Writing, trust, and brand building the 37signals way

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people just I think appreciate that and they go, you know, they're motivated by something beyond just selling stuff. They're actually giving things away. They want to help and I think it enders you to them. them in this case being us, but anyone who does this. Uh I I think that you just pay more attention to what they're doing and you trust them more. You know, when you're when you know you're being sold something in the back of your mind, your lizard brain's like, I don't trust this something. What's the motivation here? When you just read something or something gives you something for free or whatever and there's no clear attachment to it or there's no path to get something else. Like for example, um we give a lot of stuff away for free. We don't ask for your email address. Like a lot of people like think I'm giving this book, this

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ebook away for free. Well, you're not if you're asking for someone's email address. That's not free. Now I know I'm going to get hit up with all these offers and all these other upsells and like just give the damn thing away for free. People are going to know who wrote it. And if they think it's interesting, they'll check you out again. Like don't make everything an opportunity to to Just connect. just share. So that's the kind of stuff we do. I think that's why it's particularly valuable. I think we could have done it another way which is that there's a string attached to everything we do and that wouldn't feel very authentic or real and I think people would see through that. So it's not only that you do it, it's I think also how you do it that's important. Well, and I think if I may add that it also works because the way that you guys build products is you build something that you want and that you use. So it's

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opinionated software. It's not project management for everyone. And so you by sharing your view of the world and how you guys approach work and why and how you evangelize and you attract people who agree with that approach let's say and then your software software is kind of like the way of doing that like after I read it doesn't have to be crazy at work base camp is the way to work in that way in a sense. Yeah. Yes. That's exactly right. So you're evangelizing. Yeah. you evangelize to some degree, you know, but again, it's not about like the I it's evangelism in a sense, but evangelism typically also has this idea of conversion attached to it. We're not trying to convert anybody. I don't want to convince anybody of anything. Like,