you see all of these. Sign up now to get this eBook; there are only 5,000 copies. It’s really, it’s a digital, it’s a digital product, and there’s only 5,000 of them.

Devon Anderson: So, the type of messaging that we wanted to do was, it has always been very honest and full of integrity. So it’s funny to us that people think that we’re pulling their leg. And we say no, this is legitimate. When we say that we have 3000 to sell when they’re gone. , that’s really what’s happening.

Cornelius McGrath: I think that picks up on a pretty powerful point, which is the trust you’ve built with your reader. Whether that’s a paying member or not. And to go to the pre-release where you said, Hey, you can just order one, we’ll comp it, and you just paid for shipping.

Cornelius McGrath: You just said to [00:19:00] people like, please don’t. break the trust. And I probably would have expected a lot of other people in that position to have spent a ton of money creating a hugely bureaucratic and complicated process to ensure that people didn’t do that. Whereas you guys just save yourselves all the time and just said, we trust you.

Cornelius McGrath: Don’t do this. And it’s incredible, I would call it, it’s a big, incredible technique that reminded me of something that Darren Ehrlich talks about a lot, which is those ideas of if you reiterate trust through an honour code, or you have people read the Bible and the Ten Commandments, they’re way less likely to cheat.

Cornelius McGrath: And you guys nailed that, right? In this sense, I could have gone and ordered 20 books. And again, you’re right; there were repercussions if you would never have this membership again. But I love the fact that you just said, hey, we trust you guys. You’re almost like family. Just take one each. And I’m just interested; I don’t wanna, maybe you can’t talk about it, but I’m assuming there was no abuse of that system.

Devon Anderson: I don’t know we didn’t do as [00:20:00] much of an audit. Maybe we said we would, but I think the line in there is the line in the email that you’re referring to. And I think we said something like if we can’t trust you, who can we trust and we really believe that.

Devon Anderson: This is our inner circle. It’s our inner community. And we really do want it, want people to look at it like a family. And so for us to put this big process in place where we can catch people. The hat that you’re wearing was from a promotion we did sometime last year, right?

Devon Anderson: It was just a gift that we wanted to give to our learning community members. And and we just asked, Hey, you pay shipping. We’ll cover the cost of the hat. You just want to send it to you. We had a couple of abuses of that. There were a few, and we asked them; in that situation as well, we said, please don’t order more than one.

Devon Anderson: We understand that you can, we understand you can game the system if you want to and you can, you can take advantage of us. But no, there were very few, but like a small handful. Not enough to make; it’s disappointing, [00:21:00] sure. But it’s not enough to make a big deal about it every time we do something like this; we really do believe that, on the whole, learning community members want to be the kind of people that, you know, that we believe each other are we. There’s a quote I heard a long time ago. The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust them.

Devon Anderson: Now, of course, they can; it’s up to that individual whether they’re going to violate that or not. But yeah, we really do believe that it’s not just a show that we’re saying, let’s give them a little bit of guilt, and then maybe they’ll act the way we want them to, but yeah.

Farnam Street’s Independence from the News Cycle

Cornelius McGrath: So, one of the things, and you talked about this earlier that I love about Farnam Street, is just your independence from the news cycle. Just complete, sheer, utter independence from the news cycle. And it’s not to say that Shane’s power, Shane’s podcast with Howard Marks, when it wasn’t re-released and sent out an email an opportune time, like you guys clearly had your pulse on what’s happening.

Cornelius McGrath: So much of what I’ve seen in terms of the content curation and charging around content curation has been, Hey, come take this tiny course, this tiny piece, [00:22:00] and then we’ll keep splitting it up over time, and we’ll charge you incrementally. for each piece. I personally feel like the final street model is these things are going to take decades to understand.

Cornelius McGrath: Okay. We’re going to give you the most in-depth version possible so we can provide most value, but we encourage you to study and keep coming back for more. And it works; it’s the complete opposite of false scarcity, as you said because you’re actually curating depth with the consumer and saying, Hey, forget speed reading.

