Your Algorithm Has Commitment Issues

Greetings Ambitious Achievers!

Last year, I rode a questionably assembled Triumph motorcycle into Canoa, Ecuador, and checked into a little hotel on the beach. Peter Stromberg, the owner, walked out wearing board shorts and no shoes, flanked by two enormous black dogs. He had a little bit of sand on his face. He’d been paragliding that day.

Within 10 minutes, I learned that Peter grew up in Poudre Canyon, a few miles from where I live in Colorado. No one lives there except kayakers, snowboarders, me, and, apparently, Peter. Thousands of miles from home in a tiny town on the Pacific coast, two people from the same obscure stretch of Northern Colorado ended up under a thatched roof talking about travel, creativity, business and how the hell we’d gotten there. What are the chances?

Before Canoa, Peter owned a popular chain of coffee shops in Fort Collins, called Muggs. He’s one of those industrial-strength serial entrepreneurs. He visited Ecuador as a tourist a decade ago. He liked it. So he went home, sold his stuff and came back to Canoa. He borrowed some money, bought a bar (and later a hotel), and settled in this tiny beach town.

I interviewed him about his life as a nomadic entrepreneur (never travel to Ecuador without a proper voice recorder app) and wrote a story about him. He’s a testament to the human spirit and how one person’s success may look totally different than anyone else’s.

That story has been on my mind as we’ve been redesigning SUCCESS magazine. Partly because I remember it so clearly. Maybe because there was something about it that was decidedly, I don’t know, human. I think I know why it stands out to me.

I read all day. It’s part of my job. News, newsletters, websites, texts, posts and whatever somebody, usually my mom, sends me with the useful note, “Read this yet?” It’s mostly digital stuff served up by algorithms.

Print doesn’t get that luxury. There are only so many pages to work with in a magazine, which means every story must be intentional. Put someone on the cover and you’re making a fairly public declaration that this person is worth knowing. Give a writer six pages and you’d better have a reason.

Once the magazine goes to the printer, that’s it. There’s no do-over. We can’t change the headline because it isn’t getting enough clicks and we can’t chase the thing everybody started talking about 10 minutes ago. We made our choices. We committed. There they are, in ink. Forever.

In the last few weeks during the redesign of this venerable magazine title, I’ve been thinking about what deserves to appear on those pages when nearly everything we read is built to move quickly through our lives and through the algorithms. “What can we commit to these pages?” I often ask myself.

And I keep coming back to Peter and the random encounter on a beach. There he was, barefoot and sandy, living a version of success entirely his own and completely committed to this life he created.

I don’t remember what I read the morning I met him or what was trending on social media that week. But I remember riding into Canoa. I remember the ocean, the thatched roof and the improbable Colorado connection. I remember sitting there listening to his story and thinking, “Well, I’ll be damned. This is what it’s like outside the algorithm.” And right there, I decided being outside the algorithm is a good place to be. It’s where we commit to our own success. And that’s why the printed word still matters, still moves people. It’s a commitment to a moment in time. A uniquely human way to leave an indelible mark.

–Amy (a person deeply committed to paper)