Every week, I post an update of what I’m working on and what I’ve accomplished. I’ve been doing some form of this weekly update for several years. Yesterday, I realized that I forgot to do an update for the week ending September 28, 2025. So, I published that week’s update today. You can see it here.

I still need to share an update of last week (week ending October 5), and I plan to publish it before the weekend. That means you’ll see two weekly updates in the span of a few days. It’s not a mistake; it’s intentional (kinda). Hopefully this makes sense.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs 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: 82
• Total blog posts published: 539

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week ending 9/28/25 (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read Positioning, a framework for thinking about perception and using it to own a position in the customer’s mind from a marketing perspective
• Added four more books to the library on this site—see more here; these, which I read in 2018 and 2017, were about financial crisis winners, open-book management, and mental clarity

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add four more books that I read before 2024 to the library on this site—see more here

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week two hundred eighty-seven was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs 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

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• Last week I shared what I learned about Pipecat and Livekit, two open-source orchestration frameworks that can be used to build real-time voice and multimodal AI agents (see here). This week I learned about turn detection: “determining when a user begins or ends their ‘turn’ in a conversation.” Turn detection makes for polite AI conversations—AI and the user don’t talk over each other because the AI waits until the person is done before it speaks.
• The best conversations between entrepreneurs aren’t polite. They’re high-energy. Ideas are shared rapid fire. One entrepreneur’s idea sparks more ideas from the other. They interrupt each other. They talk over one another. These types of conversations, replicated using the above frameworks and paired with a library of knowledge from biographies and other books, could lead to entrepreneurs having great thinking or sparring sessions with AI.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

I’m making great progress on my weekend project. I estimate that if I add four to five books each weekend for the next three weekends, I should complete this project by the end of the third weekend. I’m excited to wrap this up and share my complete library with others. I really hope people find it helpful. I haven’t seen anything like this that caters to entrepreneurs or investors.

Now I have to narrow down my list of potential projects and pick the weekend project I want to work on for the next few months. I also need to figure out what the optimal length of time is for these weekend projects. This one will have taken about five months by the time it’s done. I feel like that might be too long. My gut tells me that something in the three- to four-month range is about right. That way, I can complete three or four weekend projects a year. I’ll think more about this over the weekend.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs 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

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• A developer showed me his new AI solution for enterprise HR teams. His tool uses audio as the input method (i.e., people talk to the software, and it talks back). I asked what powers his tool, and he told me about Pipecat and Livekit. These two open-source, orchestration frameworks can be used to build real-time voice and multimodal AI agents (e.g., phone bots, web voice assistants, or software that the user interacts with solely via voice). “Multimodal” means able to handle multiple input/output methods (text, audio, video, etc.). These tools let you build agents that can accept spoken questions or instructions from a user > convert that speech to text (STT) > feed that text to an LLM (which processes it and provides a text response) > convert that text to speech (TTS), and speak to the user (e.g., answer questions or respond to instructions).

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs 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

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• Access to books or other resources that document solutions that have worked for other entrepreneurs isn’t always enough. Many entrepreneurs need to have conversations about what’s in those resources to help them think. Other people’s perspectives uncover their blind spots, foster faster ideation, and help them determine how to apply information to their own situation.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs 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: 81
• Total blog posts published: 532

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, a framework for thinking about marketing that describes 22 laws that are foundational to marketing
• Added four more books to the library on this site—see more here; these, which I read in 2018, were about the Enron scandal, fracking, process improvement, and investing in post-Soviet Russia

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add two more books that I read before 2024 to the library on this site—see more here

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week two hundred eighty-six was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Last week, I shared my decision to pick up the pace on my weekend project—updating my library—so I can finish it by mid to late October.

Last weekend, I set a new goal: add a minimum of four books each weekend until I’m done. If I have the bandwidth, I’ll add more.

This project has been fun, but I’ve started thinking about other things that also would be fun, and I’m ready for a new project. This one began at the end of May (see here), so if I wrap it up in October, I will have worked on it every weekend for five months with no breaks. To date, I’ve added 132 books to my library.

I’m in the final stretch. Wish me luck!

Earlier this month, I shared that my weekend-only project to update my library won’t be completed until November at my current pace. I could either make peace with that or ramp up my pace to add more than two books per weekend.

Pondering the situation, I decided to finish the project well before the holiday season kicks off. I’m afraid that if I finish in November, I’d be more likely—with all the holiday distractions—to not begin another weekend project. I want to have established the habit and momentum of a new project before the holidays.

I’m going to add more books to the library every weekend. Four, or maybe even five. I’ll test it this weekend and settle on a number. My goal now: complete this project by mid-to-late October.

Wish me luck!

Weekly Update: Week Two Hundred Eighty-Five

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs 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: 80
• Total blog posts published: 525

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read Invested, Charles Schwab’s autobiography detailing his founding of Charles Schwab Corporation and how he built it from a pioneering discount brokerage into a financial services company catering to individual investors
• Added two more books that I read in 2018 to the library on this site—see more here; they were about the $5 billion Malaysian 1MDB scandal and the high-stakes underground poker world

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add two more books that I read before 2024 to the library on this site—see more here

Asks:

• No ask this week.

Week two hundred eighty-five was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!