Cornelius McGrath: This is actually how you remember what you read. ─ Like that, to me, is fascinating. And I think so much of the value that you guys have is that you’re so independent from this content machine that we’re just filled with on Twitter, right? Donald Trump did this, Theresa May sneezed; it’s just so reactionary.

Cornelius McGrath: And you guys have this longevity; it’s like the space and haven of when you sit down to that newsletter when you read that book, you feel like you’re peering into the future, and there’s nothing else around. Like that, I’m sure that’s got to come into your world of like positioning and messaging, I get there’s  [00:23:00] content piece, but how is it that you create that, Debra? How do you and the team create that?

The Importance of Timeless Information

Devon Anderson: No, for sure. If you think about, if you think about what’s really important, like you just said, you can spend a day, you can, and we’ve all done this, right? Where you go to check something on Facebook or something, and then you like fall into some rabbit hole, and then two hours later, you come out, and you’re like, I don’t know anything more than I did two hours ago. Like it’s all just useless information.

The Guiding Principles of Farnam Street

Devon Anderson: One of the things that’s one of guiding principles of Farnam Street is that information is timeless. What information can somebody read 10 years from now, 20 years from now, and it’s still going to matter? It’s still going to improve their life.

Devon Anderson: And it’s still gonna, cause if you’re going to spend time, information right now, there’s so much of it, right? It’s information overload. You can learn literally anything about anything with a couple, a couple of clicks. So at Farnam Street, everything that we do, we, we want to ask that question is [00:24:00] this:

Devon Anderson: is this information that is still going to be relevant down the road, and is it really going to make a difference?

Creating Content with Long-Term Relevance

Devon Anderson: So yeah, so the courses that we create and the content that we put out, everything that we do at Farnam Street, we want it to have. We want it to matter, not just today, but in five years and 10 years, because if you’re going to spend your time, if you’re gonna invest your time in learning something, you’re gonna invest your time in reading and getting deep into some of these topics.

Devon Anderson: You want that time to be well spent, right? You want it to have a return on your investment. You don’t want to spend all that time reading something that’s going to be obsolete in three weeks, right? Or a year, two years, five years, whatever. So as long as you know that the information that we’re putting out, people can read it.

Devon Anderson: They can learn it. They can trust. If I. But if I invest my time in this, it’s only going to improve my thinking. It’s going to improve my life. It’s going to improve my overall happiness and the kind of purpose I get out of my life. That’s I don’t know if that answers your question.

The Power of Mental Models

Cornelius McGrath: [00:25:00] But it really does, and I think there’s an exit velocity to the content, right? Not in that I read this blog post, and I can go and do a thousand of these. It’s much more gradual, right? It is I read a blog about how to think about the world or how to think about the specific thing women finance. And it’s more than just a list of mental models.

Cornelius McGrath: That’s why I want to dive into the book. It’d be easy to think that this is just going to list it does weigh more than that, right? It connects it to examples. It ultimately ponds the questions. And like you said, it’s very; you choose like you, the consumer have to be intelligent enough to figure out what’s going to carry the bulk of the weight for you there.

Cornelius McGrath: And I love that concept of you still leave some of the work to be done by the reader. But you do open up the doors and say, hey, here’s the sandbox to play.

The Role of Reader in Learning

Devon Anderson: And that’s a good insight because we try not to be prescriptive in anything; we try not to say this is the way to think about this, but this is the way that you should do this.

Devon Anderson: It really is. It’s an introduction [00:26:00] to an idea, and then we invite the reader to explore that idea and how it might apply in their life. Cause it’s going to be different for other people as well. Every, especially when you think of mental models, like everybody is still going to take, even if it’s the same mental model, it’s going to colour what they see differently.

Devon Anderson: Because we’re all. Looking at reality through our own lived experience. So, it’s, we all have a different lens that we’re looking at the world through anyway. So, we’re not ever going to be able to; everybody looks through the same lens the same way, right? So, the mental models are going to color the way that we view the world differently. So, it shouldn’t be prescriptive.

The Legacy of Books

Cornelius McGrath: And this idea of the books you’ll never get rid of. Again, it’s a legacy play, right? You want something to come out. And again, I think you’re right. It’s indicative of the design, but it’s also indicative of what’s inside. I’m like, that’s it. That’s an extremely thing and tough thing to do.

