i didn’t know the rules, so I made them up

You know those people with clipboards trying to wave you down on the street? That was me in college. 

Except I was going door-to-door in New York City. In apartment buildings, knocking on doors until someone asked how we got in there anyway?

Nobody really trained me on what a "normal" ask was supposed to look like. I just knew that if I didn’t meet my quota for 2 weeks I got fired. And I really needed this job. 

The suggested amounts on the donation sheet were something like $15-$20 a month, or $100 one-time.

So that's roughly what I asked for, at first.

But nobody told me not to go bigger. And knocking doors until 9PM for $25 at a time was…not fun. So I started asking for more, because in my mind there was only upside. 

I started getting $500, $1,000 donations. People were signing up for $150-$250 a month. My team became the top-earning office in the country in less than 6 months.

Looking back, I don't think I was better at the job than a lot of other people on that team. I think I just didn't care about what I was “supposed” to be doing.

There's a version of this that happens to a lot of people early in their careers, before they've absorbed what they're "supposed" to do. You don't yet know which asks are considered too much, which conversations are considered too direct, which numbers are considered too big. So you just... say them. And sometimes it works. 

I think about this a lot now, watching founders who've been at this a few years. You pick up so much real, hard-won instinct the longer you do this. But you also absorb a hundred invisible rules about what you're "supposed" to do, many of which probably don’t even apply to you, they just seem true because a lot of people around you did it that way.

Some of those rules are worth keeping and some of them are probably a fake ceiling you never asked for.

One question this week: What rules are you currently following that you haven’t tested? 

Hit reply and tell me what you came up with. I read every one.