At 20 years old, I read a book that split my understanding of money in two. Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad is built around a simple contrast. His own father, "Poor Dad", was highly educated, worked hard, climbed the career ladder, and always struggled with money. His best friend's father, "Rich Dad", had little formal education but understood something about money that schools never teach. The difference wasn't income. It was what each man did with it. Poor Dad worked for money. Rich Dad...
8 days ago • 5 min read
My dad told me:”Start saving for retirement, it’ll be here before you know it”At 22 years old, that sounded like:”Throw good money into a black hole and maybe, 40 years from now something comes back”He meant well. But to me it sounded abstract, distant, and completely unreal. I obviously knew in my head I'd get old eventually. But I couldn't feel it any more than I could feel myself dying or swimming on Mars. He was describing a destination I had no interest in reaching. So I ignored him. For...
15 days ago • 4 min read
Nobody chooses to become a poodle. But this is how it happened to me. I'd consumed the news obsessively for years. Served a steady diet of problems I was in no position to solve. I used to be happy, optimistic — someone who saw the possibilities in everything. Now I believed it was all downhill from here. That this was as good as life was ever going to be. I was 25 years old. In fact, I used to be a runner. Now the only thing I ran to was McDonald's. With no hope, there was no point in...
22 days ago • 5 min read
Years ago I saw a meme I still can't shake. A side-by-side image of Bruce Springsteen and Göran Persson — the former Prime Minister of Sweden.Both born the same year.Both men of power and money.Both 65 at the time of the photo.One was shirtless in the ocean, looking 45.One was pot-bellied, bespectacled, looking like he'd already retired from life. Bruce Springsteen (left), Göran Persson (right) I was shocked that two successful men of the same age could look so different. That's when I made a...
29 days ago • 5 min read
A colleague asked me recently: "Why does it seem like whatever random topic comes up in conversation, you always seem to know something about it?" I didn't have a ready answer. But sitting with it later, I think I know why. I've been an amateur engineer, an aspiring doctor, a history obsessive, an archer, a pistol shooter, a judoka, a dog sledder, a camper, a chess player, a guitarist, and a runner. I've started more things than I can count and abandoned most of them before they got hard. For...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
At 22 I read a book that told me the world was more fragile than I thought. It was right. But the lesson I took from it was wrong, and it cost me years. Emergency by Neil Strauss began as a personal crisis. After 9/11 and the looting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he went from rock star biographer to survivalist — learning to live without electricity, slaughter a goat, get a second passport, and defend himself if necessary. His conclusion: most people are completely unprepared for a...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
At 22, I read a book written 100 years ago. It's called The Richest Man in Babylon. Set in ancient Babylon, it teaches financial principles through parables. The core lesson is deceptively simple: pay yourself first. Before you pay your landlord, your phone bill, your grocery store — set aside at least 10% of everything you earn as money that belongs to you permanently. Never touch it. Let it grow. Put it to work. The rest of the book elaborates on that single idea: a part of all you earn is...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
I read a post recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.Stijn Noorman shared that one of his clients chose him over four other coaches. Not because of his content, his branding, or his track record. But because of his method. Every other coach told this person the same thing: if you want to make money online faster, you need to do sales calls. That's the fastest path. That's how you close clients. Get comfortable with it. Stijn was the only one who said: you don't have to.His...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
I was used to the classic promo emails. You know the ones. They fill the entire screen with images. Sometimes they look like a unicorn threw up on your inbox. They scream "advertisement" before you've read a single word. Then I heard Ramit Sethi on the Tim Ferriss Show. I loved his thinking about online business. So I signed up for his email list. And I couldn't stop reading. He sold me in every single email — and not small sums either. Several of his courses cost thousands of dollars. Yet I...
2 months ago • 3 min read