I turned 32 last week.
Every year, I love looking back and realizing how much I didn’t know the year before. To that end, here are 12 things I got wrong (or have been getting wrong for a while) and how I changed my mind.
I think my friend Bevin introduced the idea of sympathy vs. feedback idea to me:
When someone complains to her about something, first she lets them get it all out
Then she asks (I’m paraphrasing), “Okay. What are you looking: sympathy or feedback?”
A few months ago, a colleague sent this message:
“I was just painfully reminded by my friend had I held my initial $1K investment in ETH, today would be the day it was worth $1M.”
I once had a family friend named Andrew. He introduced me to Puff Daddy, Usher, and Triple Five Soul apparel. He also had a brilliant mind for medicine. Rutgers University literally created an award in chemistry, so they could give it to him.
While he was in medical school, I asked him how he did so well in his studies. His answer was simple:
When I was in middle school I had three key beliefs about my future:
1. I wouldn’t buy a house. Instead, I’d live in a RV. I’d drive around the United States and park on residential sidewalks and in Walmart parking lots. My cousins teased they’d let me park my RV in their four-car garages in the winter so I wouldn’t freeze.
The first musical I remember listening to was Miss Saigon. My mother played the cassette on weekends, and we listened to it dozens of times. As a boy, I tried assembling the story by the songs alone: Why did Chris leave Kim so suddenly? Why did he marry Ellen? For years, for some reason, I thought she was stuck in a Vietnamese jail with her son Tam, not hiding in a village.
A couple weeks ago, I saw the musical for the first time, and songs like Why God Why? and I Still Believe transported me back to those weekends, that cassette, those moments wondering what transpired between Chris and Kim.
I just finished my second week at Reforge and if I had to sum up the week, it’s this:
I’m learning a new language — and it’s hard.
Reforge teaches growth professionals how to advance their skills in growth through online education, networking and mentorship. The students are 3 years into their career at companies like Facebook, Google, Dropbox, LinkedIn, etc. aka some damn smart people.
And after 5 minutes of talking with them, I realize I don’t have the vocabulary (yet) to talk through the ideas and concepts I’ll eventually teach, things like growth models, churn, and viral loops, just to scratch the surface. 90% of the time I’m just a smiling sponge in my chair, trying to absorb as much as I can.
That’s just part of the game. At I Will Teach, we called this “starting with a child’s mind.” The better you are at that, the easier everything else gets.
Fortunately, I’ve done my fair share of starting with a child’s mind. Years ago I moved to Los Angeles, with no idea that Hollywood had a its own language and cadence. I learned it slowly and painfully from scratch.
Last week I learned some interesting things about SF tech culture. For example:
- Investing in cryptocurrencies is a thing
- People invest hundreds, even thousands of dollars in “coffee set-ups” — home coffee brewing equipment to make their own personal perfect cup of coffee
- Everyone loves wearing Patagonia
But the biggest mental shifts I’ve had to make is about money. Here are 2 ideas about money I’m trying to hold simultaneously in my mind:
I caught this absolutely beautiful bit of foreshadowing from Robin Black a few months back. There was something magical about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I saved the interview and kinda forgot about it.
It wasn’t until recently I connected the dots when reading other old interviews.
This first interview they recorded a day before Conor McGregor knocked out Jose Aldo in a record 13 seconds.
Robin is talking about how certain fighters have learned to adapt to Jose Aldo’s leg kicks. Basically, you have to keep your weight off your front foot.
It gets interesting when he points out that Conor probably WON’T do that, and why (around the 2-minute mark):
OK, well that solves that problem, but it also creates a whole bunch of new problems that we don’t normally deal with.
And takes away all these great things that we do.
And I know philosophically that they do not adapt for you. They make you adapt for them.
That’s SBG, that was Coach Kavanagh, who I’m a big fan of his thinking. And so they will not be dealing with that.
Hey dudes.
I’m still very much here – but have been working on projects that pulled me away from posting on this blog.
Will start posting again soon.
(If you want to see one of the projects that’s absorbed a lot of my time the last few months, click here to read Fighting Broke, my blog on personal finance and career advice for Hollywood assistants.)
Talk soon.
Photo Credit: Mti Abhi