Week 36, 2024
Week 36 of 2024 has arrived. The rivers are moving to the sea, and we are moving toward the same; the sea of molecules and matter from which all life springs and eventually returns. You are breathing in bits and pieces of dinosaurs and Stoics. And one day, someone will breathe particles of you, too.
Time to walk over to your 4K Weeks poster and fill in another square. Done?
As this email goes out, I have likely just walked up from the river to the house, after spending a full day sitting in a folding chair, half submerged in the Little Sugar Creek. It is beautiful, and small, and beautiful.
Every year for the last eight years, my family and our two best friend families have shared a long Labor Day weekend at the same house on a river. It is one of our most loved traditions.
And for the last two years, thoughts of it have been mingled with this weekly newsletter for me. While sitting in that river two years ago, I decided to start writing a weekly newsletter. I decided that I would commit to writing it each week for a year, and my main fear was the anxiety of being rushed to get it out each week. So, I came home from that trip and spent the next two months writing the first eight weeks, and finally sent the first newsletter out Week 46 of 2022.
The most important lesson I can see while standing here, looking back to the beginning is this: Just start. If you have an idea, or a beginning of an idea, commit to a big enough chunk that you can learn something… and then JUST START.
Enjoy this week!
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Remarkable Weeks
Week 36 of 1935, Malcolm Campbell was the first person to drive the first automobile to exceed 300 miles per hour. He powered Blue Bird to 301.129 miles per hour, at Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. He was 2,633.86 (50.51 yrs). Have you ever driven faster than 100 miles per hour? 30o mph is insane.
Week 36 of 1976, Jim Henson premiered The Muppet Show on television. He was also the creator of many Sesame Street characters like Kermit the Frog, Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch. He was 2,088.86 weeks old (40.60 yrs).
Week 36 of 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then students at Stanford University, formally had Google incorporated. They were 1,327.57 weeks (25.46 yrs) and 1,306.43 weeks (25.05 yrs) old, respectively.
This Week's Quote
"People take different roads seeking fullfilment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost." -Dalai Lama
Gosh dang it, this is hard.
A human life is basically a very complicated event tree, branching into new and different directions of possibility each time something happens to them, starting from before the egg is even fertilized… by the time a baby is born it is already more complex and unique than we can possibly imagine. And yet, we all expect our neighbor to be making all the same choices that we are making. (But not too similar! Copycat! UGH!)
We have to take each beautiful individual flower as they come to us, and not wish them to be yellow instead of pink, or pink instead of yellow.
But, in a world where we are all judging books by their covers all day long both literally and metaphorically, HOW? Because judging a book by its cover is useful a good portion of the time. No cap.
I suppose the "how" is with kindness, humility and openness… Which is hard.
My sister has this thing she says sometimes…"That’s not my favorite, I don’t love that.”
Which is a beautiful way of saying “I don’t like it”, because it preserves the possibility that it might be your favorite, and that’s fine.
To each their own… and to me, mine.
What I am Consuming This Week
Freakonomics Radio, #501, "The University of Impossible-to-Get-Into"Man... prestige... no doubt it matters, but there are a lot of paths to success.
People I Mostly Admire, #37 "Sendhil Mullainathan Thinks Messing Around is the Best Use of Time."
I really like this one, and the "Change:Status Quo" bit is worth the price of admission.
Rory Sutherland. I have been seeing this guy on IG reels for a while now. I noticed yesterday that every time I see him in a reel I think about it for a while... Usually it is about the improbability and irrationality of successful things... which is something I am interested in... so I googled him, and it turns out he wrote a book called Alchemy, which I have ordered, and regularly writes for The Spectator, aUK magazine of politics and culture. I have sent a few of his recent articles to my Kindle, so I will be sitting in an Ozark Mountain river, in the southern part of Missouri, reading articles from a Conservative UK magazine this weekend! Thanks 2024!
What I am Thinking About This Week
Influence
The other day, in my Mastermind group, one of the guys was talking about the value of coaching… which is meta, because the mastermind group is us coaching each other.
Coaching is really having a moment right now it seems. (Has it been forever, and I am just noticing because I am in my 40’s?) And when any arena grows, schmucks pour in to milk the money stream.
But the value of a good coach can’t really be understated. Heck, just being in a group where you are the “least accomplished” person in a field, whatever that means for the situation, can be insanely valuable.
It is really hard to build a road map of uncharted territory… like, really hard. There is no reference, no landmark to look back to and check your relative progress, not to mention the constant second guessing... is this success? is this? What about this?
It takes a special kind of person to attempt to be the absolute first person to take, for example, a mom-and-pop plumbing shop, and spin it up to a smooth machine doing 10 million a year in revenue. And for every first, there are a ton who tried and failed.
But… once it has been done, and systematized, it’s nearly easy.
Think about the problems of scaling up a plumbing business. How do you get new work at the same rate you hire new plumbers? How do you hire new plumbers? How many trucks do you need? Where do you keep those trucks? Who is going to take care of all those trucks? Oh, you want to double in size? Ok, just buy 24 more trucks, find 36 more plumbers, an operations manager, and office manager, and keep them all busy and organized… oh, and where do we keep the keys to 24 trucks?
None of these problems seem hard to the guy on the other side of them… they all seem like just processes you need to run. To the guy on the front side, each one of them is a complicated, novel problem to solve with 1000 right-ish solutions, but only a few really good ones.
And so, if you have the advice of a person who knows how to do it, who has done it - that is more valuable than gold. Seriously. Imagine you have a 2 million dollar gross revenue business, and it is 10% profitable - $200,000 profit! You are growing at 15% a year, things are good. In 10 years that will be an 8 million dollar business = $800,000 profit! There are a ton of problems that you will need to solve to get from 2 million to 8 million, but it’s ok, you have 10 years.
Now, this guy, who you know knows how to scale a business - the pudding is important! - says he will charge you $20,000 a year to coach you. That is a TON of money! Ten percent of your profits!!! $100,000 over 5 years! That is crazy… except…
If he can save you five years of struggle by providing a road map… what is that worth? At least 3 million dollars in extra profit… and that is on the low end, and doesn’t even account for fewer sleepless nights.
Find people who have done what you want to do, and pay them the money… BEG them just to be in their presence. If you are willing to do the work, and take the risk, it is a huge force multiplier.
I know I went deep on the business example, and I know not all of you (or even many of you) own small businesses. Don’t let that dissuade you. The money and the profit is just a way of quantifying the value of a guide. The insane value of mentors and coaches is likely more true with regards to personal growth… it is just easier to compare apples to apples with the business example.
Have a great week!
Spencer
Dad Joke O' The Week
Did you know that Humpty Dumpty had a great fall?
Yeah, his summer wasn't too bad either!
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