Smart Small, Take Risks, Memorize, and Prototype

Starting small to show forward progress

I’m dipping my toes into podcasts.

First, I’m writing an intro for a podcast about John D. Rockefeller’s youth in the style of Ira Glass. Not a full podcast, just the intro. I’m also not going to do the full podcast unless I really start to love the process.

If I do record, I’ll just record a 5 minute soundcloud to see how I enjoy it.

Start small. Keep moving.

Take Great Risks

Many successful people have put everything on the line at some point.

John D. Rockefeller fits into this category. In his first business with the Clark Brothers, he had almost their entire business on the line with a shipment coming in during a storm.

Dan Bilzerian bet his entire life savings on numerous poker hands (He got rich playing poker).

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Don’t read too much into this. There are tons of people who made fortunes who didn’t have anything all on the line at some point. To be honest, putting everything you have on the line is probably not the smartest thing to do.

But do take risks.

Don’t be risk averse.

If you never take risks, you’ll probably end up in your parents’ basement playing World Of Warcraft.

Memorizing Baseball Jersey Numbers

I have a buddy named Iain Kaplan who is super impressive. He went to Harvard. He is super smart. And he has this uncanny ability. He can name any baseball player’s number just by hearing their name. It’s uncanny. It’s super impressive. You don’t understand how impressive this is by reading me say it. You need to sit in a bar with him and throw out 40 player names so you can watch him rattle off their jersey numbers on all the different teams they were on.

John Looking For a Job

I finally got around to writing the first script for my podcast introduction about the childhood of John D. Rockefeller. It’s very much a rough draft and needs to be edited 7 more times, but here’s a link to a post talking about it.

Prototyping

I dove back into Gmail.js tonight! Really exciting to start prototyping again. This is going to be really cool. 🙂