WHAT'S
ON
THE METHOD

The 2ndBrainWay.

Four moves, in this order: learn it, build it in front of you, hand it over, break it. Each one was written the day something broke. It ends with your people running the thing without me.

By Adam LaBare ·

Most method documents are written forward, by somebody imagining how work should go. This one was written backward. Every rule below exists because something failed first, and the failure is printed next to the rule so you can decide for yourself whether the rule earned its place.

That is the difference between a philosophy and a method. A method has a changelog.

  1. 01

    Learn it.

    Nothing gets built until we have walked the job that eats your week and named which parts a machine should touch and which parts it should never touch. Describe the Tuesday that goes wrong. Thirty minutes, free, before you owe a dollar. Adoption is decided here, at the start, with the people who will have to live with it, not hoped for after the invoice.

    WRITTEN AFTER A company that bought the tools, took the logins, and had nobody using any of it ninety days later.

  2. 02

    Build it in front of you.

    One thing at a time, built around the way your business already runs rather than the way a demo runs. Scoped and quoted in writing before anything is owed, then handed to a named person on your side. A full commission can be a web application, an iOS or Android app, or an internal system nobody outside the company ever sees.

    WRITTEN AFTER A generic product sold to somebody who then had to bend their business around it.

  3. 03

    Hand it over.

    You drive it before handover. It goes to a named person on your side, the one who has to run it on a Tuesday, not to a login. That person works it beside me, hands on the keyboard, until they can do it alone and know what to look at first. Then I leave and it keeps working.

    WRITTEN AFTER The vendor who ran a generic demo, handed over the logins, and left. That scar is the real competitor, not another firm.

  4. 04

    Break it.

    Before you depend on it, it gets pushed until it fails while you watch. Bad input, a missing file, the person who is out sick, the day the internet drops. You meet the failure while I am still in the room, so you know where it fails before it fails on you. Everything can be built. Almost nothing gets adopted, and this is the move that decides which one you got.

    WRITTEN AFTER A status page reading all clear for two days while the machine behind it was dead.

WHAT IT PRODUCES

Two things come out of the four moves.

The thing itself. The application, tool or system built for your problem. Full commissions included, which means a web application, an iOS or Android app, or an internal system nobody outside the company ever sees.

Your own second brain. The source of truth the business runs on, built around what you and your people already know, so what the company knows stops living in one head and starts living somewhere the company can reach.

After delivery, and only if you want them, the marketing engine and the operating engine attach to what was built. Financing is available and trade for services is genuinely on the table. A select few clients a month, because the third and fourth moves take real time.

See what it costs

Rather watch it happen first? The fourth move runs in public on a real task every Friday at 12:00 PM ET, free, at the Friday session.

The path

  1. 01 · See one builtFree, Fridays at 12:00 PM ET
  2. 02 · Bring one taskThe One Task workshop, $500, 13 seats
  3. 03 · Get one builtA build call, free. One job, $0 to $3,500
  4. 04 · Keep it runningThe care plan, $200 a month

One path, four rungs, cheapest first on purpose. Start with See one built.

Save a free seat See the whole ladder with prices →