Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Investing with Fear – YouTube interview with investor and entrepreneur Howard Marks. Great interview. My biggest takeaway is that his best investments (with the biggest returns) were made when his firm was afraid but had to do it anyway. He said that “if you wait until you have nothing to be afraid about, probably, the opportunity has passed.” I also love his views on the keys to a great partnership: shared values, complementary skills, and mutual respect. The other thing that really stuck with me is that Marks says he did a terrible job of making decisions early in his career. He wasn’t making good decisions with intention until he was almost 50 years old. He’s now a billionaire, so it’s never too late to start thinking rationally. I also loved how he starts many of his statements with “I could be wrong, but . . .” or “I don’t know but . . .” I want to try that.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

Today I was reading up on Kobe Bryant’s routines and work ethic. I came across this quote from him:

Confidence comes from preparation.

In this video, he explained that preparation through thousands of reps helped him understand what he was comfortable and uncomfortable doing. So, when he was in a high-pressure situation, he was able to be calm because what he was about to do was just another rep of something he’d exhaustively prepared for.

I love this quote. It shows us why Kobe had outsize success.

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This week I caught up with a friend who started a company last year. The company has customers and is growing slowly. She recently realized that the market dynamics being what they are, the company likely won’t be the grand slam she originally envisioned. So now she’s considering what to do next: push along with the company even though the odds aren’t great, or begin looking for another problem to solve.

During our conversation, she said something that caught my attention: Building the current company was fun and gave her something exciting to work on after leaving her nine-to-five job every day. The idea of not having another idea to work on immediately is unsettling. She wants to stay in building mode.

The entrepreneurial bug has bitten my friend. She tried it and she loves it. The idea of working only her corporate job isn’t appealing because she feels like she’s just going through the motions there.

When people who are wired to be entrepreneurs get a taste of it, they don’t want anything else. The idea of not working on a company becomes foreign to them. It’s why many entrepreneurs say they’re unemployable. Being an entrepreneur and constantly racking your brain to solve problems makes entrepreneurs feel alive. Seeing how your hard work and cognitive effort turn into a product or service that others use is rewarding on a level that only entrepreneurs can understand.

And that’s why I’ve always felt that entrepreneurship is addictive. When people get a taste of it, there’s often no going back.

As I’ve shared over the last few weeks, I’m helping a friend work through logistics and operational challenges at his scaling start-up. The company sells physical products, so my experience running a company that sold physical products has been useful. And I’m getting something I hadn’t planned on: a front-row view of the launching of a new brand via marketing. Marketing is my weakest area, and I want to understand it better. Working with my friend, I’m seeing how he’s using various marketing strategies to launch his latest product. It’s been cool to see the step-by-step, day-by-day actions and thoughts that led to results that have exceeded all our expectations.

I’ve learned a lot about new-age marketing so far and am looking forward to learning more.

Yesterday I wrote a post (see here) about the prove-it mentality and how that mindset propelled one Atlanta-based company from five people to a behemoth worth tens of billions of dollars that trades on the stock market.

Today I read a quote from Mark Twain that reminded me of the story from yesterday’s post:

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

Being certain about something you haven’t proved to be true and being wrong about it can get you in trouble. Having a prove-it mentality helps you avoid that situation.

Whenever I hear someone say something isn’t possible, I think about a conversation I had with the founding CTO of a publicly traded Atlanta company. Jim helped scale that company from five people to an IPO with thousands of employees. He’s a problem solver at heart and always believed the impossible was possible. I asked him what the secret to his company’s and his team’s success was, and he said his team didn’t blindly trust anybody or anything. Their motto was “prove it.”

As the company grew, it was pitched every product and service imaginable. Whenever they asked why they should buy the product or service, the answer was “All the big companies are using it.” To Jim, that answer was illogical. He and his team gave that rationale zero weight in their decision-making process. Instead, they tested everything to figure out what was possible and which products and services were the best. Often, they found that the big companies weren’t using the best product. Jim and his team would find better products, often at lower prices because the companies were smaller and hungrier. Knowing which companies were using subpar products helped his company understand others’ shortcomings and gave his team insights on how to differentiate their company to their customers.

