At the outset of any business is this feeling, this dread, like if you say “no” to something you might watch the only revenue walk out the door. The default mode for just about every American is one of scarcity.
In a land of plenty, you had best bend over backward for your fair share!
This is not a sustainable way to do anything. Eventually you start to hate everything and find yourself crawling back to the shelter of the corporate world. At least, here, you don’t have to choose who you get to work with.
It’s just a job; you can go home at the end of the day.
When you mention “punk” the kneejerk is universal: “You ain’t punk man, you a fuckin’ poser.”
Apologies – egg whites are getting too expensive to keep my liberty spikes prim and proper. My nose ring is a paper clip and it sort of falls out when I sleep. When you turn 40, sleeping in the gutter ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I’m in bed by 10, friends.
Still, I’d rather only work with punks – as clients or collaborators – because it makes for a better world. It’s more or less what OutWord is built on – look at you: you are punk.
You are welcome here.
This isn’t about mohawks and safety pins or thrashing chords and mosh pits. This is about the other, the counter, the friction. Every generation has its punks.
But this isn’t about fellating Sid Vicious or cutting new holes in the Misfit’s shirt that you picked up from Target. It’s not about the music. You can be punk and jam out to Bad Brains or to Taylor Swift. I don’t care…and that’s the point.
Punk is a mindset. Punk is a way of being. This is what I look for when I say, I only work with punks.
Mindsets and Methods
The punk says, fuck this. They look at what the world is offering and laughs. Our surroundings are built for the many to squash the few. We are flattened and homogenous – there are no surprises in this world.
Because when everybody looks the same, we get tired of looking at each other. Make your own clothes when nothing on the rack fits. When the radio sucks you shut it off and whistle your own tune.
Write the books you want to read. Say the things you wish you heard from others.
This is the mindset: do what isn’t being done for the people who want something else. Do it for the people who have yet to realize there is another way. Show your little slice of the world that there is a different way of doing, being.
Your company, industry, competition – it is an establishment that breeds your friction, your resistance. Why not be the sugar in the gas tank of the steamroller that only exists to make the world flat and easy?
There are no best practices, there are only people who are starving for what you have to offer. A punk feels this, knows this, and wants nothing more than to do something about it.
punks in business
A business can be punk until it establishes a hierarchy. Once you can say “I am more important than the next person,” you lose.
The headlines are full of “alternative” executives who claim to be rewriting the playbook on how things should be done in the world of business. I say: unless you’re willing to give everything up to elevate every person in your company above you, sit down and shut up.
You don’t hire me and I don’t take you on as a client. This is a collaboration. Knot your tie, follow your agenda, and call me when you’re ready to break something.
No Employees
OutWord will never have employees. Yes, I want this to grow, but not if it cannot sustain itself and the people connected to it.
I want more people to discover a totally different way of doing business…but I’ll be damned if I am in the place where I’m assigning work to others. Again: collaboration. You show me how it looks and I’ll help it in any way I can.
No due dates. No boxes to check.
I’m not hiring people to do things. I’m building a stage with a microphone and a big-ass PA system. I want to bring in outside acts who have something they want to share, who need a place to grow.
I don’t need someone who will write what I ask. I want people who know how to grow.
This is an opportunity.
Drop out. Step aside from the race. Cut a new path. The opportunity is in what’s next, and you get to decide what that gets to be. If you have that feeling in your gut, go with it.
I’m just here to show you where that feeling can take you.
