I fired Monica 15 years ago. Now look at what she’s doing.
I thought my post yesterday was absolute genius, and I asked myself if I shouldn’t hold off on publishing it so that I could submit it as an op-ed to the New York Times. Or as political analysis to the Atlantic. Instead I posted it here, because immediate feedback is like crack. And then the post bombed.
I want to say that I spent way too much time writing the post. But what I really spent way too much time on was analyzing the metrics. I have ten ways to measure the success of a post, which means that depending on how I’m feeling, I will find a way to tell myself that it did well or that it did not do well. So I started looking for who is the type of person who liked the post. And I saw that Monica reposted it.
Monica used to work for me. I hired her because I loved talking with her. I started doing online courses before it was possible to have 50 people on a video call, so live courses back then were me looking at a blank screen and interacting with people I couldn’t see. Monica was so smart and funny, and she came to every course, so I started calling her live during the course so things would feel less one-dimensional. She was my fourth employee at Quistic.
She was awful to work with. She literally produced nothing but ideas. I was homeschooling two kids and launching a company, and it was clear that there was space for one person with tons of ideas and no execution: me. So I fired her.
You know the thing that really makes me think she’s like me? She was shocked that she wasn’t doing a good job. That’s me, all 10,000 times I’ve been fired. The thing about people who get fired a lot is that we think we are so good at what we’re good at that what we’re silently refusing to do doesn’t matter. The truth is only the first part. We are really good at the stuff we choose to do.
So I was happy to find Monica’s Substack, which appears to include a book publishing empire (pictured above, in her backyard). This is so Monica — her curiosity would never be limited to one arena.
I scrolled through her notes. And I learned so much. She said she doesn’t have an email list, and then she described what I would have defined as an email list. So I thought: maybe I don’t know what an email list is. Then she defined herself as an ENTP 3w2 and I had to look that up, and I thought, maybe I don’t know what personality type is anymore. I read note after note, and I remember how fun it is to hear her ideas.
Yesterday’s post became a success to me because Monica reposted it. Also, she wrote her own headline, and it’s so much better than the one I wrote. Maybe I should use her headline and pitch it to the New York Times.
Anyway, while I was snooping around her life, I saw that she has a baby. And I think I’ve turned a corner in my life. Because I used to get physically ill hearing that someone has had a baby. Most of the women I have worked with stopped working when they had kids, and the older I got, the more clear it was to me that they were functioning at a higher level than I was.
But I saw Monica’s baby pictures and I thought: I’m excited to see what Monica does with her endless stream of ideas and her new job as a mom. Just like Monica made me more optimistic about online courses, she makes me more optimistic about a new era of motherhood.
When I fired Monica, I told her I thought she’d do something great, just not with me. And that I’d always be happy to be a reference.
She never asked for a reference. So I’m giving her one now: Her relentless search for new ways to see things I thought I already saw is an intellectual breath of fresh air.
That’s funny because I thought your post belonged on NYTs and was surprised when no one commented.
Awww. You’re such a good friend :)
“The thing about people who get fired a lot is that we think we are so good at what we’re good at that what we’re silently refusing to do doesn’t matter.”
This ihas been within the reasons I’ve been fired when I’ve been fired. The most recent time was in April. Brilliant at 4/5 of the job, AWOL on the other 1/5. I got away with it for four years because I was SO good at the 4/5. Finally the missing 1/5 caught up with me.
(I’m doing independent consulting to generate income, btw. So far so good. Currently billing 50% more doing that than I was making as an employee.)
Seeing the intersection between the MBTI and Enneagram above made me look up mine: INFP 4w3. Turns out my 3 wing is saving my bacon as an INFP and it probably the only reason I can tolerate a corporate career. It gives me some level of ambition, and I hate it when I don’t achieve my aims and dreams. So I keep going, and it forces me to not get lost in my emotions as frankly I’d rather do.
I’m scared to think about the extra w thing for Enneagram. I feel like this is something that could totally derail me. I have to like, keep one I shut when I look to not get overwhelmed.
Hello! Just want to say, this post is very weird for me, because so many of the details big and small are untrue, but some of the overall point is true. I really think you are blending me with a different person.
You should absolutely pitch the New York Times and please steal headlines, whatever. That data is crazy, but I’m not surprised you found it.
You didn’t have to write this post to say hi. Just email me next time.
I took your last name off the post so it doesn’t come up when people search for you.