relationships – The Waiter's Pad

Identities and Information in Smoking

July 6, 2026June 15, 2026 MIKELeave a comment

Summary: three things affect action. The pliable long-term solution is appealing to identity. Building relationships does this well.

“There were all these campaigns to try and get young people to quit smoking and they did not work. It’s going to give you lung cancer. This is your lungs after smoking. None of that worked. What worked was the ad campaign that had these old white dudes calling and talking about all the money they made on these young kids smoking.” – Andrew Huberman, June 2026

One of my biggest challenges teaching high school is action.

My 7th period last year was explosive. The question was could we harness that explosion to create energy.

Three avenues lead to action.

Inertia. The ‘good’ kids show up, take notes, try hard-ish all on their own. The ‘bad’ kids are late, fall asleep, and change the subject.

Inertia just is. Your mind would be blown away by some of the high-action high-inertia kids. A friend at our graduation party texted me the day after saying her faith in humanity was restored. The other two avenues are:

Short-term. Easy to use, middling effectiveness especially long-term. This is discipline, calls home, moved seats, extra credit, candy, real-life-examples-and-interestingness, detention.
Long-term. The goal. Perfection. The target. Like lunar eclipses rare and beautiful.

In the same way short-term is easier to spin up so is information. If you don’t X then you won’t Y. It’s so shallow. But it’s easy and sometimes I just did it.

The best technique (so far) to get to the long-term and identity based action catalyst is through relationships. When I first started teaching it was all watch how fast we’ll go from day one and that has shifted to starting slower but going further. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Are you committed capital?

March 30, 2026March 5, 2026 MIKELeave a comment

Investor John Arnold told Patrick O’Shaughnessy there were two things, early on, that helped him become one of the greatest investors.

First was, “a lot of retained earnings, and then new investors came in.” Makes sense. If you have a great idea with lots of room to grow, let it grow!

Second was committed capital, “Whenever we had a down month or a downtime period, which we had, they weren’t calling to redeem, but they would call up and say, do you need more capital?”

This is an idea we’ve seen before, notably with Buffett – but this time it hit different: is this how I act in my relationships? The answer wasn’t good.

When my daughters are being teenagers, do I lean in and offer more love? When they’re frustrated, am I a good set of ears? When there’s a down period, do I ask them if they need more?

Hearing Arnold talk about it make complete business sense. Like, heck yeah, let’s do this together. But I didn’t feel that in my relationships: too short, poor listening, too transactional.

Oof.

But now we have that question. Guidance. Are you committed capital?

Love and Trust and USA Basketball

February 24, 2025January 18, 2025 MIKELeave a comment

One theme here is that information is not enough.

In his book, 10 to 25, about communicating with young people, David Yeager writes that the compliment sandwich doesn’t work because its supply side not demand side.

JTBD works so well because it shifts the focus from me to you, a business to the customers.

The supply side version of a compliment sandwich is what Yeager calls “wise feedback”. Before young people can hear criticism they have to feel safe. Feelings matter. Being in-the-group matters.

Shane Battier tells a story about Coach K’s early Olympic experience. Coach has just come from Duke where he sets a standard. People like us do things like this. But there was one guy on the team who was not very good in pick-and-roll defense.

So, coach lit into him. “You let him know in no uncertain terms that this is not going to fly,” said Battier. “And at that moment, like, you could see the look on this player’s face. He had never been talked to like this.”

Battier had. “I lived it, so I understood where it’s coming from. It was coming from a place of love.” This is Yeager’s wise feedback. It comes from a place of wanting the best. The listener feels safe because the listener and speaker are on the same side – they’re in the same group.

Coach K wises up right way. “It clicked and you realize, oh, this is not appropriate for him at this moment.” He didn’t have the right relationship for that kind of communication. It takes trust and love which take time and effort. We evolved as group members.

Note: Another version of this idea is here: https://moontower.substack.com/p/jokers-everywhere