Author: Peter Kang

Reflecting on The 11 Laws of The Fifth Discipline (from Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline)

June 4, 2019
by Peter Kang
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It’s been a year since I read Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline and yet, I’ve been reminded almost every single day of the lessons from the book. My company Barrel recently celebrated 13 years of being in business. My co-founder Sei-Wook and I have been there for all 13 years, and I feel like it’s only been in the past year that the two of us started to take a less reactive approach to running […]

Operating Rules Vol.1

February 17, 2019
by Peter Kang
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I’ve found myself recently repeating a few different rules to in my head as reminders on ways I should be operating, whether it’s in day-to-day behaviors, in occasional decision-making, or interactions with others. Sometimes, when I’m distracted, emotionally incensed, or completely in mindless mode, I’ll forget these rules and behave in regretful ways. But one thing I’ve noticed is that as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to embrace the upside to slowing down and considering […]

My Personal Finance Stack 2019

January 14, 2019
by Peter Kang
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I last wrote about my personal finance “stack” in the summer of 2017. A lot has changed since then, so I want to make this an annual activity and use it as an opportunity to examine how I’m managing my money. Without going into any absolute figures, I’ll share how I organize my money, what types of investments I’ve made, and the services and tools I use. Money is something that’s still a tough topic to […]

2018: Habits That Stuck

December 31, 2018
by Peter Kang
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2018 was a good year for experimentation. I tried out a lot of different approaches to cultivating or switching up my habits . Some ended up sticking and many were abandoned. I’m grateful that I’ve had the luxury of time, energy, and resources to continually mold my daily routines freely. I know that this won’t always be the case, especially when new responsibilities (e.g. parenthood) emerge, but I hope that the past few years of […]

Lessons from Atomic Habits by James Clear

December 2, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I’ve thought and written a lot about habits over the past few years. However, after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, I realized that I was still lacking awareness when it came to understanding how habits formed and stuck around. While many of the ideas, examples, and concepts in the book were very familiar to me (e.g. cognitive biases, small wins / reinforcing feedback loops, tracking, etc.), it was really nice to see everything come together in an […]

Continually Evolving Thoughts on Talent and Hiring

October 28, 2018
by Peter Kang
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In writing this post, I wanted to make a reminder for myself about the continually evolving nature of how I’ve viewed talent and hiring, and how it’s possible that my views will continue to change in the future. When we first started Barrel, Sei-Wook and I were essentially a couple of freelancers who said yes to enough work that we needed to hire people to help us. We used Craigslist and that was the start […]

Common Opportunities in Growing E-commerce Businesses Vol. 1

September 23, 2018
by Peter Kang
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At Barrel, a segment of our clients (and prospective clients who contact us) are growing e-commerce businesses doing anywhere between $500k to $5 million in sales. They are typically run by small teams (usually less than 10 people, often just 2-5 people) and have either been bootstrapped (funded with the founder’s savings plus the profits of the business) or with a small seed investment from friends and family. Drawing from my observations and experience reviewing dozens of […]

Exploring Daily Commitments

September 9, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I recently signed up for an online fitness program called Athlean-X. It’s a 3-month plan that requires 5 days of workouts with 2 days of rest and recovery. I haven’t been able to keep up day-for-day with the plan, especially as I like to fit in basketball and running on some of the days, but I’ve tried my best to fit the 5 workouts every 8-9 days. The workouts themselves are not overly difficult or […]

Being Short and Embracing Setbacks from Astroball by Ben Reiter

August 22, 2018
by Peter Kang
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Sig had developed a theory—a hypothesis, to be exact—about undersized ballplayers, after so many years of watching Jed Lowrie and José Altuve, and now Alex Bregman. Most players with their skills but traditional pro bodies had lived their entire lives without having ever been told no and often without suffering any setbacks. So, when faced with the prospect of failing at a critical moment, they didn’t know how to handle it, because they’d never had […]

The Discipline of Joy & More Thoughts on Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam

August 12, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I’ve compiled some additional thoughts on Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam. You can read about my time diary experiment here. Progress is motivational, and makes time feel expansive. In the time-perception survey, people who strongly agreed with the statement “Yesterday, I made progress toward my personal or professional goals” were 20 percent more likely than the average survey respondent to believe that they generally had enough time for the […]

