What Nine Years of Not Quitting Can Build A few months ago, I asked myself a question. What if I had a Jarvis? Not the polite British butler version. The Tony Stark version. The one that handles everything outside the workshop so Stark can stay in his Zone of Genius. Tinkering. Building. Blowing things up. Occasionally damaging a beautiful car collection. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing I wanted the same thing. Something that would pull as much off my plate as possible....
1 day ago • 8 min read
Two Years in the Dirt, One Year to Reach the Sky The Coach Who Taught Future NBA Stars How to Put On Socks John Wooden won ten national championships in twelve years at UCLA. Seven of them in a row. Nobody has come close. So when people first read about the man, they expect complicated strategy. Brilliant offensive schemes. Speeches that left players ready to run through walls. They don’t expect to read about socks. Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court by...
2 days ago • 8 min read
Who’s Programming You? A few days ago I was listening to Jason tell stories after class. Jason is the owner and head instructor at Meraki, the BJJ gym where I train. He’s a phenomenal martial artist on the mat. He’s also been in the room with some of the best fighters on the planet. He was describing what fight day looked like for Anderson Silva during his prime. Jason was part of Silva’s training camp. He saw it up close. Anderson Silva giving Vitor Belfort a brutal front kick While the...
3 days ago • 7 min read
Thought Without Action Is Nothing More than Mental Masturbation I was the kid who lived in books. Small. Quiet. Introverted. Scared of conflict. I spent my childhood in the library because the library was safe. No bullies. No physical confrontation. No risk of getting hurt. I could read about warriors, adventurers, heroes who did things I would never do. I could think about courage without ever needing it. I could philosophize about discipline without practicing it. I was a thinker. That was...
4 days ago • 7 min read
The Most Underrated Superpower: Inversion How to Build a Life of Success by Studying Failure A few days ago I wrote about asking better questions. About coming from curiosity instead of criticism. But here is the thing about criticism: even when you are judging someone else, you can use that judgment to your benefit. Not by tearing them down. By inverting what you see. By turning their mistake into your roadmap. The Problem with Should I have a long list of how people should behave. You...
5 days ago • 10 min read
Everything Goes in Cycles, and the Blue-Collar Trades Are Back I was a lousy student. Barely graduated high school with a C-minus average. Bottom of my graduating class. My buddy sitting next to me at the ceremony opened his diploma holder and found nothing inside. They let him walk but he had to go back and take a class he failed in summer school. So I guess the company you keep and all that. Based on the model for success in life, I was kind of screwed. I was not college or university...
6 days ago • 8 min read
Pick the Vehicle That Fits the Journey You Want It Is the Journey, Not the Goal There is a video by Alex Hormozi that his marketing team has been running for six months. Half a million views. It breaks down the four main business shapes after studying hundreds of businesses: e-commerce, service, education, and software. Alex Hormozi and his 4 business shapes, with his shadow on the paper, lol It is one of the smartest breakdowns I have seen. If you have not watched it, go watch it. But here...
7 days ago • 9 min read
Not All Warriors Are On the Mat I have spent most of my life connecting with warriors. On the mat. On the jobsite. In the gym. Men and women who show up, do the work, and refuse to quit when things get hard. But I have also learned something that took me years to see. Not all warriors train. Some of them farm. The Man in the Field I stumbled across Chris Newman’s YouTube channel a few months ago. He posts funny shit. He educates people about regenerative farming versus corporate farming. He...
8 days ago • 7 min read
To Get Better Answers, Ask Better Questions One question has been the key to my success in life. “How can I do this smarter, better, and easier?” That question drove me on the mat. It drove me on the jobsite. It drives me now as I build a business. Tony Robbins, doing his thing, hosting a big event Tony Robbins was absolutely right when he said that to get better answers, you need to ask better questions. Most people are stuck not because they are stupid. They are stuck because they are...
9 days ago • 6 min read