

My Mohawk and Being the SpeakerText CEO  - MediaSquirrel
http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/06/my-mohawk-and-being-the-speakertext-ceo-.html

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mattmaroon
People almost always act first, then rationalize later. Whenever someone gives
a profound argument for their behavior, it's rationalization rather than
reality almost 100% of the time.

Thus when someone claims that their mohawk and f-bombs are part of a
calculated persona, you can almost always be sure that that was originally
just the way that person was, then came the rationalization that it's a
calculated move to achieve some goal, which in turn reinforced and exaggerated
the original behavior.

The upshot is, if he worked at McDonald's rather than his own startup, he'd
probably still have a mohawk and drop f-bombs. He's just a mohawk wearing,
f-bomb dropping kinda guy.

(That's not meant to be judgmental.)

~~~
steveklabnik
I'd say that what he meant was not that he started using swear words and grew
a mohawk to implement a calculated persona, but that he allowed those parts of
his personality to bleed over into his professional life as a conscious
decision.

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zefhous
What's the big deal?

Calling yourself a CEO in a company of that size is pretty pretentious. Maybe
being pretentious part of his well planned out strategy?

This _might_ be interesting if it was a CEO of a company that was worthy of
having a CEO. Probably not.

~~~
zackattack
People seem to automatically respond to titles. c.f. my latest blog post:
[http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/the-science-of-
compliance...](http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/the-science-of-compliance/)

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steveklabnik
I have 5/8th inch stretched ears, and a bold, black tattoos on my forearms:
[http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-
sf2p/v184/59/117/14200...](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-
sf2p/v184/59/117/14200296/n14200296_35330111_5837.jpg)

If anything, they helped secure my investment. For a few months after he
invested, one of my investors kept talking about how much he loved that I was
a scrappy young guy who did what he wanted and wouldn't take shit from people,
yet listened to advice.

I'd agree with Matt, it's all about the public persona you want to have.

~~~
MediaSquirrel
I love hearing shit like this.

------
justin
I was going to put cornrows in my hair and one of my cofounders basically
forbid it (I'm not black). He was right, I would have looked like a ass.

