🐣 hello hello!
This is a page about who I am & how I became that person.
Contents:
👶🏼 My Story
☀️ Career Approach
🌱 Life Philosophy
❔Questions On My Mind
👶🏼 My Story
Childhood
- From Oak Park — a Chicago suburb home to Ernest Hemingway and Iman Shumpert.
- Grew up as the youngest of 4 in a “be safe and be home by 6pm for dinner” type of household.
- Being the youngest made me want to stand out and “be the best”.
- And living under that parenting style led me to love independence and exploring.
- Also, I was obsessed with sports throughout my childhood.
High School
- Cut from the freshman basketball team. Heart wrenching at the time. But surprisingly great fuel. Made the sophomore team (as a benchwarmer). I was a damn good hype man though. Still am.
- So my attention switched to baseball + lifting. Went from 8th grade local league backup to competing with big D1 commits for the starting pitcher job my senior year. I also gained ~15 lbs and ~4 mph on my fastball each of my 4 years. Most of that growth came from learning online + working really hard.
- Around the same time, I became obsessed with emotional intelligence, habit formation, & intentional living. I’d even read How To Win Friends & Influence People to my baseball teammates on the bus to away games 🤓.
- I was also really into entrepreneurship, history, and technology. I read every Wait But Why essay and devoured podcasts like Acquired, The Knowledge Project, and How I Built This.
- I also befriended lots of nerds, artists, & jocks. Variety is the spice of life!
- And I graduated valedictorian, but entered college focused on meeting people + doing startup stuff.
College
- I majored in Industrial Engineering at UIUC, but quickly realized that curriculum was out of date. So, I spent my time:
- Building stuff. I founded Illini Blockchain — that taught me a lot about sales, marketing, hiring, managing, and blockchain. I also wrote 2 newsletters: Your Mindset Matters and Notes To Self. Those taught me about leverage and copywriting. And I experimented around with many more projects.
- Working with great people. Freshman year I built the CRM for my Mom’s estate planning business. Sophomore year I did growth for Glide (backed by Pear). Junior year I did cold DM sales for Jason Levin + cold email sales for Randy Ginsburg. Senior year I did content work for Matter + growth work for Julian Shapiro. I’ve learned a lot and fallen in love with sales / marketing. I am very much still a padawan. But I am obsessed.
- Reading great internet resources. I explored philosophy, history, startups, marketing, sales, biology, blockchain, writing, consciousness, meditation, and a lot more. I share the best stuff I find on Notes To Self.
- Hosting events. I hosted ~50 events during my time. Most came through jam sessions (apartment parties where people get drunk on ideas). Others took the form of retreats, public interviews, and random adventures.
- Traveling. I lived in Madrid for 5 months. During my time, I hit 45 cities and 13 countries for under $3500. I love traveling cheap and befriending locals (sometimes even living with them!).
Post-Grad
- The day my lease ended, I flew to Indonesia and Thailand. Then I was a camp counselor at Camp Chippewa for 10 weeks. No cell service, outside all day, & learning a ton about child psychology — it was awesome.
- 2 days after returning, I flew out to live with Erik Torenberg and help him launch the Turpentine Network. Built the cold outreach engine from scratch and helped him get ~75 more incredible founders in 3 weeks.
- I then started working at Haven and Solace, doing growth and sales.
- I’m still working at Haven. Helped closed a few big deals which is cool. Still a padawan. Hustling a lot to learn.
- I also spend a lot of time intro’ing great founders, investors, and operators. Connecting people is my superpower.
- And I still write Notes To Self each week to over 600 people.
☀️ Career Approach
I'd like my reputation to be “talk to that guy and you'll leave energized, thinking about something new. Good things will happen (via resources, connections, etc), and it'll generally cost you nothing.”
I love connecting people, curating resources / ideas, and building growth channels. I think I’ll eventually combine these 3 loves into a business. Not sure what that will look like yet.
I like to move fast, test things out, and work with a team. I love leaning into obsession. I pride myself on being useful, doing the dirty work, coming up with ideas, following up quickly, doing the intellectual work before asking questions, & making my coworkers look good.
I’d like to work with positive-sum, long-term minded people; be able to hone in on a sales / growth skillset; and work in a company that’s growing fast.
I could see myself thriving in a growth / sales type of role working for a high growth startup or for an entrepreneur I admire. Based in San Francisco.
To start my career, it’d be cool to make a good chunk of change, build leverage, and keep my burn rate low. I think that will help me live a flexible life where I have the space to go on a few side quests (like salsa dancing in Columbia or hitchhiking around Europe).
Then, I’ll use that time & experience to pursue my noble mission. I want to tackle a problem that, if solved, can 100x the future of humanity. I’ve only got 3-5 shots on goal to punch my dent in the universe. So I want to go big. For what it’s worth, I’m also actively questioning if “big” is good. I could be wrong about what I really want. That said…
I’m talking re-creating Golden Age Athens’ culture, providing universal basic everything (food, water, shelter, healthcare, education, economic freedom), quantifying physical & mental health to build proactive and precise healthcare systems, becoming an interplanetary species, reversing climate change, living off of sustainable energy, & installing high speed trains. I bet it’ll be the Golden Age Athens culture. PS: I wrote an essay on these ideas.
🌱 Life Philosophy
Many people spend most of their time doing things they don’t really enjoy for reasons they can’t articulate. We all work too much, fall into mimetic traps, do bullshit jobs and all kinds of other busy-work type stuff.
Personally, I’m terrified of unconsciously drifting through an inauthentic life. So, I read. I reflect. I listen to smart people. And I try to be present as much as possible.
I also surround myself with friends who define success for themselves, grab the universe by the balls, and make their dream a reality. I highly recommend.
❔Questions On My Mind
Big Questions On Life & Society
Who’s having the most fun?
How can I better listen to the wisdom of my body & emotions?
What ancient texts (from religions & philosophies) can teach me about life?
How can I build a meaningful career that gives me leverage in the future?
What was the secret sauce behind Golden Age Athens, Renaissance Florence, Enlightenment Age Philadelphia, and Early 2000s Silicon Valley?
Where is my thinking irrational or unclear enough that it’s hurting my quality of life?
How can I be ambitious and high-agency without stunting my personal relationships?
What stories am I telling myself that are bullshit? What is my real end goal with X action/belief?
Where am I copying others that I don’t want to be or shouldn’t be?
What impactful ideas can I share with my communities and eventually the world?
For the things I want to get better at, have I been deliberately practicing or just going through the motions?
Do my current typical actions bring me closer to or further from my idealized self?
What emotional armor am I holding on to that used to protect me but is no longer serving me? Can I start to become curious and observant about it (and slowly take it off)?
Reflection Questions That Bring Clarity
Am I closer to freedom?
What did I ship this week?
Is my calendar optimized for flow?
Where am I trying to be too clever?
Does my calendar reflect my priorities?
Was I going too fast, too slow, or just right?
What 20% of actions drove 80% of results?
What’s giving me energy? What’s dulling me?
Can I intentionally slow down to move faster?
What am I putting off? What if I just did it now?
Did I let other people dictate how I spent my time?
Am I calm? Am I fit? If not, what's in place to change that?
What can I remove, digital or physical, to improve coherence?
Am I sticking to the schedule, or am I letting life get in the way?
What’s the real goal here? Is there a better way to accomplish it?
What are my strategies for this org/goal? What habits do I have that represent those strategies?