Thoughts on Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam and My Time Diary Experiment

July 29, 2018
by Peter Kang
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In Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam, the author writes about her study of over 900 participants in which she surveys them on how they spent a Monday in March hour by hour and how they felt both about that day and about time in general. She writes: First, people who feel like they have enough time are exceedingly mindful of their time. They know where the time […]

The Importance of Marketing to Existing Clients from Managing the Professional Service Firm

July 17, 2018
by Peter Kang
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Managing the Professional Service Firm by David H. Maister is a must-read book for anyone running a professional services business. For too long, I thought that a digital creative firm like Barrel was somehow special and played by different rules than consulting, legal, accounting, or architecture/design businesses. Wrong. It became quickly apparent in the first few pages of the book that Barrel operates in the same way as any other professional service firm and that […]

Lummi Island and The Willows Inn in Washington

July 6, 2018
by Peter Kang
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Lummi Island Baker Preserve Overlook View of Surrounding Islands

Melanie and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary with a trip to Washington. We spent a couple of days in Seattle meeting up with friends and doing touristy stuff around the city. We then drove north a couple of hours to Lummi Island and stayed overnight at The Willows Inn. We enjoyed an excellent dinner at The Willows Inn, enjoyed the amazing view from our beachfront room, and woke up the next morning to an […]

Systems Archetypes from The Fifth Discipline and How They Apply to a Digital Agency

May 28, 2018
by Peter Kang
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One of my favorite parts of The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge is the topic of systems thinking and how so many of the problems inherent in organizations (and even personal behaviors) stem from being unaware of the various systems at play and how these systems, when undetected and untouched, can control and determine outcomes, often in ways contrary to what you may have intended. In such situations, we’re likely to blame external forces for our […]

Personal Mastery from The Fifth Discipline

May 22, 2018
by Peter Kang
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Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs. In Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, one of the five disciplines is personal mastery (the others being systems thinking, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning). Senge equates personal mastery with personal growth and learning, espoused by those who “are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek.” As […]

The Seven Learning Disabilities from The Fifth Discipline

April 1, 2018
by Peter Kang
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In Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, he introduces seven learning disabilities that largely go undetected in organizations. Only by identifying these, he writes, can an organization take the necessary steps to cure them and become a learning organization. The Seven Learning Disabilities It is no accident that most organizations learn poorly. The way they are designed and managed, the way people’s jobs are defined, and, most importantly, the way we have all been taught to think […]

The Importance of Client Satisfaction

March 11, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how we can best get a sense of the health of our business at Barrel. There are the usual metrics like inbound leads, deals in the pipeline, and expected revenue from signed clients. There are also in-project metrics like profitability and how we’re tracking towards meeting milestones and deadlines. But the more I’ve explored this, the more I am convinced that the most important metric is one […]

Halfway Through My Thirties, How’s It Going?

March 4, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I turned 35 today. I spent the day watching some TV, going for a run, doing the laundry, catching up on work, and eating delicious meals cooked by my wife Mel. It was a peaceful and restful Sunday, just what I wanted. Throughout the day, I found myself thinking about how I’ve hit the mid-point of my thirties. I was reminded of a blog post I wrote 5 years ago, Three Things to Consider for My […]

Lessons from Pricing Creativity by Blair Enns

February 11, 2018
by Peter Kang
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Lessons from Pricing Creativity by Blair Enns

Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour is a book that provides rules and tactics to help creative professionals charge more for new work and run a more profitable business. It’s by Blair Enns, the founder of Win Without Pitching, a training program that helps creative professionals win more business. I’ve been a follower of Enns for some years, having paid for access to his materials, enrolling in his online course, signing up for his webinars, and listening […]

What are My Deliberate Practice Opportunities?

January 20, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I recently paid for an online course called The Art of Focus (unfortunately, it’s no longer open to new students). It’s a series of videos and exercises designed to help increase my capacity for deep, focused work. In the introductory video, one of the topics is about Deliberate Practice. Here’s an excerpt: In the early 1990s, K. Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University, studied experts and amateurs in an attempt to discern why […]