Shane Breslin for Mantel
Why Mantel should hire me
Who me
I’m Irish. Ireland is a strange place. We're 5 million people. That’s the population of Cook County, Illinois. We've got one foot in Europe, one foot in the UK and our dick in the US. We’re an economic poster-child with record levels of homelessness. The most successful Irish people have always done their best work at a distance.
I led editorial at Ireland’s best digital media startup from 2010~2015. Yep, long time ago. I won’t bore you with the depression (economic) and the other depression (personal) that put me in a financial black hole. I won't bore you with that. Took me a few years to get back up, but I promise, I won't bore you. Last time I mention it.
I believe the Internet is humanity's greatest invention: the wheel, the printing press and the internal combustion engine rolled into one. Our normal Tuesday would look like magic to our grandparents. (Like, look at me, applying for a job that doesn't exist, with a company 5000 miles away, when I've never been west of Ohio. It's mad and it's beautiful.)
But so much of the Internet is broken. It's divisive and hateful. It sees people as users, eyeballs and traffic. But I still have hope for the upside of the Internet: to connect people meaningfully through technology. Looking in from the outside (soon, hopefully, from the inside) this is what Mantel is about to do, at scale. I want to be part of it.
I'm pretty sure a safe job is dangerous for my health.
Five years ago, on my last trip to the US. I still have the watch, but the rest of me is different.
I didn't know what to put here. So here's a pic of me outside Shakespeare's Globe. Because words have always mattered.
Why me
I have a CV that's all over the place and an ADHD brain, which is actually my greatest asset. That said, here goes.
Think of me as Tom Wolfe without the white suit, Hunter S Thompson without the drugs, Wendy Rhoades without the legs, Bill Campbell without the capacity to do it for free.
I'm a writer, but so is AI. Maybe I can still do it better. Or maybe me + AI is better than both of us.
I'm a coach, but one day I saw an overweight Life Coach force a donut down their throat with four fingers and I sorta lost a little faith in coaches. Then I remembered: I've read John Wooden, read about Vince Lombardi, and watched Andy Reid, so I know a coach can build a skyscraper with his mind.
I learned to write ASP and once built a basic analytics program to tell me what the hell people were doing on my website. (WebTrends was $6k a year! Google Analytics didn't exist!! GA4 was years away from pissing everyone off!!!)
Knowing these three things — how to string a sentence, how to reach people one-to-one in ways that open doors in their mind, how to talk a little code — made digital media startup stuff perfect for me. Then came the thing I promised not to mention. But I'm back now, and I'm hungry as hell.
Bring me in, introduce me to everyone and everything, and I am certain I'll soon find ways - through long-form content, or a growth loop opportunity somewhere in the customer journey, or long talks about what's possible while hiking in the hills - to help Mantel to the moon.
But honestly, I dunno. I'm not sure I would hire me. I know how good I am, but I've also seen up close the detritus of my f#%kups. I know I can't succeed alone. I also know that a startup that connects people who care deeply about real things is exactly the right place for me.
Three Quick-Not-Easy Ideas for Mantel
Collectors are long-term people. So maybe the short-form content trend is not for them. If they value quality and timelessness in things, maybe they'd value quality and timelessness in content, too. Could we deliver, twice a year, a beautiful magazine to their door, full of great stories and photos about collectors and collectibles? Think Sports Illustrated meets Stripe Press, for people into cards, cars, Caravaggios and crypto-punks.
Recently, inspired by a guy who tries to build tech products with the atmosphere of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, I wrote a long essay about software and beauty. It feels like feeling itself is critical. Feeling is why people collect. Feeling is why people come and why they stay. Facebook's early days were a tidal wave of belonging. Can we find a way to measure feelings of belonging within Mantel?
Tim Ferriss talked recently about how, in 2006-2010, the uncompetitive landscape was online. But now, that's switched. The main Internet platforms are saturated. Offline is open again. Discord-ers are Chronically Online. Many of the wealthiest people still distrust the Internet. Can we occupy the borderlands? If yes, the moon is Mantel's.
If you'd like to talk, I'm available 24 hours a day for the next two weeks.
More? Okay, here's 31 people who changed how I see the world
Nassim Taleb (Risk and randomness)
Rafa Nadal (Be weird)
Tim Ferriss (Be different)
Richie Ball (Be you)
Naval Ravikant (Wealth > Status)
Mary Oliver (One precious life)
Sean Boylan (The greatest Irish coach)
Tom Brady (Longevity matters)
Ernest Hemingway (Simplicity matters)
Greg Baxter (Intensity matters)
Gary Keller (Focus matters)
Cal Newport (Depth matters)
Seneca (Reflection matters)
Robert Greene (This whole thing might be in breach of Law 4)
Marianne Williamson (Don't play small)
William Shakespeare (All the world's a stage)
My father (Long story, not typical)
Diego Maradona (Pleasure at all costs)
Ayrton Senna (Drive at all costs)
Teddy Roosevelt (The man in the arena)
Jordan Peterson (Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today)
Lewis Howes (Rock bottom is not the end)
Grant Cardone (Who's got your money?)
Parker Palmer (Life is hard and good)
Jeff Booth (Economics is broken, #1)
Gary Stevenson (Economics is broken, #2)
Joseph Campbell (It's a journey)
Michael Lewis (It's a story)
Quentin Tarantino (Don't hold back)
Tom Wolfe (Write with scalpel precision)
William Nack (Pure heart)
Shall we do this?
The last word