The Standard Is What You Allow
Whatever quality you let slide becomes your new baseline, so relentlessly set the bar every day.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 82%
Alex Lieberman's operating belief is that the standard of your business is whatever you allow: by saying nothing to sub-optimal work, you implicitly declare it acceptable, and that becomes the new baseline. Morning Brew's founders enforced this maniacally — every morning for the first 2-3 hours they printed out Morning Brew, Axios, The Hustle, and the Skimm, and with pen and paper went through every story, circling what was good and crossing out what wasn't, holding each writer to the best writer's bar ('Lindsey Quinn wrote this same story better than you did — be better'). Sam counters with a caveat: this obsessive standard-setting pays off once you have product-market fit (roughly $5M+ revenue), where you can iterate a B-grade product to A+; before that, the maniacal polish can be counterproductive.
Origin
Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief enforced a daily competitor-teardown ritual at Morning Brew; Alex credits the 'standard is what you allow' idea to lessons from Austin on standard-setting.
Core principles
- 01Silence toward mediocre work is implicit approval.
- 02Your baseline is whatever you tolerate.
- 03Benchmark every piece against the best, not the average.
- 04Maniacal standards pay off after product-market fit, not before.
How to run it
- 1
Set the bar at the best
Define the standard as the best writer's or competitor's output, not the team average.
- 2
Review real output daily
Print or pull up your work and competitors' every day and go through it piece by piece, pen in hand.
- 3
Mark good and bad explicitly
Circle what's excellent and cross out what isn't; make the judgment visible and specific.
- 4
Never let mediocrity pass silently
Say something about sub-optimal work every time, because silence sets a lower standard by default.
Watch out Saying nothing to weak work implicitly declares it your new acceptable baseline.
- 5
Match intensity to stage
Apply the full maniacal standard once you have product-market fit (~$5M+), where iteration turns a B into an A+; ease off before then.
Pro tip Sam notes that before PMF, obsessive polish can be counterproductive — 'just have fun, do what feels good.'
In the wild
For the first 2-3 hours each day, Morning Brew's team printed Morning Brew, Axios, The Hustle, and the Skimm and, led by Alex with pen and paper, went through every story circling what they liked and Xing out what they didn't, telling writers exactly where a rival wrote it better.
→ A relentlessly enforced quality bar that Alex credits for the brand's voice — though it made him unpopular with the first writer.
Sam observes that once you have PMF you can iterate a B or C-plus product to an A-plus, which is when the maniacal standard earns its keep.
→ Standard-setting compounds into quality once fit exists to iterate on.
Common mistakes
Letting weak work slide
Tolerating sub-optimal output without comment silently resets the team's standard to that lower level.
Going maniacal before PMF
Applying obsessive polish before you have product-market fit can starve the search for fit; the intensity belongs after.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and editors building a product where craft quality is the core differentiator.
Not ideal for
Early pre-product-market-fit teams where relentless polish would starve the search for fit.
From the transcript
“The standard of your business is what you allow. If you allow sub-optimal content to be written, that is the new standard you set.”
“Once you get past 5 million in revenue or something, you probably have some type of product market fit. You can absolutely iterate your way…”
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