Stages
Adobe Creator VIP Community Summit, San Francisco. University at Buffalo. INBOUND, Boston. Craft + Commerce. Speak Your Way to Cash.
The question I run everything through
Is it hard,or is it wrong?
Hard is not the enemy. Wrong is. The two feel identical from the inside, which is why capable people finish the wrong things and quit the right ones. This is the test that tells them apart.
Keynote speaker · Sober since May 15, 2015 · Crown Heights, Brooklyn
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Hard is not the enemy. Wrong is.Facts got free. Judgment didn't.Tired is a condition, not a verdict.Evidence settles it, not feeling.Say it out loud to one person.Hard is not the enemy. Wrong is.Facts got free. Judgment didn't.Tired is a condition, not a verdict.Evidence settles it, not feeling.Say it out loud to one person.
Three things that are obvious once you hear them
01
Nobody quits because the work is hard. They quit because they can't tell if it matters.
Which is why more grit is the wrong prescription for most people who ask for it.
02
The test won't tell you what to do. It'll take away your best excuse for not deciding.
Three questions. Evidence instead of feeling. A move by the end of the page.
03
All I do is make people pause long enough for common sense to kick in.
That is the whole job. On a stage, in a newsletter, in my own kitchen.
Former Meta and Adobe. General Assembly faculty for over ten years. NYU faculty. Fourteen years after he left, Adobe booked him back.
Terry keynoted Adobe's Creator VIP Community Summit in San Francisco. Ten minutes, one test, and homework the room had to do that night. He has designed AI training for teams at Google, Amazon, EY and Berkshire Hathaway, and is General Assembly faculty, over ten years, and NYU faculty.
Faculty
General Assembly faculty, over ten years. NYU faculty. Mentor at Amazon, Techstars and the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute.
Featured on
Good Morning America, SXSW, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company.
Before this
Business development at Meta and Adobe. Fired from Facebook for drinking. Sober since May 15, 2015.
Trusted by teams at
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Where the test gets run
A dozen small calls
between breakfast and bed.
The workout you skip. The email you don't send. The thing your kid is fighting you on.
The test
Three questions. Fits on a card. Fits in a kitchen fight.
When a decision hurts, that pain is either a warning to stop or a toll worth paying. They feel identical. The test settles it with evidence, in about a minute, and then it takes away your excuse.
"Man, this makes everything so much easier. It's just hard or wrong, and then you go forward from there."
A student, a few days after the Buffalo keynote
The Hard or Wrong card · tap a question
Is it hard,
or is it wrong?
- 1What am I actually trying to achieve here?If the answer is a feeling, you named the fight, not the goal. Say the outcome out loud.
- 2Is this hard, or is it wrong?Settled by evidence, not feeling: go get the fact, run the smallest reversible test, or set a decide-by date.
- 3What's the move?Wrong goal, drop it. Wrong approach, change the road. Just hard, push, with people behind you.
hardorwrong.comFree
The keynote
Ten minutes to sixty. Then the room runs it.
Halfway through, every phone comes out. Attendees run a real decision through the test on the spot, and a stuck initiative the whole room has circled for two quarters gets a move before the session ends.
"People built actual tools on their phones. Not demos. Months later, people from that session are still talking about it."
Amy Nelson · Founder, The Riveter
The documentary · sixteen minutes
Rock bottom was the beginning.
I was fired from Facebook for drinking. Then my son died during birth. This is the story of what I did with that.
The full film. No email required. Just press play.
The Real Work · Thursdays
One decision a week. Told, then tested.
A small scene from my week, the test run on it, and the move. Family, business, the gym, the stuff I would rather not say out loud. Then two ways to use it in yours.
Coaching · one call
Bring the decision you keep circling.
Thirty minutes. We name the goal, settle hard or wrong with evidence, and you leave with the move. Booked and paid in one link, no back and forth.
Later · not live
Members
Once a month, we run the test live on your decision.
A small room, a real decision, evidence on the table, a move by the end. Capped, so it stays a room and not an audience.
Where Patreon goes when you are ready for it. The promise is the live room and the archive of every decision we have run; the price and the cap are yours to set.
Who's writing this
Fired from Facebook for drinking. Sober since 2015. Still here.
Former Meta and Adobe. General Assembly faculty for over ten years, NYU faculty. Father of five in Crown Heights. I train five days a week, I coach flag football, and in 2026 Adobe flew me back to keynote its Creator VIP Community Summit, fourteen years after I left.
0days sober
and counting
and counting
RoomsAdobe, Google, Amazon, EY, Berkshire Hathaway
Featured onGood Morning America, SXSW, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company
FacultyGeneral Assembly, over ten years · NYU faculty
HomeBrooklyn
Run the test.
Then go forward.
The three questions and the card are free. The keynote and the call are how I make a living.