Cornelius McGrath: So, like when you went, and you got Morgan from the school of life, you bought in the [00:27:00] design agency, and everybody from there was that really for your extension of. Hey, we’ve been messaging and positioning this thing for several years now around being more than just an email newsletter.

Cornelius McGrath: And actually, we realized that to stand out in this row of books, you can probably see behind me, this thing not only has to be good on the inside, but it has to be good on the outside.

The Importance of Design in Content Creation

Devon Anderson: I don’t think it was it has to be good on the outside. I think everyone wanted it to be good on the outside; I don’t think that it was so we could sell more books or so we could do anything like that. I think we just wanted something that everybody was going to be completely proud of.

Devon Anderson: And yeah, so obviously, the aesthetics of the book play into that. We like the way that I imagined this book; if you need to burn your books to keep warm, things get so bad.

Devon Anderson: Things get so bad that we have to start burning their books to keep warm. This one, when you get down to it, you just curl up with it and die cause you’re not tearing the pages out of that book. And that’s obviously, that’s a little extreme, but that’s the way that [00:28:00] we want to talk about it.

Devon Anderson: Like internally when we’re making some of these decisions, so yeah, of course the design and everything plays into that, but it was much more yeah, we’re super proud of the inside as well as the outside, and that’s, that was, I don’t think that it was ever like a conscious decision like, Hey, let’s make the outside look this way so we can X, Y, Z.

Devon Anderson: I think it was just like how does this. How can we make every part of this book reflect how we feel and the ethos of Farnam Street? Yeah, so that’s what came up.

The Balance Between Self-Help and Providing Value

Cornelius McGrath: Devon, my final two questions. I want to be conscious of your time. So, I’m interested, do you see, you talk about helping people, do you see that this is clearly much deeper though than a self-help book, right? Like it’s not, I see it as more of a guide in my opinion than a. How to do this. So how do you strike that line between not being generic and self-help but providing value at the time?

Devon Anderson: I think it goes back to the idea of being prescriptive. I think there are a lot of [00:29:00] self-help books that, that say, Hey, this is the answer to your problem. And I don’t think that problems I don’t know. I think that by giving people the tools. It’s the whole teach a man to fish thing, right?

Devon Anderson: By giving people, the tools and different lenses to look at the world, I think the problems in a lot of cases, they solve themselves. Rather than trying to be brilliant at solving problems, you’re really good at avoiding problems in the first place. And I think that with the proper mental models, that’s the outcome.

Devon Anderson: And so, I don’t know if that answers your question, but I remember the first time I came across this is before I started reading Farnam Street; I read Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. And I remember as I was reading that being so blown away by just human folly, right?

Devon Anderson: Now, at an intellectual level, we all understand that we all understand that we do that, but as I was [00:30:00] reading the book, I was like, wow, that’s me. And that’s me. And that’s me. So I started recognizing myself in a lot of these biases where before it was like something that other people suffered from, right?

Devon Anderson: Like I knew that these cognitive biases, especially in marketing and copywriting, that was something that I particularly liked to study. And and you put elements of that in, in your writing. So yeah, I was aware of them, but I think when I read Kahneman, that was the first time that I saw myself in them.

Devon Anderson: And I think the same thing happens with these mental models. Like I think as you study mental models you start to see the impact, not only the impact that they can have in your life if you apply them, but the consequences. That will occur if you don’t. It really is like pulling the shades up off your eyes in a lot of ways.

Devon Anderson: I think that we see the world so black and white in so many ways that allow us to see. Nuance and allowing you to look at a problem from multiple angles changes everything, right?

The Power of Perspective and Understanding

Cornelius McGrath: It’s like the [00:31:00] moving it’s like a moving telescope of sorts, right? Or I’m blanking on the word right now, but when you put a little slab of bacteria, right? They need the cloud scope, whatever it is. And you’re looking on those different lenses, but it’s almost like you’ve got a 360 rotation on either side, you’re not just looking from a depth standpoint, but you’ve got some perspectives of the left and right.

