Brandy Cerne

Build honesty into your culture, not transparency.

It’s language/market fit at work — when you find the exact right words to explain your product or service to prospective customers, words that resonate with goals and struggles that are already in their brains. When you talk about your product, a lightbulb in their heads switches on that says, “That is EXACTLY what I’m looking for” — they feel like... See more

Your premise is the specific, defensible purpose for a project or your overall platform, pulled from your personal vision for your audience . Most work is too generic to resonate, too forgettable to become anyone’s favorite. But by developing our premise — and forcing ourselves to test just how differentiated it truly feels to others — we stand a g... See more

This is a hospitality solution: a problem that we solved not by sneakily chipping away at the service we were offering but by blowing it out in the opposite direction—by giving more, not less.

A traffic jam is often the first sign that some strategy is reaching its expiration date. Early on, a successful strategy has few proponents because the strategy isn't successful yet . There are few people on the highway because there is no way to know yet whether that highway is going to get you where you want to go.

But as it becomes more apparent... See more

I struggle with the cultural push toward insularity and self-reliance. I suffer from the inertia of screens and the ennui of stuff. I indulge in the brief hit of dopamine comfort that comes from online shopping (the kitchen gadgets, the houseplants, the skincare products). I drink wine to unwind. I sip from the warm cup of promised safety and comfo... See more

Our desires, motivations and behaviors are constantly being shaped by incentives and systems we aren’t even aware of. So much genius and money has gone into a metaphor that assumes all humans desire is status and likes and influence and convenience and efficiency.

Yes, humans want all those things. But we also want to be inspired. To be delighted. T... See more

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—

The size of it made us all laugh.

I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—

They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.

This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.

I did all the

... See more