The Cortado, Vol. 1

You know those ads that are like, “Personal trainers don’t want you to know this one simple trick to get in the best shape of your life”? 

I click on those. Not actually, but I almost have. At some fundamental level, I actually believe this, that I’m one simple trick / software tool away from figuring it all out.¹ Newsletter platform Beehiiv is the latest tool on which I have pinned my hopes for creative actualization. Surely, this will be the one that unlocks my true potential, but in the small chance it isn’t, my excitement will fade, and I’ll port you all back over to Wordpress or something. While I was moving stuff over, I figured I may as well do a boring rebrand of this publication.²

The Cortado Dispatch is dead;
Long live The Cortado!

Why Cortado? This superior espresso drink comes to us from Spain, where a (double) shot of espresso is cut (to cut ➡️ cortar ➡️ past participle of cut ➡️ cortado) with a bit of milk.

Furthermore, the cortado has aspirational qualities: efficient (smaller cup and less liquid to heat means less waste), humble (no fancy foaming), and balanced (the milk cuts the bitterness but doesn’t drown out the complexity of the coffee; the espresso is allowed to express itself on the palette in a clearer way than it could on its own).

Oh, to be a bit more like a cortado!

If you’d like to listen to a podcast teaser of this newsletter, you can do so below. Warning: the hosts, Google Bill and Google Brenda, go a little off the rails at the end, sort of swept away by the scope of my ideas.

Greetings from NYC (the Personal Section)

Where more coffee, more alcohol, and less sleep… makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise?

Two observations from the Huge Apple.

1) People in New York City are nice.

Why is this, or perhaps more pertinent, why do I believe this?
Some theories, not mutually exclusive:

1. Because I am familiar with the mythos of NYC as the city of hard-charging hustle and bustle, I expect people to be mean, or at least inconsiderate. Thus, when I get on an elevator with a tall man and a short woman, and the short woman says, in a humorous tone, “I feel really short right now!,” and we chuckle, and then I say, after a pause, “Me too actually!” which is funny because I am tall but the man is taller than me, and we chuckle again, I leave the elevator feeling warm and mirthful. (Long-time followers will know I love elevator conversations but am loath to start them, because I personally know many people who detest elevator conversations).

2. It is the Thanksgiving time, and folks are feeling more grateful than usual, and their gratitude is pouring out of them in the form of kindness to their fellow man.

3. My beauty, the combination of bone structure and physical presence, is so stunning that it elicits smiles and general approbation from subway-and-elevator riders.

4. Two weeks of travel and two red-eyes (both meanings, flights and sclera) have left me so bedraggled that my appearance engenders a kind of pity in the bosoms of New Yorkers, and so they smile at me compassionately.

5. Because I am familiar with the mythos of NYC as the city of hard-charging hustle and bustle, and because I am not as familiar with the local social scripts as I am with those in, say, San Francisco, I adopt a deferential, even submissive, affect: disarming pursed-lip smile, eyes cast downward, large nods or mini-bows at thresholds of apartment buildings, hotels, subways, cafes, and elevators. New Yorkers interpret my aw-shucks shuffle as respectful-bleeding-into-pathetic, and the New Yorkers, thus disarmed, smile at me compassionately.

6. New Yorkers are nice.

2) Exceptional people also play stupid games on their phones

I have passed the last few days with several exceptional people. Not exceptional in the sense that each human is technically exceptional in their own way, but in the actual sense. They are exceptions to the rule that the great mass of us are doomed to mediocrity.³

I can now report back, after days of careful observation, that highly effective people also play stupid games on their phones. They sometimes give their attention away cheaply to the attention-harvesters. Their brains seem to crave constant diversion and entertainment in a way similar to mine. At least that’s how I’d interpret their behavior.

This finding heartens me.

The Business Section

Let’s get down to…

“Hire lucky people.”

An HR exec told me about this rule she discovered in her mid-career. It’s the classic self-fulfilling prophecy. The logic is that people who think they are lucky… are lucky. Their belief subtly informs their behavior, and their behavior is the mechanism that attracts goodness to them, goodness they interpret as luck.

Product Marketing is writing (good invitations)

The party doesn’t start when you walk in. It started when you got the invitation. From that moment, you began to form expectations, hopes, and if you’re like me, anxieties about the party. It became real for you well before you knocked on the door / strolled into the j (Priya Parker taught me this in The Art of Gathering).

Good product marketing is writing a kick-ass invitation, one that (figuratively, but almost literally) creates your product and company in the mind of your audience and sets expectations about what great things are going to happen, should they choose to accept.

— from “Ethan’s Guide to Product Marketing,” available by special request only

Song(s) of the Month

Option 1: if you would like to increase your heart-rate
Good for a run or the gym

Option 2: if you would like to decrease your heart-rate
Good for staring longingly at the stormy sea

Book of the Month

Consider the Lobster, by DFW — commune with a soaring intelligence, feel smarter by association, and I dare say become a better person.

Imagining of the Month

You may use this as your LinkedIn cover photo, but you have to give me photo creds.

Thank you for reading The Cortado.

Stay balanced,
Ethan

1  The more likely reality that I’m hundreds of complex contortions away is too much to bear.

2  The above is to explain why this edition looks a bit different than prior ones. If this is your first email from me, everything is fine and normal.

3  Full disclosure: they are family members, which is how I was able to observe their habits so closely; I am a bit the black sheep of the family, and the only one with an email newsletter.