Most people know by now that one way I quality control these missives is by sending them out internally at Permanent Equity for feedback before they are even considered for consumption by the outside world. This is why the ones that are “not my best” never see the light of day and so therefore you think (maybe? I hope?) that I am clever more consistently than I really am. 

And I also hope that I do a decent job of communicating to the people at Permanent Equity how much I value their feedback, good, bad, or indifferent. Yet even Brent, after a string of pretty decent ones, replied “I’ll stop replying to all of these with ‘good job’...but…good job.’”

And I said, because it’s true, “Keep replying! It’s nice to start my morning with an affirmation.”

I don’t relay this story to toot my own horn, but rather because I think it’s illustrative of the fact that no one puts something out into the world without wanting a genuine response. Yet for some reason many of us are programmed to think that we might be bothering or burdening someone by responding. 

For example, I sent an email recently to our investors to gauge interest in whether or not they would attend a Partner Summit here in Columbia, Missouri. I got a number of responses and duly noted in a spreadsheet who might and might not attend. A few days into receiving those responses Brent, who was cc’d on some of them, said, “Hey, are you responding to these?”

And I said, “No, I didn’t want to clog up people’s inboxes. I was going to respond to everyone when we had a decision on whether or not to move forward with the Summit.” As soon as I said it, I knew what I had said was stupid. Why wouldn’t I respond and thank them for their response and say we would be excited to see them? Not only is it true, but in all cases I could and can think of, recognition is better than a vacuum.

Another thing this got me thinking about is the relationship in a relationship between duration and contact frequency. My experience is that when someone makes a new friend, there’s a surge of activity that decays over time even though it seems like the opposite should be true. And I’ve experienced that with this daily. Most of the responses I get back (aside from Brent, who writes me back a lot) are from people I’ve never heard from before, but my favorite responses are usually from people who have already written back a few times (note that you have to write once in order to write twice). 

Again, I can’t put my finger on why that is, but if you have insight, I’m all ears. What I do think is true, however, is that nobody doesn’t want to hear from you provided that what you are sending is both genuine and thoughtful (stay away, spammers). At the risk of repeating myself, it turns out we’re social creatures.

— Tim

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