The Impact of Mental Models on Personal Growth

Devon Anderson: It’s like looking at a problem through a keyhole or opening the door. It’s if you want to explain to me what’s in a room and you got to do it through a keyhole or I allow you to open the door, which is going to allow you to give me a better description of what’s in the room. Yeah. And I think that. Yeah, I think a lot of people go through life looking through the keyhole, and they don’t know that the door is unlocked; all they got to do is open it.

Devon Anderson: And that’s what the mental models, I think, allow people to do. I don’t think people, a lot of people, understand the power of that. So yeah, when we say this is a book that we want you to. The last book that you’ll, that you’ll ever get rid of. I don’t think that it’s just hype talk.

Devon Anderson: I think that Farnam Street, we really believe that. I think that we [00:32:00] believe in the power of mental models, and we believe the power of changing the way that you view the world; I think that it has the potential to completely change your life.

Defining Success and Value in Content Creation

Cornelius McGrath: My final question is going to be a three-part question. I know you got to go. Your favorite mental model and why, and then where is? How do you guys define success? Maybe it’s a bad question, but like how do you think about what we did today was valuable, right? What we created did make a difference. Like I’m really interested in how you guys think about those two things.

Devon Anderson: My favourite mental model. It’s a tough one. A lot of times, the mental models, I think once you really started getting into them, they just become the way that you look at things. So you don’t really say, no, now I’m

Cornelius McGrath: I’ll come to raise it. Yeah.

Devon Anderson: But I think with people, especially with relationships, I recognize, I don’t know, maybe Hanlon’s razor that I can be a lot [00:33:00] more patient with people when you realize that people aren’t out to get you and they’re not doing things maliciously, but it’s probably just a misunderstanding. I think that alone can can solve a lot of problems. If people would learn to look at people through that lens that this person did this thing, not to slight me.

Devon Anderson: They were most likely completely unaware that it offended me in one way or the other. Do you know what I mean? It’s really a matter of perspective. We don’t often look at other people’s perspectives and look to consider what they were thinking at the time why they did a thing.

Devon Anderson: So there’s actually a funny story if you want to hear it about that. Not too long ago, I was coming out of a grocery store. And I had my car remote in my hand, and I had a bag of groceries. And as I approached my car, there was this lady standing in the, front of the car, and she was too close to the car for comfort.

Devon Anderson: You know what I mean? Like, I didn’t know why she was looking at it, and it was just a little bit weird. [00:34:00] So I get in my car, and I set the groceries down, and I’m looking at her through the windshield, and she’s. And she’s staring at me, just giving me this look, and I, I don’t understand what she wants money.

Devon Anderson: What is she? I didn’t understand what she was doing. So, I’m just keeping my eye on her getting ready to go. And her stare is just super intense. So I’m thinking, should I open the door? Do I ask her what’s going on? Is she wants something? Is she in trouble? But it was like this mixture of confusion and fear in her eyes.

Devon Anderson: And then I looked down at the floor, and I noticed that my gym bag is gone, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, did she steal my gym bag? And then I looked up, and I noticed that the past that I used to get into the gym is not hanging on my rear-view mirror anymore. So now I’m like, Now I’m going on the defence. Whoa, she’s, I think she just broke into my car and stole a bunch of stuff.

Devon Anderson: And then I looked down, and I noticed that my [00:35:00] upholstery was a different colour, that I was, in fact, in her car ──━ and ━─ terrified. She just thought that I was just showing up. Like as brazen as a guy can be, I could just get in the car, and that’s gonna, yeah, I’m stealing your car. What are you going to do about it? So the timing was just crazy. We have the exact same car, the exact same colour.

Devon Anderson: She had already unlocked her car. So by the time I got there, it was already unlocked. So I thought that my. My remote, so all of these misunderstandings, and I got out, and I look at her, and I’m like, this is your car, isn’t it? And she’s yeah, so I’ve apologized. And, but I just think it’s so funny that like little things like that happen all the time on smaller scales, where we’re always inferring intentions.

