When I was in the seventh grade I had just started to develop an interest in sports and decided I needed to find a sport to play. I had never played organized sports before, so I decided I would keep an open mind and just start trying things out. The first sport I attempted to play was baseball. I had never played before so naturally … Continue reading How Saying “No” Makes You and Everyone Around You Better
Over the last several weeks my team and I have been in the process of marketing our next fund. Collectively, we have probably traveled over 10,000+ miles (by plane) in the last 60 to 90 days talking to potential investors. We’ve been to Boston, Chicago, Tulsa, London, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Austin, Oklahoma City, Houston, Baltimore, Portland, and Vancouver (WA). In each place we go we normally … Continue reading Pattern Recognition
It has been tremendously difficult to choose one topic per week to write about from the Art of War because the book is filled with SO many different topics to choose from that I think are all worth writing about. One theme from the book that I have been pondering is the strategy of staying in one place and not moving until you have a … Continue reading The Art of War Series – Part II – Move Only When You Have the Advantage
At the start of the new year I made a decision to formalize my reading practices by committing to read a minimum of one hour each day. So far it has been going great and I find that I’m reading a lot more than the minimum each day. I start reading at 6am and usually wrap up about 7:30am or 8am. I find it relaxing … Continue reading The Art of War Series – Part I – “Preparation”
In 2008 I was working as a financial advisor in Chicago for a large insurance company. The job was 100% commission-based and I was responsible for paying for absolutely all of my expenses. The company didn’t provide anything to its advisors, not even basic necessities like printing paper or paperclips. I was 27 years old at the time and enjoyed what I was doing. … Continue reading The Challenge of Making Tough Decisions
At the end of each year I like to reflect on things I’d like to improve on in the following year. As such, I’ve decided to perform a SWOT analysis on myself to thoroughly assess where I am and where I want to go. A SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. No matter the industry, all businesses and organizations regularly perform … Continue reading Self S.W.O.T Analysis
After I graduated college with my civil engineering degree, I knew deep down inside I was likely to change career paths at some point in the future. It wasn’t that I didn’t like engineering, it was just a lot slower in the real world than I had pictured in my head. Nearly two years after working as an engineer job I had transitioned to a … Continue reading Most Goals Are Non-Linear
I’m not big on clichés, but there are a few mottoes I live by that I believe have helped me quite a bit in life. I won’t list all of them here, but here are two I believe are worthy of sharing publicly. Motto #1: Incremental Progress Incremental progress is a methodology I adopted when I started learning Spanish 3 years ago. In short, incremental … Continue reading Incremental Progress + Purposeful Preparation = Positive Outcomes
In any given week I might have meetings with 5 to 10 different companies. Most of these companies are early-stage in nature and are often seeking one of two things: Advice and/or capital. If I had to guess, I’d say 10% are seeking advice, 85% are seeking capital, and just 5% are seeking both. For the overwhelming majority of those that are just seeking capital I … Continue reading The Importance of Validating Your Assumptions
One of the things I used to struggle with early on in my career was keeping things in perspective. I remember one of my earlier managers telling me “to never get too high on my highs or too low on my lows.” Thinking back, this was really good advice that I’ve learned to apply in many areas of my life. I was working in sales at … Continue reading Keeping Things In Perspective
TheJCurve 