Quit Asking for Permission and Do This Instead
Talentless gatekeepers with huge egos get to profit off the good of society because the system lets them.
Some people spend their entire lives waiting for permission.
They want to be chosen. They want a secret award ceremony in their name. They want the tap on the shoulder from the record label executive who says “you’re special, here’s your million-dollar advance for your first album.”
Talent shows like The Voice and America’s Got Talent prove that being chosen is bullsh*t. These TV shows are built on the idea that lucky breaks exist. That all you need is an opportunity and permission and your success is set in stone.
The music industry created the trend of asking for permission. In recent years this has bled into the world of startups and entrepreneurship.
Instead of asking a record label for permission, entrepreneurs ask clueless VCs for money in investment rounds. Even if the entrepreneurs are liars, even if their business is built on nonsense, cheap debt managed to fuel a huge tech bubble.
We got fake unicorns like WeWork and Uber.
Asking for permission is a trap. It leads us to chase fame. That causes us to want to live the luxury life full of appearances and selfies. And that can lead us to buy more stupid luxury possessions we don’t need (like Lambos).
Permission-seeking is a pandem!c.
On one side of the marketplace are permission seekers. On the other side there are the gatekeepers.
Permission-seeking rewards the gatekeepers, not you. They get rich. They get the power. They get to decide. They get to bend the rules in their favor. They want to tell you how to think. Just look at social media platforms – they had the opportunity to sway elections. All you get from gatekeepers are the scraps.
I’d argue this reality is what screws up many parts of the world.
Talentless gatekeepers with huge egos get to profit off the good of society because the system lets them. I say f*ck the system.
The root cause of this permission-seeking is school. That ultimately bleeds into university. And when you join the workforce you end up saying “Please sir, may I have this promotion?” Often the talentless employees get promoted.
My career would have been different if I figured out the permissionless life sooner. I spent half my life in banking trying to impress “Head Ofs” and “General Managers” who didn’t give a f*ck about me.
No matter how hard I tried, I rarely got promoted. I kept being given excuses:
“You’re not old enough.”
Then when I hit my mid-30s: “You’re too old.”
“You need a finance degree to work in investment banking.”
“You need an MBA to get promoted to manager.”
“You need more years of experience.”
“You can’t work in marketing because you only have banking experience.”
“Working in the innovation lab requires startup experience.”
I’ve heard it all. I’ve been rejected in job interviews so many times with no explanation. Earlier in my career I worked as a musician. I got told time and time again I wasn’t good enough, even though my fans loved my music.
When I was a DJ, nightclubs told me that I had to bring more guests through the door if I wanted a regular gig. When I brought more people, it was never enough.
The gatekeepers always wanted more. They always wanted to extract more value and squeeze more energy out of me. They wanted to push me to the brink.
Gatekeepers are slave drivers.
Don’t make the same mistake as me. Stop asking for permission.
Permission is a lie.
The internet destroyed the need for permission. The world is now permissionless and most have woken up.
Online you can network with anybody in the world. You can sell stuff without a website. You can find customers with social media. You can start a business using $0 no-code tools.
It’s now less about access, and more about mindset. Do you believe the world is permissionless? Are you resourceful? Will you quit waiting? Will you stop worshipping mentors and gurus?
The internet is the best thing to ever happen to me. It helped me stop asking for permission. It allowed me to write online and reach 500m+ people. It gave me a sense of purpose. It allowed me to build a community, a movement.
I’d be nothing without the internet.
I’d still be stuck at my dead-end cubicle job waiting for my hairy boss to notice me and buy me a freaking latte for working 12 hours on a Sunday to get the banking pitch ready for him.
There’s a better way. It’s called the permissionless economy.
Instead of asking for permission, do this…
Go independent. Some call it being indie.
It’s a better path because it leads to true freedom. The permissionless path lets you have full ownership of the work. You own the distribution which is a fancy way of saying you own the readers, subscribers, fans, customers, leads, suppliers, software, etc.
You depend on no one but yourself.
If you can master yourself, you can master the permissionless economy. It’s why self-improvement is now a core skill that every successful person must have.
Owning your work and future feels better than being told what to do or asking venture capitalists for hundreds of millions of dollars for your business, only to have them tell you what you can and can’t do.
And from a personal point of view, f*ck having writing platforms tell me what I can and can’t write. The permissionless life is “I do what I want.”
So my takeaway for you is to stop asking for permission.
You’re better than the gatekeepers give you credit for. If you are connected to the internet and reading this then you have a huge advantage. Stop being tossed around like my daughter’s rag doll.
You don’t need to be special to be permissionless. You don’t need to wait. You don’t need to dream. You don’t need someone else’s blueprint.
All you have to believe is that you can do whatever you want, if you’ll just start building something online that’s driven by your obsession.
Go independent. Go indie. Unlock true freedom.
Before you go, one of the most beneficial things you can do that requires absolutely zero permission is:
Write online. Do it daily.
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It is up to one thing: STOP waiting for other's acceptance and DO! Just DO!
Good one again! Thanks!
Just found your work, Tim. Thanks for saying this so clearly. It gave me a LOT to think back on.
In my work as an editor, probably by year seven or eight I realized that nine out of 10 writers come to someone like me looking for permission to say the thing they really want to say. Doesn’t matter how accomplished or educated (or published) they are—there is a line that a lot of people walk right up to and then turn around again. And then they spend all their energy trying to give themselves permission rather than giving that attention to The Thing they want to write, say or do.
Once I noticed this, I started changing how I delivered feedback and guidance. I try to be the kind of editor that focuses on the elements of accessible writing and points out when their instincts are spot on. I want them to keep trusting themselves and their inner knowing around writing, and hopefully that translates to other areas of life too.