Devon Anderson: People’s actions like someone’s doing something, and we think they’re doing it because of this reason or they’re doing it because of that reason. And there might just be, they might just be really stupid at the moment, or they might [00:36:00] not be aware that it’s affecting you that way.

Devon Anderson: So anyway, I think that would probably be one that if I could teach the world this thing, that would be one that, that I think would be very useful for mankind.

Cornelius McGrath: That’s absolutely awesome. And the final quick round. How do you guys think about value? How do you know you’re leaving the world a better place than when you arrived?

Cornelius McGrath: Like, how, as a team, do you think about it? It’s clearly not views, right? It’s clearly not, the number of times we’re COVID here. It’s something deeper. I really want to start to uncover what that might be.

Devon Anderson: That, that’s a really good question. We don’t do any advertising. We don’t do any ads, nothing. No, we don’t do anything. And we’ve talked about that. We’ve talked about like the level of growth that we think is. Is optimal for where our goals are.

Devon Anderson: We don’t want to grow too quickly. But we also don’t want to attract the wrong type of person. You know what I mean? There’s this delicate balance right now, particularly in the learning community and the people that read our newsletter.

Devon Anderson: [00:37:00] We get, I don’t know. I, we’re growing at a healthy enough pace right now that we feel like the things that we’re doing are right. So our open rates are really high. Our engagement is really high. The types of comments that we get are great.

Devon Anderson: When we ask for engagement, we usually get some really healthy engagement from our audiences; yeah, I don’t know, like it’s a very unsatisfactory answer. Probably we watched some of those growth metrics, and that’s a hard one, too, right? Because I don’t know that we would if our growth slowed down, I don’t know that we would immediately say, oh, things are broken.,

Devon Anderson: We’ve got to change our model. Because I think, for the most part, what we’re doing is working. And what we’re trying to do now is just find other ways to engage with people and make the content more accessible in different ways. So obviously, there’s the podcast, the knowledge project, there’s the learning [00:38:00] community.

Devon Anderson: There’s the blog. We do rethink workshops, where we. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a.

Cornelius McGrath: I haven’t. No, I would love to go.

The Power of Community in Learning

Devon Anderson: Yeah, so twice a year, we have these workshops where we talk about some of these mental models in the scope of decision-making and innovation. And so yeah, so we’re constantly looking for new ways to make our content and the things that we talk about on the blog more accessible and other areas and other avenues that people can consume it at their own preference and in a way that is, is best for them and more convenient. Yeah, I don’t know. Does that help?

Cornelius McGrath: No, it’s great. I think it’s; I think it’s, I think it’s a tough answer, right? I think it’s an answer that everybody’s trying to figure out. And I think the media company I think most close to you is the Players Tribune.

Cornelius McGrath: In the sense that they started creating first-person content around athletes that was independent of the news cycle. And was things that nobody else would talk about. And the revenue model. Is it completely different? It’s founded on athlete contributions. All right. They did move to ads eventually, but I think that’s the question right now is, what is that modern-day media [00:39:00] company that is trying to strike that delicate balance of monetizing relationships and community?

Cornelius McGrath: But also building something that’s sustainable, and there’s an element that’s free and is reach-oriented. But you guys also seem to have a pretty healthy group of people like myself who want to part ways with a lot of money compared to other things. And I would say that my Farnam subscription.

Cornelius McGrath: It’s, I can’t even quantify the ROI, which is part of the issue of the provider. But but I think that’s a good question and like an exciting question and shouldn’t be seen negatively. But, maybe I think you guys might be some of the first to figure it out cause you’re on the edge of that, and you’re pushing the envelope.

Cornelius McGrath: Yeah, the reading experience is fab. I’m not being served 15 ads for five different supplements when I’m flicking 300 words into an article, it’s it’s like a respite.

Devon Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. And. And that’s awesome to hear because when we hear that, then that’s when we feel like we’re on the right track.

Devon Anderson: Cause that’s what we want people to take away from it. We don’t want to feel like, and it’s not to say that people who use ads or [00:40:00] anything like that their content is subpar or what they’re doing, like the New York Times, you read the New York Times and you’re going to get an ad every paragraph or two.