In the end, this prove-it mentality became a huge competitive advantage for Jim’s company, but only because Jim and his team did the tedious grunt work of vetting everything to truly understand what was possible and what products were the best. Over time, that work compounded to the point that their technology platform was lightning fast and the best in their industry. When customers got a taste of how much better their platform performed, they were hooked, and the company developed a cult following.

Just because someone says something isn’t possible, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. And just because everyone says something is the best, that doesn’t mean it is the best. If the decision is material, it’s worth digging in yourself. Often you’ll find that what others say is impossible is very possible or what others say is the best is far from it.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 124
• Total blog posts published: 833

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 7/19/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read Principles of Great Traders by George Coyle, a framework book distilling decades of interviews with elite public-market practitioners (investors and traders) into the core principles that powered their enormous returns. Coyle coauthored a book I’d already read, Market Wizards: The Next Generation, and in it he mentioned his other books and articles. I was curious about him and decided to give Principles a read since it’s pretty short.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-nine was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

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Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• 300 years of Americans getting rich – YouTube interview with Joseph Moore. Moore gives a historical perspective on how Americans built wealth, including investing in the stock market, and how indexing changed the stock market. His take on bonds beating stocks for long periods made me want to learn more about bond history. His views on real estate being a path to building a modest fortune but a terrible way to make a massive fortune stuck with me. He said that real estate has not always gone up (inflation-adjusted) for most of American history and that elevated inflation and the ability to purchase using mostly debt changed this. I loved his views on how the best way to build wealth is to solve other people’s problems, take more risks, and relocate to chase opportunity. Great interview, and I’m buying the book he wrote on this topic.
• Why blogs are dying – An interesting blog post on why the top 100 once-successful blogs are dying. Only 21 of these sites continue to grow, and the vast majority have lost 85% of their traffic. My takeaway is that in the age of AI, blogs where people document what they did to solve problems (i.e., their firsthand experiences) have moats and are performing the best. The days of getting traffic by answering questions on blog posts are over because AI can quickly summarize this kind of information.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

I’ve been getting up to speed on the latest in e-commerce as I help a friend with his new company. The game has changed a lot since I was actively in the space. Two big things have jumped out at me so far.

First, AI is drastically changing e-commerce. Each person can do more, and AI can handle some tasks, so fewer people are needed to run an e-commerce company. I’ve heard that some large, branded e-commerce companies are running with only 8% of their revenue going toward SG&A expenses. That’s extremely low. AI is also changing marketing. Companies can produce ad creative faster, creating and testing more ads in less time without having to substantially increase overhead.

Next, a ton of branded e-commerce companies are doing over $100 million in annual revenue. Companies’ ability to drive awareness and sales has drastically changed with platforms like TikTok Shops. And it’s easier for companies to scale functions such as importing, warehousing, and fulfillment on a dime through platforms like Flexport, FBA, and FBT. The result of all this is rapid scale for some companies. When I was first starting in e‑commerce, it would take well over a decade to reach $100 million in revenue. That’s if it ever happened; it was rare, with only a handful of brands achieving it after a decade or two of grinding. Now companies can hit those numbers in two or three years!

Overall, I’m learning that the world of e-commerce is transformed. The new class of e‑commerce companies is doing more with less and going further faster.

This week I had a great conversation with someone who came across my blog and reached out. An avid reader and entrepreneur, he asked for feedback, which I gladly gave. I also shared my experience building a product similar to his and some other things I’ve learned. The conversation went longer than we’d planned. He offered to make introductions to other entrepreneurs who are avid readers, which I appreciate.

My takeaway is that sharing what I’ve learned, online for free, encourages serendipity. I have no idea how many people out there are interested in the same things I am. Some of them may come across what I’ve shared, and it may be helpful. And a smaller subset of those who get value from what I share may reach out to discuss ideas.

I enjoy my habits of daily blogging and reading; I’ve grown a ton because of them. And recently I’ve realized that they’re leading to my connecting with like-minded people, which I didn’t expect but do enjoy.  

My takeaway is that sharing what I’ve learned online has little downside and, over the years, a growing upside.