One of the biggest realizations I’ve had this year is that my emotions are not important. Not that I should control them, or manage them better… but that they literally do not matter. At best, they’re useful feedback tools. At worst, they can destroy your life, your relationships, and everything you care for. Think about how many emotions you experience on a given day. You’re…
books that have changed my life
over the last 5 years, i’ve read 348 books – that’s an average of 1.3 books per week. of the 348 books i’ve read, below (categorized) are the most impactful. books i return to time and time again, and can recommend with full confidence: business mastery deep work influence antifragile the hard thing about hard things zero to one crucial conversations philosophy meditations total freedom…
questions for performance reviews
since launching kettle & fire, i’ve been thrown into a role where – for the first time – i’m managing more than 5 people. as the team has grown, i’ve had to learn how to hire, manage and help team members grow and thrive. it hasn’t always been easy or smooth. as part of working on this, i’ve hired an executive coach, meditated, read ~10…
startups i’d invest in today
at some point in the next 10 years, i plan to start an angellist syndicate. until then, i’ll be writing occasional (timestamped) posts detailing the companies i would invest in today, and why i’d invest in them. the goal is to build a track record of predictions around startup success before it’s happened. most companies i’ll look at will be in the tech and food…
language and hidden meaning
last week i listened to a podcast with peter thiel and tyler cowen (link). in the q&a section at the end, peter says something that struck me about the hidden meaning we have in language: “I’m skeptical of people who excessively invoke science as an incantation of sorts. When you use the word science it’s often a tell, like in poker, that you’re bluffing and…
why you should find things you hate doing
one of the bigger things i’ve learned while running kettle & fire is that there are a LOT of things i hate doing. bookkeeping, accounting, reading contracts, any sort of admin stuff that feels boring. dealing with sending in amazon inventory. calls with agencies. working on legal stuff. bleh. this aversion to doing stuff like the above has had really, really, painfully negative consequences for kettle &…
how to mock up a website in keynote
for a long time i’ve wanted to figure out how to do mockups in tools i know how to use (aka not photoshop, omnigraffle, hotgloo or something like that). i also wanted to use tools that i could quickly pull together and hack together on my own. well, last week i figured out how to mock up a webpage in keynote. i pulled together something very…
why i’m writing without capitalization
take a look at my blog posts from 2016. it shouldn’t take long: i wrote 3 of them. during the same period, i wrote 18 different drafts that i never published. why? i like writing, it’s something i want to get better at, etc. etc. but the reality is, for each of the 18 posts i drafted last year, i got 90% of the way…
startups i’d invest in today
at some point in the next 10 years, i plan to start an angellist syndicate. until then, i’ll be writing occasional (timestamped) posts detailing the companies i would invest in today, and why i’d invest in them. the goal is to build a track record of predictions around startup success before it’s happened. most companies i’ll look at will be in the tech and food…
Meta Problems and the Problem Stack
After leaving Rackspace (post Exceptional acquisition), I was stuck with what felt (to me) like the ultimate first world problem. I didn’t know what company to start next. In the end, I started Kettle & Fire bone broth. I also ended up buying another company, Fomo, in the marketing tools space — another space I knew well. Both are going well and I’m quite happy with where…