Devon Anderson: And yeah, that’s just not the model that we’ve adopted, and we want people to self-select. And I don’t know if you noticed this with the learning community, but we don’t push it a ton. We don’t. We don’t talk about it a lot. We’ll mention it in our newsletter from time to time.

Devon Anderson: And then usually once a year, we’ll have a like a two or three email push, or we’ll talk about we don’t send that many sales emails because the learning community is always available. So what that does is if people are going to do a little bit of work, if people are reading the blog and they’re like, man, this stuff is awesome. I want to dig deeper. I want to dig deeper. And they like start reading, and they’re going to come across the learning community.

Cornelius McGrath: Yeah, the way you hooked me, just, Podcast transcripts. Genius. That to me, you were the first site you did it before Ferris did it. As soon as you guys started doing it, Tim did it.

Cornelius McGrath: Tim’s been doing it for a long time. And that was genius because I read that piece with Atul Gawande, I read the piece with Annie Duke [00:41:00], and sorry, I listened to them, and I was like, oh my God, I really want to dive into this. And it was actually Navales. I think you actually ran a promotion on Navarles for a bit where it was free.

Cornelius McGrath: And that thing was such fire that I was like, okay, now I can’t even imagine like studying a podcast. I’m not just listening to it but being able to see the written word and the event you just did with Annie, and you said the PDF it’s literally 37 pages. And even that, it does some themes from the podcast, right?

Cornelius McGrath: And there’s some themes from the articles that came out of that. And I’ve read her book. But there’s still an element of stuff she’s saying that she hasn’t said before. Yeah. That’s the gift that keeps giving over time.

Devon Anderson: Yeah. And that’s how we want the learning community to be revered. We want people to because it’s not just about more content, right? The blog has plenty of content to keep you busy for a long time. Yes. And in truth there’s probably not going to be much new in the learning community that you can’t already get on the blog, but it’s a way that people can engage with each other.

Devon Anderson: One learning community member told me he [00:42:00] is you look at threads on Reddit or Facebook or Twitter, and just the devolution. Just how everything devolves. I’m not saying that right yet, how everything devolves in conversation. The learning community is like that breath of fresh air, right?

Devon Anderson: Where you can still, people disagree all the time. So it’s not like everybody’s coming into the learning community and all looking at the world the same way. We’ve got radically different approaches to all kinds of of different topics, but the way that people communicate with each other and they respectfully disagree and debate and challenge ideas, that’s a special environment, right?

Devon Anderson: So it’s not just, Hey, we’re going to give you more content. We give you more opportunities to I guess, practice the content in real life.

Cornelius McGrath: You’ve created a space. You’ve literally created a space, and I think spaces where you can be more human, where you can connect, have rigorous conversation. It beats the subway train, right? Where everybody’s on that phone.

The Importance of Quality in Community Membership                       

Devon Anderson: So that’s what we want the learning community to be. So as far as To, I guess, practice the [00:43:00] content in real life marketing that, and yeah. So, it’s always been, let’s keep it in the background a little bit. We want to talk about it enough.

Devon Anderson: So, people know that it’s there where when people join our newsletter, they’ll get it. I think one mention of it, maybe two, and then we don’t talk about it much. And our hope is, and our expectation is that the right people. When they find it we don’t do discounts, we don’t do flash sales.

Devon Anderson: We don’t do anything like that. It’s just the right people will know they’ll see it, and they’ll say that’s for me and the people that are on the fence, it’s at the risk of sounding a little bit. Callous would rather you not join, because the quality of any community is in the membership.

Devon Anderson: So, if you get a bunch of people that are in there just to stir the pot or to troll, then it’s not what we want. We want people that are serious and self-select, and so far, that’s what we’ve gotten. We’ve got an incredible community of people in there. And yeah, so I, I guess that’s the long way to say what we’re doing seems to be working, but we’re always looking for ways to optimise how we can [00:44:00] connect with people and share the messages that we’re sharing.

Cornelius McGrath: Awesome. Devon, I think that’s an amazing note to end on. You do me a lot of time. You’ve been very generous.

Devon Anderson: Hey, thank you. Cornelius. It’s been great talking to you.